I am Five Years Old!

My Blog Speaks, on His 5th Birthday…

“Momma says I am a Big Boy now and I should go clean my room. It is my birthday. I am five years old.  I don’t want to clean my room. If I clean my room I won’t be able to find my toys. Momma says I can have cake- if I clean my room. Will you clean my room?”

But seriously folks…

If my blog  was a child, he would be a rather precocious five year old. Today is his birthday, so it is a really, really special day for him. It is one of the days you might even remember when you are 86 years old and all you can remember about being five is your kitty cat birthday cake with the gum drop eyes, nose, and mouth. But blogs are not people…you have to re-post, quote, feature, or summarize a post to bring back a blog memory.

Some of your favorite posts (apart from Google’s obsession with Mister Fritter) came when I was living deep in the mountains, and had serious snow days to compose posts at odd hours like 11:30PM or 2 AM when I could not sleep because the wind was howling outside the windows and doors of my little house…and no one would be at work in the morning because no one was going anywhere in 6…to…36 inches of snow.

It was a particularly healing time for me in my life, even though I was isolated, and quite possibly because I was so isolated. Pouring out thoughts a few fingers at a time, at all hours of the day and night, can be refreshing to the spirit.

It began with a memory I had of climbing one of Ireland’s highest mountains in County Kerry with my cousins…ending with our Cork cousin leading the party out of a fog so thick I felt blinded and therefore lost…but the Corkman did not lead us astray, and we were back in a pub later, me at the crisps, and the other lads at the beer…but a rather humorous journey because we had been humoring him about the possibility of the white mist coming down and how he’d be lost and everything…and sure, we’d lead him out of there all right…

and so The Lost Kerryman (at wordpress) was born. and I determined to bring to it a bit of that same humor that has prevailed in my family.  along the way, I discovered some special friends on wordpress, kindred spirits, most of whom have gone on to another  plane of communication that does not include wordpress.

To them, and to you, my dear reader, I do appreciate your interest.

For those who have stuck by all these years, thank you. Some of you have inspired me to write similar posts, to explore similar subjects, or to boldly go where no blogger has gone before.

For those of you who have not known me, nor my blog, since I began….I thank you, and I ask you to share with me your thoughts about posts or the blog itself.

Looking forward to the next five years…

 

 

 

 

the pink icing got me

the pink icing got me. really. if it had not been for the pink icing, i would have been good. isn’t it always like that? you’re doing just fine and then some pink icing shows up on a brownie cake on your desk at work. and then all Spain breaks loose. (nobody expects the spanish inquisition!!!)

 

 

 

Not at all like when i was ten and used to sit on the floor of the library for hours reading about Jenny the cat, or some French girl with a horrible haircut and a bunch of watercolor nuns, while my mother and father roamed through the stacks, or did whatever they did when they went to the library. back in the days of run-on sentences from getting-up-in-the-morning until the head on my pillow sank into a white-cloud ocean-going-vessel set sail for Sleepytime. ah, those were the days, and the nights, and the dreams…mostly sweet, with kitty cat cakes decorated with lime, orange, and cherry gumdrops…back before looking in the mirror at Mister Hippo wasn’t a daily morning encounter.

Now don’t get me wrong, Mister Hippo has been there the whole time. Even on my vacations. But lately, Mister Hippo has…been…looking…middle age. there, it had to be said. middle. age. where the thirtyish looking body went, God only knows, replaced by a complete foreigner looking like Mon. Poirot and belching like a sea lion off the coast of California.

i found solace in Pepto, as in Bismol, but the raging circus from parts unknown disturbed my sleep. i awoke staring in the mirror like an Escher painting meeting an Edgar Alan Poe short story. Why are the eyes red? And why do I feel like I have been rummaging through the cask of amontillado when i haven’t partaken of liquid spirits since a glass of kosher wine with my spaghetti…many moons ago?  

if i had known that middle age was going to be like this, i would have come prepared. i would have brought a year’s supply of peppermints, a complete Shakespeare, and a lifetime-guaranteed Gumby…to yank and pull rather than go through a metamorphosis myself.

but no. age demands we take notice. i may still be able to pass for thirty five some days, but there are too many others featuring mornings resembling the day after Ghenghis Khan’s final invasion, days when i do not feel human until water is sliding down my face…and warm at that.

and while i have adapted to not being as handsome as i was, say, six months ago…i can still look in the mirror and recognize the spittin image of Clark Gable…and Johnny Depp…and even swish my hair back out of my face. i may be sitting in middle age, but i refuse to succumb to an image as Mister Hippo every morning. Maybe mini Hippo, but not full blown….

 

bookends part 3

In the meantime of the day, when the clock just doesn’t quite strike a primary number, Albert assumed a cup of Java into his routine. It sat before him, it sat beside him. It even sat between his legs. But when the clock struck four, the cup sat empty, save for a few charred remains of the day.

And so our common man took his common seat among the passengers aboard the yellow train for the north. And here, as he fiddled with his laptop zipper, our little man counted. Three, four, five…six- fields filled with a ripe brown that reminded him of his cereal.

New Forever Flakes…crispy even with a bowl of milk. The finest breakfast you’ll ever have…

“I say, do you mind?” a voice insisted, leaning forward.

“I do not.” And with that, Albert handed over a section resembling the Financial Times. He smoothed the front page, then folded it aright.

“Thank you.”

“No. Please don’t mention it.”

They stared and he stared back. He fiddled with the zipper, flipped his wrist- still not Five. A tray came forward, launched somewhere behind him, rolling.

“I say, a cup of that,” the voice demanded.

Stop the bleedin’ cart! Stop the bleedin’

“And you, sir?”

“The orange fizzy- you know.”

But before she could gather his euros, Albert twisted the bottle and drank a gulp. It burned with satisfaction, wiping away the dry coffee within his mouth…

“Best pay…”

“Yes. Thank you,” he managed.

Albert sat with his nose downward.

An unintelligible mumble squawked through the dingy speakers.

They’re drunk again. I swear it…I’ll tell Izzy. She’ll tell her brother, and then-

“Nice day?”

And who are you, you little thing? Can’t be more than twenty. Pretty though. If I were your father, I wouldn’t be letting you on trains-

“I didn’t want to bother you- but, you look sad.”

What a deduction! She’s a genius. Sad? I had my Lucozade, why would I be sad? Would you be sad if you had your Lucozade every workday on the train home? 

“Sorry…”

“No…it’s all right,” Albert managed. “I’m quite happy. Brilliant in fact.”

And then, this dark eyed female actually smiled. I know, I know. She’s but twenty or twenty one I’d say, but…

“I’m Tessa.”

“Al…Albert,” he creaked.

I hate to admit it, but she reminded me of someone. Now you may as well know that I enjoyed her company, just as I enjoy your company as you read this. But- and this is a serious but- she meant nothing to me. Alive in her presence- yes, but not a few sods burning the night away. I may think of you, dear reader, and ponder, what do you think of me? 

“Savage!

All pretense lost, she launched out like a submarine. Her vocabulary was attrocious. Simply attrocious.

“Like you’re a real one, aren’t ya?”

She took a breath. Did I hear a wheeze?  

“Real what?”

“Sexy beast. What- God, you must be forty. But- my mam, she’d kill for a look at you.”

I swear I felt my-

“Do you mind? I’m trying to sleep!”

The Voice, interrupting this precious girl. Can you imagine? And, he smelled of brie. I know. I know- brie- is there any worse smell than that? A toilet perhaps?

“Yer a devil of a man,” Albert fumed. “You might sit elsewhere.”

The Voice rose to meet him. He reeked as his breath approached. But as he leaned forward to step out into the corridor…he saw it. A single old photo. Fallen on the floor. His shoe went to cover it, but Albert had seen it. The Voice shrugged, then scooted the picture farther back under the table.

“Your girl?”

He looked away. There was no more need to quiet him. He stared out the window.

I reached under the table with my own limb and pulled it backward. Reaching down, I held it firmly in my grasp…but not soon enough. Not when the dark eyed girl saw the image…

XXX  XXXX  XXX

I withheld part 2, as it is brewing in Museland, like a peppermint tea- strong but purposeful. I confess this is great fun, but I fear it is more serious an endeavour than I intended. Now it means something to me.

Again, I’d like your comments, insight, reactions, philosophies…

In the e-space where laundry never dries

can’t sleep…must be two in the morning…the air kicked off too early…not that it’s hot in here, but my mind feels so much like a gerbil in a wheel, I need wind-down time. The wheel keeps turning with possibilities. It is as if I’m seven again, spinning wildly on that metal manic-go-round ratchet we had back in elementary school..the kind good for instant throw-up.

If ever there was a sadistic public school torture device, it was the spinning ratchet. God only knows what mental fate the inventor suffered, but I do know that whirling ponytails attached to little girls don’t fare well, nor do the little girls themselves. Many a young monster sentenced a whining female to a trip round on that UFO until in agony the wee munchkins either hurled themselves onto the ground or found the contents of their stomachs deposited there. And that is what I have been feeling- metaphorically- tonight.

Spinning….on…off…can’t sleep…round and round every conceivable scenario in the history of the known- and unknown- universe…without the ponytail…thank God.

So this is what creative writers suffer at two thirty in the morning when the caffeine that didn’t work four hours earlier suddenly kicks in- I’ll be jotting down notes on that later- and life becomes one big run-on sentence.

Sure, I’ll sleep eventually, but for now, I’m stuck in the kind of e-space where laundry never dries.

…And as this ratchet slowly jiggles to a stop, tonight’s contestant on the wonderful wheel of purgatory will spill wobbily off the wheel in search of his bed…

Mama never mentioned having nights like this, but then again, Mama probably never rode on a spinning ratchet either…