A Triolet

I was checking a forum where we talk about literary stuff and the current main discussion is poetic forms. I mainly write blank verse, but I have been known to play with a classic form now and then.

In researching various forms I came across one I had never heard of: the triolet. It is an old French form, not used much anymore, if at all, but its simple elegence intrigued me, so I decided to take a stab at writing one.

A Triolet

The fragrance of my lady fair
Sweet musky scent of silky skin
As to the boudoir we repair
The fragrance of my lady fair.
The perfume of her fills the air
And with it did my heart she win
The fragrance of my lady fair
Sweet musky scent of silky skin

The Family Vacation

Mother tottered down the walk on thin legs schooled into tiny steps by years of high heels, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She looked up at the small porch where her three grown daughters and one of their spouses sat laughing and smoking. Daddy sat on the steps, grinning at his family's smoky laughter. His "You know that's bad for you's" were met with exhalations of "Oh, Daddy."

Mother's youngest grabbed her camera. "No, no, no, no, no!" Mother cried. "Don't take my picture!"

Laughing, the youngest snapped away.

Ken, middle daughter's husband, came striding around the corner, the youngest's husband at his heels. They had been doing the managerial rounds of the condo, making sure there were no beach towels hung on the balconies. A warm breeze, salty-sweet, blew from oceanward across the low dunes, carrying the sounds of waves and shouting children.

"Where are we going to eat?" Ken asked, lighting a cigarette.

"Tinney and David want to go to the Rex!"

Ken groaned. He hated Italian. "You can order fish, honey," his wife cajoled.

"Now, David and I are going to pay this time," Gay the oldest snapped. The others smiled and eyed each other with a `we'll believe it when we see it' look. Gay's David was famous for not picking up the check.

"What? What?" Mother attacked the discussion. "Where is this place? Do we really have to go out? We can just eat here, can't we?"

"Mother," said Pammy the middle one. "I've cooked and cooked. We want to go out. This is your vacation. The place isn't far."

Tinney and her David chuckled. The restaurant was a half-hour drive. "Don't tell Mom how far it is," Pammy had cautioned. "We'll never get her to go!"

"Oh, we're ready, we're going?" said Daddy as the others got up. Into the cars the eight of them piled, Tinney and her David with Pammy and Ken in Pammy's `Nazi tank', Mother and Daddy with Gay and her David in David's top-of-the-line Oldsmobile. Off they drove, down beachy highways, putting the ocean at their backs. Peering out the back window, Tinney and David spied as Mother shifted and complained in Gay's David's back seat. They laughed conspiratorially, Pammy sipping Diet Coke from a straw so her lipstick wouldn't smear.

At last they pulled into the gravel lot beside the low, lion-fronted building. Mother glowered at all of them, daggers flying from her eyes. "She growled the whole time," Gay's David confided, grinning.

They filed their sun-browned bodies through the door, herding disgruntled Mother ahead of them. The patriarch of the family-owned restaurant seated them at a large round table in the back. "Ooh, Pammy, is this really a good place?" Gay sniped. "It looks kind of tacky."

"The food's great!" Tinney averred, her husband smoothly fitting his assurances to hers.

"Oh, I don't know Pammy. In D.C..." the oldest continued her complaint.

"Gaysie, this isn't D.C. This is the beach," Pammy snapped. "Be happy."

Gay's David insisted on cocktails and ordered wine. Alcohol smoothed out Mother's mood, and she almost smiled. Fresh, crispy bread was set on the table, and after they'd ordered, "You can go to the salad bar," the waiter told them.

A large man was at the salad bar ahead of them. Carefully, artistically, he built his huge salad, going back and forth along the bar, making it just so. "Will you look at that?" Mother asked too loudly. "Look at that salad! How can anyone eat so much salad?"

"Shush," her children said, but she forged ahead. "Do you think that's all he's getting? What do you think, George?" She roped her husband into her monologue. "Do you think he's just getting salad? Have you ever seen anything like that?" Daddy grinned sheepishly.

"Mother, you're embarrassing us!" the youngest said. "He can hear you."
The man smiled grimly and left the bar.

Dinner proceeded with forced-cheerful toasts and exclamations of delighted surprise at the taste of the food from some quarters. Ken picked silently at his salmon. "Gee, Pammy, in D.C..." Gay complained.

"How is your salmon, honey?" Pammy asked, ignoring Gay.

"Not bad," he said. He was getting his enjoyment from his wife's crazy family. Presently, he engaged in his favorite sport of baiting Gay. She huffed and squeaked as he teased her. Her husband smiled secretly to himself, deep in his wine. Perhaps he found pleasure in hearing his wife being teased. Perhaps not. His deafening silence gave no indication.

At length the meal was over, Mother mellow-happy. Cheesecake was brought and shared. The waiter was snagged and a picture taken of the sated, burnt-nosed family. All eyed the check until Gay's David, trapped, picked it up.

Back they piled into the cars, Mother and Daddy in Gay and David's top-of-the-line Oldsmobile, Tinney and her David in Pammy's `Nazi tank'. Mother complained, out of habit, about the long drive back. Pammy and Ken and Tinney and her David, out of sight of Daddy's weary disapproval, lit cigarettes. "Next time," Pammy said, sipping her warm Diet Coke, "we'll leave Mother and Gay and David home, and just take Daddy." They laughed, conspiratorially, companionably, in agreement.

My Unhusband And The Tennis Shoes

Tennis shoes had been a bone of contention between myself and my unhusband throughout our marriage. (I call him my “unhusband” because ex-husband does not describe how completely I have removed him from my life.) We both had good-paying jobs, but we tended to live beyond our means, with my unhusband being the main instigator of such living. Granted, we were young and unaware of the pitfalls of credit…at first. Granted, as well, that for the first half of our marriage we were drunk and/or high much of the time. The booze and drugs did nothing to improve our monetary situation, of course. But tennis shoes were always something my unhusband and I never quite agreed on.

Junior, as my father later came to call him, always had to have expensive tennis shoes. If they cost less than $100 there weren’t good enough. $100 for a pair of tennis shoes still seems like a lot of money to me. In the early 1980’s it was, in my opinion, far too much, especially considering the fact that Junior wore them out so quickly. He played a lot of tennis, and basketball too. I was lucky if the darn tennis shoes lasted four months.

As the years passed, I got more and more irked about his insatiable desire for expensive new tennis shoes, and he became more and more insistent he get them. It was not just the expense that irked me. Junior was always a slob, and acquired a habit of putting his sweaty, dirty tennis shoes on the kitchen table when he came home from a game. True, we didn’t eat at the kitchen table very often. It was used more as a kitchen island, a place to put groceries as we, or rather, I, brought them in, a place to put letters that had to be mailed—that sort of thing. Still, it was my strong opinion that a kitchen table was not the proper place for tennis shoes, sweaty or not.

I had married Junior for a very bad reason. My parents were putting pressure on me to live a normal life and act like an adult. I had been a “free-spirit” (they called it a screw-up) since I was a teenager. I was twenty-three. It was high time I got a steady job, got married, had kids and a house with a white picket fence and all that crap. Pickings for a husband in the town in which I found myself, the town in which I still live (although he does not) were, at that time in my life, horrifically slim. In a town where most people marry by age 18, if not sooner, the men still on the market were all losers. The only single men near my age had either gotten divorced early, or had never married. Junior simply seemed less of a loser than the others. At least he wasn’t a country bumpkin with a nasty filthy beard down to his waist. He actually spoke proper English (although $25 words were always over his head), and never asked me to a Marshall Tucker Band concert, as one hick did. Junior actually liked real music—rock and roll!

It was my best friend, and the circle of friends I met through her, who got Junior and I together. Everyone was attached—if not married at least dating. They couldn’t stand the fact that there were two unattached people of the appropriate sexes with whom they were acquainted. Appropriate, that is, for dating each other in that time and that place among that group of people. They came up with a brilliant scheme. They told me that Junior thought I was cute and wanted to meet me. They told him the same thing. Over and over, for more than a week. Then finally, they arranged a meeting.

I had not met him previously because I worked 1st shift and he worked 2nd, and I lived with my parents under a fairly strict curfew. Why I lived with my parents and had a curfew at the ripe old age of 23 is another sordid story for another time.

My best friend Tammy, and the wife (at the time) of one of Junior’s friends dragged me up to the friend’s apartment one night. Junior and I chatted for a bit, then he walked me to my car. He charmed me by actually asking if he could kiss me! No boy or man had ever done that—asked that is. They just kissed, like it or not, if I let them get that close. We had a few things in common, more than just the love of rock music. We both partied, both loved movies and, after all, we had the same friends. I needed a boyfriend to turn into a husband. He needed a mother, and I had already become an expert in mothering boyfriends. I actually loved him at first. The marriage completed the circle of our friends…for as long as the marriages lasted. None of them did.

Almost exactly halfway through our marriage I decided that I had had enough of partying. I was sick of the hangovers. I stopped drinking and drugging completely, and with no problem. To my extreme dismay, Junior did not. Indeed, he seemed to get worse, and the marriage became a nightmare. I think, in retrospect, that I simply was seeing him as he really was for the first time. I tried to get him to stop, not that that ever works. I was to find that it just makes the alcoholic/addict sneaky. They are masterful liars and manipulators and, in my experience, these behaviors don’t end when they become “clean and sober.” They may lessen in time, if the alcoholic is truly honest with themselves and works hard on changing, but few do. AA meetings replace parties, coffee and sweets replace booze. Their friends are still addicts—they are just addicts who don’t use.

Junior finally got “clean and sober” a few months after his mother died. He went on a four-month bender. It was so unbearable I was about a week away from leaving him when he came home at 4 AM one morning, drunk as a skunk, and announced he needed help and was going to check into Bridgeway, a local, popular treatment facility. Although I had to be up in two hours to get to work, I jumped out of bed and helped him pack. I thought this was my salvation, the saving of our marriage and the end of the nightmare. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

After the obligatory thirty days at Bridgeway, Junior came home and announced that he wasn’t going back to his job. He had been drinking and drugging at work. Everyone he knew at work was still drinking and drugging. AA tells us (drunks and their significant others alike) that going back into a situation where the drug of choice (every drug was Junior’s choice) was constantly at hand was a sure way to relapse. I agreed, good little AA wife that I was, that quitting his job was necessary. I thought he would get another job soon. He never did.

I was working ten to twelve hour days, working on weekends, trying to make ends meet. Having one income instead of two made things difficult, but Junior never seemed to realize it. He seemed to think he could spend as much money he wanted to on anything he wanted, just as he did when both of us were working. He bought CDs constantly, and we always seemed to be feeding “our” new AA and NA friends. The house, in fact, was full of these new friends. Every day when I would come home from work the house would be full of “recovering” alcoholics watching TV, playing video games and generally being loud and obnoxious. It wasn’t much better than when Junior was drinking, just different. I so wanted to come home and rest, have some peace and quiet, but that was not going to happen.

At the time I had one pair of work shoes. I needed good shoes, as I was on my feet most of the time. They were falling apart, and new ones cost about $45. I was desperately trying to make them last a few weeks longer. I didn’t have the money to buy another pair. It was summertime and Junior, in addition to playing a lot of video games, watching a lot of TV, and going to a lot of meetings, played a lot of tennis. A whole lot of tennis. He played every day. One day when I came home in my wretched work shoes, hot and tired and not at all wanting to be subjected to the din of the “shiny happy people” in my living room, Junior announced that he needed new tennis shoes. He had been playing so much tennis that his shoes were wearing out!

We argued. I was the one who needed new shoes, not him, I told him. I was deeply resentful of his carefree “recovering” lifestyle. I thought he would have gotten a job by this time—it had been a few months. He couldn’t get a job, though, because he had to work on “recovering.” Part of that “work” was playing tennis—he had to have new shoes! “Tennis helps keeps me sober!” he whined. “Don’t you want me to stay sober?” Of course I did. The marriage sucked, life sucked, my job sucked, but at least Junior wasn’t drinking and driving, or coming home a 4 AM and cranking up the stereo. This was thought with the same logic of women who say: “at least he doesn’t hit me” or “at least he doesn’t cheat on me.” In other words, things could be worse. Not much, but they could.

So I did the only thing I felt at the time I could do: I let him buy the tennis shoes, and wore my work shoes until they were falling off my feet. I don’t know, I have never known, if I am angrier at him or at myself. In my defense, I thought I was doing the right thing, keeping him sober to save our marriage. I now know that only he could keep himself sober, and only if he wanted to. But I was still naive about alcoholics. I actually thought he would make it! He would be the one in a hundred, or a thousand, who stayed sober and got his life, our life, back together. Plus I had a lifetime of experience at being manipulated by alcoholics, having grown up with Mommy.

Although Junior never got a real job, things settled into a reasonably livable situation. I was even happy. I even liked Junior again, and enjoyed our “recovering” friends. The meetings and the socializing made my horrible job bearable, for a time. That might have been the end of the story, if it weren’t for a rule I had learned while growing up: you don’t tell your family members everything. You save up the juicy tidbits and use them at the most opportune times. Mommy had played that game my entire life.

Junior started drinking again, two-and-a-half years after leaving Bridgeway. It wasn’t obvious at first—he was being sneaky about it—but I knew things were going downhill. We went to my sister’s house for Christmas. She lives at the beach. It was bitter cold, I was bored to death, and Junior kept making himself absent for several hours at a time. During one of these absences I told my sister about the tennis shoe incident. Pammy was ready to kill Junior. I wouldn’t have minded at all. In fact, I thought it was a fine idea, but I didn’t want her to go to jail for it. So Junior remained unharmed, and the marriage plodded on for another three years, and another recovery center vacation for Junior.

I had a nervous breakdown and got on disability. Junior still didn’t get a real job. He mowed lawns, bringing home perhaps $300 a month. He ate more than that! He smelled like stale beer all the time, although he swore he wasn’t drinking. He went camping for days at a time. I finally caught him red-handed and kicked him out. My father immediately changed the locks on the doors. It was late fall, and getting cold. Junior tried staying with his brother, but his brother wouldn’t put up with the drinking either, and kicked him out too. My whiny unhusband phoned and said he had no place to stay, and it was getting too cold to camp. He promised he would stay sober if I would let him stay at the house until he got enough money to get a place. Fool that I was, I let him stay on the couch. He stayed sober two days. I gave him two choices: get out or go into a recovery center again. He chose the latter.

I had no intention of letting him come back, but I let him believe he would have a place to stay when he got out until he was actually in rehab. Then I filed for a separation. When I told him he checked himself out of rehab, found a place to stay and—gasp—got a job! Amazing what a man can do when he finally realizes he no longer has a wife to support him!

As soon as he had a place of his own, he bought a recliner and a big screen TV—on credit, of course. He’d been working less than a month, and was still drinking. He came over a few times over the next few months to collect his stuff. The last time he drove up in a brand new bright red Toyota 4-wheel drive extra-cab pick-up truck with all the bells and whistles. After showing off his new truck, he showed off his new tennis shoe. He was inordinately proud of them. They cost him $25.

Grandpa the Lawman

Grandpa was a big man. At least, that’s what I hear. I never met him: he died the same year I was born. Daddy didn’t inherit Grandpa’s size, although his younger brother did. Daddy was tall and lanky. Both Robert and Grandpa were tall and broad shouldered and beefy. Grandpa, I think, was bigger then even Robert.

Grandpa was born, conveniently, George Davidson Young. I say conveniently, because it was the habit of my large extended family, which first pioneered the Swannanoa Valley of North Carolina, to use the mother’s maiden name as the middle name of each child. This makes it easy to trace our ancestors, and figure out if someone is a second, third or fourth cousin. Most of the cousins I have left in Swannanoa are Davidsons, but there are Pattons, Pattersons, Alexanders, Gibbs, Curlees and Stones still in the area. There was a family reunion about a decade ago. Over a quarter million people showed up!

Grandpa didn’t seem to have a particular vocation. Like Grandma, he had gone to visit with his cousins in Bellingham, Washington when he was quite a young man. He started a bus service there, and didn’t return to Swannanoa until after he married Grandma and they’d had two sons. Once home, the young family lived on the grounds of Granny Annie Davidson’s boarding house, and Grandpa got a job with the Buncombe County highway patrol, which in those days was about forty guys on motorcycles. Swannanoa was never incorporated into a real town. It was just a factory with a lot of houses and tiny town built nearby. It still is, but the factory burned down a few years ago. There’s not much left but a bunch of middle-aged Davidsons.

Since Swannanoa didn’t have its own sheriff, Grandpa became the only law in town. Later, when he took a job as personnel director at Beacons Blankets, the local mill and only real employment in the town, he still was the only law. Buncombe County didn’t assign another patrolman there. I guess they knew Grandpa could handle things. There wasn’t much lawlessness in Swannanoa. A squabble between neighbors, perhaps a domestic disturbance now and then, certainly more than a few drunken fights on Friday nights when the men who worked at the mill got paid.

There were no Miranda laws back then. No one had ever heard of police brutality. So, being the large man that he was, if someone did something “naughty” Grandpa simply went and bonked him over the head and dragged him off to jail. If things were more than he could handle alone, he’d call a couple of his buddies. We’re not talking Goober and Floyd here, either. Grandpa’s buddies could pack a punch!

The real occupation of a lawman in Swannanoa was finding and breaking up stills. They were—and are—everywhere. Everyone knew Grandpa, but since bootleggers didn’t take kindly to having their stills destroyed, they had to be taken by surprise. To be sure, Grandpa had a rifle. Everyone hunted. But there is no record of anyone ever getting shot on a raid on a Swannanoa still. Grandpa preferred his fists. And after the still was broken up Grandpa and his buddies would always take home a jug or two, for medicinal purposes, of course!

Grandpa made one attempt at producing illicit booze himself. He tried to make homemade beer. At the time the family still lived in the Cabin on Granny Annie’s property. It was one room, which served as kitchen, dining room and living room, and a screened sleeping porch—the only bedroom for a family of four. They slept there all year round. Daddy can remember waking up with snow on his blankets. The only running water in the Cabin was a pump from the well that Grandpa installed on a broad iron sink. The wastewater ran out of the drain into a pipe that led to the nearby stream. I have a picture of one of their cats trying to catch the water as it came out of the pipe.

The beer-making attempt was in the summer. There wasn’t much storage space in the Cabin, so the crates of newly capped beer bottles were pushed under the beds on the sleeping porch. Perhaps Grandpa had put in a bit too much yeast, perhaps it was just the heat, but one night the caps popped off the bottles. Everyone woke up covered in beer. I’m sure Grandma was less than pleased and played no small part in this being Grandpa’s only attempt at making home-brew. Wash day came early that week, and getting two young boys to agree to wash before Saturday bath night involved a good bit of ear-twisting.

Grandpa’s skill at bonking people over the head eventually got him into trouble. Not with the law, but with the Beacon Mill baseball team. The mill baseball teams were a big deal for the small towns around Asheville. All of the mills had baseball teams, and the entire town would come out to root for their team on game days. Grandpa was the manager of Beacon Mill’s team for many years. Unfortunately, he had a large temper to go along with his large size, and he kept getting into fists-fights with the managers of the other mill teams. The other mills got tired of having their baseball managers get knocked out at every game with Swannanoa, so Grandpa was told he was no longer allowed to manage the team. But he was still the law, and remained so until his untimely death of a heart attack in 1955.

Things are different now. Patrol cars cruise the depressed area of Swannanoa, little more than a convenience store stop between Asheville and the minimum-security prison halfway to Black Mountain. Grandpa wouldn’t like it there now. I know I don’t. The town was made for simpler times when a strong man could maintain peace with his fists and bring home a jug or two as his reward.

In Memoriam: Christopher Reeve

Christopher Reeve
September 25, 1952 - October 10, 2004

I just found out about Mr. Reeve's death from a heart attack at the all-too-young age of 52. Having always been fond of Reeve as an actor and more, I find myself fighting back tears.

Mr. Reeve was a fine but underrated actor before his accident. His performances in such movies as the fabulous "Somewhere In Time," the hilarious "Noises Off," and the finely tuned thriller "Mortal Sins," to name but a few, showed clearly that he had far more range than most people gave him credit for. Reeve was far more than the man who leapt tall buildings in a single bound--not that there was anything wrong with his performances in the Superman series. Whatever fault might be found in the series came from the screenplays and plots, not Reeve's performances.

Yet to the world, he was Superman...until his accident. Then he became more than a comic book Superman--he became a real-life Superman, a person who was infinitely inspirational, a person who would never give up. Granted, there are thousands of paralyzed people who also never give up, who are also in inspiration to all who know them. Granted, also, Reeve had the means to get the best of medical care--means which many people do not have.

What made Reeves different was his position: his celebrity put spinal cord injuries into the eyes and mind of the world. Always an activist for causes and charities involving the arts, the environment, children, and human rights, he now turned his activism toward increasing public awareness about spinal cord injuries, and he worked to raise money for research into a cure.

As soon as he could, he began to work again, making public speeches and a narrating documentaries. But it was when he returned to acting that he really shone. Actors consider "Whose Life Is It Anyway" a plum role, as it allows them to create their entire character with nothing buttheir voice and facial expressions. Reeves didn't have a choice: his voice and his face were all he could use. This was not some actor showing off his chops by pretending to be paralyzed. This was a truely fine actor proving that his voice and face were all he needed to portray wonderful, three-dimensional characters--and all he needed to be a terrific director as well.

Interviews with people like Larry King and Barbara Walters kept Reeve and his cause in the public eye. His determination and progress were a never ending source of inspiration. But his work in front of and behind the camera made it obvious that this was a man who was an inspiration in every way, in every part of his life...and always had been.

The inspiration that Christopher Reeve motivated in others will not end with his death. He will live on in our hearts...yet he will be sorely, deeply missed.

Grandma and the Roosians

Once upon a time, when the world was very different from the way it is today, long before my mother was so much as a glimmer in my grandmother’s eye, the Piritzky family lived the privileged life of Hungarian lesser nobility.

I say privileged with qualifications: the life of the lesser nobility of Europe, like that of all of the classes, was set in stone. The peasants tended the fields and estates of the nobility. Some, to be sure, had villages of their own on Hungary’s grassy plains where they raised the horses that were the descents of those brought by Attila the Hun. These were far more fortunate than peasants in other countries, and their horses highly sought-after. But most peasants were resigned to a life of servitude, with no hope of ever owning land of their own.

The Jews ran the shops and the banks. Neither Hungarian peasant nor noble could own a business. The Gypsies, somewhat better received in Hungary than in many other European countries, often inter-married with the Magyars, peasant and noble alike. They had done so for generations. It was unusual for the Rom—the name the gypsies give themselves—to marry outside of their own people but there was, and is, nothing “usual” about the Hungarian people. So, with their gypsy blood, many peasant women told fortunes with tarot cards for coin, and many of the lesser nobility did the same, but for entertainment. The nobility, no matter how poor, could only make money by running the family estate or by entering the army. The women, of course, could earn no money of their own at all. There were also those among the mixed-blood peasants who became performers, acrobats who showed no fear.

My grandmother, Anna, with the exceptional dark-eyed dark haired beauty of her mixed Magyar/Rom blood, caught the heart of a young Hungarian noble of no title and small fortune. Perhaps that is a bit too romantic: like most marriages in those days, it was an arranged marriage. Sandor’s (pronounced Shandoor) family had no estate, and to make matters worse, had a Polish last name. Whether the name had anything to do with the family fortunes is unknown—Hungarians are a secretive lot. The arrangement to have Sandor marry Anna 15 years his junior, may well have had as much to do with family fortunes as with love.

Sandor and Anna were married in Budapest. Sandor entered the army as an officer, and quickly made his way to the position of general. Anna bore him two daughters. I knew them as Claire and Peggy. I never knew their Hungarian names. The girls were brought up to marry well. They would have fine homes and servants, as their own parents did. But they were born at an infortuitous time. The Austrian branch of the Hapsburgh Empire controlled Hungary, and was allied with Germany. The Hungarians disliked their Austrian overlords, but had no choice but to bow to them. Hungary, like many other countries, was not strong enough to escape the greedy reach of the Hapsburghs. Transylvania kept alive Hungarian traditions the Hapsburghs did not allow. Yet, despite the Hapsburghs, Hungarians of all classes led a settled life that, it seemed, would never change.

Then World War I came. The Hungarians had no choice but to fight with their hated Austrian overlords in concert with Germany. Grandfather went to fight in the trenches, while Grandmother took their daughters to live on a small farm near the Hungarian/Czechoslovakian border. I imagine a family servant or two went with them, but again I am unsure because of the family secrecy.

At the end of the War the Hapsburghs abdicated and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was split among the Allies. Borders were redrawn. The part of Hungary in which Grandma and Grandpa lived became part of Czechoslovakia, and was put under Russian rule. Grandpa had family who had already fled Hungary—some to Holland, some to America. Grandpa and Grandma made plans to flee themselves, and not simply for the insult of being considered Czechoslovakian. For Communism had come to Eastern Europe with the end of the War. The class system was destroyed, the lands of the nobility split among the peasantry. To make matters worse, the Russian soldiers had orders to find and kill all officers who had fought for the Germans. Needless to say, this order included Grandpa.

So plans were made to flee with their children to Holland, and thence to America. The plans were interrupted one day, however, when two “Roosian” soldiers arrived at the door. Two fully armed but war-weary Russian soldiers who no doubt supplemented their meager pay with loot. Perhaps other such visits had had gone well for the soldiers, but they never counted on Grandma. As soon as the soldiers were spied on the road to the house, Grandma had Grandpa hide in the basement. When the soldiers knocked at the door they were welcomed by 5” 2” and 130 pounds of female fury, brandishing a very sharp axe. Screaming at them in Hungarian, Grandma charged the soldiers. The soldiers wisely turned tail and ran as fast as humanly possible. There is no doubt in my mind that, had the soldiers dared to face Grandma, they would have left with fewer limbs, if they left at all.

I can imagine the look on my grandmother’s face as she faced the soldiers. I have seen that look on my mother, my sister, and even on my own face: a look of utter and undeniable female outrage that easily can make the strongest man tremble in his shoes, and cause those with hearts less stout to grovel. Had that look and the fury behind it been the only thing Grandma left me, it would have been enough. That look, with the help of a small hunting knife, chased a would-be rapist from my door when I was seventeen. That look has caused many a male co-worker to mutter: “I’m glad she’s not mad at me”! That look has allowed three generations of Piritzky woman to be masters at the fine art of returning things to stores that no store in their right mind would accept as a return. Not as romantic as chasing away soldiers, but far more useful these days.

But that is another several stories. As for my grandparents, Grandpa fled to Holland that very night. Grandma stayed behind, sold the house, packed up their belongings and their two young daughters, and followed a few weeks later. From Holland they booked passage to America—first class, according to family legend. Grandpa told stories of America to his daughters on the journey...but that, too, is another story.

Anger Managment...but will it work twice?

If you've read some of my other posts, you probably know that the wife had been mad at me for days. Giving me the cold-shoulder treatment. I tried the hearts and flowers thing, and still got the cold shoulder. So I tried giving her the cold shoulder. All that accomplished was we didn;t talk to each other except to say "Hi" or "I'm going to bed" for a full day. Great! Just the reaction I wanted--not!!

So when she started bitching again (of course, it is about money and the business--she doesn't like that I made more money than her so that she owed me out of her account and not mine {grrrr}) and I let my anger show. Suddenly she is all hearts and flowers. Well, that is an overstating a bit. But she was nice again, acting as if she had never been mad at me at all.

Hmmm, says I, this is interesting. I get mad and she backs off! She loves to be mad, but she hates to argue.

I haven't had a chance to try this again, as I haven't accidently made her mad at me for a bit, but that won't last. Will it work again? Stay tuned!

What Flood? or I Love My Car!

The rains of Hurricane Frances have reached us here in the mountains--it's been raining all day. That much rain means floods--we live in a flood plain. One of our parks--the only one really deserving that appellation--is built on the edge of a swamp. No alligators here, but egrets and other water birds make the swamp their home.

We are used to the flooding, although like any other disruption of daily life, it creates a panic among the exceptionally large population of bad drivers. People have their scanners on to find out which road has just been closed--as if we don't all know which ones get closed when it floods. Come on, folks, we all know what areas will be flooded: Atha Plaza, Shepard Street between the college and the tiny Cessna airport, the theater parking lot, Jake's Driving Range (I have always said that he ought to keep a stock of live fish and use it as "Jake's Casting Range" on the days it floods--that place will flood with the least amount of rain). Oh, and pretty much every cornfield in the area.

With a really bad flood, you can't get there from here, no matter where you are or where you're going. Still, we have it a lot better than many surrounding areas--no mud-slides, no mobile homes sliding down the hillsides, no raging rivers carrying off pick-up trucks. The floods always recede in a day and leave no more damage than a few new potholes.

So why the heck is everyone so bent out of shape when it floods? What is the big deal? Stay off the roads you know very well will be flooded, especially if you don't drive a truck or SUV. The idiots will go out, just as they do during our one or two big snows, and get stuck.

Ah, but if one does drive an SUV--now that's a different story! Barring the rare really deep places, the high water the Kias get stuck in are mere puddles, just enough to pull on the wheels a bit.

I have an SUV. Jessie is her name, and a fine car she is! I have a bumper sticker that says: "Beware of small womyn in large vehicles as you crunch nicely under the tires." Granted, this is a town full of SUVs and jacked-up pick-up trucks, many of them taller than my Blazer, but I am proud of my Jessie and love having fun when others drive the pseudo-treacherous roads (treacherous for them, not me) with fear and loathing.

This is the first good flood since I bought Jessie. I got to play in the snow a couple of times--what fun!! It would have been better if the idiots in cars had stayed off the roads--they ruin everything! Fortunately most of the idiots had the wisdom, or timidity, to stay off the earliest-to-flood-every-single-time-it-rains-more-than-an-inch roads. I passed a few small puddles on the way back from Walmart (by the way, why do people run when it rains? They don't stay any drier than if they had walked), nothing to trouble me at all. But as I neared what I knew would be a pond across the road just past the college, I began to wonder: just how high is it?

No cars had chanced that road, nothing smaller than a couple of full-sized pick-ups. There was a truck ahead of me at the flood pond, and a van coming the other way. The van kicked up quite a wake. It was lower to the road than the truck that had passed through before it, and pushed some of the water back. Bummer! I let the truck in front get well in and watched the water flow back over the road, then with a thrill of excitement running through me, plowed on through.

How cool is this? Water spouting up past my fenders and splashing on the side windows. Nothing pulled on my wheels, not a problem in the world--I wish I'd gone faster!

By tomorrow the road will be closed--the rain is supposed to last through the night and all day tomorrow. Maybe by Thursday I will have another chance at the flood pond, if the water doesn't recede too quickly.

I love my car!!

Mi Familia Loco-the visit

A bit of background:

I have two sisters. One I can't stand. I call her my Evil Sister. The other I adore. Her name is Pammy and she has a wonderful husband we call Kenneth Darling. Pammy and Kenneth Darling live about nine hours away. Between health problems (as none of us are spring chickens) and busy lives, we don't see each other much.

My Mom died 5 years ago...or six, I am terrible with time. The widows immediately descended, but Daddy mourned for more than two years and fended off the unwanted attention. Then he moved into a local retirement community, Carolina Village. It's a great place. He has his own apartment and lives on his own, but if ever he needs medical attention, short or long-term, it is there for him. He doesn't have to cook or clean or do anything except what he wants to do. Wish I lived there!

Shortly after moving into Carolina Village, his eye was caught by a tiny little woman who had just moved in herself. Dad likes tiny women--Mom was tiny too. He is also, I found to my dismay when he moved into The Village (as it is called), that he is an incurable skirt chaser. After several months of pursuit, he finally latched onto this lady, whom he dubbed The Doll, and they are now joined at the hip. They don't live together, and claim they don't sleep together. As she is a very old-fashioned lady, that is probably true.

So, Pammy and Kenneth Darling decided to come up for a visit. I was thrilled!!! I was really looking forward to spending some Sissy time together, while the guys watched a ball game or foraged at Home Depot.

Pammy and I thought we'd have a bit of time with Daddy doing something, then she and I would go off and spend some Sissy time together. Pammy and her husband Kenneth Darling were planning to use that opportunity for Kenneth to corner Daddy and finally get the information on Daddy's annuities that Kenneth needs as executor of Daddy's estate. Daddy has been promising to get the info to Kenneth for two years! We figured we would have a short visit with The Doll and then have some family time, but her daughter was out of town, and Daddy didn't want to leave her alone for the whole afternoon. Pammy and I both later both agreed that having The Doll hanging around during the entire visit was very inconsiderate of Daddy and of her, but Daddy has his head so far up The Doll's butt he can't think straight.

We all had lunch together, then I suggested that we go to Jump Off Rock, a little knob on the top of a nearby hill from which you can see four states. The entire jaunt would have taken us an hour tops. Daddy said that wasn't much of an adventure, we should go to Pisgah Forest. I thought, OK, so maybe two hours, then we'd have a bit of family time--surely the girlfriend could go back to her apartment for a little while.

Well, Daddy took the longest possible route to the Forest, then went winding along the Blue Ridge Parkway, taking in every possible sight. We were stuffed in the car for four+ hours! Oh, and get this: Daddy said I had to ride in the front seat, as I am too "broad" to fit in the back with two other people! The nerve! Of course he thought it was terribly funny, although I complained bitterly about his comment. I had hoped Kenneth would sit in front so he and Daddy could talk, and I would get to sit next to Pammy. (sigh)

So then, when we *finally* got back to Daddy's place, The Doll *still* didn't go back to her apartment! She stayed hanging around while Daddy entertained us by playing the piano. Now, I love listening to Daddy play and, although he has his own peculiar rhythm, I often sing while he plays. So it's not like it was a complete nightmare, but where was the family time? Pammy and Kenneth and I finally gave up on having any time alone with Daddy and said goodbye. We talked about meeting for breakfast the next morning before Pammy and Kenneth returned home, but of course, The Doll would have to come! Arrrrrgggghhhh!! My family!

Pammy and I are both a bit put out about the whole visit, but Daddy thought we all had a wonderful time. The next visit will be better planned. Meanwhile Pammy and I are talking about getting together, just she and I. She could fly up (she has frequent flyer miles) and we wouln't even have to tell Daddy she's here.

Is my life a soap opera or what?? lolol

Feeling underappreciated and put-upon rant

The ying has yanged: the wife is mad at me because I made more money in our online business last week than she did. Excccuuuuuuuuseeee me!! I know it's all my fault my fault my fault (reference to Handmaid's Tale)--yeah, right!

What ticked her off is that, well, we each have a bank account for separate parts of our business. All of the money I made last week is in her account, and what is in my account does not balance it out. This is perhaps the the 5th week out of two years that I made more than she did, and the first time she ever had to fork over more than $50. Of course, by the time the banks open Tuesday, she will have sold some stuff--already has, in fact, and the balance will tip the other way. Not that she thinks about that!

I suppose I will be getting the cold shoulder until then. She refuses to eat dinner with me--probably back in her office (the door of which is always closed, and I have to knock, whereas she can walk into my office at any time--I have no door!) eating Lance crackers--junk food junkie!

You thought I was ranting? You haven't heard nothin' yet!!

OK, so I asked her to move in and told her that I would only ask her to pay $150.00 towards household expenses until she had her medical bills paid off (she is disabled--so am I, but she is sicker than I am). Now, that is $150 going towards food, utilities, taxes, insurance and household maintenance! Pretty good deal, eh? You think there would be some ongoing appreciation of this but noooooooo!!! The medical bills continue to pile up, so I have never been able to ask her to pitch in more (OK, I know, I got myself into this, but still!)

Pooling our money instead of having her money and my money is out of the question. She has to many bills and I'll be darned if I'm paying for them! I pay for enough! She's been here five years, we had a Holy Union about a year before that....

(I pause to take a drag off my cig and a swig of Fresca--could live without those two things ;)

So she says to me last night: "Why don't you list this and this and this?"

"I've been busting my butt the last week packing and shipping stuff!" says I. I have suggested many times that she list some stuff--she is too ill to pack, but she can list! Oh, no, she couldn't figure out how to do that! This from a woman who is the smartest, most well-informed and well-read person I have ever met. She is no slouch at the computer, she is on it all the time, but she "can't figure out" how to list! Doesn't want to, more like! She'd rather surf her political sites and play Freecell! Well, so would I...well, not quite that, but I'd like to spend my whole day not working--just once!

I have been trying to make nice today, but that isn't working and is making me resentful. So stop it, me!! ignore her like she is ignoring me! Yeah, that's the ticket, fur sure! Now, can I really do it? This will be an interesting experiment....

So meanwhile, what did I do today (since she's acting like I do nothing around here). Oh, gee, not much! Woke up and found one of the cats had missed the litter box--everything had to be pulled up, the floor swept and mopped, the cat boxes scooped, the nasty stuff washed in a separate Lysoled load, and while I was at it, empty all the waste baskets and take out the trash. Folded all of the laundry in the dryer, dried the new load, started another load. Washed the dishes. Fed the cats. Went to the grocery store and hauled in everything. Sorted through some stuff that hadn't sold and put some in a "take to the thrift store" box. Relisted a bunch of our best-selling items, checked and adjusted prices at two of our four sites, went through the list of "too cheap to keep" stuff, deleting where necessary and pulled it all off the shelves. Printed out three shipping labels/packing slips, with all that entails (three Word docs, four windows open in I.E., plus Notepad open). Talked a bit to one of my online freinds (my one bit of anything resembling fun). Fixed the dinner she wouldn't eat. Pulled the knot grass up that had overgrown my St. Francis garden statue and our cat Harry's grave. Gee, is that all?? And the night is still young. (sigh)

May go nap for a while.....