Nonnie's Bothered, Drago Gets Hair

 

Mike Huckabee is obviously a stupid-head.  Last week he called Natalie Portman a starlet! If it had been a big news week, I might have missed this egregious error, but not much else has been going on lately, that I’ve noticed, anyway. Natalie won the Academy Award for Best Actress!  Just last weekend!  Jeesh-politician no-nothings.

 A starlet is:

starlet [ˈstɑːlɪt]

n

1. (Performing Arts) a young and inexperienced actress who is projected as a potential star

2. (Astronomy) a small star

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

Everyone’s entitled to a mistake or two, within reason, but if Tea Drinker Huckabee needs to air his opinions on Ms. Portman’s pregnancy, he could at least get her status straight. She’s an A-list actor, not a “potential,” but a “made it.”

People keep asking my brother Drago how he got his hair. Turns out, he’d never lost it.  He just thought he had.  Ten or eleven years ago he started shaving his head because he didn’t like the gray that was coming in (or something.) Last November Drago liked our other brother Leon’s haircut so much he decided to see if he could get one. So he stopped shaving his head and he went from bald to haired, just like that!  (Well, “hairy” isn’t the word I want either.  Drago has not become hairy.) Our housekeeper Lydia calls him Adonis, which makes him blush. (He does all that Yoga, too, you know.)

Not much going on in my life.  Finally got the tests my doctor wanted for my breasts and bones. Oh, yeah. I’m reading a novel by a friend of mine, Russell Bittner, that has a lot  of sex. I’ve known Russell mostly as a poet and although his poetry is often sensuous, I had no idea what I was getting into-bedtime reading-wise with his prose.  Good writing, mind you-none of that throbbing, gushing, or taking; his love-making scenes are explicit and er...engaging, yet poetic. Ima gonna tell him that he should have made at least one of the protagonists a vampire, or a virtual reality-come to-life type, or a serial-killer profiler!  He would have made millions by now, easy.  Of course, he can always do another one.  Easy, right?

No Wonder Charles Dickens is Still Going Strong

Dickens had something there-with those Christmas Spirits. Well, maybe not so much the Spirit of Christmas Future. I don’t have much of a feel for that one at this point. Pretty sure I’ll spend it with Drago, my brother. Maybe we’ll go somewhere, you know, hook up with more family or do something exotic. Salzburg, maybe. Mozart in the Dom Cathedral. Snow and roaring fireplaces in the restaurants and cafés around the city. Mmm.  But if we went away, we’d have to leave our dog and cat, Blossom and Sam, and knowing us, we’d feel like that would be a crummy thing to do.  Dunno. Christmas Future made sense for Scrooge, though. They had to show him what was coming if he didn’t lighten up. It was the right thing to do for the old goat.

The Spirit of Christmas present is a nice size this year. Drago and I spiffed up our house. (Lydia came over with a covered litter box and Sam’s corner is much more private and presentable.) We went on a significant spree, really.  Of course, Dad’s not here to roll his eyes or talk/cuss us out of spending the money, but he would have liked what we bought, once he got used to the new stuff. Leon and Rae sent us an excellent espresso machine and tomorrow morning we’re going to our neighbors’ and one of them is only four. Nice. I’ve got most of the vision in my right eye back, after surgery for a couple of retinal tears. Except for the tiny bugs that float around all the time, my eye’s in pretty good shape. There are gifts to open and many, many cookies. I’ve shown splendid restraint so far.

That leaves the Spririt of Christmas past and that one’s a bugger. Seems like there’s been hundreds of them back there, taking turns giving me what we used to call warm fuzzies, God help us, and a few right hooks to the chin. Mom’s been around since Drago got the decorations down. She is indeed a Christmas Spirit. Always went kind of nuts, even scary a few years, getting everything ready, but by Christmas Eve she'd be okay-a star, in fact.

Oh, jeez. Just got lost in memories again. Buying presents, with money and not so much, cooking, not baking, crowded dining room tables, Scotch pines and Frazier firs. I need to spend some cat and dog time, I think. Too many Spirits at the moment. Oh, Drago’s back from yoga and shopping. Says he got me something good. That’s all right, then. Merry Christmas. xxoononnie

In My Dad's Karmann Ghia

Two days before Christmas, Dad said with aplomb,

"Tomorrow night we'll go out for some holiday charm

for your too busy Mom, so she won't have to cook."

(All week she’d been wearing that crazed-lady look.)

But that morning angels started a huge pillow fight,

a blizzard that blew all day and all night.

For the first time I felt that snow was a blow,

but Dad, brave Dad, said, “Dress warm, we’ll still go.

In the Ghia we’ll do it, if we all can fit in it.”

I sat on one brother,

the others sat on each other.

We sang carols and laughed

And just about crashed.

We slid, spun, and yowled

on roads barely plowed,

but we made it and Dad said it

would be a night to remember

for each family member.

Once again, he was right.

We still talk of that night.