Archive for the ‘I Hear The Craziest Things’ Category

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I Hear The Craziest Things: See Tate City and Hidden Waterfalls

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Waterfalls are my zen. They’re my destination every time I flee my every day and the weather permits interior driving/walking. My Waterfall Challenges are off-road, in the middle of nowhere stuff, which makes seeing this on one of those dirt-road trips a bit of a surprise:

See Tate City

Get it?

There I was in the middle of some of the most beautiful and rugged country a car can drive to in the North Georgia mountains, just shy of the state border with North Carolina, when off to the side of the road someone had painted a big red barn with a spoof on the tourist trap signs all around the more popular Rock City.

In the middle of a field.

Next to a mushy dirt road that resembled a mud puddle that morning because it had been raining for days.

“Cute,” I thought to myself. “The locals have a quirky sense of humor. I like that.” And off I went to find the obscure turn off where I could park Bessie and hike into the woods in search of interior falls several miles away.

Then, I saw this.

Tate City Pop 32

“Seriously?” I pulled out my local map. (more…)

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I Hear the Craziest Things: Anyone Got a Tissue?

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Every time I pull a tissue from a tissue box in my house (once or twice a week), it’s always the LAST one in the box–even the box beneath my beside table reserved solely for my personal consumption. What does this say about our family dynamic?

 

dude-wtf

  • Do others’ allergies outpace mine so dramatically?
  • Am I unknowingly using tissue in some fugue state, after which I suffer PTSD symptoms due to the trauma of blowing my nose and promptly forget I’ve indulged?
  • Are my men scurrying about, from one box to the next, looking for ways to score their next tissue hit while avoiding the horror of reaching into the linen closet for a new box?
  • Do they have a covert scanning method I’m not privy to, where infrared sensors alert to the immanent arrival of the final tissue, so they can be certain not to remove it from the box???

My entire morning will be consumed, pondering said mysteries…

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I Hear the Craziest Things: Horizon View…

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

My husband and I recently snuck a weekend away from every day life. The hotel on the beach we stayed in, when asked about an upgrade to a ocean view room, said none were available, but we could pay for a “Horizon View.”

sky

Huh?

I have to upgrade to look at the sky from this place?

Where is this amazing room? Are we talking the penthouse? ‘Cause that would be worth throwing some extra dollars at.

Nope. This would be an ocean-facing room that you can’t quite see the water from. But the beautiful clouds and such that hang over the ocean could be ours to stare at for just a little more per night. Then, I suppose, we could use our imagination to conjure all that watery stuff that would be swirling about just beneath our visage.

So, we’d be paying for a top-floor room, only the angle wouldn’t be quite right to see the water?

Nope. This would be a ground floor room. And we’d have to settle for two double beds (did I mention this was a getaway for my HUSBAND and me, you know, sans intrusive teenager forever breaking up our cuddle time with one demanding need after another, like food and transpo and clean clothes and all that nonsense!).

So, there we were, expected to be excited about about paying more for a ground floor, tree-obstructed, water-facing (sort of) room, from which if you looked out at just the right angel from the corner of the window, you might be able to catch a glimpse of the blue, blue ocean sky above the sea we’d never see. (more…)

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I Hear the Craziest Things: I’m NOT the weirdest author on the planet…

Saturday, July 16th, 2011

Who’d have thought that my odd ticks as a writer were tame in comparison to the masters of eccentricity?

  • Truman Copote wrote lying on a couch, with a drink in on hand and a pencil in the other.
  • A Newsweek reporter stripped down to his boxers to work so he didn’t wrinkle his clothes.
  • An acclaimed female author writes facing a brick wall, saying among other things that it seems a fit metaphor for being a writer. Heh.
  • Hemingway created only 500 words a day, telling a friend he got one page of masterpiece for every 91 pages of sh**t.
  • And the list goes on.

copote

Take a peak for yourself.

And, if you’re a writer or artist of any kind, feel good about your own messed up process ;o)

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I Hear the Craziest Things: Highschool Teacher Gone Wild

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

This just in. A high school teacher gone rouge–publishng erotica, in a thinly-veiled plot to warp young minds…

teacher mug shot

Here’s the link to the story. Read it. Keep your children close. Don’t let them go to public school, because look who’s lying in wait…

Yeah, I’m a little steamed.This started as a Facebook rant, but I’m moving it over here. Because, really! Really, America?

OMG!

And if this woman was an ordained minister in her spare time? Would her students be in danger of her getting her “religious” juice all over them? What if she were a practicing Muslim? Would that mean students were being potentially brainwashed by an Islamic extremist? If she baked sweets all weekend, is her class more susceptible to diabetes or bad cholesterol, simply because she moves among them by day disguised a “normal” person while she conspired to suck your children into her dastardly do?

And before I get an backlash, I’m INTENTIONALLY using totally no-related occupations, particularly the religious ones. (more…)

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I Hear The Craziest Things: Apple wants to help you help them…

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

I’m typing on my new iPad. Call me a happy girl ;0)

But you know me well enough now. You’re expecting that’s not the end of this Sunday story. How much fun would that be, right?

There we are at the Apple Genius Bar, while this great kid, Adam, is showing me the standard bells and whistles of my new toy–which will replace my laptop for most travel and work I do away from home from now on.

He’s confident and in his element, as a genius should be, thinking I’m cute for saying I’m a GA Tech grad and know computers (at least IBM hardware and operating systems). He’s digging that I’m an author and asking me about what I write while he puts my new toy through it’s paces.

But here’s the thing, I say, pulling out my laptop. I need to pull MS Word documents from this to the iPad for travel, work on them while I’m gone, then port them back.

His cheerful enthusiasm dims just a little, (more…)

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I Hear the Craziest Things: Forgeddaboutit…

Saturday, March 19th, 2011

I owe you a sonnet on Michelle’s and my hotel experience last weekend, and I’m good for it. But this fine Saturday morning, my family’s whirling like a runaway top, and I’m chasing dust bunnies in their shadows trying to keep up. So, here’s some of the things that gave me some Internet happiness (or double-takes)  as I re-entered my “normal” life this week.

I’ve never worried about aging, never had a “list” of things I needed to do by a certain age to feel fulfilled, never looked back (much) at some point in the dwindling past thinking THOSE were the days.I accept every morning (and I know it’s a blessing) that better stuff is ahead. The “it’s all downhill from here” perspective of some? Forgeddaboutit.

So, I give you 4 Cool Women Making 40 Fantastic.

 the new 40

I do drink expensive, designer coffee, but only because Starbucks makes it the best, the way I like it (incredibly strong, yet decaf and doused in tons of fat-free milk and so cold you can feel your throat bracing itself just before you take your first sip).

What I don’t do is indulge (very often) in the pastry in their cases or the hot chocolate or the other “light” and yummy looking things they offer that, to me, seem just a little too good to be true. Not to mention the fact that if I ate that much sugar and fat in the middle of the day, I’d be in a coma before I managed to drive wherever I was headed next. But I know others love the goodies, and I don’t judge.

Except, when I see the latest “mini” bites of heaven tempting folks as soon as they walk in Starbucks door. Birthday cake pops and mini cupcakes and tiny red velvet woopie pies… OMG!!! If my low blood sugar wasn’t the one thing about my system rivalling my thyroid problems for top billing in the making me sick department, I’d have dove head first, love at first sight, into the pastry case.

 starbucks woopie pie (more…)

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I Hear the Craziest Things: Rochester Edition…

Monday, March 14th, 2011

The Central New York Romance Writers are an amazing group. Michelle Grajkowski and I just had our best weekend workshop experience EVER with them. The travel thing is always bizarre, though. I hear the craziest things…

Did you know milk has more calories when you cross the California state line?

At the Subway where we grabbed lunch Friday on the way to our afternoon “meet and greet,” this sign on the sneeze guard in front of the sandwich counter of course caught my attention, if no one else’s.

cheese

 In case you can’t read it–it says 1% low fat milk has 160 calories everywhere but in California, where it magically increases to 180 calories.

I mean, really? I get what this might mean: a larger container of milk is used in the California region; the caloric definition of “1% low fat” might be gauged differently based on California FDA regulations; CA cow’s milk has given up worrying about how it looks in HD and has let itself go, and, really, what’s 20 extra calories when you’ve already hit 160… (more…)

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I Hear the Craziest Things: Political Incorrectness

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

I’m not a militant feminist. In my life, with the men–with all people–in my life, I like taking care of them. I like them taking care of me. We take care of each other and respect each other and make sure everyone’s needs are met. We try to spoil and pamper each other as much as we can. And when we can’t we work our butts off together every day to make the harder-fought-for stuff happen.

That said…

It’s crazy how easy it still is for the world not to take women seriously. On  a daily basis. Even in the silliest of examples, there remains an obvious inequity between the sexes in this country (and don’t get me started on the rest of the world). The very core of how we think of the masculine and “fairer” sexes still needs to sort itself out.

Chick-fil-a is a prime example. It’s been my son’s favorite restaurant since he was old enough to choose flavor over texture in his hunt for the perfect chicken nugget. They make of the best milkshake on the market. And they offered an amazing promotion this year. Daddy and Daughter Valentines Night, so dads could bring their littlest sweethearts in for some special family time a day or two before he takes mommy out for the big day. Sweet, right?

cupid arrow back

I guess that left Mommy and Son home that evening eating whatever mom managed to whip up from her Betty Crocker cookbook. (more…)

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I Hear the Craziest Things/Shoes Are My Heroin Double Feature

Friday, February 4th, 2011

Here’s how the craziest conversation I’ve had in a long time went yesterday–

[Indifferent, Frustrated, Redneck Woman] Where did I hit your car?

[Still Shaking Me] Right there (We’re still in our cars, she’s tried to drive away and I’ve tracked her through the parking lot).

[IFRW] That? It’s nothing. I barely tapped you.

[SSM] The wheel and back panel are a mess. You may have messed up my suspension. I need to see your insurance information.

[IFRR] Don’t try to play me lady. I’ll buy you a new wheel. No sense involving insurance. I’ll give you twenty dollars. (Digs in her purse).

[SSM] (Laughing, realizing it pisses her off when her cigarette falls out of her mouth her head spins back toward me so fast) You need to pull over. I’m calling the police so we have a report.

[IFRW] The Police. Lady I got no time for that. I’m leaving… (Sees me taking a digital photo of her license plate with my phone and whips into a parking spot across the lot for me, begins waving something out her window). Here it is, b*$#h! Here’s your insurance. (more…)

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