DIY Zombies

I'm reading "Legends of the Chelsea Hotel" right now--a collection of tales and anecdotes about that most iconic of bohemian destinations, the one-of-a-kind Chelsea Hotel in New York. One of the first stories the author related is about ethnomusicologist/filmmaker and all-round wack-job, Harry Smith, and how old Harry made himself a zombie. The author of the book refers to this rather singular episode as 'fiction' in the introduction, but it seems, given Smith's apparent lifelong interest in all things occult, that there might be a teensy grain of truth here, at least where the attempt at a zombie is concerned. The zombie episode occurred fairly late in Smith's life, when, by all accounts, he was a brain-fried train-wreck lurching along in a drug-induced, hallucinatory fog. Not in right mind=urge to manufacture undead lackey. Makes sense to me...

Anyway, the story goes that Harry called upon his prowess as a voodoo priest (he had studied voodoo extensively in Haiti many years before) to zombie-fy some unlucky conscript. He press-ganged some poor down and out, stoner junkie off the street, dragged said junkie back to his room at the Chelsea, and got him even more bombed and insensate. Junkie is sitting there in a stupor when Harry and his disciple get the party started. Harry channels the spirit of the voodoo snake god, Damballah Wedo, and anoints the junkie with cat's piss and chicken blood from the poor chicken he has just sacrificed. At the appropriate moment, he blows a big puff of zombie dust into the junkie's face, and part 1 is complete.

For part 2, Harry and disciple take glazed and incoherent junkie up to the Chelsea's rooftop garden, dig up some lady's tomato plants, and bury the junkie in the earth for his requisite, crazy-ass zombie slow-cooker simmering period. After however many nights, they dig him up, and poof! Bob's yer uncle! Harry has a zombie. Harry gets the zombie to do all his dirty work, crappy errands such as queuing up at the drug dealers, bringing home booze, and occasionally removing plastic bags full of poo from his room to the garbage outside. Zombie Boy lives in Harry's closet, and it's all as tidy and efficient as anything.

I wish for a zombie houseboy of my own. I can think of many tasks which would be well-suited to a zombie's undead hands. Dishes, yardwork, shovelling dog poo from the back yard, (if Harry's story is anything to go by, zombies are good with poo) vacuuming, etc. It would seem to me that a zombie would have a sort of insensitive, cack-handed approach to task completion--he is undead, after all--but these sort of jobs would be fine to hand over to his lumbering ministrations. I don't think I'd want him doing the ironing, say, or much in the way of food preparation; we just don't know where those zombie hands have been. But for simple, manual labour-type domestic tasks, he'd be perfect. Perfect. So I want one. If only Harry was still with us... I would offer to buy him drugs in exchange for a quick zombie creation ceremony. But, until such time as I do get me a zombie, all of those zombie jobs I mentioned sure as hell ain't getting done with me sitting here. Maybe I'll *pretend* that I'm undead while chiselling flakes of petrified oatmeal off of cereal bowls....might be the only way to get through it.

Panic Sets In!

I feel like a cornered rat. Things are a-comin' at me from all sides and I CAN'T DO IT ALL!!!! NO! My work contract is up at the end of the month, and I have a bunch of things to get through to cram onto my last invoice. I have most of my bios for the Folk Festival programme book to write and submit, also by the end of the month. I have a crapload of yoga work to do, not the least of which is teach the Moon Salutation in class tonight, and I do not in any way have it all in my head.

The end of the month is only a few days away. One of these days (tomorrow) is mostly taken up with transporting my lovely friend Jan out Priddis way to a birthday -type-coffee-lunch-get-together thingy, which will be delightful, except that I will plagued by the sound of relentless clock ticking in my ear. I kind of know how the dude in "The Telltale Heart" felt. I can also hear Cher singing "If I Could Turn Back Time", with a sort of extra rhythm section provided by the tick-tocking clock. I'm panicking and losing my mind (what's left of it, anyway)at the same time. So why the hell am I writing this blog, you ask, rather than doing any of the aforementioned tasks? Good bloody question. I DON'T KNOW WHY! It seemed like a good idea at the time. Time? Who mentioned time? Time is the enemy. Well, time and Cher.. ... (It seems that the Clash have just rolled up and punted Cher off the stage in my mind)....Cue "Should I Stay or Should I Go"...And now I really gotta go.

In Which Queen Fee Explains Her Hairy Afternoon

Cleo came off the bus today looking a bit like grim death. I, like any good mother with a grim death child, asked what was wrong. She pointed to her head and said "that!" I wondered right away how I could have missed it. It seemed that a small and messy bird had made a nest in the top of Cleo's hair, a little above the elastic of her ponytail. Seriously, something had to be living in this clumpy, lumpy snarl of hair and dried foliage. Upon closer examination, it proved not to be the bolthole of a tiny feral creature, but quite a clump of burrs. The following explanation was offered: "Well, you know today when we made the birdhouses, and we made them in the church hall next to the school? Ok, so we finished a little early, and the birdhouse teaching man and Mrs. Payne thought it might be a nice thing to pull some weeds from around the church. So we did, but then me and Clodagh and Elena kind of went into the burrs, and a whole lot got stuck in our hair, and Mrs. Payne couldn't get them out for us and then Elena cried." "Did you cry, Cleo?", I asked sternly. "Uh...NO..... But I was really mad at the burrs." Right.

We were to meet up with Mum at Safeway after school, and Cleo found her little Che Guevara cap in the truck and jammed it down on her head before she would consent to enter the store. My real problem was just how the hell to remove an animal-nest sized clump of burrs from my daughter's hair, but my wise Mum came to the rescue. (Good thing this didn't happen last week when said Mum was still out of the country and thus not available for such vital advice!) She suggested pouring a whole lot of hair conditioner on the clump and then gradually working out the awful snarl. So that is what transpired when we got home.

The scene is this: Cleo is standing in the bathroom, draped in a towel and looking none too pleased. (Grim Death has made his reappearance in this tale) Raine, of course, is crowding in to get a piece of the action. I depress the pump of the conditioner, and somehow manage to miss Cleo's head entirely, and hit Raine square in the chest, in her hitherto clean school uniform. I sigh, and mentally file away yet another mess to deal with at yet another time... I get the conditioner into the snarl, and began working it through with a pick-comb. Cleo is moaning and howling like she's being flayed, while Raine is exhorting me not to hurt Cleo as though she's pleading for her life in front of the Spanish Inquisition. I am pulling out huge chunks of burr and hair and dropping them in the toilet. Cleo begs to be allowed to flush the offending burr down the toilet when all is said and done, which is far from being the case at this point, let me add. Operation Burr continues in much the same manner as above for about 20 minutes. FINALLY, the wretched burr has been all extracted from Cleo's head, and I put her through the shower in record time.

This all was before I had finished unpacking the groceries or thinking of supper. What a production. But all's well that ends well. Burr is gone, Cleo's hair is shiny and smooth, AND she got the last laugh, giving the final flush to her prickly attacker. Raine helpfully added that now we know how to do it for next time. Next time, you say? I really have to go lie down.

A day of rain

I really love the rain. The little bit we get every year is just lovely, and the dry and thirsty ground is slurping up this moisture about as fast as I get through a bottle of champagne! (One bottle for a whole night is really not enough...) But rain has its own requirements. My Raine announced this morning that her rubber boots were too small. She and Cleo had a play outside this morning that was cut short by Raine coming in with her toes hurting. As the rain is set to continue, I told her that I would pop out in the afternoon to get her a new pair o' boots. Simple, hey?

Oh my fucking fuck....this turned into a fiasco of EPIC proportions. I went to the following retail establishments: Zellers, Wal-mart, Superstore, Sears, the Bay, Children's Place, Shoe Warehouse, Winners, London Drugs, Once Upon a Child, and NADA! Not a whiff of a goddamned boot for her in any. Wee teeny baby boots, and a couple pairs of grown-up boots, but nuthin' for real children. Now, I really abhor a large retail establishment (other than a thrift shop) and I REALLY abhor an exceptionally busy one. This is Saturday afternoon, and the stores are crawling and I want to put out my own eyes with my house keys. I have lost the will to live by Wal-mart, where I was nearly run over by a 300 lb man's cart full of Snackwell's Diet Cookies. I wanted to scream and swear at him, and tell him that his Light Snackwell's are not going to help at all, and that he should get the hell out of my way and go have his stomach stapled....By London Drugs, I have purchased a family size chocolate bar, and am shoving it into my mouth with more than a faint air of hysteria. (I think I ate a bit of foil...)

The clincher came when I called home to give Lee an update of my whereabouts (so that he didn't place an all-points bulletin out for me, it had been so long) and spoke to Raine to deliver the bad news about the lack of boot. She happily chirps "Oh, it's OK, Mummy, 'cause Cleo's boots are too big for her, and they fit me fine, and mine fit her!" I literally pulled the car over to the nearest parking lot, draped myself over the steering wheel and wept bitter, bitter tears. An afternoon of my life, and a weekend one at that, that I shall NEVER get back...

The only plus was that I managed to find Lee a copy of the Patrick O'Brian book he's been wanting. I stumbled in the front door, and immediately began drinking.

P.S. I have made a decision on the sundress mentioned in a previous post. I have decided that it has an air of "young Sophia Loren in the Italian summer" about it. All being well, this is what might come to mind when I wear it, and not the air of "Shrek in a tablecloth in the festering fug of the swamp..."

Prine line for May 23.

"You can change your mind
for somethin' else to do
And your heart gets bored of your mind
and it changes you..."

-(the immortal beloved) John Prine

p.s. there may well be more Prine lines here in the future...stay very tuned!

A Letter

Dear Death Plague,

Go away, and leave my household in peace. We never harmed you in any way, yet you feel the need to come back, again and again, and infect various members herein with your vile germs. Honestly, you have TRULY worn out your welcome. What kind of guest visits without invitation and then stays for weeks and weeks, perhaps drifting out now and again, but always returning with a vengeance. Did your mother never teach you the rules of visits such as these? You have reduced me to shoving wads of tissue up each nostril to stop up the pouring (yes, I know this is an exceptionally vivid visual, but you won't pay attention to anything else), and to smearing diaper rash cream all over my nose and upper lip. You have reduced Lee to dreaming of Neo-Citran rather than beer. You have caused Cleo to miss a crucial, pre-competition dance class. In short, Mr. Death Plague, you have royally fucked everything up. So pack your bacteria-laden bags and GET THE HELL OUT!

Sincerely (though in no way "yours truly")

The Snot Queen

Life's like that.

Ah yes, the ups and downs of life. And, as one's day is simply a microcosm of one's life, one's day, too, will have these ups and downs. What a philosopher she is, you think.... shut up. I can state the obvious here and there if I feel like. So there. Sometimes it's the only thing I'm any good at stating. And yes, my little microcosm-life, my day, DID have ups and downs.

I had the worst sleep ever, coughing and hacking like I'd spent all my life down the coal mines. Woke up ill and groggy, with a foul head. Down.

I opened a new packet of Voortman Tea Ring biscuits at coffee time. Loves me a Voortman tea ring, and there is something about the crispy freshness of a new packet that just makes me happy. And hungry. Up.

I tripped as I was negotiating the basement corner with a bunch of laundry, and landed....IN the goddamned cat box. Yes, in it. As in very close proximity to all the poos and the pee clumps. I had pee clump imbedded in my knee. Plus, the shitting laundry spilled everywhere. Down.

I finished making a lovely bracelet for myself, with memory wire, featuring turquoise of the most beautiful shade--all bluey-greyey-greeney-- , red coral, and sterling beads. It is beee-you-tiful, thank-you very much. Up.

I signed Sueage's passport tonight, and I had the immense thrill of putting '36' in the 'years the person is known to you' line. How cool is that? Up.

I was making hollandaise sauce for supper, and because I w as multi-tasking like a creature possessed, I hit the blend button with the lid still off the blender, and now I have teeny flecks of hollandaise sauce in my hair. It looks like nits. All you blondies out there could probably have an equally distressing hollandaise incident, and then go off for tea with the Queen, and all she's gonna notice is a faint lemony-buttery aroma (which could easily be the little tea sarnies), and not weird little blobs decorating your 'do. Hollandaise and black hair is definitely a no-no. Down.

I have one last thing upon which the jury is still out. I bought this sundress at the Goodwill today. It's a pretty reddish floral pattern, with a halter neck, and fits like a dream. Problem is, it has a full, swishy skirt. I'm not sure this swishy skirt does me any favours. Like the dress a lot, but I'm just not convinced I have what it takes to deploy the full and swishy skirt. Like I say, jury's out.... Up? Down? You tell me...

One hell of a movie

I watched one last night. A HELL of a movie. An enchanting, singular movie. I haven't seen a movie that moved me so much in a long time. It's called "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont", and it is essentially both a love story and a hugely sensitive exploration into the complexities of old age. The love story part is not what one expects. It's not romantic love in the traditional sense, but the real love that exists in profound (and in this case, unexpected) friendships. In a nutshell, Mrs. Palfrey is an elderly, elegant widow, who moves to London and takes up residence in the shabby grandeur of the Claremont Hotel in Lancaster Gate. She strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young writer called Ludo, in circumstances both amusing and poignant, and the results are magical. I'll say no more, except to exhort everyone to watch this amazing, simple and exquisite film. I shall leave off with a quotation from the movie, which kind of sums much of it up. It brings a lump to my throat.

Mrs Palfrey says, "I've spent my entire life being somebody's daughter, somebody's wife, somebody's mother, and now, for this last part of my life, I just want to enjoy...simply being myself."

Robotic Cuteness

I'm not sure why this story tickled me so much, but it did. I somehow just love the idea. The pictures are lovely, too. I particularly like the one of the little robot-maestro shaking hands with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Yo-Yo looks quite tickled by the whole experience. Enjoy!

Corny Cats and Carroty Dogs.

I just love it when the animals get all excited about food that you'd never expect. I came into the kitchen a few moments ago, and found Hamish sinking his little cat-fangs into a cob of the unhusked fresh corn that will be on our supper plates in about 45 minutes. I have heard that this kitty passion for corn is rather common. One of my friends has a cat that will carry a cob of corn around in his mouth like a dog with a bone. Brian, on the other hand, thinks that the scrapings of my morning bowl of muesli, yoghurt and soy milk are manna from Heaven. He even once ate a leftover raisin from the Alpen bowl. Crazy, corny, muesli-y felines...

Dorian LOVES carrots. Truly loves them. This is the dog who will eat pretty much anything (see previous post about the cheese-skirt, and you will find a partial list of things Dorian finds to be tasty treats), but some of the things he eats are really just time-fillers. Carrots, however, rock this dog's world. He's even choose them over poo. And that's saying something....

Mu old ferret, Dukie, was passionate about his veggies, and would physically recoil from meat. Ferrets are meant to be all fierce, the little, sinuous rat-slayers of England, but Dukie would only show his deep-seated ferret ferocity to unlucky cruciferous vegetables. The one time he ever bit me in pure fury was when I wrenched him off a lovely fresh head of cabbage from the Farmer's Market.

I guess I'm kind of waiting for Jemma Newt to bust out of her aquarium, slither into the kitchen, and make herself a pot of ichiban. That would be awesome. And now, I have to go and boil all the cat-cooties off my corn cobs!

My husband is just a wonder.

Lee's in the bathroom, fixing some sort of malfunction in the shower. I am always amazed and impressed in equal parts at all the useful things he can do. So what if he's not exactly a dab hand in the kitchen--the man's a freakin' star with the fixings and the buildings. Of course, the most impressive project in the past year has been my wondrous 40th birthday kitchen, (and, boy, and I looking forward to a summer that is a world away from last in terms of chaos, unsettledness, and teetering mountains of kitchen goods filling the dining room, basement etc etc. Oh, and a whole lot less of washing dishes in the bathroom sink) but I can think of so many recent examples of Lee's cleverness-- the door handle of Richard Leakey (our death-trap ancient Volvo), the gear shift knob of same, the drywall in the living room ceiling, my gorgeous, antique milk glass boudoir lamp, Dad's lawnmower, the hot water heater, and the list goes on... He deals with broken toys, smashed china, injured books, hanging pictures, infirm computers and listing bookshelves, to name just a few, with grace and efficiency. SO many reasons to love my husband. AND, it must be said, he does actually cook a mean perogie...

...he also used to paint my toenails for me when i was too pregnant to see my feet...

A Li'l Pick-me-up

Just returned from putting my aged parents on a plane bound for sunnier climes, and, despite a delightful post-airport Denny's lunch with my sis, her fam and my fam, I find myself a little.....a little....., well, flat. Glum. Down in the dumperoos.

This needs to be fixed, and just in case anybody else is similarly afflicted, I'm going to share with everyone a song I have already listened to as a mood lifting tool. I shall leave proper music blogging to my infinitely better qualified husband, but I think I can safely tack this little gem onto this here blog, this one time. Listen and enjoy, little friends. It's by Desmond Dekker and the Specials, and it's special indeed. Go away and thrill to it now!!

• Carry Go Bring Come (MP3, via RapidShare - scroll down and click the "free" button)

A Bad Name.

I'm currently working on my specialty project, which is required for my International Yoga Alliance 500 hour teaching certification. I'm loving my subject--doin' laya yoga, and chakra stuff. It's a great subject, but Lee earlier pointed out to me that one of the books from which I'm currently drawing research is authored by an Alan Finger. Now, I'm sure that Alan is an awesome yogi and and a reliable authority on all things chakra, but his name's Finger, for God's sake!!

Come on, Alan. Yes, you were born with the name Finger, but there are avenues to correct these kinds of unfortunate mistakes. You go by your mother's maiden name, for instance. If that name is something like Finkelstein-Burpworth or something, then off you go, Alan, in all haste to the government office, pay your nice money & change the damned name. I've never understood why folks let themselves be continually saddled with dismal names, when they don't bloody well have to. A name says so much, and you know, if I was called Fiona Stomach, or Fiona Collarbone, or Fiona Anal Sphincter, I know what I'd do. A body part name is a BAD name.

Nearly Died Laughing... (No, I really did)

I bet you did not know that one can actually be harmed by laughing. Well, my dears, it's true. Just let Auntie Fee explain it all for you.

You see, there's this thing that happens to me, and as far as I can tell, doesn't happen to anybody else in quite the same way. (I see, in my mind's eye, my husband giving the "duh" shrug. He thinks that I may actually be an alien life form. Unfortunately for me, he has more than a little evidence to back this up. But that, on the whole, is a story for another day.) It involves laughter. Terrible, violent, uncontrollable laughter that goes on and on and on and will not stop until it has run aground. The most minor of humourous incidents can set it off, and it only happens when I am in some sort of already weakened state. It goes like this:
1. Minor funny thing is said or done, often involving Lee, whilst I am a little sub-par.
2. I begin laughing like a normal person, and then, somehow, the switch is tripped. This appears to be completely random.
3. The laughter turns hysterical, and then into overdrive. I shake uncontrollably, no real sound comes out, except for an occasional whimper or moan, as I attempt to head it off. Tears pour (and I mean POUR) out of my eyes, and physical damage begins. My body hurts and I feel like I'm in the throes of a seizure. I CANNOT STOP. The episode must run its course, and this can take awhile.
4. Often, if Lee is there, I set him off laughing, too, which just adds rocket fuel to my Guy Fawkes style bonfire of laughter. I usually wave my arms desperately to make him stop, and at this point, I have lost my vision due to the quantity of tears which have soaked my face and my clothing. I am now in SERIOUS DISTRESS.
5. When the episode has run its course, I begin to wind down, but this is still a critical time, as I seem to be unable to stop my mind returning to the thing that triggered the laughing in the first place. More minor additional waves may occur here.
6. Utter exhaustion and physical pain leave me a damp and lifeless heap, and recovery is somewhat arduous. A little lie-down is often necessary.

Many of my nearest and dearest have witnessed this spectacle for themselves. The first time anybody sees it, the reaction involves utter incredulity and not a little confusion. I really traumatised an innocent staff member once at the A & B Sound bookshop, when I had one of my more legendary episodes in front of a customer service desk, in full view of the public at the end of one of our Boxing Day sales. It was really quite awful, and I couldn't even walk at the end of it. I would catch the poor fellow shooting me nervously quizzical looks out of the corners of his eyes for months afterwards... Sigh.

SO. If you're ever of a mind to lay a bet on what's gonna carry me off to the Big Bug Zoo in the Sky, this is a distinct possibility. Me, I'd still lay major cash on a stupendous hangover, but death by laughing is a sneaky second.

In a Mitford mood.

" 'The food, Sadie, it's the food. I know how difficult it is for you in wartime, but we are all, in turns, being poisoned... The fact is, dear, that if Mrs. Beecher were a Borgia, she could hardly be more successful--all that sausage mince is poison, Sadie. I wouldn't complain if it were merely nasty, or insufficient, or too starchy, one expects that in the war, but actual poison does, I feel, call for comment. Look at the menus this week-- Monday, poison pie, Tuesday, poison burger steak, Wednesday, Cornish poison---'
Aunt Sadie looked intensely worried. "

-The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford.

P.S. If anybody has gone this long without reading The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate (I can't think how this could be possible, but I'm willing to entertain the ever so faint possibility) READ THEM NOW.

In Which Q. F. throws a couple of points to ponder out there....

1. Why is the combination of potato, salt & fat, in any permutation, so f-ing delish?

2. Why is it so comparatively easy to haul in support for a human charity, and so difficult for an animal charity?

3. Why does Dorian stink so much? He can have baths, be doused in doggie deodorant/cologne, have his cushion Febreezed, etc etc, and he still pongs to high heaven.

4. Why do I always lose the objects I enjoy most?

5. Why does champagne do for one what no other bevvie does?

And now, my friends, I sign off, and leave you with the above to ponder. If you have any answers, please feel free to submit them to me. There may be a reward in it for someone who can help deodorise the dog...