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 |  It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper. |
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My friends, When we were young and newly hatched—also young and in love—my husband and I lived with our four young children on the Space Coast of Florida. The massive propulsion of rocket and shuttle launches from Cape Kennedy often rocked the windows and doors of our little love cottage. We were always properly respectful and impressed by the reach of mankind’s achievements. It was a point of pride to stop whatever we were doing (dishes, dinner, dancing, sleeping, fist fighting, etc.) to watch the eastern horizon—hands on hearts, tears in eyes—as the United States of America raced into the frontier of space. One deep, dark morning (about 2:00 am) I shook my husband awake to watch yet another triumph of human advancement. “Get up,” I mumbled to Sherwood, “the shuttle’s going up. We gotta’ watch.” Sherwood moaned, “The garbage is out all ready. Let me die.” He did not open his eyes. “Come on. We should watch. Night launches are amazing.” He dragged himself upright and clung to the window ledge behind our bed. We knelt, with our chins braced on the ledge, our bleary eyes fixed on a blazing light in the eastern sky. We watched. The light did not appear to move. We stared some more. The light remain fixed. We struggled to focus. The light blazed away. We waited for the light to fade into the blackness of space. It did not. We watched and watched and watched. The light stubbornly refused to move. At last, collapsing back into my pillow I said, “Honey, go back to sleep.” Sounding confused, miffed, and a little whiney Sherwood asked, “Why?” “Because for the last eight to ten minutes we’ve been staring at our next door neighbor’s bug zapper.” He went back to sleep. And I lived to worship at the altar of space exploration another day. This story pretty much sums up who we are, and how we got this way—excessive staring at bug zappers. And this is my blog, a space-age way of recording one’s thoughts, ideas, embarrassments, and foibles for the entire known world. Once upon a time, I would have made this record on papyrus, rolled it up, stuffed it into a ceramic jar, and asked to have the whole thing buried with me in my sarcophagus. I still might. Disclaimer: Some of the stuff you will read here is true. Some of it is not. Some of it is the result of wishful thinking. Some of it is the result of too much thinking, and some of it is the result of too little thinking. But all of it will be written with joy and laughter, because the alternative is despair and weeping, and isn’t there more than enough of that stuff out there? Thank you for your support, Linda (Zippity the Zapped) Zern |
| Some time ago, I watched an Elvis impersonator dude get arrested, interrogated, searched, accused, and observed with a jaundiced eye for possibly whipping up a batch of Ricin in his kitchen. It made me wonder. What would our neighbors say about us on cable TV if we were hauled off for cooking up crazy crap in a crock-pot? Allegedly. See something. Say something. I’ve been trying to imagine what the neighbors are “seeing” at our place when they peek over our wire field fence, realizing if I said something every time I saw something at my neighbor’s house, I’d have the See-Something-Say-Something folks on speed dial. I mean how weird does it have to be to qualify as something? It’s not hard to imagine one of those breathless, throaty cable reporters stuffing a microphone in my next-door neighbor’s face and asking, “So, is it true that the Zern family had some unusual weekend rituals? Allegedly?” “Rituals, no, but they seemed to be overly found of circling.” Reporter nods and asks, “Satanic symbols? Hex signs? Crop circles?” “No. Nothing like that, but when they sit outside in their crappy lawn chairs they always wind up in a circle. But it migrates.” “What does?” The reporter will look perplexed but intrigued. “The yard circle. In the summer they circle under that big maple tree, but in the winter they land on the septic tank.” At this point our neighbor gets tired of pointing and drops his hand. “And did you see that as an indication that they were cooking up crazy crap in a crock-pot.” Hesitating, my neighbor will scratch his head. “No. But those grandkids are constantly peeing on stuff.” There it is. Public urination and yard circles. Our family would be good for at least one charge of felony mischief. But that’s not as bad as what goes on at our next-door neighbor’s house. Allegedly. Our neighbor’s eight-year old son informed my daughter that on Sundays his family likes to practice “knifing.” She asked, “What’s knifing?” “You know,” he said, “when you make a target and practice throwing knives at it.” I’m a little embarrassed to admit that our family is way behind on its knifing practice. Don’t tell. Linda (Don’t Look. Don’t Tell.) Zern |
| My husband Sherwood travels everywhere, all the time. It’s not as cool as it sounds. Mostly it means getting ‘felt up’ by airport officials on every continent. Our overseas communication policy is to talk twice a day, every day by cell phone. This allows us to make sure that neither one of us has been kidnapped by near sighted sex slavers. It also allows us to handle family business long distance. Examples of family business include: I’m sad because raccoons got in the garbage again; where’s the barn broom; or why didn’t you buy rabbit food? That kind of stuff. However, since Homeland Security has been under the gun . . . oops . . . no, no not gun . . . I mean G for glitter, U for up, and N for nuts . . . since they’ve been under the Glitter Up Nuts for collecting overseas and domestic calls and making notes, we’ve decided to come up with a code word system for our private telephone business. Think Enigma Code for Dummies. Please don’t spread it around. This is just between us: you and me and some pimply computer wonk at Homeland Security. Here’s the breakdown. When I say, “Come home and drill something!” It’s code. It means, come home and trap the raccoons trying to turn our garbage cans into apartments for their furry little jerk selves. If I claim, “The roosters are howling.” It means that the Muslim neighbors have been firing off enough ammunition at tin can targets to make our dogs refuse to go outside to relieve themselves, and I’m worried they’ll explode from urine retention. When I declare, “Ugh! The dolts are in the house.” That’s political commentary meaning that there are actual dolts in the actual big house on the actual hill acting like loonies, or how the heck did Alan Grayson become our representative? Doesn’t he live in Orlando? It’s a sign of the times. The words only mean what I mean them to mean; get what I mean? Or I’m thinking of buying a Glitter Up Nut. We also have a code word should either one of us be kidnapped by near sighted sex slavers, but Sherwood is always forgetting what the code word is, which makes me testy when I quiz him. He can remember a thousand weird computer acronyms for when Uganda calls, but he can’t remember our sex slaver kidnapper code word. What’s up with that? See why I need a Glitter Up Nut? Linda (Enigma Elf) Zern |
| In honor of the Winter Olympics, I'm re-posting Coach-of-All-Sports for my husband . . . “He needs to get his blade on the ice.” Looking over at my husband, I tried to decide if he had one or two chocolate donuts in his mouth. “Get your blade on the ice,” he yelled through chocolate glaze and donut dust. I squinted over my glasses at the Olympic speed skaters gliding around and around in a frenzy of bad posture and arm swinging. “Babe, you’ve never speed skated in your entire life.” He ignored this fundamental reality. “Dig, dig, dig!” he yelled. “He’s going to loose if he doesn’t dig.” He punctuated his coaching acumen by pushing a half empty bag of chocolate covered donuts back under the bedspread. It’s possible he thought they would cook better under there. Later, as skiers flew down an icy mountainside he offered up this tip. “She’s going to be way off the mark if she keeps coming out of her tuck that way.” He was snacking on Swiss Cake Rolls and Pepsi by this time. I drew a line when he started to coach the curlers on the most advantageous amount of bend to have in their knees to properly push the big-frozen-boulder-thingy down the shuffleboard court made of ice. “Stop. You do not know the first thing about speed skating, alpine skiing, or curling, which, I happen to know, you do not even consider a real sport.” “What?” He look offended and a little hurt. “You! You become the coach-of-all-sports when the Olympics come on.” He pulled a bag of Doritos from underneath his pillow, shrugged, and said, “You and I ice skated that time in Ottawa, and the kid and I went skiing that time in West Virginia.” “In West Virginia, where you pointed, hooted, and laughed your butt off on the ski lift when you saw some poor kid crash, burn, and roll down the mountain like a bag of spilled marbles,” I reminded him. “So?” “That kid was your kid, our kid. That’s it. That’s the sum total of your winter sports expertise.” Music swelled as they played one of those montages where lithe, athletic young men and women raced, spun, and sailed across the screen into glory and history. I reached for my husband’s grease smeared hand as our National Anthem played. “It is inspiring.” I blinked hard to hold back sentimental tears. “You’re right,” Sherwood said, thoughtfully. “So, you know what, I’m thinking that from now on, when I eat Swiss cake rolls I’m only going to drink water.” I patted his hand. “Way to go, Coach.” |
| I have been in search of a writers’ group, full of people of like mind, similar writing goals, happy to talk plot, reluctant to talk mental illnesses (their own or mine), and willing to provide printed copies of their latest efforts so that I can follow along with my finger as they read their great American novels. My search has taken me to a college with ivy on the walls, master classes with the rich and famous, the Space Coast Writers’ Guild, and the Saint Cloud public library. Everywhere I wind up, I learn a little something . . . At my college, I learned that smoking the Mary Jane is more legal in some spots than in others. Early on, as I walked across campus with a school administrator, I caught an unmistakable whiff of the recreational . . . stuff. The school administrator seemed oblivious. I acted oblivious. I wondered if I should invest in an oxygen mask for strolls across campus, knowing that I would be tested for illegal drugs in order to become a volunteer member of the Osceola County mounted posse. Apparently, riding a horse while stoned in the county of Osceola is frowned upon—not so much in Winter Park. Master classes are just that, classes taught by masters in their art. The art, in this case, would be writing. What I’ve learned from the masters: good writers are not necessarily good talkers; a lot of writers talk trash about capitalism; a lot of writers never sell their books for less than list price; some masters are meek, self deprecating, and kind, but then they can afford to be. They’re stupid rich. Or as one of my teachers declared, “If you aren’t writing for money. You’re an idiot.” I dig it. Being a member of the Space Coast Writers’ Guild has given me the heads up. The space coast is a happening place for writers and their concerns: contests, book fairs, book signings, conferences, seminars, library spotlights . . . I’ve also realized that for every three new techniques I master to promote my books, there are seventy-two other high tech tricks waiting to be learned. The whole thing makes me want to be Emily Dickinson, wearing lovely gowns of lace and organza, alone in my isolated attic room, writing strange and convoluted poems about . . . whatever I want, whenever I want—for cash and prizes. I’m an idiot. And then there’s the writers’ group at the Saint Cloud library, headed up by a lovely man who declared his deep and fervent desire to break into the genre of mystery writing. Presently, he ghostwrites erotica, and it’s become something of a drag. Or as he declared, “Let’s face it, there are only so many ways you can ‘do it.’” Can’t argue with that. I got to thinking about this lovely writer’s dilemma. Maybe, he could write space erotica. You know, people in space on their way to Mars, who have to figure out how to ‘do it’ in zero gravity. But then I remembered my lessons from high school biology. “If it wasn’t for friction, there’d be no babies.” And there it is—friction and gravity. The physical laws of the physical world—it’s just tough to argue with the law. Riding a horse while stoned is stupid. Writing for money can pay the rent. Emily Dickenson is dead; it’s time to learn to tweet. Erotica may pay the rent, but mystery writing won’t run you up against the laws of friction and gravity. The sky’s the limit. The search continues as I seek others of my kind. I learn a little here. I learn a little there. And it’s all good. And fun. And educational. And grist for the writing-mill that is my literary journey. Linda (Grinding it Out) Zern |
| I married my high school sweetheart. My husband married his high school sweetheart. Which means that we married each other. It also means that we went to high school together. He followed me around for all of my sophomore year. I had no idea. Back then it was called ‘kind of cute.’ Today it’s called stalking. After the stalking phase, we actually took a class together—some kind of writing class, I can’t remember what it was called—Word Mongering, Essays Anyone Can Understand, How to BS Your Way Through the Rest of your Life, something. The first thing our public school teacher told us was that no one in that class, not one of us, was college material. I believed her. I’m not sure if Sherwood cared enough to believe her. I think he was still mildly stalking me at this point. The second thing our public school teacher said left most of us shocked and shaken. “I can smell plagiarism. And I mean smell it, not to mention recognize it when I see it,” she said, fixing her plagiarism-detecting eyes on us as she looked down her plagiarism-sniffing nose at us. She repeated her plagiarism spotting abilities, many times. We trembled. Okay, I trembled. Sherwood was checking out my Sweet Honesty t-shirt. I went home and sweated over our first writing assignment, two pages of ‘something that interests you,’ every word mine, every thought from me, every sentence coming out of my head. What was my paper about? I have no idea. But I know one thing, IT WAS MY ORIGINAL WORK. Sherwood went home cracked open the Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedia and copied one of the articles—WORD FOR WORD—straight out of the book. I remember what his TOTALLY FAKE essay was about—The Boston Freaking Marathon. We handed in our papers to the fake paper-sniffing teacher. Okay, let’s recap. I wrote a totally original essay. Sherwood cheated like a guy selling fake Gucci’s in New York City. Sherwood the Cheater made . . . wait for it . . . an A, with “Very Interesting!” written across the top of that fake paper like a going out of business banner. My paper? I made . . . wait for it . . . a C . . . for chump. Later, he had the effrontery—how’s that word for a C for chump writer—to claim that he didn’t copy the article word for word. He left out words like written by and see reference. I admit; it was a little discouraging, but I got over it and had the effrontery to finally go to college and keep right on writing. I also married the boy, but I encouraged him to pursue a career in computers rather than wordsmithing. Linda (Tattle Tale) Zern |
| My husband and I are halfway to a hundred. Or as I informed my college editing class, “I’ve lived half of a hundred years, and I have a lot to say.” And then I said some crazy crap about needing to take the grammar class so that I could say what I want to say more clearly. Then I failed my first grammar test. Here’s what I’ve learned so far in Editing Essentials. Human beings can take the fun out of just about anything. Just. About. Anything. “Hey there, Grog, I sure like those spear chuckers’ spears you’ve painted on that cave wall. Spear chuckers’, plural possessive, right?” Not my husband, he’s a man who knows the value of simple pleasures and simple fun. He knows that grandchildren would rather play “Monster” with Poppy in a dark yard, than join a league of any kind, ever. Monster is a simple game. The children run screaming in terror while Poppy sneaks up on them, leaps out at them, or hunts them down like a spear chucker stalking baby bison. The game is considered successful when one or more of the younger children are booger crying from fright, and the older children are so sweaty from running around they smell like baby mammoths. It’s a little known fact that a romping good game of Monster can cripple Poppy up for two, even three days. But still he answers the call of “Play Monster, Poppy. Play Monster.” And that’s why when our ten grandchildren walk in the front door they take one look at me and then ask, “Where’s Poppy?” Because he’s fun, that’s why. No quizzes. No tests. No note cards. No stupid, endless rules. Just fun. Just screaming, adrenalin pumping, heart stopping fun. And what’s wrong with that? Not a single thing. Linda (Chopped Liver) Zern |
| Exceptional-ism. I’m for it. Everyone can do something better than a lot of other people. No! Really. One of my granddaughters can correctly identify sixty-four flashcards of citrus tree diseases while wearing fox ears on her head. She’s flat out amazing. The problem with modern day exceptional-ism is making it look like everyday brilliance, so folks won’t feel sad when they can’t name sixty-four different kinds of citrus tree diseases while wearing fox ears. I get that, because I’m exceptional . . . well not sixty-four flash card memorizing exceptional but I think I can hold my own around a subject and a predicate. “I’m exceptional, you know,” I inform my children, quite frequently. They say, “Can I borrow six hundred bucks?” I say, “I’ve written books, you know. One almost won a prize.” They say, “Oh wow, that’s almost wow but not quite. Now about that six hundred bucks.” Sigh. It’s hard to be the exceptional when nobody notices. Or it could be the number of times I’ve done unexceptional stuff while they were hanging around. “Hi, Mrs. Zern, are you here for your semi-annual teeth cleaning?” “And floating,” I chirped as I winked and laughed. (Floating is what you call what the vet does to old horses so their oats don’t fall out of their old, yellow teeth. And that’s why that’s funny.) Absolutely no one gets the joke about floating. I laugh my exceptional laugh alone. “Well, Mrs. Zern, there’s a bit of a problem.” “Did I get the appointment wrong? It’s Thursday, isn’t it?” “Well, yes, your appointment is Thursday—six months from now.” Then there’s the whole losing your car in the parking lot, in the rain, while wearing a white shirt/skirt/caftan with socks and high heels. I’m an artist. I don’t have to dress normal, or have to know that the black Nissan Titan I was trying to break into wasn’t MY black Nissan Titan. It’s a kind of exceptional-ism—really exceptional daffiness. It’s genetic. Once in a dash for the SHOTGUN seat in our white van, our four daffy children pushed, shoved, and argued their way across the parking lot at Sea World. They jumped into a white van. It wasn’t ours. My husband and I started up OUR white van and pretended to drive away. Which proves how completely not brilliant it’s possible to be. We only pretended to abandon them. We had our chance and blew it. No one is great at everything. Being great at everything isn’t exceptional it’s just annoying. Linda (Flash Card Daffy) Zern |
| It’s one of our granddaughter’s favorite stories. She begs to hear it again and again. Her dad tells the story—over and over. It’s the tale of how Aric, our oldest son, fashioned a homemade bolo (bolas) out of two wild Florida yams and a hunk of grapevine and attempted to kill our youngest son and their cousin, Daniel, with it. In the family lexicon, it’s called The Great Wild Yam Bolo Attack of ’93. Our oldest son enjoyed heavy infusions of adrenalin from a young age; You know, the way some kids enjoyed pizza. Our youngest son enjoyed pizza. Aric liked to build tiger pits and Argentinean bolos. Adam liked to avoid tiger pits and Argentinean bolos. The way Adam tells it, Aric appeared out of the misty Florida fog one day, carrying a bolo he’d constructed out of two wild yams connected with a length of twisting vine. Note: Wild Florida yams are as hard as rocks and about as useful. Also Note: No one ever discovered where Aric stumbled upon his homemade bolo making skills, except that he did. The way Adam tells it, Aric said not a word to either one of them. He simply appeared and began to twirl the homemade bolo around and around over his head. The way Adam tells it, they began to yell, “No! No! Don’t do it Aric. Please don’t do it.” All they heard was the searing whir of rock hard yams slicing the humid air. Then they began to run. Adam swears he outran Daniel, knowing that no mercy would be shown. At least that’s the way he tells it. Racing for his life, Adam remembered looking over his shoulder to see Daniel thundering along behind him. As he watched, Aric let fly his homemade bolo. It flew true. Daniel went down in a tangle of legs, arms, dirt, humidity, and yams. Adam knew better than to stop running. He wished Daniel safe passage to Valhalla and kept right on running. At least that’s how Adam tells it, over and over and over again to Emma, who laughs uproariously every single time. It’s good to have stories to tell. Good to have stories that make little girls laugh. Good to have survived long enough to be able to tell the stories to our children that eventually become our family histories. So to Emma and all the other grandchildren, I say, “Let the stories begin.” Linda (PAX) Zern |
| In a heavy southern accent, the DMV examiner asked our seventeen-year old son, Adam, if he had ever been convicted of a DUI? He said, “Yes.” Adam didn’t drink. Or drive. Or have a license. What he really meant was, “I’m a little nervous.” Communication is a tricky, tricky business these days. Political correctness, rampant hypocrisy, personal agendas, and the fact that everyone with fingers has a website and is selling something has put a crimp in getting the straight story with veracity. Veracity? Crap. What does that mean? Technically, it means “habitual truthfulness.” Truth? Oh boy, but I’ve heard that truth is a relative term, because I go to college where simple things become as nasty and complicated as a knot in the shoelace of a toddler’s tennis shoe—that has been urinated on all day. Relative? Relative means that your truth is not my truth or our truth is not their truth unless it’s true on Comedy Central. I think. How is truth supposed to work if we can’t agree on whether or not there actually is a knot in that shoelace? Or whether or not the smell wafting up from that shoelace is urine when we have to untie that shoelace knot with our teeth. Examples of relative truthfullness include: Hearing politicians call their LIES misspeaking. “I know I said that there would be a chicken in every pot, but what I meant to say is that everyone should smoke some pot, and then you won’t care one way or the other about getting free chicken.” Hearing politicians caught in their LIES, claiming that they could have said something more “tightly.” More tightly????? “I know I said that I was born in a log cabin without a pot or a chicken to put in the pot, but what I should have said is that I made all that stuff up.” Hearing politicians deny their LIES. “I had no idea that I said that stuff about free chicken. I found out when you found out on the news. And they never get anything wrong. Right?” Don’t even get me started on the phrases “cutting edge,” “mean-spirited,” or “stupid doo-doo head.” It is my grandchildren’s “reality” to call me “mean” when I refuse to let them overdose on Otterpops. “You are a mean old YaYa for not letting us eat enough frozen sugar water to give a whale diabetes.” But I know that what the children are really saying is, “It’s so hard learning to be self-controlled.” Truth. Civility. Semantics. It’s a relative minefield out there. Linda (Doo-Doo) Head) Zern |
| Heather, our oldest daughter was four years old when she started taking ballet classes. It helped her grow up graceful, cultured, and beautiful. We have been watching her recitals, productions, and shows since she was four years old. She is swanlike. We are swine-like. Of course, her dad is the head swine, and I am the swine queen. When our daughter danced in a showcase at her college we packed up our pork rinds and ball caps and tromped right down to sit in the front row to watch her. We’re swine, but we’re supportive. The production included traditional dance numbers, a stunning number choreographed by our daughter, and then . . . a dance piece in the . . . um . . . er . . . highly modern style. I consulted the program. The highly modern dance was called Viscous (as in, the thickness of liquids, also goo.) During the highly modern dance, dancers (we think they were dancers) were covered head to toe in muck green leotards (we think they were leotards.) The mucky green bunch began the dance piled in a moldy looking heap. I knew we were in trouble when I realized the title of the piece might mean sludge. When the moldy pile of dancers began to crawl, creep, and convulse around the floor as the music (we think it was music) moaned, I began to worry. This was not going to be received well by my husband, the computer analyst math geek whose idea of modern dance is standing up and stretching. The dancers continued to twitch and creep. I tried hard to look contemplative and to think deep thoughts about thick liquids. I prayed that it would end quickly. Alas, no. On the music moaned. On the dancers rolled and oozed. On and on until, like that kid in that story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” my husband pointed out the glaringly obvious. “This is crap!” Or he might have said, “They look like carp.” I’m not sure. At this point it all gets a little blurry—crap, carp. Who knows what he actually said? But I’m pretty sure he it was right out loud, not yelling out loud, but loud enough. You know? I don’t think he pointed. However, what he did next is seared into my memory. He laughed. First it was only a muffled chuckle, trapped behind his hand, but then as the green muck folk quivered closer he laughed through his nose, mouth, and possibly his ears. It was loud. And like an infection, the laughter spread from my husband to the others, row by row. It radiated out like ripples on a weedy pond. Several audience members tried to control their laughing by stuffing their own fists in their mouths. This caused more laughing—a lot more. I was desperate as the levity rebellion spread, and I snapped, “If you don’t stop laughing right now, I will take you out of this meeting, Mister.” Later, Heather reported that one of the dancers backstage with really good hearing observed, “Hey, someone out there is laughing.” Heather said, “That’s not someone. That’s my dad.” After the show, one anonymous critic was heard to say, “Those dancers looked like those danged slugs in my garden.” Sherwood had no further comment. We went to Dairy Queen. Actually, I loved the way my math wizard loves to point and say, “Hey, the Emperor has no clothes on. That dude is naked.” Of course, usually, the naked dude is Sherwood. Oh, wait. That was in high school when streaking on motorcycles was all the rage. What we lack in culture, we make up for in bravado. Linda (Pass the Pork) Zern |
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