Blog - Freaks

Mrs. (or was it Miss??) Sherman was our 5th grade music teacher and in between teaching us how to sing:

(I want everyone to feel like they are in the room with me… Reminder, this is how I looked on my best day:)

she would punish a chatty male student by coming up behind him and bonking him on the head with a stack of books OR hitting him on the head with xylophone mallets. Ahh! Those were the days!! AMIRITE?? 

Speaking of punishment… I made a card!:

I was listening to a podcast…

Don’t judge me. I SAID DON’T JUDGE ME. The book of Genesis is chock full of names I can’t pronounce, BUT I can pronounce Jacob and Esau and that reminded me of a teacher we had at Incarnation when I was 9 years old named MR. JACOB ESAU. He was our science teacher (was he, though?? He had an apple-cider jug full of apple-cider that had a baseball-sized mold glob floating in it and was obsessed with Edgar Allen Poe.) To get into the character of Science Teacher he would recite The Tell-Tale Heart.

Soooo…

I thought about that and then I made this:

I watch Teletubbies with Winnie and never alone because that would be a sign to my caretakers/housemates that I have COMPLETELY lost it.

One day WE were watching and I spied a bundled-up Bernie!

Hi Bernie! I SEE YOU!!

Remember when you were voted three different things by your senior class??And you daren’t show your Mom because that would shatter the illusion that you had so carefully constructed?? Just kidding, I had no parent fooled. PS: I didn’t even buy that yearbook because I was too busy partying. SORRY?? (PPS: NOT sorry.)

Now onto popular culture!: I didn’t even know that ACB was a Zeichen Press fan!

Oh, and just because everyone loves cute babies holding late nineties ephemera, here’s a photo of Winnie holding Po. Ignore that creature at our backdoor. 

Remember when your little sister was born so your parents sent you (and your impossibly short shorts) and your little brother to stay with your Aunt Patricia on the Cape?? REMEMBER THAT??

Oh… THAT WAS MY OWN PERSONAL MEMORY.

I think Ernest Hemingway said something about going bankrupt gradually and then suddenly – isn’t that the way with so many things?? First you are just a sister and the next thing you know, you’re on an airplane telling an old woman that you will for sure write to her but then feel guilty about talking to a stranger and crumple up her address and throw it in the Boston airport trash can.

Speaking of old women (wait, what?), here’s a Valentine. (Wait, what?)

Umm, WTF?? 

This baby was in a dresser-drawer. And just like a good Lifetime movie (sans the kidnapping and murder) we adopted her!

Oh, I kid (and twerk)! She’s just the best living-toy ever – and already nicknamed “Winnie”!

She’s pretty cute.

In the 1950’s, my Mom wrote (and sent!) postcards to her family and I have them (just for blackmail.) Ahh, the 1950’s… all the dads hula-hooped to work and the moms fixed wounds and cracks using silly-putty! (That’s historically accurate.)

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Dear Zeichen Press,

I have kept up on all happenings by watching YouTube and censored dot tv videos and am I tired!

Francis had to go further to get ice to crush because the service station nearby was burned by the peaceful protestors.

Ask Jen to forgive me for never writing to her.

Love,

Fran

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ENOUGH OF THESE DISTRACTIONS!!  

Sometimes neighbors can be enemies – just like Canada! J/K, Canada is not our enemy! Mexico is! Too political?? 

There was a granny who lived down our block and every other weekend her grandkids came to stay with her. Their last name was Bestman but we secretly called them the Worstmans. (It might be because we hated them?? Once my older sister and her friend pointed corn cob holders threateningly at them across Vincent Avenue. It was just like West Side Story without the Tony Award-winning music, choreographed dance numbers, Puerto Ricans, and doomed love!)

The “fight” fizzled out (aka Mrs. Heefner asked us what we thought we were doing) and the next Winter the Bestman house caught on fire and all of their Christmas presents burned up! My Mom told me that one of the boys (Miles) was playing with matches in the attic.

I guessed my parents didn’t know about our turf rivalry because they bought them a bunch of stuff. I was jealous but acted like I wasn’t because I had already had my First Confession/First Communion.

Every 25 years I like to feel disturbed so I watch Matt Damon bludgeon Jude Law to death with an oar and then cuddle his dead body in the bottom of a little boat before sinking it with a pile of rocks.

(Happy Halloween!)

#Oldestintern must know how attracted to that era I am because she entrusted me with 166 pages of inspiration. And by “entrusted me” I meant she forgot an old magazine at my house. (Sorry, Madge!)

But the 1950’s fashion DID inspire me!

ALSO,  after a whirlwind of (Jen) printing and Dinah (detachedly) choosing paper and envelopes, I can finally stop being such a social butterfly and photograph the new cards. PHEW!

I want everyone to feel included, so here’s a card I posted to Instagram this week:

Dan the Man (number one) knocked on my door and brought me a heaping pile of curried potatoes on a paper plate, introduced me to the music of Tori Amos, and listened to our kitchen-conversations because our windows were so close. (HOW COULD HE NOT?!)

Dan the Man (number one) also played classical guitar, had a big belly, long curly hair, and wore red suspenders. With OR WITHOUT a stained white t-shirt.

I used to babysit for my baby cousin when Dylan was also a baby (Note: I knew he ate the cat food over there because his poopy-diaper smelled like a litter box). We were picked up in a taxicab three mornings per week

by a hippie named Dan the Man (number two),

and while we buckled up in the backseat (carseats were for suburbanites), he would tell me all about the best items to eat at the Old Country Buffet. Thanks Dan the Man, that IS useful information!

Oh, I carpe diemed like crazy in those days.