What's in a Name?

I had a lovely drive this morning dropping Owl at her office. The temp was in the upper 30's; brisk breezes kept sand dancing lightly across the roads; the traffic was super light because it was a Thursday preceeded by a religious holiday.

We made the trip in record time without a single near-miss... or so I thought. As I was making a left turn into Owl's office parking lot we (By the Grace of God) narrowly missed getting broad-sided by a speeding car passing me on the left in spite of the fact that I had my turn signal on...(Lest I should forget I was still in the UAE where driving is fast and furious, even on secondary roads.) I saw him and swirved just barely missing a high speed crash at my door.

I pulled away, thanking God for the last-second rescue. Soon I approached a huge machine in the road. Owl's office is in a converted warehouse in the industrial area where semi-trucks and slow moving monster equipment all rule the roads. This bright red and orange behemoth was a crane/cement squirter used to deliver wet cement many stories above ground at high rise building construction sites. Bold lettering declaired it to be the Putzmeister Elephant. Not seeing much Yiddish in the UAE, it amuzed me greatly. I only knew putz as a Yiddish verb meaning to move about in a lazy way. I thought to myself, "That's me, I putz around the house all day and I'm large. I could be a putzmeister elephant too. Maybe I'll adopt it as a new nickname. It could go into the family lexicon alongside Wicked Sloth-monkey, and Iccky Fish."
Owl would come home from a hard day of reportering and ask me, "Whadja do all day, Mom?"
"Oh, not much," I'd reply casually. "I read. I blogged. I did the dishes. I was really just a putzmeister elephant today."

I was surprized when I got home and looked up the meaning of putz at dictionary.com.

putz
n.

1. Slang. A fool; an idiot.
2. Vulgar Slang. A penis.


intr.v. Slang putzed, putz·ing, putz·es

To behave in an idle manner; putter.


[Yiddish pots, penis, fool.]

Now I know why a hugely long fluid shooting retractable crane was named a putzmeister elephant... and NO, I don't want it as a nickname anymore. Thank you.

Mrs. Abez Takes a Vacation

Yesterday Mrs Abez came home for a visit. She rushed into the house,hugged me and then ran into the kitchen and started opening cabinat doors. "What a wonderful collection of white people food! she gushed. "Ooo, cereal... what no kid cereal? (Large Hulking Son eats it as fast as I buy it.) Peanutbutter! Chocolate syrup AND chocolate fudge! Wow,homemade cookies! Three kinds on hotdogs!" she mumbles through the ginger snap in her mouth as she opened the freezer.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "Do you lead some kind of junk food deprived life with your in-laws?" She reminded me that her Husband-Friend doesn't like peanutbutter, her in-laws are't fond of sweets and H-F tries to prevent her from eating the foods that give her migrain headaches: chocolate, cheese, nuts, and mint.

That night she stayed up girl-talking with Owl till 3 am. The next day she slept late, brunched leasurely, and napped in my waterbed in the afternoon.

In the evening we walked out to Baskin Robbins after dinner. While I was in an ice-cream-31-choices-induced-stooper, I failed to see what Abez was ordering. As we sat down at the table I noticed with horror she had a scoop of MINT CHOCOLATE-CHIP ice cream with FUDGE SAUCE, PEANUTS AND WHIPPED CREAM (not a migrain trigger, but an upset stomach starter for Abez)!!!

"Abez," I gasped, "What are you doing...three migrain triggers at one time!!! You're head will explode! Your husband asked me not to let you eat trigger foods and I assured him I wasn't tempting you with any. Now you're cheating on your husband with an ice-cream sundae!"

"I know what she's doing. " the ever wise Owl explained. "She's doing what you used to do all those years we went to Grandma's house."

"Oh yeah," I replied dreamily. A hazy mood of fond recollection overcame meas I recalled my trips to my Mom's house with my 4 kids. I would hit Mom's house, race with you kids to see who could eat all the junk food and chocolate in the house first, and do all the things I couldn't do at my house because I was the Mom. I'd watch hours of movies, sleep late, camp out in the reclining chair and read for hours. My parents' house was almost the exact opposite of my home where tv time was strictly monitored and limited, junk food was kept to a minimum and there were never chocolate-filled candy dishes. Basically I became my mother's child again and took a vacation from rules, diets, strict limits and from being Mom of my own 4 kids.

Mrs. Abez doesn't have any kids yet, but I think she needed a vacation from adult life. This morning when we were leaving the house to drop Owl at work and her at home, she confirmed my suspecions. As she was going through the cabinats again, she said, "I'll be back in a few weeks when I need to relax, roll around in the waterbed, eat junk and be a lazy bum for a day."

God bless her. She is her mother's daughter.

PS: again Spell Check won't work, Sorry)

25 Things about me, Me, ME!!!

On Friday, I dutifully, sat down to type a blog update. I pounded away at the keys for over an hour on a piece about how I never know the day or date since moving to the UAE because I go to church on Friday instead of Sunday and that throws my whole mental calendar off.

When I finished my piece I asked my live-in editing troll, Owl to please edit it for me. She read it, grew angry because I hadn't even spell checked it myself and declared it confusing and pointless. I told her to save it as a draft and I would fix it later. Yesterday, I returned to blogger to find she had deemed it unworthy, rejected it and deleted it! Wow, how's that for personal editing service!!! No more waiting for a politely written rejection letter from a publisher... she delivers personal rejection right in your face. She didn't even request a rewrite...click.. Rejected AND Deleted!!!

I hate to attempt to rewrite something I've lost. So, instead of trying, I'm stealing Abez's idea that she stole from ICU Baji: a list of 100 things about me. Like the lazy Abez, I shall also offer mine in installments. I am supposed to be doing other things here like cooking and cleaning and laundry and applying for a job... but I blog because I am.

My List of 100 Things About ME by Carol/daMomma

1. I'm left handed

2. I delivered all four of my children through natural homebirth.

3. I have my Father's lovely blue eyes, and whenever I look deeply at them, I see him in me.

4. I have 2-1/2 years of college and have nightmares about not being able to finish my education.

5. I've a very quiet and very reserved person to all but my family.

6. I like, no I love, no... I live Chocolate.

7. I dabble in self herbal medication... sometimes with weird and disasterous results. Ginger induced personal earthquakes anyone?

8. I love to read children's books.

9. I am a strange mixture of quiet, reserved and very childlike.

10. I am a Wicked Sloth-monkey... someone who is slow to good, but quick to make mischief.

11. I'm such a rotten speller, I couldn't win a 3rd grade spelling bee if my life depended on it.

12. Yellow makes me happy. Yellow flowers, yellow shopping bags, even yellow shopping bags on the ground trying to pass themselves off as yellow flowers will make me smile.

13. I've lived my life in a mental haze. I never could remember names, faces or numbers.

14. I'm a Latter-Day Hermit.

15. I talk to machines, giving them both praise and threats as needed. It works too!

16. I personify the inannimate. I realized I had inadvertenly passed that on to my 3-year-old grandson when one day I heard him call out: "Shoes, where are you?"

17. Exclaimation points should alway come in sets of three!!!

18. I have 4 beautiful and healthy adult children; two sons and two daughters, now add 2 grandsons and one wonderful daughter-in-law and one equally wonderful son-in-law. One irreplacable husband.

19. I am fifty-one-derful years old.

20. I've moved 30 times in my life.

21. I've perminately moved to Pakistan twice.

22. I've permenately repatriated to America twice. This is my first permenate move to the UAE.

23. I've had my entire household and personal belongings reduced to 2 suitcases per person twice.

24. I refuse to do it again. Now whenever I move, it's a full sized shipping container or I'm not budging.

25. I'm a displaced Hoosier-Chicagoan.

That's the first installment. Spell check isn't working, my editing troll is at work, so you get a live sample of my creative and wacky spelling.

Now I have to stop being a wicked blogging sloth-monkey and pretend to be a hardworking homemaker.