Some people get the spotlight. That is just how it goes. If there were a wider area recognition …. it would be called “being in the floodlight.” But no. The spotlight is narrow, focused…. on a “choice” few.

Take the Keebler Elves for instance. They have their mugs all over the place. And if you ask my opinion on the matter, there are others out there who make much better cookies, and crackers. Yet… those Keebler Elves get the commercial spots and the catchy jingles. And how about those snappy outfits.

And really, those little Keebler Elves did their finest work in the form of the Club Cracker. Albeit … once again… this is merely my take on the matter. But I like a Club Cracker every now and again. Polly wants one. Polly always wants the cracker.

But back to the spotlight. Those elves make things like Toasteds. Grahams. EL Fudge Cookies. Chips Deluxe Chocolate Chip Cookies. Zesta Crackers. And a few other things. Do you see what I’m saying here? Kinda’ lame.

But Nabisco. Now THERE is the ticket. Nabisco has the far superior line up. Oreos. Ritz Crackers. Chips Ahoy. Wheat Thins. Nutter Butter Sandwich Cookies. Nilla Wafers. Fig Newtons. Honey Grahams. Cheese Nips. And on, and on, and on.

And who is responsible for all of this? For getting the fig in the center of the Fig Newton? For Puttin’ on the Ritz? None other than…. The Nabisco Gnomes.

Oh sure, you have never heard of them. And who could have? They are always taking the backseat to those Keebler Boys. But those Nabisco Gnomes are off in their little trees… just baking up a storm. Remarkably. And they are cuter too, I think. Woodsier.

Yep. I’ll take the quiet, in the wings, Gnome… who can bake like a champion… with much more skill… I’ll tell you. And besides all that, they are so much faster. They turn out 7 times more product than the Elves.

It just goes to show you… There’s No Pace Like Gnome.

“The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.”  – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

It is funny how we come to love and appreciate certain things in life.

Some of those appreciations are learned over time. And on occasion, they become our “favorite” things. Like meals, for instance.

One of my favorite meals was a Spaghetti-o Concoction. I have Regina to thank for that. Regina was one of my grandmothers.

Alright. Confession Chamber. Truth be told, I didn’t care so much for my Grandma Regina. She never spoke, or smiled, or played…. and by god…. she could not cook to save her life.

But when Grandma and Grandpa would babysit for us, she would on occasion, fix us a meal. It was always the same. Spaghetti-os with ground beef and lots of black pepper. Lots of black pepper. We always got a plateful of Archway cookies too. The kind with the Raspberry fruit filing. And to drink… a 7-UP.

Every time.

Now at first, you could barely choke it down… with the half-tin of pepper sprinkled throughout. But eventually, over time… I started to really like it. I’d take a bite and slug it back with the cold 7-UP. Kind of reminiscent of the old tequila, lime, salt combo when you do a shot.

Yes, I acquired a taste for the Grandma’s Home Cooked Spaghetti. Like people acquire a taste for Limburger Cheese , or Braunschweiger and Mayonnaise Sandwiches.

It has even become one of my sort-of-fond-memories of my Grandma. Well… my ONLY sort-of-good-memory of her.

You know…. I just don’t think she learned how to love people. It makes me sad to think about her sadness. Maybe she was different with the older kids. I don’t know. But when I was growing up, it was obvious that she was pretty miserable.  There was no joy.

If I could get in my Time Machine, I’d go back and ask her. Ask her why she felt so dreadful……and if there was something I could do to help.

But I can’t go back, so I will never know…. and I missed my chance to help her.

I hope I never make the same mistake with anyone else…… ever again.

AND…. I ALSO hope Sphaghetti-os has a great line of commercials slated for Superbowl Sunday. Some things should not be forgotten.

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Little Peeta stood at the altar for hours…. weeping. Lenny was nowhere to be found. How could this happen? They had vowed to Mouse-Marry one another straight up at noon. Farmer Fred was supposed to bring him to the little mouse church.

She threw her bouquet of flowers toward the floor… with all her might. Peeta sobbed uncontrollably. A mouse heart broken. By Mr. Lenny Grayson.

But with everything in life… sometimes the story we don’t know is the one to be told.

You see…. earlier that day…..

Farmer Fred arrived on time to give Lenny a lift. The farmer’s wife was with him. “Just a quick stop by the pharmacy, Lenny. I have to take my wife there.” So the farmer took the wife.

“Wait for me Fred….” the wife said as they pulled up to the curb. She grabbed little Jimmy out of the back seat and took their child inside for a flu vaccination.  Yep.  The wife took the child. The line was long.. and things were getting late. So little Jimmy said… “Oh Mom. I’ll just go see if the nurse can come with us.’

So the child took the nurse. On the way to the church, the foursome chatted about the weather and such. Then, on old Bendy Rail Lane…. they saw three goats, two chickens, four dogs, and a cow in the middle of the road. They were not budging. Lenny the Mouse was getting worried. He started sweating in his little gray tuxedo, with the yellow cummerbund, and all.

“Enough waiting!” cried the nurse. “I’ll go get the cow off the road…. so then you can pull around.” And… the nurse took the cow. But the cow said…. “Mooooooo.” Then the cow said…. “I am not going anywhere without Andy.”

“Who in the heck is Andy….. ?????” they all shouted.
“He’s my dog.” And wouldn’t you know it?  The cow took the dog.

Now YOU may think you know how this plays out… but no.

You see… about two blocks away from the church, Lenny the mouse, the farmer, the wife, the child, the nurse, the cow AND the dog…. were all crammed into the station wagon with the panel siding. Just then, they spotted Fritz. The Cat.

Now Fritz dealt in all sorts of cheese. Domestic and Imported.
Lenny was so nervous. He couldn’t take it anymore… his little mousy paws were shaking. He cried out… “Farmer. Stop the car.. I HAVE to score some cheese before I can do this thing.”

Farmer Fred screeched on the brakes. Lenny scampered out of the car and over to Fritz. The little mouse then yelled back… “I don’t have enough money. But I NEED a hit of cheese.”

Finally, the dog gets out of the car and says to Len… “Consider this a wedding present kid.” Without a Trace….. the dog took the cat.

Well… little did they know that Lenny had a cheese addiction. And once he gets started…… you know how it goes with addicted rodents. They either end up dead in a mouse trap somewhere…. OR off to rehab for 90 days….

… and such was the case with Lenny.

Peeta never found out what happened to him. Ever.
And no one ever saw Fritz the Cat again either.

The moral of the story: Get your flu shots early. For Peeta’s sake.

What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone? Bertolt Brecht 

No Tail Dude… above.

Full Tail Dude below.. …. watching my back.

It is so DANG cold out… this Cardinal froze his little tail off.

I kid you not. No Photoshoping on that bird. The little dude lost his tail… and it wasn’t in a Poker Game. Seriously.  I mean…. I personally am freezing my butt off.  That little bird did the same.

Yes.. this Winter Stinks. In fact…. I am deeming this whole entire deal…

“The Winter of Suck”
A Winter so terrible… it started in the Fall.

More details to follow.
But until then….. watch your back.

Just like a good Ohio Cardinal would.

http://www.thewinterofsuck.com

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.  – Margaret Atwood

Most of you know, I am a pretty big fan of Albert Einstein.

He seemed to be one of those brilliant, amazing people… maybe the brightest…. but he also spoke a great deal about the human condition.

And of course there is the Theory of Relativity. And boy, oh boy…. it is a really good one!

In the very simplest of terms… it explains that light always travels at the same speed. That’s one part. It also explores the idea that time slows down and things do not happen at exactly the same time. For you… something may seem like it happens in a certain sequence of time. But for someone else… it might appear to happen in an entirely different way. There are twin paradoxes at work in the universe…. you see.

At any rate… it is highly complex and confusing… not only to me.. but even to scientists. Oh Albert. Dear Albert.

But we ALL DO understand how things can be “relative”… … … it happens every time we turn around… and click our heels three times.

Let’s say for instance, you get the opportunity to eat ice-cream and play super fun games… for an hour. That hour will go by pretty quickly. Now let’s say you have to hold 40 pounds of bricks for one hour while listening to badly sung versions of The National Anthem. That hour will probably go by very slowly.

Here is another. This one is very pertinent. Place yourself in Ohio, in late October. You are listening to the morning news. The weather dude gives you the very bad news… “…. and tonight we are expecting temperatures to dip below freezing folks. That’s right. Tonight we could see a low of 31 degrees.”

Well… you drop your spoon in your Fruit Loops bowl.. and say with a sense of loathing.. “Dang. THAT is cold. We are going to freeze our butts off tonight.”

NOW… fast forward to January. Still Ohio. You hear some news again. We’ve had a month long of subzero temperatures and more than our fair of snow. Again, according to the weather dude… “we are in for three solid days of below zero figures. BUT… there is hope folks. On Thursday we may see a high of 22 degrees.”

You do a happy dance right there in the kitchen and starting singing “Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas.

You see…. it is all relative.

Really everything in life is considered in relation or in proportion to something else. Our perspectives, viewpoints, and on. It is all relative.

One thing is for sure. I bet if Albert were here, he would be feeding the deer. But when he’d go outside….. with his brain always churning out the math the way it did…

He would probably be cold and calculating.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
– Albert Einstein

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
– Albert Einstein

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.
– Albert Einstein

I have loved to draw for as long as I can remember.

Seriously, it is one of my first memories. Coloring, drawing, having a writing utensil in hand and a fresh clean piece of paper before me. Yes. As long as I can remember.

Coloring books were okay. But I always like to draw other things on the coloring page. Change the scene up a bit… or add a thing or two.

Drawing was an adventure for me. There were scenarios to create, characters to meet, and worlds to explore.

Yet there comes a time in our lives when our society tells us it was a waste of time. We should quit “frittering away our day” and put our energy to more important studies, such as math, and reading, and science.

But to my little mind… it just seemed like an extension of me A must-do.

Yet. I put it aside.
I’ve never thought I was good enough to “squander” any serious time on drawing. But those notions are embedded deep within.

I can’t remember who first told me that crayons were childish, and drawing was an activity for little children.

But I do know this. In second grade, we had big pieces of paper which were taped on the blackboard. Before homeroom, or if we got back in early from recess, we could draw on those pages. On day I drew a funny little bearded guy, and I was so proud of him. Like any young budding artist, I signed it. Just “Polly Kronenberger” and I pointed an arrow from my signature to the comical rendition. I was seven.

Well, a kid named Mark Wolfenbarger started making fun of me. He said that little drawing was a picture of ME. Little Marky Mark chided me about how I looked ugly…just like my little beard-and-mustache-guy. I had about enough self-esteem to fill a thimble. I bought into all of it.  And…. I was mortified.

I didn’t draw for a long, long time after that.

But time passes. These days…. I just do it because I love it. And it feels right. It feels natural and good to draw and doodle. And it happens when it happens.

I am, after all… Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day. It only seems right.

I guess the moral of the story is that if I love something, I should probably do it. Nevermind that I may not be very good at it… or will never have any measured societal successes as a result.

Those two things don’t matter. What matters to each of us, I think, is doing what is right for our hearts. And the rest will follow.

“Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.” – Stephen Covey

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.: – Erich Fromm

“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.”  –  Buddha

You know how I love to sneak back in history…. well tonight is one of those nights…..

So on this date… THIS January 24… these things have happened as the years have gone round.
In 1634 …. in a little burb called Austria….. the Emperor Ferdinand II declares Albrecht von Wallenstein a traitor. I assure you…. everyone went bananas.

Then, in 1839, our Sock-Monkey-Loving-Man, Charles Darwin was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. Everyone went Ape.

And of course. In 1935, the very first canned beer, called”Krueger Cream Ale,” is sold by Krueger Brewing Company. On that day… everyone hopped around like a barrel of jumping monkeys.
History is full of surprise. And we as humans…..react to surprise. Yes. You and I naturally respond to all the things we hear in the news. And that happens in the “right now.” I suppose that makes it a current event. For a moment.

At any rate, I have segued. Again. As always.

Here is the deal. I’m feeling a little out of sorts tonight, you see. Segues galore. I have been off kilter all week. It is called the flu. But before I go any further, you don’t have to write back to me and say…. “Polly, I hope you feel better.”

Of course you hope that. You are my friends. Well, everyone except for you Jim. Oh, and Beth. You two are out. But everyone else probably wishes me well. So no need. I am not one of those people who write on Facebook every time I stub my toe, or fall off my scooter.

Otherwise, those would be the only things I posted.

There is nothing wrong with it….. It is just that I am clumsier than a monkey on roller skates in an oil slick.  That’s why I don’t recount all my mishaps here.

So at any rate…. all this week I have been sick with the dumb flu. It seems to be getting worse. Let’s all blame it on Jim and Beth.  They won’t wish me well.

But I’ll just keep hanging in there. A bunch. It truly IS making me a little bananas. But tomorrow is another day. Maybe then I can monkey around…. and write more about history….. in the future.  Sock it to ya’!

(P.S. If it sounds like my Tylenol levels may be toxic at this point, I can assure you…. they certainly are.)

“The most important thing when ill is to never lose heart.” – Vladimir Lenin

There is a whole, whole lot I really like about being human. Beef Jerky, and reruns of Underdog, to name a couple. Not to mentions farmland at sunset, mountainous vistas, majestic waterfalls…. and Sausage Dip…. with Tostitos. But there are certain things about all of this…… that I just do not understand.

I mean… I understand that is ALL a part of being human. I guess, in truth, I just don’t like some things about it. Things I don’t agree with. Things happening in the world which seem incredibly wrong to me. Yet. All a part of life.

To continue, the thing that worries me the most is that life is …. ultimately … insecure.

Life is precarious. Of course it is. Every minute can be pretty uncertain. Intellectually, I understand that.

But my difficulty is that I EXPECT to feel secure. I put a big bunch of energy into achieving control and having everything “just right.” But….. quite naturally we as humans have very little to say about what the universe will do next.

The old Boogie Man called Fear.

With me… it mostly has to do with keeping the ones I love out of harm’s way. Myself, too. Keeping our place in the world safe and together…. happy and settled. While we watch reruns of Underdog, and eat Sausage Dip.

And those that know…. well….. they say that talking about our fears with others… and facing them… is a good way to get over them. I am not so sure that is true. But at least now you all know what a big weenie I am.

Or maybe it was just some sort of confession and I didn’t know it when I was writing this. Just as I finished, I stumbled upon a site called “Confessions”…..

Sooooo…… here is a late addition to this post.

There is a woman named Candy Chung, and she did an artistic installation called Confessions. She left blank placards, and encouraged exhibit goers to write down a confession as part of the work.

She turned a “gallery into a contemplative experiment around anonymity, vulnerability, and understanding in the heart of the Las Vegas strip. Over 1500 confessions were displayed on the walls: I still love her two girlfriends and five years later, I’m scared I’ll die alone, I eat too much cheese, Came here married to one girl and left married to two girls, I sold heroin to my friend and it ruined his life, I stole over 15,000 from the company I work for, I like porn more than my husband does…….”

Ahhhh. The Universe. At work all the time.

“The mistake is thinking that there can be an antidote to the uncertainty.” ― David Levithan

“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.” ― Mark Z. Danielewski

It appears that several readers of last night’s installation were unable to follow my train of thought. Clearly…. you did not get the memo about using your Ovaltine-Secret-Decoder-Ring to follow along.

Yes, it is true. I was writing in a highly secret code last night. So without the decoder-ring… how could you possible know?

Other folks mentioned that to complicate matters, they could not get past the picture of me…. in a Farah Fawcett Do, not to mention Mary as Wynette and Justin as a blonde. The mental picture was too complicated and grueling. Some complained of headaches, and motion sickness. So, by popular demand…. AND…. to cure all that ails you…… I give you this compilation.

From left to right, Mary as Tammy Wynette; Justin as Barry Manilow; Polly as Farah Fawcett.

The bad news is……. I cannot repeat the secret message I revealed last night. That was a one time offer.

The good news is…. or maybe the bad news… I’ll just ramble on about something else… totally unrelated…

…. and here it goes.

We built this home here in Ohio 18 years ago. Things are getting to the point where they are starting to wear out. You know. Roofs. Appliances. Outdated fixtures.

So we have been thinking of spiffing the place up. Now I am a “do it right now” kind of gal. Let’s just run with it and be done with it. But Mary is very methodical and needs to research all aspects before putting a good foot forward. Somewhere in between is a perfect balance.

At any rate, we have been kicking around ideas here and there. Especially for the kitchen. It needs the most help at this point.

Wellllll….. yesterday our refrigerator thought it was a microwave. And wouldn’t you know it? Me and the fridge got into a heated fight. But we’re cool now.

But mostly… I want to get some new dishes. So. I have invented crockery that comes to me when I whistle. My cup runneth over.

Oh enough for tonight. I have to go spray my hair with heavy duty shellac. Right after I jib  and taunt Mary’s head…. na, na, na, na, na, naaaaaaa. Yep, that hair needs to be teased.

“A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.”  – Diane Arbus 

A good friend of mine had a dream last night. He said Mary & I were in it… and that the three of us were running around, buying old cars, fixing them up… and such. I had Farah Fawcett hair. Mary… a version of Tammy Wynette. Any my friend Justin… well….. let’s give a nod to Barry Manilow on that one.

Which brings me to this…. “The average person who lives to be 75 will have spent six years dreaming.”

As the Sandman would have it….. I dream a lot.   A big WAY lot. In fact, I will probably spend 8 years dreaming by the time I am 75. I just know it.

Dreaming is, I think, just an extension of our conscious energy. I a subconscious way.  Kind of like going to the IMAX Theater… by mistake.

I like to think about all the possibilities of energy in our universe.  For instance. “The Sun takes 220 million years to orbit the galaxy, a journey it has made 20 times so far. ” That’s a lot of traveling of a lot of energy.  That’s a whole lotta sun shinin’ down on me….

But energy can be very big, or very small. “Plato thought that the smallest particles of matter were tiny right-angled triangles.”

Now that’s funny to me. I thought the same exact thing.  Yep.  Me and my boy Plato.  (Sidebar:  I thought his name was Playdough when I was little.   Playdough and Soccer Tees.)

Speaking of small right-sided shapes…. “Wombats have cubic feces.”  This may have had something to do with why Plato thought the way he did about small particles.

You wouldn’t think by looking at a wombat, that they would have square poop. But they do. Once again, you just can’t judge a book by its cover…. For instance….. “An orange is a berry but a strawberry isn’t.” How about them apples?   And I think Wombats eat all three.

This next factoid made me sad. I’ve heard of a scaredy cat… but this takes the cheese. “The common shrew protects itself from predators by dying of fright.” Scared to death.  Counter-intuitive, don’t you think?

And. And. And. And….. speaking of counter-intuitive….. “Summer on Neptune lasts for 40 years, but the temperature is minus 328°F.”

I am thinking….. This must be summer. In Neptune. Because it sure ain’t the land of oranges, sunshine, and Farah Fawcett.  That sounds more like….Southern California.  ….in my opinion….

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.  – Plato