‘Never to return’

I had a great birthday.  I always do.  I look forward to getting older and older, moving forward, upward then out of here, ‘never to return’, to quote that uni-browed wonder Frieda Kahlo.

This attitude helps me to treat every birthday like a holiday.  I took the day off and went to the NY Botanical Garden.  I walked through the forest to the waterfall.  The sound of the rushing water had a tranquil effect on me, so I stayed there for a long time.  I used a twig to etch my name and birthday, 11/17/62, in the dirt with a circle around it.  One of my best friends called.  We had an enlightened conversation for a while with the sound of the waterfall rushing in the background then mom called and that was a nice conversation too.

I hung out a bit in the forest then went to see the Japanese kiku chrysanthemums.  I had a hard time finding the greenhouse and had to pee and couldn’t find a bathroom.  I found some stupid porta pottys and unfortunately had to use one of them.

I walked and walked and walked and felt it in my ass and legs because I haven’t slept enough and had some pre-menopausal weirdness going on —  or — maybe it’s just because I’m half of a hundred years old!  But the landscape is so lovely there, though Sandy wreaked havoc on a hundred of their trees and a lot of the pretty leaves had blown off of them.  The walk to the chrysanthemums was worth it however – what a fascinating display.  I have wack pictures taken with my cheap phone camera which doesn’t do them justice:

That last picture is a group of chrysanthemums that had been grown from a single stem — too bad it’s all fuzzy right?  And who the hell is that nice lady?

I came home — ate what I wanted to eat — a hamburger medium rare and huge onion rings from the Piper’s Kilt.  Being a cake enthusiast, of course I had cake and cake!  Since Halloween was somewhat intercepted because of my namesake hurricane, it’s still going on in my apartment, which is decorated thusly.  Usually Halloween’s officially over for me after my birthday anyway.  I watched the movie Vault of Horror with the last of my Halloween candles lit and said ‘This is the life’!

And thank you all for wishing me a Happy Birthday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ooooh look a black cake

 

Image courtesy of Pam’s clip art

Some people assume I’m angry because I listen to death metal.  The intense, primal expression of death metal helps me experience my feelings cathartically and I am released from the bondage of anger.  I like it for dinner music or during ‘romantic’ interludes.  While the music allows me to feel peace, it is music that I use to release anger.  So that means that I do have anger issues.  But I’m also known as laid back, gentle, kind, sexy — what?!  Also someone told me that listening to this music causes negative vibrations.  Bah.

‘Easy listening’ music parading as jazz gets my goat and puts me in a very dangerous position.  It makes me want to stab myself in the ears with sharpened chop sticks.  So I say we should moondance because it’s my birthday.

Summoning happens to be black metal however…

Farts, Effluvium and More!

I learned a new word.  Ef-flu-vi-um:  an invisible emanation; especially: an offensive exhalation or smell.

I’m rather embarrassed the way I learned of it.  But I was told that you rid yourself of embarrassment by telling people about it in a public space.

I thought effluvious was a word, and that it meant something like a ‘miasma of putrid decay.’  I had planned to tell you that if I live until Saturday I will have had fifty glorious years on the effluvious planet called earth.  But I’m not so dumb.  I punched effluvious into Merriam Webster and discovered that I had made up a word.  The beauty is that the wonderful people at Merriam Webster thought I might be looking for another word close to that spelling.  So they found me a real word that looks like that one, effluvium.

I had been dying to use the sentence ‘a miasma of putrid decay’ ever since I heard it on Count Yorga the Vampire.  I made up two cool sentences with my new word that I learned, one even incorporates the Count Yorga phrase AND the word effluvium!

Check this sentence out: ‘The effluvium emanated from his rancid hole singed off the hair on my head.’

And check this out — instead of saying ‘Who farted?’ you can now say ‘Who emanated the effluvium into this miasma of putrid decay?’  The only thing, is you have to use a Shakespearean voice when you say ‘this miasma of putrid decay’.

It’s fun to use new words.  I think scientists or medical professionals use this word probably, but I’m afraid I’ll have no further use for it unless I want to sound like a pretentious ass.  But thank you for listening — okay just once more – Now I shall retreat into the effluvium of my decaying existence.

They Wouldn’t Give Me Any Cake

 

I was going to write about having sex with Clark Gable for the 4^th time but instead I chose cake.  Besides, my interludes with Clark Gable may start to read like a Twilight Zone episode.  A lonely lady conjures the spirit of CG.  He tells her how brilliant she is and he whispers in her ear, ‘I understand you lover’, then he tells her to ‘Come sit, sit right here my dear.  YES that’s it, that’s it!  Right…ah yes there.’

I tried to get a piece of cake at the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale when I visited grandma at lunchtime. They rolled it out on a cart and I ran to it like a jack rabbit in the woods. “Oooo ooo-ooo can I have a piece?”  It looked so good, like they bought it from a classy bakery.  It didn’t look like supermarket sheet cake – which are absolutely fine with me as well.  It had thick white frosting with pink piping around the edges and a fruity red filling – I’m starting to breath heavily.

They wouldn’t give me a piece.  “It fah de residents,” the lady said before handing out pieces to the old people.  My g’ma got a piece.  I thought about just snatching it from her before she said, “You want mine?”  She had dug into it and heaved a piece into her mouth.  She’d already messed around with it and when she talks sometimes particles fly out of her mouth back onto her plate – “Uh, no thanks,” I said.

Her table mates, “Matthew” and “Methuselah” had cake.  Matthew said he’d give me his – the sweetie!  He was more concerned about spaghetti.  “They make it here honey,” he says.  Matthew peppers every other sentence to you with “honey.”  “The cook over there, he’s Italian, honey.  I spoke to him the other day, he said they’d give it to us on Wednesday.” Methuselah had fallen earlier in the day poor thing.  We talked about that.  He said that the lump on his head didn’t hurt and wondered if there was a part of the head where you didn’t feel as much pain.  I said I didn’t know.  Methuselah was thinking about writing a book about the lump on his head to make people feel sorry for him.  My g’ma said they get cake for all of the residents with birthdays during the same month.  “Oh that’s right.  Isn’t it my birthday today?”  She said suddenly.  “It’s May 8^th grandma, your birthday’s February 7^th,” I said.  “Oh yes, that’s right,” she said laughing.  I left there without getting cake.  But I’ll be there at lunchtime at the beginning of next month when maybe they have another nice cake.