Melicious Details

Hospital Schwag

Clyde had to have outpatient surgery that required about an hour of general anesthesia. To best decribe his post-anesthesia amnesia, I wish I could have created the following video.

Scene One

I enter the recovery room to see Clyde sitting up in bed.   

Me: How are you feeling?
Clyde: Fine.
He looks down at this feet, which have on bright turquoise socks.
Clyde: Why do I have these socks on??
Me: They probably didn't want your feet to get cold.
Clyde: My feet are never cold.

Scene Two

I drive up to get Clyde outside the surgery center. He gets in the car, holding the turquoise socks but acting like he has never seen them before. 

Clyde: Look! They gave me these socks!
Me:  NICE.

Scene Three

We arrive home. Clyde is still clutching the socks. 

Clyde: I'm going to go put on some shorts.
Me: OK.
Clyde: Did you see these socks they gave me?
Me: Yes. You showed me already.

Scene Four

Clyde comes into the family room wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and - inexplicably - the turquoise socks.

Clyde: I'm going to go work in the yard.
Me: The doctor said to take it easy today. Why don't you relax and watch TV for awhile?
Two minutes later he is sound asleep on the couch.


Scene Five

I am working in my home office. Clyde comes in and sits down.

Me: How was your nap?
Clyde: Good. He looks down at his feet. Why do I have these socks on??

 

 

Hens Laying vs. Hens Getting Laid

Ever since I got my chickens you can't believe the number of times I've had this conversation.

Person Who Doesn't Know Anything About Chickens: How often do the chickens lay eggs?

Me: Hens lay once every 24 to 26 hours.

PWDKAAC: How many roosters do you have?

Me: No roosters. Our town has a no rooster rule.

PWDKAAC:  So chickens can lay eggs even if there isn't a rooster??

Me: Yes, they still lay eggs, the eggs just aren't fertilized.

PWDKAAC: So they don't need a rooster to make the eggs?

Me: No, they can make eggs all by themselves.

PWDKAAC: OK, this is probably a dumb question, but how do the eggs get fertilized?

Me: Well, the first thing to remember is that the Daddy Rooster and the Mommy Hen love each other very much.

Blogging Hell

To My Readers -

In case you don't know it, I really love y'all. Every one of my blog posts is big giant Valentine Sealed With A Kiss from me to you. And my little heart truly appreciates every minute you spend reading my stories.

Some of you get to my blog via facebook. Some of you view it via an RSS feed.  And some of you get this delivered directly into your email box, which would seem super convenient, right?

Except the technology used to send my blog post directly to your email box does a really good job of NOT SHOWING YOU THE VIDEOS EMBEDDED IN THE POST.

This makes me crazy. Because I know just enough about technology to know that it should work, and I feel badly that what you get in your email box is not the blog I intended.

So, if you would like to view the video in my latest post titled Chicken Style - which is not possible to view in the email sent to you by the people I hate at Feedburner - click here

 

Chicken Style

Last February, we brought home four one-week old baby chicks. Not only do they produce eggs now, but also endless sources of entertainment. Chickens are seriously hilarious.

This is Agnes, a White Crested Black Polish. See that puff ball on top of her head? It's only the beginning of her spectacular coiffure.

Five weeks later, Agnes flaunts the early stages her Check Me Out, Bitches look.

By the time she is three months old, Agnes has become a full blown diva, bossing around the photographer and demanding a catered lunch.

I tell her she looks like the Don King of poultry.

By the end of the summer, Agnes requests a video shoot because photos don't do her 'do justice.

 

But for the love of God , it has been impossible for her to keep up the awesomeness through the winter.

True Confessions

Hi. My name is Melissa and I have a slight lisp. It’s a good thing I’m making this confession online because saying “slight lisp” out loud is hard. But not NEARLY as hard as saying “synthesize”. Saying “synthesizing a thesaurus” is impossible.

When I found this helpful pronunciation guide, I realized, whoa. There’s someone out there who sounds just like me.

 

Are you familiar with a company called Heath Zenith? I can’t say that either.

Walking the Walk

Have I mentioned that I hate to exercise? I have? OK here is an example of me actually exercising: Clyde makes me do a three mile walk (which includes forty six steep hills) seven days a week. And when I say seven days a week, I mean three.

There are circumstances that prevent me from walking seven days a week, which I think are worth sharing since some of you may find yourself in a similar situation, especially if you are ever married to Clyde, who is dead serious about walking seven days a week. When these circumstances occur, Clyde and the dogs go on the walk, and I stand at the back door and say “have fun!”

The Circumstances

Time - there are days when the amount of time available between when I get up and when I have to be somewhere is not long enough to include a walk. It’s hard to quantify what this “long enough” amount of time actually is. It just depends.

Weather  
Snow - I live in the Bay Area. It snows approximately every 30 years. See photo. 
Wind - I don’t leave the house when it’s windy.
Fog - Everyone knows it’s dangerous to walk anywhere when visibility is limited.
Rain - See Wind.
Temperature - It can’t be below 50 degrees or above 75 degrees. Also, there can be no rain and/or wind accompanying The Temperature.
Other - Dew point can’t be too high/low. 

Gear and Equipment - I only have one pair of socks that work with my walking shoes. Sometimes they are in the laundry.

Sports Injuries - It’s important to take precautions and not walk when injured:
Sometimes my right foot is a little tiny bit sore.
Once in a while my left knee might be bothering me.
I have a headache.

Other than these circumstances, going on a walk is great.

It snowed at our house on Feb 26, 2011. This is me (and Tango) not walking that day. He looks worried because he has no concept of what a snow angel is.

Trouble With Foreign Tongues

I couldn’t just restart my old blog. I had to switch to a completely different blogging platform. And then I couldn’t be satisfied with one of their pre-designed templates, I had to customize it. And customization means speaking the HTML. So there I was, in the land of Web Development, attempting to speak the HTML, with only the slightest idea of what I was doing. It was like being in Mexico, where I could say “hello” and “thank you,” but not “where is the museum and what time does it open?”

It also reminded me of the summer my friend Dee and I spent in Italy. To say we spoke Italian would be similar to me saying I speak the HTML. So I think what happened is that a charming bilingual bartender (right, Dee? he was a bartender?) convinced us that while traveling around his country, we needed to develop a signature phrase — some eloquent words in the Italian language that we could use in any situation where we didn’t really know what to say. Like during those awkward silences with a train conductor or a police officer. 

Our signature phrase was “I’m so sorry about the thunder - but let’s have some more wine!” We said this phrase at least 10 or 12 times a day - often just to each other - so became really proficient pronouncers of all the words. To this day, I can bark out that phrase in perfect Italian even if woken from a dead sleep.

Later, during our touring of the Tuscan countryside, we met some other Americans at a restaurant. After talking about everyone’s various Italian adventures, Dee and I shared our signature phrase. One of the American guys said he’d developed a signature Italian phrase also. His was “I have naturally curly hair.”

Before Clyde went on a trip to Costa Rica, I helped him learn some basic Spanish words. And I decided he needed a special signature phrase to really kick his Costa Rican experience up a notch.

Me: OK, so in addition to Hola! you need to learn a signature phrase.
Clyde: What does that mean?
Me: When you are checking into a hotel or ordering at a restaurant - if you don’t understand what they are saying, or just if it seems like it is your turn to talk, you would say this.
Clyde: What does the phrase mean?
Me: It roughly translates to “I apologize that my Spanish is not very good.”

What he didn’t know was that what I’d actually taught him to say was “I love to sing and I love to dance!”

Don’t you love greeting cards that capture exactly how you feel?

Fraught by Apparel

Unless the weather channel is predicting a hard freeze, Clyde wears shorts everywhere every day, except when I invoke the You Must Wear Pants rule.  And since his preferred shopping strategy is to buy a whole bunch of whatever he needs all at once to avoid having to shop again any time soon, the Shorts Shopping Extravaganza happened last weekend.

Saleswoman: Sir, can I help you find something?

Clyde: I need some new shorts.

Saleswoman:  Any particular kind? How about a khaki chino?

Clyde: A what?

Saleswoman:  A khaki chino.

Clyde:  Um...No thanks.

After she walks away, Clyde turns to me and says:  Why did she just ask me if I wanted a coffee drink?

The English-Italian-Vietnamese Translation Triangle

I love my manicurist, Nancy.  She's been doing my nails for almost 20 years.  She came to the Bay Area via a small boat when she fled the communist regime in South Vietnam in the 1970s. Even now she still has a strong Vietnamese accent, which, when combined with her slight lisp, can create some funny conversations. 

When I was in Italy, I'm sure the Italians were thinking something similar about me:  that blonde woman's strong American accent combined with her slight lisp make for some amusing pronunciations.  Like the time I ordered fish gelato.  Because I was trying to say the word for peach (pesca) and it came out sounding like the word for fish (pesce).

Nancy and I recently had this conversation:

Nancy:  Mayleesa, in backyard, I put kacheebo!

Me:  Nancy?  A what?

Nancy:  Kacheebo!

She does some gesturing.

Me:  Oh!  A gazebo!

Nancy:  Yes, kacheebo!

Me:  Nice!

Nancy:  Now we put in a <insert sound of puppy sneezing>

Me:  A what?

Nancy makes the puppy sneezing sound again.

I am perplexed.

Nancy:  A tub.  It has jet.  It has BAUBLES!

Me:  Ooooh!  A jacuzzi!!

Nancy:  Yes!  How you say it?

Me:  Ja-coo-zee.

Nancy:  Ya-coo-zing.

Me:  Exactly.