Plastic flowers and Bundt cakes.

As I write, it is Sunday, Memorial Day weekend. I'm alone in the house as my son is with his Dad and Mr. Man is working. My windows and doors are open wide, my stereo is keeping me company with the most beautiful voices in God's creation, (IL Divo) and I'm fully engulfed in one of those burning and all too rare moments in life when everything makes sense. I'm positive at this moment that I could simultaneously discover a cure for cancer and heal the lame if my Yorkie weren't distracting me by biting my fingers as I type.

As a child Memorial Day meant cousins and cakes and corn on the cob and plastic carnations that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. It was wearing corsages to church that Grandpa bought you because you were his girl. It was a deep and peaceful sense of belonging in the midst of comfortable love from relatives you didn't see often enough. It was vivid tales of precious ones who had gone on,told under the giant oak tree between sips of sweet tea and long draws on Lucky Strikes and Virginia Slims.

It was a profound sense of knowing and gratitude uncommon in little girls. At fifteen, Memorial Day was the first time I could hear the faint ticking of life's clock echoing somewhere in the distance, whispering a reminder that sweet moments such as these pass like a breath. Before I had the capacity to understand it or the maturity to forgive it, there were no more stories, no more plastic carnations and no more Virginia Slims.

I breathed in and I was there. I exhaled and I am here.

So much time has passed and yet it was just yesterday. Paw-Paw would wake up early so as to get to the cemetery and carefully place flowers on the graves of everyone to whom he and Maw-Maw had ever been related. As a little girl it seemed to me Memorial Day was like Christmas for dead people. The object was to get up early before they woke up and leave them pretty, plastic flowers so they'd be surprised.

After church, but before the car loads of southern relatives would arrive for supper, we'd walk around the cemetery and sort of say hello to everyone. It didn't matter that they were six feet under. Some of my most polite conversations have been with dead relatives. On the off chance that we came upon a grave of a relative I had not previously met, my grandparents naturally would introduce me.

"Aunt Vernie, this is Sherri, Sybil's girl," Maw-Maw would say. "Sherri, your Aunt Vernie is your great, great, great Aunt on your Paw-Paw's side."

"Sherri, now this feller right here is some of your Maw-Maw's people," Paw-Paw explained. "He was just a young man when he went home to be with Jesus. Got the fever and just never did get no better."

I never thought it was at all odd that I met a great deal of my relatives long after they were dead. In my family dying didn't mean you stopped being an important part of life.

Equally important to the Willis' and Petty's on Memorial Day was the food. Maw-Maw and I would spend all day Saturday cooking in preparation of the Day of the Dead while Paw-Paw ran back and forth to town to buy parts for the lawnmower that never worked more than ten minutes at a time.

When I was a little girl, I didn't so much cook as I did "steer" things that needed stirring. As I got older and learned to cook, I sometimes made a dish all on my own. Maw-Maw thought everything I did was nothing short of brilliant so it wasn't uncommon for her to become so emotional over a cake I'd made that she'd call every relative we had to prepare them for the shock and awe they would surely experience when they first got a look at my Bundt on the table.

Next thing you know, everyone she had called would call back within a matter of hours and ask to speak to me so that they could express their genuine excitement at the very thought that they were going to be in the same house with me and my Bundt. "Your Maw-Maw says she's never seen anything so perty in her life. I'm calling your cousins to tell them to hurry home from church so they don't get over there after it's done been cut."

No sooner than I would hang up from all my Bundt fans then I'd hear, "Daddy," which was Maw-Maw's pet name for Paw-Paw, "run get the camera and take a picture of this cake. Nobody will ever believe how perfect it is. It's just too perty to eat." If I had actually ever done anything worthy of all that praise, my entire family would have had a collective stroke. I could have easily killed off the whole clan with just one spectacular accomplishment.

I have only my grandparents to blame for my current and unnatural need to be adored. When you are immersed in such adoration as a child, how can you settle for anything less as an adult?

Sweet memories. Flashes in time. Beautiful, perfect love.

No plastic flowers, no long walks in a North Carolina cemetery and not a Bundt cake in sight. This is my memorial. I love you...always.



Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
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My beautiful boy.

Today the only man I've ever been completely happy to be in a long term relationship with turns eleven. My son, my Big Dog, is having another Happy Birthday.

He wasn't born a Big Dog. For many years he was my Puppy... until the day that is that he looked at me and with great authority said, "Mom, I'm not a puppy any more. I'm a Big Dog".

I woke up the Big D this morning with a bowl of chocolate cereal and my patented Happy Birthday song. He likes it when I sing about looking like a monkey and the horrible smell that probably goes along with it. As I belted it at the top of my lungs, I had to wonder how much longer it will be until he informs me he's too old and too sophisticated for monkey birthday songs, and for chocolate cereal.

Yesterday the two of us popped over to Wally World to pick up some goodies for his classmates in celebration of his birthday. "You're short, Mom," he said, his voice cracking with every other word. "When did you get so short?"

My heart felt a little funny and my eyes started to puddle. My Big Dog really is getting to be a big dog.

"I need some new soap, Mom."

Wow. That's new. Usually soap is like cryptonite to him.

"And I want that soap that smells good."

Oh crap. I know what this means. It's the cycle of a man's life. In the beginning, they hate soap and everything it stands for and will spend a great deal of time and energy avoiding it at all costs.

Later on, when their hormones are in full swing and they begin to figure out that the female of the species is the most perfect and desirable thing on Earth, they not only want soap, they want soap that smells good. My baby has apparently reached this stage.

Not to worry though. As soon as a man gets married he comes full circle and begins to think of soap as a frivolous expenditure and rations it like it's liquid gold.

"I need some floss, too. I don't like the kind we have."

My son, the kid whose room consistently smells like a gym where only dead people work out, is asking for dental floss. If he asks me for condoms, I am going to kill myself with his Red Zone and cherry flavored dental floss.

"Hey Mom," he said as we were walking toward the register with his chick magnet soap, "For my birthday, I want a DVD of that old show Dukes of hazard."

"Well, I already have your present, but I'll tell Daddy."

Even though Number Two and I have been divorced for a long time, I still call him Daddy...even to his face. Our relationship has been filed in the "B" for "Bizarre" category for years.

"Ok," he said and then with a thoughtful look, "Make sure he gets the one that is in color."

In color? What is he talking about? "Son, all the Dukes of hazard episodes were in color!"

"No way, Mom. They didn't even have colored TV back then."

My kid evidently thinks his Mother is a hundred and grew up in the Little House on the Prairie. I guess that is as it should be. Kids need to think their parents were never young and lived in the stone ages next door to Fred and Wilma.

This boy, this funny, perfect, love of my life is eleven. I can hardly believe it. He's beautiful, with his blonde spikes and long legs and giant smile and I am the luckiest Mom in the entire world. Nothing I have ever done in my life could have come even close to making me deserving of my children. They are my love, my joy, my everything.

Happy Birthday, Big Dog.

Love,
Mommy


Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
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I am Woman, hear me squeal.

As is the case every day of my life, today I accomplished more before noon than many people might get done all day.

I'm an army of one.

By eleven o'clock this morning, I was enjoying a vigorous work out in my home fitness center, which also doubles as Mr. Man's garage. Wearing my "Queen of the World" t-shirt and pumping away on the fitness contraption that rides like a mechanical bull, I was mentally patting myself on the back.

"I really am the Queen of the World," I thought. "I have already answered 14 emails, updated two websites, finished two email campaigns, wrote an article, did a load of laundry and went to the tanning bed. I am truly an amazing woman! If it weren't for things on high shelves, I wouldn't be at all opposed to a society where men were kept in cages as pets. Who needs 'em when chicks like me are around."

Whether it was the release of the mighty endorphins or the four cups of coffee and hand full of vitamins I had for breakfast, I was working that machine like I was in the National Finals Rodeo. At one point, I think I might have even slapped it a little.

I was invincible Sher, Queen of the World and tamer of the mighty fitness bull! Nothing could stop me! I figured after I finished with my work out, I would probably go outside and lift the car up over my head just because I could.

And then I saw it.

Right across the cement floor of my fitness center/garage sat the biggest, meanest, scariest looking insect I have ever seen in my entire forty-one years. It was huge. So huge in fact that it couldn't even be a natural bug. I knew immediately it must have come from the nuclear power plant were Mr. Man works. I'm guessing it hopped on his back bumper and held on with it's long, knife-like claws for the entire hour long ride. Either that or it just threw on a fake mustache and a hat and convinced Mr. Man it needed a ride.

I didn't know what to do. I was so terrified I couldn't make a noise. It was like one of those really bad nightmares where your dentist is chasing you with a GPS device he wants to implant on your uterus and you can't scream no matter how hard you try. As Tanner, the amazing four pound Yorkie was beside me, I pointed toward the nuclear bug in hopes that he'd spring into action and protect me.

Instead he grabbed a Sharpie and an old piece of cardboard and created a make shift sign. "Bet you wish I had a pair now, don't you Miss Let's Get Tanner Neutered?"

In the meantime the nuclear bug, who had by now found the stash of Jack Daniels Mr. Man doesn't think I know about, was changing the station on my garage stereo and sorting through a box of clothes I am taking to Goodwill. His tentacles were waving around all over the place and his eyes were glowing nuclear green.

Finally having found my voice I did what I always do when I am confronted with something that scares the crap out of me. I swore at it. Bad, bad words came flying out of my mouth like I was a profane Poet Laureate. I heard myself say words I didn't even know I knew and I'm not entirely sure I was using correctly. I questioned his heritage, I told him where I'd seen his Momma last night and I commented on the size of his Little Man.

He acted like he hadn't understood a word I'd said. I think it was the Jack Daniels.

I was running out of options. I couldn't squash this thing. It would be like trying to squash a cat. Besides, I don't wear shoes when I am riding the exercise bull and no way I was going to let any part of my skin touch this creature. I'd have to boil myself.

My only course of action was going to have to be hand to hand combat. I would have to fight like I'd never fought before in order to get Tanner and I to safety and to liberate the world from the scourge of nuclear insects. (As a Republican, I am required by law to use the word "liberate" at least twice a day.)

I spotted a broom lying against the wall and grabbed it before he could stop me. Meeting my challenge, he picked up the Swiffer I had carelessly left by the door that leads back into the house and stood his ground. In most situations, a Swiffer is better than a broom hands down. But when choosing a weapon, anyone knows the broom is the better choice.

The fight was on. I jabbed and he blocked. He jabbed and I blocked. We were like two swashbuckling pirates, except his three feet long antennae kept getting in the way. I battled the nuclear bug for what seemed like an eternity until finally I struck the fatal blow. A hard smack on top of his big old bug head and he fell slowly to the ground, Swiffer in one hand and nearly empty bottle of Jack in the other.

He's still out there. Or at least I hope he is. I'm too afraid to check. Every once in awhile I put my ear to the door to see if I can hear any movement, but all has been quiet. I couldn't pick him up to dispose of the body, so I did what I always do when I kill a bug. I covered it up with a Kleenex and left it for Mr. Man to throw away.

Hey, it's a really big Kleenex.



Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
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Top ten things I refuse to do today.

10. I refuse to use the word trifecta in any conversation, no matter how cool it sounds.

9. I refuse to bend at the waist any more than absolutely necessary.

8. I refuse to loudly proclaim to anyone in ear shot that my sugar-free popsicles taste just as good as the Ben & Jerry's my son gets to eat.

7. I refuse to help old ladies across the street, although I might help them across an ice-skating rink if the need should arise. It all depends on the old lady and how big a hurry I am in.

6. I refuse to be nice to people I don't like.

5. I refuse to say I'm sorry for something I'm not only NOT sorry for, but am pretty proud of myself for actually doing.

4. I refuse to let anyone tell me I should cut down on the references to monkeys, fire batons and river dancing in my writing. Being true to myself is what it's all about and if I happen to like writing about monkeys, fire batons and river dancing to the point that it causes the heads of my readers to simultaneously explode, I can live with that.

3. I refuse to eat beets, even if a stranger offers me a dollar to eat one.

2. I refuse to look at myself in the mirror while wearing my new glasses because I thought I looked pretty good until I got them. I am content to continue to suffer under the delusion that my pores are not small canyons.

1. I refuse to let anyone get away with calling me "Honey", "Dear" or "Sugar Britches". I will however allow the terms, "Goddess", "Beautiful" or "Woman who makes me want to be a better person". "Sweetheart" may be allowed in special cirsumstances, but only when said by an insanely handsome man and even then, only when his level of handsomeness has been pre-approved by yours truly.


Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
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You can take those bifocals and...

"You're blind as a bat," said Mr. Man. "You need new glasses."

"Shut up and read me the directions on the Macaroni-n-Cheese box," I said.

I don't want to say he was right about my less than 20/20 vision because that goes against everything I stand for. But I'm woman enough to admit that he was less wrong than he normally is.

I hate going to the optometrist. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I'm all about personal space and doctors of the eye area tend to want to get up in my face and breathe on me. I don't enjoy that.

I also do not enjoy giving them several hundred of my dollars for something I know full well cannot possibly cost that much. I'm a bargain shopper from way back and it irks me that I have to pay retail for anything...ever. I guess I was hoping I'd find a pair of prescription eyeglasses at a garage sale or lying on the side of the road somewhere.

I just used the plural of the make-believe word "irk". See how frustrated these people make me?

So, when I saw an ad on television for a place two hours away that was having a SALE on eyeglasses, you can imagine my delight.

"Mr. Pookie! Mr. Pookie! Wake up!," Although his name is Mr. Man, sometimes when we're alone I call him by his pet name. I'm affectionate like that.

"I'm going to drive four hours round trip to get eyeglasses on sale today," I said as I walked into the wall.

"I'll drive you," he said.

The whole way there Mr. Man gave me impromptu eye exams using road sings, license plates and mail boxes that I thought were cows being very, very still. "Can you see that?" he'd ask.

"I don't know. Can you see this?" Because my daughter might read this, let's say I was holding up a peace sign.

We arrived at We Be Cheap Eyeglasses and was immediately handed a stack of papers to fill out. "Is this a test?" I asked, squinting at the microscopic print.

"I'll do it," said Mr. Man, who thinks he's better than me because he can see tiny words.

"Do you want the full eye exam for $50.00 more, or the basic eye exam which is free?" the twelve-year-old with multiple piercings and black fingernails asked me.

"What's the difference?"

"Well if you have a tumor or something, the doctor wouldn't be able to tell if you only have the basic exam," she said as she spit the nail she had just chewed off her index finger into the air.

"Tumor! I could have a tumor in there?"

Here is your sales tip for the day, kids. Any time you want to make a fast buck, casually mention to an obsessive-compulsive that they could have a tumor behind their eye and then tell them the only way they can find out is to hand over fifty dollars. You won't even need a gun or a ski mask.

"Not only do I want the tumor exam thingie, I will pay extra if you'll have him take a look at this red bump on my chest," I said pulling up my shirt. "It looks a little suspicious, don't you think?"

After Mr. Man made me put my clothes back on, he finished up the paperwork and together we waited patiently for the man with the D and the R in front of his name to summon me.

"I'm going to laugh if you have to get bi-focals", said Mr. Man while I looked over the hundreds of frames that lined the walls.

"Laugh all you want Sporty Spice, but if I have to get bifocals, I am leaving here and going straight to Jay's Mid-Life Crisis Emporium and picking up a twenty-five-year-old cabana boy and a gallon of Botox."

"Ms. Crazy On Your Face," called a four-hundred pound woman with dirty sneakers and blue eye-shadow. "Walk this way, please."

(That joke is way too cheap and way too easy, so I'll pretend I don't notice the opportunity.)

I followed her into a tiny room that featured a broken chair and cheap carpeting. "That old chair has been broken a long time," said the morbidly obese lady who probably didn't even know her shoes were dirty because she hadn't seen them since she bought them. "Just don't put all your weight in it or make any sudden moves and you'll be fine."

"That's ok," said polite me. "I know that broken chairs and ugly fixtures mean that you are passing the savings on to me."

"If you'll have a seat behind this enormous and mysterious looking machine, we'll get started. Please place your chin on this germ-infested chin holder and press your nose into the very same nose hole that woman in the waiting room you saw blowing her nose into her shirt sleeve had hers on mere seconds ago."

"Where's the doctor?" I asked as I squirted the contents of my ever present bottle of Germ-X over the entire surface of the eye-tumor detecting machine from outer space.

"Oh, you will see him as soon as we're finished here. Don't worry, Ma'am. I'm highly trained on this equipment." Those words might have offered some comfort had she not been simultaneously banging the top of it like it was a cheap tv and the reception was bad.

Turns out this scientific piece of equipment did nothing more than force me to watch a very slow game of Pong and mash a button whenever I saw the little ball move across the screen.

"Good news!" she said after what felt like an eternity. "No nasty eye-tumors...plus you got the high score! What are your initials?"

After she stood across the room and shot an air rifle blast into each eye, she crawled up on her Rascal and had me follow her to an even smaller room with even worse carpeting.

On the wall hung a poster of really stressed out and obviously terrified kitties hanging onto a tree branch for dear life. I can't remember what the sentiment beneath the picture read, but I think it was, "We are so terrified and stressed out! Why doesn't that man put his camera down and help us down from here?"

Just as I picked up my phone to call the humane society, into my room walked the big guy with the impressive letters in front of his name. "So what brings you here today?" he asked.

"Oh, the usual. I think mailboxes are cows and I can't see the letters when Vanna flips them."

"I'd like you to look through these gigantic glasses that I have suspended from the ceiling on cables and simply read the letters you see on the wall," he said as he scooted so close to me that I could immediately tell he was not Jewish.

"The letters, please."

"Q...V...H...9....24....P."

"Good. And now with the other eye, please."

"G...U...hamburger...56...cotton gin...B."

"Good. Now I will click this technical clickie thing that I went to school for five years to learn how to operate and you tell me whether your vision becomes better or worse."

Click.

"Better. No! Worse. No, no! Wait a minute," the pressure was unimaginable. "It's sort of better and sort of worse. I have no idea!"

"And what about now? Better? Or worse?"

"Are you even a real optometrist? Unless it's hidden behind that motivational picture of the tortured kitties, I don't see a diploma on the wall."

"Ms. Crazy On Your Face, it looks like you need bifocals."

I think I blacked out for a minute because the next thing I knew, paramedics were hauling the good doctor out on a stretcher and I was being told I didn't need to come back for my glasses as they would be shipped to my home, which they hoped was far, far away.

"So," I said to Mr. Man as we drove out of the parking lot, "Do you know how to get to Jay's Mid-Life Crisis Emporium or should I call Triple A?"

Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

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I totally love you, too.

Cause I said so....

Dear Sher,
Something crazy is going on at my house.  My family loves snacks and they get very antsy when the snack supply gets a little low. As a result, I must resort to hiding my snacks. Lately, when I go back to my hiding place, they are gone! How do I solve this mystery?
 
Dear Tanner, the Yorkie who can type,
Mee-maw knows you think we are stealing your snacks. I can assure you that we have no interest in your tiny, fake steak bones. However, you might do well to remember that you can't hide ice.

Dear Sher,
I love you!

Dear Friendly neighborhood stalker,
I love you, too. Send me money.

Dear Sher,
Poor Tanner! Hope he's feeling better now, did he ever find his testicles??? Or is he still lost.... lol.

Dear Person who cares enough to ask about my dog's hoo-ha's,
He's checked everywhere, to include under the pillows on the sofa and in my shoes. I'm keeping him crazy drugged on doggie cocaine though, so I don't think the reality has set in. He heard his lesbian dream boat barking outside today and he wanted to go to her so badly he nearly figured out how to use sign language. I will cry when he finally attempts to love the women in his life only to find out he's now the Mayor of Dysfunction Junction.

Dear Sher,
I know you've had a lot of husbands. How do I get my husband to "perk up" in the bedroom?

Dear Potty mouth that thinks I know about those things,
You came to the right person because I so do know about those things. When I was twenty, I read the "Joy of Sex" from cover to cover...although it really didn't involve reading as much as it did looking at creepy pictures of hippies that didn't know what a razor was for, doing things I don't think real people do. Therefore, I consider myself a "do the deed" expert.

First of all, leave a copy of Norah Jones' "Turn Me On" in the CD player of his car. If that don't get him all raring to go, he's not capable of going. Next, leave him a series of...um....less than lady like messages on his phone. (Make sure you actually have his voice mail and not his boss'.) And finally, pretty yourself all up so that you look like a two-dollar hooker before he gets home. (And don't shave your armpits or your legs. The book says men like that.)



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Husband number XIVXII, come on down!

Sometimes I see people that I just don't like. Maybe they have a mean face, maybe they smell funny, or maybe I suspect they are fans of reality TV. But for whatever reason and try though I might not to do it, I often pre-judge people.

I say you can always tell a crappy book by the coffee cup rings on the cover.

(I have to admit, no one will get that line but me...and yet I dare to leave it there.)

Such is the case with a man in my town that we'll call Middle-Aged Crazy Guy. I don't like him. He is the single creepiest man I've even seen, and that includes the guy I dated once that sat on my lap to kiss me good night.

Ick.

Middle-Aged Crazy Guy scares me. Every time I see him out and about, I do my best to avoid him. I try not to even look in his direction, which is hard because he exhibits some odd behaviors. He's jumpy, always moving around in one way or another. And he wears giant mirrored fly-eyes sunglasses that he is forever pulling down to his chin or pushing up on his head.

And speaking of his head, it is way too big for his body. He has this giant cartoon noggin and an itsy little body that should not logically be able to hold his enormous cranium upright. It defies explanation...and gravity.

So yesterday I'm in the bathroom putting on my spackle and wood putty to make myself look less like a troll, blasting Lisa Marie Presley on the stereo, which I am only allowed to do when I'm home alone, and the door bell rings.

Without thinking, I fling open the front door and there he stands. Middle-Aged Crazy Guy himself is standing on my front porch not more than four feet from me, mirrored sunglasses resting on his chin.

"Sweet Lord!" I screamed and jumped back. I try to never answer the door that way, but sometimes it's the only appropriate greeting.

"Hey there, Lady," he said. "What's the story on the refrigerator in your front yard?"

Now before you start thinking REDNECK, let me say that the old refrigerator was sitting outside waiting on the city to come dispose of it for us. I almost never leave large appliances on my front lawn. It distracts from the painted white tractor tires with flowers in them.

"Well," I said trying to compose myself, "it's trash. End of story."

"I've got me an old boy that's a looking fer one," he says. "Does it work?"

I am still so freaked out I can hardly speak. Despite my best efforts over the years to avoid him, here I am having an actual conversation with Middle-Aged Crazy Guy. I'm sure God is laughing hysterically at me.

"I suppose it works. It's been in the garage a long time, but you're welcome to it if you want it."

Not only am I being forced to talk to him, now I am giving him stuff. Surely I will be rewarded in Heaven for this wonderful act of humanity.

"Well now I've got to go hunt a dolly!" he yells at me. "I wasn't planning on picking up a refrigerator today!"

He acted like I had run out in the street, stopped his truck and ordered him at gun point to take the refrigerator off my front lawn. I was just about to tell him what he could do with the dolly and the refrigerator, when he interrupted me.

"Believe me, I could lift that refrigerator without a dolly if I wanted to," he said pushing his glasses from his chin to his eyes. "Just the other day I lifted an entire deck right up over my head."

To make sure I got the full impact of his super human strength, he proceeded to lift a pretend deck over his head. What with all his grunting and distorted facial expressions, I started to think maybe there really was a deck over his head and I just couldn't see it.

On and on he went, struggling with the weight of the imaginary deck. He gritted his teeth and put one foot way out in front of the other to steady himself. Actual beads of sweat were forming on his crazy forehead from the intense weight of this thing.

I was about ready to ask him if he needed a little help with it when he decided to put it down and tell me the rest of the deck story.

"Oh, I had two fellers that wuz with me that wuz supposed to help me lift that damn deck, but they wuz worthless. They just kept standing around doing this..." Middle-Aged Crazy Guy started gesturing wildly with his hands like he was helping to land a plane in a blizzard.

"I finally jest told 'em to get the hell out of there and let me do it myself," he said, pushing his fly eyes back down to his chin.

And then, just when I was looking around for the camera that I was sure I'd find hidden in a plant, he looks right at me, grins and gives me the double eye brow raise. You know what I mean. Bugs Bunny used to do it when he'd see a girl rabbit chewing on a nice carrot.

Middle-Aged Crazy Guy was totally hitting on me!

"Just go get your dolly and take the refrigerator. It's all good. I'll see you later." I knew if I didn't get the door shut and get away from him I'd have to marry him and I simply cannot have wild-eyed little-bodied babies running all around the house.

Well, actually they probably wouldn't run very much because their gigantic heads would keep throwing off their balance. They'd have to wear helmets and teeny-tiny little shoes.

I did however learn a valuable lesson from my encounter with crazy up close and personal and I am happy to share it with you.

It's almost never a good idea to put a refrigerator in your front yard no matter how pretty it looks.

Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

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Sher's House of Testicle Removal.

This morning I looked right into the eyes of my tiny little Yorkie and told him he was going to go for a lovely ride. His tail wagged, he licked my hand and he hung his head out the driver's side window all the way....

...to the Vet's office.

This is where you should hear the theme to Jaws playing in your head.

Last week, after he violated the neighbor's lesbian dog yet again, I decided it would be best to lop off his testicles. Nothing personal. But when a male dog cannot be controlled in any other way, testicle removal can prove to be very effective in curbing unsavory and embarrassing sexual behavior. I found that daily being forced to see Tanner make sweet, sweet love to his teddy bear with no eyes met both those criteria.

Mr. Man and my son were not nearly as enthusiastic about my decision.

"How could you let them cut off Tanner's penis, Mom?" asked the boy with whom I seriously need to have a talk. "How will he pee?"

"They aren't removing his penis, Dear. They are going to remove his testicles so that he can't make babies."

"If I don't want to have babies, are you going to do that to me?" he asked, wide-eyed, bottom lip trembling.

"It's very possible, son. If you ever get the urge to make a baby, just remember that Mom will be forced to chop off your testicles."

It's my belief that a bizarre and sick obsession about having your mother neuter you if you "do the do" will prove to be fabulous birth control. Later on, I plan on showing him pictures of extreme circus freak cases of VD and telling him you get it by touching a girl's breasts before you're married.

Feel free to nominate me for parent of the year.

Mr. Man had concerns of his own.

Ring, ring, ring. (Or in the case of my phone, annoying cell phone music plays.)
"Hello," I say in my sweetest, try to be sexy, phone voice. I make it a habit to answer the phone like a phone sex operator on the off chance that James Spader is calling.

"Hi Bear."

Wow. It's Mr. Man calling in the middle of the day, which almost never happens.

"Bear, I've been thinking. I've not been very nice to you lately and I wanted you to know that I'm sorry."

Hmm. This is an interesting turn of events. Mr. Man is saying he's sorry without my having to spend seventy-two straight hours of intense and careful explanation peppered with the occasional expletive as to why he should be sorry.

"What are you sorry for exactly?" As a card carrying member of womankind, I cannot in good conscience let him off so easily. I will need details, dates and a specific list of offenses in order to grant forgiveness.

"I'm just sorry, that's all. I'm sorry for not being nicer to you," he answers. And then the clue I needed to solve this change of attitude mystery.

"So, how's Tanner?"

Aha! Now I get it. Now I know why he's suddenly seen the error of his ways.

"Tanner's fine. He keeps looking around for his testicles though. I think he's hoping they've just been moved to an undisclosed location somewhere on his body. The best news though is that he's very snuggly and loving right now. All he wants to do is sit with me and love me."

Silence.

"I love you, Honey. I'll sit with you and snuggle." says the Man that is convinced I am going to have his testicles lopped off if he doesn't straighten up.

"You should have seen him this morning, Mr. Man," I say. "I totally had him convinced that we were just going to take a ride and enjoy life. I even let him hang his head out the window. I can't believe how easy it is to fool a young dog."

"Yeah, poor guy never saw it coming."

"By the way," I say turning back on the phone sex voice which I know fries the logic part of his brain, "on your next day off, I'd really like us to take a nice, long ride in the country and spend some quality time together.

"I'll even let you hang your head out the window."

I can't believe how easy it is to fool an old dog.


Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
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Bet that, Baby.

Call it OCD, call it Type A personality, or call it just being me, but I'm a planner. I like to know what's coming before it gets here and whether or not its washed it's hands before it arrives. And if I know something is coming I don't want to do, I can turn into Super Wonder Bitchy in nothing flat.

I think it's because I like control. Not a little control. Not partial control. Freaky Machiavellian you belong to me now and we only do what I want to do control.

In the words of Popeye, I yam what I yam. If you don't like it, go eat someone else's spinach.

Yesterday Mr. Man, who is bent on the two of us spending quality time together by doing manual labor, informed me that if I don't help him clean out the garage today, he will systematically throw out every single thing...no matter how much I might need it to live a productive and happy life.

He is the devil.

To tell someone like me that you plan to throw out my stuff is like asking me to lie down on the floor while you remove my liver with a rusty garden spade. It's not ok.

Add to that the fact that I believe it's morally wrong for a woman to sweat or to willingly enter into any place where spiders hang from strings and try to crawl on your body parts, and let me tell you Houston, we have a huge freaking problem.

He had planned on spending last night, an actual Saturday night, with the two of us elbow deep in spiders and dirt, throwing my stuff in a dumpster. But, I'm a pretty persuasive chick when I want to be so I did what any thinking woman would do when her husband is being a poop head.

I put on six quarts of make-up, seven layers of perfume and a push up bra. Crisis averted. Rather than cleaning, we went out to eat and to place a "For Sale" sign on my best friend's camper. (Her camper is so not for sale, but I am easily entertained.)

Today even the powers of the push-up bra and Joop aren't going to get me out of having to work in that God forsaken garage. And if I don't, it is very likely that he will throw out my collection of ceramic truck stop teddy bears, and no one wants that.

Time for a new plan.

As I sit here clicking the keyboard, he is lying in bed waiting for me to finish writing. He knows that the one rule in this house that is never, ever to be bent or broken is that when I am writing, I am only to be disturbed when there is blood loss involved. And even then, it better be of Helter Skelter proportions. I don't cotton well to losing my train of thought.

Now, where was I?

Oh yeah. My plan.

I figure as long as I'm sitting here writing, he will be forced to wait on me so long that he will forget about working and more importantly, about throwing out the homemade cards my eighth grade boyfriend gave me.

I'm an evil genius.

The only problem is that I really have nothing left to say. I've written everything I wanted to write and said everything I needed to say. The only thing left to do is to sit here with my brow furrowed, sighing loudly once in awhile for good measure and type random words. And if it means I can get out of getting dirty, I can totally do that.

Bobsled.

Marsupial.

Eloquent.

Zimbabwe.

Kojak. Barnaby Jones. Ponch. Grumpy short dude with parrot on shoulder who used to be a Little Rascal and then killed his slutty wife and got away with it because people on TV can do anything they want and never go to prison.

Microwave.

Amarillo.

Armadillo.

Brillo.

Pad.

Here he comes. Oh crap.

Tiny bottles of alcohol.

Thumb eating monkeys.

Superior.

Mr. Man is a goober who thinks he's smarter than me. College boy with his two degrees who rolls his socks up in yucky little balls and then expects me to unroll them before I wash them and now wants me to spend my Sunday cleaning out the garage. I'm so sure. I'll sit here and type all day, I will.

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Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

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The Edna.

Do you ever wonder if anyone anywhere even notices you any more?

Do you ever feel like you have somehow managed to become so boring that you are now completely invisible to the naked eye?

Do you ever stare at someone you hate really hard hoping that maybe you're a little like Carrie and their head will explode leaving teeth, hair and eyeballs all over the place and since no one knows you've got the Carrie thing happening, they will never pin it on you and you will totally get away with it?

Me neither.

But if I did, and I'm not saying I do, I would think about the power of Edna.

Edna is a lady that lives in my small town. I don't actually know Edna and we have never even spoken, but lately I think of Edna a lot. Every morning when I wake up before I get out of bed, my prayer is, "Lord, in all I do today, grant me the power of the Edna".

Picture an old lady that is eighty if she is a day. Her face is time worn with as many wrinkles as you've ever seen on a human face, but covered in carefully applied pancake make-up that accentuates every crease.

Her cheeks are perfect rosy balls thanks to her Avon lady. Her eyebrows have been drawn on so that she constantly looks like she's surprised and her eyes are outlined in coal black with thick black spider legs where eye lashes should be.

Her lips are giant shiny blobs of neon pink and her jet black hair is piled up high on her head, held in place by no less than fifty bobby pins and several coats of industrial strength hair spray.

This is the Edna.

I love Edna's "I don't give a good damn what you think" style. It's not just in the way she wears her make-up. It's in everything she does and I like to believe it's in all she is.

If you came to visit our town, you might notice her driving down the road on the way to the VFW to throw back a couple stiff ones. Like Edna, her car refuses to be ignored.

It's a giant boat of a thing in a golden brown color I don't think Detroit has made since 1970. It is without question the biggest car in our town. It's such a land yacht in fact that little Edna can't see over the steering wheel, so she does what Edna does and simply adjusts to a potential problem.

She looks through it.

You'll know it's Edna coming at you because she has a personalized plate on the front that says, "EDNA" with a pink rose painted on the side. Even without the forget-me-not plate you still couldn't mistake her. Her's is the only car that appears to be driven only by a stack of Priscilla Presley hair and her steering wheel looks like it's smoking a Marlboro.

You got'ta love her.

Even though I think of her practically every day and have to contain myself from shouting, "You go, Edna!" every time I pass by her, she has no idea what a fan she has in me. She has no clue that I am her pupil, her disciple even, although I'm betting it wouldn't surprise her. I rather doubt Edna has a problem with low self esteem.

If Edna's husband told her he wanted to spend his only weekend off in months cleaning out the garage, Edna would either whip out a knitting needle and slice him from stem to stern or throw a pillow and a blanket in there for him so he wouldn't freeze to death in his new apartment.

Edna doesn't have time for anything less than insane and total adoration of the incredible woman she knows she is.

So many times I've wanted to walk right up to her and ask her to tell me the meaning of life.

Would she say it's love?

Would she says it's following your bliss, no matter how uncomfortable that might make the world around you?

Would she tell me the meaning of life can only be found in being true to yourself even when it's utterly and profoundly painful and frightening?

I don't know, but frankly it wouldn't surprise me if she said the meaning of life is a good stiff drink and a smoke after a roll in the hay with a widower who still has all his bottom teeth.

I hear you Edna. Words to live by.


Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
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Not for nothing.

I have stuff on my mind today. Big stuff. Important stuff. Stuff I'm sure you can't live another day without knowing. Or at the very least, you wouldn't WANT to live another day without knowing.

~ My picture on this blog makes me look like I have a lazy eye. Seriously. I was telling someone yesterday that it makes me look like one of those spooky Scooby-Doo paintings that follows you wherever you go.

Go ahead. Try it.

I totally see you over there.

~ As I was watching Fox News this morning, I heard the funniest thing I've heard on the Republican news in a long time and found myself laughing so hard I nearly spilled coffee all over my boxers.

During an interview with the mother of a grade schooler who had been told he could not read his Bible during recess, her attorney (naturally there is an attorney) said, and this is what made me crack up, "These grade schoolers are free to discuss alcohol and illicit sex on the playground. Why not the Bible?"

I'm all for the Bible on the playground or wherever else it wants or needs to be and as a Republican, I do so love the Republican news channel. But, what kind of school is this anyway? I'm not even free to discuss alcohol and illicit sex in my own home and I'm forty-one! I can't see little third grade Bobby hanging upside down on the monkey bars with boogers stuck to his chin saying, "Hey there Mary Lou. Did you see that very special episode of Rug Rats last night when Chuckie drank alcohol and had illicit sex with Lil?" It made me laugh till my side hurt. Maybe I need to get out more.

~ I came home from tanning yesterday (yes, I bake myself like a turkey and will someday look like shoe leather) and on my front porch I found a beautiful rose. It was yellow with pink just around the edges and it was in a pretty vase. No note. No indication of who left it. Mr. Man was sleeping and anyway I knew it wasn't him because the last time he brought me roses was our first Valentine's Day together and I dismembered him with words for daring to offer me such a cliche gift on such a manufactured holiday.

Anyway, I went inside, closed the blinds and did a little happy dance because someone secretly loved me. We all want to be secretly loved, but not everyone is as honest about it as am I.

I found out later that indeed I am secretly loved. By the elderly lady next door. I love her, too. (But why couldn't she have been a firefighter or Elvis or Harry Connick, Jr.?)

~ I went swimsuit shopping the other day. We're taking the family to a lodge the first week in June and it has a massive indoor/outdoor waterpark. I can't be seen waterparking around in something I've worn for two summers in a row. Much to my dismay, apparently there are only two kinds of swimsuits available for women this season. Truck stop hooker/exotic dancer at Barbie's Tuck-A-Buck and Grandma the retired librarian whose boobs reach the floor.

I'm doomed. There are no swimsuits for forty-one-year-old mothers of two who don't work for tips at a hotel near the airport and don't know the first thing about Dewey Decimal or using a quiet voice.

Maybe I'll start my own clothing line and call it, "My Girls Are Still Perky, But I'm Not Eighteen Any More". Something so tastefully done that men will neither throw up nor drool and of course something that wouldn't cause Little Bobby the third grade retrograde to say illicit things about me or want to consume alcohol from his chocolate milk carton.

I'm headed for the sewing room. I'm going to need some fabric, a glue gun, some staples and as many spangles and sequins as I can get my hands on because I so do not know how to sew.


Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

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I have humor envy.

I am supposed to be working. And I really and truly was up until about two minutes ago. I needed a break from being the working me, chained to my computer like it's a bad husband who will beat me if I try to leave.

On days like today when I am simply overwhelmed with the monotony of my life, I visit Pickle Loaf Bologna File.

Whether I have a serious deficiency in my brain or this guy is the funniest human being alive, I don't know. All I know is he can make me laugh like a mad woman in no more than two or three sentences.

I hate him because I wish I were that clever and funny and brilliant.

I love him because so few people can make me shoot Diet Pepsi out my nose.

Some of my favorite Pickle Loaf Bologna lines?
"I bet in the asexual plant community their novelty pens turn upside down to slowly reveal naked pictures of themselves."

Or maybe it's this one, "It would really be unfortunate if you vomited in a spaceship. Because there it would be, floating around the whole trip, making people feel uncomfortable."

Or, this one, "I would like to go downtown and set up a stand with a sign that reads, “Free cookies for the illiterate.”

Then when someone came up, I would point to a smaller sign that said: “We are not in the business of providing cookies to liars.”

See what I mean?

Read his stuff. If you don't think it's funny, I offer a 100% money-back guarantee and I reserve the right to call you names behind your back.


Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

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Not that there's anything wrong with it.

If you've read my blog for very long, you know that from time to time I suffer bouts of insomnia that cause me to want to fling myself off a bridge. Tonight is such a night.

I've done everything I can to go to sleep and stay that way short of hitting myself over the head with a chair. I called Mr. Man, who told me to read my new book, "Medical Cures They Don't Want You To Know About" until I get sleepy. That would be a good plan if I were anyone else. But, telling Sher to read a book that is filled with page after page of how the FDA is secretly trying to kill me is probably not some of his best advice.

I even called my best friend...who happens to work nights and is paid to have insomnia... to ask her to sing me to sleep. She had the nerve not to be there.

How selfish. When I need someone, I expect them to be waiting by the phone in anticipation of whatever need I may have, raring and ready to meet said need. With glee even.

Tomorrow, I am so breaking up with her. Being my best friend carries with it a certain amount of responsibility and if she is unable to fulfill her duties, I'll have to appoint the first runner up to take over.

She will also have to give back the crown.

Even though I can't sleep, I have to say that sometimes I welcome it. I've decided that my brain on little or no sleep is a veritable factory for exciting and previously un-thought-of thoughts and grand ideas. I imagine that Van Gogh and Einstein and Elton John were insomniacs and much like myself, they were geniuses.

Or is it genius-i?

Before I forget all this brilliance, I should write it down so that it is preserved for posterity. Is posterity even a word, or did I just make that up?

See? I am brilliant when I don't sleep. I even invent new words for humans to use in their every day conversations. When is the last time you invented a whole new word?

To prove my REM inhibited intelligence, I will create more words right here, right now, on the spot. Let's see Elton John do that.

If you liked posterity, you'll love "replicate". It's from the Latin "replicatus" which means "to plicate again".

"Dang it Spot! How could you replicate all over the kitchen floor when you just went five minutes ago?"

And what do you think of this one: "inebriate"? That is a good one. All the cool kids will be using it. It is a combination of both Cajun and Aramaic and it means literally "the act of taking off one's shoes without untying them".

"As an executive in a Fortune 500 company, my time is far too valuable to waste it tying shoes. That's why I inebriate them instead."

What about "homonym"? Now that is a good looking word.

Homonym is a medical term actually. Although I am unsure of it's origin, I can tell you that it means, "a nym that was born attracted only to other nyms of the same sex".

"Gee Sarah, I really enjoyed my date with Bill the other night, but I think he's a homonym. He kept flirting with the nym that waited on us at the Wiener Schnitzel."

Wiener. That's a funny word. Wiener, wiener, wiener. I wonder who invented it? It was probably me the last time I couldn't sleep.

Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
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Ladies and Gentlemen, Delbert Has Left The Building.

You’ll be happy to know I am not dead. At least not yet anyway.

I am writing from the lovely waiting room of Dr. I’m Not From Around Here, where I arrived a full forty-five minutes early. Totally an obsessive Sher thing to do. I don’t like to be late and I don’t like people who like to be late. I only forgave my twenty-year-old daughter last month for being two weeks past due.

The drive was great weather, pounding music and best of all, I managed to avoid breaking down across from the Bates Motel. Of course, I’ve not made the return trip home yet, so Norman may still have a shot at me.

I had hoped to use my handy dandy lap top to blog right here in front of God and everybody, but amazingly this hospital does not offer me a hotspot. For the kind of money Blue Cross is paying these people, I would expect some wireless internet access…and a cabana boy with a tray of cocktails with fruity skewers and umbrellas in them.

Totally blogless, I have resorted to writing this in Word and will post it later. Providing I am still not dead that is.

I’m sitting here passing the time being snoopy, looking around the gigantic room at the other sickies, while trying to be oh-so-stealthy. I am even peering over my glasses like a librarian because as everyone knows, they can’t see me staring if I do that. To most of the men and women here, I must look like a spring chicken as they are all roughly one-hundred years old.

Cheese–n-rice, that can’t be a good sign. Apparently my body is falling apart way ahead of schedule.

I wish I had a camera in my phone so you could see what I see. But as cell phones aren’t supposed to be turned on in here for fear of somebody’s chest spontaneously exploding, let me see if I can paint you a word picture of some of the other inhabitants here on the island of misfit internal organs.

There is the very dignified lady to my immediate right with short, gray hair that is sprayed stiff to stand up on end all over her head, except for the small bald spots here and there. She’s dressed in varying shades of beige from head to toe and her glasses are overly large circa 1978. Not only is she dressed in beige, she is the single beige-iest woman I’ve ever seen. I wonder what her life has been like, what secrets she has in her closet full of beige clothes. Was there a time when she wasn’t beige?

Does she have a husband? Is he handsome? Did he ever make her heart go pitter-patter? It’s been my experience that the beige women of the world aren’t necessarily beige on the inside and I’m betting old Stiff Hair is no different.

She’s reading a book…probably some Harlequin type where at least one winch is raped in the first chapter and the words “throbbing” and “welcoming’ are used more than they have any right to be. It must be that kind of book because every few minutes, she covers her mouth with her free hand as if she can’t bear to read another word. And yet, she does.

I see her look up at me from time to time as I click the keys of what I’m sure she thinks is an oversized calculator. She doesn’t approve of me. Me with my wild hair, my cropped pants and black t-shirt with BLONDIE scrawled across the front and the various and assorted pieces of jewelry on my arms, ears, fingers and toes.

“Hippee with her big calculator,” she thinks. “What has she got to add that takes so much clicking anyway?”

She probably blames Elvis and all that rock-n-roll, hip-shaking devil’s music.

Then there is the hard of hearing man directly in front of me. I know he’s hard of hearing because his escort, who I believe to be his son, keeps talking to him in a voice so loud I want to punch him in his gullet. (I have no idea what a gullet is, but I like that word.) The old guy must be way old because his son is at least twenty years older than I am and wearing sensible shoes that no self-respecting person would wear until they are at least sixty-five.

Or maybe he’s forty-one. As I myself am forty-one, is it possible I think I look way better than I really do? Maybe I should end the charade and stop at the sensible shoe outlet before I leave the city and leap into old age feet first.

Yeah. That’ll happen.

But my favorite person here has to be Delbert Townsend. How do I know his name?

Because for the last ten minutes, I have repeatedly heard the woman in kitty cat scrubs using her best outdoor voice call, “Delbert? Delbert Townsend?”

Delbert is so not here.

I don’t know where Delbert is, but I like him. He’s a renegade, that Delbert. Probably off hitting on a nurse somewhere, or God and Viagra willing, getting hinky in a broom closet with a blue-haired hottie he hooked up with before he got tired of waiting. You can’t contain Delbert Townsend in some waiting room with bad magazines. He’s a wild card. He’s unpredictable. He may be back, he may not. You just never know with the Delbert’s of this world.

It’s getting close now to the time I was actually supposed to be here so I should close before the kitty-cat woman bursts through the saloon doors that lead to the much smaller and far more intimate waiting room that will contain me until Dr. I’m Not From Around Here is good and ready to visit with my thyroid. While I wait there and in honor of my Delbert, I will lick all the popsicle sticks in his presumptuous glass jars and rearrange his brochures about the dangers of osteoporosis and how to take Fosamax.

Besides, I can no longer concentrate what with the old shades of beige lady politely picking her nose, her little finger sanitized for her protection in her crumpled up beige hankie.

Come back to the Five and Dime, Delbert Townsend, Delbert Townsend!


Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
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There is nothing to fear but fear itself. And cremation.

I'm tired of having OCD. Some days I can live with it and other days I think I'd like to try a more manageable disorder. Maybe something like anorexia. I could be mentally ill and fabulously thin at the same time.

Who am I kidding? I don't have that kind of dedication.

Tomorrow I have to drive...all alone and without benefit of Mr. Man I might add, to a big scary hospital two and a half hours away. And when I get there, I will be rewarded for my efforts by getting to spend some quality time alone with Dr. I'm Not From Around Here.

I'm not loving it. Especially since watching Medium last night about the possessed doctors that chop up patients when no one is looking.

The thing is, I have obsessed like mad tonight about the entire trip, the visit with the doctor and whether Mr. Man will remember to take my rings off before they cremate me.

I get right to the point with my obsessing. No sense in beating around the bush.

I have done absolutely everything I can think of to do to get my mind off this giant OCD fit I am having and nothing is working. Years ago I would have simply eaten a Trazedone flavored ice cream cone, but not now. Now I choose to suffer the madness without benefit of horse tranquilizer.

What a girl.

So I figure if I can't beat it, maybe we can laugh at it. Chopin is blasting on the stereo, my son is at his Dad's and my dog is covering his ears with his paws to try to drown out my choice of music. I'm all set to spill my guts and dress the demons in lamp shades so they look funny.

First of all, I am obsessing that I will have a flat tire. And with an obsessive-compulsive, it's never just a flat tire. It's a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, with no cell phone bars and the Bates Motel across the street.

But wait! There's more!

Not only is it a flat tire in the middle of nowhere with no cell and Norman peeking at me through the curtains in his mother's wig, it's what caused the freakin' flat tire in the first place.

I didn't touch the oven knobs seven times.

Ok. That's a lie. I did touch them seven times, but it didn't feel right so I had to do it again. And you know what? I didn't want to do it again so I threw caution to the wind and refused to do it.

One small step for me, one giant leap for a flat tire and my future as Norm's blonde from a bottle slave. (I'm not wearing the old lady's wig, I don't care what he says.)

I should have touched the knobs and called it a day.

If I actually make it alive to the hospital, I have to worry about what happens next. The last time I saw Dr. I'm Not From Around Here, he repeatedly stuck a needle the size of a tree limb in my throat without benefit of numbing agents or a bullet and a bottle of whiskey.

He made me cry. I don't like mean men that make me cry. Especially when I'm not wearing water proof mascara. I left his office looking like I'd been out all night doing mind altering drugs and sailors on shore leave with an ugly bandaid on my neck to boot.

And it wasn't even a Rug Rats bandaid.

So I'm thinking that this spectacular enlarged thyroid will freak him out tomorrow. Even though he does this for a living, I'm fully expecting him to pass right out when he sees how much it's grown.

Only when he comes to after the nurse puts cold clothes on his head will he tell me it must come out immediately.

"Oh no!" I'll say. "I can't possibly let your cut my throat open today. I have plans. I have to feed my dog. I think I left my fire batons on. I'm late for an intimate supper with Norm and his mom."

Logic would tell a normal person that doctors don't routinely throw you in the hospital and slit your throat without first sending you home for weeks to worry about it. I hear the logic, but the hiccups in my brain are louder.

Much louder.

And so I obsess. And on and on and on it goes until I am so frustrated and so tired of fighting the demons in funny hats that I give in and count all the slats in the blinds and turn the lights on and off twenty-one times.

Tanner the amazing four pound Yorkie thinks we live in a Chopin Disco.

Oh well. Better go and try to get some beauty sleep. (Can you hear the maniacal laughter?) If you never hear from me again, fear not.

I have either been set on fire with my rings on...because I so know Mr. Man will forget. Or, I have become Norman Bates' bitch.

Now look at me. I'm saying bad words. That one will cost me an extra seven times at the stove.




Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

Tell me you love me at: HumorWriter@gmail.com

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Feel free to move about your life worshipping me as a Goddess.

I love email. It's the best thing since pigeons for getting to know new people and for shamelessly coaxing them into telling you they love you.

And I do so love to be loved.

Every few days I am lucky enough to get a really nice email from a really nice person...who is probably in all reality an inmate of some sort in an institution of some sort. I'm always amazed that total strangers would take time out of their busy lives to write me and say nice stuff, but I eat it up like the chocolate frosting I snarf under the table when an editor rejects me.

I'm sick like that.

I love the "Dear Sher" questions, but the "you are funny" emails really put the giddy-up in my gallop. (A big shout out there for my Grandpa...who is dead and therefore may not find that funny.)

Here are excerpts from the niceness, which I will of course repay with sarcasm.

Dear Sher,
You are an amazingly funny and talented writer! Ummm, perhaps I
should clarify that...funny as in "Ha Ha!" not strange, mind you. I
tripped across your Blog and web page and am still up to my pecker
(that would mean MY NOSE to you Midwesterners) in reading your stuff.
Signed,
Tim; Peripheral Visionary & Master of the Obvious


Dear Pecker Nose,
Thank you so much for your kind and sort of pseudo sexual email. Normally when I receive email, I don't publish the name of the person who did the writing. In your case, I couldn't help myself. Anyone that has a signature like that deserves to have people see it. It sounds like a really bad off-the-strip Vegas magician. I love it! Let's get married so I can be Mrs. Peripheral Visionary & Master of the Obvious.

Dear Sher,
Funny, Smart & Attractive: Well, will flattery get my e-mail opened? Okay, then let me add talented writer with excellent spelling skills and paragraph usage....
I think you have talent. And not to toot my horn, but I predicted "Fantasia" from the very beginning. So, you see, I have an eye and an ear....
For "SMIDGENS!" of my writing and photographs take a look: www.sandraewebber.com

Dear Person who understands me,
Thank you for taking the time to notice my incredible use of the paragraph. I've always dreamed of the day when someone would say to me, "You have excellent paragraph usage". Of course, I was hoping it would be said by a firefighter and more screamed than said really...but this is cool, too.

It's great you predicted Fantasia from the beginning. I didn't really get it, though. Too much music and not enough Mickey and Donald driving cartoon cars.

And in closing, I love that you are a fan of the ...
I love the dot, dot, dot, too and I try to overuse it as much as I can....

Dear Sher,
I love your writing. You're funny! Do you write anything other than humor?

Dear Sher Lover,
Yes I do, but it will make you either want to commit suicide or kill a man. That's why I try to never let anyone else read it. I'm not ready for that kind of responsibility. (Although I am in review with Blue Mountain cards at the moment. Apparently they enjoy the odd suicide-inducing Happy Birthday greeting.)

Dear Sher,
Is your little man too small? Click here.

Dear Person who somehow found out about the tiny man I keep in the closet,
Yes, he is small but I happen to like him that way. I don't go through nearly as much Little Man Chow as I do when feeding a big man and when I take him out to run errands with me, he fits nicely in my patented Little Man Carrying Case.

Thank you for your concern.

Dear Sher,
Great story! It was a very well written and amusing piece.

Dear Mr. Vague,
Of what?


Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

Tell me you love me at: HumorWriter@gmail.com

Tell me you hate me at: Yeah. I'm so sure I'm going to make that easy for you.



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Bumbles bounce. Do mules?

So I'm watching the Travel Channel, which is the best channel of all the channels God ever created, when I saw them.

The Grand Canyon Mules.

If you aren't familiar, they are not a football team, although I think that would be a great name. They are actual four-legged mules who work for the government at the Grand Canyon, which is the grandest of all the canyons God ever created.

Apparently visitors to the Canyon can hop on the back of a mule to be hauled down the incredibly steep and crazy scary dirt trail to the bottom of this big hole in the ground. Why they feel the need to descend 5000 feet in the first place is beyond me entirely. Add to that the fact that they want to do it on a mule's back, and I'm completely at a loss.

As I watched these tired old mules hauling fat Americans down such a frightening and narrow trail, a few things really gave me cause for concern. Call it OCD, or call it common sense, but I think everyone that is considering riding a mule for fun or profit should consider these questions.

What if you get a mule that is just exhausted? What if he collapses half way down and as a result you fall off the side of the trail? The words "plummet to your death" come to mind. Do the mules get regular health exams to prevent such a tragedy? Are they on the South Beach Diet so that they don't have heart attacks?

What if you hop on a mule that looks perfectly happy to be at work, but is secretly bi-polar? Isn't it conceivable that he could suddenly have an attack of mania and decide to fly?

What if your mule doesn't like you? Would he tease you by walking so close to the edge that you wet your pants?

What if he's had an argument with his significant other the night before? Maybe he's hung over from trying to drink her off his mind? Or worse yet, he caught her with another mule...who just happens to be the mule carrying the Asian tourist in front of you? Would there be a fight? Would you be able to hang on while your mule is kicking the ass of the ass that was sleeping with his wife?

What if you are so fat that Disneyland won't even let you ride Space Mountain? Do you really think a mule can carry you down a 7 mile trail? What if you break his back? Would you have to carry him on your back down the remainder of the trail?

What if a snake jumps out in front of you on the trail? Would your mule freak out and hop around yelling, "Somebody kill it!" and if so, where are you in all the commotion?

What if your mule doesn't understand English? What if you say, "pretty mule" and he thinks you said, "Jump or my associate will chop off the thumbs of your wife and kids."

What if Osama Bin Laden is hiding behind a rock on the way down and pops out and yells, "Boo!"? Bumbles may bounce, but I don't think mules do.

What if your mule has OCD, like me? Would he keep going back up the hill to make sure he didn't leave his curling iron on? Would he have to keep his eyes on the ground at all times so he didn't step on an ant and get sent straight to Hell? Would he continually ask you if his forehead felt hot because his last rider had a cold? Would he constantly look over the edge and whisper over and over again, "I will not jump. I will not jump.I will not jump."?

You can ride a mule if you want to. I think I'll take a golf cart.

Wait a minute...what if the brakes fail? What if I pass out from the heat and drive my cart off the edge? What if......?


Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

Tell me you love me at: HumorWriter@gmail.com

Tell me you hate me at: Yeah. I'm so sure I'm going to make that easy for you.



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