humour

Well, I’ll Be Spatchcocked!

/ Diane Henders / 56 Comments

It’s odd how I can go for weeks or months without running across anything particularly funny on the internet, and then suddenly I get inundated by snicker-inducing goodies:

I was browsing Amazon for Christmas gift ideas, and I didn’t realize some vendors have such a tenuous grasp on reality (and good taste).  Check out this “Lovely silhouette art for baby nursery”:

Awww… how adorable. Not.

Um, guys… it’s a panda waving handguns.  In what world is this ‘lovely’ or in any way appropriate for a baby nursery? Although if this is how parents are decorating their nurseries these days, it does explain a few things.

So I abandoned the Amazon vendors to their delusions and went to catch up on my blog reading instead.  And within minutes I ran across the word ‘spatchcock’.

If (like me) this is the first time you’ve encountered that word, I know what you’re thinking.  I can practically see your thought-bubble from here.

You’re thinking, “There goes Diane down another dodgy research rabbit-hole that leads to a kinky sex website.”

I’d act all indignant about that; but there’s not much point since we all know it’s happened before and it’ll probably happen again.  But I swear, this time I wasn’t reading anything dodgy at all – it was a cooking blog.

There was no definition or explanation; only a note that you could “spatchcock the chicken” if you wanted.

Well.

I’ve lived for over five decades, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never wanted to do anything that sounded like that to a chicken.  Or to any living thing, for that matter (with the possible exception of a couple of guys I’ve known).

I did a Google search for ‘spatchcock’, braced for who-knew-what perversion.  And I found it immediately:  Jamie Oliver spatchcocking a chicken.

I’d love to say that it was as lewd as it sounds; but sadly, it only means ‘to butterfly’ – to remove the chicken’s spine so the carcass can be flattened for cooking.  I’m not sure why they didn’t just say that in the first place, but it’s nice to know there are cooks out there who share my childish appreciation for salacious-sounding words.

Apparently the internet was on a roll, because after serving up panda pranks and chicken chuckles, it rounded out the amusing animals with a plastered possum that broke into a liquor store and went on a bender, a scofflaw squirrel that got charged with criminal mischief and was released on bail, and some hostile hagfish that slimed a car so badly it looked like a remake of a Ghostbusters movie.

But ‘spatchcock’ is my most prized discovery of the week.  I don’t find words that are new to me very often, and I consider it a serious lapse of my professional puerility that I’d never heard of a word with such great comic potential.

’Cause now I’m imagining a new verbal expression of shock:  “Well, spatchcock my ass and call me a chicken!”

Gotta work that into a book somehow…

P.S. Just a bonus to this week’s bounty of beasts:  Yesterday I saw two women walking across the Canadian Tire parking lot in Parksville.  One was walking a large dog on a leash.  The other also held a leash… attached to a goat.  They were going for a walk.  To Canadian Tire, apparently.  Now I have yet another reason to laugh uncontrollably at the word GOAT!

Do Ya Feel Lucky, Punk?

/ Diane Henders / 40 Comments

It’s been an interesting week… if by ‘interesting’ you mean ‘a blood-pressure-spiking, rant-inducing tragicomedy of ridiculousness’.

Or in other words:  ‘Same-old, same-old’.

We started the process for our second floor renovation in early August, reasoning that two and a half months was lots of time to get a permit, frame a storage closet and a bathroom, and insulate before the weather turned cold.  I sealed my doom by signing up for a six-week watercolour course to begin in mid-October, because the construction would be done by then, right?

Ha.  I reckoned without the glacial pace of structural engineers and bureaucracy.

Last week when we were rushing around getting ready for the framing inspection (we did the framing ourselves), I finally lost my grip… on everything from my paintbrush to my temper.

In our last watercolour class I had foolishly bravely decided to paint along with the instructor.  I didn’t expect great results; but what the heck, if you don’t try, you’ll never know, right?

I actually did okay for a while.  I laid in washes for sky and water, and underpainted my trees… and then my coordination short-circuited and my paintbrush (loaded with brown pigment) flipped out of my hand and bounced… not once; but twice… onto my painting.

Two gigantic dark-brown turds splotched down in the middle of my misty landscape.

I burst into uproarious laughter.

Taking their cue from my continuing chuckles, the rest of the class converged to giggle and cheer me on while I tried to convert my turds into dock pilings jutting out of the water.

I failed, but at least we all had a good laugh.

In between construction and turd-painting I’ve also been hard at work on Book 13, and apparently I need new reading glasses.  For a few days a muscle under my right eye twitched wildly, making me look like a female version of Dirty Harry on speed.

That turned out to be fitting, because when I discovered water puddling on our floor from a leaky door, I completely lost my shit and fired off… *ahem* …a strongly-worded missive1 to our home-builder, who has been ignoring my deficiency reports since May.  I doubt if it did any good, but at least it relieved my feelings.

After that banner week, I couldn’t help snickering in anticipation of comedic disaster when I looked into my kitchen junk drawer.  It contains everything from screwdrivers to matches to notepads… and also a tube of lip balm, a black Sharpie marker, and a Tide pen all in the same convenient compartment.

Now, what could possibly go wrong?

So if you hear about a woman who accidentally poisoned herself by using a Tide pen instead of lip balm, you’ll know who it was.  Or who knows?  I might unwittingly use the Sharpie to enhance my Dirty Harry image with a permanent black moustache.

So whenever I make a blind grab for that tube of lip balm, I have to ask myself:  “Do ya feel lucky, punk?  Well… do ya?”

*

1 Even though I really wanted to fill that email with enough profanity to make their eyes bleed, I didn’t use any swearwords at all.  Aren’t you proud of me?

Hello, Garlic, My Old Friend

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

There’s pretty good evidence to suggest that Hubby is a vampire:  He’s basically nocturnal, and garlic repels him with the force of a speeding Mack truck.

Unfortunately, I love garlic.

I try not to inflict it on him often, but every now and then I get a restaurant meal that’s redolent with my favourite allium.  This week was one of those times:  I knew as soon as I took my first mouthful that it was going to be a sinus-burner.  But at that point it was too late to stop, so I chowed down and enjoyed every bite.

Later, I was marinating in my own fumes when a little tune popped unbidden into my brain:  The first line of “The Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon.  Only instead of his lyrics my brain supplied, “Hello, garlic, my old friend”.

And just like that, a blog post is born.

I give you my latest masterpiece:  “It Pounds The Sinus”, sung to the tune of “The Sound of Silence”.  Look out, Weird Al Yankovic; I may be even weirder than you.

Here’s the instrumental version* so you can follow along with the tune:
*The meter is a bit off because the guitar player didn’t exactly match S&G’s original version, but you get the gist.

It Pounds The Sinus
(Sung to the tune of “The Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon)

Hello garlic, my old friend
I’ve gone and gobbled you again
Around my tastebuds softly creeping
From my pores nastily seeping
And the odour that was planted in my veins
Still remains
The stench confounds the sinus

In all my reek I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I was accosted by a deadly vamp
Though his fangs were lit by the flash of a neon light
He couldn’t fight
The stench that pounds the sinus

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People gawking without speaking
People fleeing after sniffing
People hiking on, who only turned and glared
After I aired
The stench that pounds the sinus

“Fools,” said I
“You do not know, garlic eaters like me blow
Vile miasma that can leach through
Breath mints, Febreze, and full-strength bleach, too”
And my breath like violent raindrops fell
A deathblow
To the suff’ring sinus

And all the people were afraid
Of the horrid stink I’d made
And a sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said
“Bad breath is a problem that a normal girl forestalls
With strong menthols
But garlic still dumbfounds the sinus”

Any other garlic-lovers out there?

Contractor’s Contractions

/ Diane Henders / 41 Comments

If you’ve ever tried to renovate during an insane housing boom, you know exactly what we’ve been going through for the past year.  But if you’re blissfully unfamiliar with that situation, I’m here to tell you that contractors use a special language full of shorthand and contractions; and after a year of tearing my hair out I’ve finally learned to interpret the local dialect.

Here are some common phrases and their translations:

“I’ll be your project manager and take care of everything.”:  “I’ll collect $1500 per month from you and ignore your job entirely unless you call and nag me every day.  If I do actually get involved, it will be to obstruct progress by telling all the trades that I’m the sole point of contact and then dropping off the face of the earth.”

“You can have anything you want…”:  “…as long as it’s one of our three substandard stock items.”

“We can have that in for you by Friday…”:  “…two months from now.”

“Yep, we can do that no problem.”:  “We’ve been promising that we can do it for the past three months; but now that it’s time for us to actually show up and do the work, we can’t do it after all.  You’ll have to find somebody else and sit on their waiting list for another three months.”

“That’s impossible.”:  “That’s not the cheap-ass way we want to do it.”

“This is prepped all wrong.  Whoever did it was an idiot*.”:  “I’m going to charge you extra.”
*Any trade not currently on site will be blamed for shoddy workmanship regardless of the actual quality of the work.

“I’ll drop by and do an estimate and get right back to you…”:  “…when hell freezes over.”

“I’ll be there Tuesday at nine AM…”:  “…or maybe noon.  Or maybe sometime Wednesday.  Or I might not come at all; but the one thing you can count on is that I won’t call to tell you.”

“I’ve just got a couple of days left on my current job and then you’re next in line…”:  “…after I take the money from my last job and go on a three-week bender, and then do ‘a quick job for a friend’ that takes another two months.  But right after that, you’re next… ish.”

“I have to leave for another job, but don’t worry; you can get anybody to finish these last couple of details for you.”:  “I’ve made a fundamental mistake in my work and I can’t finish unless I tear it out and redo it.  And that ain’t happenin’, so sayonara, suckahs!”

“I’ll charge hourly.”:  “I’ll hide in my truck talking on my cell phone for hours at a time and hope you won’t notice when I bill you for it.”

“I know that’s what the building code requires, but as long as you don’t get a permit or an inspection we can do it my way for a lot cheaper.”:  This means exactly what you think it means:  RUN AWAY!

Unfortunately, being able to translate these phrases accomplishes nothing except to adjust my expectations far below what I would normally consider sub-par.  And even my adjusted expectations are turning out to be wildly optimistic.

So if you’re looking for me, I’ll be the bald chick in the corner muttering profanities to empty air and yanking on my last two remaining hairs.

But at least I speak the language now.

*

P.S.  I learned these phrases the hard way this year but, to be fair, we’ve also had some excellent tradesmen who were professional and reliable.  But after two separate miscreants bailed on us this week after promising us the world for months, I was just a leetle cranky.  I’m all better now.  Ish…

The Four-Letter S-Word

/ Diane Henders / 62 Comments

The four-letter S-word:  Snow.  Yep, that’s an expletive around here.

Growing up on the Canadian prairies, snow and bitter winter cold were simple facts of life.  We dressed appropriately and respected the danger; but unless the temperature sank to -40 we carried on.

When I was in my twenties I moved to Calgary, Alberta, and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  There was still cold winter weather, but it was regularly punctuated with chinook thaws where the temperature rose above freezing.

But…

Years ago my dad and step-mom used to spend the winter in Victoria, BC.  I visited them frequently, and it never snowed.

Later, Hubby and I came to central Vancouver Island once or twice a year for ten years or so.  We visited in all the “winter” months, and it never snowed.  (Okay, once we saw about an inch, but it melted the next day.)

So after thirty years in Calgary we decided to move to Vancouver Island where ‘it never snows’.

Yeah, right.  We got suckered.

Last winter was the coldest and snowiest on record.  We had about two feet of snow on our yard, and it stayed for a couple of months.

But, hey, that was an anomaly, right?

*snort*

Guess what happened last week?

Yep, about ten inches of sh-… I mean, snow.

Vancouver Island doesn’t deal well with snow, and often the power goes out when the weather is bad.

Fortunately, we knew this.  We’ve wired our house so we can switch over to generator power if necessary.  And it was necessary:  we lost power four times, for several hours each time.

When I was a teenager, our prairie farm was hit by a three-day-long blizzard.  The power went off the first day and was finally restored five days later.  The roads were impassable.  If we hadn’t been prepared, everything in our house would have frozen, including us.

So last week when the snow came down and the lights went out, my brain flipped into DEFCON 1:  “AWOOGA!  AWOOGA!  EXTREME HAZARD!  ALL HANDS ON DECK!”

I scurried around lighting candles, dragging out my big goose down duvet, and helping Hubby get the generator deployed; all the while knowing that WE WILL DIE IF THE GENERATOR QUITS!  What if we run out of gas?  We don’t have our wood-burning backup furnace installed yet, OMIGOD WE’RE GONNA DIE!

Um, no.

The temperature was barely below freezing.  There was no wind.  And even if the roads had been impassable and we had no heat source at all, our neighbours’ place is less than a quarter-mile away.  If we had actually managed to die, it would have been from sheer stupidity.

So maybe eventually I’ll get over my knee-jerk panic over winter power outages; but that sh-… um, snow… is still sticking around.  And it’s barely November.

We’ve been had.

*

P.S.  To be considered a true Islander I have to complain about the snow, but I’m secretly enjoying the pretty white sparkles.  This is the best of both worlds:  I can enjoy the snowscape in my yard, and if I need a break I can drive ten minutes to the coast where the grass is (usually) green and the ocean waves keep rolling in.  Paradise!  🙂

P.P.S Just because I needed a bit more stress in my life, my web host has gone belly-up, taking all my websites and email addresses with it.  If you’ve tried to email me, I apologize – your email has probably vanished into cyberspace.  I hope to be back in action with a new host by tomorrow.  Watch this space for updates…

Update:  I think (hope) everything’s working again… *fingers crossed*

Mactac, Mullets, and Manure

/ Diane Henders / 30 Comments

Anybody remember the Mactac of the 60s and 70s?  Maybe you knew it by another name, but it was all the same thing:  adhesive-backed vinyl printed with colourful graphics.

I suspect that people with taste avoided Mactac like the plague it was; but out in the sticks where I grew up, the only taste we had was in our mouths.  Every questionable surface in our house got covered with either woodgrain print or sparkly gold paisley on white.

It actually looked okay for a while.  But then the adhesive deteriorated and the vinyl curled up, creating tattered edges that looked as though rodents had been gnawing them and leaving a sticky residue that defied any attempt to clean it off or reglue it.

My love affair with Mactac faded when I realized that it inevitably suffered a slow and ugly demise, and the last time I applied adhesive-backed vinyl to anything was in the late 70s.

Until this week.

We needed a cheap-and-cheerful solution for a kitchen backsplash until our construction budget recovers enough to upgrade our kitchen counters.  So the other day I was walking through the store when some pretty glass tiles caught my eye, for less than half the price I’d expected.

Yep, adhesive-backed vinyl had reared its deceptively attractive head.  It’s even embossed with grout lines like real glass tile, and it’s insanely sticky.

I succumbed.  I’m really hoping it doesn’t curl up and die like the old-school stuff.

Looks like glass… smells like vinyl.

That blast from the past made me think about other oldies that are new again… like the mullet haircut.  If you’re not familiar with the mullet, it was an 80s hairstyle trimmed short around the face and ears, with the rest of the hair left long in back.  The instant the 80s were over everyone restyled their hair and pretended they’d never worn a mullet.  Overnight, it went from a fashion statement to a joke.

I had a mullet haircut back in the 80s, and I even wore it for a while after everybody else started laughing about it.  I loved that haircut.  It was comfortable and practical:  I had the long hair I loved, but it wasn’t in my face.  I still don’t understand why it became so universally despised.

But apparently it’s in style again for young male hipsters and Millenials.  So  I wasn’t unfashionable; I was only a few decades early… and the wrong gender.  Details, pshaw.

On to our next M-word:  Manure.  We got a giant load for our garden so of course I had to share it with you, my beloved readers.

Why, you ask?  (I’m hoping that’s a ‘why?’ of guarded curiosity, not an anguished cry of ‘oh, sweet Lord, why?!?’)

Well, it seemed appropriate since I’m usually full of shit; but ultimately it’s because I couldn’t resist the punchline:

Mactac, mullets, and manure… you don’t want to get any of them on you.

18,000 pounds of horseshit. That’s more than I usually manage to pack into a post.

Polyester Flop-Sweat

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

Pundits say you should do one thing every day that scares you, to prevent yourself from stagnating.

Fasten your seatbelt, ’cause I’m digressing already:

I have issues with the word ‘pundit’ – my brain concatenates ‘pun’ with ‘bandit’, and I get a mental image of a chortling masked villain who barges into conversations to drop a vile pun and then flee, leaving behind shock, awe, and a punny stench.

Anyway, back to ‘doing the thing that scares you’:

I’m not up for a scare du jour, but I do think it’s good to step outside my comfort zone every now and then. So last week I started a 6-week watercolour class.

You may recall a post where I mentioned I’ve dabbled in oil painting; but I’ve never posted anything about watercolour. That’s not because I haven’t tried it. I’ve been trying it since the early ’80s. I haven’t mentioned it before because I completely suck at it.

But I’ve kept all my watercolour paints and brushes, and every decade or so, I think, “Jeez, how bad could I actually be? I should give it another try. Surely I don’t suck as badly as I remember.”

Then I try it again, and yes; yes, I do suck that badly.

So I’m doing what scares me and seizing watercolour by the brushes. With the help of the supremely talented Peggy Burkosky, I will figure it out. I hope.

Maybe.

But even if I don’t, I’m still getting a private giggle… because the classroom has black plastic chairs, and therein lies a story.

Back in the dark days when I had to dress up and attend excruciating business networking events, polyester pants were in style. If you’ve never worn old-school polyester pants, think ‘pant-shaped plastic bag’. Now add ‘hot summer day’. Plus ‘black plastic chairs’:

After sweating through a lengthy business presentation, I rose with relief… which was short-lived when I turned to pick up my briefcase and discovered that I’d left a butt-print clearly outlined in condensation on the black plastic seat of the chair.

I froze.

Should I just walk away, hoping the evidence would evaporate before anyone else noticed?

Or should I wipe off the chair?

But if I got caught in the act, what would I say? “Oh, ’scuse me while I clean up my sweaty butt-print. Hey, would you like one of my business cards? I’ve got them right here in my back pocket…”

Fast-forward to my first watercolour class last week. Blissfully unaware, I wore yoga pants made from spandex, which is basically a stretchy form of polyester. Fortunately the weather is cool now; but you can bet I did a quick little shimmy in my chair before standing up at the end of the class… just in case.

I won’t reveal my watercolour attempts yet; mainly because even after six hours of instruction, I still haven’t completed a painting. (And I might not ever admit that I’ve completed a painting. My crimes against art might go straight from the easel to the campfire.)

But hey, at least I’m not stagnating… unless you count the puddle of flop-sweat in my black plastic chair.

P.S. Remember those awful old polyester pants? What were we thinking?!?

Shower Growlers And Barking Spiders

/ Diane Henders / 24 Comments

Depictions of the literary Muse always show some dreamy ethereal woman draped in a classical Greek robe, with brilliant ideas swirling like rainbows around her perfectly coiffed head.

Ha.  I wish.  Here’s the conversation I had with my Muse this week:

Me, strolling up to the Muse’s door on Monday:  *knock, knock*  Hey, there…

Muse:  What’s the matter with you?  Can’t you read the “Do Not Disturb” sign?  Get lost!

Me:  Oops.  It’s just that, well, I usually write my blog drafts today, and…

Muse:  Scram!

Me:  Okay, sorry.  Um… maybe tomorrow…?

Muse:  Yeah, whatever.

Me, shuffling bashfully up to the muse’s door on Tuesday:  *knock, knock*  Hi.  Um…

Muse:  You again?  Whaddaya want?

Me:  Um… a blog post…?

Muse:  You gotta be shitting me!  Didn’t I just bust my ass for you all morning on Book 13?

Me:  Well, yeah; and I was really happy with your ideas.  I appreciate it… but… you know I do a blog post once a week…

Muse:  Oh, for…  Okay, FINE!  Check out the Urban Dictionary for “shower growler”:  “When you’re showering you press your butt against the wall and fart, making a rumbling growl and vibrating the walls of the shower.”*

(*Note:  This was not even the Muse’s own idea – my friend Chris emailed it to me last week.)

Me:  Come on, I need more than that.

Muse, glowering dangerously:  Oh yeah?

Me, finding a backbone at last and glowering in return:  Yeah!

Muse, emitting a martyred sigh:  Fine.  Write a whole post about farts.  How about a page of euphemisms?  I got a million of ‘em!  Blow the butt trumpet, strangle the stank monkey, play the colonic calliope, roast your Jockeys…”

Me, snickering in spite of myself:  Well… I dunno…

Muse:  …Do the one-cheek sneak; drop a barking spider; hit 7.4 on the Rectum scale; a turd honking for the right of way…

Me, stifling giggles:  Stop!  I’ve been trying to behave lately.

Muse:  You?  Behave?!?  As if.  How about this:  “Shit a brick and fart a crowbar”.  Or hey; how about some definitions?  Like “Fartabout”:  Walking away from everybody to ease out a fart so nobody notices.  It’s like a walkabout, only you’re farting…

Me:  There’s already a word for walking around and spreading the stink.  It’s called ‘cropdusting’.

Muse, huffily:  Well, fine, you obviously don’t need me, then. *slams the door in my face*

Me:  Wait, I didn’t mean it that way! *knock, knock*  C’mon, open up!  I need you, really I do.

Muse:  Get lost!

Me:  *sigh*

So there you have it.  I would have prepared a literary masterpiece for today, but my Muse had a bad case of brain flatulence.

Everybody else gets the classy chick with rainbows and perfect hair.  I get this:

Diane’s Muse

So how was your week?

The Bee’s Knees

/ Diane Henders / 27 Comments

The other day I was working on Book 13 when I wrote “I made a beeline for the door”.  Then I stopped and stared into space as my brain took an unexpected detour.

Why does ‘make a beeline’ mean ‘to go quickly and directly to a destination’?  Have you seen how bees fly?  They look like little fuzzy drunks staggering home after a night on the town.

If I had actually ‘made a beeline’, I’d have wandered aimlessly around the room, made several erratic circles under a table and around a couple of chairs, gotten into a stranger’s face for no apparent reason, caromed off the window sixteen times before figuring out that I couldn’t exit through it, and at last arrived at the doorway; where I’d need three tries to make it through an opening several hundred times larger than myself.

Whoever invented all these sayings about bees had obviously never watched bees for long.  Take ‘busy as a bee’, for example.  Sometimes they’re busy, like these guys working away at my sunflowers:

Busy bees

But one summer morning I went out to water my garden, and eight of them were curled up together snoozing in a squash blossom.  They weren’t any too eager to get up and start working – after the first spray of cold water they struggled groggily out of the blossom, stumbling over each other like a bunch of hungover teenagers after an all-night party and buzzing complaints as they hauled themselves into the sky.  Then they staggered as far as the next flower before plopping down to sleep the day away.  So much for ‘busy’.

Lazy bees

And let’s consider the time-honoured tradition of ‘talking to your children about the birds and the bees’.  Say what?

Neither birds nor bees have sex like humans.  Most birds only have one multi-purpose opening for sending or receiving semen as well as for taking a dump and laying eggs.  And most species aren’t too fussy about fidelity.

And bees?  Yikes!  Male bees follow a queen and take turns mating with her in flight.  When the deed is done the male bee’s penis gets ripped off, disemboweling and killing him in the process.  Unfazed, the next male in line pulls the leftover penis out of the queen’s body and re-enacts the whole grisly scenario.  Then the next male takes over, and the next.

So if we actually discussed ‘the birds and the bees’ with our kids, we’d be talking about promiscuous sex and snuff orgies.  Try explaining that at the next parent-teacher meeting.

‘The bee’s knees’ is another expression that makes me wonder.  Over the years it’s been used to indicate ‘something nonexistent’, ‘something very small’, and ‘something excellent’.  Apparently we aren’t too sure about the bee’s knees, either.

So if I should ever mention that I intend to make a beeline for bed to get as busy as a bee, it could mean staggering dozily away to sleep for hours; or zipping straight to bed for something a little more… *ahem* …interesting.  (Or downright disturbing.)

But what the heck; having a bit of mystery in one’s life is the bee’s knees, don’t you think?

Stepping In It

/ Diane Henders / 43 Comments

We went for a short wilderness walk last week, enjoying the splashing of trout in the placid waters of tiny Loon Lake.  We only met one other group of hikers:  a family with a dog.

On the way back, Hubby pointed down at the trail.  “Don’t step in the dog shit.”

I eyed the flattened pile with a sneaker-print in the middle of it, and revolting certainty filled me.  I knew that sneaker-print.

Sure enough, I’d already stepped in it on our outbound trip.

Which begs the question:  What are the chances of being out back of beyond with virtually unlimited landing zones for my feet, and STILL stepping in the only pile of dog shit within ten square miles?

If you’re me, the chances are approximately 100%.

Maybe it’s because I’ve got big feet, so the odds are better than average.  If I wore teeny little size-sixes I might spend less time cleaning objectionable substances out of my treads. (Then again, if I wore teeny little size-sixes at my height, I’d probably topple over in a high wind.)

But in general I don’t think too much about my feet or where they’re landing.  They’re far away from the rest of me; and as long as they’re working fine, I let them do their thing.  They’re functional, not decorative.

Okay, definitely not decorative.  Some people are blessed with slim elegant feet and delicate toes or cute little chubby tootsies; but I inherited the Henders family’s knobby bunions and weird long prehensile toes.  I’m not sure how being able to pick up a pencil from the floor without bending over gives me an evolutionary advantage; but at least studies show that long toes make better sprinters.

I figure hooves would have been more practical.  How wonderful to never again smash my toes on a table leg.  Never to have my toes stepped on or crushed by falling objects.  No blisters from ill-fitting shoes.  And never having to shop for shoes at all – just an appointment with the farrier every now and then, and I’d be good to go.

But then again, the farrier would be like going for a pedicure, with the worrisome addition of red-hot metal. *shudders*

I had a pedicure… once.  The foot massage was nice; but having a stranger wield sharp objects near my feet was disturbing, and the toenail polish was wasted on me.  Nobody ever sees my toes – I hate having cold feet so I never wear sandals.  (Also:  Weird prehensile toes.  Nobody wants to see that.)

Or maybe my antipathy to sandals (and my unfortunate magnetism for merde) was born the year I marched in the 4-H parade as a kid.  Our uniforms dictated white sneakers for the boys and white sandals for the girls, and there was a prize for the club with the best synchronized marching.  We were determined to win it.

We marched behind the Beef Club.

Yep, you guessed it:  Right in my path was a fresh cow patty, and my precise marching step landed my foot in the middle of it.  You haven’t lived until you’ve had warm cow shit oozing up between your bare toes.  We didn’t even win the marching contest, dammit.

And that kicked off my lifetime of stepping in it.  Anybody know where I can buy some shoe diapers…?