Noel at AC Steere

All right, already! Enough with the demanding comments.

My excuses for not blogging recently include the following:

1. I've been busy. The fall semester started, and I've been doing lots of media writing for the big college. And to think, I even got a new laptop (a MacBook Pro!) and I've had no time to laud it here. My "to do" list is longer than my . . . well, it's long.

2. Grandma got stuck in the bathtub. Long story. Maybe when it's less fresh and more funny, I'll write about it. No, just when I have time. Wait for that.

3. I turned 30. And who wants to write when she's old? Well, me. As per Holly's request, I'll take a photo of my present from Noel very soon and post it here. Just post nagging comments until it happens. To appease the rude masses until then, how about some photos of Noel?

The talented Catherine Humble took these last Tuesday night (coincident with the bathtub incident, by the way) at AC Steere Park. Aren't they wonderful? (Click on the slide show itself to bring up a separate tab/window with bigger photos.)

Lead poisoning, anyone?

In the Strange strange news report, here's one for the books. Or, more accurately, the pencil boxes.

Today, the AP reports that a German surgeon has removed a pencil lodged these 55 years in a woman's brain.

I can imagine, based on the scant details provided in the story, little Margaret skipping along with a pencil in her hand, ignoring that common wisdom not to run with scissors or other sharp objects lest you poke an eye out, when oops, she tripped and the pencil invaded her gray matter.

Apparently the aphorism lies, for the pencil did not seem to affect her eye. Just produced a half century of nosebleeds and headaches. Small potatoes. So we should say instead "Don't run with pencils because they might disappear into your brains."

Worse things can happen, for sure, but this must be a parents' nightmare nonetheless. And a skipper's nightmare too, according to Margaret: ''It hurt like crazy.''

I can confirm. Once, when we were at orchestra festival, I was running and tripped on a sidewalk, scraping the knuckle of my big toe on the concrete. Ripped a big hole in my hose and left a scar that remains to this day. Just writing the story makes my toes curl.

Now if that isn't the same kind of thing as wearing a pencil in your brain for 55 years, then I don't know what is.

My mom the cowgirl

My mom. An Air Force family, she and her sisters grew up in Pakistan, Germany, Taiwan, and Japan. She can still count to ten in Urdu and Mandarin Chinese. She's a cultured woman of the globe.

Her parents moved back Stateside just in time for her to graduate from high school as the fastest typer in Texas. Over the next twenty years, she morphed from typist to business owner (not that she can't still type lightening fast), opening a catering company, a series of executive suites with centralized secretarial services, and then the Express Personnel Services franchise in Shreveport that my sister now manages. So she's a smart gal with lots of initiative and lots of pants suits.

But to my knowledge, she never drove an AWD vehicle across any ranch. Or talked to cows. Certainly never bottle-fed any calf. Until she married Randy Glass. Now look at what's happened.

It's a good transformation. Seems like the natural next step: globe-trotter, entrepreneur, cowgirl. And blast if I'm not jealous about her feeding that calf!

Though I've not met him, that calf has already won me, or at least the lactating mother in me. Since he was born, the mama cow has kicked him away from her udders; Mom and Randy finally had to put her in a squeeze chute and tie back her leg so he could suckle. Hopefully, he got the all-necessary colostrum and will survive.

His surrogate mom will surely do her tongue-sticking-out derndest to make that happen. Ride 'em, cowgirl!

Too clean

Because I only used the word "hurt" once and no other potentially racy word ever, my blog has been rated G. I'm a little disappointed. Maybe if I quoted my grandmother more often, I could up the rating some.

Maybe one day I'll become a librarian

Apparently, it's now cool to be a librarian. Kara Jesella's recent New York Times piece "A Hipper Crowd of Shushers" confirms that information fluency isn't just for geeks. Or at least that geeks can sometimes do cool things, like get tattoos and order drinks according to their Dewey Decimal book-title equivalence?

Some people have too much stuff in their brains.