writing

I Dream Of Dillweed

/ Diane Henders / 19 Comments

Or maybe that’s “dickweed”.  Let me explain.

I’ve been sick for the past couple of weeks, but I’m all better now.  For those of you making the obvious “sick mind” jokes, just… well, yeah, okay.  I guess I can’t argue.

However, now I understand the true meaning of the phrase “fevered dreams”.  And lucky you, I’m going to share.  Hang on, ‘cause here we go:

A large group of Puritans stands silent and stock-still, all eyes fixed on me.  Men, women, and children, all garbed in sombre black with white lacy collars.  They just stare.  I don’t know why.  Their holy book is a catalogue of hand-crocheted sweater patterns.  On the front is a photo of a blonde fashion model wearing a lacy, openwork yellow sweater.

I’m not even going to try to analyze that little vignette.  But as the night wore on, my brain started to serve up coherent stories that only changed when I realized they were dreams.

The scarred, grizzled leader of a bike gang gets into my car and informs me that I will be hosting a party for the gang.  It will be a barbeque, and we discuss the menu while I drive to town to buy groceries.  They’ll have New York steaks, and I will make my famous potato salad.  Baked beans are discussed and agreed upon.  I do not find this funny.  I know as soon as the steaks are grilled to medium-rare perfection, I’ll become the evening’s entertainment.  My chances of survival are slim. Death will be merciful.

All very dark and threatening, but the dream continues:  They will bring their own beer.

Then I knew I had to be dreaming, so my brain switched scenes:

I awaken lying prone on a grey marble roof.  My drink is beside me, the glass slithering over the slippery curved edge as I open my eyes.  Sheer terror seizes me when I make a grab for my drink and realize I am hundreds of stories above the ground.  I jerk away from the edge, and irritation overcomes me.  I mutter, “Well, shit, I’m just going to throw these blankets over the edge and hope there’s nobody underneath when they hit, because I’m not climbing all the way back up here to get them.”

I must have made it down from the rooftop safely, because next thing I knew, I was a nurse.

I watch an angry-looking uniformed woman stride across the hallway, and my inner narrator dictates, “The administrator had heard about the blocked toilet ten minutes ago.  This allowed her nine and a half minutes to be furious.” 

For some reason, the narrator thinks these two sentences are sheer literary genius and must be written down at the first opportunity.  (And I just did.  Hmmm.)

Anyway, that dream went on, too:  I am one of a team of several nurses who must lift a six-hundred-pound patient.  As we gather around him, he booms, “Hell, my dick is 330 pounds alone!  It could be even bigger if I wanted.  Every day I rub it with dillweed!”

I wake with the triumphant bellow of “Dillweed!” still echoing in my mind.

Welcome to my brain.  Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

P.S.  Wanna buy some dillweed?  I hear it’s great for… well, you know.

Happy New Y… Wait, Where Are My Clothes?

/ Diane Henders / 19 Comments

It’s a sad fact that I’m long past the age when that question should be on my lips.  It’s also a sad fact that I asked myself that very question this New Year’s Eve.

I only had three pints.  Honest.  And I was home by 9 PM.

In my defense, I was fighting a cold, and I didn’t feel much like eating.  Many people would consider it unwise to start slugging down beer when one’s entire food consumption for the day has been two slices of toast, an apple, a granola bar, and some guacamole.  Apparently, I am not one of those people.

The beer was very tasty.  I had good intentions to anchor it with a pizza, but the pub cook dropped my pizza in the kitchen (no, I’m not making that up).  So they had to make it again, and by the time it arrived, I’d already downed a pint.

Let’s just say it was a very effective pint.  I strive for efficiency in all things, and in this case I outdid myself.  By the time the pizza arrived, it was far too late to act as an anchor.  All it did was bob like a pathetic dinghy in the rough swells of my second pint.

The third pint was, frankly, unnecessary.  But oh, so tasty.

At approximately 1.2 pints, I achieved the correct level of intoxication for shooting eight-ball.  Anything under a pint, and I’m trying too hard.  At the magical “optimum beer saturation level” (OBSL), pool becomes easy.  I can still triangulate with both eyeballs.  I effortlessly calculate angles, the cue feels like an extension of my own arm, and I sink balls one after the other, swaggering around the table with only a tiny bit of cockiness to clear the table and sink the eight-ball.

The problem is, it’s impossible to maintain OBSL.  Exactly one game after achieving it, it slips away again, at which point I might as well try to guide the cue ball using the Force.  ‘Cause I sure as hell can’t guide it with the cue anymore.

We rang in the New Year for St. John’s, Newfoundland at 8:30 local time (thank goodness we live in a multiple-time-zone country), and headed home.  Walking, fortunately.  At least the cold didn’t bother me.

I went upstairs to change my clothes.

I couldn’t find them.

I stumbled around the bedroom, looking in all the usual places.  Closet: Nope.  Bathroom:  Nuh-uh.  Chair in the corner:  Not there either.  At last, I discovered them cleverly hidden in plain sight, lying on the bed.  (It was dark in there.  Never mind.)

I’m a little foggy on how that could have happened, because when I know I’m going to put the same clothes on later, I usually leave them where I removed them.  The walk-in closet and the ensuite bathroom are the usual locations.  If I had actually taken off my clothes beside the bed, I’d have been mooning the neighbours.  And that was when I was sober.

I guess I’ll never know for sure.  But if the neighbours avert their eyes and snicker the next time they see me, I’ll have a pretty good idea.

Happy New Beer!

Cooking With Spam

/ Diane Henders / 15 Comments

I have a sneaking sympathy for the manufacturers of SPAM, that “is-it-really-meat” product my mother usually fried with a crunchy coating of cracker crumbs.  It must be tough on their self-image to be associated with worthless, annoying email.  Maybe that’s why I keep an open mind to the humorous potential of the spam I get on this blog.

Most of it is the garden-variety “buy our product” crap, but every now and then, a true gem lodges in my spam filters to tickle my funny-bone.

For instance:  “Excellently constructed report, if all people offered a similar posts just like you, the net would be a more desirable destination.”  I’ve seen that particular comment umpteen times, but in this case the context made me laugh when it appeared on my post “Gettin’ Down At A Piss-Up”.  Soooo… piss-ups are a desirable destination… yeah, okay, I’ll give you that one.

Or how about this one: “…you still take care of to keep it wise.”  …Except for the fact that my post was titled “Brainless”…

And then there was the warmly complimentary, “Excellent facts many thanks for posting about it.”  I might have let that one slide under other circumstances, but my post was “Barbie, Celebrity Affairs, and Altering Reality” – a post entirely devoted to the rambling fantasies of my deranged mind.

Then there are the ones I suspect are secret communications in a clever code.  Maybe they think since I write spy fiction, I’ll be able to decipher their messages.  For example:  “I’m gonna watch out for brussels.”  Oooookay, then.  Good to know.  I’ll watch out for brussels, too.  Are we talkin’ sprouts, European cities, or what?

This cryptic comment really made me wonder:  “tiger blood?”  That was it.  No other information.  Just the question mark, which was obviously intended to be a clue.  As in, “Do we have a go for our covert op that’s so badass we code-named it ‘tiger blood’?”  Or maybe it’s an honest question:  “Is that tiger blood?  Or just ketchup?”  Or wait a minute, maybe it’s a comment on my savage beauty, my untamed… aah, never mind.  Probably not.

But, hell, maybe there is some irresistible attraction at work here.  I just got this comment:  “I got what you think, thanks for swing up. Woh I am glad to gestate this website”.  Well, if you’re swinging, I think you probably got the clap.  I haven’t heard the euphemism “swing up” before, but it seems to me a swing-up would be better than a swing-down.  I think a swing-down would make it much more difficult to gestate.  Besides, a swing-down just seems so… dejected.  Deflated.  Flaccid.  (Yeah, I used that word).

But, like gonorrhea, my visitor’s enthusiasm is infectious.  “Woh I am glad to gestate this website!”

Hey, I’m easy.  Flattery will get you everywhere.  Gestate away to your heart’s content.  Just wash your hands before you come to the table.

‘Scuse me while I go fry some of these up with cracker crumbs.

Making Up Is Hard To Blue

/ Diane Henders / 17 Comments

Ah, the festive season.  A time when most women look forward to getting dolled up with glamorous makeup and swanky little cocktail dresses.  (I said swanky, not skanky.  Don’t put words in my mouth.)

I, on the other hand, try to attend only events where I can wear jeans and swill beer in my usual bare-faced comfort.

Once upon a time, I wore makeup.  And by “once upon a time”, I don’t mean, literally, “once”.  I mean there was a time in my life, decades ago, when I actually wore it frequently.  There are many good reasons why I stopped wearing it.  Here’s one of them.

Blue eyeshadow was fashionable when I was in junior high school.  I was a geeky kid.  The eyeshadow package had instructions.  What could possibly go wrong?

My younger sister was involved in a school Christmas concert.  Mom had to be there early to help out, and Dad was to bring me along later, in time for the actual performance.

Feeling very grown-up, I decided to wear my new eyeshadow.  The package contained two shades of vivid blue.  I read the instructions carefully.  They said something like, “Apply darker shade on eyelid and blend lighter shade up to brow bone”.

This confused me.  I thought eyeshadow was supposed to go on the eyelids.  My brow bone seemed a helluva long way up there.

I spent a short time puzzling over the exact definition of “brow bone”, but I didn’t think there was a hidden meaning.  I seem to recall actually looking it up in the encyclopedia to make sure I’d gotten it right (I told you I was a geek).  No alternate definitions for “brow bone”.

Little did I know that researching “brow bone” was the wrong approach.  I should have researched the word “blend”.  Or maybe looked in a fashion magazine to see how the real makeup artists did it, though that’s an iffy proposition at best.

Cheerfully oblivious to better judgement, I smeared blue eyeshadow all the way up to my eyebrows.

Dad made no comment, and off we went.

We arrived in the already dimmed auditorium and found seats.  Just before the show began, my mother arrived to join us.  I distinctly remember the look of horror on her face, but I can’t remember exactly what she said.  The gist of her reaction was, “You let her go out looking like that?!?”

To which Dad replied with his usual honesty, “It all looks awful to me.  I couldn’t tell the difference.”

I’d like to say I learned my lesson that night and always applied my makeup tastefully from then on.  Sadly, however, photographic evidence suggests otherwise.  I respectfully submit that I may have been the main reason behind blue eyeshadow’s subsequent decline in popularity.  Don’t say I never did anything for you.

These days, I only wear makeup when I’m having pictures taken, which mercifully only happens once every few years.  I wear the makeup for exactly long enough to have the picture taken, and then I immediately go home and scrub it all off.

Earth tones only.  Never, ever blue eyeshadow.

A Dave By Any Other Name

/ Diane Henders / 19 Comments

I’ve been called a lot of different names in my lifetime, sometimes by people sincerely trying to get my name right; other times not so much.  Like a dog, I focus on the intonation, not the actual words.  “Sweetheart” can sound really hostile, and “Hey, Buttbrain” can warm my heart.

Not that anybody’s ever called me Buttbrain.  This week.

Some people seem to accumulate nicknames more easily than others, but I suspect there are a couple of factors that influence the process.  The truly cool nicknames usually get applied to people who’ve either done something truly cool, or truly dumb.  Besides that (dubious) qualification, it seems to me the quality of one’s nickname says more about the creativity of one’s friends than anything else.

I wasn’t overly popular in school.

Wait, gotta run.  Minions of the Society for the Eradication of Ridiculous Understatement are breaking down my door to drag me away…

Okay, I’m back.  Phew.  Lucky I learned those ninja skills while the cool kids were attending all their cool parties.

I didn’t do anything particularly dumb in school, and I missed “truly cool” by an embarrassingly wide margin.  My nickname in school was “Fender Bender”, which sounds kinda cool now, but in fact had nothing to do with my driving skills and everything to do with the fact that those are the first two words in alphabetical order that rhyme with “Henders”.

Those who knew me in university might consider “Fender Bender” appropriate, but that wasn’t related to my driving, either.  Suffice it to say that you don’t want to narrowly miss running over me in a crosswalk.  I get irate when I’m scared shitless.

Later, I acquired some more predictable nicknames:  “Di”, and, while Charles and Diana were an item, “Lady Di”, which caused considerable amusement to those who knew me well.  Ain’t no ladies here.

Oh, and I was briefly nicknamed “Garbage Gut”, “Mongo”, and “Anklebiter” in university, but those were just passing phases.

My all-time favourite nickname was “Dave”.  Back when I was a geek…  Oh, never mind.

Back when I was being paid to be a geek, the vendors apparently decided a mere woman couldn’t possibly deal with the intricacies of building computers and networks, so they christened me “Dave”.  For the last several years I held that job, most of my outside correspondence arrived addressed to “Dave Henders”.

I didn’t really mind.  I figured Dave was probably a pretty cool guy.  In fact, I developed a fondness for Dave, so I named a character in my fourth book after him.

The rest of my handles were either insults or endearments, none of them particularly interesting or creative.  Though Hubby does call me Gorgeous on occasion, which is just one of the many reasons why I love him.

So, to quote the old chestnut:  Call me anything you like; just don’t call me late for dinner.

Or you can call me Dave.  That works, too.

What are (were) your nicknames?

Barbie, Celebrity Affairs, and Altering Reality

/ Diane Henders / 23 Comments

Every now and then, my mind wanders.  All right, fine, my mind wanders quite a bit.  But sometimes it wanders farther afield than usual, into the realm of the truly ridiculous.

I’ve already mentioned I sometimes wonder whether electronic devices are actually sentient, but here’s another thought that intrigues me:  wouldn’t it be cool if you could alter reality with your mind?  There are lots of experts out there who say reality is subjective, and we create our own reality through our perceptions.  I like that idea.

I usually think of it around the time hail is pummelling my garden.  I send psychic waves up into the sky, imagining tents of steel mesh diverting the hailstones away from my slowly liquefying tomatoes and zucchini.  It never works, but it gives me something to do besides ripping my hair out.

And I can hardly wait until I figure out how to teleport.  Imagine how wonderful vacations would be.  You could go anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye, see whatever you want, and then pop home and sleep in your own bed.  You’d never have to worry about forgetting something.  You could teleport home and water the plants, put the cat out/in, grab your toothbrush, whatever.  I really, really want to be able to teleport.

When I was a kid, I wondered if my teddy bears and Barbie dolls came alive at night when I was sleeping.  I imagined the teddy bears getting up and walking around, doing teddy-bear things, though I wasn’t quite sure what those might be.  Come to think of it, I’m still not sure what those might be.  What would a teddy bear actually do if it was alive?

And I imagined the fights and explanations between Barbie, Ken, and Stacey:

“Ken!  What were you doing lying on top of Stacey?  How dare you?”

“Barbie, I swear, that little kid just crammed us together.  I couldn’t help it!”

“Well, you sure took your time getting off her, didn’t you?  And where are your pants!?!”

“Honey, you know I can’t move while the kid’s looking!  And the pants weren’t my fault…”

While I’m on that topic, I always wondered about poor Ken’s lack of, er, “features”.  Was it a tragic industrial accident?  A vengeful Barbie?  A manufacturing defect?

I also imagined that pictures of people could actually see.  It made getting undressed for bed an interesting, if somewhat self-conscious process, what with all those posters of movie-star men hanging on my wall.  To this day, I don’t keep a picture of my parents in my bedroom. 

Come to think of it, though, that might explain a lot about all the celebrity hook-ups and divorces.  When they spend all that time with their faces and bodies crammed against each other inside the pages of People magazine and the tabloids, you’ve got to expect nature to take its course at least some of the time.

What do you think?

Gettin’ Down At A Piss-Up

/ Diane Henders / 9 Comments

This weekend, we attended the Grape Escape, a showcase of food, wine, and liquor.  As usual, there was a mind-boggling and delicious array of food and booze.  As usual, we poured ourselves into a cab afterward and managed to maintain a semi-vertical orientation while we staggered into our house.

Many of the other attendees didn’t manage to stay even semi-vertical.  By the end of the four-hour event, bodies were propped against the walls, and I was saved from being crushed only because a garbage can intercepted the fall of the very tall man stumbling determinedly in my direction.

Considering that 2,500 shit-faced strangers are confined in one large hall for four hours, it’s a remarkably orderly event, probably due to the pairs of police officers sprinkled strategically throughout the venue.  We go every year, so none of this surprised me.

What did surprise me was the sheer number of seductively-dressed women in attendance.  I obviously failed to realize the hook-up potential of the show.  It was -20 outside.  I saw more exposed flesh there than at a Calgary beach in the middle of summer.  Not to mention 4”+ stiletto heels, which are truly entertaining when their wearer couldn’t walk a straight line if she was barefoot and holding two handrails.

The crowd was cheerful and all-embracing.  Literally.  I wore jeans, a T-shirt, hiking boots, and a wedding ring.  By the end of the event, guys even started coming onto me.  I’m not sure whether they couldn’t see straight enough to realize they weren’t talking to the cute young thing beside/behind me, or whether they just didn’t care that much anymore.  Gotta love beer goggles:  improving middle-aged women’s self-esteem since the invention of beer.

I felt sorry for the long-suffering vendors by the end of the night, though.  I’m pretty sure there were only a handful of us who were still capable of focusing both eyes on the label while they extolled the virtues of their Sauvignon Blanc.

Some of that was their own fault, though.  They were generous with their samples, and there were a couple hundred different kinds of beer, wine, liqueurs, and hard liquor.  Take even a mouthful of each, and you won’t make it around all the displays.  I speak from happy experience here.  Very happy.

I was delighted to discover some new favourite beers and wines, but I guess I missed the main point of the event, which was apparently to get pissed and get down.

I didn’t quite achieve “pissed”, but I was close.  Next year, I’ll try harder.  And maybe I’ll get myself some 4” stilettos, too.  It’s cheap amusement to see a guy’s expression when I peer down at him from a 6’2” height.  Fortunately, Hubby’s secure in his manhood, and at 5’7”, he doesn’t mind being eye-level with a couple of my more outstanding features.

And, hey, when you’re wearing heels that high, getting down at the end of the evening is a sure thing.  Who says four inches can’t be satisfying?

Brainless

/ Diane Henders / 23 Comments

I just got back from two weeks in Manitoba.  I have 682 unread emails, and there’s a stack of as-yet-unidentified but vaguely frightening papers and envelopes in my “In” tray.  It’s Wednesday morning, time for a blog post.  I’m brainless.

I pre-planned carefully for exactly this situation.  I have 38 half-written blog posts in my “Blog” folder, ready for the day that I can’t think about anything to write.  Just like a boxed meal in the freezer, all I have to do is take one out, add some seasoning, and serve it up.

I’ve tried three different ones so far.  They’re all flat, boring, and tasteless.  And that’s “tasteless” in the sense of “bland and flavourless”, not “rude and potentially offensive” (which can actually turn out to be fairly entertaining on occasion).  Apparently those posts were not only half-written, they were half-baked.

I feel the same as I did at three A.M. the day I was planning to begin my fourteen hour drive home.  “Thump-bang-bang” woke me.  This is not a happy sound at three o’clock in the morning.

I got up to discover that the pulley from the furnace blower motor had flung itself off its shaft and was lying uselessly in the bottom of the furnace.  I spent a good half-hour trying to reinstall the pulley in my semi-conscious stupor before I realized that it was just around zero outside, there were electric baseboard heaters in the rest of the house, and we were highly unlikely to freeze to death if the furnace didn’t run for a few hours.

The pathetic part of all this is that there’s only one way to put the pulley back on the shaft.  It’s not like you can do it wrong.  I tried over and over.  The same way.  The same result.  It wouldn’t go back on.

Hands covered with black grease, mind circling as uselessly as the remaining pulley on the now-disconnected drive motor, I stumbled into the bathroom to wash up and fell back into bed, realizing as I shivered under the covers that it probably would have been smart to put on slippers and something warmer than a thin robe before attempting repairs in the middle of the night.

The next morning, the problem was miraculously simplified when I looked at the furnace again and realized that both the driveshaft and the pulley had been gouged when the pulley twisted off, leaving a slight burr on both.  A few minutes work with a metal file solved the problem.  Amazing what a few hours of sleep and a modicum of alertness can do.

I’m hoping to regain a useful level of alertness soon, and maybe the judicious application of some honing and smoothing tools will fix up those blog-posts-in-waiting.  I’ve also resolved to get a few of them completely written, once I get my brain safely reinstalled on its driveshaft.

Meanwhile, anybody got a brain file?  Apparently I’ve got a nasty burr somewhere…

P.S. Many thanks to all who offered encouragement to my step-mom.  Her first treatment went very well, and she wants me to thank everyone for their good wishes.

More Beaver!

/ Diane Henders / 14 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, one of our senators caused a kerfuffle when she took verbal potshots at our national animal, the beaver.  Calling it a “dentally defective rat” and a “toothy tyrant”, she suggested that we should change our national animal to the “noble” and much more photogenic polar bear.  Righteous indignation and off-colour jokes abounded.

According to the online poll at CBC, 78.54% of respondents thought the beaver should stay.  Comments sections were overwhelmed by thousands of responses.  Most of the male writers stated a particular fondness for beavers, though many accidentally omitted the ‘s’.  A mere oversight, I’m sure.  Female respondents in general tended to exhort the good senator to leave their beavers alone.

In keeping with the typical ugliness of celebrity confrontations, the love lives of the contenders were brought into question, too.  Many observed that polar bears will pretty much screw anything that moves, while beavers mate for life, thereby cementing the beaver’s reputation as a morally superior mammal.  (No word on the senator’s love life at this time.)

To add to the mud-flinging, photos worthy of the most sordid tabloids were posted, showing a frowsy beaver with a deranged expression, contrasted with a soft-focus photo of a snowy-white, perfectly-groomed polar bear.  In retaliation, the polar bear’s weight problem was identified and cruelly ridiculed.

Almost as cruelly ridiculed was the senator herself.  The general consensus was that we should keep the beaver and ditch the senate.

In other news, I noticed an article about farmers hunting beavers to save their land from the destructive flooding caused by dams.  No eyebrows were raised over this article, though.  It’s not exactly news that much time, energy, and money is expended in the hunt for beaver.  Or, um… beavers.

P.S.  I’m still with my step-mom while she undergoes chemo this week, so I may be slow in responding to comments, and I might not make it around to comment on my favourite blogs.  I’m still thinking of you, though.  Thanks for visiting!

Ooooo, Scary!

/ Diane Henders / 8 Comments

Since Halloween was this week, “scary” has been on my mind.  It was definitely on my mind when I looked in the mirror this morning, but that’s another story.

“Scary” is such a versatile word.  Halloween costumes are good-scary.  Haunted houses and ghost stories are creepy-good-scary.  Politicians are scary in a stomach-churning, “eeeuw-I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it” way.

There’s exciting-scary, when you’re hurtling down a black-diamond ski run and you catch an edge and almost lose it but you don’t, and the adrenaline slams into your veins and you let out a whoop and haul ass to the bottom grinning like a maniac.

There’s the detached sort of scary you get when you’re airborne immediately after parting company with your dirt bike or slipping on the stairs.  It’s that short moment that takes approximately forever to experience, and your brain has exactly enough time to say in calm and reasonable tones, “Oh, shit, this is really going to hurt!”

And then there’s scary-scary.  The kind of scary that makes your heart pound and your hands sweat.  The kind of scary that makes you drop your shoulder like a defensive tackle and fling little old ladies in all directions as you bull your way through the lineup to get to the toilet before you shit your pants.

Well, maybe not really.  And anyway, that only happened once.  Don’t bug me.

My point is, even though “scary” is technically defined as a bad thing, we search it out in so many ways.  When I was a kid, I always wanted to be something scary for Halloween.  Some people would argue that I achieved “scary” on a regular basis, but they may be exaggerating.  Though I do have a vivid memory of my mother saying, “Try not to be so… ferocious.”  It wasn’t even Halloween.

But I never wanted to be a clown or a princess or a ballerina.  I wanted to be a pirate, a headless person, or some other horrifying apparition.  I wanted to make people shiver in abject terror.  Note the clenched fist and fearsome grimace.  I was seven at the time, and my sword was tinfoil-covered cardboard.  I wanted a bigger, scarier sword, but cardboard wasn’t to be wasted and tinfoil was expensive.

When I got old enough to understand real fear, “scary” lost some of its attraction.  But still, in fiction and movies, we have to have a dose of scary, or the storyline just seems flat.  It makes me wonder if cave men sat around telling scary stories, too, or whether they had enough “scary” in their lives without making any up.

What is it about that burst of adrenaline?  Maybe it’s the relief afterward.  Maybe it’s the bragging rights when you’re sitting in the pub telling the story with a cold one in your hand, and your friends shiver and exclaim and laugh in all the right places.

I don’t know.  All I know is, it’s my corporate yearend, and I have to wade through my financial records again.  That’s a whole different kind of scary.  And that story isn’t going to hold anybody enthralled at the pub, either.

P.S.  I’ll be with my step-mom for the next week or two while she starts her chemo treatments, so I may be slow in responding to comments, and I might not make it around to comment on my favourite blogs.  I’m still thinking of you, though.  Thanks for visiting!