Mr. Muddle's Befuddled Universe

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

Last week I just finished the painting shown on the right in the photo above. It was painted as a companion piece to the one on the left which, as you may recall (if you read my StumbleUpon Blog), I used as part of my assignment in Mr. Pickett's class. (Was that fucking pretentious or WHAT?! Oh hell, I would die of embarrassment if I weren't so used to it by now.) These two are to replace the two that used to hang in this spot but which are being shipped off to NYC this week since my daughter called first dibs on them when I die. Oh, I'm not dieing, I'm not even sick, I just figured why wait. She likes them, she wants them, and I need the wall space. Ok enough about "art"... on to Sunday lunch...

Today's menu was roast pork ala a recipe by Mario Batali, red cabbage baked in a balsamic reduction sauce, mushroom risotto and a green salad with this fabulous garlicky dressing. Here are a few of the Sunday regulars. Normally my mother would sit down there at the corner of the table where young Megan is seated. Mother is one of our many lefties but she is the only one who is a trouble maker about it. She also is the only one that requests NO ice in their water glass. Mom was a no-show this week and will be again next week, Sunday matinees at the local theater, you know.

Once again the child in me is a little resentful that her love of the theater takes her away, but the adult in me is doing hand springs that I don't have to listen to her extol the virtues of St. Bill which is how we refer to my late father from time to time. This time of year is tough on her since my father had the dumb luck to die on the one day you can never forget ..Groundhog Day. This is also why we sometimes refer to him as Punxsutawney Bill. My younger sister has made family history by uttering the now oft quoted line “Oh Daddy! Why'd you hafta go and die on Ground Hog Day!”

Anyway, where was I.. oh yeah, Mom and the Sunday matinees. Historically Sunday matinee performances at the local civic theater are the worst possible audiences. They are made up almost entirely of old blue haired widowed ladies who have spent the morning at Sunday school and church, followed by a quick pre-theater lunch at Luby's Cafeteria so that by the time they reach the dark warm confines of the civic theater they are ready for a nap. Our theater is in-the-round and I can't tell you how unnerving it is to be standing out there in the middle of all those people acting your little heart out only to look up and see that the entire front row of people on all four sides are sound asleep and snoring. OR.. during a quiet moment of stage business one of them wakes up and demands to know from the one asleep next to her what happened and then they all start to wake up.

Today's dessert was a special one. This is my Beloved giving a rare pre-dessert speech. In honor of Tuesday's upcoming inaugural events, my Beloved made peach cobbler using a recipe from a restaurant in Chicago that Pres.-Elect Obama said made the best peach cobbler that Pres.-Elect Obama had ever eaten. You can tell it is a solemn occasion. It's not everyday my Beloved makes a pre-dessert speech while gesticulating with a giant spoon.

Obama Peach Cobbler

Photo/painting credits: Crazy Red
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— Crazy Red
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© 2009 Crazy Red

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

Well, boys and girls, if it's Sunday, it must be time for Sunday lunch. My Beloved, sensing that everyone was suffering a little from post-Christmas depression, knocked himself out and made Texas comfort food ...chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, cream peas, salad with Green Goddess dressing, biscuits and apple pie. My recently married daughter arrived early, I was out of cigarettes, she offered to drive me and off we went. Why drive when you can be driven I always say, so we hied ourselves off to the now infamous corner CVS where this time the cashier failed to honor their "buy one get the other product half off " face cream sign and I endeared myself not at all to the other patrons by holding up the line until the correction was made. It was during this exchange that my youngest daughter, Miss Idgie called her sister on her cell phone to make inquiry as to how one makes vegetable soup so while I was listening to the cashier and the assistant manager sort out the face cream situation my daughter was explaining to her sister the mysteries of carrot peeling and celery washing. Finally credits were credited and cards re-swiped through card machines as the line of people behind us grew longer and longer and you actually could hear the sigh of relief as we bade the cashier, the assistant manager and the clientèle a "Ya'll have a wonderful Sunday, thank you so much for everything, sorry for the hold up!", climbed back in the car and headed back home. Only to have to park halfway down the street since the word of a Chicken Fried Sunday had spread fast and we were a full compliment plus one.

My mother had begged off for a theater related emergency, seems the cast had yet to learn all of their lines and an emergency line rehearsal was called since the show opens this coming Wednesday. Even though she is not appearing in this particular production and is still hobbling around with a cane from her knee replacement surgery she never misses a rehearsal whether she is actually involved or not. Cousin Thing was also a no-show and I have noticed that even though Cousin Thing and my mother's departure on a Sunday always elicits it's own sigh of relief from the assembled masses, they are also uniter-s of the family in their own weird way since we are united in that we each do a mean impression of my mother yoo-hoo-ing her way in the door and Cousin Thing mumbling something under his breath about John Locke.

My oven is having baking issues again and there was much hang wringing in the kitchen and opening of the oven door since it is crucial for the gravy and the biscuits to arrive at the table simultaneously. This made lunch a little late in being served so everyone was pretty well lit by the time we finally sat down to eat. The conversation became quite lively and I give you here, completely out of context, a few of the funnier lines I overheard while cleaning the kitchen...

"The raisins have to macerate? For how long? Until they go blind?" "White pepper is for pussies!" "Ok, someone has to skip dessert or I will have to ask for all the go-pie back!"

Just because you don't attend Sunday lunch doesn't necessarily mean you miss lunch if you call ahead and beg one of your children or grandchildren to bring you a plate. At one point my Beloved and I were smooching in the kitchen and listening to the loud and desperate conversations taking place in the dining room and I said, "They're having a ball out there and what the hell are we doing?!. Cleaning the kitchen!" He pulled me closer and said in my ear "No, we're not just cleaning, we're facilitating."

Well, it remains to be seen what will come of all this facilitating, but if you are lazy and read the ending first, suffice it to say...

Crazy Red is
Still Crazy
Still Red and Minus one wisdom tooth... damn! solid food never tasted so good!

Today was also my newest son-in-law's birthday hence the helium balloons tied to the chair. You can also see the beginnings of the seat marking. Long before lunch everyone is scoping out the seating situation and you begin to see odd personal objects placed to hold your spot. This includes not only handbags and a jacket or two, but I have also seen cell phones, packs of cigarettes and someone's wallet used as a place holder.

My second born daughter lighting candles so I could take pictures. I am still digging out from under Christmas and have yet to move all of the furniture back. The dogs have also been objecting to the amount of pillows on the window seat and Smithers is on a redecorating campaign and keeps tossing them on the floor. Well, I did have it built for the dogs in the first place so I guess he has a point.

Some of the family waiting for lunch. There were a few more in the kitchen, a couple in the living room selecting their places... (we have a few lefties in the group and left handed people are quite particular about where they sit ...something about elbows hitting.) It was a beautiful day though, the sun was shining, it was just warm enough to open the doors and let the fresh air blow in through the screens and you could smell the chicken fried steaky goodness all the way down the street. I love Sundays.

Photo credits: Crazy Red
Click on photos to enlarge.

— Crazy Red
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© 2009 Crazy Red

Today's Theme:
Queen — "Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon (Live)"

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

A CrazyRed Thanksgiving in the Country

Above is a photo of Beloved's little log cabin in the woods where we spend every Thanksgiving.

Over the years as our family has grown we have built several other cabins to house everyone. We call this one "The Treehouse" and it is the newest addition to our little compound and the one everyone fights over to stay in. Normally, my Beloved and I stay in this one, however it is only one bedroom and we had my resident grandchild with us so we stayed in the main cabin. My son, his now 6 year old daughter and their dog moved in with me about 3 1/2 years ago, and because he is a chef he works a lot of nights. My granddaughter and I drove out there Wednesday afternoon with my dog, Mr. Smithers, and from the minute I stopped the car, dog and child never stopped moving until they both passed out later that night. That's Smithers in the foreground and my grand-dog, Dexter, in the background. All the kids have dogs, so whenever we have a family gathering out here everyone brings their dogs. Last 4th of July we were 20 people and 7 dogs.

The view from the Treehouse. The kids wanted to name all of the cabins so the one on the left is called "Snipe's Lodge" after Mr. Snipes who built it — it was a stable in it's previous life and the first cabin to be built after the first child got married. The one on the right is named "Memaw's Ash" after my Beloved's mother. His mother was a two pack a day-er until she died last year at 92. She would forget to flick her cigarette so she would always have these inch long ashes hanging off. The kids called it the Memaw Ash.

That woman was so funny, her doctor told her she could only have one drink a day, so she started having her bourbon and water (heavy on the bourbon and think watery thoughts) in one of those huge plastic Tupperware tumblers that would have so much bourbon in it that the ice evaporated on contact. But, she only drank the one. Another view of Memaw's Ash and in the background is my Beloved's cookhouse. He claims that the kitchen in the main cabin wasn't big enough to cook for our large herd of children. Personally, I think he built it to get away from our large herd of children, lucky bastard.

An interior view of the main cabin and Mr. Smithers on the back porch. The oldest son of my Beloved likes to hunt, unfortunately for him, his previous Guest Wife banished all of his hunting trophies to their garage, so we agreed to "store" them in the cabin temporarily. He has since divorced, remarried and yet the horns, antlers and flying duck still remain. I put Bubba the Talking Big Mouth Novelty Bass up there too, but someone took it down.

Mr. Smithers stands guard

My granddaughter, Naomi. She just turned 6 two weeks ago and is in kindergarten.However, she has the vocabulary and mannerisms of a woman 8 and a half times her age, the fashion sense of a Coco Chanel and Betsy Johnson rolled into one and sounds a little like Elmer Fudd. Teaching her to say "Hoochy Mama" was not without it's repercussions. My son got a note from her teacher and then she and I both got in trouble. I love to ask her questions just to hear the answers because she is such a trip. They have been learning about the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving at her school so I asked her why we celebrate it. According to her the first Thanksgiving was a feast that the Indians and the Pilgrims had because the Indians were thankful that the Pilgrims had landed in Texas to teach them how to make sweaters and the Pilgrims were thankful that the Indians taught them how to make corn bread. "Really?" I said "The Pilgrims made the Indians sweaters?" "Oh yes," she said, "because the Indians were cold and didn't know how to knit."

Here's the thing about Golden Retrievers, Labrador Retrievers and any breed of dog that has Retriever attached to it's name - no matter how often, how far, or where you throw it.. they bring it back. In Smithers' case he retrieves things that you haven't even thrown yet, like this large chunk of tree.

Naomi has her play cell phone in her right hand and her little purple purse with the glitter makeup in her left hand. Not ten minutes after I took this I heard her wail "SMITHERS!" which usually means that Smithers has absconded with a Barbie or Pretty Pony or in this case a purple purse with glitter makeup. While Smithers is good at retrieving he has relinquishing issues and I have taken to keeping a secret stash of throw down Barbies in my closet for whenever I hear the now familiar cry Well, the tussle between dog and pissed off 6 year old was broken up by my Beloved, but the glitter makeup is no more.

What do you do with an 80 year old woman and a 6 year old girl who are both bored and both demanding your attention while you are trying to clean the kitchen? I hear "Go Fish" is a gateway game and could lead to Bridge or even Mah Jong.

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving! We sure did!

Photo credits: Crazy Red
Click on photos to enlarge.

— Crazy Red
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© 2008 Crazy Red

Today's Theme Song is dedicated to all those turkeys we have loved: Lynyrd Skynyrd — ``Free Bird (Live, 1977)"

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

The Wedding Reception Afterglow

Saturday we held the wedding reception for my second born daughter. This is the daughter that back in July took the cash option offered her to elope rather than have a traditional church wedding. (See my previous posting.)

I thought she might do one of two things, take the money and break off the engagement OR stop fooling around and plan the damn wedding! To that point the only dress that had been purchased was mine! (Which was killer, BTW.) Little did I suspect that she would take the $$$ and run. To Las Vegas in August. August 13, 2008 — which is also the doomed and disastrous anniversary date of yours truly and the father of second born daughter. My state of pissed off over this turn of events lasted only as long as it took me to realize that she had just saved me a ton of pain, suffering and aggravation not to mention the $$$!! I had met the future in-laws, finally after many months of the issue of our meeting being sidestepped and avoided and now I know why. Let me just say this one thing about them and then we will leave it alone, for now. ... Everything that I am, they are the exact opposite... Think "The Birdcage" with me in the role of Albie, if Albie were a real woman and not a drag queen, and you have a fairly clear idea of what we were up against.

So, I had a complete change of heart and there was much singin' and dancin' and chortlin' with glee in CrazyRedLand at my good fortune to have given birth to at least one child who was sensible until... once again fate and a pissed off mother-in-law interceded and on October 25, 2008, the previously planned for marriage date became the date of the wedding reception to honor the happy couple and I was back in wedding planning hell once again. My daughter, without discussing it with me aforehand and, in effort to appease her new mother-in-law who had not taken the Viva Las Vegas wedding nearly as well as I did, had made an offer in compromise, hence, the wedding reception. Of course, she was right once again and I set to work planning a home grown variety using harvest/fall colors as my jumping off point not only because of the time of year but mostly because those colors look great on me and coincidentally my killer dress was a killer shade of rust orange and I was determined to wear it come hell or high water. Which I did.

So, the month of October has been devoted to two things... cleaning my filthy dog hair laden house in time for the party AND dealing with my mother and her knee surgery...etc... etc... Everyday since I set foot back in Texas, I have been kicking dirt's ass, cleaning like a woman possessed, the white Tornado, have Dyson - will travel. No, seriously, several times last week it was all I could do to keep from loading my dog and my Dyson in my Tahoe and running away to join the circus or become an itinerant vacuumer or something.. I love my Dyson!! That fucker will suck the dog hair out of the air. If I could just get my dogs not to run from it I would vacuum them... go straight to the source.. what I was talking about? Oh yes...

Therefore, falling under the heading of "Take a picture it lasts longer"... I took pictures of my clean house. I tried to take pictures during the party, but at one point set my camera down and wasn't able to find it again until late yesterday afternoon. Therefore, I have no pictures of myself in my killer orange dress, no pictures of my sisters and I together...dammit! No pictures of the food, which was fabulous and cooked by my son the professional chef, his friend the professional chef and my Beloved, the amateur but really good chef. And only a couple of pictures of my beautiful daughter and her new husband and I was forbidden to blog those. What I do have are two amazing sisters that showed up on time, took over our mother for me and then kicked ass on pulling my house together, fabulous and talented cooks as friends and relations, a beautiful and sensible daughter who can stay calm in a crisis, and a fucking Dyson vacuum cleaner, man! ..... I heart my Dyson!

To sum up, if you are as high, as I am and forgot what I was talking about...

CrazyRed is:

Sitll Crazy
Still Red
and taking a personal day of rest and relaxation.

— Crazy Red
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© 2008 Crazy Red

Today's Theme Songs:

Stevie Nicks performing ``Sara" live

Jefferson Starship performing ``Sara"

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

The Wedding Reception Preparations

On Monday morning I awoke and started hyperventilating when I suddenly realized that I only thought I had done everything on my "do-list" of wedding arrangements. In my zeal of self congratulations over being so organized, I had failed to contact the rental place for the tent and other rentables, such as tables, chairs, knives, forks, glasses, plates, tablecloths, you know, minor things. So, I hied myself down to the rental store and thirty minutes later and one hefty check + 10% for breakage coverage drove home again secure in the knowledge that nothing else could go wrong until...

I arrived home and walked in the house to be assailed with the most horrible smell. Marilyn, my half Jack Russell Terrier -half long-haired Chihuahua had yacked up on every available cloth surface in my house after eating a stick of butter someone had left out on the counter. My washing machine ran day and night for three days and I held off on putting any slip cover or window seat cover or pillow back out until Saturday morning when the dogs were sequestered elsewhere and the dog hair had been dutifully sucked up by my trusty Dyson. Friday night, the sisters arrived and the next morning the transition began...

It is helpful if you have one sister that has a penchant for home decorating shows, is a little obsessive compulsive and you don't get your feelings hurt if she re-cleans your house. I just stood back, got high and turned her loose. It is also helpful if you have another sister who does litigation law and is always on the lookout for a potential lawsuit. She was in charge of risk management and tea light distribution and later she saved my ass during the great wedding cake snafu. Instead, I went outside and took care of the outdoor portion of the party preparations.

Photo credits: Crazy Red
Click on photos to enlarge.

— Crazy Red
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© 2008 Crazy Red

Today's Theme Song:
Betty Wright
``Clean up Woman (live)"

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

How My Mother Took the Yippi-Yi-Yo out of my Ki-Yay
or
"I've Got the My Mama Wears Depends,
My Sister takes Dextrol
and I'm Doing More Kegels Blues”

If you are just tuning into the continuing saga of my ridiculous life for the very first time let me briefly bring you up to speed on the latest doings then move on. We have a lot of ground to cover. Okay, my mother told me in August that her definitive decision regarding my constant nagging to get her knee replaced was "Shut up, Red, as usual you don't know what you are talking about. I will never have my knee replaced EVER! I will just suffer!". Two weeks into my 3 week vacation she emailed me to let me know that her "knee had finally imploded", she was having knee replacement surgery in October and how soon could I be home. The surgery was done on Tuesday morning of this week.  The operation went smoothly, the recovery process has been a whole other enchilada.

Things I have learned this week..

1. My 80 year old mother LOVES "Hannah Montana" and the rest of the Disney Channel line up. Which I discovered on Tuesday when I asked if we might watch the debate. "No, Red, I absolutely REFUSE to watch the debates!” she shouted at me over the eardrum shattering volume of a hospital TV turned to high. She then proceeded to yell at me over a deafening roar of canned laughter the back story of " The Jonas Brothers". This is the same woman who in 1960, when our television was broken beyond repair, refused to allow my father to purchase another because we were growing up to be heathens and TV would be our eventual undoing. Instead, we were made to listen to recordings of “Peter Pan” with Jean Arthur and Sir Cyril Richard, “The Lady's Not for Burning” by Christopher Fry and “Winnie Pooh and the Heffalump” as narrated by James Stewart. Then one day my father came home from work early and found all of us including our maid, Rosita, next door at the neighbor's house watching the Mickey Mouse Club and bought a new television set that very day.

2. I have several friends whose parents have had the same surgery as my mother and assured me that she would be sedated for at least the first day or two and would sleep most of the time. Well, they sedated the wrong half. She had an epidural. According to the surgeon other than knocking her out for a brief time in order to insert the needle, she was awake through most of the operation and talked a blue streak to the anesthesiologist. I was informed later by the recovery room staff that she never shut up the entire time she was there and when they wheeled her into her room she was still talking. This continued all day until she finally fell asleep late that night and only because I insisted that the nurses give her something to knock her out. Please!

3. The “Sleeping Chair” for the family member staying with the loved one overnight is not made for sleeping no matter what the sign says. It is an instrument of torture designed to drum up future business for the Spine and Joint Hospital.

4. Before she drove us to the hospital my mother handed me a thick file folder containing among many things a sheet of paper with a list of 20 people that she wanted me to inform that she “had survived the surgery”. The list was divided into two categories, one for email and the other for phone numbers. My younger sister was dead last on the email list and my older sister was dead last on the phone list and the number listed as hers was an old number from several years ago. This may explain why my sister says my mother never calls.

5. Wednesday night she was in a lot of pain. Because of the epidural and her low blood pressure the pain medication had to be held to a minimum. To distract her I began asking her questions about her childhood. She told me stories from 6 PM until Midnight. This is my favorite ..

My mother loves cats and as a child saved up all of her money to buy Missy, a White Persian. At some point Missy went into heat and all of the Tom Cats began coming around and serenading the fair Missy outside of my grandparents house for several nights running. Finally, one night my grandmother had heard enough. She got up out of bed, stormed outside, looked over the assemblage of cats, selected the one she thought was the best of the lot, picked it up, took it inside the house, and threw him in the spare room where she was keeping Missy cloistered. Two months later Missy had kittens.

My mother was discharged from the surgical hospital this afternoon and is now ensconced in a rehab facility for the next 20 days. I told her that some of my StumbleUpon.com friends had sent her their best wishes for a speedy recovery and she said “Well, Red, please tell them I said thank you, but why you feel compelled to tell the whole world our business, I will never know. Now shut up, Hannah Montana is about to start.”

So, for those of you who have wondered why CrazyRed is so crazy.....

CrazyRed is:

Still Crazy,
Redder than ever,
and really wishing she were adopted.

— Crazy Red
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© 2008 Crazy Red

Today's Theme Song:
Queen performing ``Killer Queen"

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

How I Spent 24 hours in a Spine and Joint Hospital Without Killing My Mother
or
as I like to call it
Tuesday...

My mother had informed me that I was to be at her front door Tuesday morning at 7 AM in order to make it to the hospital by 7:30AM. We live in smallish large town and when I say that I drove across town to pick up my mother we are talking a trip that takes less than ten minutes from my driveway to hers. Cut the time in half for the trip from her house to the hospital. However, it is her knee, she is nearly 80 and I did as I was told.  But, the night before there was a huge thunderstorm that knocked out all the power on my side of town and screwed up my alarm clock causing it not to go off at 5:30. Consequently, I did not wake up until 6:38 AM and began to reenact the scene from Seinfeld when Elaine oversleeps and has to scramble to get her detested boyfriend out of her apartment and on a plane... (not the Van Wyck!). I arrived at my mother's front door at 7 AM sharp. Of course, I was sans makeup and had not had a drop of coffee (if you know me you also know I have issues with mornings..I am a true night owl and have forced myself to adapt to a daytime world and I DON"T FUCKING LIKE IT! NOT ONE FUCKING BIT! until I have had at least one pot of coffee and can begin to see the world through caffeinated glasses.)

So I get her, her walker, her suitcase, her totebag of medications and instructions (hers, she printed out a  file folder full of instructions for me to hand to the nurses filled with information on how she likes to have things done.  And if you think that's bad, you should see the size of the file she gave me) and then SHE drove us to the hospital.

About 9:30 AM I begin to wonder why she has yet to be sent to surgery mainly because if they don't come and catheterize her soon I am looking at yet ANOTHER trip taking my mother to the bathroom down the hall and believe me, getting a little old lady in a gapebacked gown on a walker with a rolling IV pole out of bed and 20 feet down a slippery hall and back again is not NEARLY as funny as I make it sound.

I ask the nurse about the delay and I am informed that her SURGERY is not until 11AM, we weren't even supposed to be there until 9:30 AM.. and the answer to my catheter question was another trek back down the hall to the bathroom. I asked her, as I was getting her out of bed, adjusting IV's, handing her her walker, "Mom, did you know we weren't supposed to even be here until 9:30?" And she says "Oh yes, I thought they might work me in ahead if I got here early". As we walked back from the bathroom, my mother slightly ahead of me on her walker while I rolled the IV pole along behind, said to me, "Red, I hope you are keeping my gown closed back there, I wouldn't want the whole world to see my naked bum".  I gently let go of the back of her back free gown where I had been holding it closed and said "Oh yes Mom, I have it closed.  Don't worry about a thing".  Eleven o'clock on the dot, they came and wheeled her off to surgery. Just in time too, guess who had to go the bathroom again.

So, to those of you whom have asked about her, I thank you.. She would LOVE knowing that she was the center of attention. And since she has yet to master the intricacies of logging on to the internet, I will LOVE knowing that she will NEVER read this.

Crazy Red is:

Still Crazy
Super duper Red
and Super duper tired

— Crazy Red
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© 2008 Crazy Red

Today's Theme Song:
Tom Jones — ``She's a Lady"

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

Honey, I'm home!

— Crazy Red
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© 2008 Crazy Red

David Bowie performs ``Rebel Rebel"

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

Mr. Smithers, my Golden Retriever, and I are waiting on a double short cappuccino outside of a Starbucks in Amarillo, Texas, this afternoon. He is ready to go home.

When I was asked today by my Beloved which I preferred, our treks up the Eastern portion or the Southwestern portion of the USA, I couldn't make a choice. I have loved it all. Whether it was seeing the snow fly on top of a mountain in July in the Smoky Mountains, the Grand Canyon for the very first time, or coincidentally being in the Black Hills during the middle of the week of the Sturgess Harley Davidson Motorcycle rally, I have loved every minute of it. Believe me, driving through the Black Hills on the way to Mount Rushmore takes on a completely different vibe with the sound of hundreds of Harley's down shifting all around you. We met the nicest couple from California at the KOA that week and have been corresponding and trading Christmas gifts with them ever since.

Then there was Robert and Florence. We met them in Paris last December at Chez Denise. We were seated at the same table, I struck up a conversation and by the end of the evening the four of us had agreed to have dinner again the next night. We were returning home and they to Lyon the day after that. We had a wonderful evening. Later, on the street outside of their hotel, Florence saw Catherine Deneuve smoking a cigarette in an outdoor cafe. We spent the next ten minutes trying to capture ourselves on film with Catherine in the background. What a great way to spend a last night in Paris. That is what traveling is about for me. Meeting people you would never meet otherwise, seeing the things you would never see. Whether it is on the prescribed list of tourist destinations such as the Louvre or the World's Largest Ball of String, or seeing something magical and unexpected like snow on a mountain in the middle of the summer. Some of my friends will only travel together in groups of 3 to 6 couples that all know each other and, while I have been on those tours on occasion and had fun, I think they are missing the point. Seldom was their any interaction with the people of the places we visited and what little interaction that did occur was often viewed through a prism that was reaffirmed (and not always for the better) by the people I was traveling with. Okay, maybe the rest of the group didn't interact, but I sure as hell did. There was the lovely visit I had with the museum security guard at Les Invalides while he taped my camera back together after I accidentally dropped it on Napoleon's Tomb. Or the evening spent doing Munchkin imitations for the two adorable little British moppets who charmed me out of my crackers (not the saltine variety, the exploding when you pull the strings during a celebration variety) at a New Years Eve celebration in England. Then there was the little old lady in Wales who grabbed my hands and pulled my 5'6 ½ foot frame down to her 4 foot eye level, looked at my hair and said with great feeling “the Gaelic blood is very strong and is not to be denied”. I don't know what she meant by that. She had been listening to my Texas twang all the way up the mountain on that backwards train (you know Red, she will talk to you). I even had told her quite pointedly when she asked that I am a mutt genetically speaking as are so many of us here in the good old US of A. Then her daughter appeared and I could hear her mutter to her mother as she led her away a warning against talking to strange redheaded women from Texas while in the ladies room at the top of Mount Snowdon. I hope she remembered me, I sure remember her. Okay, this is the last, and I mean the LAST installment of “How I Spent My Summer Vacation”... Crazy Red is: Still Crazy
Still Red
and Almost home

— Crazy Red
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© 2008 Crazy Red

Simon and Garfunkel perform ``America"

Simon and Garfunkel perform ``Homeward Bound"

La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

In the photo above Mr. Smithers (my Golden Retreiver), Mr. Burns (our 125 pound black Chocolate Labrador), and me are on our way to Aspen, Colorado.

Mr. Burns does not like to have his picture taken and will usually hide out of camera view the second he hears the whir of the lens. Unlike Smithers, who will drop everything and rush right over to pose and preen for the camera. However, we were playing “The Cow Game” and Mr. B just couldn't be bothered with being Greta Garbo and allowed me to take this one picture of him.

“The Cow Game” is a game I invented for Mr. Burns when he was just a puppy and would get bored on long trips. He has never been one to suffer in silence and back then he had a whine that a friend of mine likened to having an icepick stab you repeatedly in the medula oblongata. Couple a glass shattering whine in an enclosed car, and you had me about to toss my first born dog out the window. Hence the invention of “The Cow Game”. It began one day when I espied cows while Mr. Burns was wailing in the back of the Tahoe. I tapped on my window with my ring and said very excitedly “Cows, B, cows!”. Well, it shut him up. He rushed right over to the window and begin to bark. (I would rather listen to a bark than a whine any day of the week!) Every time I saw cows I repeated the tapping and the “Cows, B, cows!”, and in very short order he figured out what cows were and started to look for them himself. His first trip to Wisconsin he deduced that where there were silos there may be cows, so he took to barking at silos. Then he somehow managed to make the intellectual leap from hay bales to cows and started barking at those too. Now, we can't even say the word “cows” without Mr. Burns going crazy and have had to resort to referring to them as “C's”. However, we started noticing fairly early on that he didn't always see the cows that were far away and many times he would bark at shrubs and other large hummocky looking vegetation . In addition we observed that if the windows were rolled up he wouldn't bark at all. I deduced that he was extremely nearsighted and was relying on sticking his snoot out the window to make sure that what he thought he was seeing were, in fact, cows. Just doing a little smell check.

Smithers is not as smart as Mr. B.. He has yet in his three plus years to ever bark at a cow although he knows that Mr. Burns seems to care a lot about them and gets very agitated whenever he sees them. It is this agitation that has now become Smithers cue to mount Mr. B and to hump him furiously in the back of the Tahoe. It was quite disconcerting to the rest of us the first time it occurred (we damn near wrecked the car) but, as it continued to happen again and again, we decided that Smithers is gay and/or he thinks that it must have a calming effect on Mr. Burns. Either way, “The Cow Game” has taken on a whole other dimension since we had to add “Smithers, stop humping!” to “Cows, B. cows!” Smithers is now constantly on the look out for cows, but since he doesn't bark at them and has no way of getting Mr. Burns' attention, a lot of them have slipped through the gay-dar and Smithers frustration level mounts.

Today we were driving through Salida, Colorado, and while stopped at a stop sign Mr. Burns began barking furiously at the life sized statues of elks, deer and cows artfully displayed on the corner by a local garden center. This set Smithers off as well and passersby begin to laugh and point at our dogs, one of them going nuts barking and slobbering out the window at the bad lawn art and the other one just humping away like there was no tomorrow.

So kids, we will be home on Thursday, hope you didn't have any crazy parties while I was gone.

Crazy Red is:

Still Crazy
Still Red
and Going home to Texas.

— Crazy Red
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© 2008 Crazy Red

George Strait sings ``How 'Bout Them Cowgirls"

Brooks & Dunn sing ``Cowgirls Don't Cry"