Memory Aids: aka Pics, Hearing Aids for My Mind

In April '07, I worked the Jerry Lee Lewis show. This backstage picture of the piano he used that night is a good way for me to remember the show.

This pic reminds me that a friend said there would be good bargains at Scarborough Faire this weekend and we should go. Wonder if it's too late or too wet now?

also-- Wonder why I didn't buy these guys a drink last year....?

I Can Hear The Thunder

It’s pouring outside. The rain is coming down big, fast and hard.
Within five minutes of looking out my window at the rain, I saw one jr high kid walking home from school with a huge backpack, and another walk out of his house, get on his bike and ride down the street as he does every school day.
Both boys were hooded against the rain. Both were soaking wet almost surely within a minute. The kid on foot was alternately jogging in discomfort and walking in dejection.

I tried to remember the last time I got soaked by a rainstorm. I couldn't.
I thought about stepping outside and getting soaked, for the fun of it.
But the kids didn’t look like they were having fun.
I thought of the kitchen painting I wanted to start today, and how I’d have to change clothes and shoes once I got wet.
Getting soaked might be fun, but inconvenient. Like outside sex.
Is that a sign of getting old?
Now that it’s passed, I wished I'd done it.
Regrets.

LOVE IS SQUASHING BUGS

A commercial for a TV show this week is a man telling a woman “I wanna squash bugs for you.”
I think that's a nice declaration of love.
No one’s been squashing bugs for me lately.
I maturely squash my own bugs.
Squashing my own bugs is not something that comes naturally to me.
I was the youngest child with a brother, father and mother who previously squashed bugs for me. Bathtubs, basements, closet, it didn't matter where I found them; I was saved. It was a great life.
Didn’t move from my parent’s house till I got married at twenty; then my husband squashed a few for me. But that’s when I started to learn to squash my own.
Waiting for someone to rescue me from an insect, when I regularly dealt with mice and spiders in my horse stable, seemed silly. However, it was nice to have my husband as a back-up for particularly freaky encounters.
Now, single, with my own place, it comes with the territory. I am chief bug-squasher.
Initially, big spiders were the hardest to approach. Big spiders still give me the heebie-jeebies.
But then I moved to Texas and encountered extra-large roach/waterbug monsters.
Huge, dark, winged roach-like insects that die for days on their backs, and turn into a yellow, yolk-like mess if you squash them, they freaked me out the first time one flew off the ceiling onto the wall.
I had a few false starts slapping them with a slipper, before I realized they’re like armored tanks and need a hard shoe to be smashed or a straight shot of DDT.
It took me three months to finally kill one.
Ever since I adopted a cantankerous cat, I haven’t had to kill too many big bugs. I’ll find parts of bugs I would’ve had to squash, but the cat turned them into pieces.
Other than that, I squash my own bugs.
I’ll do it for the one I love, too.