Holiday Wishes on a Cold Winter’s Morning!

What’s on my mind? One of the many perks of having Canadian cartoonist Graham Harrop as a long-friend is that he spoils us with a gorgeous cartoon each year. This is Graham’s 2020 card. May you all be so lucky! And - despite the sadness and the anger and the necessary restrictions of 2020 - may you all do your best and be your best for a safe, sane, calm and happy Christmas.

And thank you, Graham and others around the world, for your greatly appreciated readership and notes. xox Nicole

© Graham Harrop, 2020 

She Knew Nozzink!

What’s on my mind? Stuff happens. Stupid stuff, to be sure. Stupid medical stuff I wouldn’t normally mention.

A few days ago, I had the kind of minor, out-of-the-blue “medical incident” that eventually knocks on everyone’s door. And so it was that a technician wired me up and plugged me in. I distinctly remember her telling me that I shouldn’t remove the electrodes, but that she would do it. 

Tottering home, I went about my daily business, forgetting that a machine would be sending NASA (what-ev-er!) beep-beeps about my bawdy parts. Sitting vaguely reminded me of the electric chair (“I’ll tawk! I’ll tawk! I wuz framed!”), so I tried not to sit too much.

Today was the day the electrodes came off. We dutifully drove to the technician’s office, only to find her AWOL. The woman who answered my knock on the COVID-secured door said she couldn’t unplug me because she knew nozzink about electrodes, advanced physics, the collision of stars in the universe, or stupid medical stuff.   

She told me to go unplug myself. I considered answering in kind, but would never swear at a well-meaning, hard-working essential worker. I whinged: “I don’t know how to do-o-o it! I can’t re-e-e-ach those places!” She nodded toward our car, with Himself behind the wheel.

“Zat your husband?” she asked. “Yeah,” I said. “He can unplug you,” she said, before closing the door in my face. 

When I told Himself what had happened, he said: “Here, let me help you!” He’s the obnoxious, cheerful type.

When he tried, I said: “No! Get away from me!” I’m the obnoxious, independent type.

I bent, I contorted, but couldn’t quite manage the plugs. So Himself took a turn, reaching under … Never mind what he reached under! He unclipped the $#@! plugs. I was happy to have them off - so happy that if I were a smoker, I might have had one. 

Considerably more relaxed, I knocked on the door, again. The same woman appeared.

Handing her the bag of electrodes, I said: “Look, I’m really sorry I was short with you a couple of minutes ago. You were right. My husband took everything off. We’ve been married 10 years: It’s the closest thing to car sex we’ve ever had.”

© Nicole Parton, 2020 

Thinking Outside the Box

What’s on my mind? In this unusual and tragic year, Himself wanted to make our annual Christmas garden extra bright to cheer up our neighbors. So here’s what happened when he did. 

A few nights ago, our friend Bev brought her two-year-old granddaughters to tour the garden by night. Of the many lit gardens around here, ours is probably one of the smallest, but Himself and I always get lit at Christmas. 

We stayed inside during the children’s tour, but saw one one little girl pet an artificial deer, while the other put a small gift bag on the sidewalk - perhaps because I told Bev I’d leave a small box of chocolates on the mat for the girls. This story is about those chocolates. 

Rather than give homemade cookies for Christmas - perhaps not the best idea in the Year of COVID - I’d previously bought a few small boxes of Belgian chocolates as holiday gifts for the neighbors. 

Ever-efficient, I’d already gift-tagged the boxes and placed them under the tree, briefly forgetting I’d promised the children chocolates, too. Problem: I hadn’t bought an extra box. When Bev rang the bell, I was unsuccessfully trying to claw off a tag labelled “Lee and Carole,” our neighbors across the street.

An uncomfortable number of seconds passed before I gave up and opened the door, rearranging my face from frenetic to calm and cow-like. 

Pasting a placid smile on my face, I said: “Hi-i-i, Bev … Nice to se-e-e-e yo-u-u-u.” Trying to appear relaxed, I lounged against the door frame while - behind my back and unseen to Bev - sending Himself desperate hand signals. 

With a passable command of Spousal Signaling, Himself caught on that there must be an “issue” with the box of chocolates. 

Himself is sometimes hit-and-miss in Spousal Signaling, but his talent for Spousal Mind Reading is keen. He instantly grasped that whatever “issue” the box may have, an “issue” always means trouble.  

Putting 2+2 together, Himself remembered I’d been bending over the box until the doorbell rang. He correctly concluded the “issue” must be the tag on the box. 

And so he jumped into action, doing his best to scrape off the tag before finally giving up and scissoring it off. As I stood in the doorway, he slipped me the box of chocolates, Mission Accomplished. I, in turn, placed the box on the mat, closing the door as the girls began their tour. 

Only then did I see the tag Himself had cut from the box. There it lay on the hallway table - his prize in Spousal Signaling, his victory laurels for Spousal Mind Reading - the scissors directly beside it. The tag read: “Milk Chocolate with Truffle Filling ... Mocha Crème Filling Enrobed in White Chocolate …” and so on. Unsure exactly what the “issue” was, Himself had removed the tag describing the chocolates in the box.

Which is how Bev’s granddaughters came to receive a box of chocolates labeled “Lee and Carole,” and why we, in turn, got a tantalizing description of the contents of a box of fine Belgian chocolates we’d just given two two-year-olds.

We felt like dorks. We are dorks. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Lee and Carole will never know what they’ve missed. Unless they ask to tour the garden, of course. In which case, we'll hand them a box of chocolates labeled “Tom and Ann.”

© Nicole Parton, 2020

The Santa Clause of Life’s Contract

What’s on my mind? 

I was 16. My job was to steer over-excited kids onto Santa’s lap; to blow up balloons with a hand pump as Santa grilled them; and to hand the brats a balloon and a candy cane before their beaming moms.

Probably the sole reason Santa got the job as a department-store Claus was that he was fat. Probably the sole reason I got the job as a department-store elf was that I wasn’t. The elf costume fit perfectly, as it had for the many, many, men-nee elves who’d preceded me. A quick sniff of the underarm area confirmed that.

Santa’s German accent was thicker than goulash. A tiny fleck of spittle usually danced on his lips. Terrified by his voice, his spun-plastic beard, and ... well, the spit, some kids wailed and peed on his legs. Santa bounced them on his knee to shut them up; the photographer took a picture; I handed them a balloon and a candy cane; their mothers took them away and ordered them to stifle.

On our coffee breaks, Santa’s beard came off and his feet went up in a foldable secular house painted with fake gingerbread men, candy canes, and a sign reading THE NORTH POLE. The house was near the red velvet chair where his equally red velvet suit routinely absorbed the pee hits. If the still-stinky underarms of my elf costume were any indication, the department store wouldn’t be dry cleaning any elf or Santa outfits when our Christmas gig ended. 

I joined Santa on these breaks, pumping up extra balloons to get ahead of the mob. Moms sometimes plunked three kids on his lap; I needed to be ready when the hordes descended.

In the privacy of his foldable house, Santa loved nothing more than to reminisce about his Glory Days in the Luftwaffe. With my reading mostly focussed on porn, I didn’t know much about the war. Trying to make conversation, I said: “My father was a tail-gunner with the Royal Air Force. He flew over Dresden at 20,000 feet.”

Santa glanced up from his reverie. In a soft, even voice, he asked: “Was ist das?” I assumed the question was hypothetical, and continued pumping balloons. 

Without warning, Santa screamed: “WAS IST DAS!?!?” He sounded like I imagined an interrogation officer would sound, which was exactly how (as I later learned at the movies) interrogation officers sounded. 

Also without warning, he snatched my balloon blower, pushing it down his pants (“Is that a balloon blower in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”).

Outside the foldable house, with Santa back in his chair, everyone was decking the halls and laughing about a holly, jolly Christmas and asking Rudolph to lead their sleigh tonight while my virginal 16-year-old lips couldn’t pucker hard or fast enough to meet the demand for balloons. I was a lamb thrown to the Wölfe. Kids started mewling: “I want a bal-lo-o-on!” Even two candy canes wouldn’t pacify them.

Santa told the department store I wasn’t up to the job. I told the department store Santa was a closeted Nazi who’d stolen my balloon blower. The department store fired me. I had to turn in my sweaty elf costume. This experience taught me to steer clear of men in red suits.

© Nicole Parton, 2020

Nicole Cuts Himself’s Hair

What’s on my mind? 

I am the Delilah to my husband’s Samson. When I recently cut his long COVID hair, his strength ebbed - an understatement. He screamed and almost fainted.

Himself is one of those hippie-at-heart guys who, in his long-ago youth, wore a ponytail and mustache. He looked lousy in a ponytail, but only moderately lousy in a mustache.

I now sport an 8-inch COVID ponytail. For the first time since I was (never) a hippie, I can wear my hair up or down. I look lousy with my hair down, but only  moderately lousy in a ponytail.

Himself and I are the perfect couple. Neither of us looks lousy all the time, though the hair on Himself’s head has been growing so fast and so long that the scary notion he might wear a ponytail was becoming ever more real each day.  

As though changing gears on a sleek sports car, I effortlessly slipped into Nag Mode: “CUT YOUR HAIR, YOU IDIOT!” Not quite like that, but sorta like that.

How do you get your cut hair while social distancing? Our hair grew another inch as we hemmed and hawed, straddled fences, put the issue on the back burner, and generally took comfort in tired clichés.

I’m no stranger to home haircuts. My father once put a bowl on my head, cutting anything that dangled below it. Arms, legs … Nothing was safe. My friends are on alert that anyone who releases my Grade 1 class photo will face a lawsuit. In that shot, I look like a lanky first-grader whose hair was cut with a bowl on her head. Nuff said.

I once persuaded Himself to let me trim his hair before a party, upon which I learned a man dressed in a tuxedo with a baseball cap isn’t trying to make a fashion statement. Whenever a Fellow Guy said: “Hey, buddy, lose the cap!” Himself snapped: “NO!” Period. Full stop. Conversation closed.

Hair = Identity. Consider the not-you anonymous blockhead whose heavily sprayed comb-over has morphed from orange to yellow to metallic silver with a touch of white. I’ve never met this narcissistic dodo, so I’m splitting hypothetical hairs.

Back to reality. When Himself offered to chop my lousy long hair, I cried: “No-o-o-o!” Still concerned about the social distancing dilemma, he allowed me to cut his only after I said I’d learned my lesson from the baseball cap incident. Which, of course, I hadn’t.  

Ever wondered why barbers and stylists hold hair between their index and middle finger as they cut it? I have. After doing exactly that, I thought: “Hmmm ..? Do I cut above or below my fingers? Above? Below? Above? Below?” I shrugged and picked “below.” 

How wrong could it be, I thought? The second I snipped, he snapped. I knew what I’d done was very wrong. But once you start, you have to finish, right? I finished Himself’s hair re-e-e-al good.

Eye-balling his head in the mirror, Himself let out a strangled sob. Trying to make light of it, I said: “If I stuck a finger in each ear and lifted your chin with another, I could use your head as a bowling ball, ha-ha.”

Himself didn’t laugh. I’m going to buy him another sports cap for Christmas. One with anything - anything - but a slogan about bowling.

PS: Hair means trauma. I’ve written about hair many, many, ma-ny times before. See Diane Cuts Her Husband’s Hair for the story of Himself’s first scalping. 

© Nicole Parton, 2020

Enough, Already!

What’s on my mind? 

Enough, already! Fie on sore losers! 

Fie on babies who mewl about legally conducted elections! Fie on narcissists and grifters! 

Fie on COVID’s indiscriminate cruelty! (But follow the rules and stay safe).  

Fie on it all! 

Think Gingerbread Men! And enjoy my daughters’ funny video and this great recipe: 

https://nicoleparton.blogspot.com/2011/12/gingerbread-men-with-attitude.html

© Nicole Parton, 2020