So That Happened

I'm at war with a bluejay. Laugh if you want, but this is serious. This vengeful, diabolical bird lives in the tree outside my window and finds it perfectly hilarious to wake me up every morning by standing in my planter box  and chucking clumps of potting soil into my room. I must have done something to offend this particular bluejay, because I was was also the victim of a pine cone aerial attack several days ago while watering plants. I have called in the Brute Squad (my cat) but that feline wouldn't lift a paw to help me if I was being mauled by an army of rabid mice who had just bathed in catnip.

This morning my mom and I drove to the Puyallup Fairgrounds to set up her pottery in the Artists in Action studio. As we were assembling our shelves and unloading pots, the petite middle-aged AiA coordinator stopped by our station to check in. "Have you met my daughter Olivia?" my mom asked her. "Nice to meet you," I said, extending my hand. "Olivia!" she exclaimed, then turning to my mother added, "she's gorgeous!" She must have meant there to be a pause between that statement and the next words to come out of her mouth, which were: "How did that happen? The last time I saw her she was about this tall!" (She approximated my height by lowering her hand to within two feet of the floor. By her estimation we'd last met days after I emerged from my mother's womb.) Yes, she probably intended for those statements to be separated by a brief period of dead air, but what it sounded like to me and my mom was, "She's gorgeous! How did that happen?" My mom and I each half-laughed, half-gasped. I was nanoseconds from scoffing, "What are you talking about? My mom is stunning!" and I could tell my mom was amping up for a punch along the lines of, "Hey, I've looked worse!" And that's not all. As this woman passed by our shelves to go welcome the next artist, she smacked me somewhat forcefully on the rear end and whispered, "Stop growing!" Yes, you read that correctly. I was spanked by a post-menopausal program coordinator at the Puyallup Fair. I can now cross that off my bucket list.

Here is a new segment I'm calling, "Oh it's on, Rhoda Janzen." I have, as of this morning, officially declared a feud between myself and Ms. Janzen, author of the memoir Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. It's no secret that I think hyperbole is the greatest figure of speech on the face of the earth. It's kind of my thing, and I don't recall giving Rhoda Janzen permission to use it. Yet use it she does, as you'll see here as she discusses her ghost-editing assignment: "What I was doing was unusual - unusual, I mean, beyond the fact that there are maybe 16.2 people in the entire world who would like to know more about the sacred dramatic literature of the fifteenth century." Imagine my displeasure when suddenly, from out of nowhere, Rhoda Janzen prances her way onto my hit reading list and yanks hyperbole right out of my hands. If that's not illegal it damn well should be. So I say to you, Rhoda Janzen, it's on. It's so on.

My mom was cleaning out a drawer of her bureau the other day and came across an unopened package of Angel Cards. For those who are unfamiliar with them, Angel Cards are small laminated slips of paper that feature a virtue--kindness, balance, courageousness, etc.--and a coinciding drawing of an angel performing that task. The idea is that you keep them on a dish face-down, flip over a different card every day, and devote that day to patience or friendship, which is portrayed by an angel in a pink floor-length gown hugging a tree. So as my mother was sorting through the contents of her drawer, something caught my eye about her Angel Cards. I'm ashamed to say what this "something" was, mainly because it took me literally 45 seconds to figure it out: they weren't in English. My mom had accidentally bought a package of Angel Cards in German. I alerted her to the situation. "'Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" she said. "No wonder they were on sale!" Having no conceivable use for inspirational cards that she couldn't read, my mom gave them to me to do with as I pleased. Naturally I put them face-down in a bowl on my desk. Every day I turn over a new card, first trying to guess the virtue based on the drawing of the angel, then trying to pronounce the virtue in what I consider to be an eerily authentic German accent, then decoding the virtue through an online German-English translator. Today's virtue, "Eenvoud," shows an angel in a blue dress with her hands clasped together, possibly holding something, possibly not - it's hard to tell, as these aren't the most detailed of drawings. I take that to mean that today's theme is ambiguity. I will therefore spend my day carrying around a nondescript, vaguely visible object in front of my chest and being very proud of myself for doing so. Or not. Who knows. It's ambiguous.