Stephen King Novels

Did you ever read that Stephen King novel, Christine and then spend the whole rest of your summer vacation being afraid of your sister’s 1975 VW rabbit, Wilbur?!  Stupid name, no?  But now you must be afraid.  Very afraid.  Afterall, the possibility exists that beloved cars can come alive.  And seek vengeance.  You mocked its name.  And now you must DIE!!!

Or have you ever completely avoided that underground tunnel on your morning run?  The one that takes the running path safely UNDER the highway??  Or do you prefer instead to dodge cars ACROSS the highway, rather than take that tunnel because it reminds you too much of the underground tunnel scene set in the playground that’s guarded by hedge animals in Stephen King’s The Shining.  Once you’ve read that scene, you can’t view tunnels the same way again.  Ever.  Tunnels now contain unspeakable evil.  All tunnels.  All evil.  And if you’re ever lucky enough to run through one safely, don’t look back.  DON’T LOOK BACK!!!  Because if you do, you’ll get a one-armed wave from whatever evil lives within.

Gaaaaah!

There are so many Stephen King novels that have ruined me for so many things: clowns, St. Bernard dogs, solar eclipses, dirty pillows, posters of Rita Hayworth, sparrows, strawberry pie, baseball cards, handcuffs, the bull Erinyes, dreamcatchers, mice, long-buried alien spacecrafts which leak invisible gas and turn the townspeople on each other.  Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking at my door.  Wanna go out, don’t know if I can, cuz I’m so afraid of the TOMMYKNOCKER MAN!   No need to go on.  You get the gist.  But the most important thing to mention here is that you might have a twin in a parallel universe.  If you ever have to go on a mission through the Territories to locate a magical crystal, the twin thing becomes a real possibility.  I just wanted you to know what was what in case you haven’t read The Talisman by Stephen King.

Over the years, my relationship with Stephen King has become like my relationship with Martha Stewart.  It’s love/hate.  I hate him and he doesn’t know who I am.  Even so, I do find myself forgetting from time to time how his stuff gets in my head and lives there.  FOREVER!  So once in a while, when my memory stumbles and falls, I pick up one of his books, hoping to give him another chance to play with my sanity.

Case in point?  While Hubby was out-of-town on a business trip last week, I started reading Stephen King’s A Good Marriage.  It’s about a woman.  Whose husband is out-of-town.  On a business trip.  She discovers a hidden box in the garage.

And?!?….

Done.  DONE!

Now I remember why I am once again done with you and your crazymaking, Stephen.  But nice try.

Day of the Dolphins

Long before you could buy movies out of the air and use mind control to have them delivered directly to your t.v., they had these things called video rental stores.  These were store fronts FILLED with black boxy movies-on-video-tapes.  The tapes were the size of three-ring binders which you could rent for two or three days, and when you returned them, you could pay a gazillion dollars for the privilege.  And because there weren’t enough of the new-fangled video tape players to go around, you could rent those at that store too!  The video tape player even came in its own hard-sided, tuba-sized carrying case for convenience.

One Friday night, many eons ago, Hubby (then Fiancé), my oldest sister, and I went to such a place as described above and rented such things, also as described above.

Originally, I think we were looking for something along the lines of “Beetlejuice.”  But my sister insisted that we should instead rent something called “Day of the Dolphins.”  It starred George C. Scott and our dad really, really wanted to see it.

Really?  REALLY??

Have YOU ever seen “Day of the Dolphins” starring George C. Scott?  No??  Shocking, because it had George C. Scott in it.  He was a scientist, and he and his wife gave birth to dolphins which they then taught to TALK!!!  Bet you wish you’d seen it now and I was just kidding about the birthing part, but NOT the teaching to talk part.  I can’t really remember how it ended, though.  I’m thinking it’s highly likely the dolphins went rogue and murtalized an entire beachside town.  Or maybe it was something more along the lines of “the dolphins got kidnapped by communist spies who hoped to use them to take over the world.”

No matter.  What I do actually remember is that the main dolphin (named Pha, pronounced Faw, as in Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly, fa la la la la, la la la PHA) could only say a few words.  Side Note: George C. Scott must have been a really crappy dolphin scientist because, despite this being his life’s work, Pha could only ever say things like: Pha loves Pa; Pa loves Pha; Pha loves Ma; and so forth.  Oy.  You get it.  Very limited vocabulary, mostly rhyming.  Not sure what the spies hoped to do with that.

Two things at this point I wanted to mention: 1) Why, for the love of all that’s holy, would my father want to see this movie?!?  I think it was my sister who really wanted to see it and she made up that ‘Dad wants to see it’ part.  And 2) Why, for the love of all that’s holy, would George C. Scott be IN this movie??!  I’ve seen George on Broadway in a Noel Coward theater-in-the-round thingy, and he seemed smarter than that.

Sigh.

Why all the crazy talk about the crazy dolphin talk?  Because it’s Father’s Day and I wanted to do my own rendition of Pha loves Pa.  ‘Cept mine goes a little something like this…

I love you, Dad.  Happy Father’s Day.

P.S.  Hi, Hubby.  Happy Father’s Day and love you, too.  Remember that awful movie??  Did we ever figure out why my dad would want to see it??!

Haircuttery

Q. Did you get your hair cut?

A.  No, I got them all cut.

This is what my geometry teacher in highschool used to say when we asked him if he just had a haircut.  This then necessitated a hardy, har, har followed by an inordinate amount conversation about our own hairstyles until the geometry teacher was forced to whip chalkboard erasers at…those people with the best hairstyles.  Or…at those people who may have been talking too much ABOUT their hairstyles.

I think I may have just discovered why I hate geometric proofs.

Where I was really going with all this is that my sisters and I recently had a conversation about the haircuts our mother used to give us.  All I’ll say here about those haircuts is that they involved a bowl and scotch tape and people thought I was a boy up until last year.

But that conversation got me thinking about them-there bowl cuts and how they must’ve been pretty cheap, what with the cost of bowls and tape being almost nil.  And…hey, I need a cheap haircut!  However, since I live in opposite world, I asked my DAUGHTER to cut my hair (and to please leave out the tape and bowl part).

For about ten minutes leading up to the event, we discussed how much to take off.  Not much!  Just to there!! [Said the pretty lady in the mirror demonstrating the slim inch of hair she wanted off.]  Sissy confirmed time and time again: Yeah, yeah, just about an inch.  An inch.  Only to take off the frazzled ends.  Just an inch.

Trustingly, I leaned back in the kitchen chair so that my long and beautiful locks could flow unencumbered down my back.  When I heard snip, snip I thought Sissy was just warming up the scissors, getting’ the feel of her tools and such.  But then Sonny walked into the room and said, “Oh my GOSH, Sissy! What are you DOING?!  Mom, she just cut off SO MUCH of your hair!!!”

What??  WHAT?!?  I jumped out of the seat and looked down at the floor.  There was a good THREE INCHES of hair pooled there while Sissy just stood by, innocently holding the weapon of mass destruction in her hand.

I thought we agreed: ONE INCH!!!

Her reply?  “Naw, it all had to come off.”

Alrighty then, let that be a life lesson to ya: when you ask the girl who’s all in, full out in everything she does, to cut your hair just an inch?  She cuts them ALL.  THREE inches.

I didn’t tip her.

Fun Fact Friday

Prairie Dogs?  What, are those like Jackalopes or something?!  That’s what my cousin thought during her first trip to Colorado, that prairie dogs were some sort of joke animal named so as to confuse visiting Southerners.  But let me assure you, as I assured her: prairie dogs ARE a real thing.  And now that we have that established, here’s a fun fact about prairie dogs for ya…they CLIMB.  THEY CLIMB!  THEY FRICKIN’ CLIMB!!!

RUN!!!  RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!

GOD SAVE US ALL…PRAIRIE DOGS CLIMB!!!!

How do I know this?  Because I saw it with my own two eyes…

It all started with my phone call to the next door neighbor, “Hi.  Our dog just cornered what appears to be a sick-and-dying prairie dog in our back yard.  But I have to run the kids to tennis practice so I can’t deal with it right now.  Would you be able to make it ‘go away’ while I’m gone?  Yeah??  You’ll do that for me?!  As soon as you borrow the air rifle from the other neighbor??  Sounds good.  Thanks!”

As a side note, if you don’t have a neighbor like that, you should totally get one.  And also get one of those ones with the air rifle too.

But when I got back home from tennis practice drop off, Good Neighbor was poking around in all the corners of my back yard, air rifle in hand, no prairie dog in sight.

We’re looking at eachother, totally puzzled, when Air Rifle Lender Neighbor calls from the other side of the fence, “It’s over here!  It just climbed the fence and it’s on Good Neighbor’s back porch!!”

Climbed?!  CLIMBED?!?  Oh, gugguggug.  This isn’t gonna go well.

And sho’ nuff.  It didn’t go well.  By the time Good Neighbor and I got around the fence to his yard, we saw the prairie dog running across the patio and CLIMBING up the side of his house.  When it reached the back porch light, it just perched there looking at us.

CLIMBED?!? 

And then the wild west shoot out commenced.  ‘Ceptin that dadgum varmint wouldn’t quit already.  It kept risin up, doin its best zombie apocalypse rendition.

gugguggugGUG!  NOT.  GOING.  WELL. 

PETA please don’t come get me.  I just stood there shuddering and looking away and most likely getting bubonic plague in my open mouth.

Oh, that reminds me, here’s another fun fact about prairie dogs for ya…they carry bubonic plague.

Thus ends this episode of Fun Fact Friday.  Thanks for stopping by.  Happy Week-end Everyone!

Honey Do

Did I mention that school’s out for summer here in Colorado?  And Sonny wrote himself a Honey Do List for the amazing line-up of things he needs to do on the first Monday of vacation.

I’ve included the list in this blog post for your viewing pleasure. Honey Do List

I think that any Summer Break Honey Do List, written by any incoming middle-schooler, in any corner of the galaxy, should – from this moment forward – end with “be awesome.”

Hubby thinks that any Summer Break Honey Do List, written by any incoming middle-schooler, in any corner of the galaxy, should – at a minimum – have the word ‘teeth’ spelled properly.

Hmmm, good point.