The Fourth Collision of the Mad Ones

11:00 Upon receiving an irate phone call from Miss Swanson, the ever tardy Mr. Buls urged the Mad Ones to begin without him. This was verily done.

 

11:05 Miss Katie Johnson opened the minutes with an improvisational prayer, for which she was thankful, considering that she was not prepared with a written one.

 

11:09 Miss Shelby Johnson continues the meeting with a reading from the Graham Greene novel, The Power of the Glory. The excerpt was on the image of Christ in the world.

 

11:14 Mr. Vowell shared a quote on St. Augustine and offered his interpretation of it.

 

11:15 Mr. Buls finally graced the Mad Ones with his presence—he was greeted cordially despite his shameful breech of Mad Protocol. Mr. Vowell continued in his diatribe, considering that Mr. Buls did not possess the Magic Maraca. (We had to improvise. It was upon Madame Johnson’s suggestion that the Maraca was thus used with great delight.) Miss Shelby Johnson invited the presence of an angelic choir when Mr. Vowell quoted T.S. Eliot.

 

11:20 Miss Shelby Johnson gained possession of the Magic Maraca that she might offer her opinions on Mr. Vowell’s wealth of pertinent quotes. She spoke of the questions that Master Jenkins has lately been posing in the Authors of Christian Commitment class, particularly the loss of a unified culture.

 

11:25 Miss Aubrey Swanson gained the Magic Maraca so that she could read an excerpt from The Politically Incorrect to English and American Literature. This was very well received.

 

11:30 Miss Katie Johnson read from Emerson’s essay, “The Poet,” to which Miss Shelby Johnson took great exception.

 

11:35 The Meeting was put on pause for a minute.

 

11: 37 Miss Swanson became greatly perturbed at Mr. Vowell when he kept referring to the Holy Maraca as the Holy Macarena. He exploded, “It’s the shaky thingy with things inside that make a noise!” There was an abiding silence. The meeting continued.

 

11:39 Miss Shelby Johnson’s new chapter and story idea were discussed.

 

12:00 Miss Katie Johnson shared her ideas for her character’s development and was given encouragement to continue writing.

 

12:06 Mr. Buls began to share his trilogy. Mr. Vowell was intrigued by the idea and developed his goal to become a part of Mr. Bul’s cast of characters. The Mad Ones wish him luck in this endeavor.

 

12:30 Miss Katie Johnson was picked up by the long absent Miss Jones, so her participation in this meeting came to a conclusion. They could have invented rocket packs with built-in pencils and laser notebooks for all that she knows of the rest of the meeting…which would have been really cool….

Cake or Pie? Uh, NEW OPTION!

Alyce came home for Easter and today I got to hang out with her. Needless to say that I am now in far higher spirits than I was previously -- Alyce is marvelous for reminding me what's important and what's crap. Anyway, we went to lunch and I discovered what is quite possibly one of the greatest wonders of the natural world.

Cobbler.

Warm peach cobbler with nice cold ice cream on top. The melding of heat and cold together in one's mouth is worthy of its own poem, if not epic. Great, just what I needed. Another addiction.

Sigh. 

........anybody want to go try cherry? 

Sometimes I wonder, O God, why Thou didst make me with a larger than usual sweet teeth? There must be a reason for Thy plan, but what, pray tell?

Beautifully Weird

I've come to the conclusion that life is beautifully weird. Any situation can be accounted for by either saying, "Well, it's beautiful, but so weird!" or "How weird...but at least it's a beautiful world!" Try it. You'll see the brilliance in my conclusion. 

Random much? Not really. Follow the reasoning behind my madness...

So today was a pretty cool day. Busy -- as seen by the fact that my INCREDIBLY eccentric knee is killing me (which is the weird part) but also by the mountainous amount of crap I bought for a hundred bucks today at the Rummage Sale (beautiful).  The Rummage Sale is pretty much the penultimate of all yard sales to ever be held on the planet. I kid you not. It comes around once a year in April. Basically, a church's insanely wicked (read: epically awesome) idea for fundraiser for their big summer mission project is to get everyone in the congregation to collect all of their junk and unnecessary items throughout the year and then bring it to the church so that it can all be organized, priced, and sorted into three parking lots and two gigantic revival tents so that other people can buy even more junk and unnecessary items that they'll just end up giving to Goodwill at some point within the coming year. 

Everybody following me still? Well done! 

Anyway, what with the Great Johnson/Swanson Migration to Union this coming August, we decided to hit the Rummage Sale and do some damage on the amount of supplies we still needed for the apartment. My mission was to find a recliner. I do all my homework from my chair, so a place upon which to rest my weary behind was the Necessary of all Necessaries, the veritable Holy Grail of furniture. This is the reason why Mom, Shelby, Aubrey, and my lovely future Union buddies Courtney and Heather were all outside in the cold at freaking 7:50 in the morning. To say that my comrades were grumpy about the circumstance would be to say that Joan of Arc was a charming girl that merely swatted flies that were trying to get into her homemade raspberry preserves. 

Despite this, we persevered and finally made it into the revival tents. I refrained from speaking in tongues and or asking someone to talk to me about the Lord and made a sanctified beeline for the furniture section. You see, we were battling half of Mexico here, and time was of the essence! I managed to find a lovely specimen of a recliner, though not the color I wanted, and promptly sat in it to mark my claim. This is the shopping equivalent of peeing on a fire hydrant or bonking a girl on the head with a club before dragging her away by the hair -- much more civilized! 

Those of you who are women already recognize my next dilemma -- having found a recliner in mauve rather than in the wanted tan or blue, I came to the painful realization that none of my intended bedding would work in my new bedroom! So I was forced to head to that section of the rummage section, where I finally ended up with a charming choreography of sage green, cream, rose pink and mauve. Friendly yet durable. I found a few knickknacks to warm up the room (a really cool wavy green bottle was my personal favorite, as well as a stained glass mirror and a green wrought iron basket with cream roses) and considered myself well on the way. 

After all of us managed to buy a lot of things we probably wouldn't use for at least a few years (*cough* HIGH CHAIR *cough*) and a few other fun items (Evan, I'm SO jealous over that lava lamp....no, I'm serious. If it were green, it would have been MINE!) we finally managed to make it home. It was at this point that we sadly lost Courtney and Heather's company. Mom then had Shelby and I put on dresses and gussy up and we went out and took pictures. It was mucho fun! (I'm supposed to know the word for that, but I'm too tired to care at the moment.)

(And I seem to be using a lot of parenthesis on this post.)

(Weird.) 

(--but beautiful!) 

(Yeah, if you say so.) 

(And now I'm having a conversation with myself...this is disturbing.) 

(Stopping now!) 

(Stop.)

Ahem. 

Anyway, the other funny part to the day was when I drove to pick up dinner for Mom and myself since we were the only ones home and neither of us felt like cooking. I had enjoyed the drive; it was a lovely day and I had the windows down admiring the budding trees and azaleas, not to mention the whole playlist I made of sappy music. I was humming "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol (the ULTIMATE of all sappy songs and it always makes me happy) while I was standing at the bar waiting for my order to be delivered. There were three people sitting there eating: an older guy and a kid, most likely a visitation situation, and another older man who looked slightly more, um, button down shirt-ed than his bar-fellows. If you catch my drift. So anyway, like I said, I was just standing there minding my own business when all of a sudden I start hearing the non-button down shirt guy start talking, and while I was only listening with one ear, it sounded like he was talking about me. "Don't worry, she's not paying any attention to us. Got her mind in her own world. Damn redheads...."

It was at this point that I whirled around, ready to let him have it, when I notice that he's not even looking at me. He's looking down at his enchilada rather despairingly, and Button Down Shirt Dude is just sitting there watching me to see how I'll react, laughing silently. The bartender lady looked at the dude incredulously and said something to the effect of, "Man, you better be careful when you're muttering..." and gave me an obvious look. The guy looks over at me and VISIBLY jumps when he catches sight of my red hair. He looked like he was afraid I was gonna slug him! So I start laughing and said, "You better be careful about us redheads, we've got bad tempers..."

Upon realizing that I am not going to relocate his teeth to his right ear, the Bar-Fellow laughed nervously and said, "Yeah, and I don't really need another redhead in my life!"  I refrained from saying, Uh, yeah, cause you're never gonna have this one! and merely replied, "Yeah, I'm an Irish girl raised by hillbillies. You wouldn't have had much of a chance!" We were all still laughing when he told me to drive safely. Obviously hoping I wouldn't come back and haunt him for affronting my breed, of course.

Why do weird things always happen to me whenever I go to El Porton (see gay bartender post for details: http://blindingfirefly.blogspot.com/2008/03/series-of-random-events.html)? 

Oh, right, because life is beautifully weird!

The Third Installment of the Mad Ones, as Recorded by Miss Katie Johnson, Secretary

11:19 Herr Vowell called the third meeting of the Mad Ones to order; Mr. Johnson was excommunicated for twenty seconds for some sort of infraction against Mr. Vowell’s fragile sensibilities. There was great rejoicing among the commoners for this indication of Mr. Vowell’s inestimable power over the ham that is Mr. Johnson.

 

11:20 Miss Shelby Johnson has a diatribe on the need for tracking down that illusive Temptress, time, in order to write.

 

11:21 Miss Swanson offered an original prayer, “Blessing on the Written Word.” Miss Swanson was then offered the Magic Sharpie, as the Magic Golf Ball had rolled away somewhere and could not be bothered to offer an appearance.

 

11:22 Miss Shelby Johnson executed an arm-wavey-happy-dance upon Miss Swanson’s announcement of having begun reading T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. Miss Shelby Johnson then began to talk a lot, obviously forgetting Miss Swanson’s current possession of the Magic Sharpie. (Which she dropped on her computer, prompting Mr. Johnson to say the ever eloquent, “Smooth…”) Miss Aubrey Swanson then proceeded to inform us of the progress of her vampire story, including the creation of a new character.

 

11:36 Upon the successful reading of Miss Swanson’s piece, the attention was put on Miss Katie Johnson. Gulp. The honor due to this new leader of the meeting did not prevent Mr. Vowell and Mr. Johnson from having a Gollum/slurping noise contest. Babies. They were reprimanded by Miss Shelby Johnson. The excerpt of Miss Katie’s Johnson planned story was received quite favorably. A serious discussion on the importance of humor within a fantastic story followed.

 

11:51 The Magic Sharpie passed to Miss Shelby Johnson. She read a selection from Georges Bernanos’ The Diary of a Country Priest. Next, Miss Shelby Johnson read a further portion of her novel; it was excellence in physical form. The Mad Ones all felt insignificant in her deceptively short presence and explicated prowess. Miss Shelby Johnson’s reading birthed a discussion on the need for emotions to be expressed through corporeal description.

 

12:10 Miss Vowell read the next serial excerpt on his story of Fain (sp?) and Mitzi. The Mad Ones were all eager to learn what would happen next in this fascinating tale of beans and poppycock.

 

12:27 Miss Shelby Johnson screamed in agony when Mr. Vowell refused to continue reading his story. They suggested that he change one word of his script—even though Mr. Johnson voiced his opinion that the Mad Ones were over analyzing—and Mr. Vowell agreed with the wisdom of this criticism.

 

12:30 Miss Shelby Johnson was scolded by Miss Katie Johnson for Miss Shelby Johnson’s incessant and blatant thievery of Miss Katie Johnson’s beloved Cheetos.

 

12:40 The meeting was voted to be drawn to a conclusion, with the next meeting to occur three weeks hence due to basketball games, familial visits, and the Rummage Sale.