Slice of Life: More Absentmindedness, Frozen Yogurt, Funny Dreams, Creativity and Insomnia

September 17, 2017

Lately, I've been feeling very energized to pursue various creative goals, puppetry-related things in part but also some other projects. All of this creative energy is having an interesting effect on me, including more absentmindedness ... which was previously mentioned in a recent post of mine.

In one recent incident, Dad and I were headed to church for our second choir rehearsal of the year. Dad has joined as a baritone who might shift between bass and tenor, and I'm in the soprano section. As Dad is driving us, I began to share with him some of the crazy puppetry ideas buzzing around in my head. I am not the only absent-minded one in the family, and I ended up distracting him. Dad drove past one of our usual turns, and the driving mistake probably added about 10 minutes to our trip. We turned up late, not for choir rehearsal, but for the prayer meeting that precedes it.

Then, just last night, Dad and I went out together again to pick up some yummy cold stuff from a frozen dessert place near us. (I guess they call themselves a frozen dessert place, since they sell soft serve ice cream and frozen yogurt, gelato, sorbet, etc.) This place is part of a little strip mall, and, most always, when we go to this strip mall, we are headed to the grocery store. I was in mental writing mode, and my feet, once out of the car, were programmed by automatic pilot to go to the grocery store entrance. Dad said something to me before I actually went through the door, and then I turned around and saw some pumpkins on display just outside the entrance. I started patting the pumpkins affectionately, because they reminded me of my A. Morris Pumpkin puppet character. Then, I followed Dad to get our frozen yogurt, and I don't think I ever explained to him why I was patting the pumpkins with such affection.

Me with A. Morris Pumpkin

Mom didn't accompany us but put in an order for "something vanilla or something citrus-y and fruity." So, I fixed her up a Creamsicle bowl with vanilla ice cream and orange sorbet, then topped it with some little fruity candies called mango stars and strawberry boba, raspberries and blueberries. I like Creamsicle too, but I chose different flavors for myself, Nutella gelato and caramel macchiato frozen yogurt. With all of that chocolatey and mocha stuff, I did give myself some fruit too, some Bing cherries and blackberries.

These recent absent-minded incidents are not as embarrassing as something that happened one or two years ago. When I was working for the newspaper, I would walk down from my office to the 7Eleven for my lunch and pick up a sandwich and some fruit and a drink. I was such a frequent customer there that I had a pretty friendly relationship with one of the workers, and he bought my first mystery book, Action Men with Silly Putty, for Kindle. Still, it wasn't the only business in the area I frequented. There were one or two other businesses nearby where I might go for lunch.

One day, I was in full blast mental creative writing mode during my lunch break, and I walked down to the 7Eleven on automatic pilot. I had really intended to go some place else. As soon as I walked in the door, I paused and thought, "Why am I here?" My friend there saw me pausing and probably looking confused, so then, I made my situation worse, and, after making eye contact with him, told him that I didn't mean to come here! This, I thought afterwards, was bordering on rudeness. How can you tell a business, especially one where you're on good relations, that you didn't mean to come there or buy anything? So then, of course, I felt obliged to buy my lunch there.

When I went to the counter to pay for it, he asked, laughing a little bit, "So, you didn't mean to come here?" I tried to explain, and, with his next words, he made me feel much, much better. "You," he said, "are an artist. Your mind can be in two places at the same time."

The other effect this recent burst of creative energy has had on me is getting my brain wired up late at night. I've been trying to get enough sleep, but it's a struggle. Ideas want to come to mind after I'm already in bed and trying to sleep, even when I know I'm exhausted. It doesn't feel like an entirely negative thing. I like myself like this rather than the me who is too overwhelmed with other concerns in life to be creative. I hope I can get a balance between working hard at my creative goals and also sleeping well at night.

I suppose I'm not alone. I mentioned in a recent post that I've read Jim Henson's biography. As I was reading it, I kept feeling like this man was a lot like me. It's not just the puppetry connection that I felt, and it wasn't thinking that our creative ideas or particular gifts were all that similar. It was the description of his basic temperament and personality that sounded a lot like me. He was described as quiet, calm, not easily ruffled, all words or phrases that friends and family use to describe me. There was even an interesting scenario in the book where he was in a position where he needed to fire someone from The Muppet Show, but when the person was sent to his office, Henson just couldn't do it and ended up giving him a bear hug. I thought, "Yeah, I can see myself doing something similar." I would have a hard time firing someone too. Another thing that I learned from the book is that his creative drive sometimes robbed him of sleep too.

By the way, at the time that I was reading the book, I kept thinking Henson must be, according to the Myers Brigg system, an INFP like I am, and later found a personality site that agreed with my assessment. Rather than explaining the significance of the four letters for those who might not know the system, I'll just include this little summary of the type from Manual: A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Brigg Type by Myers & McCaulley.

Full of enthusiasms and loyalties, but seldom talk of these until they know you well. Care about learning, ideas, language, and independent projects of their own. Tend to undertake too much, then somehow get it done. Friendly, but often too absorbed in what they are doing to be sociable. Little concerned with possessions or physical surroundings.

I have some insomniac tendencies. I've been listening to the Book of Psalms on audio via YouTube to help me sleep, and last night, the last Psalm I remember hearing was 39, so, obviously, I didn't just pop right off to sleep. On Saturday, I know I napped, which is good, and I was dreaming of Cavalier King Charles spaniels. I think I know what inspired it. I had been watching a movie recently where a dog of that breed made an appearance, and I was admiring how pretty it was. It amazes me, and also strikes me funny, how often I dream of animals. It makes me think I'm more of an animal enthusiast than I claim to be. I even had a "celebrity" animal visit me in my dreams recently. I follow a clever, trained bunny called Bini on YouTube. In one of my recent dreams, I met Bini the Bunny, and I was so happy.

I suppose I should tell you about my weird Ambien experience. I find it funny now. In fact, as early as the following day, it became a source of laughs. Some years back, I went with some friends to a camp called Camp of the Woods. We did some work projects there such as boarding up cabins for the winter season, or, as I remember one year, folding up a lot of fitted sheets, and, in return, we got to use the camp facilities in our down time.

I was taking Ambien for sleep at the time and was stupid enough to think that I could sit up casually drinking my chamomile tea in the lounge with my friends after taking my pill. I would go to bed after I drank my tea. I started to get double vision and announced, just as casually, that everyone had two heads and that it was probably due to the Ambien. I got up to go to bed, and my roommate for the weekend and one of our other friends got worried about me and led me back to my room. I had another weird visual phenomenon, where the pattern on the hallway carpet seemed to be floating at my waist level. They told me not to look at it, but that seemed hard to avoid. The next day, one of my friends was teasing me that the moose head in the lounge must have been talking to me that night, and I told all my friends that they all looked much, much better that morning.

I don't mean to discourage anyone from taking Ambien temporarily if it's needed. I think it did me more good than harm, and I could have avoided the visual effects if I had gone to bed promptly after taking it. Ah well. Fiction writers wonder about strange medical "what if" situations, and I have been known to ask my doctor and nurse friends bizarre questions about what would happen to somebody in different medical situations, including "What would happen if someone was shot with a tranquilizer dart?" In part, this experience of mine gave me some inspiration for that scenario in the first Action Men.

What about you? Are you a creative type? Do ideas keep you awake at night sometimes?

Wouldn't it be nice if we could work out our ideas during sleep in our dreams and had the technology to note it all down without the need of waking up?

Slice of Life: Personality Quirks, Strengths and Weaknesses, Collecting Old Bottles

Labor Day, Monday, September 4, 2017,

Mom made a creamy turkey rice soup for our lunch, and I didn't do as much sous-chef-ing, or as Dad would put it, Sue-chefing, as sometimes, but I did help fetch and carry ingredients. Mom sent me to the downstairs pantry and fridge for some white wine, chicken broth and kosher salt. I came up with these, and she noticed we had a lot of baking ingredients to be stowed back in the pantry. "I should have sent you down with these first," she said. Mom likes to double up on tasks.

I did store away the baking ingredients, but I tried to explain to Mom that telling myself to go downstairs with one thing and come back upstairs with another thing, most likely, would not work. It sounds simple enough, but as many times as I've tried this before, nearly always, I manage to do the first thing and forget the other. It's when I get to the top of the stairs that I remember, "Oh, right, I was going to get such and such," and then head back downstairs. It's not selective stupidity, although it certainly sounds like it. I know it's just a personality quirk, that, as a writer and a creative type, my mind is always filled with more things than the practical thing that's right at hand. I won't go into details about Myers Brigg personality types, but if you are an INFP, and you know it, you can probably understand. (The same goes for INTP and some other types.)

Absent-mindedness doesn't really mean the mind isn't working. The mind is actually working very hard ... on more than one thing. I comfort myself that I have something in common with a lot of brilliant people who gained reputations as being absent-minded -- great inventors, great writers ... There's a reason why there is such an expression as the "absent-minded professor."

Even so, "absent-minded" seems like a negative trait, while creativity is considered a positive one. I've been thinking that a person's strengths and weaknesses are often very closely related. In fact, sometimes the same trait can be described in both negative and positive terms. For example, a person could be called stubborn, but the positive counterpart to "stubborn" is determined or persistent.

Well, I've described my character Jack Donegal, of Jack Donegal Mysteries, as absent-minded, and now you know I do not have to look far for inspiration.

In the afternoon, as I was putting away Saturday's picnic things, my lunch box and FreezPak, and so forth, I decided to save my pretty Blossom Water bottle. I am sometimes tempted to save pretty bottles, thinking they can be recycled as vases. This one, I think, with some flowers in it, would make a nice centerpiece for a girls' tea party.

I put it on my shelf of knick knacks where I already have a couple of other bottles saved, an Arizona green tea bottle and a unique bottle for some Japanese strawberry soda.

The handsome Air Force man in the central frame is my nephew Bill.

The strawberry soda bottle is a unique one. It holds a glass marble that drops down from the top when you open the soda and gets trapped in a narrow section of the bottle's neck. It can roll back and forth in a narrow little space but can not drop down any further. I don't think it serves any purpose other than to be novel. I bought it at a little Asian specialty store that sold bubble teas and Japanese snack foods. I suppose it's pretty useless as a vase, but it is interesting. Perhaps, I won't save it forever, but it's on my shelf for now.

I've saved bottles off and on, but, at one point, I felt I had a few too many of these and tossed a bunch. I did have some "limited edition" old-fashioned Coke bottles, and I think these may be among the ones that got discarded. I wish I had saved them now. For years, I held on to a bottle for China Cola, supposedly made from Chinese herbs, from a pizza place near my college. I eventually tossed it. I haven't come across the beverage since, but I did find an image online.

A few years ago, my parents and I stopped at a Cracker Barrel while on vacation, and we picked up some "retro" sodas at the shop there. I persuaded them to keep the bottles and put them on display in the den where we already had some antique bottles my cousin Kevin had given them.

The blue bottle is an antique and has "Merson's Drug Company" molded onto it.

I've been raised by a woman who is not a saver and has more of a Clean Sweep philosophy. Collections can get out of hand. Thank God for Pinterest where you can virtually collect all sorts of things without creating clutter.

Slice of Life: Book Discussion, Dad Puns, Funny Word Origins, Silly Songs, "Cool" Ukulele Players

This is an excerpt from my journal a few days back, but the lunch discussion was so interesting, I thought I would add it.

August 28, 2017

We had a simple hot dog lunch and some interesting discussion. I talked to Mom and Dad about Can You Forgive Her?, and I said it wouldn't suit every reader's tastes as the writer used quite a few lines to describe the green drawing room. “It wouldn't be everyone's tastes in movies either,” said Mom. It reminded me of my brother Bruce who can't appreciate some of the historical period movies I like. “All the scenes take place in one room!” he's said. I guess I still had “drawing room” on the brain, so I said, “With some of the period movies I like, they think everyone just sits in the drawing room.”

 Dad couldn't resist punning. “Yes,” he said, “and they don't even do any drawing!”

 I got into a silly mood as I took a hot dog from the platter and said, “Come along, little dogie.” We then had a discussion as to why cowboys said “Come along, little dogie” to cattle. From the sound of the word, it seems more appropriate for dogs. Mom thought it might have been influenced by a Spanish word. I looked it up later and had difficulty finding the information I wanted. I finally found a definition of dogie with a possible word origin. The Spanish influence was one theory, that it was taken from the Spanish word for lariat, dogal. Dogies, apparently, are orphaned calves. Ramon F. Adams, a writer on western Americana, had one explanation for it, that orphaned calves, weaned too soon, got swollen bellies and were called “dough-guts” which then became “dogies.”

 “Come along, little dogies,” was not the end of my silliness. For some reason, I began to sing, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” I tell people sometimes that my brain is a random jukebox. When I'm in a happy mood, my random jukebox can make some odd selections of very silly and stupid songs. This is one example. When I was a kid, my oldest brother Tim had an album of K-Tel novelty songs from the '60s and '70s called Looney Tunes. Tiny Tim's “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” was on it. My brother's record seemed like a kiddie album to me, and I played it plenty of times, but why this particular song popped into my head at lunch time, when I hadn't heard it recently, I can not explain.

 This brought up Tiny Tim and his falsetto voice in discussion, and we talked about what an odd character he was. The discussion then shifted to ukulele players, and I made the case that ukulele players are not considered as nerdy as they may have been at one time. I listed several “cool” modern ukulele players: Youtuber Dodie Clark, Grace Vanderwaal who won America's Got Talent and Iz Kamakowiwo'ole who had a hit with his version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World.” This then made me think of Disney's Moana, and in Saturday's quick walk-through of the Disney store, the “Lava Song” (which has a ukulele accompaniment) had been playing. Somehow, magically, and not unhappily, the “Lava Song” replaced “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” as the song stuck in my head.

© 2017 Susan Joy Clark

Action Men and the Great Zarelda (Part 11)

Continued from Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 ...

Recap from previous episodes ...

 Andy thought he could act as Zarelda's magician's assistant and investigate into her side activities at the same time. Just as he discovers something possibly incriminating, he goes through with their first show. At the finale of the show, just after the vanishing trick, he remembers smells something chemical before losing consciousness. Andy wakes up locked in Zarelda the magician's sword trick box in the theater's storage room.

Part 11 

I don't know if I was under the spell of Stockholm Syndrome or not, but I felt almost relieved when Zarelda came into view. I could hear her shoes clicking against the floor as she approached. She sat down on something – whether on a box or a chair, I'm not sure – and situated herself near my face. She hovered her face over mine so that she could look me in the eye. Her hair draped down and tickled my neck. “Hello darling.” She slid her hand down my cheek and jaw in a way that was surprisingly tender, considering the fact that I was her prisoner.

I wish I could say that I was totally unaffected by her manipulative ways, but my mind, or maybe my body, was doing strange things to me. It's true that I didn't have the same feelings for her that I had when I first spotted her, a beautiful woman on a plane. The fact that she had kidnapped me and might possibly kill me had put a damper on things. Even so, my hormones had a mind of their own.

“So,” I said, trying to keep my voice from squeaking. “I suppose this is just practice for one of your tricks?”

“Tricks? You know all about tricks, don't you, darling? I thought I could trust you, but you're full of tricks, aren't you?”

Her hand still rested on my cheek, and her fingertips caressed me. What a way to confuse a guy.

“I found your phone,” she said. “I know you know my secret. I know you've been telling your friend, Jack, about my little … side business.”

Was Jack in trouble now?, I wondered. “It's okay,” I told her. “You don't need to worry. I won't get you in trouble. I'll be a good boy. I'll do anything you like. I'd do anything for you. I'll travel with you to Brazil and hide a whole pandemonium of parrots in my gaucho pants …” I paused. A gaucho was a Latin cowboy, I knew, but now that I'd blurted out that statement, I wasn't one hundred percent certain that gaucho pants were menswear. “... I mean in my chaps. We could be the Bonnie and Clyde of animal smuggling.”

She smiled at me in a peculiar way, perhaps derisively. “No, darling. You are a good boy. I know you, Andrew.” She slid her fingers through my hair. “You are someone who likes to obey the rules. I like to break them.”

She stood up suddenly and walked away. When she returned, she hovered an object over my face, a sword, the kind I supposed were used with the sword box in which I was trapped. “Beautiful bit of workmanship, isn't it?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered, trying to keep my voice steady. The grip of the sword was a spiral twist of reddish cherry wood. The pommel at the end was a rose worked in gold. The guard similarly was a rose worked in gold with a gold leaf protruding from either side. I took all this in, while wondering what this unpredictable woman planned to do with this dangerous item.

She touched my face again, her hands on either cheek, and her hands felt cold and wet. It took me a moment to realize that she was applying shaving cream to my face, which she then proceeded to work into a lather.

“What? What are you doing?” I asked. “Do you always give your victims a nice shave before you … before you kill them?”

Zarelda didn't directly answer my question. She continued to massage my face with lather. This had to be, by far, my most bizarre experience “This sword was a gift, as were the others, from my father, when I first began my career as a magician.”

She held my head and face, pulling my skin taut, with her left hand, while she touched the sword edge to my face with the right hand. She was shaving me with the rose-hilted sword. “You see. It gives a nice close shave,” she said. “This is the real McCoy. You, my friend, might be in the toy business, but this is not a toy. It's not merely a prop either. People often wonder if I use real swords in my act.” She slid the sword's edge along my cheek, my jaw and throat. I didn't answer her. I was afraid to even twitch. At any moment, I wasn't sure if she was going to groom me or slit my nicely available throat. I suddenly realized I was bracing my hands against the top of the box.

Just as suddenly, she was done, and to my great relief, she set the sword down somewhere beyond my line of vision. I started to breathe a little harder, feeling my chest rise and fall, as if I'd forgotten to breathe in the past minute or two.

Zarelda leaned over me once again and, inexplicably and confusingly, put her lips to mine and gave me a rather long kiss. A sensation that was part thrill, part chill traveled down my body. It didn't feel so terrible … stupid hormones … traitors! “Listen carefully, Andrew,” she said. “I will do anything, anything to avoid going to jail. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” I said. My voice came out weak and breathy. Under my current circumstances, I felt practically emasculated. I suppose she knew it and liked it that way.

“Good.” She stood up and lifted the sword once more in a way I didn't like, hefting it high in the air, point down. She stepped away from my face and moved further down the length of the box and of me. With sudden force, she plunged the sword down through the top of the box and between my open legs. I wasn't hurt. I wasn't even nicked, but the sword came within what seemed like centimeters to a very sensitive bit of my anatomy.

From my current perspective, I couldn't really tell how close the sword was to touching me, but I sensed it, and it caused me to hold my body in a kind of permanent flinch. After just a few seconds of this, I felt searing pain through my sore back. My eyes teared up from the pain, and I couldn't even wipe away the evidence of my weakness. My agony was beginning to feel psychological in nature.

She walked away then, leaving me alone, the sword still in its place. I heard rattling, and I realized after a while that it was my body trembling inside the box.

“Dangle Schnot and Boogers,” I muttered under my breath, and then, quoting Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, “You wicked old witch.” After that, I might have said something that rhymes with witch. Where was Dorothy with her bucket of water to throw on this evil creature?

I thought of The Princess Bride's Wesley in the pain machine, after his torturer calmly asks, “So, tell me how do you feel, and remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.” All Wesley could do at that moment was whine and cry, to which his torturer replies with a deadpan, “Interesting.” Feeling some sort of kinship with Wesley almost lightened my mood … almost that is.

I told myself to calm down. This emotion wasn't helping my case at all. Zarelda was out of sight. I could remove my shirt altogether – not an easy task in this confined space – yes, pull off the dangle-schnotted zipper pull, remove a button from the shirt cuff, attach the zipper pull there with the remaining thread, poke the sleeve out through a sword hole and pick the lock, with my fingers reaching out through a sword hole below it. Yes, there was a possibility that Zarelda would return to find me semi-naked, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Anything was better than passively waiting in my prison for whatever came next.

To be continued ...  

© 2017 Susan Joy Clark

Silliness and Sophistication: A Trip to Grounds for Sculpture

Here I am trying to get the attention of this highly preoccupied gentleman at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey.

"Pardon me, Sir. Do you have any Grey Poupon?"

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I traveled with three friends to Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. We actually made a weekend of it, spending Saturday in Seaside Heights, Sunday afternoon at Grounds for Sculpture and Monday at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden.

We had a little bit of difficulty at the outset. My friend Iris, our trip organizer, bought our four tickets online.  We traveled to the grounds in two separate vehicles. Iris and I were in one with all four of the tickets. Adrienne and Jeannie, who arrived first, discovered that they needed tickets to enter the gates at the parking lot, so they purchased two more tickets to enter the gates. Now, Iris had two extra tickets she had purchased. She read that the tickets were nonrefundable, but I had a feeling that, if they understood our blunder, they would make an exception in our case. Thankfully, they did, and the extra tickets were refunded. If you plan to visit with several others in different vehicles, don't make the mistake we did. 

At Grounds for Sculpture, our first stop was lunch at the Van Gogh Cafe. My friend Adrienne thought I would be enthused about this particular eating option, and she was right. I'm a fan of Van Gogh, and reading the biographical novel "Lust for Life" by Irving Stone, a few years ago, helped me appreciate him more. On a previous visit to Grounds for Sculpture, I had eaten at the Rat's Restaurant -- which seems like the last thing you should name a restaurant -- and that was special to me too for an entirely different reason. It's all themed around "The Wind in the Willows," one of my favorite books from childhood.

Adrienne and I enjoy our lunch in the Van Gogh Cafe.

At the cafe, I felt like I was inside Van Gogh's "Terrace at Night." On either side of the seating area are tiled roof lines. A yellow awning reminiscent of the painting overshadowed the cafeteria line area. The ceiling made one thing of "Starry Night."

I also had my favorite meal of the weekend here, a baguette sandwich with brie cheese, ham and Dijon mustard. This was particularly satisfying after trying a similar panini style sandwich at a different restaurant earlier. I had been a little disappointed since the mustard was skimpy and the brie, my favorite cheese, had been replaced by Swiss, my least favorite cheese.

My friends Iris and Jeannie both tried the bruschetta, and Jeannie was particularly enthusiastic about it.

Below Adrienne and I pose with one of the sculptures that was displayed indoors on the grounds. Adrienne thought we should mimic the figures' poses (and initiated a lot more silliness throughout the day.) This is a Boaz Vaadia sculpture, made up of layers of rock cut to shape. My favorite sculptures were more realistic figures, many based on famous paintings, but when you consider this unique method, this more simplistic figure is quite impressive.

Below is one of the first outdoor sculptures we saw.

Do you see a deep meaning in this odd piece of sculpture? Who knows what esoteric thing was in the mind of the sculptor. I like the cute and whimsical sheep and shepherd, but this loopy thing with a human head looks like some sort of cryptozoological creature. I'd like the sculpture much better without the Mt. Rushmore/snake hybrid, but the loops did give us fun frames for our faces.

This man in the yellow was just too rude. I mean, honestly, I know he has his girl there with him, but couldn't he pass the bread? Or say "Hello?"

This was outside one of the eating areas, the Peacock Cafe, at Grounds for Sculpture. Even the lacy green metal chairs look like pieces of sculpture. This sculpture of the dining couple makes me think of an Impressionist painting, but I can't place which. Many of the sculptures on the grounds are 3D models of famous paintings.

In this same area, a little ways from here, another sculpture of a nude woman was sprawled at our feet. I spoke to her, saying, "Are you in any distress? Do we need to administer CPR?" As I looked up, I saw another visitor to the grounds smiling comically at my comment. I don't always let out my humorous side so spontaneously, but it's nice to be with friends who know you well and still like you ... and who aren't afraid of some silliness themselves.

Adrienne poses like a fountain at a fountain in the Water Garden. We visited the grounds on an extremely hot day, so I was grateful for this cooler area and wanted to jump into every fountain we saw. Some misters did help cool us down.

We admired this lady in the mist, and then we saw that she is a fountain too. It may not be obvious from the photo, but there is a trickle coming out beneath her. When we saw that, we giggled and passed on.

Adrienne and I are both fans of C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," so she told me I must dance with this dryad which may belong in Narnia. So, I did.

And she joined me.

Iris had a wonderful look of anguish while posing with Edvard Munch's "The Scream." You'll notice that he is concave. We were inside a small structure here, and his convex form was visible on the other side of the wall.

Many of my favorite areas were indoors in the main building, the Seward Johnson Center for the Arts. Here is another tribute to Van Gogh in a 3D reproduction of "Bedroom in Arles." It was so interesting to be inside this painting with its bright colors, thick outlines and slightly skewed shapes. I felt like Mary Poppins who had hopped into a chalk pavement picture. "Chalk pavement pictures? I ask you, and highly questionable outings of every other kind!"

Jeannie posed very prettily with the "Mona Lisa," and Adrienne posed sweetly with Mona Lisa's guard.

Don't they make an adorable couple? Mona Lisa had a guard on either side of her. The other looked rather serious, but this one had such a lively gleam n his eye.

I posed with "The Girl with the Pearl Earring."

I said "Oh, pardon me," when I walked into a room and saw this lady, a replica of Eduouard Manet's "Olympia." Jeannie tried to point out the flowers that her servant offered, but she didn't seem very interested.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day. The Water Garden, a few trees, a trellised walkway and an ice cream break at the Gazebo made the heat more bearable. Be prepared with cash at the Gazebo. They can't take credit or debit cards.

I'd recommend a visit to Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey if you are in the area.

"It's a Boont!" and Other Creative Gifting

I recently blogged about a letter I prepared for my niece to give to her at her wedding, a letter full of quotes on love. I also had a little fun with the gift I gave her, a Nordicware Bundt cake pan. I'm a big fan of cutesy bakeware, and when I'm browsing in the kitchen and cookware department of a store, these are the sorts of things that catch my eye.

Anyone who has seen the original "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" will remember the significance of Bundt cake in that movie. It's a movie I remember watching with my brothers and their families one Christmas, and even the men were laughing at this "chick flick." In the movie, when the parents of the groom meet the parents of the bride, there is some cultural clashing. The parents of the groom bring a Bundt cake, a novelty to Toula's family. When presented with the cake, Toula's mother goes through a variety of pronunciations before getting it right. "Boont. Bonk. Bunk," etc. Later, she notes that there's a hole in this cake, and when it is served, there are flowers in that hole in the center.

I printed out a photo from the movie with some humorous captions that I wrapped with the gift, instructing my niece to remember to put flowers in the center. I also wrapped with the pan another print-out that's both a tribute to the movie and practical, a recipe for Greek yogurt lemon Bundt cake from The Food Librarian. I also made note that this blogger has a collection of 29 other Bundt cake recipes.

It's fun to add these little touches, and it reminds me that some of my best memories were made with gifts where I spent less money but more time and thought. I know many crafters like to give hand-made gifts. I am an occasional crafter and have given hand-made gifts, but often, as a writer, I have had fun with words, either as the main gift or an addition to the gift.

When I was a college student, I often wrote short stories as gifts for friends or family for their birthdays. I'm beginning to think I need to revive this tradition. I also wrote poems in handmade cards to give on special occasions. These weren't usually Shakespearean style sonnets but light humorous ditties. One year, I made Valentines for several of my female friends. One girl's last name was Ballentine, so you can just imagine what sort of poetry fun I had with that.

 The best memory I have of giving anyone anything was in seventh grade. I took metal shop that year. It might surprise you that I took metal shop, but the elective courses were in cycles of three, a different class per semester. Whichever cycle I chose would have included one shop class and one home economics type class, either sewing or cooking. Seventh grade was the year most of my family received something I made in metal shop for Christmas. For my brother Dan, that year, I made a desk organizer with a letter file and a pencil can marked with a hammered initial D. It was the accompanying letter that created most of the fun with this memory, a letter supposedly from Santa.

In order for you to appreciate the content of this letter, it is necessary to give you some background. The previous summer, our family moved. It was not a big move, just a move from one town to a neighboring town, but it did require me to change school systems. My brother Dan, who was a college student at the time, and I spent much of the summer packing boxes for our move and, while we did, we listened to a mainstream rock radio station. I was always very conscious that our parents wouldn't want us listening to music with too many sex or drug references or other negativity. One of those days, packing boxes, I heard the song "Bang Your Head" by Quiet Riot for the first time. I thought it was the stupidest song imaginable.

Most people would agree it's not a deep song fraught with meaning, and, perhaps, that the lyrics are a bit strange. I don't know when "headbanger" or "headbanging" became terms, but I was unfamiliar with either at the time. I understood it quite literally as instruction to bang your head into something like a wall, which really would make it the stupidest song imaginable. I ran to find my college age brother and told him about the stupid song I'd heard. Dan, being the family clown, promptly came up with an impromptu song composition of his own, "Smash Your Face," and for the rest of that summer, there were many spontaneous performances of the "Smash Your Face" song.

Dan also had a habit at that time of sneaking up behind me and greeting me with a smack on the rear. I've noticed that men's signs of affection often resemble acts of violence ... chest bumps, fist bumps, arm punches, smacks ... My cousin's wife tells me that, growing up, she greeted her brothers with smacks to the belly.

So, that December in 1984, my "letter from Santa" to brother Dan went something like this, "Mrs.Claus, the reindeer and I had a conference and decided you deserve this ... " I then proceeded to weigh his good and bad deeds and listed the butt smacks and the singing of punk songs like "Smash Your Face" among his "bad behaviors."

When Dan read that letter, which he did aloud, he laughed until tears rolled down his face, and that is the best memory I have of giving anyone anything.

When a Fly is Harder to Kill Than Rasputin

This morning, I tried to kill a large fly that found itself in my bathroom, and he was harder to kill than Rasputin. Have you read about Rasputin and his manner of dying? I learned all about him a few years ago when I read the non-fiction book, "Nicholas and Alexandra" by Robert K. Massie. It seemed he had a goat-like stench and yet attracted women. How he managed this is a mystery to me, and so is his death.

Rasputin was a Russian mystic and an advisor to Alexandra, wife of Nicholas II, the last czar before the Russian Revolution. Alexandra felt he could heal her son, the young Tsarevich Alexei, from hemophilia. Rasputin was assassinated but not easily. Supposedly, he was given poisoned food, and when that didn't kill him, was shot in the back, after which he tried to counterattack. He was then chased and shot once more in the back and again in the head. He continued to live, so he was beaten with a truncheon and eventually drowned in the River Neva.

This giant fly sat in my bathroom sink. I thought it would be a simple thing to drown him. I ran water and, though the drain wasn't closed, enough water rose to submerge him. I did this again and again, letting the water rise, splashing it over him as he tried crawling out of his watery grave. Several times, he disappeared with the receding water under the metal cap over the drain, and I thought, "Good. He's going down." He didn't go down. He'd come back up with a lop-sided crawl like Lazarus emerging from the grave. To reference a favorite movie of mine, he was only mostly dead but not all dead, and there is a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.

At last, I gave up, because the exercise seemed to be futile. There was no hope unless I changed my method of execution. I could smack him with a hard object. (It was Miss Clark in the bathroom with the lead pipe. Well, probably a shoe would do.) Alternately, I could squash him in a bit of tissue. Both methods repulsed me. He was a large fly, and I was sure he would make a large squished mess. So, I turned off the bathroom light as if to say nighty night and went off in pursuit of breakfast.

A little while later I returned to, er, use the facilities, and the large black half-dead thing had painstakingly crawled out of the bowl of the sink and was now perched on the side ... the toilet side, all wriggling and wiggling. I knew then I had to finish the job. I would have to be bold and carry through with it if I was going to have any peace in the bathroom while using the aforementioned bathroom fixture

I went and got two Bounty brand paper napkins, the thickest, cushiest napkins I've ever seen. As I did, I said aloud, "Sorry Fly. Your doom is nigh." Then I laughed aloud at my unintentional rhyme. Bounty napkins are good, because, I guess, a large fly needs something extra absorbent? Actually, I was hoping that the thicker the towel the more I would be shielding myself from that repulsive squish. On first squish, Rasputin the fly, actually hopped out of my towel, still wriggling. On second squish, I got him ... I think.

I tossed the paper in the wastebasket and waited. I half expected to see him crawl out like Rasputin on the attack after the first shot, like Wesley and Princess Buttercup rising out of the lightning sand with one collective and exaggerated intake of air. If flies could talk -- and thank God they can't -- I imagine his labored speech would go like this, "You ... have  ... not ... defeated ... ME!" as he crawled out from the wastebasket. Perhaps, he still will.