Blogaganza!

If you read my blog with any regularity, and of course you don’t, you’ll recall that last week I ran out of post ideas.  I appealed to the literally tens of you who read my blog to give me ideas, and an astounding 3 of you came through for me!  Thanks Deb, Stephanie and Tara!

I could give you the link to go back and look at their suggestions, but since I know you lazy people won’t take the time to do that, I’ll remind you now that their ideas were to

1. Go to Wikipedia, look up “Coffee Talk with Linda Richman” and get ideas from her.
2. Discuss the Guinea Pig Geico commercial.
3. Scan old pictures of me (Beth) and discuss them
4. Make things up.
5. Talk about Deb.
6. Write about a car show or find a weird car part and make up something funny about it (which reminds me of the old game show, The Liar’s Club…do you remember that show? That was seventies television at its finest).
7. Include a discourse on our local menace, the dreaded Stinkbug.
8. Do a sinkhole tour.

Now if I were smart, I’d stretch those ideas out into 8 separate blogposts.  But I am not smart. In fact, some would say I walk around in a fog most of the time whistling “Oh Susanna”, looking for my car keys, and trying to remember the two things I wanted to get at Walmart. Two things!  I can’t keep a list of two things in my head anymore!

What was I talking about?

So, here goes my stab at a blogpost with all of those things in them:

Deb Rancherd looked up from her cup of tea.  The Guinea Pig Geico commercial was playing on her countertop television set, and Deb, a great fan of both Geico and the Guinea Pig, turned up the volume on the tv. 

“OMG!”, she squealed to her husband, Mac, “Look at those darling little piggers rowing the boat!  Also, too, I think we need to up our insurance.  Have you heard about all of the sinkholes opening up in town?”

“No!” Mac exclaimed.  “I wish you had some pictures to show me.”

“Well, lover, you are in luck.  I took some while I was wheeling around town the other day in the car I bought at the car show.  Here let me show you.”

“Also, too, you have to see this awesome picture of my friend Beth thinking she’s a Boat Show Model! ” [snort!]

Well, Deb and Mac had a good laugh at poor Beth’s expense and then Deb headed out to work as an exterminator.  Deb liked her job, especially when it involved her old foe, the Brown Marmorated Stinkbug.  The stinkbug, as we all know, originated in Japan and China, then headed to America, the land of opportunity, for greater things.  Like apple pie, no healthcare, a failing economy, and Beth @ Dirty Laundry’s tomato plants. 

photo source

While on the road to her first customer, Deb noticed an odd looking item laying on the passenger seat of her car.

photo source

“Wow! What a weird car part that is!  It will be perfect for holding all of my lip balms!  Or perhaps I can display dead stinkbugs in those holes.  Or it could make a nice bracelet….Hmmm…I know!  I’ll save it for April Fool’s Day, cover it with dough, fry it, and serve it up to Mac as a little ‘surprise!’”

Happy that she had already gotten her April  Fool’s Day trick planned out, she headed to her first appointment, a woman with an exaggerated New York accent adorned with lots of gold jewelry, a Halloween sweater, large dark glasses, and big hair, which she constantly adjusted, named Linda Richman.  Linda greeted her at the door.

“Deb!  Come in for a cuppa coffee before you kill my stinkbugs, darling, no big whoop.  Hurry up now, I’ve got a shpilkis in my genechtagazoink and I’ve gotta get off my feet.”

Deb joined Linda on her sofa and set her coffee on the coffee table.  “How have you been, Linda?” she asked politely, for Deb was nothing if not polite. 

“Oh, not good, honey.  I’m a little verklempt.  I just realized the chickpea is neither a chick nor a pea, Grape Nuts are neither grapes nor nuts, and Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island.  Would you like to discuss that with me?”

Although Deb could have stayed all day chatting with Linda about how Ralph Fiennes was not spelled Rafe nor Fines, she gulped down her coffee and begged Linda’s forgiveness.  “You are my first stop of many.  Besides your stinkbugs, I’ve got to head to the Cul-de-Sac and take care of a nasty rodent problem they have there, then head to Dactyl Street and spray for bats.  But before I go, look at this picture of my friend Beth and her bratty brother Dave.  See her and her ragged Dorothy Hamill haircut pointing to her bean bag chair?  Why, it is neither a bean, nor a bag, nor a chair.  Odd, no?”

Then Deb thanked Linda for her coffee, and headed for the door and the stinkbugs waiting for her on the house’s siding.  Which was when a swarm of angry Stinkbugs looked Deb over, declared her to be “like buttah” and sprayed her with their stinky spray. 

And the moral of the story is… Don’t make fun of your friend Beth’s awkward middle school years