I have a new story in IndyWeek today.
It’s a first-person account of my attempt to get PUA (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance) as a freelance writer.
I’ve also gotten the go-ahead to begin work on my Third Annual Indy Week Virtual Holiday Potluck. It’ll be out around Thanksgiving.
Take care and stay safe, Gentle Reader.
Thanks for you time.
*What you shall read here is all true, and I hope it amuses you (Cockney Rhyming Slang)
Those adorable Brits.
Most of the time when it comes time to write an epistle to you, Gentle Reader I have something on my mind that I want to share.
But sometimes, no matter how long I walk the dog, or how many long showers I take, I just can’t come up with an idea. So, I keep a file of phrases, thoughts that need filling in, things I hear or read, anything that from which I might suss a column.
Last year, before Harry and Meghan made their escape from the royal family, I read a story about her paternal side of the family; the uber awful Thomas Markle and her step-sister, she of the horrible hair, Samantha.
I don’t know what the back story is, but there’s a ton of anger toward Meghan. And of course, the media eats it up. Samantha seemed to be furious that she wasn’t welcome at either the wedding or the palace to hang with the royals.
She was so upset that she went to London, and had taken up the habit of hanging around the palace gates trying to get noticed and provoke a reaction.
She provoked a reaction.
From palace security. Working under the assumption that no stable relative by marriage of the royal family would act as she was, they decided that she was someone to watch.
They designated her a “fixated person”.
And if that isn’t the most charming, most British phrase, I don’t know what is. Over here across the pond, we’d probably call her a crazy ass stalker.
That nation of jellied eel and mushy peas have the cutest way of saying things that we more prosaic Americans put in much more blunt and boring terms.
Knackered means exhausted. Which is fun, but it’s even better in cockney rhyming slang—cream crackered.
Chuffed, gutted, and gobsmacked. All very much more charming than our pleased and excited (chuffed), completely, utterly disappointed (gutted), and shocked down to one’s toes (gobsmacked). They are also much more economical than the three or four words which we need to describe the same emotion.
Cheeky; often used with monkey, as in “You’re a right cheeky monkey.” Charming, mischievous, and a little disrespectful of the high and mighty. Ryan Reynolds and Chrissy Teigen are cheeky.
Pissed is not angry, it’s drunk.
Snog means make out. Have a nice snog sounds so much nicer than necking and petting. Necking and petting sound like something you’d see at a dog or horse show.
Bagsy. If you’re in England and you want to get the front seat for a car ride, don’t yell out “Shotgun!”. They’ll just think you’re an American gun nut. To get that primo seat, sing out, “Bagsy!”.
I had an Uncle Bob, I’m guessing that a good many folks have or had one. But if you’re in Yorkshire or Southwick, “Bob’s your uncle!” means, “There you go!” or even more excitedly, “Ta-Dah!”
Bingo wings are the flappy arm parts on women of a certain age. As one of those women, bingo wings is both kinder and funnier than ‘arm flaps’.
If you nick a car in Altoona, it probably had something to do with a shopping cart (trolly in the UK) and you can buff it out. If you nick a car in Nottingham, you’ll do time in jail (Gaol-England), because to nick over there means to steal.
Take care, Gentle Reader, I hope your week will be tickety-boo.
Care to guess that one?
Thanks for your time.
Contact me at debbie@bullcity.mom.
One morning, at college in Montpelier, Vermont, The Kid woke up blindsided by a ferocious wall of pain.
It ran from neck to elbow, and felt like fire was pouring down upon my child. But that was when no one was touching it. At the slightest touch, The poor Kid’s pain went from a barely tolerable eight out of ten to a sanity-draining fourteen or fifteen.
Obviously, this sudden and debilitating pain needed medical attention.
Somehow, The Kid dressed and made it to the emergency department at the small Central Vermont Medical Center.
At the ER, when told them the reason for the visit, and where The Kid studied (New England Culinary Institue), eyes glazed over, and acetaminophen was suggested. They assumed my child was just one more partier from the cooking school and wanted something stronger than Budweiser and Acapulco Gold.
So, The Kid went back home and took a couple of Tylenol.
But not only did the pain continue, it got worse. Classes and meals were missed because it just hurt too much to get out of bed.
Finally, a neighbor and good friend had seen enough. “Get up, get dressed, I’m taking you to Burlington.” Burlington is a university town about 30 minutes from Montpelier and the largest town in Vermont.
They went to the emergency room at UVM, the University of Vermont.
There, serendipity occurred.
The doctor that caught my child’s case was one of the most respected teaching doctors in Vermont.
Not only that, he’d made a study that was particularly pertinent to The Kid and The Kid’s hurty arm. This doctor had made an in-depth study on a disease, and this is the disease he thought was causing all the trouble.
He diagnosed the scourge of middleaged, immuno-compromised post-chicken pox sufferers—shingles.
My mom has had shingles, so The Kid knew from shingles. “But I’m young, and there’s no rash! How can I have shingles if I’m young and there’s no rash?”
The doctor asked, “Did you get the chickenpox vaccine?”
The Kid was actually in one of the final chickenpox studies at Duke. Petey and I had always thought we did right by our child by getting the vaccine before it was approved for wide-spread use. It had been used in Europe for years and we thought we’d saved the child from the itching that drove you crazy and those weird lumpy oatmeal baths.
We’d saved the Kid from childhood chickenpox, but it looked like that tiny bit of virus in the vaccine stayed around inside. And now, like the monster thought dead at the end of the movie, it had resurrected and transformed itself into shingles and risen to wreak havoc within the body of our little scholar.
But this variation had the added twist of an M. Night” Shyamalan feature. The main identifying feature of this sickness is a rash with blisters. The shingles The Kid had, and other young people who’d had the chickenpox vaccine produced no skin irritation.
This type of shingles is known as “Ninja Shingles”. The lack of rash and the youth of The Kid explained the failure of the original ER to diagnose, or even believe my child was in distress.
The reason I got to thinking about this unpleasant interlude is because The Kid has been tirelessly haranguing me to get the shingles vaccine. Not wanting to suffer like my child, I got the first of two inoculations last week.
OMG, my shoulder hurt. But then I thought about The Kid and what shoulder pain could really feel like. So, I took a couple of Tylenol got on with life.
Thanks for your time.
Contact debbie at debbie@bullcity.mom.
Gentle Reader,
Since the matthews family band has been on lockdown at two different addresses, we’ve had a whole lot of time on our hands. And after I crocheted enough face mask ear guards for most of the ICU nurses at UNC and quite a few medical staff at Duke, I still had that time, and crocheted some more.
Then I discovered face mask chains; decorative chains to which you clip your mask and wear around your neck to keep it close at hand. After I made a couple for me and The Kid (Petey wears a gaiter), I kept going.
Then The Kid began sewing masks, and kept sewing.
With Petey acting as house photographer, we all decided to pool our abilities and open an Etsy store. It’s called, shockingly, Matthews Family Band.
You are cordially invited to visit.
Our not quite right child has also opened a solo shop. The shelves in this emporium have hand-made curios that are equal parts dark and humorous. Its name is, E A Poe’s Oddities.
The Kid has asked me to extend to you, Gentle Reader, an invitation. Please come by to be impressed or disturbed (or possibly both) by my child.
Thanks for your time.
Every dog has a signature move.
They have some weird quirk, or funny game, or strange physical ability. Every single one. If your dog doesn’t, it just means you haven’t noticed it.
Riker, our two-hundred-pound Anatolian shepherd was, literally, a big crybaby.
He cried when he wanted love. He would lay in the living room, look as pitiful as caninely possible and weep and wail. He also cried at night when he went to bed, until I went over and tucked him in with his blanket and gave him a goodnight kiss.
Yeah, he wasn’t spoiled at all.
But the big payoff was when you went over and showed him some love, he would actually purr. Like a sofa-sized kitty. Purr.
When we go on walks, Crowley, our current pup, has one of the nuttiest moves I’ve ever seen.
He’ll take a few steps, lower his left shoulder, and drop like he’s been shot. Then he lays there, on his side, and laughs while looking to see if I’m watching him. If it’s not 1000 degrees or I’m not in a rush, I run over and make a huge fuss over him, “Oh poor Crowley fell over! Whatever shall we do?” He thinks the whole production is hilarious.
Turns out, it’s the actual technique for stuntmen to fall dramatically and also something the army teaches for hand-to-hand combat. I’m not quite sure how Mr. Crowley Pants learned it, but I’m seriously thinking about trying to get him a gig as a self-defense instructor.
All the love and knowledge that I have to show my dogs came from the original dog; Fluffy.
We got him when we lived in Puerto Rico. He was the surprise love child of a chow and a Borinquen terrior, which was the colloquial term for a mutt of indeterminate lineage. He and I would sit on the curb, watch the world go by, and share a Charms pop (I took a lick, he got a lick…).
My big brother Homer who was also stationed in Puerto Rico adopted Fluffy’s brother. Unlike his black, extremely hirsute littermate, Eric was short-haired and as red as Opie Taylor’s tresses.
As for Fluffy’s move, he jumped.
He didn’t leap into swimming pools like those frenetic pooches you see on ESPN when there are no human sports to televise. He didn’t jump over felled trees and across brooks and streams like National Velvet.
From a sitting position, he would leap straight up. If you held a piece of cheese as high as you could, he would vault toward the ceiling, grab the nosh, and land again into a sitting position. And all in the blink of an eye.
My dad is 6’4” and his reach is somewhat north of eight feet. No sweat for Fluffy. That dog would make Zion Williamson weep with jealousy.
He had one other odd “talent”.
In San Diego, we lived in a house with a chimney. In that chimney was a beehive. Periodically a bee would fly out of said chimney. The first time we saw it after we moved in, Mom freaked. She was just about to call an exterminator when Fluffy walked over and caught it and ate it.
We were afraid he’d get stung and swell up and get sick. Never happened. The dog just loved the taste of bees. And for the entire time we lived in that house, Fluffy never missed one.
That dog and his insect predilection would have come in very handy a few weeks ago. Instead of stinging me more than twenty times, Fluffy could’ve just gobbled them up.
Thanks for your time.
Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.
“Would you like to pet my dog?”
Yes, Gentle Reader, looking back I now realize the question sounds like it came from the mouth of a seven-year-old.
But that query fell from the lips of this loquacious scribbler three years ago.
Which was the very first day I took Crowley, our brand new puppy, for his very first walk.
My street is very small, but there are two neighborhoods very close to us. This was where I’d decided to do the dog walk thing.
The first development is one quiet, shaded, U-shaped street. There are mature cypress trees everywhere. The houses were built in the early sixties. Until about 1995, it was still unpaved.
Most of the houses are still occupied by the original owners. Back when the neighborhood was young, in almost every house there lived at least a couple of kids. The streets that rang with the shouts and laughter of children in the 1960s and 70s now host sporadic visits from grand-and even great-grandkids of that first generation.
That morning with Crowley, I had just turned onto the last leg of the “U”.
There was an older man working out in the yard. I could tell he found my new pooch completely captivating (dog people recognize each other), so that’s when I asked the infamous question.
Turns out his name was Mr. LP, and he did want to meet my fuzzy, adorable boy. He also wanted to play with him, talk to him, talk about him, and introduce him to his wife, Miss Mary.
Mr. LP told me that he’s always liked dogs but his wife was the hard-core, take no prisoners dog lover of the family. After that first day we became friends and when they were on the porch when we were out, we’d stop and talk a spell. Crowley adores them.
The first spring and throughout the summer I discovered that Miss Mary’s green thumb was the size of a pup tent. A florist could make a mint with the volume, quality and variety of the blooms out front.
Out back is the vegetable garden, every year equally as beautiful as it is bounteous. It’s like a tiny, adorable farmer’s market.
A couple of years ago, I brought her some paw-paws, a fruit native to North Carolina that’s a member of the passion fruit family. It looks like a chayote and is sweet and tastes of tropic-grown citrus and vanilla.
She hadn’t seen or tasted a paw-paw since she was a child.
Last summer she took me out to the garden and showed me this enormous pawpaw bush. I thought I had inspired her to get a plant, but I was wrong.
The year before she’d thrown the remains of the fruit I’d bought her into the garden as compost. The bush had just sprung up, she said.
It was taller than the top of my head.
From trash. Miss Mary casually threw an eaten fruit on the ground and a healthy, pawpaw bush sprung up. Growing really sweet and tasty snacks.
In 1951, Miss Mary was 16 and she and Mr. LP had been dating for six months.
“I was sitting with Mary on her mama’s couch. And I said, ‘Mary, can I ask you a question? Do you think we should get married?’”Mr. LP smiles before he says, “And Mary said, ‘yeah, yeah I think we should.’”
2020 is their seventieth year of marriage.
I am furious one day when she tells me that when she got married, she was thrown out of her high school because, as her principal told her, “You are a wife now. Go home.” She’s philosophical about it, telling me that’s how it worked back then, no one even questioned it.
In the time I’ve known her, I have never heard a harsh tone, or a strong thing said against another. She’s the sort of person that when they say, “Bless her heart” they mean it. By that, I mean that they sincerely want that person’s heart to be blessed.
Miss Mary passed last week. Honestly, she was already an angel. Her kindness will inspire and fortify my own humanity forever. My heart breaks for Mr. LP, their three daughters, and the rest of the family. She was a five-foot tall walking heart, topped with a crown of curly, silver hair.
She was a giant.
Thank you Miss Mary.
And
Thanks for your time.
Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.
The column I write for the Chatham News&Record is online.
This week I have a recipe for extra crispy chicken tenders that never let you down.
Take care and stay safe, Gentle Reader.
Thanks for your time.
This time it’s personal.
Sting me once, shame on you.
Sting me twenty-five times, and I’m getting the biggest can of Raid I can find…
This time of year, I mow the lawn about once a week. The hour or so I spend out there is both enervating and relaxing. I work up an honest sweat, get some terrific exercise, and see immediate results of my labor.
Honestly, it’s treasured me-time.
About six weeks ago I was happily, innocently cutting the grass. I was in our side yard, serenely pushing Hondo, our self-propelled, self-mulching mower. Suddenly, I felt a burning sensation on my leg, similar to the feeling of being burned by a cigarette.
Then before I knew it another, and another. Then I saw wasps before being stung twice more.
I jumped around like a lunatic for a minute, swiping at already departed beasts and ran inside the house. Petey helped me make sure they were all gone, I took a couple of pain relievers, and went back out and finished the yard.
I assumed they had built a nest on the house, under a bit of siding and vowed to be careful when mowing in the vicinity or turning on the hose, which was located there.
A week later I was again in the area cutting the grass and taking great care to give the house in that space a wide berth. I mowed the strip abutting the flower bed with a wary eye toward the wall.
All of a sudden my world exploded. The wasps were everywhere. They bit exposed flesh and then dove under my clothing and began stinging. Then they crawled under my ankle socks and into my sneakers to bite my feet.
My dancing from the week before looked like the movement of a merry-go-round horse compared to the rabid racehorse gyrations I was doing in my yard. My language was so colorful there were colors unseen on the human spectrum (which was especially embarrassing because my neighbor, a minister, was sitting on her front porch with visitors).
I ran inside again, and again Petey helped me both remove wasps and the many stingers their compatriots had left behind.
In all, we counted twenty-five stings; my right elbow being the recipient of five separate and distinct attacks. I took a couple of pain relievers along with a couple benadryl tablets to fight the vemon that was now coursing through my veins.
Then.
I.went.out.and.finished.mowing. Looking back, it was the most badass moment of my life.
And, I’d always thought I was a big baby.
I discovered later that the wasps were not in a nest on the house, but yellow jackets that live underground. Hondo and I had both run over their front door.
Later that night I hurt everywhere and was red, hot, and puffy. The next day the pain was gone and I was itchy. The following day my lips began to tingle. Then they began to swell.
Well, the top lip swelled. I looked like a Simpson character sporting one of their extreme overbites. The doctor gave me steroids to speed the poison out of my system and I spent the next week in a benadryl-induced fog.
I now have an Epi-pen in case of another attack and a resulting dangerous reaction.
If this was a comic book I’d end up with a tiny waist, a cute, sexy yellow and black costume, the power of flight and a lethal sting.
But I get a fat lip and probable fatal allergy to future wasp stings.
Ah, 2020, thou art the harshest of harsh mistresses.
Thanks for your time.
Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.
bull city mom 