From The Creepy File

When I'm feeling blue or bored, I love to spend time on such internet vehicles as pinterest ; craftgawker, etsy, stumbleupon,dwellinggawker, apartment therapy and even kijiji.

I'm amazed at the creativity out there.

But sometimes; inexplicably, I'm troubled. Creeped-out, even. Possibly enraged and anxious at some bizarre artistic level.

So please.

Do not photograph innocent barely born humanoid babies in questionable elements such as: flowers, (especially sunflowers), nests, tree branches (even facsimiles of the same), acorn-shaped items, pea costumes, wooden bowls, old tin cans, pumpkins, eggs, terra cotta pots, or driftwood. Please place babies into soft sleepers, then wrap them in flannelette blankies, and cradle them in your arms. You'll be glad you did.

Do not. Take a sweater that was obscenely ugly in the first place, then haul it down around your waist, and pretend its a skirt. A sweater is not a skirt. never was. never should be. And those pom poms? Give your head a shake.

Besides. How many women do you know who have the type of hips that enable them to pull their sweater down over them and prance around like santa's little helpers? Creepy. And just plain wrong on many, many levels.

Don't write on your kids banana before packing it into their school lunch. That's just wrong. When you put a banana into a paper bag alongside a ham sandwhich, you will have banana-infused-ham-and-cheese shortly after heading out the back door. Doodling on the fruit merely adds insult to injury. It must be stopped.

The pencil carving. This is brilliant, but it creeps me out. I hate to think of the artist in his poorly lit studio slaving away on his intricate pencil carvings and slowly losing his precious eyesight. Besides. What does he do when, 15 hours into carving a heart shape out of the top of a pencil, it suddenly snaps?

These things are easily prevented, and cause unnecessary stress to many innocent bystanders.

Now I've told you, and now you know.

Leave creepy to Halloween, and the rest of the year do something awesome instead.

A Page From my Psychology File

Some people are really good at presenting themselves. They have simple, waste free ways of toilet training their babies by one and a half hours of natural childbirth. They cook all their meals a day ahead in the crock pot using dandelion greens their goat chewed off the front lawn. They're thin and occasionally munch on whole grains while busying their hands on stitching organic undies for their loved ones. They know the difference between animal fibers and some other kind of fiber that I can't remember just now.

They run their own equestrian farms, manage fair trade corporations (oxymoron, right?), despise hair dyes, and never shop at Wal-Mart.

They're what I like to call Social Maximalists. They could write pamphlets on how Best To Present The Self.

Then there are the Minimalists.
Minimalists like to poke fun at their own lives. They tend to give you the lowest common denominator on anything they've set their hand to. If they've recently lost a hundred and four pounds, they'll tell you that it would have been hundred and ten if not for that box of digestives that spoke to them softly and gently one lonely afternoon.

If they own the cattle on a thousand hills, they'll tell you in great detail about the one named Bessie who they forgot to call in one night who died alone of thirst and old age.

Minimalists exist to question the authenticity of the maximalist.
Maximalists exist to provide a prototype for the minimalist to despair ever aspiring to.

For entertainment at your next social event, plan the seating so that all the maximalists are together. Listen to them out-shout one another in their quality of life proclamations.

Put the minimalists in another corner. They'll blissfully sip their G&T's because they're
pretty sure
they're not
all that important
anyway.

I Hate The Phone

People talk about texting and e-mail posing problems because you communicate without the aid of body language and inuendo. I say- give me the written word. I never think fast, and writing allows me to pause mid-sentence, mid-thought and re-evaluate, edit, and re-read so I'm more sure that my words are saying what I want them to.

The phone makes me feel panicky because its jarringly immediate. There's no body language. There's no smiling to make up for the fact that your brain has gone on the blink. You've just got to spit it out right quick. And it better make sense. Right. Now.

I bought an electrolux at the thrift shop a few weeks ago for $25.oo. I couldn't believe my good fortune. This vacuum put an entirely new spin on the whole concept of vacuuming. Instead of passing over the same thread fifty times without much success, my new/old electrolux pretty near relocated the laminate strips in my living room.

On day two of deleriously happy housekeeping, the vacuum made a tired sound.
On day three it sunk down to a dull, bass sound and the powerful suction had become a thing of the past.
The moter had blown.
Wanting to give the guys at the thrift shop a break, I decided to steel my nerves and call up a guy from around town who has a reputation for being a bit of an electrolux genie.

It took me about two weeks to build up the nerve, but eventually the anxiety of seeing the same thing on my to do list every day spiked my anxiety to the point which the only way to properly resolve it was to just get it over with.

Armed with the local phone book and the cordless, I faced my giant.

"hello?" (low, gravelly voice answers)
"Oh. Hello. Mr Sneed?"
"Who's calling?" (low, growly, suspicious voice)
"Well, it's Joyce Hildebrand, and I'm calling sort of on behalf of the thrift shop about an electrolux vacuum?"
"Oh. Yes....?"
"Mr Sneed, are you the electrolux guy?"
pause.
"This is Mrs Sneed. Mr Sneed's wife."

oh.
I'm
so
sorry.

I think maybe I'll buy her a carton of cigarettes and a flat of scotch to make up for my phone blunders. And swear never to condescend to the telephone. Ever. Again.