Strange Road Kill Day on Highway 14

I commute twenty miles to work each weekday; it's a straight shot down a lovely roadway we like to call Highway 14. Since it is an easy drive, I find myself paying attention to little details. Details like the profusion of small to medium former animals resting in the road. Today there was a large number of these unfortunates, a few of which I really had to watch in order to avoid further running over. I counted a possum, a raccoon, an armadillo (there's ALWAYS an armadillo - are these guys slower than they think they are or just suicidal??) and I think a former dog. BUT. And here's where it gets really weird. Upon entering the town of my destination, I started noticing odder stuff stuck in the middle of the road. First a lone shoe, then several yards down the road, its mate. Then another shoe, and another. All in all, about five pairs, some matched, some lonely and alone. Has Imelda Marcos cleaned out her closet? Is today throw your shoes out the window of your car day? Barefoot Freedom for All? Hmmmm. Shoes in the road. Makes you wonder.

From The Department of Redundancy Department

See that red car? I followed that red car for several miles up the road today. See that ever so carefully photographed (through my windshield) white blob on the upper right bumper area of the red car? It is a lovingly made bumper blob - larger than a sticker, more like a sheet of paper, adhesive backed, landscape oriented, laser printed. I so wanted to get a photo to show you, dear Internets, for you know of my obsession with grammar, spelling and word usage. Okay. I took the picture because this bumper blob says:

Save An Animal
EUTHANIZE
A Child Pedophile

I promise.

Haunted By The Folder, Or Birth Mother Blues

A while ago, while rummaging in my file drawer, I came across The Folder. This is an old dog-eared manila job stuffed full of papers, notes scribbled in and outside. It's the folder I started when I started to look for my birth mother and the son I gave up. You remember the story of my teenage heartbreak and pregnancy, you'll find it here.

Anyway, The Folder. Several years ago, I decided it was time to make the search, to see what information I could find about my birth family, and reconnect if that was in the stars. I put my name into all the Triad search websites, wrote the requisite letter to the agency in New Orleans, started poking and prodding around. I received non-essential information provided by my birth mother at the time of her confinement in St. Vincent's (I used to think that terminology for pregnant women was so sexist, but this time, it truly fit...) I found out her ethnic heritage, some sketchy family information, and that was about it.

And then I found Fran. Fran was a private investigator, who for a fee, attained my adoption papers and Christopher's, and read them to me over the phone. I got names, birth dates, cities of origin, more family details. I was set. Or not. I hemmed, hawed and generally procrastinated about it. You see, on one side of the equation, I was sure. I had a plan, a timetable, some good energy. I knew the circumstances and I knew more or less where my son came from, and where he'd be coming from now. On the other side, the antecedent was a blank. I never felt energy, didn't know what had happened to this woman who gave me life and then gave me up.

As a child, I fantasized about my origins -- I used to imagine a long limo pulling up in front of our modest New Orleans suburban house, and Elizabeth Taylor emerging to claim me as her own lost child. Or Julie Andrews. I alternated the two, mainly because with my dark blonde pixie cut and blue eyes, people would say I resembled Ms. Andrews. Liz Taylor was much more glamourous and dramatic. The Liz fantasies I usually used when I was pissed off over something my mother wanted me to do or not do (i.e. cleaning my room or hitting my brother) and I felt my style cramped by this OUTRAGEOUS maternal request. I'd show her, I'd be whisked off to Hollywood with my REAL mother (Liz or Julie) and NEVER have to clean my room or SEE that horrid evil little brother EVER again. Obviously, that worked out well. My mother never knew just how close she came to losing me FOREVER and continued the raising, nurturing and loving blissfully unaware.

I still have that faded Hollywood fantasy to draw from now, although I love my mom and wouldn't have had it any other way, limo notwithstanding. Perhaps I dwell on the negative aspect of the search now more than I did as a child. I mean, what if she's not up to my fantasies? What if she doesn't want to know me? What if she's terribly ill? What if she's crazy? What if she's dead? I think that if I'd had any indication that she searched for me (and I have left huge drifts of breadcrumbs wherever I could to facilitate that search) I would feel differently.

Now that I work at the library, I have more genealogy resources at my disposal. As a matter of fact, the genealogy room is at my back at the reference desk. Just behind me is a vast treasure trove of public record info, computers with search engines and databases and the like. I've made a few haphazard stabs at looking around, and the only results kinda scared me. I found a woman, approximately my birth mother's age, mentioned in an article because she had a mentally ill son in trouble in the prison system in California. I poked a bit more, but her background information didn't quite jive with the information I had already. Talk about mixed feelings there, disappointed that the search must go on, but relieved that I don't have a crazy half-brother in jail being abused.

I still hold on to The Folder. It has grown fatter slowly over the years, my mother contributing things she's come across - a wedding announcement from a bride she thought looked like me, some phone numbers of people with my birth mother's last name from her home town, notes I've written as I've looked around. Perhaps one day, my phone will ring, or I'll answer the door, and I'll be able to chunk it. For now, I'm just a little haunted by it all.

bing -- Stream of Semi-Consciousness

Is it just me? Am I the only one who is startled, embarrassed and insulted by these new bing.com ads? Being a child of media and a writer and producer of same, I understand the concept. I get that search engines sometimes lead us down a disassociated yet strangely linked path, a rabbit's hole of information -- but that happens only in front of the computer. Not in the middle of the rest of our lives. Oh, Microsoft, tell me it ain't so. Yes, I see the attempt at humor. No, I don't REALLY ever think we'll get to be such search engine junkies that these non-conversations would actually happen. But I just think it is so insulting to the intelligence of your intended audience to even suggest this as reality, as a problem that can be solved by bing.com that you lost me. I won't try it, not until you come up with something else to spark my brain. Am I an audience research panel of one?

Four Foods on Friday

Love love the Friday for many reasons, not the least of which is Four Foods on Friday, brought to us again by Valerie at Fun Crafts and Recipes. Here are this week’s four questions.

#1. Clair’s question. What’s the biggest kitchen blunder you’ve made?
This one came early in my cooking life. I was about twelve, and my mother and I attempted to make that very cool braided Easter bread that you put the dyed Easter Eggs onto. Well. It was one of the few yeast bread recipes we'd ever tried. We either did something too much or not enough. It was nasty, heavy and resembled a doorstop when baked. Cured me of trying to bake with yeast for years after that. I didn't really get it until I got my bread machine.

#2. What’s your favorite snow day beverage?
Snow day? Qu'est-ce que c'est? Actually, we in South Louisiana did have a snow day this past winter. We drank about a half gallon of hot chocolate, the recipe off the cocoa tin.

#3. What’s your favorite way to eat celery?
Tuna Salad, with onion, dill pickle, a little curry and garlic and a couple shots of tabasco, light mayonnaise and lemon juice.

#4. What’s the most most unappealing looking food you can think of?
Probably I'd vote for geoduck, that giant clam thing they find off the upper West Coast. Blech.

Rain. We Need. Big Time. Please Send. Amen.

As I crossed my front lawn, heading to retrieve two days' worth of mail (I don't know what it IS about these male people I live with. Neither of them craves real, tactical contact with the outside world. They're content to sit in the AC and Xbox their brains out, while politicians wander off into Argentina and stuff. Ahem. I digress....)anyway, as I crossed, I noticed this strange crunching noise. It was coming from the soon-to-be-former St. Augustine grass so thickly covering the lawn. It is downright crackly. Man. Do we need some rain.

It has been over 100 heat index for the last four days. The Cub Scouts, hearty souls they are, have even been sending the boys home from day camp hours early. Of course, if you saw the venue for this BB gun shooting, archery bowing, whinging dog food through a slingshot all day adventure, you'd send them home early as well. It is a rodeo arena. Max has fondly dubbed it, The Poo Place. As in, OH NO, we are NOT having Cub Scout Camp in The Poo Place AGAIN! Yes, my precious son, you are. And you're going. And you'll come home again in the afternoon and need to be immediately hosed down before you get near my sofa. So none of the Poo from the Place gets into MY HOUSE. It is even worse with the lack of rain, as the dust just bowls up and permeates sweaty cub scouts. I'm wondering if boiling him would get it all OUT.

Now, this rainless condition has affected my procrastinated tomatoes which I missed putting in the garden on time. I did haphazardly stick three plants into pots on the patio, and I have been saying novenas while watering each evening after work. I've dumped a huge amount of Osmocote into each pot, and stuck a ginormous tomato cage on each pot. These poor plants look like they've gone to the vet and come back in a scratch collar. But. I've been talking ever so sweetly to them, in between novenas, and I still have hope for a mid-summer crop. There are flowers on two of the three plants and they've seemingly gotten past the heat wilt stage that snaps the flower off before the fruit begins to form. With a little luck and not too many cutworms, I may even have a homegrown tomato or two before it really fries in August. But man, we could really use some rain.

Four Foods on Friday

Here's my fave Friday meme, courtesy of Valerie of Fun Crafts and Recipes. This week’s four questions:

#1. bestmomma’s question. If you could copy the cooking expertise and ability of one person, who would it be?
My ultimate would be Julia Child. She was fearless and fun, the first woman to break into the 'serious' chef world. Bon apetit!

#2. What’s the first red food that comes to your mind?
Strawberries!

#3. How do you eat your strawberries?
Right out of the carton, or just cored and sliced with a little sugar or Splenda sprinkled on them. Max can eat his weight in strawberries like that.

#4. Share a recipe that uses cherries.
Hmmmm can't think of one. My favorite way to eat cherries: Get fresh cherries, chill in fridge, wash and pop into mouth one by one. Pretend you're Michelle Pfeiffer in "The Witches of Eastwick."