Soup Cans and Brillo Pads

Have you ever cut yourself on a soup can lid? Or Green bean lid, or any metal lid? Billo Pad is made of long metal strings.  I know that!  But somewhere in my mind I forgot.  At a clients home, using a Brillo Pad on the stove they used like a campfire...I went to rinse it out and noticed a string hanging from the pad.  The "OCD" that tries to find a home within my mental walls, told me to get rid of that out of place strand of string on the steel pad.  Note that word STEEL...Steel is hard and sharp eh?  So I pull the string to remove it ....don't you know it cut the living bee jee bees out of my right hand middle finga! The blood was speaking to me all over the place.  It was saying duh wit lady...steel cuts, HELLO.. That wasn't string you dilly wadder it was a miniature RAZOR!   Felt great yes indeedy.  Just sayin, don't pull any strings off your brillo pads.  They are killer pads. Blood makers. Throb dobbers. Life stoppers for one day for sure. Try washing your hair with your left hand!  

OVERKILL...

   The bottom two photo's are my porch.....

I could have named this post Blackmail, or "How to Blackmail Your Grown Children." Me, I know how.  I have been known to threaten them with the use of 75-100 little stuffed animals called Beenie Babies in the back window of my car. And everyone knows my car because the license plate says "ALSWELL."  It really never has been but it is supposed to help in the area of positive workings for the betterment of self and others. I considered changing the plate to LF S SHT...but that might have been a bit over the top. Just thought it might turn things around. Back to OVERKILL...When I used to own a very large home with many rooms to play interior designer with, it fulfilled that life desire for me.  I downsized to a two bedroom apartment with a porch.  Each Spring I decorate that porch...but this year I felt I may have gone into a bit of overkill.  It wasnt until I was driving to a clients and passed this one small home....stopped, backed up, pulled out the Cannon Sure Shot and whalla! OVERKILL. This was my wake up call.  You know one of those homes with little deer and bears and skunks and ducks and roosters, and bright plastic fake flowers, wind chimes, and funky lights.  I came directly home and started removing itmes from what I call my "Macy's porch on a Budget!"  I have come back to earth thanks Grannie Overkill's yard....

FishMan...

The Friendly Fish...

                                                      
                                                                  The Hammock...

The Coy Pond

My helper Maria and I sometimes cant help but give certain clients nick-names.  This client we call "FishMan!"  He and his girlfriend have an amazing backyard I wanted to share.  Inside their home are several aquariums, fish art everywhere, even a fish stapler. Art bearing ships and boats and boys and men fishing.  I say he is a reincarnated fish. Seriously.  Personally I like his fish. One in particular always comes up to greet me when I clean the outside of his tank...the others not-sa-much.  The one that likes me lets me take his picture, and again the others run. Like they don't get it..No where to run HELLO! This home is in the center of a large city. They got very lucky to find a home with such a huge yard so wonderful after they created what should be in a magazine...  amazing lonely peaceful red hammock, a special Coy Pond, waterfalls, Chinese lanterns, hot tub, bird feeders, fire pit, squirrels and birds and bunnies, and two wonderful dogs named HeBear, and Cassidy, lest I not forget the cat...Gendel who loves Maria but can live without me! Go figure. S H U T U P, the fish likes me! By the way Ryan "FishMan," just graduated from College.  Congrats to him for sure.

Fudgie Ate Ralph!

(Fudge is the chocolate colored doggie...The family recently lost Ripple to doggie heaven)

I hollered, "Maria!" (my helper at our workplace) She came around the corner and stopped and starred at me.  I said, "Look, Fudgie at my Ralph!" (Ralph Lauren Shirt) Then we both broke out laughing.  Fudgie is one of our Green Pets. (we do Green all natural cleaning) A brown, part Aussie, part Chocolate Lab or maybe all Chocolate Lab.  He is a very sweet dog....but he is used to me giving him cheap milkbone biscuits when I arrive and when I leave.  He noticed my business things placed by the front door.  Seewww, he decided to sniff and scratch and eat the pocket out of my Ralph which he did and as he ate the magnificent cotton stripes he came upon HALF of a cheap milkbone biscuit that would have been his given a few more minutes.  I said, "Bad dog!" He hung his head and I said, "I didn't mean it, you go boy...go for what you want and and need in life even if its a cheap half a bone."  The Ralph was used from a garage sale anyway. Maybe I should have chewed thru a few pockets in my day.... Good dog I say.... sshheeessh. 

Not a Whimsical Table...

I found this table on the side of the road.  Yes I was garbage digging. Really I was walking the dog and this table was in someone's garbage. It was and is majorly beat up.  Two of the legs are bolted on with metal plates and screws like someone did major surgery on it. Seriously.. There is a slot for what looks like a place for a pull out missing cutting board.  And large dents in the top. (I have a glass piece for the top) While I was painting it I wondered if it was a young person's desk, or did it live in someone's kitchen and were they very poor considering the total major leg repairs. Or was the old man living with his children and bored so he kept fixing things that should have been thrown away.... Under the table top appears to be yellow paint and rust colored and brown and gross things which led my mind to wonder if anything dastardly might have occurred.  Like the carving of a deer carcus or possibly a murder was covered up by the use of said table.  I let go of the idea it may have come from the east in a covered wagon. Why dont we ever hear about covered wagons crossing Wisconsin?  It's always that they start here and go cross the "Plains." I better Google that. I Google everything I don't know and then some. Just in case the worst scenario happened I blessed some tap water and then blessed the table and its ghosts.  No what?  I don't have any place to put it. I had it on my Macy's low budget yearly porch re'do, but now its too nice. Really I just needed to get my creative juice's back under control and didn't feel like sewing. This be the result... I think it looks like "The British are Coming, The British are Coming, only thing missing is a white horse and furry hat!"  p.s. there is a matching chair outside on the porch not redone.

Been Gone a While!

I created a blog book at http://www.blurb.com/.  It was a fun 400 page expensive book!  But a great one that someday if we all don't disappear in 2012 will bring my children and Grands an idea of who I really am.  I don't always show who I really am, but my book does. I also moved my office from one room to another which has been a joy don't you know?  Then in the moving of it all I lost the cord to my printer which uploads photos I like to use on my blog.  And then my computer puecked and continued puecking for over a week.  I upgraded to Windows 7, paid $300 for repairs and upgrade, and I love it.  Didn't love Vista so much....  So hopefully I am back with grand imaginative lies. I mean stories of real life drama and or fun.

I received a beautiful bouquet of peonies and placed them on my counter bar. That was a week ago and if you know anything about peonies you know the petals after a week are only tenderly hanging on.  My cell phone rang, I let go of the floor steamer handle I had up on the counter which let go and hit the "vaaaazze" and down it all went, water, petals, and all, into my open purse sitting on the barstool, and onto the floor. Must a been a million and a  half petals. Well, a hundred anyway. It looked like I could start a popourri business.  (I hate that blogger stopped checking spelling!) Anyway...I got to the ringing phone and no one there.  Back to the death of the peonies scene. I got the chaulk out to outline the mess but decided that might be over the top.  So instead I just starred at it. Then I left it sit all day long even now its still sitting there.  Can't vacuum wet petals!  The analogy is  cat pueck. If you leave it sit for a day it dries out and you very easily scoop it up with several folded paper towels..Don't want to get any on me ya now.  Glad that doesn't happen very often. Either neither.  Petals or Pueck.

Mugged at the Cemetery...

I am so not kidding!  I have a 5th cousin Bob Jungbluth out in Cali who does the family geneology and asked me to visit the Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison and get him some photos of the last remaining relatives in his family history journey of years.  I certainly agreed....So its Sunday and my house is all in disarray getting prepared for new carpet on Tuesday so leaving was an alright deal for a nice sunny day.  I gathered up the traveling dog bed, harnessed the dog, knowing full well cemetery's don't usually allow them, but she is only 5 pounds..so I break the rule for my dead ones!  I get there alright....  Find a map, start driving the winding maze of narrow roads through acres and acres of green grass and trees and grey stones of all sizes and shapes.... I have directional dyslexia so the map and I and reality before my eyes were struggling.  It became somewhat like a show I watched as a child called The Twightlight Zone...a never ending road to nowhere.  Finally!  I see section 16.  I drive around and around its imaginary wall all the time it's calling to me to get out and come on in. It like a triangle, hexagon, and rectangular piece of land, all mixed together. I wanted to park that car and walk around every stone giving them all the attention they have yearned all these lonely decades there.  The five or six people I am searching for, one in an unmarked grave is a special spirit to me... Mary Jungbluth, whose father took her infant from her as she was unwed...she became depressed so he placed her in the Mental Hospital in Madison then to be moved to the Badger Prairie Mental Home where she died.  No one ever came for her. I wanted to talk to Mary, acknowledge her, tell her I understood, thank her and possibly put her to rest, but I couldn't park and get out.  Something was frightening me deep inside.  Could have been the fact I was deep in a forest of tombstones and spirits with no human being in sight and had been any for over 30 minutes or so...  So I left the callings of my dead ones.  You see I also noticed the ding ding on my dash telling me "Gas Gone!" Considering my gas gauge is broken and I use the trip set, and I was terribly alone in this dense forest of tombstones...I was so outta there.  After filling my tank I decided to go back... I can only surmise they were still calling to me.  I said to myself, if there happens to be more people around I would walk Section 16 and find my people.  No one! Still desolate and even more so.  A terrible feeling something was amiss came over me when suddenly I see a man walking toward me very quickly. Then running.  Oh my God! This is what happened in my dream.....I was so terrified I couldn't get the car back in gear...and which gear?  R for reverse or D for drive and which way out of the maze?  Did he know which way and I didn't?  I threw it in D and screamed the tires to the left...SECTION 17-4. No time to look at the map..where was I? I could see my attacker in the mirror but the mirrors are backwards to me...So which way, which way?  Adrenalin was pumping so far out of control it swallowed all my senses...  Now I saw him, red jacket, dark pants. He was jumping over grave stones to catch up to my lost in death travel. If I went left and it looped back right over the hill, I was his!  If it didn't loop back I might make it out...the main road had to be in sight soon...soon I wailed.  I took the leap of faith and went left only to see him leap onto my car from the right side and hang on inside the window frame.  This was it! I would die in the midst of the dead.  But what about my dog?  I couldn't leave my dog behind in this ghastly ghostly place of horror. I felt a sudden surge of strength...controlled strength from some unknown vista.  Mr....you screwed with the wrong lady!  Possibly my dead ones showed up because I can't imagine getting my wits back about me alone...they were too far gone at that moment in time and terror...but back with me they were.  I grabbed a very sharp dart that I keep in my console for just this reason...seriously!  I hacked his fingers and then as he screamed in anger and slid down over my drivers window I hacked his eye right out....he fell to the ground and under my back tire. The body thud and bump is a sound I may never be able to be free from in life...   I had done one thing right and that was turn left which led to the main road. ...no one was in the Cemetery Office so there was no one to tell about the several markers I had overthrown with my Buick....  or the man laying around or about Section 4, Lot 8 with I presume...one eye hanging from its socket and a broken leg, possibly more.  I pulled over into a BP Station and called 911...  Cemeteries should have watchmen and camera's...especially when there are acres and acres for transients and or preditors to hide.  But this time the ghosts of Forest Hill won out! So I thought.  When the authorities arrived we went back to the scene of the incident as I could recall it.  There was no body.  No blood... No broken tombstones...  But there was one eyeball laying near the exit of Section whichever where I left the body. Told ya I said....  Now I have to go back and get the photos for Cousin Bob!  When do you think that might happen?  In your dreams?  Yes that is exactly where many things happen to The Happy News Lady.