Hone my story telling skills by using this space to share anecdotes about my life.

Third grade offered the opportunity to take a cassette-based language course. (The school made the quantum leap from reel tapes – Oh, yes, this was the 70s.) My parents insisted on Spanish because it would be more useful in southern Arizona. I wanted to take something more exotic like Latin or French. At eight years old, I was torn between rebelling against my parents’ wishes – hoping they’d capitulate – or remaining an overachiever.

The first year of rote memorization and recitation was painful, but my report cards notes evolved from “Jim is doing acceptable, but [has a negative attitude problem]” to ending with “Jim is doing well in the [name of curriculum], but hates the cassettes.” Recommendation: continue with the program.

Summer came, and I was glad to be out of that part of school. While camping, my folks ran into the Gonzalez’s, a family we met in a previous year’s camping. Hector and I shared the same birthday, so we played most of the day. My dad mentioned to his dad that I’d been taking Spanish. Perhaps to encourage me further, it was suggested I try speaking to Hector’s dad. Perhaps it was performance anxiety, but the only thing I could recall was the phrase drilled into me in the last lesson we had before break: “El burro sabe mas que tu.”

After some silence, and my chagrin at realizing I had unintentionally insulted Hector’s dad, his dad complimented me on my accent.

I have no idea why anyone would have thought that would be a good thing to included in a curriculum.

When Jeny was a wee slip of a lesbian, I used to work nights.

We lived a couple blocks from a 7-11 and, of course, Jeny and I were in there just about every day for one thing or another.

We had walked over there one morning for me to get some orange juice and for her to get something to rot her teeth with.

Jeny had her goody and was standing at the counter. Since she was, I dunno, three or four, her nose came up just to the edge of the counter, so her eyes and forehead were above it.

I was coming up toward the counter from behind her, several feet away.

Two high school aged guys came up from her right to pay for something and the asshole closest to her just gave her a rough shove out of the way, nearly, but not quite, making her lose her balance and fall.

Unfortunately for him, by that time I was within arm’s reach, and grabbed a handful of his very nicely braided and greasy hair, and with rather more force than was probably necessary, I dragged him over Jeny and opened the swinging glass door by SLAMMING his face into it, shoved him out the doorway, and onto what I guess was his and the other punk’s bikes.

Also unfortunate, was that his nose seem to split right down the middle, spewing what seemed a huge quantity of blood everywhere…

Crying by that time, he began screaming at me that I was a racist!

I agreed, telling him I had always hated fucking assholes…

Then I headed back inside where, apparently with the blood splattered on me and the Charlie Manson look in my eyes, the other kid decided discretion was indeed the better part of valor and began backing up, apologizing for the other kid’s behavior…and backed into one of those big racks of dollar bags of potato chips, knocking it over and sending them everywhere.

Well…what could I do?

Sure…I began laughing my ass off…

The bloody kid came in then, pissing me off all over again, threatening to call the cops.

I agreed that would be a fine thing, I’d wait right here for them and would listen while he explained why he attacked a little kid.

By this time the clerk, also the owner and someone we were acquainted and friendly with, threw the two guys out…told me not to worry about it…which I hadn’t intended doing.

The scary part of all this is that the grabbing and pushing and nose splitting wasn’t a calculated thing…it just sorta happened without my “help.”

Sometimes I over-react…

The subject title was “FUCK YOU”! No joke it was. I opened the email and it said something like this “FUCK YOU COCK SUCKING, LICK.ME, ETC. and so on.”

I was dumbfounded and could not have any explanation for this. I told my dad and he got very upset figuring someone must have gotten into my address book somehow. But I knew that was not the case. I also knew my mm did not send the message. So then I ignored it.

Until… the other day.

I sent Mom and email. A few moments went by when I received an “auto-reply”. In the message it said, “FUCK YOU COCK SUCKING, LICK.ME, ETC. and so on.” I was like, hmmmm, why does Mom have an auto-reply set in her email? So I called her.

Mom, said she did indeed have an auto-reply. Why? I have no idea and I do not think she knows why she had it either.

Now fortunately, my sister was at the house when I was explaining this unfortunate situation. She knew exactly what to do. Mom has Road Runner DSL. It seemed Road Runner had this on their site. So Sis went in and deleted it. Whew.

The kicker is this… if I was receiving these so-called auto-replies, how many other people that were emailing her received the same thing? Mom said her cousin, had emailed her about a family reunion and a friend emailed her about dinner.

We had a good laugh about it.

I have these Lucille Ball type moments where I wind in odd situations where normal most people would never find themselves in. I call them ‘Doing a Dawn’

When ADD boy was almost 3 years old he was so excited to go trick or treating that he jumped off a chair onto my foot . My in laws were there and I cussed like you would not believe! Bad Dawn :O First I hobbled around until the New Year. I could not figure out why my foot still hurt and why it would swell up after going Christmas shopping. He was only a 30 lb toddler. How much damage could he have done? After I had it x-rayed and physical therapy I had to wear this orthopedic looking blue Velcro Birkenstock type shoe. I had to wear a regular shoe on my other foot around the house just so I would not be all lopsided when I walked LOL! Well I guess he did a lot! He damaged the tendons in my right foot. I wear orthotics in my everyday shoes now. Of course I have hurt it 3 more times! Always the same foot!

Next I stepped off of the lofa sofa onto the Baby Bop toy when I closed the mini blinds in DIY girls room. Man did I yell! More X-rays and this time a HUGE ugly bruise. Time to break out the ugo Ortho-stock & more PT. They give me this rubber band to do exercises at home with. I don’t think they understand that when I put something under my foot and flex it in that manner it cause pain! Besides it’s latex and I’m allergic to it so I give it to Berta as an exercise band ;)

Then McSmarty ran it over with the Radio Flyer wagon BUT! I had my God Daughter in the back back so there was no way I was going to fall and let her get hurt! ( She has Cystic Fibrosis and spends WAY too much time in the hospital) I twisted so that I did not fall and tweaked my foot again.My Ortho-stock was pretty much worn out and dead by now so I just wore my shoes with orthotics all day. (the reason I did not wear shoes was because 1. really hate shoes 2.I did not want to step on my daycare babies when they were crawling[they were everywhere ] 3. It kept the house cleaner so they could crawl around on a cleaner floor) I had one pair of tennies just for the house and one just for the park that had sand bits in them.

Most recently I stepped off of the brightly painted yellow curbs in Alaska after having two cape cods made with “the good $#!+” from the Red Dog Saloon. I tried to grab onto McSmarty on my way down but I was falling hard and fast into the cross walk right in the middle of the street right, in the middle of town with this fancy spin where I twisted my ankle, then I hit my knee then I landed flat on my back and he almost stepped on me! Too bad we did not get THAT on video!

I just remembered on more. I was on my way to pick up my kids from school and I somehow stepped on my garden hose and bent foot so that the ankle touched the sidewalk. I drove to school using My Left Foot while my I watched my left one swell up.(it’s a good thing I don’t have a sick shift)

If you ever see me walk on the sand at the beach I will tip toe because the sand pushes up on my foot flexing the tendon the wrong way and it will hurt for a while after that. I also have to tell the person giving me a massage, when they get to my foot not to rub and flex it, OUCHIE

American Airlines flight 722 takes off from LGA airport at 8:30am this past Sunday with Segsy, Son, Hubby and 10 others from hubby’a work headed to Miami, Florida.

WE took off and they showed the safety video. My son says to hubby, Daddy are there masks going to fall for us to put on? No of course not. We’re in the air a bit more and my friend A asks me if I watch LOST b/c she saw an ad in the airline magazine and had some questions. We caught up, shared our views etc and moved on. About 10 minutes later the cabon lights go out, the air goes off and the cabin fills with some smokey stuff.

Fortunately I was oblivious and did not think there was anything wrong. Fortunately, a woman sitting next to me starts to say, This plane is going to land soon. Really? I ask. Why so? Well, she says, I was pilot for 15 years on US AIR and it seems there is an electrical problem. Of course I asked if it was anything I needed to worry about. She said no.

Look if this woman is remaining calm, I am going to be calm too.

Within 5 minutes, the captain comes over the speaker and says we are going to be making a landing at BWI airport in Baltimore.

F’n great! F’n great.

I am making a long story short and a long day sound shorter here b/c I am quite tired.

So it’s now 10:30am. We had to go get out luggage, get reticked, go through security AGAIN! Next flight out was 3:15pm. So it took us 9 hours and 15 minutes to get to Miami. We missed the first quarter of the Superbowl!

AA gave us nothing but a lunch voucher. Time to make a complaint and see what I can get for all of our troubles.

Gardening in Australia is not without its hazards. It is easy to forget that we are home to some of the most poisonous creatures on the planet. Weeding my flower bed inevitably unearths a few bulbous looking spiders of varying sizes (all of which are too big for my liking!)

My flower bed is a rather simple one that was created when I was quite a young age. My parents simply separated it from the lawn by placing some rocks down to mark the edges. It makes keeping the grass out a tricky prospect.

One particular day, I was turning the rocks over to weed out what had taken root underneath and prevent it from spreading amongst my flowers. The birds seemed to be enjoying the show, with one particularly enterprising magpie picking at the bugs I was uncovered, at what it obviously considered a safe distance away from me.

Of course, the inevitable happened, and I overturned a rock with one particularly big, hairy spider underneath. It quickly scrambled to the top and I quickly scrambled away. The magpie took all this in with interest. It looked at the spider then looked at me, cocking its head to the side. So I did the only sensible thing… I backed away a bit more.

In one chomp, my problem was gone. I knew there was a reason I liked magpies.

McPunk and I met at school when I was 15 and he was 16 in PE class. I was out for a few weeks because I got my Appendix removed. He came up to me and told me how much he missed me and asked me out.

We went to the drive in. My mom made me take my obnoxious friend Tammy. She called her Tammy Big mouth. My Dad called her Tammy
Big foot. LOL! She sat in the back seat of the ‘68 Camero and threw popcorn. He dropped her off first then me. I asked if we were bf & gf and he said yes. He was so shy. I kissed him. He said he felt just like the song I have a date

After I had managed to graduate high school with A’s and B’ putting in no effort. ( against all odds I might add) I was living at my boyfriend’s(McPunk) parents house because I could not take the emotional abuse from my alcoholic mom anymore. Also I was sharing a room with my hyper Bother AND my step-sister who had just moved back down from Northern California and my mom was insanely jealous of any attention that my step-dad gave her. My Dad had moved to New Mexico 4 years before.
At 18 I had already been working at Slave-On for 2 years, had a car, a checking and savings acct. The day after graduation I moved into my Nonna’s and payed rent. She lived too far for me to commute to school.

They had six kids just like the Brady Bunch. The Mom Nancy had 3 girls and the Dad John had 3 boys. The eldest girl had moved out so I had a room all to myself. It was a crappy room. Everyone had to walk through it to get to the laundry and when the boys would put their Vans tennis shoes in the dryer they would make one heck of a banging noise. But for the first time since my Bother was born 13 years ago I had my own little corner of the world :)

They did not have Cost-co yet so his Dad would go shopping at Smart-N-Final. He would just ask us girls to get what ever we wanted. We would fill the cart with $200 worth of food in no time. It was a trip! Later when his parents went to Greece for two weeks. I would be the one scraping dozens of blueberry Pop-tarts out of the rug after the rager party we had, that the police had to shut down. He was the oldest son which made me the lady of the house.(Do you know how long you have to run an air conditioner with all the windows open in the Spring to get the smell of beer and clove cigarettes out a house!?)

His step-mom made arrangements for us to fly to Hawaii for my Graduation over the Summer. We had broken up but we both had payed like $600 or $800 each out of our own money so we still had to go. It was hard for me to be with him. I always had all of these cute guys asking me out at work, parties, and the beach all the time. I felt like I was missing something. We had been together for 3 years and I had already dated a few guys before him. I made the poor guy wait 2 1/2 years for sex( we were both virgins) so he really was a good guy, but was he my good guy?

We went on the trip and of course we had a great time. You could drink at 18 back then, the Mai Tai’s where mighty tasty after a long day on the beach or sight seeing. We went on this round the island tour on Oahu. Our tour guide was just a local and just a little older than us. He told us to come by his work later and we all could go dancing. We had rented a VW rabbit convertible( which McPunk later bought, one of, but I took over payments when it was getting all beat up when he needed a truck for construction)The tour guide told us not to tell his buddies that we were tourists. He did not want to get hassled. I don’t blame him. Tourists are geeks, we were cool ;) We went dancing at this local club then he took us to the top of this ridge overlooking the city of Waikiki. It was so spectacular at night with all of the lights. The three of use just sat and talked about life, goals and dreams. After he took us down to the Iolani Palace. He told us that of we carve our initials in this Giant Banyan tree we would be together forever. It was completely deserted so we did it.
We did move in together for about 5 months at the suggestion of his step-mom when both of our roommates arrangements had changed. Berta commented on how we had evolved more into brother and sister than gf & bf. It was true. Just because we were 2 nice people did not mean we were meant to be together. I think his step-mom meant well but she was pushing us together.

Just recently I reconnected with McPunk. We are now great friends again.
Together Forever as Friends :D

...not too long ago (and until this day too), there lives a charming-enough-to-be-royalty man in California. His name is Markov (henceforth referred to as M).

Spinning to the other side of the globe (India, to be precise), meet a rather friendly, pleasantly plump yogini who is perpetually trying to lose some weight. She is known in these circles as Aatmiya, though her real name is Vrinda (henceforth referred to as V).

The rest of the cast in this story:
1. V’s husband whose name literally translates to Prince (although this is not a fairy tale).
2. Balaji, V’s true, true friend, who was part of the merry trio that did touristy things all Saturday on Feb 2 (h-r-t-a TTF).
3. There may be more, depending on how this story tells itself.

Anyhow, V learned at this forum that M was to visit her country on a valiant corporate mission. She issued an invitation to visit. The invitation was backed up by Meli, Dawn and Flirt (the happening people of 43T) who vouched for V’s coolness. M found himself talked into visiting Chennai, India although his mission was taking him to a completely different city.

D-day was Feb 2. V sent M a list of possible things they could do in her city. 90% of the suggestions entailed shopping (V’s 3rd favorite activity after a. eating too much, and b. exercising in the vain hope of burning off the consumption). M wrote back picking the only options that had nothing to do with shopping.

“I will wait for ya at the airport exit”, V wrote to M. “I will be the woman with the biggest smile.” At 11:00 am on the appointed day, V realized while she was waiting that she had not exactly set up a fail-proof system of indentification. Although that made her anxious (she had only seen one pic of M from when he had visited Dawn, and could suddenly not remember what he looked like), she grinned determinedly from ear to ear. Recognition when M sauntered out of the airport was mutual and instantaneous.

The rest of this story will be told mainly in pictures, so if this has been too wordy for you, please dont run away yet.

Outside the chapel at St Thomas Mount, here are TTF and M

This was the first time M met V and TTF, as we have already established in the narrative so far. This was also the first time he had met a banyan tree. M is plenty smart. “Are those the roots?” he asked before V could explain to him about those thingies hanging down from the tree to the ground.

“Do you like crocodile reserves where they try to breed/protect endangered species?” V asked M. “I dont know. I have never been to one.” said M. So they went to one.

M deciding which croc to get up close and personal with.

“Pick me!”

M prefers them small?

V does the wuss version of making friends.

Eat your heart out! V gets to hold on to that brave and fearless, _baby croc-befriending arm.

It took some ungainly scrambling….

....But they did it, just so you could get to see some cool pictures.

This is a monument dating back to the 16th century. On the right is a carving of a dude dressed in the style of those times. On the left is the sculptor’s sci-fi impression of what dudes would wear many centuries into the future. Pretty accurate, huh?

V played statue too. They tried telling tourists it was bad luck to visit this monument and not pose as a statue and click a pic. No one bit that bait…..but wait…..

.....Look at what they started.

Dont monkeys free-range roam about in the U.S of A? M spent a lot of time clicking monkeys! They posed patiently for him.

There were tons and tons of sculptures in the open, but M was intent on looking at what was behind the only locked door. V was watching to ensure they did not get arrested.

Arent they a happy bunch?

M was maxed out on Indian food so they went to a Sushi place for dinner. No saki unfortunately. (The cops had clamped down because this place did not have a permit for liquor).

The TTF ate sushi and sashimi for his first time ever. In India we are allowed to use as many chopsticks as we like, to transport Japanese food to mouth, as you can see in this pic. They tried telling M that, but M stuck to two.

M and V made a medal from the inedible portion of the garnish to reward TTF for being so brave at downing everything that they challenged him to eat. He wore it with pride.

Oops…I just realized one of the cast members has not made an appearance yet (V’s prince) and we have reached the end of the story!

M stayed awake despite feeling very tired until about midnight talking to him (or rather answering questions about his fascinatingly interesting work) when they got home. When V said “I want to turn in for the night”, he almost wept with relief. The next morning M was off again to the city that was home to his corporate mission.

Here is hoping they all live happily ever after (M, TTF, V’s prince, V, monkeys, crocs and walk-on cast members like Dawn, Flirt and Meli).

T H E    E N D

This One Time after I had moved out on my own. I was about 21. I called my (dyslexic) Bother. He was about 16 and had him read me the recipe for Potato soup over the phone, out of the little booklet that came with this crock-pot that our really good neighbour Bob & Cathy gave my Mom. She never used it but I did.

When I still lived at home. I would have it all set up and all I had to do was mash up the potatoes a bit then add the canned milk when I got home after school.( I never did use the shallots that it asked for. I’m sure the market in Garden Grove did not have them anyway. I just used an onion)

Well, my Bother got out of school before I did and they would eat the whole darn pot and not leave me any of it!! I can’t tell you how many time they did that! I’m like COME ON!!
I guess it was good :)

Fast forward to him reading me the ingredients and amounts. Berta my other roommates and I were going to have some guys over for dinner. I figured I would make my Wonderful Potato soup(we had done spaghetti do death)

I’m serving it up and everyone at the table starts to make the same face. OMG it is SO salty . My Bother told me to use 3 Tablespoons of salt instead of 3 teaspoons. They just use a T or a t so I had used 3 Times the correct amount :P
Of course Psycho Nancy thought it tasted just fine. LOL

I was moved to desserts after that.

I was in Bangkok. I arrived the night before on a flight from Saigon, and checked into the Opera Hotel. I awoke to news that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army had launched a major battle in Vietnam, which came to be known as the Tet Offensive. The safe house where I had spent the previous night had been hit, just one of hundreds of targets that were attacked. I never heard whether they took any casualties. The My Canh floating restaurant where I had eaten lunch the previous day was hit hard. Not surprising, since on June 25, 1965, it was the scene of a VC terrorist bombing that killed scores.

I missed that little piece of the war by about 12 hours. It was the first inkling I had that a guardian angel was looking out for me. It’s been confirmed many, many times since then.