Flabby Brain

I’ve been scanning more photos, and when my 7-year-old daughter dug these out of a box buried in a closet at my parents’ house, I flipped out.

That’s me in the center, dressed as the camel. I was not quite four years old, and it was my pre-school’s Christmas pageant.

I *loved* that camel costume. I mean LOVED it. Of all the costumes my extraordinarily talented mother ever made, this one is my all-time favorite.

Mom put newspaper in the camel body to stiffen it and yardsticks in the back legs, and would you believe that when I walked those back legs would walk with me.

For real. It was awesome. I really feel that I cannot overstate the awesomeness of this camel costume.

Other kids tried to climb on the camel back. I wanted to carry them around. That didn’t work so well. I guess the costume would have been awesomer if I could have done that.

But still, seriously awesome.

Look at the Christmas joy on my little face as I sing a carol. The next year I was the Virgin Mary, and I was bummed out because I wanted to be a camel again.

I didn’t need Christmas as an excuse to break out the camel costume. I wore it at my fourth birthday party.

The little girl in the background is Heather. She was five years old, and she was the daughter of my aunt’s then-boyfriend. Heather didn’t like me. Probably her dislike was not really of me but rather of her dad dragging her to his girlfriend’s niece’s birthday party. That’s probably the reason she was mean to me.

But maybe she was just jealous because she wasn’t a camel.

My parents recently celebrated their 40th anniversary. In anticipation of their upcoming party I am scanning many old family photos for a slideshow.

I had to share this series because it cracked me up so much.

Picture this: Christmas, 1971, Austin, Texas. Newlyweds invite their parents over to open Christmas presents in the small, white, frame house they’ve dubbed “the honeymoon cottage.” The young husband is a technology geek, and this year he has some money to spend. He’s going to get his parents something nice.

“Oooh!” says his mother. “What can this be?!” Dad silently and absent-mindedly tears off the wrapping paper, not pausing to fold it carefully so that it can be re-used for future gifts. Off-camera the young daughter-in-law shakes her head sadly.

They open the box.

“What the hell is this thing?” Dad asks. Mom is bewildered and disappointed. The box had been big enough to contain a porta-crib. So much for the grandchild announcement. Three months of marriage already, and nothing.

“Look, Dad,” their son points, “it’s a stereo.” Dad puts his hands on his hips and harrumphs. The son continues, “You know — like a gramophone, but it has two speakers. See, the sound is split onto two separate tracks and each speaker plays a different track, which gives you a three-dimensional audio experience…” he trails off.

“See, Dad, it explains about the equalizer right here on page 32A of the manual…”

“Hmph,” says Dad, as he hitches up his trousers, “well…thank you, kids.” Mutters…”What the hell am I going to do with this thing?”

And 39 years later the son gets an iPod touch for Christmas from his own kids. Which he doesn’t use.

The struggle continues.

The End

We went to the bank today and noticed that the vintage items store in the same parking lot was having a sidewalk sale. Sidewalk sales being irresistible, we moseyed on over there.

That’s when we happened upon this beauty:

It’s perfectly suited for a future refinishing project, preferably something with red Krylon that will end up looking like this:

Or turquoise Krylon. I’m more excited about turquoise:

No gold handles, though. With turquoise one should stick to nickel.

But Lynn, you’re asking, why on earth did you buy this mid-century monstrosity when it is not at all in your style?

This is why:

It’s a stereo, a completely mint, working stereo. Not only does it have a turntable (up to 10 discs automatically!), but it has a radio receiver. And the speakers put out a rich, deep sound, sound that is better than the stereos we had been casually shopping in stores and certainly better than the little stereo we already had.

But wait. It gets better. Check this out:

Do you see the input selections? AM. FM. FM AFC. TAPE. ST PH.

Wait, back up. Tape?

We checked out the back of the console, and sure enough, there are inputs for a tape player. Not only that, but there are outputs to a tape player so as to record the playing record.

Who cares about tapes? you ask. I don’t. What I care about are tape inputs. Because guess what else I can plug into those inputs?

That, friends, is my iPhone. I am playing it through a stereo manufactured right around 1970. How freaking cool is that?

Not only can I input any iPod, I can output records to my laptop from the tape outputs. This means I can rip records to .mp3 in style.

We’ve placed the “new” stereo where we had the table/shoe rack that served as a constant attraction to this family member:

Here’s hoping it does not attract sharp puppy teeth as much as our shoes have.

Hope y’all are having a happy Saturday!

It’s Memorial Day, which means we fly our flag on the front porch and The Big M has the day off work. This year our children’s school district made Memorial Day a makeup day for a snow day we had in the winter. Which means…

free babysitting!

We chose to celebrate with wine and steak. Our 15th wedding anniversary is coming up next month, and we picked today to break out the bottle of wine that we purchased on our trip to Italy for our 10th.

If you’re a fan of the show Modern Family, you may have caught the scene last week where Claire and Mitchell find themselves trapped in a tree house and decide to kill the time waiting for help to arrive by drinking a bottle of wine. Claire does not have a corkscrew, so she opens the bottle with a shoe.

Of course we had to try this. The crazy part is that it worked! Here’s a YouTube of how it goes:

The downside to this method is that it stirs up all the sediment. When you’ve had a bottle of red wine sitting on a wine rack for five years, this is not the best plan for opening it. But it was so hilarious we didn’t care.

Next I cooked the steaks. We decided that the next time I make steak I need to take photos of every step and post them because I have finally learned how to make the perfect steak. The key is a cast-iron pan on the grill and a lot of prep time. The actual cooking took about 10 minutes.

Here’s how mine looked:

It was melt-in-your-mouth goodness. It’s been a delicious day.

We saw this sign yesterday morning and had to stop to take a photo with my phone. It’s a little hard to see — it says, “God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.” I was going to post it as just plain funny, but now, in light of last night’s news, it seems oddly prescient.

Osama bin Laden is dead. Praise be to God.

It was a Weltschmerz — which we used to call “Welshrats” — the world sadness that rises into the soul like a gas and spreads despair so that you probe for the offending event and can find none.  –John Steinbeck, East of Eden

I’ve got the Welsh rats nipping at my heels today, and I can’t pinpoint why. The sun is shining, the house is clean, the kids are behaving, and I don’t have to go grocery shopping. At least not urgently. We can do without milk for a day.

But something is gnawing. I think the trigger may have been a conversation I had today in which I learned that a second young dad at our school has died in the last three weeks. The first had a pulmonary edema and died with no warning, and the second, lymphoma that was so advanced he made it only six weeks beyond his initial diagnosis. Between them, they left behind five children, the oldest in fourth grade and the youngest an infant.

I’ve been praying like crazy for the brother of my friend Julie. He’s a young dad, too, and he was just diagnosed with melanoma that has metastasized.

Lord, please bless Paul and his wife and their little son. Please help him as he goes through chemo. Please heal him. Please bless his family and ease their worry.

It is heartbreaking. The young dad for my own little family is out in west Texas today, and I worry for him, too. Lord, that he may be safe on the road. That he may be healthy. That we will grow old together and know the joy of our grandchildren.

I’ve wrapped myself in threads of illusion, a woven blindfold that blocks out the terrifying reality that almost nothing is within my control. When a thread slips, that’s when the world sadness rises into my soul like a gas. I think keeping out the despair is perhaps under my control.

To that end, I’m going to go watch Home Alone 2 with my kids. They think it’s hilarious, and I’m grateful to be able to cuddle up with them on the couch.

…..

P. S. Ten minutes in, and I feel better. I love my goofy goobers.