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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 |
| Reports of my imagined death are false—also incorrect. I’m not dead. To recap: I am not dead. I’m just concentrating really hard. Several years ago, my husband couldn’t instantly get a hold of me via my cell phone, because it was dead, the cell phone. NOT ME. When he couldn’t immediately contact me from Kuala Lumpur or Detroit or Walmart or wherever to let me know he’d forgotten to take out the garbage or something equally informative, he panicked. So he called our daughter, Heather. Who called our daughter, Maren. Who told her friends at school that I’m a hermit and a nut. Who called my husband, her father. Who called our daughter, Heather, again. Who called each other, over and over, whipping each other into a frenzy. Heather finally broke the cycle of hysteria by calling her friend, Maria, and saying, “I’m at work. Could you drive out to my parent’s house and check on my AGED mother?” Maria! Marie who lives in a whole other village, Marie, who got in her car, drove to our country home (also our city home) and finding all the doors, window, and portholes open assumed that I had been eaten by cats—also raccoons. I was in my office—working. Proving that what we’ve got here is a hefty case of the jitters. While it is true that I live alone a great deal of time, I am not a complete idiot. I try to wait for when my husband is home to clean the chimney, re-organize the hayloft, chop down trees, or check the crawlspace for expired squirrels. And as far as being murdered in my sleep by criminal types, I believe that most criminal types are stupid people, the kind of people that get stuck in chimneys. And if I can’t outsmart some nimrod stuck in my chimney then shame on me. That’s why I sleep with the cat. Plan A is that I will throw the cat at the stupid intruder and make my escape out of the bathroom window. At which point I will run to the ditch out front and hide behind the enormous stump that the county hasn’t carted away from storm damage. It’s the main reason I haven’t called the county about the eyesore stump by the road. That stump is part of my master plan. I have a detailed schematic drawn up. Please note: That stump has been hauled off since I first reported on the above foolishness, thus changing plan A to plan B. Unfortunately, plan B has me hiding in my neighbor’s barn in my *scanties. So sometimes I sleep in my bathrobe with my cell phone in the pocket, except that my cell phone is quite often “dead,” thus kicking off jittery meltdowns in the first place. Go figure. Linda (Chimney Sweep) Zern *Scanties is a southern word for clothing you don’t want to be caught wearing while hiding in a ditch. |
| I was forty-six at the time. I needed a haircut. I walked into one of those cut rate chop shops for hair and asked in a youthful, jolly way, “I just walked in for a haircut. Who wants to welcome me?” The receptionist gave me her best and most practiced smile. She looked twelve. I flipped my scraggly hair out of my eyes in a hip, child-like way. “And will you be wanting the fifty-five and over discount?” she said, her hand hovering over the appointment book. Stunned, shocked, dismayed, and startled, I said, “No, no discount! And I’m not pregnant either.” There it was, my first brush with death, the dreaded senior citizen’s discount inquiry. I was forty-six. But some of my wrinkles were ninety. I blame Botox. It’s hard to find a forehead that isn’t lying about its age. So, in the spirit of honesty and full disclosure I make an accounting of my wrinkles and how they came to roost on my face. Please note: I have a very expressive face. My face expresses itself a lot. If I paralyzed my wrinkles my mouth would turn to stone, not unlike my heart. To begin there are four parallel lines across my forehead. They look like wrinkle canyons. These are my shock and awe lines. As in, “What made you think that lowering the cat out of the second story window in a pillowcase was a good idea? Pull that cat back in this window right now.” Or, “Your brother put peanut butter where? Show me.” These wrinkles are also my “Ask a stupid question wrinkles.” They appeared after having to ask questions like, “Is that Barbie doll smoking a cigarette?” Or better yet, “Please tell me that you are not making Barbie porn with the family video camera?” Then there is the single SLASHING wrinkle across the very top of my forehead known as the mark of the oldest child. This line appeared the day I found our oldest son dangling upside down by one foot from his grandfather’s motor home. Typing a rope to the railing of the RV, he’d attempted to go “rappelling.” The RV was the tallest thing he could find in Florida. Now, he dangles out of helicopters for the US military. The wrinkle deepens. The nest of crosshatched lines around my eyes was created by having to watch 1,247 games of Little League baseball without sunglasses in the Sun Shine State. The marionette lines around my mouth are inherited. I got them from my mother, who got them from her mother, who got them from . . . It’s hard to argue with genetic baggage. The wrinkles on my cheeks are my very own. They’re dimple wrinkles, and they’re from laughing. They’re from hearing my husband (at public swimming facilities) say things like, “Quick, everyone run for the car, the baby just pooped in the hot tube.” And then running, and then finding out nobody pooped in anything. Actually, that’s the problem. I don’t have a heart of stone. Like you, I feel everything, and everything I feel comes pounding out of my heart, surges through the pores of my face, and drips right off the end of my deeply lined chin. It seems odd that the goal of our society is to make our faces look as if they’ve never felt anything or been anywhere. My face was forty-six years old, and it had seen some stuff. My face is older now and it has seen a lot more stuff. And it’s a good face—wrinkles and all. Linda (Discount Diva) Zern |
| I have funny, funny neighbors here on Kissimmee Park Road. In fact, one of my funny neighbors, oh let’s call him John Donut, a member of my church, called to inform me about a change in a church meeting time. Instead of giving me the Christian update, in a Christian way, my funny, funny neighbor decided to have some funny fun with the crazy lady of Kissimmee Park Road. That would be me—the crazy lady. Funny, funny stuff this. He pretended to be a code enforcement officer. Rattling off an official sounding name and title, he asked, “Is this the Zern residence?” In my bathrobe, wet hair slapping against my forehead, I said, “Sure. You bet.” “I need to inform you of the county codes about leaving your yard un-mowed.” Please be aware that I was in my bathrobe because I’d just showered after chopping, burning, weeding, edging, planting, seeding, mowing, and whacking at my yard. A fat drop of water raced down the bridge of my nose. “I’m sorry. What? Are you sure you have the right house?” “Yes, pretty sure. Last owners . . .” he paused as if referring to some kind of official record. Oh, he was good. “Umm . . . the Reynolds?” “You’re saying that my grass is too long. Did I hear that right? We have six acres of grass. Are they all too long?” “Yes, Ma’am, you can’t be letting your property get out of control like that.” “Are you sure you have the right house?” I repeated, flipping wet hair out of my pupils. “Quite sure. In fact, I’m parked right outside, and may I say that you need to tell that lazy husband of yours to get off the couch and mow his yard.” Slyly I asked, “Are you sure that the problem isn’t with my neighbors?” “No, in fact, they’re the ones complaining.” I heard what might have been a muffed chuckle, but I was too busy preparing to rat out my neighbors to notice. “Oh really!” I trumpeted. “My neighbors are complaining. Which one? The guy on my left who has decided to start his own personal landfill or the guy on my right with his eighty-nine diseased goats? Hmmmmmm! Would you like me swear under oath about it? Would you like me to swear? Period.” And there it was—the rat out. I’ve always wanted to believe that I was the kind of person that would risk arrest, torture, and death by Nazi’s rather than spill the beans about Anne Frank. But now I know. I am the kind of person that when faced with a practical joke would sell out everyone with fences adjacent to mine to a FAKE county code enforcement officer. It’s true. I am a tattler. And shame on me for ratting out the landfill guy and the goat man. Linda (I’m telling.) Zern |
| This week Facebook dripped with wishes for merriness and joyfulness and happy good will. I love that. Social media gets a bad rap. And truthfully, there is a bunch of mildew and mold out there floating around in cyber space, masquerading as convictions and philosophy but still . . . I did come across a great homemade clam chowder recipe and a boatload of merry wishes for laughter, love, and eating—clam chowder recipe, check, double check. As the grandmother of ten children that I find grand, the laughter and love are pretty well covered as well. And rather than carry around a purse full of darling kid pictures that bulks up my wallet, I occasionally brag about the love and laughter in my life in words: Zoe Baye (# 1 of 10) – “All I want for Christmas is duct tape and a sewing machine.” She wasn’t kidding. If you want to locate Zoe, just listen for the sound of ripping duct tape, because she’s whipping up pillows, purses, toys, clothes, blankets and circus tents—all constructed from . . . duct tape. She’s ten years old. Emma Sarah (# 2 of 10) – Emma’s fondest wish is to wake up one day and find that she’s been magically transformed into a cat—possibly a fox. She has several sets of cat ears (also fox) that she wears the same way some women wear pearls. I have every expectation that Emma will be wearing cat ears with her wedding gown. Emma is eight. Conner Phillip (# 3 of 10) – This kid is a future game show host. During a recent shopping trip, my daughter turned around to discover Conner dancing wildly, while playing a slinky like an accordion. He’d thrown a hat down on the ground and was hoping for loose change from the other shoppers. Conner is seven. Kipling Sherwood (# 4 of 10) – This kid is planning to live with his cousin Sadie and running a zoo when he grows up, although he’s warned Sadie that if she doesn’t start catching more animals she might be OUT of the zoo business. Kip is a world champion frog catcher. Kip is five. Sadie JoLee (# 5 of 10) – Has informed her mother that she would never kill Emma, her big sister, because she wouldn’t want to clean up all that blood in the house. Her mother has put Sadie under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Sadie is planning on running a zoo with Kip if she can UP her frog catching numbers. Sadie is five. Zachary Jon (# 6 of 10) – Conner has described his brothers, Kip and Zac together. “When those two are together, they’re like an angry mob.” Conner’s right. They’re quick. They’re smart. They’re heat-seeking missiles of mass messes. Zac is big and tall and strong and devoted to his big brother. Zac is three. Reagan Baye-Love ( # 7 of 10) – This is an unsinkable kid. Can’t be sunk. Deadly allergies and asthma can’t make a dent in this kid’s perception of her own abilities. She can. She will. She must. Do not get in her way. Her cuteness is second only to her will power. Reagan is three. Griffin Henry (# 8 of 10) – They call him the grumpy muppet. He’s a sober boy not given to giggles, but when he does smile, it’s a soft, sweet gift that lights up all the air in his vicinity. He’s happy to push: his lawnmower, a baby stroller, the Flintstone car. He’s pushing, not pushy. Griffin is almost two. Hero Everdeen (# 9 of 10) – She’s not much of a talker, but she can roll her stomach like a drunken sailor. For a little girl she lives life large. She likes to eat. She likes to drink. She likes to collect dirt on her hands, face, clothes, and neck wrinkles. She likes the angry mob types and feats of strength. Hero is one. Scout Harper (# 10 of 10) – This one was born with ocular albinism, not enough pigment in her eyes to absorb the light. Doesn’t matter. She’s already talking. She’s so little that when she says, “Hi!” and waves at you it’s kind of freaky. Scout is one of those people who is going to make the most of every moment she’s been given on this earth. Scout isn’t one yet. Jesus the Christ once assured his followers: “For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” I think of babies and children when I read that. Who in this world is more hungry, more naked, more a stranger, more in prison than a child without the love and care of a steady, selfless family? When I hear people denigrate the gift and obligation of raising the future generation of this world, I wonder who they think is going to read their books, look at their art, maintain their governments, or pay for their old age if not these little ones? Careful. For He also said, “If ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me . . .” Linda (Grandmother to the Stars) Zern |
| We are each burdened with prejudice; against the poor or the rich, the smart or the slow, the gaunt or the obese. It is natural to develop prejudices. It is noble to rise above them. ~Author Unknown
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| Our son-in-law Phillip is a hook-up guy. To save eight bucks on parking at a familiar family attraction he’ll declare loudly, “I’ve got the hook-up. I know a spot.” We then drive way out of the way, artfully dodge security, run from sharks, and crawl through muck to a free parking lot, only to hear Phillip wonder, “Man, when did they put that barbed wire up?” I am personally against the hook-up for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that 1) I feel like a complete idiot trying to beat out the parking attendant for eight bucks, and 2) I enjoy being able to complain loudly if I don’t get my eight bucks worth. Pay the money and you’ve bought the right to gripe—loudly. That’s my motto. That and the fact that hook-ups never work for us—ever. Somehow it always costs us more than full price anyway. Last time we painted our house Phillip got us the hook-up. A house painter friend of his had a free week and an empty paint pan. We had a blue house. We needed a tan house. The hook-up. For an excellent price and a promise to hand out business cards we agreed to have our blue house turned into a tan house by a ten foot tall Jamaican man named George. Our painter named George, ten feet tall, accompanied by myself, two feet tall, sailed off to purchase paint and supplies. We went in George’s van. Let me just say this about George’s van, it looked like it had personally immigrated from Jamaica via the Gulf Stream at high tide. There was a couch in the back of the van in lieu of seats. We did okay, for a while. We made it to Sherwin Williams. We made it down highway 192. We made it to Walmart. And we almost made it out of the Walmart parking lot. Almost. With paint, brushes, rollers, primer, tape, and hope we headed toward my soon to be tan house when George, in the lovely, lilting accent of his homeland, said, “Oh mon, I have no breaks.” I perked right up. “Define no brakes and are we going to die?” “It means that I cannot stop this van and maybe.” The couch in the back of the van slid six inches toward the rear doors. And he couldn’t and we almost did. Coasting is the best description of what we were doing around that parking lot. Me and George. “We be coast’en, mon.” We tried some stuff. We tried more brake fluid and a consultation with a mechanic. We tried prayer. Finally, we just threw good sense out the broken van window and coasted to my house where George painted our house a beautiful light tan. The house looked fabulous. George got his van stuck in the muck ditch in our yard, where it stayed stuck for over a week. Actually, it was more an adventure than a hook-up. It’s time to paint the house again. I’m going to paint it myself. It’s not that big. I own a ladder. Besides George moved to New York City where he and his wife could have a baby for free. The hook-up. Linda (Paint by Number) Zern |
A REVIEW "One of the most admirable things about Mooncalf is that it's difficult to find a single wasted word in the entire book. Granted the book is short; yet, it is very rare to find a book which treats with such delicacy the choosing of each word--each adjective, verb, and noun. Themes, motifs, and symbols are everywhere throughout Mooncalf, and most impressive of all none of it is discarded. Motifs and themes exist in big and small circles in Mooncalf, circling back in on themselves as well as intertwining themselves with the plot and the characters that inhabit it. And those motifs and themes, those messages and those symbols, don't go away once you've finished the book. They stick with you. It's hard to forget Mooncalf." (The Thousander Club) Read the full review @ http://thethousanderclub.blogspot.com |
| 1 And we, the tribe known as Zern-ites, did yet tarry upon the lowlands of Central Florida where we did feedeth our flocks and watch our neighbor, even he of the tribe of Ishamael, butchereth his own sheep and goats on the festival of Eid. Yea and very many did he butchereth. 2 And it was strange unto us that our neighbor should butcher thus, but we did shruggeth it off and wonder much at these doings, having hope that our property value dideth not fall even lower than it had hitherto fallen. 3 And our patriarch did continueth to travel beyond the horizon line to work much abroad in the lands of the foreign kings and he did continueth in this manner and his wife spake much unto Sherwood saying, 4 Come not home again thinking to have chocolates left upon they pillow, but think to put thy hand to the plow and the hammer and the lawnmower and be quicketh about it. 5 And surely our sons and daughters did yet prosper in the land, increasing both in flocks and children. And they dideth tarry much in the kitchen and in the yard and in the refrigerator of our ancestral home, yea, even YaYa’s abode. 6 And Aric did take Lauren unto wife in the land northward; and Heather and Phillip did yet teacheth and traineth their children and the number of these children being five; and Maren and T.J. did moveth into even their own home, yea she and her family, and there was much rejoicing; and Adam and Sarah brought forth yet another daughter, one Scout Harper. Thus did the number of children that we thought of as grand did numbereth ten. And we dideth laugh much at their antics. 7 And it came to pass that I dideth battle much against the heathen hoards, even the raccoons and the feral cats that dideth much infest the land. 8 Yea, even that raccoons that laid waste to my flock of chickens and I did weepeth much and wail. 9 Yea too, the feral cats that dideth lurk and sneak and snarl in the darkness, slipping silently into my abode even my home, where they dideth meet mine dogs in battle. 10 Which dogs did frighteneth the feral cats until they didest loosen their bowels all over my kitchen floor, and I did weepeth much and wail. 11 Whilst the cats did battle much with the dogs and the raccoons did eateth the chickens, I didest write much upon my computer machine of things both past and present. And I did bringeth forth a new book, a smallish book that was both easy to read and hard to forget, a book called MOONCALF, and I did hope much for its good success and gentle message. 12 And the year being twenty and thirteen, yea even it did pass away as if we were in a dream; a dream both happy and sad, both good and bad, and we did learn much of our purpose in this life and of our hope in the life to come. Thus endeth my record. |
| If I get any safer or more secure my body probably won’t be found until the spring thaw. And it doesn’t snow in Florida. I have a smart phone. The problem with my smart phone is that it’s stupid, and it gets itself lost CONSTANTLY. When I was a girl our phone wasn’t smart. And it didn’t go for rides in our pants. It sat on the kitchen counter or hung on the kitchen wall and behaved itself. When I was a girl I knew where to find the phone and how smart is that? Now the smart phone goes for rides to the store, the gas station, and the barn where it gets itself lost, forgotten, or misplaced. How stupid is that? Married but alone more than not alone (my husband is either an international computer analyst or a spy) I’m often encouraged, by people who want me to do stuff for them on a regular basis, to carry my phone with me when I’m hanging from the barn rafters dusting for black widow spider webs. They worry I might break a hip and not be available to cook Sunday dinner for twenty-seven. So, I do. I carry the phone with me around the farm, where I consistently forget, lose, or misplace it while dusting for black widow spider webs. And that’s how it went. I remembered in the middle of the night that I needed my phone. How else am I going to call the cops when I’m attacked by giant black widow spiders in my bed? Right? So, I threw on my pink bathrobe with the red hearts and tromped out to the barn to find my smart phone. Except the barn rabbit--the one that refuses to stay in a cage--saw me, ran straight at me, flipped sideways, and shot rabbit urine at my ankles. She’s a good shot—also excellent barn security. I screamed, lunged for my phone, and took off back to the house where I realize that I’m locked out because of all of my husband’s nagging about heightened security—every window and door—locked, bolted, sealed. But I have my smart phone. Unfortunately, it’s not a key to any of the doors. Nothing to be done but push open the bathroom window with the broken latch. Have you ever tried to push open our bathroom window with the broken latch? Yeah, well . . . if you’re looking for a quick way to amputate an appendage then I’ve got a window for you. Afraid it would break my neck if it fell on me, I wedged the window open with a rake. As I scrambled through the glass guillotine my smart phone fell out of the pocket of my bathrobe into the bug-infested bushes beneath the window. “That is the dumbest phone ever,” I said to no one in particular as I tumbled into the bathtub. An observation or two: Security is in the eye of the beholder and a phone is only as smart as its owner. Also, furry bunnies are urine- shooting terrorists. Linda (Safety Zone) Zern |
| When I was a girl growing up in the liberated seventies after the radical sixties, we were told that true freedom consisted of two things: 1) letting it all hang out after burning your bra and 2) going natural after losing your safety razor. After all, men didn’t have to wear restrictive, tight whalebone corset stays . . . er . . . um . . . I mean they didn’t have to wear over the shoulder boulder holders, and men got to have hairy wildebeests legs, so women should get to have hairy wildebeest legs too. We called it liberation. Mostly it was just droopy and hairy. Still . . . it was kind of interesting to think that women might be more than the sum of their . . . er . . . um . . . parts, even if they had to be hairy to do it. It was interesting. For a day or two. Now it’s bizarre uses for hot wax. Please be advised that the names have been changed to protect my daughters who are going on a cruise and feel the need to render their bodies as hairless as newborn rats. “But why?” “Because everyone is doing it,” one unnamed daughter argued. “Always a great reason to do anything,” I countered. She then demonstrated the proper position to assume when having hot wax poured over your . . . er . . . um . . . less than hairless bits, followed by her pantomiming a violent ripping motion. She then acted out the resulting screaming, throwing her legs over her head, crossing her eyes, and passing out. My other nameless daughter sighed and said, “I didn’t use hot wax. I tried those wax strippy things.” “Have you lost your . . .” She cut me off, frowning. “They didn’t work very well. I now look like a well loved teddy bear.” “Good grief. You turned yourself into the velveteen rabbit before it winds up on the rubbish heap,” I said with a hand on my . . . er . . . um . . . heart. “Pretty much.” “What happened to the bra burning, boob drooping, hairy legged, proud momma, caftan wearing women of my youth?” “They got a special deal on a Caribbean cruise.” Right. That’ll do it. Linda (All Natural) Zern |
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