Free-Range Franimals - True Story

Off-key Christmas carols float dreamily through the Summer air, the ice-cream truck trolls for kids using low-fi audio technology. Water-balloons are filled, teams are picked (bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish, how many pieces do you wish?) but distractions are everywhere and soon talk turns from who is on which team to pretend lands filled with orphaned children. Poor, parentless children, left to cobble together meals from mint leaves and wild rhubarb.

Summertime, and the children and animals are off-leash — days are filled with sprinklers, wet bathing suits, hot dogs burned on the grill, and day dreaming.

Here’s a new card:

There was a pet store in my neighborhood (Petcetera) that had all kinds of fascinating creatures. The best creature was a full-size (5 feet, from snout to tip of tail) alligator in a steel tub. The tub had a makeshift screen cover so that the alligator couldn’t escape.

A screen cover. 

So the ALLIGATOR couldn’t escape.

I think it was drugged anyway — it just laid there, blinking it’s beautiful eyes.

Of course there were snakes, and I don’t know much about snakes, but what I do know is pretty scientifically accurate. When snakes speak, they drag out their s’s. They’re usually pretty shy but if you give one a frozen mouse they are your friend for at least 5 seconds.

It was a fat PVC pipe, coated in Crisco, pitched at a 25° angle and suspended over a pit filled with filthy water. A $5 bill was clipped to the high end and my job was to shimmy my way to it. (Why am I always shimmying poles?) With my glasses pushed tight to my face, my stringy blonde hair moved back and forth as I slid myself toward my goal. I wore my lucky shorts — Granny Smith green with pink piping — and “my 4th of July” shirt — red and blue striped off-brand Izod.

A crowd gathered.

I wanted that $5 and the glory that came with it. With that $5, I could buy enough candy to satisfy my aching sweet tooth and with that glory came a lifetime of bragging rights. “The greased pole in the Hollow in Barnstable? Yeah, I did that.”

I entered a competition today. This one does not involve poles, pits, or Crisco. It does involve money and Jen and I have both agreed that we will do (almost) anything for money.

Uncommon Goods invited us to submit designs for an iPhone case and after slathering myself in Crisco, I submitted some designs. I know you’ve seen these before. I’m really into recycling.

I know that Native Americans can anticipate the change of seasons by paying close attention to the subtle signs in nature. I’ve been doing that too. 

Sign number one was seeing a rat splattered on the street in front of my house. When the rats crawl out of the sewers it means we are in for a serious drought. Or that I need to move.

Sign number two was seeing a man peeing on the side of my garage. When a man pees on the side of your garage it means that I need to move.

Okay, the school year is fizzling out like a dud of a firecracker and that’s good because I’ve seen those mangled hands and it is difficult to fill in those little SAT bubbles with a nub-hand.

Once Upon A Time, I made the difficult transition from Catholic Grade School to Catholic High School — this meant going from blue and green plaid skirts to brown and gray plaid skirts. THIS meant that I had to inch my way up the school’s flagpole and fly my skirt like a flag.

Just like Hayley Mills (in The Trouble With Angels!) sans cigarette.

It’s not too late to send your favorite graduate from the Class of 2012 a Zeichen Press card stuffed with money!  (You’re welcome, graduates.)

One fully loaded California Job Case weighs as much as I do and I have spent the week proving this.

We are in the process of rearranging the shop and I am in the process of atoning for my sins via physical labor — my hair shirt is at the cleaners and flip-flops don’t hold small rocks like Uggs.

Here’s how it works: I carefully slide one 100 lb case out of the cabinet and onto the floor.

And then I do that, like, 60 more times.

If I realize there is a case of type I need on the bottom of the pile, I simply pick up each and every case on top of that case and create another pile on the floor.

At some point, intern(s) get involved.Their apprenticeship is very old-school: They sort type/hate me. That’s how they used to do it in the good ol’ days, I’m just trying to keep tradition alive.

They’ll thank me later.

My mind wandered as I listened to the Second Reading. I wondered if I could get my hands on a chocolate milk for lunch. I watched the third graders fidget. I planned my fishing-themed diorama. …Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth… I figured out what the initials TGIF stood for — oh, that makes sense! …I felt something crawl up my uniform blouse. 

I felt something crawl up my uniform blouse! Or did I? The question went unanswered because, like Abraham Lincoln in the balcony of Ford’s Theater, I’d been shot. Most likely, an assassination plot carried out by those boys that dumped Mountain Dew on my head last week. Oh, the pain! I signaled my teacher and was escorted to the nurses office by a girl that needed a hero badge to add to her girl scout sash.

The nurses office was familiar to me. Homesickness was an ailment I suffered from semi-regularly.

When I staggered through the door, the nurse stopped her mimeographing and looked at me. I pointed to my gunshot wound — nearish my right armpit but closer to a more embarrassing region. She lifted up my blouse. I stared at the poster on the wall.

Yes, kitten. I will hang in there.

It turned out not to be a bullet lodged in my ribcage, but a bee sting.

In honor of that important event, I created my own Hang in There! card. Do not accuse me of ripping off the original, it is an homage. An HOMAGE.

A strange custom:

One child crawls through a tunnel made of other children — the crawling child is spanked on the bottom by each participant. The spankers laugh hysterically.

The concept of automated and industrial scale corporal punishment originated in 19th century Russia.

It’s true!

I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say that the concept has evolved from judicial whipping of peasants to tunnels of birthday abuse for today’s schoolchildren.

A good friend of mine turned XX (not Roman numerals) and she has such fond memories of the Spanking Machine!

I made her a card:

Judy was tired of being stuck upstairs. She longed for the streets. She longed for adventure. She longed for danger.

Day after day, trapped by that drooling, excitable houseguest. It was just too much. She had only one choice: jump off the balcony. Thank goodness the deck broke her fall. This wasn’t the first time she threw caution to the wind. It was, in fact, the third. Words are unnecessary when there is photographic evidence of this nature (if you are squeamish, scroll no more):

That’s what a tail looks like when all of the nice stuff has been ripped off of it. Or, as the vet told me, “degloved.” We can’t imagine what she did in the cat world to deserve that treatment.

Just when we stopped crying ourselves to sleep, she came home looking like a BP oil spill casualty.Meow!

Poor Judy, only six lives left. Use them wisely.

Judy happens to be my mother’s name and so this is the perfect way to introduce a new Mother’s Day card:And just to keep it fair, here is a Father’s Day card:

I tell my kids that I don’t want anything for my birthday. I tell them that I have everything I need.

But I’m lying.

The truth is, I need the following items:

Wait, I needed them in 1984. Never mind. But they would come in handy now. Especially that “waterproof” walkman. (It’s not, I repeat: NOT waterproof). Also, (for the record) that Ouija Board (why was Parker Bros. into the occult?) didn’t even work. It was merely the hors d’oeuvre for the Slumber Party Game: Light As a Feather/Stiff As a Board. Um, if I caught my daughter and her friends playing that game, I’d be like, I GET TO TELL THE STORY AND CUT THE PRETEND HOLE IN THE FOREHEAD AND FILL IT WITH SAND.

Oh, I wouldn’t… I’d be more like, YOU GIRLS GET TO BED, ENOUGH OF YOUR WITCHCRAFT.

ALSO, that PacMan tray should only be used for craft projects. Never for food in bed. NEVER FOR FOOD IN BED.

Hmm, I guess I really don’t need anything.

PS: Thanks mom, for life!

PPS: Don’t worry, this is not a Holy Day of Obligation.

No.

Normally, mobs carry pitchforks and torches but Cash Mobs are different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5zUAnIaD4I

How?

Cash Mobs are a happy sort and their motivation has nothing to do with drawing or quartering. Cash Mobs support local businesses by encouraging shoppers to spend $20 at an independent boutique on a designated day.

Isn’t this a beautiful and simple concept? I promise it won’t turn into a Black Friday Walmart thing. Leave your pepper spray at home. 

i like you is next on the list. (Saturday, April 14.) Have you ever been?! You will be reduced to a giggling mess.

Just step over the girls.