Thursday, January 15, 2009

The Honest Crap Award!


To keep this award I have to tell you ten things about me that you don’t even want to know.

FringeGirl is forcing me do this so jump over there and tell her hi and thanks for me. You'll enjoy her humor and freshness and truthfully it won't matter a bit if you skip the rest of this post.

I also have to present Honest Scrap, the rightful name of this award, to seven blogs I think you'll like. That will be tomorrow's post. Come back for that. UPDATE: SHUFLE, Chapter Thirteen, is tomorrow. Come back Saturday for good blog links.

Number one: I was pooped on by birds twice in one day last year. I can’t remember which day it was but I remember I got pooped on in Austin and pooped on near Caldwell. If it was the same pooper, he was flying 70-miles an hour and had taken the same GPS route we had. If he hit me twice, just think of how many times he missed.

Speaking of flying, (the second thing) I once rode on the back of a Harley Davidson motorcycle all the way from Denver, down to Houston, and back again in only five days. I even napped while riding, although I don’t recommend that. The fillings in my back teeth, among other things, vibrated for months!

At the time, and this is number three, I owned my own motorcycle, a green Yamaha. We didn’t have a garage so at night we parked both bikes in our narrow kitchen. That Yamaha looked like a poor country cousin next to the Harley but if both bikes were parked just right, I could sit on the Yamaha and scramble eggs, the extent of my cooking abilities back then.

I dumped that Yamaha twice and both times I had to stop a couple of strangers and ask them to help me upright it. I was pretty skinny at the time and that bike was way too heavy for me to lift on my own. It was sturdy, though, and after getting it set on its wheels again, I just climbed back on and rode away. That was Number four.

I didn’t weight 100 pounds until I got pregnant with my daughter, a fact that’s number five on the list. I got up to 103 pounds during that pregnancy, had my baby two months early, and immediately dropped under a hundred pounds again. Those are called the good ol’ days at Weight Watcher meetings.

I’m not that thin anymore, although I keep in shape and work out at least eight hours a week most weeks, and sometimes twelve hours a week, making this the sixth thing. I get paid for working out since I teach exercise classes at a couple of places. My theory is that more of us would work out if we were paid to do so.

Which leads me to number seven: I’m 63-years old and wear a swim suit to work. If someone had told me years ago that I’d be doing this, I would have laughed my hinny off, especially since I was scared to death of water until I was in my fifties. Of course, years ago I didn’t have a hinny.

I liked the motorcycle just fine but it wasn’t my favorite form of transportation. That would have been my horse (number eight). A customer at my photo shop GAVE me a thoroughbred racing horse. I named him Bubba.

Bubba hadn’t been a good race horse. He liked to run with the pack, not in front of it. He’d try to double back, I’m sure, just to be with his friends. Very confusing on a race track.

Bubba liked his back rubbed with my bare feet. IT Guy and I would sit on the back porch, which was elevated, and Bubba would nibble my bare toes until I’d give him his rub. I still have Bubba’s saddle in my living room. Among all the dead things on display in my house, I wish one of them was Bubba, all 16 hands of him (that’s horse talk).

Number nine (and these things are really getting harder to tie together here) is another animal I wish I had on display. Only this animal I made myself. When I worked for a theatrical costume house in Denver as a seamstress, I contrived a gorilla suit out of old furs.

The first time it was rented out to an individual, the suit was left on our doorstep the following Monday morning with a shotgun-blasted butt and no explanation. To this day I wonder what mischief that gorilla had gotten into. Looking AT love in all the wrong places, I imagine.

Another favorite dead thing, and thank goodness this is number ten, is a basket made from an armadillo. I'll show it to you if you insist.

Charles Apelt, a German basketmaker, made them for souvenirs. He displayed his first one in 1902 at the World’s Fair. The Apelt Armadillo Farm was probably the only commercial attempt at raising armadillos. They went out of business in the 1970s. Gee, I wonder why.

If you've read all this honest crap, I appreciate it. You now know more about me than most of my ex-husbands.

Have a nice day.

10 comments:

  1. Well congrats on this award. Your writing is never dull--very interesting things about you!

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  2. Ha, ha, ha, ha...

    Your life is so funny! I think you should start carrying an umbrella. You could bring the parasol back into vogue. A bird pooping on you is good luck the first time, but after that I'd have to wonder.

    You've gotta show us the armadillo basket. I cannot even wrap my mind around such a masterpiece.
    -FringeGirl

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  3. I was driving along down the highway one day and all of a sudden.. SPA-LAT! Half my truck was instantly covered in bird poop. OK, so I'm exagerating a little bit. But it was a LOT! As if someone had thrown a quart of milk at my truck. And there wasn't a bird in sight. The only thing I can figure is it was a very high flying goose with incredible timing.

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  4. I was with David when teh SPA-LAT happened. If that was a high flying goose, he has major digestinal issues. We were glad we were in the truck. It could have possibly killed us! Twice in one day would force me indoors for weeks! Yamaha scrambled eggs. Yum! I enjoyed reading up on ya. Congrats on the award. ~Mindy

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  5. I've heard bird poo is great conditioner, true or false? You're a hoot and obviously the birdies(owls included) think so too!!! Tn'T

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  6. Aw, shoot. The darn thing spit out my comment. Didn't say one dirty word, either.
    Anyway, this post was funny. Not your life, the bird poop... PJ

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  7. Congratulations, Texas Woman! After reading 10 true things about you, I must admit that I am fascinated...absolutely fascinated! Don't think that I am gonna let these things pass. I have written them down in my memory bank! Excercise, motorcycles, photo shop, chummy with a customer, theatrical costume house,husbandS...all of this on top of writing a novel and having an unhealthy understanding of gambling in illegal joints! Girl, we gotta talk!

    Again, congrats...and bravo, bravo, bravo!

    Malisa

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  8. 10 things?

    Cher hasn't even scratched the surface...and I've only known her a year.

    The pool water really loosens her up.
    Her stories and wise cracks are actually why
    most of us really go to that sissy exercise class. We know she'll make it worth wriggling into those embarrassing suits and sliding into that frigid water. The rest of you readers should be so lucky.

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  9. Sissy exercise class? You'll be sorry for that statement tomorrow in class, Sie!

    The Texas Woman

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