Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Miley Cyrus Don't Break My Heart, My Twerky Jerky Heart
I have a large pond just feet from my patio. What should be a relaxing time watching nature and wildlife has turned into a man-made fiasco right in front of my eyes.
It started about 6 weeks ago. A white duck that looks exactly like the Aflac duck has landed into a gag of Canada geese and adapted an identity crisis. He has a particular favorite pack of seven that he hangs with. They respect him, they love him and they let him guide them (seriously) all over that pond during the day.
But, when night falls they fly to their sleeping quarters and guess who stays in the pond by himself?
Nature knows itself. If it quacks like a duck and acts like a duck..you know the rest. But NO!, let's not let nature work it out the way it has since creation. In come the saviors, that's right us...humans. The duck can't possibly live on it's own could it? Let's rent a duck for a friend! So now I get to witness a duck release program.
That's right, a little Aflack duck is dropped off to be his friend. Someone to play with during the day and the evenings when the geese fly away. Something just doesn't feel right about it.
But, Mr. Aflac seems to love his new little white duck. They swim side by side all over the pond and he stopped his incessant honking for the geese to come back. For three days they brought the little duck to the pond. Mr. Aflac was sooooo happy!
And then today. No release. He quacked and quacked and walked to the area where they would bring his friend and then sat ever so quietly and with his head tucked. He didn’t' resume his call for the geese, my first time to witness depressed duck behavior! Don't get me wrong, I am sure the big hearted people who released the duck had good intentions.
The snowball effect is evident in the behavior of the geese and breakdown of the eco system of the pond. I watch the flock being fed pounds of food every day, each thinking they are solely keeping them alive. I have personally seen 4-5 quart sized buckets of cracked corn fed to them every day by one sweet neighbor, the next comes with her empty ice cream quart container and feeds them unknowing they have just eaten and yet another bucket in the afternoon and all of this is in addition to numerous bags of old bread.
You can hardly see the pond water for the muck because what they would naturally eat turns to algae. This flock of geese has crapped enough to put a hole in the ozone layer over my house.
First there were 7 geese. Last week there were over 50. Flyovers have left us grumbling as we get into our cars in the morning. Goose poop is no joke. Driveways are littered with excrement and feathers. Flocks of black birds have descended to eat the leftovers and caw incessantly. And let’s don’t forget, it is a pond. People fish , they lose their line and tackle. I have seen two geese with lures attached to their webbing.
I pulled my blinds and headed to the computer with my coffee. I can only bear to watch the geese in the morning now when they glide across the new blue horizon and touch down in the pond. Everything beyond that point is orchestrated.
I wiggled my mouse to wake up my computer. Miley Cyrus was all over the headlines. After hours of reviews and remarks, I fell prey to this headline. Miley shocks the world with her twerking performance on VMA. It took ten minutes for me to get the nerve to do a Google search on twerking. Afterwards I silently prayed that my computer would never be confiscated and it found on my search drive.
I took a walk with Snowy and realized I couldn't look up at the clear blue skies to enjoy the morning for avoiding the geese poop on the ground. We created the problem ourselves, so should we put on a shocked face when the source fed in excess creates poop? Immediately Miley Cyrus popped into my mind. Miley Cyrus, what went wrong here. Let's go back a few years. 2006 to be exact. Hannah Montanna.
No, let's go back a little farther and show our innate ability to actually breed the illness. Billy Ray Cyrus...Achy Breaky Heart. A mullet to remember. ~Don't break my heart my achy breaky heart~ Lord, I still cringe when I hear the song and every man I know that had a mullet is trying to forget about it.
We opened our wallets and drove that ridiculous song to damn near an anthem in the US. We made a rich man out of Billy Ray Cyrus from Flatwoods, Kentucky. I have absolutely nothing against wealth, but I like to think I know the difference between a fad and talent.
But darnit, I did it again. When my granddaughters were little, I bought them Miley Cyrus clothes, pens, pocket books, accessories and bookbags. I have twinges of guilt about that today.
Now I stick with classic character gifts, i.e. My LIttle Kitty, Spiderman. Their true worth doesn't come from what others think about them, the cheers of the crowd, clothes, make up, money. And…. you don't get that nasty taste in your mouth when you open a closet to the leftover lunchboxes and junk from the Brittany, Lindsay and Miley era.
My poor duck is on skid row. Because we thought it was pretty, we fed it and we told it we would provide love and then we took it away. The Canada geese may not fly away this winter. Why should they. Maybe we could open our garages to keep them warm as well as feed them. Hmmm...I see similarities here.
Excess, Billy Ray Cyrus cancelled a last minute interview with Piers Morgan to defend Miley Cyrus. I could understand that, whew that’s a hard act for a daddy to follow. Or maybe there is a duet in the wings.... Don't twerk my heart, my twerky jerky heart.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Back to School 70's Style
Enter...Music. I was browsing through Spotify looking for new stuff, realizing a few minutes in that this would be comparable to a whale picking out one fish for dinner in a sea of swarming krill.
I landed on the vast, but recognizable category of the 70's. For the next hour, I sang every word to every song. Ahhh.. the 70's, that hangover decade following the 60's Hippie peace and love, sleep in and smoke out era.
It's all well and good that we were a decade behind because country girls didn't make very good hippies.
First, not enough people knew what it was to be a hippie in our little town, so you couldn't really rebel because no one knew what you were doing anyway.
Second, There were only two channels that came in through the ~antenna~ at my house, one for the news and the other for Gunsmoke or Hee Haw. Happy Rain was the closest thing to a hippie around there.
Oh, we gave it a shot. We colored peace signs on our book covers and wore bell bottoms, hip huggers and halter tops to the dismay of the church ladies.
We thought we were ~Far Out~ and knew it all, then a stray would move to town from Californi or somewhere off and show us something that we were missing. Maybe recite some Poe.
I started thinking about how stress free school clothes shopping was for our parents. The guys usually got two new pair of Levi's, which they scrubbed up as soon as they could to get the new blue out, a new pair of sneaks, no need for shirts, they wore their coveted concert shirts until they were threadbare.
Us girls were happy with some new clogs, earrings and belts to accessorize the embroidered jeans we had been working on all summer. If our jeans were beyond repair, we made blue jean pocketbooks out of them. Basically, the style was to not look like you were wearing anything new.
Maxi's, mini's, embroidered and painted jeans, chevron shirts and dresses, floppy hats, bell bottoms, hip huggers, sizzler dresses (oh my) and clogs rounded out the apparel.
We didn't need to re-hash our summer vacations or camps with friends because our summers were always spent together. I am going to guess that our generation coined the phrase ~Hanging Out~
And hang out we did...In parks, by the river banks, floating the Edisto, fishing in gator ponds until it got to hot to fish and then peeling off clothes and swimming when we could see the gator on the other side of pond.
We drowned ourselves in baby oil and iodine and lay on shiny aluminum blankets to tan...eeek! For thrills we'd get hold of some Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine and play cow pattie bingo or cruise the town limit signs.
I crank the volume on the Spotify 70's radio station, Seals & Croft singing ~Summer Breeze~
No, I don't think I would go so far as to call the 70's ~The Good Ole Days~ but judging from the pinched faces of the parents I have seen in retail stores with grumpy kids and long list in hand. They weren't all that bad.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
SCDMV The New Whinery
Several more people rounded the corner and filed in behind me. We exchanged the sympathetic ~What are you going to do smile and shrug ~ as they came in. The woman right behind me decided to use her time to phone a friend, oblivious to the large ~Please silence cell phones~ signs on the wall. And to boot, she is talking loudly. I tried to tune her out, but she was grating.
After listening to her whine session about her suffering for ten minutes, I pulled out my phone to text Don. ~14 people in front of me, line's not moving, ugh~
I slip my phone back into purse. The lady is still going on and on. It started with DMV, then their employees, onto the state of SC, Immigration laws and then the Mexican people standing in line taking up her American space.
Just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, her phone a friend bowed out of the convo. So...what does she do? Yup..dials another friend and starts the same garb over. I was considering trading places with people behind her just to get out of earshot.
Is complaining contagious? Why did I send a text to Don? To let him know I was suffering? Lord help me if my weak mind and body think standing in line is suffering.
I am alive, I am not standing in line in a third world country for a potato or handful of rice. I am standing in line to turn in tags on a vehicle that died..so that I could have another vehicle that wouldn't die and when I left this line, I was going to go to Chick Fil A to get an ice cream cone.
What else have I complained about? Traffic, grocery store clerks, food at restaurant? I looked around at the pinched faces in line. Does everyone feel the same. Is complaining pervasive? Another lady has sympathized with the lady behind me and they are edging to the window to glare at the counter workers. Others are rolling their eyes. Are we all angry?
Can I find an oasis in the pity desert? Ahh..there's one. A mother with a son going to get his driving test. His face shows anticipation as he jingles car keys. Mom is nervously beaming.
Another lady is reading a book in line, yet another goes through her coupons.
I can go with that, make use of my time. Once it's gone it's gone, whether I am standing in a line at DMV or a concert. I know several people who would give a pinky finger to trade their real woes for my mundane suffering right now.
As if an answer to my resolve and dissipation of angst. A triage DMV employee came out to the front and started working the line. She takes my tag and tells me to leave. I heard a hmmphhh behind me from mad DMV #16, too bitter to see that she is now #15.
When I walked out of the door of the DMV, I felt somewhat lighter. Changing my outlook on the situation put a little spring in my step.
I climbed into the car, cut the A/C on, cranked the radio and picked up my list to cross off DMV.
Next on list... call cable company...Awww hell, that was short lived. But, Rome wasn't built in a day.
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