No, they haven’t returned yet. I’m holding my breath. Maybe on Halloween?
In any event, because the garden worked out so well and made me so happy, I thought it would be nice to start growing plants inside. I’m probably the only person on earth who never bothered with houseplants, mainly because I have so many damn pets that require full-time attention, especially Ruby. She’s the crazy corgi who unfortunately got DM, paralysis of her hind, which means that she has to be in a wheelie cart and lately, has to be diapered three times a day.
Great.
You haven’t lived until you’ve had an incontinent corgi.
I know I’m not alone in this, because the diaper aisle at the pet store is huge and even has diaper liners, which are like big sanitary napkins that you can stick on your own panties and put on your dog, if you happen to run out of doggie diapers and don’t feel like driving to the pet store.
Not that that has ever happened.
But Ruby looks pretty good in a pair of size 6 Hanes, bikini-cut.
So you see why I was in no rush to start with the houseplants, but I thought it would be nice, and around the same I time was thinking this, I found out that Good Morning America was coming to the house, which meant that I ordered a bunch of indoor flowers, so I could pretend I’m the kind of woman who lives in a house with fresh-cut flowers.
Instead of the kind of woman who dresses up an incontinent corgi in her own underwear.
And while I was on the phone with the florist, they said they were having a sale on indoor hydrangea, which were a very pretty blue, and since I have pink hydrangea outside, I thought it would be nice to have blue hydrangea inside, so I ordered three potted hydrangeas.
Beautiful while they lasted I thought, how hard could it be to grow them inside?
I mean, buy a potted plant and water it.
Isn’t it even an expression, “sitting there like a potted plant?”
It should be dumb and easy.
So the indoor hydrangea looked gorgeous for the Good Morning America shoot, but after that, it was Goodbye Hydrangea.
The flowers started to die, so I watered them more. Then I went online, and it said not to water them too much.
So then I didn’t water them at all for about four days, but they just kept dying.
They’re supposed to be fine in indirect light, but I moved them into the sun, and they still kept dying, then moved them into a shady part of the house, and they were completely dead.
Then I went back online and it said that indoor hydrangea can be shocked back to life with very very hot water, and I did that.
And you know what?
It actually worked.
The plants perked up and started to grow new leaves.
My heart soared.
Until two days later, when all of the leaves started to get white spots on them, that looked suspiciously moldy. So I went back online and discovered that they actually were mold, and one of the remedies suggested spraying the plants with a solution of one quarter milk and three-quarters water.
Which I did.
Now the whole house smells like curdling milk, the plants remain spotted and molding, and the ones that aren’t moldy are dying.
God knows why.
It looked easy, but it wasn’t.
Next time, I’m ordering fresh-cut flowers.
Because that’s the kind of woman I am.
Happy Birthday
Lisa
By the time you read this, I will be a year older.
But no wiser.
Because I almost got killed this morning doing a dumb thing.
Or maybe the best thing I ever did.
You be the judge.
We began on a quiet Saturday morning, and I was going to meet my best friend Franca so we could ride our bikes on the trail.
Yes, it’s that time of year again, when Franca and I go bicycle-riding and try to remain upright.
I was driving to meet her, and there was only light traffic because it was early in the morning on a summer weekend, but as I turned onto this main, four-lane road near my house, I happened to notice a flock of mother and baby geese about to step off the curb on the other side of the street and cross the road.
So right away, you know where this is going.
We’re in world-police territory.
And I could tell what was going to happen. There was a car stopped at a red light at this major intersection, and the mommy goose had just stepped off the curb to make her way across four lanes of inevitable death.
I couldn’t watch, but I couldn’t ignore it, and I certainly couldn’t do nothing.
So I pulled the car over, parked in the turn lane, and put on my blinker, then jumped out and started yelling, “Stop!”
I think I was yelling to the cars, like, “stop, don’t kill me!” or “stop, don’t kill the baby geese!” or maybe even “stop me from doing something stupid like this, because I’m older and should know better!”
But the general idea was STOP.
I ran across the two lanes toward the geese but there were two cars coming toward me. I told myself not to worry, that I was plainly visible and I was waving my arms like a madwoman and any idiot could see what the problem was. One of the cars slowed to a stop, evidencing respect for human and avian life, but the other one not only didn’t stop, but actually drove around me without even slowing down.
I cursed, at decibel level.
The other car honked.
So did the geese.
Unfortunately they also scattered in about twenty-five different directions, all over the road.
I tried to shoo them back to the curb and a few of them went, but they freaked as more and more cars started arriving on the scene, most of them stopping but many not even breaking stride at the sight of a middle-aged woman on the eve of her birthday, frantically trying to convince random geese to obey her when her own dogs will not.
Luckily, the geese started to get the idea, fleeing away from me, the yelling drivers, and racing cars, and they waddled back to the grass where they had been, then I ran back across the street to my car. But I was worried that they were going to try to cross again and I knew I needed help.
My law-enforcement specialty is dogs-in-hot-cars, not geese-trying-to-commit-suicide.
So I called my good friends at 911.
Don’t think I take this lightly because I know emergencies are a serious thing, but I thought this qualified, and I am newly deputized to protect all animal life.
Still I half expected the dispatcher to answer, “Lisa, again?”
Or, “Don’t you ever mind your own business?”
But they didn’t, and they sent out a police car, with the happy ending that the geese were saved and I was able to complete my bike ride.
I didn’t even fall down.
Or get run over.
It might’ve been the best birthday ever.
And I’m taking cake to the cops.
Pushed Around
Lisa
You know what a cutlet is?
Men think it’s something you eat for dinner.
But women know better.
For those of you without estrogen, a cutlet is a piece of fake-cotton padding in a bra.
And all of a sudden, cutlets are everywhere, aren’t they?