Devil With the Green Dress On

It’s almost April. In a few more days I can breathe easier, stop looking behind me and jumping at my own shadow, stop having to appeal to the universe to give me the strength to get through what is always the most difficult time of year.

It’s not Lent. It’s not Fiscal Year End. It’s not the impending Tax Time.

No. It’s something far more formidable than life, death or taxes.

It’s Girl Scout Cookie Time.

Yes. That time of year when, as surely as the first flowers of spring, little sprites in the form of innocent-looking, uniformed girls emerge from their underworld lairs to tempt us to the dark side with bewitching boxes of tantalizing treats.

Don’t let the cherubic smiles and “fund raising” explanations fool you. Girl Scouts are evil. They lure us into their sinister sugar-traps with irresistible indulgences available only once-per-freaking-year. Then, once we are completely hooked and live for the day the damned green-frocked prepubescent devils knock on our door, they hit us with steady price increases knowing we are now addicts and will sell our souls for some Tagalongs or Samoas.

You can run, but you cannot hide. If they don’t doom you at your door, they’ll snag you at the supermarket. You’ll feel the pull when you approach the table, set up in front of the local Safeway, populated by adorable looking, identically dressed minions with whirling pinwheel eyes and robotic smiles. Resistance is futile. You’ll take one look at those boxes of Do-Si-Dos and money will fly out of your wallet of its own accord. Next thing you know you’ll be sitting on your living room floor surrounded by empty orange boxes and not even a dim memory as to what transpired. 

I surrendered my soul to the Green Demons many years ago. They are both friend and foe now; beings I look forward to seeing as the only source of satisfaction for my cookie cravings and fear because of the power they wield over me. I’m so deeply ensconced in their damned cookie cult that I now have my own personal Girl Scout Gremlin. She doesn’t even bother with the formality of coming to my door, she just phones me.

“I’ve got your Thin Mints,” she says in a voice reminiscent of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. “How many boxes do you want?” I’m certain that while she is saying this her head is turning all the way around. It doesn’t matter how many boxes I tell her I want. She brings twice that many and I shoot out dollar bills like a Pez dispenser.

You may be smirking. Or laughing. But you’re not immune. Don’t even waste time thinking you can avoid the Green Demons. If they don’t know where you live right now, don’t think they don’t have ways to get people to divulge your whereabouts. I don’t care if you’re in the witness protection program – I’ll sell you out in a heartbeat if it means getting discounted Daisy-Go-Rounds.

If you visit my house you’ll see the evidence of my addiction. Empty green boxes in the trash, partially consumed ones in the refrigerator and more in the freezer. You’ll wonder how I eat all those cookies and manage to stay so slim. And you’ll covet my cookies. But you won’t get any. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you’ve pulled me from a burning building. The cookies are mine.

Get your own.  

The Six Million Dollar Hat

As children, my friends and I galloped our ponies, Man-From-Snowy-River style, bareback and hatless, without a thought to our safety, and somehow managed to survive. Nowadays I’m a bit more cognizant of my mortality. So despite the fact that they are annoying and totally mess up my hair, I wear a helmet every time I ride. 

I’ve had my current hard hat for several years. While still perfectly functional, it’s kinda faded and beat up and…well….smelly. I should probably get a new one. But there’s something stopping me. It’s not an issue of time, or opportunity, or sentimental attachment. The issue is that the cost of a “good” riding helmet has broken the $600 mark.

$600.

Six.

Hundred.

DOLLARS.

For a HAT.

Like the plastic wind-up rice bowl with wheels, the concept of a $600 riding helmet begs the question, …..What The F*ck????

Okay – keeping your brains from exiting your skull is worth some sort of investment. I’ll give you that much. But ALL ‘approved’ riding helmets are constructed to the same safety/impact regulations to be certified as ‘approved.’  There is no argument you can make to convince me that a $600 ‘approved’ hat is going to keep my brains off the fencepost ANY more effectively than a $150 ‘approved’ hat. 

The $600 hats boast ‘cutting-edge technology’ construction and materials. They have ‘advanced features’ such as extra padding for comfort and ventilation to keep your head cool (not to be confused with keeping a cool head; no hat can guarantee that). Some brands even offer customized colors so that you can behat yourself in, say, navy and cerulean (um, for an even bigger price). 

I’m sorry. You’ll have to do better than that.

If I’m going to pay $600 for a helmet, it better come equipped with gadgetry to rival anything James Bond ever had. It better come complete with satellite radio, HBO and text messaging features. I want built-in audio reception and a channel directly to my trainer so, like Obi Wan Kenobi, he can be that voice in the back of my subconscious saying ‘use the Force, Luke,’ or, in my case, ‘slow down, Dumbass.’ Barring that, I’ll take a built-in On Course GPS, with programmable features and a little soothing voice that offers helpful information such as “Oxer in six strides. Apply leg now,” and “Pace has exceeded escape velocity. Triple Combination not advised.”  

Instead of some advanced composite plastic alloy, I’d like the hat made of something that is both microwaveable and dishwasher safe. I’d like a brim of sharpened, surgical grade steel so I can take the hat off, fling it and use it as a weapon, ala James Bond’s nemesis, Oddjob. Instead of spending all that money and technology making something that can absorb greater impact, how about eliminating the impact danger all together? Put airbags in the damned thing. And for that price, those vents in the top of the hat better be good for something more than airflow. I should be able to turn the hat upside down and, say, drain pasta or pan for gold. 

For all the amazing ‘advanced technology’ and design, these hats are still woefully deficient very basic areas. Why is the interior padding of EVERY hat not removable, washable and replaceable? That cushiony inner padding that they charge $200 extra for? After you wear the hat for a few weeks, it compresses. The result? Your $600 helmet no longer fits you. So you have to shore it up with something to MAKE it fit. Something that has its own adhesive that you can take off and toss after it gets sweaty and smelly. DON’T sell me a $600 hat and then tell me I also have to buy a box of ultra-thin maxi-pads to stick in it to keep it to keep the damned thing on my head. 

As if the price isn’t painful enough, the Bad Hatters add insult to injury by making the things butt-ugly. Whatever happened to the elegant black-velvet look? Modern hard hats look more like the exoskeletons of alien insects. Okay, some of them are kind of cool looking. But the majority of them are just a facemask attachment away from being something Darth Vader would wear. In what alternate universe is THAT a good look?

Seriously. If you’re going to have the balls to charge $600 and upwards for your ugly hats, you’d better get your act together and chock them full of features we can actually use. It better be something that would do Steve Austin (TV’s Six Million Dollar Man) proud. Until then, you won’t see me wearing one.

Addendum: Since writing this blog, I am happy to report that I am the proud owner of a brand new, state-of-the-art riding helmet. It's safety approved, kinda cool looking, and has a removable, washable and adjustable interior lining. It's comfortable. It's functional. It's goodlooking.  And it cost me $75.

Basket Case

I’m not much of a holiday person. I don’t decorate, don’t plan parties, don’t send cards, generally don’t observe. I’m happy to just have a day off and get to pillage the holiday sales at the mall. The rest of the whole holiday hoo-ha I can do without. 

But there are a few holidays I find fun.

I like Halloween. I like dressing up like some hungry, undead child-eating creature and scaring the bejesus out of the neighborhood kids. I like lying in wait for them to come home from trick or treating so I can jump out from behind a bush and grab their candy bags. Those screaming little voices and the patter of horrified feet running away down the pavement just warm my heart. Yes, Halloween is a great holiday.

The other holiday I like is Easter.

It’s not the sentiment behind the day. It’s not the vacation time from work. It’s not Easter egg hunts or picnics. It’s not getting together with family – crap, that’s the last thing I want to do on a holiday.

Nope.

It’s the chocolate.

Notice I didn’t say ‘candy.’

Chocolate.

You can keep your peeps and your jellybeans and your marshmallow rabbits. Just give me the chocolate.

Any chocolate. I don’t care if it’s shaped like a bunny, a chick, or an International Harvester. Don’t put a lot of time into selecting just the right work of chocolate art. The artistry of chocolate sculpture is lost on me; I am not going to stop to appreciate it before I rip Mr. Bunny’s ears off. 

And it better not be hollow. Don’t even TRY to slip one of those hollow chocolate travesties into my basket. There’s more chocolate than that in the center of a tootsie pop.

Hollow chocolate is a cop out; it’s for people who don’t really care enough to spend money on the good stuff, or for people who need a place to stash their contraband. I want solid chocolate. Solid dark chocolate. And make sure there’s no nuts in it – they just take up space where more chocolate could go. Yes, fill my basket with solid dark no-nut chocolate.

Then you’d better put said basket in plain view where I will see it immediately upon waking Easter morning. Hiding a person’s basket of solid dark no-nut chocolate is just plain mean. Trust me, you do not want tell me first thing in the morning that I must look for chocolate that you’ve hidden from me. I’m not going to look for it. I’m going to put you into a chokehold until you tell me where the hell it is.

Don’t bother cooking some extravagant Easter meal. I’ve got chocolate. I’m not going to waste perfectly good stomach capacity on ham or green bean casserole when I can fill it with solid dark no-nut chocolate. I’ll eat your meal when the chocolate is gone.

Finally, don’t even think about asking me to share any of my solid dark no-nut candy. There are two things I refuse to share: Men, and chocolate. The reasons for this should be evident. If you have to ask why, you are probably the kind of person who also thinks hollow chocolate with nuts in it is a good idea.

I might sound demanding, but really, I’m not high maintenance. It’s not that difficult to keep me happy. Don’t get hollow chocolate, don’t get nuts in it and don’t hide it. Do this and nobody gets hurt. It’s that damn simple.

Happy Easter.

 

 

Barn Cars

 I drive a species of vehicle known as a Barn Car.

A Barn Car can be any make, model or year. It can be any color – color, in fact, doesn’t matter, since all Barn Cars are eventually the color of dirt. Barn Cars can be old and beat up, or new and suped up.

My Barn Car is quite nice. It gets great gas mileage and has cruise control. Drives great in all kinds of conditions. It has a lot of trunk space, enough to transport an entire body without the need for messy, time consuming dismemberment. It has room for four people, two hound dogs and three bags of feed. Other Barn Cars may have more trunk space or less, seat fewer or more humans and canines, have less or greater feed capacity. There are no firm criteria.

But there is one characteristic that all Barn Cars have in common.

A Barn Car is never clean.

I mean, never.

As in, not ever.

Even when it’s just been washed it’s not clean. And as soon as I drive it to the barn one time, well…I may as well have not “cleaned” it at all.

At any given time you are likely to find hay, mud, shavings, grain, horsehair, dirt and other stuff in any part of it. I can only assume that all of the above entities get into the car by hitching a ride on me. Once you’ve been in the car, you are likely to get home and find any or all such items have also hitched a ride on YOU. Which is fine with me, because the more crap that leaves attached to you, the less mess in my car.

Paint is missing from various parts of my car. I don’t know where it went. It’s possible that some animal ate it when I wasn’t looking. I’ve scraped up all the hubcaps on fence posts and had multiple flat tires from running over barn implements and mis-navigating potholes. The trunk is filled with dirty boots, sweaty saddle pads, smelly blankets and a Hazmat suit.

If I drive through the Eucalyptus grove where the giant white Herons nest, my car emerges looking like somebody napalmed it with white paint. I have to make haste to wash it off before it eats its way through the roof like that gelatinous thing from The Blob. The hard water at the barn is just as likely to eat its way through the paint as the bird doody is. The doody usually comes clean. The bug splatter on the front of the car, I’m afraid, is permanent.

If you want me to give you a ride someplace, I hope you’re not in a hurry.

I wish it were as simple as opening the door to let you in.

It’s not. Not with a Barn Car.

Opening the door is the final step in a long, arduous process. First, I have to create room in the back seat. This requires removing objects and stuffing them into a trunk that is already filled to burstin’ with the aforementioned barn necessities.

Only after I have done this can I begin the process of transferring the stuff from the front passenger seat into the precious small space I’ve cleared in the back. This may or may not result in items being stacked so high that visibility from the rear window is wholly or partially blocked. It may also result in objects flying at you from the backseat should I need to slam the brakes on suddenly. I’ve probably got a hard hat in the car; I suggest you wear it.

Then I’ve got to brush hay, grain, rice hulls, dirt and horsehair off the passenger seat, and make room for your feet on the floor. You might have to sit with your knees hiked up under your chin or shove your legs into the small space between the bags of horse cookies and the center console.

As for the smell…..well, you’re stuck with that. If you don’t enjoy the aroma of leather, grain and horse, I hope you don’t mind riding with your head out the window like a big ‘ol hound dog.

Oh, speaking of dogs….if I’m dog sitting, you’re going to have to share the seat with the Dog of the Day. Some of them drool more and have worse smelling breath than others. Hopefully the day you ask for a ride will be Lapdog Day, not Rottweiler Week.

Finally, you’ll have to deal with the embarrassment of being seen getting out of a Barn Car, trailing hay and rice hulls and horse hair.

I’d like to be apologetic, but I can’t – it’s a Barn Car, and that’s just the way a Barn Car is. I’ve gone so far as to put a “Barn Car” bumper sticker on the back. Consider it fair warning. Next time you need a ride, think real hard before asking me. You might want to call a cab.