Well . . . here I am again . . . sort of . . .

I just had a midnight snack of an avocado heaped with Hellmann's mayo (try spelling avocado correctly on the first try, I sure couldn't do it if my life were on the brink, so . . . I just made up a little trick, like we used to do in school, you know, to remember things short-term, like for a test. Avocado, two A's, two O's, intermixed, A comes first 'cause it's the first letter in the alphabet, or more simply, A comes before O. So, A, O, A, O. Ta-da, now we will never forget how to spell AvOcAdO, at least not until the end of this blog. I'm sure 99% of you, that would be about 1/2 a person, will just figure it's easier to memorize spelling avocoda outright . . . look at that, I STILL can't spell it. It's just one of those impossible words, has a million combinations to spell badly. Avacada, avocodo, avacodo, avacado, avocada, to name a few. Okay, now that none of us will ever spell aveecado correctly again as long as we live. Hey, the more I say avacadee, the more annoying it's getting to me. A dear friend emailed me that my "hair" story caught her attention. She said, I have to say you hit a spot with all the talk of vacuum cleaners, hair balls, cleaning, etc. I absolutely know I didn't have hair on the floor before reading your ... entry (nor have I ever vacuumed daily) but suddenly there's hair everywhere. Thanks ever so much. :-) All KEM can say is, You are ever so much welcome. I now expect to get a grateful email from someone who USED to know how to spell avekado.

Do you even like avacadoes? I think they are simply MARVELOUS creations, right up there with anything citrus. Really. Slice a lemon or an orange and just sit back and marvel. That's all you can do, they are so beautiful and enticing, so rich in color, so unique, so succulent. My granny used to take me downtown to this old-timey orange juice shop. Besides selling incredible maple sugar patty praline thingys oh, WHAT are they called?, well of course they sold orange juice, just-squeezed and roiling around in this big glass machine. That large quantity of busy OJ was enough alone to fasten me to the spot, transfixed. Then they would fill a paper cone with this cold, sweet, other-worldly Florida oranje, look at me, I can't spell worth a lick tonight, oranGe juice, and one sip and you seriously thought you had just been instantaneously whisked through space and greeted at Heaven's portals: WELCOME dear child, and please refresh yourself with a pearly cone of Liquid Gold. Oh, I loved that shop. It was kind of open-air and was just so therapeutic -- PASS OUT!, I just spelled thera . . . right on the first try. I just then wrote out thera . . . because I know if I try spelling it again, it will be . . . WRONG! Anyway, the shop had lots of goodies for sale and a bare cement floor and an "all business" proprietor -- uh, uh, got that one, too, I'm on a sudden, inexplicable accurate-on-first-take spelling roll. I've ditched poor Martha Washington. Anyway, back then people weren't afraid to do something well, no matter how mundane the task, like slicing oranges in half all day long. I appreciated his if-we're-going-to-sell-orange-juice-we're-going-to-be-perfect-at-it mentality. Back in the day people knew how to use time well and efficiently . . . by taking it easy and having some no-fuss fun. I'm talking about my granny and me now, but I hope the serious OJ man lived a little, too. My granny would take me to the old-fashioned downtown department store, Maas Brothers. She would sit in the shoe department, right where the down escalator kindly deposited people, unless you were like my great-grandmother, Josie, who would screech the whole way down, They're going to turn me into MINCEMEAT! I can only imagine she thought she would fumble at the bottom trying to step off and the grate where the stairs magically disappeared would grind her up like hamburger. I guess mincemeat has more of a dignified ring to it, so she used that. Granny would let me ride up and down the escalator to my heart's content, and I had a very big heart. Up and down dozens of times. I wondered why she allowed this, she was probably exhausted and enjoyed the chance to sit in the shoe department while I was happily occupied, although not necessarily gainfully employed. But she was a special granny and LOVED her grandchildren and indulged us to a magnificent degree.

Oh dear, this reminds me. One of my sister's and my favorite childhood books, besides The Little Rabbit that would not Eat, was titled, Sally Goes Shopping Alone by Louise Eppenstein. It's about this little girl who, Oh, my goodness!, her mother's birthday is tomorrow and she simply MUST get down to the department store to buy her mother a gift. She has never been shopping alone before, but she tells her mother her pigtail ribbons are mussy and simply MUST be replaced with Red Ribbons, she needs New Shiny Rubbers and also a Bathrobe for Lulubelle, her doll, but of course she doesn't snitch on herself and tell the REAL reason for HAVING to shop alone, which of course was to buy Mother's Birthday Present. Sally's mother decides that 8-year-old-Sally is very responsible and so she grants permission, but with reservations and lots of instuctions for how Sally should manage herself and by all means have all the packages SENT home. This was in the day when service was luxurious and there was a separate department for EVERYTHING, remember the button department? I don't think I do, I think that's before my time. Whew, SOMETHING is before my time, no way. But it wasn't before Sally's time and off she went. Of course, she bungles things up badly because she disobeys her mother and tries to carry all the various packages around with her instead of having them SENT home, because, after all, she's so grown up and knows better than her mother. Hear that, DTD? Some things kind of never change. The packages get left hither and yon all over the giant department store. It's a delicious mess and anticipating how Sally is going to work herself out of it is even more delicious. Perhaps this book influenced me to ride myself silly on the moving staircase, just like Sally. Anyway, the book was illustrated by Esther Friend and was the epitome of charming, all in red, white and black. You just don't know how much I wanted to be Sally claiming her independence.

The book associated with Laura and her Cream of Wheat and mentioned above, as also in a previous blog, The Little Rabbit that would not Eat, was written by Edna Groff Deihl with color illustrations by A. E. Kennedy and one color illustrations by Roberta Paflin, isn't that interesting? At first I no comprehendo that one, but now it makes perfect sense. Well, the drawings for this book are WAY TOO CUTE. On the cover the bad naughty little rabbit is sitting on his hind legs in front of a big lettuce leaf. His front paws are held in the air above the lettuce as if shunning it with pure unadulterated scorn, you can tell because his little face is turned away from it and tells the whole enchilada without a word. It's hysterical. Later in the book when NIP learns to eat his vegetables, he is rewarded with a trip to the store with his granny for a STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM CONE, while his silly siblings, FLIP and SKIP, chose CHOCOLATE CONES. WOW!, talk about brand new bunny and turning over a whole brand new lettuce leaf -- getting fruity ice cream and all. The picture of the store and the bunnies eating their cones on the wooden stools just SO reminds me of myself with my granny at the Orange Juice Stand. So, you can see these books revved up my imagination. And another thing, when I capitalized the letters for Red Ribbons and NIP, etc., that is exactly the way it is in the books. So my penchant for capitalizing things for EMPHASIS, well, I think I picked that up from lore of long ago, too.

This story is TOO BE CONTINUED. There is a BIG punchline to it, but my darling husband, who was not, in case you were wondering, offended by the STIKE FOUR entry, says I should budget my time. So, for once, I might just pay heed. I tend to overdo things but I want to enact my philosophy that Americans, in general, probably function at overkill at about a 50% rate. I think that we could cut out maybe 50% of everything we do and have and come out WAY ahead. Like, don't you just KNOW we have 50% more clothes than we need or can possibly stay in charge of, that we eat 50% more than we should, or at least 50% of the wrong kinds of foods, consult NIP above. We fill our homes and garages and storage units with a GENEROUS 50% more than we have any sane use for whatsoever. You catch my drift. So, since I can't seem to ZIP it -- I seem to be ducking out of my own experiment -- without further adue, Adieu. Rats, I spelled Adieu correctly on first try, that's no fun. But, a-ha!, now I see I spelled Adue wrong, good for me, I see that because the dictionary is open to Adieu, and I'll be doggoned if Ado isn't right there nearby, didn't even have to turn the page, another of my favorite dictionary games, when you find a second word that's on same page as first word. FUN. Get it?

I have reduced the promise of my "B" story to: You shall have it before the last game of the World Series, in which, most sadly, our former darling 2008 110% Unlikely World Series Rays will not be participating. BUMMER!

KEM of FEW WORDS