I’m taking a break from blogging.
[Perhaps you picked up on that from the title of this post?]
I’ll be back in October. Probably.
In the meantime I’ll leave you with this video.
It makes me happy.
Don’t believe me? Just watch.
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Movies
The Tale Of The Nosy Robin + Reading Material For Your Edification
ONCE UPON A TIME the Lady of the House was minding her own bidness, standing in her kitchen pouring some granola into a bowl, when she was startled, almost out of her skin, by an obnoxious bird.
THIS BIRD, A ROBIN, made himself known by peering into the kitchen as if he wanted into the house. Which wasn’t going to happen.
THE LADY OF THE HOUSE, in a Tippi Hedren moment, had a sudden horrifying flashback to The Birds, a creepy movie the Lady of the House saw at an impressionable age.
UPON REGAINING HER COMPOSURE the Lady of the House watched as the nosy robin stalked her, boldly staring at her and the bowl of granola that she was eating.
NOT WANTING TO RUFFLE any feathers the Lady of the House, a charitable woman, decided to give the nosy robin some granola. Hence she bravely went outside onto her deck, and put a small handful of granola on the railing.
HOWEVER, THE UNGRATEFUL ROBIN flew away when the Lady of the House walked onto the deck, leaving the granola untouched.
WHILE YOU MIGHT THINK that’d be a good thing, it turns out that what the Lady of the House inadvertently did was chase the nosy robin to the front of the house where he dive-bombed the outside of the window in the foyer for hours. The end.
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Learn More About Robins AND OTHER BIRDS
How to Stop Birds Attacking Window Glass
Has The Mystery Behind Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds Been Solved?
When The Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin’ Along
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Happy Spring!
“Live, Love, Laugh and Be Happy”
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How To Turn A Bully Into A Fool [Part 2 of 2]
[Part 1 of this childhood story is here.]
The next time Karl started hassling me was in class a few days later.
He sat a row in front of me and turned around to torment me, the quiet girl named Alice, by mocking my name in a sing-song fashion: “Alice in Wonderland, Alice in Wonderland.”
I was mad.
Following my father’s advice I turned to Karl and said loudly: “So who are you? The March Hare?”
As fate would have it, our teacher, Miss Thomas, a maiden lady [as they used to say to describe unmarried women over 50], was standing at the end of my row.
She was a known disciplinarian, seemingly devoid of whimsy.
However, my adult putdown of a kid who she knew was going to be trouble for years to come caught her off guard, and she burst out laughing. At which point the rest of my class joined her in laughing at red-faced Karl, former bully turned class buffoon, thanks to a few well said words at the right time.
Thank you, Daddy.
From this experience I learned three valuable lessons that have stayed with me to this day:
- Words have power;
- If you can make people laugh, you can make a point; and
- Bullies are weaklings who you can take down, one way or another, if you just apply yourself to making them look like fools in front of their peers.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2euFpZs2m9I
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R Is For Rhubarb, Rightly So
“Lady, you know what happens at a sale, when two women get hold of the same dress? THAT’s a Rhubarb!”
~ Rhubarb, a 1951 baseball movie
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I chose rhubarb as my letter “R” because, beyond knowing that it’s a tart vegetable with great health benefits, I knew there was a cute old movie about baseball and a cat named Rhubarb.
I remember seeing the movie somewhere along the line, and from that movie I knew that rhubarb was a slang term in baseball meaning a disagreement or a fight.
What I did not know when I started researching rhubarb is that the word is sometimes defined as nonsense. As in you might say: “Jane is talking rhubarb.”
I also did not know that “rhubarb” is the word that extras in a play say while onstage to create background noise.
I also did not know that “on a rhubarb” was WWII fighter pilot slang for being on a strafing mission on enemy ground.
Finally, I also did not know that “hitting the rhubarb” is slang for getting so drunk that you can’t drive without going off the road.
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And that, kids, is today’s installment of my A To Z Challenge theme, FOOD: Talking The Talk.
THE SPECTACLED BEAN 