BeBe Gets a Ticket

Our burgundy Mercedes has been ill and needed to go to the car doctor. We sent her to a mechanic the week before the SuperBowl and that is in January, folks! She stayed in the shop until April because a part needed to be ordered from Germany. According to our mechanic, this was the first time this particular part was ordered from the State of Hawaii.

I had the car for two weeks and yesterday when I was driving home, I see a cop's car behind me. I look in the rear view mirror and he follows. Then I see the dreaded blue light.....FLASHING!!

Damn...millions of cars pass as he collects my documents and writes out the ticket for an expired safety check which needed to be done in January!! So $70 later, I get the understanding of irony in my own life!!

What's up with that?

The Christmas Blues

Ain't it funny how the Christmas season is like a race to be run. In the beginning, the slow start means making lists, checking them twice, and figuring out where best to shop. Then the pace picks up as the gifts are checked off of the list. At the peak is the traditional Christmas letter writing and the visualization of the people who will be getting the letters. Double check the Christmas letter to make sure that all of the family members are mentioned and provided an equal number of inches of attention. Dash of to Office Max and print out the Christmas letter, then write the addresses on the envelopes, get the stamps, sort out the letters by address, get to the post office. Then wait in line for your turn.

Lugging home the mail from the post office, invariably someone's post card reminds you that you forgot to send them a Christmas letter. Then you get on the computer and email the rest of the folks their electronic Christmas letter. Add in a special message on the email and attach the Christmas letter making sure that you attached the correct year's edition. Bing...the letters are sent.

Christmas dinner is on the horizon...making a list, checking it twice, checking out what market to visit for the best deals. Then the fight is on for a parking space, a shopping cart, the very last delectable tidbit, paying for the food through the eyeballs, pushing the mountain of groceries to the car, loading the groceries only to find that there were 100s reusuable shopping bags in the trunk after all. Fight travel 20 miles home to the ranch. Unloading the groceries, making sure there is enough space in the refrigerator for all of the delectable tidbits purchased.

Clean the house!!

Christmas morning, wake up and find an excited adult-baby has cooked breakfast and sorted the gifts into piles. Unwrap gifts. Throw away the trash. Put away the gifts. Eat more breakfast...then get ready for the marathon.

Then it is cook, cook, wash the dishes in the sink, cook, cook, wash more dishes in the sink. Set the table. Put out a mountain of food. Eat. Clean up. Eat desset.
Clean up. Wave goodbye to all who came to Christmas dinner. Then, crash!

The sun jerks your eyelids open whether you like it or not. Christmas is over.
Now what am I going to do with myself until February 14th?

Forgotten Things

I don't know about you but when I am stressed, I seem to add more stress by misplacing things. An envelope with $500 cash, my glasses, my keys, my wallet, an important letter...the list goes on and on. Then I go crazy looking around for it.

The latest adventure was the loss of a Walmart bag with a bottle of Bioastin, a lauhala journal, and a roll of glue. I searched all over the house, even checking the garbage bag if in case I threw the bag away. I secretly thought that my husband put the bag away in such places as the high kitchen cabinet above the refrigerator or some weird location like that. I stomped around, shaking the walls of my house with my thunder footsteps...grumbling under my breath, certain that my husband put the package away some place and feigned ignorance about its whereabouts.

Saturday night, sick with the flu, I decided to make my "clean the refrigerator" vegetable soup made with a conglomeration of little bits of leftovers. And lo and behold...there was the sucking Walmart bag in the refrigerator. Could it be possible that the culprit of stupidity was me? What a super knucklehead after all the energy I spent blaming my husband. This is indeed the time to re-air my poem on Forgotten Things.

Forgotten Things
Muriel Mililani Hughes

Me no mai mono, mie nai koto.
Things in front of your eyes are the subjects of blindness.
I just made up this ancient Japanese saying
But ain't it the truth?
Don't it just piss you off when you can't find
Some monumental crap you've been looking for?
These trivial things are so damn important at the time.
When you finally get your hands on them,
You see what a sorry excuse for treasure they are.

Okay, some people say we lose things because
Of stress or some Freudian reason
Linked to parts of the body that have nothing to do
With where we last left the crap.
Others say that we lose things because
We are so damned sloppy.
So...I love sloppy. Don't be accusing me of being
An anal retentive neatnick. Ah....See? Freud gets in his digs again.

I think we lose things because they have their own karma
And travel to Forgotten Things Nirvana
Where they exist to laugh at us as we chase our tails,
Looking under beds and piles of paper,
Sweating and elevating our own blood pressure.
Some cosmic creator of Forgotten Things has a monumental
Plan to see us squirm, suffer, and promise to repent if only
We could find the damn crap!

Beside the ancient Japanese saying that I just made up
I have come to an earth-shattering realization.


Sometimes, we are just idiots, plain and simple
And deserve to suffer.