Rabbit, Run*

What’s on my mind? Bugs. As in Bunny. Three days ago, when a bunny the size of a softball squeezed into the Fortress, we took swift, decisive action. 

The Fortress is our highly secure back garden. It’s where we keep the “good stuff” - the tender-petaled flowers and delicate shrubs rabbits can’t resist. The tougher, less appealing, but still-pretty plants live in our unfenced front garden.

It was early morning when the bunny busted into the Fortress. We were in our dressing gowns. We didn’t know when or how she got in, but Himself strategized her eviction with the precision of a military general. This was war.

She shot us an insouciant look as she ripped and chewed clumps of the newly seeded grass Himself had nurtured with pride. (Please, God, don’t let this bunny be a “she.” She looks 10 days old, which means she’s probably pregnant with octuplets.)

Grabbing a broom, Himself opened the glass door leading into the garden. As he’d anticipated, the bunny bolted behind the shed. A quick defensive tactic. Not good. 

Himself opened the back gate. He told me to whip off my dressing gown, ordering me to spread it wider than a toreador’s cape as he poked a broom behind the shed.

I don’t have a military mind, but I didn’t like the idea of putting my privates on public display.

“I don’t want to take off my dwessing gown,” I mew-mew-mewled, but Himself insisted. 

“This is our one chance for me to force the enemy through the open gate and out of the garden!” he barked. 

So I did and he did and the bunny did. Which was how a military general and a woman wearing nothing but a bra forced a probably-pregnant and about-to-give-birth bunny from their garden.

Yesterday, a bunny the size of a tennis ball turned up in the Fortress. With a je ne c’est quoi look, it calmly began chewing the newest and most delicate shoots in the back garden. The broom, the military general, and the naked woman prevailed.

This morning, as a bunny the size of a ping pong ball happily feasted inside the Fortress, Himself spied others slipping through a hole newly dug under the fence. 

“Rabbits taking cover in a foxhole!” he said. 

“Yes, suh!” Giving him the one-finger salute, I repeated my role in our defensive maneuver, but this time without (as the old saying goes) so much as a stitch. I have a feeling we’ve won the battle but Bugs will win the war.

The downside is that I’ve been running through the Fortress starkers. The upside is that by the time Spring morphs into Summer, I’m going to have one hell of a tan.

© Nicole Parton, 2019

* With apologies to the late, great John Updike, for swiping the name of his novel.

Love Takes Flight

What’s on my mind? Small towns are not exempt from the dangers of an increasingly dangerous world. 

Vigilance is paramount. Hazards abound - even on the tranquil island we call home. Oh, sure ... The place seems safe enough. Our village (that pretends to be a town) has a single traffic light. Parking is free. The shops are shuttered by 6. The streets are empty by 8. Behind that guise of serenity, peril lurks.

Casual visitors never see the dark underbelly of this place. Locals risk getting bonked (if you’ll excuse the expression) by a falling screw (ditto) from the four-level retirement home now under construction. 

Quail run around, wild-eyed and unfettered. Deer munch gardens and hedges, unrestrained. Rabbits - don’t even start me on the rabbits. Let’s just say they’ve never been chew-chew trained. 

Long ago, in a land far, far away, I worked for a Big City newspaper. Today, I loaf around (half a loaf is better than none) drooling and staring into space. The point? A reader once phoned with a bit of advice I’ll never forget: “Stop shooting at pigeons ... There are eagles in the sky!” On several levels, he was right then and is right, today.

Bald eagles ride the hot air above our village’s town hall. Formidable, strong, heavy birds, they’re quick to swoop and quick to snatch their prey (salmon, toy poodles, elderly aunts queued up for a space in the retirement home), flying off before anyone can stop them. 

In this calm, quiet little village of masked menaces and threats, something shocking occurred last week. A wildlife photographer was innocently snapping shots of dozens of eagles when what should happen? Have patience and I’ll tell you. 

The photographer described the birds as in a “mating frenzy.” In the strictly scientific, ornithological terms with which I am familiar, they were bonking and screwing in the sky.  

As the photographer explained it: “They’re looking for mates for life. They will lock their talons ... It’s all about trust. They trust each other to let go before they hit the ground.” She described this “cartwheeling” as a mating ritual similar to “a wedding ceremony.” 

She watched two of the many eagles cartwheel, cartwheel, cartwheel ... Locked in love, neither let go. Diving, dropping, hurtling to earth, serious injury was likely; death, likelier. So where did they land? Right in the photographer’s lap. 

She screamed. They scratched. She fled. They flew. 

If you’ve ever considered visiting a quiet little island in the Salish Sea, fuhgeddaboudit. This place is far too dangerous.

© Nicole Parton, 2019

If the Shoe Fits

What’s on my mind? I once bought a pair of purple faux-alligator shoes on sale at one of the best department stores in Dallas, TX. The price had been slashed many times. By the time I bought them, they were $39. 

I guess no one wanted narrow-width, size 5-1/2 purple faux-alligator shoes. Although my feet are a wide size 8, I bought those shoes because the inner soles (also purple) bore a fancy gold script that read NEIMAN MARCUS. 

I tried to squash my feet into those shoes many times, irrationally hoping they’d fit. They never did.

Some relationships are just like those shoes. They may look great, but - as much as you’d like them to be - they’re not a good fit. I’m happy to say that while those shoes weren’t for me, my relationship is and has been for years. 

Does your relationship feel comfortable? Sometimes, a cozy pair of slippers feels a whole lot better and more genuine than a good-looking but useless pair of purple faux-alligator shoes. Think about it.

© Nicole Parton, 2019

The Moving Finger Writes, and Having Writ, Moves On

I recently came across some poor sot’s plea for tips on how to condense her book into the one short paragraph some agents demand. I was once that sot. After each day of trying, I’d leave my laptop for a little scotch and a big cry. I did this for a month. What I eventually did was imagine my 90,000-word novel on the inside of a dust jacket. Woo-hoo! 56 words.

Then I thought about myself – you know, the stuff where authors write third-person descriptions of their glamorous lives. Example: Suzy Schmerringer divides her time between homes in San Francisco and Nantucket. Suzy and her cocker-doodle-schnitzel-terrier, Bo, enjoy long walks on exotic beaches. Woo-hoo! 26 words.

Then I thought: Gee … Maybe an agent would find this too wordy. So I eliminated the part about Bo (who, to be honest, died 16 years ago and never set foot on an exotic beach because of a teensy-weensy bowel issue I won’t get into here, but ask your vet about parasites in cocker-doodle-schnitzel-terriers).

And then I again thought: Gee … Maybe 26 words about my book is also too wordy. So I polished and pared and perfected the description of my book to just one word: The.

© Nicole Parton, 2019

The Power of the Pen

What’s on my mind? There’s an unfenced hay field not far from our house. Deer used to wander all over that field. It was their buffet; it was their bed; it was their special spot to poop-poop-a-doo. 

The owner stuck a sizeable sign in the field. It looks scrawled - even crayoned. Nothing fancy. It reads: 

NO TRESPASSING.

HAY FIELD. 

Y’ know ... I haven’t seen a dear hit that hay field since. Whoever the owner of that field is, I’d like him or her to make a sign for our garden, too.

© Nicole Parton, 2019

“That’s! Kirk! Douglas!”

What’s on my mind? I’m about to use too many exclamation marks and italics. Hey! I’m an excitable woman! Besides, when you write about acting legend Kirk Douglas, the exclamations and italics tend to overflow.
Kirk Douglas celebrated his 102nd 

birthday last December.  

Anne Buydens, his wife of 64 years, is 100 years old, today. The couple’s 65th wedding anniversary is just five weeks away. And yes, that is a lot of numbers! 

I met Kirk and Anne in 2001, in a retro Palm Springs piano bar called Melvyn’s. That sounds chi-chi, as though we were old pals. We weren’t even new pals. Kirk Douglas had never clapped eyes on me before.

At the time, I had no idea of Melvyn’s history as a Hollywood hangout for the likes of Liz Taylor, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, and numerous other celebs. 

Together with my former husband, He Who Shall Not Be Named, I dropped by Melvyn’s because I liked the look of the place, lit as it was by thousands of tiny white lights on its roof-line and in the surrounding palms. I’m a sucker for tiny white lights and palms. Name one woman who isn’t and I’ll show you a liar. 

(Women go nuts when we see white lights. We assume we’ve died and gone to heaven, all those years of self-sacrificing having finally paid off.) 

Melvyn’s is a long, narrow room resembling an opulent train. The engine at the top of the room is the piano; anyone who wants to see and hear the lounge singer sits there looking cool ... an old-fashioned word for an old-fashioned, Old Hollywood, place. 

“One drink,” HWSNBN said. We took a seat near the pianist, who seamlessly segued from one equally old show tune to the next. Suddenly HWSNBN leaned into me, whispering: “There’s Kirk Douglas …” 

HWSNBN had been spotting celebrities left and right for the two or three days we’d been in Palm Springs. His so-called “celebrity sightings” were hilariously incorrect. 

Because of that, I sloughed him off with a disbelieving “Yeah, yeah …” and continued to focus on the pianist. Sipping my drink, I raised my eyes to the couple sitting opposite us. Clutching HWSNBN’s arm in a vice-grip, I hissed: “That’s! Kirk! Douglas!”

“I’ve already told you that,” he said. 

“It! Really! Is!” I rasped. “Do! Not! Make! Eye! Contact! Do! Not! Look! At! Him!” 

“I’m not looking,” he said, downing his drink. “Time to go!” 

When HWSNBN said “one drink,” he meant “one drink” - for him. I’d barely begun sipping mine. 

As HWSNBN sauntered down Melvyn’s long, thin train of Hollywood history, he made the ridiculous assumption that I was following. 

From the top of the room, I saw a doorman in gold epaulettes bow to show him out. (GOLD EPAULETTES! Only doormen at Melvyn’s and parade drum bangers wear GOLD EPAULETTES!) HWSNBN reciprocated in kind, gesturing for me to exit first. His gesture met empty air. 

What HWSNBN saw down the long hallway that is Melvyn’s was his star-struck wife, kneeling before Kirk Douglas like a novitiate, clutching his hand.

I, on the other hand, saw HWSNBN’s retreating backside as an opportunity to meet Kirk Douglas. Bounding to the spot Kirk and Anne occupied, I ignored my fast-growing suspicion that - other than the 1950’s Photoplay magazines my mother used to read - the sum total of my Kirk Douglas Information Directory was zip ’n’ zero. 

Nor did it matter that I’d seen only one of Kirk’s more than 80 films. In the one I saw, he rode a horse and wore chainmail and a breast plate. Good enough.

I had no idea Kirk Douglas ranked 17th on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest American male screen legends of all time. All I knew was that I was in the presence of an actor famous enough to have been in Photoplay, and that he’d been sitting directly opposite us. This, I reasoned, was an open invitation to tell him how much I loved and admired him and had seen every single movie he’d ever made. Sorta. 

By this time, HWSNBN was rapidly advancing with lips like a wire and a face that suggested he wasn’t pleased to find me kneeling at Kirk Douglas’ lap. It could have been worse. I could have been sitting on his lap. It could have been much, much worse, but his wife was there and Kirk is old and honey, let’s not go there.

I lisp when I get nervous, so at the very moment HWSNBN tried to extract me, I was stroking Kirk Douglas’s soft, marshmallow hand, fawning: “Ohhh, Mither Douglath, I loved you in Ben Hur!” Kirk looked chagrined. I’d forgotten Charlton Heston starred in Ben Hur. Seen one breast plate, seen ’em all.

It was obvious even to me that Kirk Douglas had had enough.

Although he was still recovering from the effects of the stroke that had impaired his speech, he managed to choke out the words: “Where ya from, dear?” 

“Vang-coo-ver,” I said, continuing to kneel in adoration. 

Extricating himself from my iron grip, he patted my hand dismissively, saying: “Well, you just have a re-e-al nice time.”

HWSNBN was steamed. I recall his exact words as he hustled me out the door: “One drink! One! Too many!”

© Nicole Parton, 2019

A Tail of Seduction

What’s on my mind? We said we’d never do this. Never, ever, ever. We lied.

We said our lives were too busy. We said our house was too small. We said this would complicate our travels. We said we didn’t have time. We said the care and later complications would be expensive, as they probably would be. We said we were too old, which we actually aren’t. 

But we also said - correctly - that our house is filled with love. We said it would be a squeeze, but we were ready to squeeze in one more. 

Until we came to our senses and decided we couldn’t offer a dog the many good things a dog needs - the first, being time. But let me tell you why we were almost swept away.

We briefly set out hearts on a black Lab born on a nearby farm earlier this year. We’d read about these pups in the local paper: “Sixteen purebred Lab puppies born in one litter on Island farm,” read the headline. Below it, the subhead: “Birthing continued for close to seven hours.” 

It’s not often a litter of pups makes the news, but a litter of 16? In the semi-rural Island community where we live, this is big news. It’s also what happens when two wet noses start to fool around. The massive litter was three-year-old mother Sophie’s first, just as it was 18-month-old Louie’s. Each is a purebred black Lab. 

Beside the obvious, two things attracted us to the story in the local paper: The dogs’ owner told the reporter: “These dogs (Sophie and Louie) have grown up with the cows, the alpacas, they run with them … We have 10 acres, they run like crazy.”

As the reporter wrote: “Many animals have been born on the family farm including cows, sheep, alpacas and even their daughter.” I couldn’t make this stuff up.

We laughed and laughed until we thought: “Hmmm …” 

I once had a purebred black Lab named Spike. He was the last Spike, I’m sure, and sadly, the last Lab in a line of several dogs, each loving and loved. 

They say you’re never really free until the kids leave home and the dog dies. This, also sadly, is true. It is better to have loved and been loved by a dog, than never to have loved a dog - and been loved back. 

The farmer will by now have found another taker, the reporter will have found another story, and some perfect person will have provided the perfect home for the perfect puppy. With resignation and a smile, all will be perfect, in this imperfect world.

© Nicole Parton, 2019

VISA Would Probably Nix It

What’s on my mind? Handbags. Not ordinary “purses,” but the tonier-sounding “handbags.”

Paradoxically, you always know a woman has prestige and status when she doesn’t carry a bag. I say “paradoxically” because QE II totes a handbag (not a “purse” but a “handbag”) with nothing in it. Oh, maybe a cough drop, but otherwise, nothing.

She famously uses her bag as a signaling device to ladies-in-waiting (“Save me from this boring dame”) or to her discreet Personal Protection Officers (“Drag this dude to the dungeon”), as the situation requires. 

Have you ever seen a TV cop vault a chain-link fence with a purse slung over her shoulder? No way, Jose.

Does Melania Trump carry a purse? Does a G-7-bound Angela Merkel? Nope and nope. So where do these women stash their Kleenex? Up their sleeves? In their bras? In a money belt under their panties? 

The really rich don’t need a purse. An unobtrusive human lapdog follows at their heels, anticipating every need - alms for the poor, pens for autograph books, diapers … Yes, diapers. Kim Kardashian once stuffed baby North’s cheddar snacks and diapers into a $50,000 Hermes bag. 

I would never buy such a bag. Although I dutifully pay my bills in full and on time, VISA would probably nix it. As the TV ad for one US credit card asks: “What’s in your wallet?” There ain’t no $50,000 purses, and that’s fer dam-shure.  

“Man purses” have a certain cachet in places like Europe and Greece. Let’s not go there. Man purses are nothing like handbags. Women collect handbags. Purse genius Kate Spade knew that. And so do the likes of Chanel and YSL. 

I have a little secret! I, too, boast a modest collection of color-coordinated bags. Crafted from elegant plastic, they match my plastic shoes. If Melania carried a purse, they’d surely match her shoes - and what I’d never-ever want, is to be in Melania’s shoes.

© Nicole Parton, 2019

From Russia, with Love

What’s on my mind? I’m still breathing heavily following the four-page summary and continuing fallout from the Mueller Report. I look forward to more. 

Having said that, I’ve just come across an extremely disrespectful parody of US President Donald Trump’s close but secretive relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Please do not watch or listen to the links, I beg of you!

Привет, comrades! This is Boris Goodenough, with the show you’ve all been waiting for … Live from Vladivostock, it’s Rus-sian Band-sta-a-a-nd! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnMtyKp6DGk

Wasn’t that great? Wasn’t it just great? And now it’s time for that special portion of the show I know you’re anxious to hear. Let’s give it up for Donald Trump’s Serenade of Love!

Trump to Putin: Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIYthyp2lto

Trump to Putin: Listen! Do you want to know a secret?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ZNwD5R7i0

Trump to Putin: Wish we didn’t have to meet secretly …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOWicZC-wKg

With thanks to YouTube contributors; Comments © Nicole Parton, 2019

Ms. Vanilla Pudding Morphs Into ...

What’s on my mind? Full frontal crudity.

Thousands may disagree, but I normally consider myself a polite person. You’re probably polite, too. Polite people are nice people. We like our neighbors. We pet dogs. We smile and wave at babies. We listen to dull stories, feigning interest/concern/amusement/sadness … whatever the story requires. We send birthday and holiday greetings. We bake cookies. We’re driven by politeness, falling just short of groveling.

When a normally polite person loses it … When all that bottled-up politeness rises to the surface like bubbling lava … When Mr. or Ms. Vanilla Pudding morphs into the Incredible Hulk …

Yesterday, I invited Himself and my bestie Hezzah to lunch at a budget-breaking restaurant. Hezzah and I often lunch together, but having a man to flatter us is a pleasant perk. 

Along came our server - young, eager, sweet-natured, bright-eyed, and well trained in the Server’s Standard Script. I’ve written about the SSS before (Fed Up! Mar. 3, 2019). I detest it. 

With only minor variations, the SSS has three basic components: 

1/ The opening gambit: “How’s your day been, so far?” 

2/ The insurance policy: “How are those first few bites tasting?”

3/ The clincher: “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”

While Part 2 makes good sense, Parts 1 and 3 infuriate me. To the first question, I usually mask my feelings, offer a vapid smile, and say something meaningless like: “Oh, this and that …” This always pleases the server, who leaves the table satisfied to have made it through yet another SSS. 

Occasionally, I toy with the idea of saying, “At 9:30, I went to yoga and got all pretzeled up; at 10:15, I had coffee with my friend Alice, and then we did a little window-shopping; at 11:30, I had the car washed … and here I am now!”

But that would be mean. The questions are scripted and the server really doesn’t give a damn. I know that. She knows that. We all know that. It’s the “What are your plans for the rest of the day?” question that annoys me most.

No matter how much I want to rip the server’s head off, polite people don’t deliberately inflict discomfort on well-meaning people trying to do their jobs.

I sometimes think I’ll say: “It’s none of your business,” or “Why are you asking?” but that would be rude. 

Yesterday was different. Yesterday, when our bright-eyed server beamed down at us - three wrinkled, graying, paunchy seniors - I knew she was zeroing in on the clincher. 

Her perky little mouth cheep-cheeped: “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”  

As I bent over the bill, calculating the tip, something in me snapped. I’d truly had enough. I know the patter’s been shown to improve tips, but I couldn’t bear to hear it one more time, and just had. 

I heard the words in sl-o-o-ow motion, as though she were swimming through molasses: “Wha-a-at  ar-r-re  you-r-r-r  pla-a-a-ns  for-r-r  the  r-r-rest  of  the da-a-a-y?”

I looked up, smiled, and ever-so-casually lied: “We’re going home to have a threesome.” 

It was worth it just to see her jaw hit the floor.

I wasn’t referring to canasta, either.

© Nicole Parton, 2019