Christmas is for kids!

Kris Kringle originally walked the German countryside ringing a bell and passing out gifts, candies and cakes to the children. So, in honor of kids and good old St. Nicholas, give yourself the best gift ever. Tear the wrapping paper off your impish spirit because at Christmas you have permission to be a child!

Here's a few hints to get you started:

1. Start wetting the bed.
2. Steal mistletoe because people kissing is so gross!
3. Put tinfoil on your teeth and pretend you have braces.
4. Ask Santa for a pony.
5. Sing the "batman and robin" version of Jingle Bells until 
     your family goes crazy.
6. Suck the end of your candy canes to a point.
7. Make a wreath out of egg cartons and paint it with
     tempera paints.
8. Wear your hair in pigtails and sit on Santa's lap.
9. Start a snow ball fight.
10. Sneak a peak at a present under the tree, then rewrap it 
     so no one knows.
11. Watch "A Muppet Christmas Carol" and sing along.
12. At parties introduce yourself as Cindy Lou from Whoville.
13. Write a letter to Santa and send it.
14. Wear bells on your shoes.
15. Listen to "Twas the Night Before Christmas" backwards,
       you can hear the phrase 'Paul is dead'!
16. Outline the toilet in twinkle lights.
17. Make Froot Loop necklaces for everyone you love.
18. Put glitter on EVERYTHING!

A bit of Bailey's...

I used to love winter, growing up a skier and all. Not so much the older I get. I actually feel for the birds at my feeders, the horses hunched against the wind, cows all laying in a cluster to gather whatever body warmth from each other they can. And Christmas... I love making everyone I love gifts I hope they will love! Nothing like putting the pressure on 'cause I never start making this stuff in July when I need to to get all I want to get done, done! But today, I'm loving the sun. It's not even twenty degrees out, the fire's burning almost constantly since I refuse to shut the shades and keep the heat in 'cause the sun's out! When I go for a walk  this afternoon, I'll smile at the crunch of ice under my cleats, hope I don't fall and break a hip and turn my face to the sun that shines with as much warmth as Antarctic ice. But so what?  It's winter, we have it seven months a year! So I'll suck down a bit more Bailey's Irish Cream in my coffee and wrap up in an afghan when I come traipsing in from the cold. And sneeze and sniffle and thank the powers that be for a bit of sunshine and imaginary warmth on the fluffed birds and huddled farm animals. And froze-to-the-boney old me! 

Out-sourced!

We have Ringed Turtle Doves living around Stevensville now. For the last few years, actually, since they were released at some wedding nearby. They are California birds, city park birds, definitely not native to our environment. Or our predators. And yet year after year I feed them, look for them daily, feel giddy when a few pair up and hatch babies on our place. But, they have become a favorite food source of one particular Cooper's Hawk and a couple of Sharp Shins who swing by our house periodically. And these guys are crafty. They try to fly my gorgeous, cooing pretty's into our windows. It is survival of the fittest. The poor doves are fair game to birds, cats, foxes, any predator who will take what they can catch and the easier meal the better. I love my doves and go out to yell at a hawk or cat at any opportunity. Makes me feel better even though I know the poor doves are now an outsourced food source!!

winter confusion

We truly live in a magical valley. Amazing events happen regularly when wild nature is out your window, along the road you drive to the grocery store or walking along a river. Driving today, on roads truly treacherous, we looked up into a glowering sky and saw a flock of thousands of snow geese milling about in confusion. The clouds were low, light snow was falling. The geese had obviously been heading south trying to make it over Lost Trail Pass and been forced to turn back by the storm. Glancing around, we saw more flocks, farther away, swirling flecks against the sky that looked like rippling waves on gray water. We drove to the Lee Metcalf  Refuge and stopped directly under the biggest flock, looked up at their white bellies, wings tipped in black and listened to the cacophony of sound, like a symphony of oboes! Wondrous, soaring sounds as these snow geese communicated obviously mixed messages until the flock finally gathered enough to all head north.  We lost them low over a field a mile or so away. There is still open water at the refuge and thirteen swans have settled there to wait out the storm along with hundreds of ducks. The swans were gorgeous of course, until they went bottoms up to feed. Then they looked like mini-icebergs! Anyway, we were lucky enough to witness a migration miracle. By tomorrow when the storm lifts, I imagine thousands and thousands of snow geese filling the skies above Stevensville, Corvallis and Hamilton down the valley over Darby and Sula as they wing their way to the open grasslands of Idaho where they'll pig out and prepare for the next "leg" of their journey south.

high speed

I know to most people, modern, cosmopolitan people of 2011, high speed internet is no big deal. But for me, living in the "them thar hill's" of gorgeous western Montana where dial up is the horse and buggy of the age, still, getting high speed is the high point of many a month. And as par with new technology, it wasn't easy. Incompatibility issues... how often do we hear that when adding a new hardware to older computers?! It's become a litany of my life. But this morning I am on line, able to access my facebook in seconds rather than ten minutes! Am I jazzed or what?

So folks may gripe and whine about the pace of today's world- and I admit I'm one of those whiners- but today, I'm forgiving the glitches, run-around rhetoric, political hogwash as well as general hotwash... and just let me add, getting honked when I'm too slow on the jump at a green light!  All's forgiven this high speed day! (Now I just have to figure out how to reconfigure my email...!)

Callie's Breasts

Callie’s breasts didn’t explode onto the scene until she became a sophmore in college. Not that she missed them. Her older sister, an athlete, hated her boobs and kept them mashed to her  muscled chest by wearing sports bras two sizes too small.  Callie’s younger sister loved boobs.  She’d started in a training bra at age nine. Everyone, including Callie, knew there wasn’t a thing inside that tiny bra but wishful thinking. She’d teased her sister about it but only until she caught her doing a serious Britanny Spears impersonation in front of the mirror. By age fourteen, her sister had graduated from training bras into a 34C cup and was training for an American Idol audition.

Callie never obsessed about her breasts. She understood that whatever boob destiny her genes provided her she’d live with it. Two girls in her high school had their breasts enlarged, at much expense and with much talked about agony, and Callie could not comprehend their reasoning. Or lack there of, as she finally concluded.

Still, more than anything in the world, Callie wanted to be an opera singer.  And, as a realist and a pragmatist, she knew that for anyone dreaming of life on the stage, possession of nice, noticeable boobs was essential. Only her diary knew about her really small, rather inconsequential worry, for she played her doubt close to the vest- no pun intended. And, as a true pragmatist, Callie gave blessed thanks for a pretty voice, a serious mental attitude and a devout motivation to that voice since the hefty boobs stayed well out of the picture.

Callie began voice lessons at six years old with the woman who led the church choir. She could mimic Mrs. Wilford’s mournful, quavering notes long before she even knew what a vibrato actually was. Callie mimicked everything with her versatile voice, bird songs, country western twangs, operatic scales and, just to torment her younger sister, Brittany Spears. Mrs. Wilford dropped her like a hot rock when at fourteen, Callie developed the loveliest vibrato in the entire choir. For two years, she studied with Mr. Devon, who played a badly tuned piano and sang in the same key. Senior year she met Greta. Greta was an exchange student from Germany and she had a perfect ear, a perfect vibrato, perfect tone and of course, perfect breasts. Thank god, Greta also had a perfectly congenial personality. When she heard Callie’s voice behind her that first day in choir, her head whipped around and she insisted Callie join her for voice lessons twice a week in the city. Callie got one job and then another to pay for lessons with Greta and Alonzo Gravetti, an Italian trained tenor. Callie’s concern over breasts vanished behind the wonder, the miraculous experience of training with Alonzo. By graduation Callie had a scholarship for the university music department.  Alonzo Gravetti took Greta’s beautiful voice, and perfect boobs, off to Italy.

Callie’s voice might have been the wonder of two counties back home but in the university music department, it was as average and unspectacular as her flat chest. Not one to despair, Callie looked elsewhere for fulfillment and entertainment. A boy with purple hair in freshman English talked her into auditioning for a play, even helped her find an audition piece. The play was an Italian farce and Callie’s operatic voice, hammed to the max, got her a small part. Callie’d found a life, her true life, on the stage at last. She discovered that acting came as naturally as the mimicking she’d done growing up. She transferred to the theater department and continued to get small, comedic roles where her voice played almost as big a part as her body.

 Then the miracle happened. Fall semester sophomore year, Callie’s boobs burst onto the scene. People started complimenting her on more than her voice. She’d become the sudden and proud owner of perfectly beautiful breasts and no one hesitated to tell her so.  She was cast as the ingenue in a Moliere play, another period farce, and the costumer nearly swooned over creating the perfect whale bone corset to display Callie’s perfectly presentable breasts.

Callie’s breasts played front and center the entire show and, being a realist and a pragmatist, Callie made the most of them. The audience sat on the edge of their seats, entranced, as the breasts strained and heaved in exaggerated desperation when the ingenue swooned in her lover’s arms. Men sweat and women held their breaths as the breasts bulged to the point of bursting above the corset when the ingenue arched herself back over the balcony to avoid the lecherous villain. Callie’s breasts played their part to perfection. They might of busted loose a dozen times but always stayed coquettishly confined.

Needless to say, Callie’s breasts stole the show. And next audition, she got a bigger and better part playing the audacious, free spirited heroine wanted by dozens of  men.

Lovin' the phobias

I do not suffer from Phobophobia -fear of phobias.  I like my phobias.  More emphatically, I LOVE my phobias. I carry them with me everywhere like a chia pet or an invisible friend who I know will never desert me. (Monophobia- fear of being alone.) I can count on them to make themselves known in times of need. This in turn allows me to adjust any of the flapping straps or unraveling threads that hold me together. (Which is the opposite of Merinthophobia- fear of being bound or tied up.)

I have no fear of sun, Heliophobia, named after Helios, the Greek god of the sun. (Although I will admit to an ambiguous relationship with Theophobia- fear of gods or religion). So when we finally blink and it is truly summer, I'll enjoy chucking these phobias that have, this endless winter, given me Phantomophobia-fear of being haunted...

Fear of rain or of being rained on- Ombrophobia

Fear of clouds- Nephophobia

Fear of wet socks- Pedisquishaphobia

Fear of liquid  passing through membranes- Osmosisaphobia

Fear of flying windshield wipers- Wapflapaphobia

Fear of waves or wave like motions- Kymophobia

Fear of brain freeze- Icedcerebralphobia

Fear of droplets on eyeglasses- Refractaphobia

Fear of hydroplaning- Skidabunchophobia

Fear of voids or empty spaces in the head- Cretinophobia

Fear of wind; blowing, bustling or breaking- Riponelooseaphobia

And last but not least, I'm 'afraid'… fear of gaining weight- Pocrescophobia and fear of more than one chin -Geniophobia!

good reads

I love The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series so much, I think I'll capitalize on it's fame and success and write a similiar series. The first book would be titled "The Blonde with the Cannibus Earring". The second, "The Blonde who Played with Twist Ties" and the third, "The Blonde who Kicked the Family Jewels".  I'm having trouble deciding if the setting should be modern or futuristic. As far as character and plot goes, maybe kindergartners fighting an Orwellian school structure and corporate corruption!! What do you all think?

May haiku

Starting to get the hang of this 'getting your name out there" stuff. It's kinda more complicated than I like. Not enough of an "escape into an alternate reality", I guess. This blogging doesn't pour out like fiction, and therefore feels like work. Find the fun in it right? So a May haiku (and remember I just came from helping kindergartener's!)
          
       Not enough sun
Flesh pale, blue veins outstanding
   Like cold winter sleet

Welcome!

I'm new on the web as Pam B. Morris, herself.  Let's have fun!

Writing Everyday

"Write everyday.  It's the best way to treat your neuroses."
                               --Paul Raymond Martin