She Keeps Coming Back....... Like the Tide (or Heartburn)

Well, my dears, it is long past time that I reappeared after surviving having my throat cut.....sorry for the long silence, but I found this so-called simple little operation quite taxing. Perhaps I can blame it on the fact that the surgeon (no doubt a stellar fellow at his craft) chose to execute a bit of creative stitchery on my jowls, therby making it impossible for me to turn my head to the right. I have made various jokes about this situation including giving thanks that I had not spent a fortune for tickets to Wimbledon or Forest Hills thus being able to watch only the left half of the tennis match. However, It has made me.....well.......grumpy to say the least.

I have also found myself a bit woozy or light headed and have questioned my doctors as to whether this sudden renewal of blood circulating to my brain has perhaps proven to be too much of a strain for the ancient plumbing therein. I have been roundly laughed at for this theory so I have decided to keep it to myself from now on. (It makes perfect sense to me !) However, I seem to be improving a bit day by day and decided today that I have been sufficiently self indulgent, lounging around indolently on overstuffed sofas and cosy recliners wondering what interesting stuff has been going on in the right hand side of the room that I have been missing. (not a damned thing, of course).

So here I am, back at my blog post, generating some of my usual nonsense. Actually, my plan is to attempt to conjure up some goodies from the past for your delight and contemplation.....depending on whether or not I can manage to wrench forth a few more drawings from the insatiable maw of the picture files. My wonderful cousin, Bruce, just visited me today and brought a bounty of precious stuff which his father had saved (his father, my cousin Bud, who has appeard in these pages somewhere was undoubtedly the world's most accomplished Pack Rat and his offspring are still discovering stuff in his treasure trove even after years of selective culling. What Bruce found was a whole bundle of samples from my line of greeting cards which I had sent to Bud during the late 50's and which are in amazingly pristine condition looking crisp and spritely though a little dated. Many of these I recognized but did not even remember doing......I was quite a busy bee back in those days apparently. With all the drinking and carousing I indulged in back then, I can hardly understand how I had the time or the stamina do so much actual productive work.

Anyway, without further ado I will attempt to summon them from their hiding place.

Congratulations                                But You Go On Forever

Now to try for a couple more. Only trouble is that, once again, I am having trouble putting the type where I want it so I will sinply say that the card  below, right has an inside caption that reads," For Medicinal Purposes Only".

I guess it is only fair that I attempt to display the inside drawing of
What",

Wish me luck.

And with that I think I will quit while I am more or less ahead.  That is the best I can do in my weak and enfeebled condition.........Enjoy

I Survived

Greetings from my own little dining room, dear ones...........I not only survived Jack the Ripper, but I escaped with my life from the hospital again.

I am a bit wimpy and weak, but I think I will live and recover.  Glad to be home.  Will be in touch soon.

Thanks for all of your good thoughts!

Exquisite Put-down

Before I go to bed  I must pass on this marvelous quote from Zagat, the Restaurant and Food critic in their section called called Outtake of the Week:

                     "They should have let the fish live."

The Day Before

No foolin' around today....this is just to say a heartfelt " thank you" to all you lovely folks who brighten my life with your own wonderful Blogs and with your comments on mine.

Going in to get my carotid artery plumbing fixed tomorrow.........I hope to  be back blogging next week.    Be patient and think good thoughts.

Love 'ya all madly.

More of Lo's Gallery

I am feeling much too lazy to write a lot today so I will take refuge in the pictures (that may be worth 1000 words.)

I did notice that the blogs in which I include photos or sketches draw infinitely more comments than the ones with just words and drivel.  I think I am beginning to get the message, but I still intend to write lots of words during blog time because I love words.  However, on lazy days I am delighted to be able to fall back on illustrations of one kind or another.

During the 50's, guitars and folk music were a big thing and a boyfriend gave me a guitar when I wistfully confessed that my ukulele was no longer satisfying.  I took one lesson, developed a few rudimentary callouses and learned the chords for about 6 songs.  I only played and sang when I was mildly to crazily drunk but since that was my condition much of the time back then I guess I played and sang a fair amount....loudly but not too well.  I did NOT always play and sing naked.

This sketch was intended to be a Christmas card I believe, or maybe it actually WAS a greeting card.....I can't remember if it was published or not, but I just may use it this year.........I have no idea what those funny dots were.

This sketch always reminds me of the years in which I took my life in my hands to climb out the window of our apartment onto the very sloping roof and erect a Christmas tree by wiring the stand to the nearby chimney, then bringing out said tree, boxes of balls, strings of lights  and a ladder.  This rooftop was visible to all who traveled along
Sunset Blvd at the end of the Sunset Strip and beginning of
Beverly Hills and my Father insisted we bring joy to the public by putting up this  tree each year.  (Easy for him to be so benevolent......it was always my neck at risk.)





The little flyer below was one sketch that I actually sold and made money (?) on.  Two dear friends had a lovely shop on Melrose Ave. called

The Four Winds.  They had incredibly good  taste and wonderful merchandise and honored me by hiring me to do their periodic mailing pieces.  We had great fun with this series.  I am so glad I found this sketch.


Uh Oh...I have cats crawling all over my keyboard  making further typing impossible so I will take this as an omen and sign off for now. 

As I often promise, I will close with a tease.....
More later.

Do Not Worry- That's An Order

Dearly Beloveds:
I do not want to cause you worry or anxiety, but I feel it is only fair to warn you that I have hit another bumpy patch in the road and will be in the hospital for a couple of days next week.  Being one of those unfortunates with rampant cholesterol despite meds it appears that all of the Big Macs and KFC chkn I did NOT eat over the past 83 years has somehow found its way into my right carotid artery and there is nothing for it but to call in Roto-Rooter.  Not to worry....I have been assured that the risk is miniscule....a paltry 1% as compared to a 50% risk of a stroke or whatever.  I go in Thursday, July 22 and should be home by the weekend or sooner.  My only concern is the 30 seconds during which they must shut off the blood supply to my precious  brain (my most favorite body part next to my good eye)........if I emerge without my sense of humor or without funny-brain function you all are instructed to pull the plug.........

I will post as soon as I can to report on this newest adventure (?).  Good thoughts and prayers will be welcome....  I totally understand  your unease....no one (especially me)  wants an unfunny LO.

Sketches from My Salad Days (what the hell does that mean?)

As I mentioned recently in an earlier blog, in performing the wretched task of cleaning out the debris from my file cabinets I have come upon a goldmine of stuff including folders of some of my old sketches greeting cards and cartoons.  At the time I did most of these I was suffering the pangs of being a starving and unappreciated artist and I did not find my work particularly wonderful or appealing.  Not having received much encouragement from the world in the way of fortunes rolling into my coffers I felt that my work had little merit or worth and so I let it die an uneasy but unprotesting death.

In rediscovering it now, 50 some years later I realize that I had the makings of a blooming genius.....who knew?  Anyway, now that I have a platform to display some of my works I am proud to offer some of my recently rediscovered gems.

This charmer is one I used to call Vampire Lady or else Coffee House Aficcionada.

Most of these did not have captions and were intended to be used on greeting cards.

The couple below is one of my favorites.....it was inspired by a lot of my old family photos.

I think of my Grandma and Gandpa when I see this now.














Mamie and Jake





            

 I think the following were going to be Wedding cards, but I was too fearful

 that they would be

                     misinterpreted.   

I am having a dreadful stuggle getting these properly positioned on the page and getting the type where it ought to go so I am just going to publish and be damned

An Epitaph for The Dirty Word

I am putting my Hall of Shame Series on hold for the moment to rant a bit about a sudden thought which came to me today and which I cannot get out of my mind......it is either profound or idiotic......I am not sure which, but it needs to be expressed and given room to breathe so get ready for either profundity or idiocy.....or very like some of each.

I had the misfortune to commit a very stupid act today....I was clumfing barefoot down the hall with my cane after rising from my bed and somehow managed to place the tip of the cane on the little toe of my right foot thereby causing me to give forth with a huge shriek of pain when I leaned on said cane and threatened the little toe with disconnection from the other foot bones.  Then I opened my mouth to spew forth a few choice utterances worthy of the indignity I had just suffered (and the clumsiness and stupidity I had just displayed) and nothing came out.  None of the satisfying cuss words I have hugged to my bounteous bosom for lo these many years seemed good enough (or perhaps that should read "bad enough").  I was desolate.
I realized that the modern world (and rap music) has ruined all the good cuss words.  Whatever are we to do?
 
No wonder there is so much violence and pent up rage in the citizenry these days.....and we have done it to ourselves folks.........There are no curses or epithets left to vent our spleen and relieve our frustrations.....we have gentrified them all into compliments (you are my bitch) or meaningless mumbo jumbo from a rap song (fuckfuckfuck yo' muthafucka).......our ears and inner core are calloused and desensitized....what the hell do we scream when we are enraged nowadays????  There are no decent cuss words left........what a dreadful predicament!

I can remember the time when I was so prissy that a curse word never escaped my lips.  (I think I may have overused "darn it" a lot in those days).  That all came to an end  ( and a screeching halt if I may say so) one memorable day in my studio.

However, before going into detail I must first set the scene so that you will understand all the ramifications of the disaster that deflowered my cursing virginity.  My kiln was a huge gas powered monster about 5 or 6 feet square.  I used to be just about 5'2" in my flip flops.  The kiln was a top loader which meant I had a mini set of steps that I would have to climb up, then wiggle my tummy onto the top edge of the kiln and dangle there suspended while I loaded the floor of the kiln.  As I added posts and shelves and moved upward I was able to get my feet back onto the steps and gain more control and more leverage over my load, but the floor was always the hardes and most iffy part of the job.  This particular day I had created a particularly huge pot and it was going to be the sole occupant of the kiln for  that firing.  So there I was teetering on my tummy on a 6" edge with my head deep into the bowels of the kiln and my arms extended to their fullest clutching the delicate treasure and.....well, hell........of course you have guessed it.........it slipped from my grasp and went splat in the bottom not only totally self destructing, but making one prodigious mess in the kiln and that is when I heard some horrible, never-to-be-uttered epithets resounding off of the walls.  I was so shocked at first that I looked around to see who might be fouling the air with those words and then I realized  there was no one else within cursing distance and the perpetrator had to be li'l ol' ME.  The brief moment of shame faded quickly and was replaced with a surge of  joy and feeling of triumph that I had not often felt up to that moment, and it was then that I knew I was doomed to blatant, shameless cursing forevermore.


Today, for the first time I realized that the bland acceptance of the grossest of modern utterances has greatly diminished the pleasure and relief one gets from cursing......a deprivation that I see a possible reason that mankind has become so inhuman.  Thank heaven my old friend, Dorothy is no longer here to see the day when merely uttering "Shit Piss, Fuck" failed to make everything all right with the world.  Sob.

 Forgive me for this miniscule blog........but.....I have left myself speechless.........

All I can think of to say about this horrendous situation is ..........Oh, Poo!

Hall of Shame - chapter 2

This damned blogging thing is certainly a bittersweet blessing/curse.  After baring my soul about my shameful addiction to  Twizzlers the other day I found myself waking up at 4 am that nite, wide awake with a head full of other items on my List of Shame that I wanted to try to write about.  Oddly, my initial dread at revealing my low class, nay,  disgusting tastes when Happy Frog  (http://talesfromthelilypad.blogspot.com  )first tagged me with this meme, morphed somehow into the insistent need to bare all and perhaps test the fortitude of my buddies with my most revolting hidden pleasures and loathings.  I could not go back to sleep until I had created a draft blog with some keywords and phrases to preserve all those gleaming tho' heavily tarnished images that had bubbled up in my brain.

Now that I am actually in the process of continuing this virtual strip tease I am a teensy bit less gung-ho about it, but still enthused enough  to drop a bra strap and wiggle my fanny tassels provocatively. ( If anyone is foolish enough to want to conjure up actual images, I suggest you mentally download the 30 year old Lo ( still sexy as hell) rather than the current one......she is still around here somewhere.........I hear her whisper to me often to remind me of the details of good times gone by.)

Well....... anyway,  to continue with those hidden delights that nourish my soul......things that I would gladly kill for.......how about books and literature?  Coming from a person who once beat her head against the nearest wall in despair when she realized she would never be able to read every book ever written, it should be a consummate laffer to learn that, were I stranded on a Desert Island, I would not cry out for Proust, Kafka, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.........read them all........borrrrring........just deliver the complete works of Robert Parker (Spenser for Hire), Gerald Durrell (My Family and Other Animals) and the incomparable and delightful poet, Ogden Nash, who distilled seduction down to 7 words...."Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker".

Can you stand any more?    Well, perhaps I will deliver one more blow to my previously admirable image.  Take this, you gluttons for punishment!

Movies that I can watch over and over and which I put on when I am in need of cheer or inspiration:

Enchanted April, Shirley Valentine, Scent of a Woman. Pete Kelly's Blues.  (and almost any Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers extravaganza....hell, you not only get great dancing, but some of the best music ever written).

I must confess that I am limp and totally used up by all these confessions, but I see that I have made considerable progress at revealing more of the worst/best of me.  I am not sure how much more of this I have to do to satisfy the requirements of Happy Frog's tag, but, very likely, now that I have begun I won't be able to shut my mouth and stop, so do tune in for the next thrilling installment of  "Things You May or May Not Have Wanted to Know About Lo".

Lo's Hall of Shame

My dear and wonderful Blogmate, Happy Frog, recently tagged me to do some kind of a list.........things I like, things I hate, things about my deepest secrets, etc.

First, I must confess that I read down her list of nominees with some wistfulness wishing that someone would tag me for something someday.....read right to the bottom and about 3 minutes later realized that I had read  right past the name of my own blog without even recognizing it.  Since the title has been one of my most profound truths and my favorite utterances for lo these many years that  says bad things about either my self esteem or my perception......probably both.  Even worse, I was immediately filled with dread..........what should have been a joyful opportunity suddenly turned into a looming threat.  Horrors!   What was this all about?

It was at that moment that I realized that I was a  most despicable fraud and sniveling coward.  Here I have been strutting around for years arrogantly declaring that I had no secrets and a person could ask me anything and get an honest answer.  I thought I had been flagrantly revealing the innermost Me in my blogs and frank conversations.  Ha!  What deceit....what a sham I  am.  (Not to be confused with Dr. Seuss's masterpiece).  Once more I am having my nose rubbed in a puddle of humility.  What was that precept about Pride and a Fall?  Fuck those damned deadly sins........

The prospect of having to reveal a list of any sort, whether it be most despised things things or even  favorite movies fills me with dread because, I realized, some of my tastes are so dull, plebian, low class and downright silly that they totally destroy this cultured, sophisticated, enlightened (?) image I thought I had of myself and that I hoped I projected to the outside world.  I hoped I had progressed to the point that I didn't care what anyone thought of me...........here I am cringing at the idea of revealing that I might kill for a Strawberry Twizzler.  M & M''s might be a barely acceptable choice.....at least they are chocolate, but Twizzlers with Gummy Bears as a runner up as motives for Homicide are too mundane, loathsome  and childish to be borne.  With each wretched revelation the unflappable World Traveler turns into a cringing guttersnipe who not only loves Twizzlers  but  (horror upon horror) washes and  reuses Baggies.....  (well, don't forget I WAS a child of the Depression).

I am so shaken by this newest insight that I can see it will take me a number of blogs to force myself to look into my soul and reveal more of the most loved and hated that I find there, regardless of what the revelations say about the real me.   I can see the list of followers diminishing  till I am left with only the stalwarts of my family....(and who knows how much their disillusionment will cause them to withdraw to the point of simply sending me an occasional Christmas Card.)

However, the one redeeming feature I may still have is my honest search for the truth so I intend to struggle through this resistance and reveal yet another shocker in a subsequent blog.  (Funny, this reminds me of my very first major insight during my psychotherapy when, from the depths of a morass of self loathing I finally admitted and accepted that I was a pile of dung without a single redeeming feature and suddenly heard a voice within declare, "Not true, Lois.....after all you ARE good to animals."  That was the turning point in my psychological recovery and has been a truth that has stood me in good stead to the present moment.....and now you must excuse me........I have to go and put out the tray of watermelon and fig newtons for the possums and raccoons.)

A Favorite Quote

 Just a quickie today.  I came across this wonderful quote by Collette and HAD  to share it......it is one of my favorite things.

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette

my life as a witch

In clearing out some of my file cabinets I came across several folders of my old drawings and sketches..during one period I was fascinated by some characters I created who happened to be witches.  This is the one I felt should be "Lois".  (I am having trrible trouble making the type behave on this blog so I will publish this now and return later to add more pix.)

Pygmy Possums.....Who Knew

Holy Moly- the past few days have confounded me with some amazing discoveries.  First --, I nearly fell out of my chair the other nite when I saw Pogo the Possum gobbling away at the porch buffet and thought I was seeing double.  (with my strange vision anything is possible).  After pressing my nose to the glass that separated us I realized that there was not one Pogo but TWO !  And they are identical twins no less so all this time I do not know which one has been the object of my Possum Watch.  I now suspect that instead of observing Pogo on multiple appearances during an evening it most probably was his sibling who came on the second visit.  Sadly. in my eagerness to get a  better view of them chomfing away at the kitty kibble, I frightened one of the Pogos away and consequently spent the rest of the evening wondering if I dreamed it all.  I have not seen both of them together since that nite, but I am sure there are at least two......for the time being I will have to call them Pogo-1 and Pogo-2......  sorry about that.  Until I can see them together again and can examine them for distinguishing features or differences I can't do any better than that.  (If there were three of them I would be tempted to steal Walt Kelly's wonderful names and call them Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred.)

AND before my head stopped whirling over that discovery I found myself puzzled over the fact that, over the several months that I have been watching this delightful (baby?) critter, it does not appear that he has grown a single smidgeon.  Considering the amount of food he scarfs down on every visit this is simply not possible so I was driven to Google to look up "pygmy possums" to find out if there could be any such thing.......and, lo and behold, there sure as hell are.....a large selection of same including one called a Vampire Possum which rattled me mightily because of my encounter last week with what I am sure was Vampire mosquito.  I have not been able to find that site again, dammit, because I would dearly love to copy a picture or two.....I did manage to grab one image of one of the varieties and I will try to paste it in here somewhere.

   

There he is.....looking a lot like my Pogos.  Needless to say, there will be more to come about these wonderful little creatures. (apparently these miniature varieties make wonderful pets and I even watched a video on Utube showing cats and pygmy possums mingling and cohabiting........no I am not going to go there.....my life is complicated enough already.

The other shocker happened last night when I was peering out  at some traffic around the porch buffet and I saw what looked like Mamma Raccoon standing up on her hind legs and grinning her raccoon grin which bares all the teeth trying to frighten me away  (Poor misguided thing......if she only knew that it  makes her look so adorable you just want to hug her.)  I promptly hid behind a chair and tried to sneak a look around the furniture to see what she was eating and I saw....(gasp)......3 babies munching away.  Those of you who have followed me for a while will remember that my raccoon adventures started just about a year ago when Mamma brought her 4 babies to eat me out of house and home.  After they grew up I would see only one at a time and I never knew which one of the 5 it was.  Now it appears that Mom or perhaps one of her daughters has continued the tradition.   OMG......remembering how much kibble those young 'uns went through I am not sure if I can afford this newest generation.  Sigh.  Well, at least I do not have to crochet them afghans.

So, if you have been wondering what I have  been up to now you know.....up to no good, as they say.  Old Lo is ear lobe deep in critters.......... again.

More Boring Yada-yada-yada About ..........Me

I am taking advantage today of this recent parting of the iron curtain around my Blogging Ability........for some reason the blockade has lifted and words seem to be accessible to me once again.  I don't know if it is a temporary or a permanent thing, but I am taking advantage of it like crazy to get a few blogs into storage for the leaner times.   (like today, for instance.)

One of the reasons I was so quiet last week was the strange fact that I felt like my convalescence had hit a serious bump in the road.  I had  been somewhat smugly commenting that, during my entire adventure with the broken hip thing,  I had really suffered comparatively little pain in the damaged leg.  Oh, I don't mean that it didn't hurt like hell most of the early time, but as I struggled along and did my exercises etc. and staggered around the house and environs the agony abated greatly and for a few weeks, as I graduated from wheel chair to walker to cane, I really did not say "ouch"  (and other things)  all that much.  I should have known that I would get my comeuppance for my arrogance.........one should really try to stay humble at all costs. 

Suddenly, for reasons unknown, putting my weight on the bad hip caused me to say a lot more than "ouch".  In fact, not only my hip and leg, but other joints in my bod was hurting unmercifully too.  After checking myself out for other signs of the Flu and not finding any I decided that what had happened was that I was healing.....,that meant that the nerves severed  during the installation of various titanium nuts, bolts and plates and baling wire  were healing too and as the numbness left me the aches might well begin.  Bummer.

At the same time that I was accepting this misery as a part of my recovery process I was also puzzling over a bunch of vampire mosquito bites.....I think they were mosquito bites because I was able to kill one of the evil critters as he was biting my ankle (but this guy was about 5 times the size of a normal mosquito incidentally) and I observed the curious fact that he left behind not one puncture but two......hence my christening him the Vampire Mosquito.....there were a several more of these strange bites here and there....he must have been busy before I got him........and they not only itched like crazy but formed huge welts which lasted for days.  I was speculating about a number of rare diseases I might be suffering from including West Nile Virus, but when I didn't shrivel up and die immediately I decided it might not be that after all.  Finally I just gave up and surrendered to my fate whatever it might  be, but I can tell you I was NOT happy about gimping around the house uttering piteous groans and shrieks all the while scratching my odd bites like a flea-ridden hound dog.

If anyone has any clue about WHAT really bit me, I will  be ever so grateful to hear your ideas.  Even though the welts are mostly gone the strange puncture marks remain faintly visible.  Is there really such a thing as a Vampire Mosquito?  And, if so, would wearing a bunch of garlic around my neck be any help whatsoever   in protecting me from future bites?   I must say that the whole idea makes me  vaguely uneasy..........I may have to go back to sleeping with my head (and especially my neck) completely covered by the sheet except for the tiny area of my right nostril as I did for years after first seeing the movie "Dracula" with Bela Lugosi ....... (in MY day vampires were not beautiful, adorable, sexy  or anything but .........simply Bela Lugosi Ugly.)   I am equally as puzzled by the current mad fad for vampires as I am by the possibility of there being a vampire mosquito...........how and why does the formerly abhorred become the deliciously desirable??  Beats me.

WTF....sometimes I feel like I have outlived sanity as I used to know it................sigh.