The Suspicious-Looking-Mole Home Removal Kit
The Graveside Banana Peel Treadmill
My Last Barbie
The All-in-One Hair Removal and Transplant Wand.
Grow Your Own Organs Chia Pet
The Shout Channel
Scrabble Sorry It’s Taking Me So Long Edition
The Quadruple By-Pass Carnival Cruise
What Was I Talking About? Rosetta Stone
And the number one product sure to be a hit with the aging Baby Boomer:
The Chase Sapphire I Woke Up This Morning Points Rewards Card
I haven’t got anything against my brain (who insists on calling itself, Peanuts, btw). It’s just that when Peanuts tries to take over for me, it sometimes gets ahead of itself and does the dumbest things.
Yesterday, I attempted to write an essay about how comical it was that my crooked tooth is now the new beauty trend in Japan. Japanese women are paying for crooked teeth to make themselves appear more approachable.
I know it’s funny, right? And since I have a this humorous crooked tooth that sticks out in front, I thought it would make a hilarious essay!
Little did I know that my brain, Peanuts, unbeknownst to me, didn’t think it was funny at all because when I went to edit the crooked-tooth essay this morning, Peanuts hit the “trash” button instead of the “edit” button before I even realized what was going on!
So then I thought, well if my brain, Peanuts, feels that way about “our” crooked tooth, how do my other organs feel about it? So I decided to survey my organs.
As for my heart liking my crooked-t00th essay, well it feels like my heart didn’t like the fact that I was pointing out “our” flaws to the world. But it tends to be a softy so I can’t really take its opinion all that seriously.
Frankly, I have no idea what my spleen’s opinion is about the crooked tooth essay, but does it really matter what a spleen thinks? I mean, sure, the spleen is in there chuggin’ away day after day, but don’t you get the feeling it’s just performing busy work? If my spleen went away tomorrow, I doubt I’d even notice. No offense to my spleen, of course.
Oddly — even though my stomach is the most demanding organ in my body — it could care less about my crooked tooth. But it’s a self-centered little thing that just sits there waiting for the world to come to it. In fact, sometimes my stomach makes me sick.
My liver doesn’t have time to even have an opinion about anything as it’s been backed up with work since the 70’s and I hate to bother it with trivial matters.
Well, they’re just a couple of snooty twins who think they’re god’s gift just because they are always in such high demand transplant-wise. I’m sure they disapprove of my poking fun at any parts of the body that they are affiliated with. I have a good mind to tell them they’re just a couple of glorified garbage sifters, and knock them off their high horses!
My poor pathetic appendix. How can you have any respect for the opinion of an organ whose sole purpose is to sit there and be quiet in case anybody wants to remove it. I assure you, if I could think of some way to boost the self-esteem of my appendix, I would. But until people start needing appendix transplants, my lowly appendix’s opinion about anything is totally inconsequential — sorry to say.
I’d have to say that perhaps my brain, Peanuts, isn’t so dumb. After taking the above survey, it seems Peanuts threw itself over a grenade in the form of a crooked-tooth essay that would have done serious damage to the self-esteem of most of my internal organs had it been published.
It’s funny the way life turns out sometimes. Isn’t it?
Until next time . . . I love you
I was at the self-check register at the grocery store when something went wrong and the screen told me to ask for assistance.
I looked over at the clerk whose sole job it is to stand there and help people. She was about ten feet away from me so I just looked at her — trying to catch her eye. But she wouldn’t look at me.
So I said, “Excuse me can you help me?” But instead of responding, she picked up the phone and busied herself looking busy. (I swear she was pretending to talk!)
Excuse me? Can I get some help over here?
No response.
Excuse me?
I’ll be there in a minute!
OK. So she leaves me standing there within an inch of my patience and finally when she can’t think of any other way she can stall, she saunters over.
What’s the problem?
The scanner doesn’t recognize these bananas. What am I doing wrong here?
(I sincerely want to know the answer to this question because I don’t ever want to do it again so I won’t have to stand there trying to get her attention and looking and feeling like a jack ass.)
“Well, there are several things you’re doing wrong, that depends.” She says this implying with her tone that it’s WAY too complicated for my little pea brain to comprehend, and she doesn’t have time to give me the complicated particulars which I probably wouldn’t understand anyway — so she takes out here special key and fixes it and walks away.
And there you have it. I’ve just been flamed by The Clerk Who Kind of Hates You.
Oh they make me so mad! Yet I have never developed a strategy for how to deal with them. I’ll leave the store fuming and saying to myself I’ll never shop there again but, in the end, I don’t want to drive miles out of my way so, of course, I keep coming back.
On the plus side, I have developed a good comeback for the administrative type of The Clerk Who Kind of Hates You.
The ones who usually sit behind a window of some kind. You know the type of clerk I mean, the one who when asked a question has this curt, pat answer:
“Well it’s all in the instructions online. Didn’t you read the instructions online?”
To which I proudly respond:
Yes I read them but I didn’t memorize them!
Isn’t that the greatest comeback ever, Dear Reader? I just love it and actually get to use it a couple of times a year. And I have never, ever had a clerk one-up me on it.
Sometimes the littlest things bring the biggest rewards!
Until next time . . . I love you
This, Dear Reader, is the view from my Morning Room.
Ok, I don’t really have a Morning Room, as such, it’s actually just a fancy way of saying a chair by the window in the bedroom.
But I like to refer to it as my Morning Room whenever I am giving instructions to my Butler.
Ok, I don’t really have a Butler, as such, it’s just a fancy way of referring to my little dog who looks like a really bad toupee that a Butler might wear.
So this morning, Dear Reader, whist sitting in my Morning Room admiring the view, I soon found myself ringing for the Butler with the Butler Bell. Which is to say, I called at the very tip-top of my very best lung,
“Here Chancey! Here Chancy!”
. . . because what I refer to as my Butler’s Bell isn’t really a Butler’s Bell, as such, but just a fancy way of saying ‘calling the dog’.
To which my Butler responded by running over and jumping onto my lap — or at least his toupee did.
Twas shortly after that, I instructed my Lady-in-Waiting to bring my breakfast to the Morning Room for my Butler and I — that we might dine whilst partaking of the View of the Estate from the Window of the Morning Room,
Ok, it isn’t really an Estate, as such, it’s just a fancy way of saying ‘tree’. But a pretty one it is. I would even go so far as to say that my Butler’s Toupee and I think it very grand indeed!
But alas, all good things must come to an end.
It seems my Lady-in-Waiting refused to serve us our breakfast due to the fact that she isn’t really a Lady-in-Waiting, as such, but just a fancy way in which I sometimes refer to myself.
And I never make breakfast.
Until next time . . . I love you
Your soulful version of Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen will sound really rad utilizing jail cell acoustics.
You’re girlfriend is cute enough to get you a ride from the west coast to the east coast like that!
You’re pretty sure you know the difference between a wall and a street, but you plan on boning up the night before.
You, personally, put the TWIT in Twitter.
You never let the fact that you’re not exactly sure what’s going on get in the way of your passion!
Nobody jumps over barriers, pushes police or blocks traffic like you do. Nobody!
You never pass up an opportunity to get your face painted for reals.
What protest? You’re just waiting for Country Joe and the Fish to show.
And, finally, you’ve definitely got what it takes to be a Wall Street Protester if . . .
You’ve always been angry that the Wall Street moguls have been bleeding your parents pocketbooks dry for 25 years but NOW it’s starting to affect your allowance!
In ten years I’ll be pushing 70, and when I say pushing 70 — I mean all 70 has to do is step a little to the side and I’m over the edge.
I mean, when you think about how old you will be ten years from this very day, well, it’s downright shocking, depressing and/or scary! It makes you feel like you want to get a move on.
And I’m all for things that make me want to get a move on because I secretly suspect my default button is set on “lazy” or at the very least “putter”.
Of course, I’ve always felt I was accomplishing something, but when I actually look back on it;- what?
Luckily, I’ve got my brain, Peanuts, to blame everything on which is a great comfort to me. I’m not the lazy one, Peanuts is by gum!
You see, sometimes my brain, Peanuts, bubbles over like a pot with too much macaroni left on high. Peanuts is trying its darndest to cook something up, but the results are often questionable and somewhat messy.
Case in point, I once wrote ten chapters into a murder mystery entitled Book Clubbed to Death, but when I took it to a writer’s group and read an excerpt from it, the writing instructor asked for a display of hands on how many people thought it sucked — and almost everyone raised their hands.
I made a promise to myself right and there, that if I ever wrote another murder mystery that particular instructor was going to be the murder victim.
So on that happy note, dear reader, I am now going to go takes some vitamins, check on my maccaroni, and then get busy writing that murder mystery. I’ve already got the title:
Who Stabbed the Writing Instructor? (and then poisoned him and electrocuted him)
by
Linda Vernon
Until next time . . . I love you
Hello my fine feathery friends! It’s been a very busy day here at the blog. I’ve hardly had time to turn on my computer let alone type a complete word. But that’s the way it goes in the terrifically, fast-paced life of a Full-time Professional Bloggist® such as myself.
Things are moving so quickly here at the blog that the Full Time Professional Blog Hubbub® is deafening, blinding and crippling!
Which makes it hard to hear, see and type. But that will never stop me, dear reader.
For rest assured I shall never let my courage fail me. I shall get this blog into your eyes before the morrow or I shall die trying — for I am a Full-time Professional Bloggist®.
5:00 am to 6:00 am: Lie in bed and decide whether or not the new words and phrases my brain, Peanuts, dreamed last night are worth getting out of bed to write down.
6:01 am to 7:45 a.m: Wander around house in pajamas looking for a pencil and paper.
7:45 am to 7:46 am: Write down “plep” and “I love you Hearth Burl.” and silently thank Peanuts.
7:46 am. to 9:30 am: Resume lying in bed strategizing how to incorporate “plep” and “I love you Hearth Burl” into blog.
9:30am to 11:30 am: Prepare to write blog by pensively staring out window pensively.
11:30 am to 4:45 pm: Lunch
4:46 pm – 8:20 pm: Supper
8:20 pm to 8:30 pm: Finally experience a creative breakthrough by thinking up an ingenious method for incorporating “plep” and “I love you Hearth Burl” into the following sentence:
“I love you Hearth Burl,” said Plep.
8:30 pm to 8:31 pm: Post on blog.
8:31 pm to 9:30 am: Put Peanuts to work thinking up new words for tomorrow’s blog post by going back to bed.
And there you have it, dear reader. The important and somewhat adorable, fast-paced life of a Full-time Professional Bloggist® such as myself.
Until next time . . . I love you
Here are 17 Things You Will NEVER Hear a Woman Say:
I don’t care what movie we watch just as long as it involves a heist!
Goodie! World War II Footage!
Tell me again — but in more detail this time — about your 18-hole round of golf.
A new sump pump for our anniversary? Thank you, honey, you are the most thoughtful man alive!
I know it’s getting dark, I’m on empty, the next town is 50 miles away and my cell phone is dead, but I’m willing to chance it!
What do you mean it’s not safe to text when you’re going 90 mph while eating a taco — don’t be such a wuss.
Has anybody seen my welding manual?
Mow the lawn? Honey are you crazy? Get yourself back on that couch and go to sleep.
People who pepper their conversations with lines from Die Hard are highly intelligent.
I’d like my house better if they wouldn’t have wasted so much space on the closets.
Ok, that’s enough talk about me and my problems, let’s talk about explosions.
I’m not fat, I don’t look fat and I’ve never felt fat in my life.
I always look so much better when I’m not wearing any makeup.
Why can’t they talk louder on ESPN? Why?
No matter how long I live, I’ll never get my fill of Professional Golf sentimentality!
Tell me again about linear equations only this time start from the dawn of man.
I spent all day cooking that and you ate it in 3 minutes and didn’t say a word — God I love you!
Here are 17 things you will never hear a man say:
How do you work this thing?
I wish you would let me vacuum once in a while.
Sick Tupperware!
Shhh . . Can’t you see I’m trying to watch I Love Lucy?
What do you mean you can’t drive any slower?
I Know! Let’s skip football, whip up a batch of tapioca pudding and watch Lifetime.
I have no idea how to read a map.
This bedding set would be cute if it just had more decorative pillows.
You like it? I bought it from the Home Shopping Network.
I got my 6-pack Sweatin’ to the Oldies.
Has anybody seen my flute?
Ah! I love that this hand lotion feels so greasy on my hands.
What? You pound in screws with a hammer? Me too!
Can I have the rest of your broccoli?
If only my computer was older and didn’t have so much memory.
I just love the way you strip the gears.
Let’s sell my recliner; I’ll stand.
Tomorrow: 17 things you’ll never hear a woman say!
Until next time . . . I love you
Good news! I finally found out why the chicken crossed the road but I’ll tell you later.
I didn’t have a list. I haven’t made a grocery list for 30 years. I used to religiously make a list when I first started out my career as a semi-professional food gatherer, but then one day, I overheard a mom say she never made a list, just went to the store and winged it using nothing but her ordinary, everyday memory.
Could it actually be possible to go to the grocery store and not make a list and still come home with everything one needed? This was a revelation! I don’t remember the lady’s name who uttered these words that changed my life (a tiny bit), but I do remember her daughter’s name was Astrid. I volunteered that year to help out in the kindergarten gym class. And I’ll tell you what; it was well worth the two-hour weekly commitment just to hear the gym teacher call her Asteroid.
You see, one of the downsides of not making a list is buying too much of one thing. Peanuts, my brain, gets fixated on a certain food stuff and every time we go to the store, Peanuts reminds me that we need it. Currently Peanut is on an egg kick.
Peanuts is quite convincing, I must say. After much bandying about, a decision is finally made that it’s better to err on the side of too many eggs than not enough.
Awhile back, Peanuts was on a salt fixation. Suffice it to say, we now have enough salt to last until Armageddon.
But getting back to why the chicken crossed the road, have you noticed what’s going on with eggs lately?
It’s like the Ritz Carlton competing with The Four Seasons. Egg brands are making bigger and better claims about how wonderfully their hens are being treated as they go about the business of laying those eggs.
Case in point:
Emma’s Comfort Coup is the less expensive brand. “Our hens live in more spacious accommodations” is their motto. They’re not actually letting the hens out of their cages, sure, but they are giving them a king-sized nest with a roomy sitting area, their own bathroom, no doubt, and breathtaking vista of the other coups, plus room service for every meal, I’ll bet. So these hens are doing alright. Oh, and they have an official looking seal that says they are American Humane Certified –which actually means a lot to me considering I don’t actually know what it means.
Ok, but Emma’s little Comfort Coop operation is the slums compared to these guys:
Cages? Forget about it. These hens don’t need no stinkin’ cages because the whole world is their stinkin’ cage. Sure these eggs are going to cost you a little more but that’s because Egg Lands Best Luxury Hotel and Spa offers their chicken clientele the run of the entire poultry estate. And what an estate it is. Swimming pools! Movie stars! They are running free in the sunshine; a gentle breeze blowing softly through their fine feathered faces! Here there are no worries. The chickens that live and lay here have obviously done something right in a previous life.
Plus, these hens of the upper echelons are vegetarian fed. No grinding up of things that aren’t vegetables for them. No siree! They’ll get some form of vegetables or they’ll get nothing at all.
All that is required of these birds is that they lay and lay around!
So why did the chicken cross the road? Why to get to the better accommodations of course!
Until next time . . . I love you
As a result, I have come to know simulated laughter as well as I have come to know the back of my hand or the bottom of my foot (thought not quite as much).
For your fake laughing convenience, I have compiled a list of the different types of fake laughs that you might want to consider incorporating into your public persona.
This is one of the more popular fake laughs as it is easily performed without having to come to a full smile. The laugher simply inhales a huge breath and slowly releases it while making the sound of an excited chimpanzee. Volume is used as a sliding scale of appreciation, but volume is a matter of feel and cannot really be taught. You’ll just have to play around with it on people who aren’t very funny until you get the hang of it.
This should be reserved for people who you would dearly love to please, such as your neighborhood used car salesman or the Pope. Once you are told why the chicken crossed the road, you should be ready with a Machine-Gun-Kelly-Ann- followed by a Sound- of- Silence Chuckler and winding up with a “That’s Hilarious” thrown in at the end. If that doesn’t get you into the Pearly Gates, well . . . how would you feel about 10 percent below Blue Book?
Until next time . . . I love you
I drove through MacDonald’s yesterday to buy lunch and take it over to my daughter Nikki and her husband, Matt. I was the one who suggested Macdonald’s for lunch having completely forgotten how much food Matt, being a 21-year-old guy, is likely to consume at any given drive-thru.
And even though Matt is as slim as the Pink Panther, he is 6′ 4″ and he is a chip off the old block when it comes to having a big appetite — which apparently runs in his family.
The legend goes that his father once set the establishment record for eating the most pancakes in a single sitting in a Canadian eatery while on a road trip. This story is even more impressive when you take into account that “Pancake Dan” wasn’t even aware he was competing. He was just hungry.
Anyway, once the order was filled and sitting on the front seat of my car, I got a little apprehensive. And the thought crossed my mind that all that delicious MacDonald-ness wafting from the window of my car was an invitation to murder.
I began to think that if a serial killer were to walk by at that exact moment and smell the irresistible aroma of $5000 worth of Chicken Selects coming from the front seat of my car — which was being guarded only by defenseless little ol’ me — what’s to stop him from whacking me over the head with the nearest sack of Big Macs and absconding with the goods?
Sure I might not actually die from that kind of head trauma, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying to kill me.
As I was waiting to pull out onto the street, I could feel the hairs on the back on my neck spell out “sitting duck!” and I was just beginning to begin to panick when finally I arrived at Nikki and Matt’s.
As we were eating, Nikki remarked how the Chicken Selects were “to die for.”
And all I could think was “How right you are, dear Nikki, how right you are.
Until next time . . . I love you
In 1956 Betty Crocker Cookbooks not only cared deeply about 1956 Mom’s cooking; they cared deeply about her life. As proof, here’s some hints from the “Special Helps” section.
Apparently in 1956, it was perfectly acceptable for Mom to lie down on the kitchen floor to relax and/or fall asleep for as long as 3 to 5 minutes without anyone thinking she was completely out of her gourd.It’s not clear if this odd form of “relaxation” was reserved only for the kitchen floor or if one might come across 1956 Mom relaxing on, say, the floor of the Post Office or while waiting in line at the bank.But a wise 1956 Mom would have kept this handy little tip bookmarked should she ever need to explain to dinner guests why they found her lying down on the kitchen floor after sampling, god forbid, one too many Brandy Alexanders.
Not only does Betty Crocker want 1956 Mom to harbor pleasant thoughts while scrubbing the kitchen floor so clean she’ll be able to lie down on it for 3 to 5 minutes, she is even giving 1956 Mom some suggestions about what these thoughts might be.Such as relaxing on a tropical island for instance. Or dancing one-legged with a guy whose center of gravity is somewhere around his knees.Or maybe 1956 Mom could distract herself from her work by thinking about a sailboat with a dangerous starboard list that perhaps the guy with the low center of gravity just happens to be sailing on.But chances are what 1956 Mom thought was the pleasantest of all these suggestions was thinking about her husband holding her golf bag waist-high for her while she leisurely takes thousands and thousands and thousands of practice swings.
This tip is a little more tricky, however. Betty Crocker is only suggesting 1956 Mom find a kitten in a tree so that 1956 Mom will have something — anything to talk about — besides relaxing on the kitchen floor and thinking about cookbook-suggested topics.This is just a suggestion because searching for a kitten could be dangerous to 1956 Mom’s health. Obviously, it took 1956 Mom hours and hours of uninterrupted hiking to happen upon a kitten in a tree.Which means by the time 1956 Mom found the kitten in the tree, she was horribly emaciated and her waist had dwindled from its normal circumference of 7 inches to a measly 5 and 3/4 inches.Of course, maybe it was well worth it because, in the end, 1956 Mom did have a wonderful story in her brain about finding a kitten in a tree to tell to her family at dinnertime and — when the time was right — she managed to tell her story with good humor and aplomb.It was a story that her family would have found uproariously funny too had they not already left the room.
Until next time . . . I love you
My grandson, Mr. Clayton D. Kaiser, got his first haircut yesterday and everything came off just as it was supposed to except for one minor incident hardly worth mentioning. But more about that later.
It only took three of us to hold him down (he being the ticklish type) but we are happy to report that not only does his haircut look fabulous, he also managed to retain both ears in the process — and, except for one slight nick in the back, looks downright dapper!
It was an incident involving a little dog who happens to belong to the Kaiser Family. A little dog who seems lovable enough outwardly, but who, it turns out, has the heart and soul of a Radical!
That’s the way the landlady described it anyway in an emergency phone call during “the Haircut.”
The landlady wanted us to return to home base immediately and “DO SOMETHING!”
A dilemma of epic proportions had presented itself:
Finish the haircut? Or stop mid-cut and rush home to save the neighbors?
In the end, we opted to continue with the haircut — but implored the hairstylist, Christine, to utilize the photon-torpedo scissors and go at it at warp speed!
When we returned home, Trudy was back in her proper area, all the neighbors had returned to their living quarters and the Landlady, who lives across the way, was nowhere to be found.
And although there were no signs of violence or blood or anything like that, god only knows the toll that Trudy inflicted on the psyche of the entire neighborhood.
But hey! Mr. Clayton D. Kaiser’s hair looks GREAT, so who cares!
Until next time . . . I love you
It’s not that I don’t love my friends, but now that I can finally contact anybody in the world anytime I want for free, the thrill is gone.
And you think, well, I should buy something with this money since I already paid the electricity bill. So you decide to go shopping for a new outfit. But unfortunately, every single thing in every single store is gut-wrenchingly hideous. And then when you DON’T have any money, everything is SUPER DUPER TERRIFIC!
Back in the day when I was cooped up at home with three little kids under foot, my greatest joy in the world was to chat for hours to my best friend in another state, long distance to the tune of $.17 a minute.
All we have to do now is sign onto Facebook for 20 seconds and PRESTO! We’re completely updated in the minutest details of our every waking moments from soup to nuts including the soup we ate for lunch and the amount of nuts our husbands are driving us.
Frankly, the thrill is gone.
So let’s make a pact everybody. Let’s put the pizzaz back into conversation, shall we? Let’s only update our Facebook accounts when something really impressive happens.
Like if one of us gets married (to somebody different from who we are already married to) or if one of us goes to jail, or one of us gets married in jail.
I will if you will.
Until next time . . . I love you