It's January and the rains have not missed their cue. Weeds are popping up, joyfully coating Southern California everywhere in a haze of unexpected green. Green everywhere and it's pretty for a moment until you blink and they've grown up into stinging nettles and the molds are proliferating with the best of them. I mean really, they put rabbits to shame. And it just so that happens that I have begun expressing my appreciation for this season by sneezing.
Mornings usually being worse, I have been known to wake up and declare with only a hint of melodrama that I am allergic to the entirety of Southern California. On most days I have a fine vocabulary for expressing a great many sentiments. But sometimes when my allergies are overwhelming I have no patience or brain power left to employ it and I curse my allergies with invective that could shock sailors.
Now don't go and misunderstand me. I love my immune system. It keeps me reasonably healthy and it has fought off all the crazy things that life and coworkers keep throwing at it. I know that immune systems are complex and difficult to understand and I do appreciate that mine is tirelessly working to keep me healthy and happy.
What I have a problem with is its training.
Yes, training. You don't think that the little army of immune responders called your immune system got to where it is today without training, do you? They drill and practice and work. They keep themselves in trim fighting condition all year round. They are trained, tireless, professional killers in the defense of my immune system. They are trained in the style of the German Imperial Army of old and they are extremely efficient. And that's the problem really.
My immune system doesn't have that much to do. I don't generally eat gently poisoned foods or sit around drinking mildly toxic water or have prolonged chats with infected herds of sheep for really any length of time. So, without any real threats, they drill. They are constantly on high alert for practically no reason. They've read the manual; I could be subjected to typhoid, mumps, cholera or trench fever at a moment's notice. And so they march, with a long list of rules and no credible attacks of dysentery in months and they are extremely bored. So they begin to frisk everything that crosses the borders out of sheer lack of something productive to do.
Molds and pollens accidentally land on my body due to the fickle air currents that brought them nearby. And my immune is waiting for them at the border in orderly lines and pointed helmets dating from the first world war and belonging to the German Imperial Army.
"Vat iz your name and rank!" Barks the leader of my immune responder patrol.
The harmless pollen blinks at them blankly.
"Vell, it must be a foreigner. Ve vill bring you to Herr Colonel"
My little Immune Colonel sees a foreign body and consults the manual. "Vell, vell vat do ve have here. Dis leeddle pollen seems to be having ze fun with us. Diz pollen does not have ze papers for being in dis area."
"But vat does ze manual say, Herr Colonel?"
"Ze manual says that all foreigners are invaders."
"Das ist richtig"
"Vait, vat iz dat?" A helpful immune soldier shouts, "Ze pollen iz bringing his friends."
"Dis iz definitely an invasion!" Herr Colonel says excitedly.
My immune system patrol falls into place behind the Colonel in perfectly distanced rows. Helmets gleaming they await the commands.
"Rechts! Rechts!" shouts Herr Colonel. And they stride off on their right foot in perfect order.
Herr Colonel begins a World War I version of beat-box and using only his God-given talents he sounds a trumpet tune mixed with a drum beat for their march. It would be enough to fill any military heart with pride.
And so my immune system, trained by the old German Imperial Army organizes itself thus. It puts on its pointed helmets every morning. The trumpet is sounded. It marches in orderly lines. The manual is consulted and everything that even looks like a pollen or potential invader is attacked. I appreciate the sentiment and devotion to my well-being. I really do. But I don't care much for the result. My body has decided, on the advice of my German Imperialist Immune System I might add, that the pollens and molds must be toxic and I should attempt to expel them with vigorous sneezing, eye-watering and a delightful but as yet not appreciated general itchiness.
Have you ever seen the film Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines? If not, you should. Not only is it hilarious, it is filled with amazing and terrifying old flying contraptions. If you are wondering what this has to do with this post you should simply watch a portion of the clips that deal with the German flying team. You will know exactly what sort of thing my immune system is doing over here.
A sample of the German Imperial Army's finest trumpet/drum beat-box moments and a sample of what my immune system looks like while trying to maintain my good health.
Showing posts with label drama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drama. Show all posts
Saturday, 14 January 2017
Thursday, 3 November 2016
History was Made This Very Evening
Most evenings do not find me communing with the collective spirit of sport frenzied enthusiasm. In fact, most evenings that involve me and sports in the same room usually involve my unbridled invective against the barbarity of this sport or the stupidity of that one. It's not even that I hate sports. I simply hate watching other people play them. I'd so much rather play the sport myself, or do anything actively, rather than watch others play sports. However, this evening was different.
Now, maybe it's my deep American roots, but I've always had a fondness for a good ballgame. (Not that I watch baseball often, but I tolerate the odd game here and there because I like the game.) As a child I remember cheering on my Dad while he played in corporate ballgames. I remember playing t-ball and Dad teaching us to bat. My brother and I loved it when he would do the "real pitcher's wind up". No doubt he went easy on us but we felt like pros when we would hit these real pitches. As slightly older children we taught our dog to outfield for us so that we could take turns batting and pitching without having to run and get the ball ourselves.
So, this evening found me captivated by the world series game between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians. Mom, who has always been a die-hard Cubbies fan was too nervous to even sit in the room. She feared that if she watched the Cubs would lose. So she hovered in the adjacent doorway, fretting and finding busy work to keep her hands occupied between running in to see a play and running out of the room so as not to jinx her beloved Cubbies.
And there is something special about Cubbies fans. They've been fans, dedicated fans, for the last 108 years without any world series wins to their credit, not since their last win in 1908. To be fair, the Indians hadn't won a world series since 1948. So, the stands were full of tense faces, hands over mouths and distractedly holding nervously onto baseball hats as fans of both teams watched 10 close innings. And what a game it was.
The enthusiasm was high throughout the game. It was exciting because it was such a close game. With the batters who nobody expected anything of sometimes bringing it home. So, when the Indians hit a ball at the bottom of the tenth the atmosphere was tense up until the moment that the Cubs' first baseman caught the ball and made the final out, winning the world series and delighting Cubbies fans everywhere. A historic moment, 108 years of bad luck, curse, dryspell or whatever you would like to call it, was finally broken. Just think about that for a minute. People were born Cubbies fans, lived their whole lives and died without seeing the Cubs win a world series. Almost two generations of people passed while waiting for tonight. It has been pointed out that the last time the Cubs won the world series, Al Capone, Mark Twain, and Thomas Eddison were alive. Tonight linked us back to a time that was a full century ago. And I was caught up in the magic of the excitement, camaraderie and importance of this moment. I watched history being made. What a great feeling, knowing both teams played so well, were so close and wanted it so badly. What a great game! What a moment to remember.
Now, maybe it's my deep American roots, but I've always had a fondness for a good ballgame. (Not that I watch baseball often, but I tolerate the odd game here and there because I like the game.) As a child I remember cheering on my Dad while he played in corporate ballgames. I remember playing t-ball and Dad teaching us to bat. My brother and I loved it when he would do the "real pitcher's wind up". No doubt he went easy on us but we felt like pros when we would hit these real pitches. As slightly older children we taught our dog to outfield for us so that we could take turns batting and pitching without having to run and get the ball ourselves.
So, this evening found me captivated by the world series game between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians. Mom, who has always been a die-hard Cubbies fan was too nervous to even sit in the room. She feared that if she watched the Cubs would lose. So she hovered in the adjacent doorway, fretting and finding busy work to keep her hands occupied between running in to see a play and running out of the room so as not to jinx her beloved Cubbies.
And there is something special about Cubbies fans. They've been fans, dedicated fans, for the last 108 years without any world series wins to their credit, not since their last win in 1908. To be fair, the Indians hadn't won a world series since 1948. So, the stands were full of tense faces, hands over mouths and distractedly holding nervously onto baseball hats as fans of both teams watched 10 close innings. And what a game it was.
The enthusiasm was high throughout the game. It was exciting because it was such a close game. With the batters who nobody expected anything of sometimes bringing it home. So, when the Indians hit a ball at the bottom of the tenth the atmosphere was tense up until the moment that the Cubs' first baseman caught the ball and made the final out, winning the world series and delighting Cubbies fans everywhere. A historic moment, 108 years of bad luck, curse, dryspell or whatever you would like to call it, was finally broken. Just think about that for a minute. People were born Cubbies fans, lived their whole lives and died without seeing the Cubs win a world series. Almost two generations of people passed while waiting for tonight. It has been pointed out that the last time the Cubs won the world series, Al Capone, Mark Twain, and Thomas Eddison were alive. Tonight linked us back to a time that was a full century ago. And I was caught up in the magic of the excitement, camaraderie and importance of this moment. I watched history being made. What a great feeling, knowing both teams played so well, were so close and wanted it so badly. What a great game! What a moment to remember.
Thursday, 31 March 2016
What is my Car squeaking about?
"Chitty squeak, clackety screech" the dashboard in the car sings merrily as we drive about town. It sings like it's someone's Great Aunt Ethel, with a high-pitched voice that is both annoying and familiar; nattering away non-stop as you drive. Maybe my car is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's stately relative Great Aunt Ethel. You don't think cars have great aunts and sing? Well, apparently you haven't met my car.
If my car really is a Great Aunt Ethel type, it is no doubt telling you to "be careful, and slow down, and watch out for that squirrel, and did you know that your cousin three times removed on your father's side had recently bought those horrid foot gloves that masquerade as shoes and I can't see how it's going to improve her appearance any, and don't you just love those red bougainvillea plants they planted in the median?"
Or maybe it's not Great Aunt Ethel after all. Maybe the car is singing its own song about roads, stoplights and gas tanks and the smell of freshly paved asphalt roads in the morning. Perhaps, the car is singing a song that goes "every day out of the junk yard is a good day!"
Maybe I'm driving a cheery realist around town. He knows and accepts his fate with a dash of cheer, realism, and song. Its squeaky rattling tune tells of its happiness to be living the life of an automobile to the fullest. I have enough gas and enough working parts to keep driving, so driving I will go. Three cheers for working motors!
Or maybe my car is plotting mutiny. It plans to wait til we have set sail on a long journey of enormous importance and break down leaving us stranded in an inhospitable section of shark infested waters. Maybe its little creaking symphony is the mutinous mumblings of a car that fancies itself abused and overworked that will crash on purpose at the earliest convenience with a raucous shout of "Drink up mechanics yo ho!" right before it careens full sail into a ditch with faulty brakes. Just maybe. Of course, I could just be imagining all of this because I have an advanced case of scurvy induced madness, anything is possible, right?
Whatever it is my car sings or mutters about, it certainly does so at a constant rate. Sometimes the squeaking cacophony is almost soothing while others it's enough to drive you mad in a mere handful of blocks. Maybe if I roll a window down a bit it will drown out Great Aunt Ethel's helpful nattering. Or perhaps, I ought to join in with the song... "every day out of the junk yard is goooooooood day!" Everyone can use a healthy dose of cheery realism once in awhile, right?
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Breaking News: Mugger claims Scurvy made them do it!
Some day it will come to this. One day I will hardly be able to fend off the scurvy and the madness and I will simply snap. This will be my headline. Mugger claims "Scurvy made me do it!"
I can tell you are confused. That furrowed look on your brow, that raised eyebrow, that slightly narrowed eye tell all. You cannot understand what I am talking about. Well how could you? YOU do not have scurvy.
At first I just thought I was tired from working too hard and maybe the tiniest bit lazy. But then I realized the terrible truth. I was in line to buy my handful of bargains at M&S when realization struck. Out of all the things I could have selected to buy I had chosen to buy a lemon cake, a lemon mousse and a grapefruit. I wasn't just tired and lazy. I was craving fruit. I had scurvy! The hard yellow evidence was staring me straight in my scorbutic face.
Scorbutic, that's just such a great word. No, focus Madder Hatter, you must stay focused. Don't let the scurvy take you like this.
Ok, produce wallet, produce change, pay for citrusy products. Almost safe. No, the madness is taking over. The scurvy... It. Is. Too. Powerful.
I stumbled back to my desk at work, delirious with laughter and the sickness. I managed to obtain a spoon somehow in this state, peeled back the lid with trembling fingers and dug into the lemony mousse. Ahhh. The cure. I could feel the sugary lemony goodness fixing me. The madness slowly receded to a normal level and I went back to my work. I had been saved from the scurvy, but not before I had realized my fate.
You see, it seems to be my fate to constantly battle scurvy. I do not eat enough broccoli obviously, as I have explained before here. So it is with a heavy heart that I must realize what my eventual fate will be. I am destined to battle with scurvy my entire life. Yes, tragic, but true.
I will not always be so lucky as to be within reach of a cure, however. So, I am doomed to be the madman on the loose grasping at anything that even looks like a cure.
Mad with the scurvy I will scuttle down the street. Nobody sitting at a quiet breakfast with grapefruit will be safe from my ravenous need for citrus. I will be forced to grab lemony desserts from people's hands and down them without elegance or dignity. Scorbutic hands trembling I am doomed to terrify the lone bearers of fruit flavoured cakes on public transportation.
With wild and anxious aspect I will spy the cakes from a distance, perched prettily on the lap of an unsuspecting bus passenger. My desperate deficiency heightening my senses and screaming that I act now to restore my health, I will leap to my feet and race to my supposed salvation. Muttering in demented demeanor aloud to myself about the scurvy I will pitch back and forth with the motion of the bus. The scurvy will feel the motion, reach back into its ancient memory and believe with renewed audacity that it is afflicting a hapless sailor, demanding satisfaction in a fruit flavoured cake sacrifice to its honour.
I will battle with the scurvy. I am a good person and won't want to take the poor passenger's cake. But the scurvy will be strong and I will eventually be forced to steal their cake. Unceremoniously, I will be found tearing into it to relieve my scurvy and become the world's weirdest and wildest mugger. Stealing cakes from innocent people. Once the scurvy has been sated and my sanity has returned to me it will be too late. I will try to explain that the scurvy made me do it as I am led away in handcuffs for mugging some poor old lady bringing a lemon cake to her friends birthday. But it will be too late she will already be terrified and traumatized by my public scorbutic debacle.
I am doomed. Summer days may find me trying to pry orange popsicles from unsuspecting little fingers. Fingers that will point me out as the orange-handed culprit. Sure, sure I could have asked where they got their popsicles from, but scurvy doesn't heed logic. Scurvy does not brook disappointment. Scurvy is a law unto itself. It is a bleak bleak future that awaits me.
Even if I try to stockpile on citrus products there is no telling when scurvy could strike. I could be anywhere and nobody will be safe from my scorbutic mania. Maybe I should get a lawyer. Perhaps a good lawyer could explain that these innocent victims had knowledge of the whereabouts of the popsicle and cake vendors and that they were withholding that information from me. I was forced to steal the popsicles and cakes out of great underprivileged need.
Or insanity. The insanity plea could work. The terrified lady from the bus could probably testify on my behalf even. Insanity may just be my salvation.
I can tell you are confused. That furrowed look on your brow, that raised eyebrow, that slightly narrowed eye tell all. You cannot understand what I am talking about. Well how could you? YOU do not have scurvy.
At first I just thought I was tired from working too hard and maybe the tiniest bit lazy. But then I realized the terrible truth. I was in line to buy my handful of bargains at M&S when realization struck. Out of all the things I could have selected to buy I had chosen to buy a lemon cake, a lemon mousse and a grapefruit. I wasn't just tired and lazy. I was craving fruit. I had scurvy! The hard yellow evidence was staring me straight in my scorbutic face.
 |
| Maybe the presence of this pirate cake alongside my lemon cake subconsciously started this whole thing? Nah, it was the scurvy. Had to be. |
Ok, produce wallet, produce change, pay for citrusy products. Almost safe. No, the madness is taking over. The scurvy... It. Is. Too. Powerful.
I stumbled back to my desk at work, delirious with laughter and the sickness. I managed to obtain a spoon somehow in this state, peeled back the lid with trembling fingers and dug into the lemony mousse. Ahhh. The cure. I could feel the sugary lemony goodness fixing me. The madness slowly receded to a normal level and I went back to my work. I had been saved from the scurvy, but not before I had realized my fate.
You see, it seems to be my fate to constantly battle scurvy. I do not eat enough broccoli obviously, as I have explained before here. So it is with a heavy heart that I must realize what my eventual fate will be. I am destined to battle with scurvy my entire life. Yes, tragic, but true.
I will not always be so lucky as to be within reach of a cure, however. So, I am doomed to be the madman on the loose grasping at anything that even looks like a cure.
Mad with the scurvy I will scuttle down the street. Nobody sitting at a quiet breakfast with grapefruit will be safe from my ravenous need for citrus. I will be forced to grab lemony desserts from people's hands and down them without elegance or dignity. Scorbutic hands trembling I am doomed to terrify the lone bearers of fruit flavoured cakes on public transportation.
With wild and anxious aspect I will spy the cakes from a distance, perched prettily on the lap of an unsuspecting bus passenger. My desperate deficiency heightening my senses and screaming that I act now to restore my health, I will leap to my feet and race to my supposed salvation. Muttering in demented demeanor aloud to myself about the scurvy I will pitch back and forth with the motion of the bus. The scurvy will feel the motion, reach back into its ancient memory and believe with renewed audacity that it is afflicting a hapless sailor, demanding satisfaction in a fruit flavoured cake sacrifice to its honour.
I will battle with the scurvy. I am a good person and won't want to take the poor passenger's cake. But the scurvy will be strong and I will eventually be forced to steal their cake. Unceremoniously, I will be found tearing into it to relieve my scurvy and become the world's weirdest and wildest mugger. Stealing cakes from innocent people. Once the scurvy has been sated and my sanity has returned to me it will be too late. I will try to explain that the scurvy made me do it as I am led away in handcuffs for mugging some poor old lady bringing a lemon cake to her friends birthday. But it will be too late she will already be terrified and traumatized by my public scorbutic debacle.
I am doomed. Summer days may find me trying to pry orange popsicles from unsuspecting little fingers. Fingers that will point me out as the orange-handed culprit. Sure, sure I could have asked where they got their popsicles from, but scurvy doesn't heed logic. Scurvy does not brook disappointment. Scurvy is a law unto itself. It is a bleak bleak future that awaits me.
Even if I try to stockpile on citrus products there is no telling when scurvy could strike. I could be anywhere and nobody will be safe from my scorbutic mania. Maybe I should get a lawyer. Perhaps a good lawyer could explain that these innocent victims had knowledge of the whereabouts of the popsicle and cake vendors and that they were withholding that information from me. I was forced to steal the popsicles and cakes out of great underprivileged need.
Or insanity. The insanity plea could work. The terrified lady from the bus could probably testify on my behalf even. Insanity may just be my salvation.
Friday, 3 August 2012
Polygonal Melodrama
Some people have the great misfortune to be plagued by people. Yes people. Maybe I'm just a misanthrope, that is still up for debate, but it seems to me that people have an alarming tendency to behave like weeds. They pop up everywhere in vast numbers and there is almost nothing you can do to prevent them from turning up when and where you do not want them. The problem with weeds is that they seem to be unhappy with simply growing in your garden. They seem to like coming equipped with spines and thorns to make your life miserable while they slowly choke your beloved plants (cauliflowers, roses, what have you) to death, much the way people pop up with their unwanted drama and plague you with it mercilessly, slowly strangling all joy and happiness in your life.
Ok, fine, maybe I am a misanthrope. If you dealt with the people I deal with, you might be too. Don't get me wrong, I do like some people, for instance my housemate. She brought me an adorable cauliflower cake from a tea shop the other day. Relax, it's shaped like a cauliflower, not actually made from cauliflowers. That would be the most rubbish cake ever invented, but I digress.
So there are a handful of people I find acceptable. The rest I'm rather tired of. Whether you are a magnet for dysfunctional individuals, or you simply find yourself in the middle of a ridiculous amount of drama, you know what it is like to be plagued by people. Much to my dismay I have occasionally found myself in the middle of a whorl of drama, either my own or someone else's, that I somehow managed to stumble into. For several years now I have also had the great distinction of being a dysfunction magnet. Sometimes the drama and dysfunction runs so deep that even years of study could not uproot it or untangle it. So don't try. Yes, I am advocating that you join me in giving up on worrying and contemplating. The only solution to this sort of problem is chocolate. Or cake, that works pretty well too.
So stop trying to figure out if you are involved in a love triangle, a love square, a love pentagram, a swirling vortex of drama or any other type or configuration of polygonal melodrama. Don't even begin to try to understand it, or fix it. Do not bring in any other verbs to deal with it. Save your brain the trouble. Break out some cake and enjoy life.
Don't try to untangle things. Trust me it's not worth the effort. Just cut yourself loose from the snaring knots of strife. Admit defeat. Raise the white flag and declare that you are through trying to decipher the meaning behind the insanity. If anyone or anything tries to get in the way of your timely retreat, don't just throw in the towel, throw it at their head. Then sit down, put your feet up and eat some cake, preferably chocolate, but I'll let you decide that one.
After all, you've just won the greatest victory of all. Freedom.
Ok, fine, maybe I am a misanthrope. If you dealt with the people I deal with, you might be too. Don't get me wrong, I do like some people, for instance my housemate. She brought me an adorable cauliflower cake from a tea shop the other day. Relax, it's shaped like a cauliflower, not actually made from cauliflowers. That would be the most rubbish cake ever invented, but I digress.
 |
| Cauliflower Cake from Betty's tea shop. Adorable, no? |
So there are a handful of people I find acceptable. The rest I'm rather tired of. Whether you are a magnet for dysfunctional individuals, or you simply find yourself in the middle of a ridiculous amount of drama, you know what it is like to be plagued by people. Much to my dismay I have occasionally found myself in the middle of a whorl of drama, either my own or someone else's, that I somehow managed to stumble into. For several years now I have also had the great distinction of being a dysfunction magnet. Sometimes the drama and dysfunction runs so deep that even years of study could not uproot it or untangle it. So don't try. Yes, I am advocating that you join me in giving up on worrying and contemplating. The only solution to this sort of problem is chocolate. Or cake, that works pretty well too.
So stop trying to figure out if you are involved in a love triangle, a love square, a love pentagram, a swirling vortex of drama or any other type or configuration of polygonal melodrama. Don't even begin to try to understand it, or fix it. Do not bring in any other verbs to deal with it. Save your brain the trouble. Break out some cake and enjoy life.
Don't try to untangle things. Trust me it's not worth the effort. Just cut yourself loose from the snaring knots of strife. Admit defeat. Raise the white flag and declare that you are through trying to decipher the meaning behind the insanity. If anyone or anything tries to get in the way of your timely retreat, don't just throw in the towel, throw it at their head. Then sit down, put your feet up and eat some cake, preferably chocolate, but I'll let you decide that one.
After all, you've just won the greatest victory of all. Freedom.
Monday, 7 May 2012
I am a scavenger.
At university, my friends and I used to joke that we had to go scavenge for food in the cafeteria. Not everything they served was edible. If you have eaten in school cafeterias you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes the only things that looked edible were the desserts, other days it was cereal for dinner and some days you had to choke down something before you had time to wonder what it was actually made of. I have to say, if you can keep an entire table full of intelligent people guessing at the contents of your dish you have skills. Perhaps not the set of skills I would recommend as necessary for being a cook, but nonetheless an impressive set. Although we did often amuse ourselves at guessing ingredients, it was not always a joking matter. Scavenging was what we termed the desperate search for real food that
often led to an assorted plate of things you found edible. Usually it meant not eating the main dishes that were being served and instead returning with a collection of gummy bears, gold fish crackers or if you were lucky fruit that you found on the salad bar or hidden by the sandwich stuff.
It wasn't all bad. We had fun with even this sad lot in life. We took the song savages from Pocahontas and gave it our own lyrics. "Scavengers, scavengers barely even eating. Scavengers, scavengers through the caf we're creeping." The frequent presence of gummy bears at our table led to the creation of Gummy Bear Theatre. We adapted Shakespearean plays and large historical events and had them performed by Gummy Bear Theatre. It may have looked something like this.
The best one was probably our highly fictionalized retelling of Hannibal's crossing of the alps with elephants in tow.
Apparently I was destined to take scavenging to another level as a post grad. I often found that I didn't have time to do proper shopping trips. So I had to scavenge in my cupboards for things that could be eaten together. It was not uncommon for me to have peanut butter and jelly but no bread, cereal but no milk, and pasta but no sauce. I did try to get food but studying just ate up my life. What kicked me out the door and into the grocery stores though was the lack of chocolate. Realizing this about myself I had to limit the amount of chocolate I bought at one time. This way I would have to go out to buy it more often and then be out to buy more real food too.
Now that I have graduated I seem to do better about buying food regularly. Yet, last night I managed to take scavenging to a whole new level. I have progressed further into my scavenger lifestyle by moving on from food. I now collect things. A few days ago I noticed a table out on the street with the trash bins. I was too tired at the time to really think about it. A few more days of passing by it had given me time to contemplate the table sitting on the sidewalk. That poor three-legged table was going to be thrown away. What a sad fate. How could somebody waste such a perfectly good three-legged table? Well, last night I was sitting in my room thinking that I could use a little table for craft projects.
So, I put on my coat and shoes and went out to the street just behind my house. I rescued that three-legged table from it's sidewalk grave. I was undeterred by the slugs that had already decided to make it their home. I brought it home and cleaned it thoroughly. I resurrected it from useless discarded furniture to craft table. Where better to create things then on a three-legged table? If it can be rescued, if it can still work then there is no limit to what can be repurposed. And if I get a little paint or glue here or there, what matter? That is what it is there for and it will only add to its character.
I had better go do crafty things before I decide to start scavenging for more things.
It wasn't all bad. We had fun with even this sad lot in life. We took the song savages from Pocahontas and gave it our own lyrics. "Scavengers, scavengers barely even eating. Scavengers, scavengers through the caf we're creeping." The frequent presence of gummy bears at our table led to the creation of Gummy Bear Theatre. We adapted Shakespearean plays and large historical events and had them performed by Gummy Bear Theatre. It may have looked something like this.
Apparently I was destined to take scavenging to another level as a post grad. I often found that I didn't have time to do proper shopping trips. So I had to scavenge in my cupboards for things that could be eaten together. It was not uncommon for me to have peanut butter and jelly but no bread, cereal but no milk, and pasta but no sauce. I did try to get food but studying just ate up my life. What kicked me out the door and into the grocery stores though was the lack of chocolate. Realizing this about myself I had to limit the amount of chocolate I bought at one time. This way I would have to go out to buy it more often and then be out to buy more real food too.
Now that I have graduated I seem to do better about buying food regularly. Yet, last night I managed to take scavenging to a whole new level. I have progressed further into my scavenger lifestyle by moving on from food. I now collect things. A few days ago I noticed a table out on the street with the trash bins. I was too tired at the time to really think about it. A few more days of passing by it had given me time to contemplate the table sitting on the sidewalk. That poor three-legged table was going to be thrown away. What a sad fate. How could somebody waste such a perfectly good three-legged table? Well, last night I was sitting in my room thinking that I could use a little table for craft projects.
So, I put on my coat and shoes and went out to the street just behind my house. I rescued that three-legged table from it's sidewalk grave. I was undeterred by the slugs that had already decided to make it their home. I brought it home and cleaned it thoroughly. I resurrected it from useless discarded furniture to craft table. Where better to create things then on a three-legged table? If it can be rescued, if it can still work then there is no limit to what can be repurposed. And if I get a little paint or glue here or there, what matter? That is what it is there for and it will only add to its character.
I had better go do crafty things before I decide to start scavenging for more things.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)