Heidi in Real Life

Do Rabbits get hernias?  If not, I think I need some stronger back teeth. Are you following me?  Cause if you're following me, I'm going to stand stone still, twitch and then run away.  I mean it. I saw a cucumber the size of a scuba tank this morning.  It seemed too good to be true, so I, the eternal skeptic, did not nibble on it. With two different kinds of legs, finding it hard to make snow angels look like actual angels. Other rabbits are looking at me (sideways of course) and rolling their eyes.  Independent thinkers often get this reaction.  Sheep don't. I spy a tomato that's bigger than me, and remembering Peter the Pumpkin eater, I chuckle. Observed Heidi light gas grill with giant flash of fire followed by singed hair odor. Gladtobeknownforkeenhearingnotsmelling   Wondering if you can load a gun with rabbit pellets? If so, I'd like to. After listening to Elvis Prestley's famous song, new favorite activity is to make hound dogs feel...

I'd give anything for a good old fashioned dysfunctional family holiday this year.   Hey!  If your relatives don’t always mesh, and you’d like to brighten your nerve wracking events, try… The “ HAVE A HAPPY DYSFUNCTIONAL HOLIDAY ” Game Object of the Game :  To keep everyone together in one room without getting hurt. Players :  1 Pair of Grandparents, 1 Outspoken Male and 1 Fainting Male, 1 Texting Teen, 1 Alcoholic in Treatment, 1 Emotional Eater, 1 Angelic Child, 1 Confrontational Female, 1 Quiet Female, 1 Mr. Manners, 1 Single Parent and 1 Dog Decks of Cards :  OFFEND OTHERS , WHAT TO SERVE FOR DINNER When all seems lost … SPIN THE ARROW for Stress-Relieving Suggestions. The board is separated into 4 rooms (you can substitute yours):  The Living Room with the T.V. for distraction, the Basement, the Kitchen where the grandparents always sit because they can’t get out of the living room furniture, and the Porch for smokers and (sometimes) Dog. Sa...

Enter Heidi's House of Horrible Holiday Misfit Treats and enjoy: Sperm Cookies Mouse Cookies gone wrong .  Instead of darling little cookies that look like mice, a simple margarine mistake later and suddenly  little almond ears and red-hot candy noses were floating in opaque little blobs with long red licorice tails. Very unappetizing. Molten Peanut Brittle There is no such thing as a safe bowl or oven mitt when you’re making microwave candy. The ceremonial “Dance of the Molten Peanut Brittle” performed while removing it from the microwave is much more about pain, burns and trauma than enjoying the treat--which will break your teeth anyway. SOS Pad Sea-foam Only 3 ingredients in this "light as air" candy, yet with all the unwritten fussy technicalities like being quiet while standing on one foot, coaxing the sugar into submission with sweet talk, a door or sneezes could instantly de-foam the concoction and morph it into flat Brillo pads that even a dunk in chocolate ...

The skies were bright yesterday in Heartland.  Warm air filled my lungs, caffeine buzzed in my brain and my thoughts were clear and determined as I walked into the building to vote. Until someone said, “Here’s your ballot, Sir .” Granted, the man behind the table was 100 years old, with lenses as thick as glass block, but sheesh, what an insult!  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his table-mate elbow him--a spring chicken compared to Mr. Magoo’s grandfather who wronged me--but it was too late.  Damage done.   So it's no wonder I was miffed by the time I read the following referendum: Should the Wisconsin Constitution be amended to prohibit any further transfers or lapses from the segregated transportation fund?” WHAT?? I am a writer, and a grumpy one now, so all I want to do is edit this confusing nonsense.  Here’s my Heidi version:   Do you want to change the Wisconsin Constitution to prevent politicians from robbing Pet...

My daughter and I walked around the shopping center to a point at which I finally announced, I was sick of shopping.  Our quest for a comfortable seat ended at a pair of “Pay-As-You-Go” black vinyl massage chairs.    “Can we try them?” Krista asked. “Why not? It’s only a dollar,” I said. As soon as Krista’s chair motor started up, she jumped up and out.  “It feels like it’s trying to pinch my spine,” she exclaimed. “No, it’s just working out the kinks,” I purred.  As she cautiously plunked back in her seat, the mechanism in my seat was luxuriously swirling the backs of my shoulders.  I was starting to relax. Until the spin cycle started. “Mom, are you having a seizure?”   “Nonononno,”  I stammered, shimmying like I’ve never shimmied before.  The chair was making me do unspeakable things.  Things I definitely did not want to do--especially in public. My chair faced the entrance to a “Game Stop” store where numerous ma...

Thinking the song “Little Bunny Foo-Foo” paints us in an unflattering light. Attempted entry into Heidi’s garden by running against webbing where perimeter is weakest. I’m in. Getting frustrated with my sideways eyes.  My difficulty focusing close-up has caused me to nibble half a pricker weed instead of a red pepper leaf. Decided to eat everything green regardless of pricker texture . Wondering why it’s so easy to get these plants.  Is it a trap or is Heidi just stupid? Hop and see. Finding solace under the oregano patch.  Why do I want pizza now? Heidi’s got some Japanese beetles on her grape leaves.  Too bad I’m a vegetarian—they look like cherry chips. LOL at Heidi’s chicken-dog , Jasmine.   She’s actually afraid of me. Boo! OMG!  Heidi is walking around her garden now, a few feet from me. She picked the cucumber I wanted . I’m nervous ( I’m always nervous ). Trying to play "statue" becoming more and more difficult. Must bolt out....

I spent two days churning away from home, convinced that my stomach flu would board the plane back with me to Wisconsin...without a ticket!    How do you actually manage diarrhea on a plane?  I was pretty miserable waiting at the gate, thinking the safest seat for me was one with a deep hole beneath it.  I wore loose, drawstring-type shorts, tried popping anti-cramping medication, and went to my “happy place.” I boarded the plane and sat next to a window.  It wasn’t 20 minutes into the flight before I crawled over the squirmy man next to me, clutching my purse to my chest and shut the metal door of the restroom. I pictured a line of cross-legged passengers stretching all the way back to the cockpit, complaining and dancing around.  Maybe the First Class facilities would need to go “public.”  Were there BAGS like they have for astronauts so at least the MALE passengers could “go”? The flight attendant knocked on the door: “Are you ok?  “Yes.”...

Consider this a city-girl's guide to coping with the wilderness. 1 .  Never Shine Your Flashlight into a Rustic Toilet “Eyes on me--do not look down,” I commanded my daughter last weekend at a Wisconsin State Park facility while on a waterfall tour.  The fact that I knew how to coach her in the proper use of a rustic park toilet speaks to my previous experience in such things. When my son, David, was 9, he had to use the outhouse at night, while camping in the woods, and he made the life altering mistake of shining his flashlight down into the vast hole beneath the plastic seat.  He froze, and dropped the flashlight.   “I am not going,” he announced, the fear-induced adrenalin-rush enabling his body to “plug up” like a hibernating bear.  We departed the next morning, but it wasn’t until days later that he relaxed.  2.  Speaking of Plugging Orafices...Invest in Some Good Earplugs  “Tweet.  Tweet.  Tweet.  Tweeti...

Once upon a time, on a camping weekend, we decided to go tubing.  I have never tubed before, but as it was described, it sounded harmless and fun. “You’ll have to leave your belongings locked in your car,” the clerk at the tube rental place said, “and walk your tubes down to the river.” “Along that busy street?”  “Yes.” God. Holding a tube over my head, wearing just a bathing suit was going to embarrass the Hell out of me forever, but, wearing just my bathing suit marching along a busy highway?  Kill me.    My daughter, Krista, had already begun the trek down the road so I tried to hold the tube at my side to shield the drivers.  But, I dropped the tube and had to bend over to pick it up.  A car horn honked, then brakes screeched.  With my un-tan, poultry-white leg-skin, I must have looked like a tailless, albino mare. “What is that?”  I imagined the driver saying to his passenger.  “That’s something’s...

As I entered, the "Victora's Secret" store at the mall, the eyes of the woman on the window poster looked sideways at me, like some portrait in a haunted mansion. Inside, images of shapely women in underwear made me feel like maybe I was in the wrong place.  I appear to have the same anatomical parts, but someone stepped on mine and yanked them down like a window shade.  None of the models look very happy.   My daughter once asked, “Why aren’t they smiling?” “They’re hungry, dear.  And  cold .” “Do you have anything that will fit me?”  I asked a skinny clerk.  All I wanted was something new to wear to sleep in instead of baggy shirts and pajama pants. Is there such a store as “Bertha’s Secret” ? I wondered, where "weathered" women go? “You could try the clearance rack,” she offered, stiffly.  The clearance rack is where they send freaks like me, to scrounge around for factory misfits.   I can hear it now... “Hey, let’s get a...

Training a teenager to drive is on my “Top Ten List” of worst experiences of my entire life.  My friend recently told me that her daughter, nearly 15, will be taking Driver’s Education classes this summer.  I laughed... and then my facial tick came back. “We’ve taken her out a few times already,” my friend reported, “and she does pretty well." “You’re fooling yourself.” I told her, “Wait till you get her on a highway.” David, my oldest son, led me to believe he had experience several years ago because he practiced with his father.  “Okay, let’s take a ride,” I said. Apparently, Dad had forgotten the “Put Your Foot on the Brake When Making a Turn” lesson.  During our first donut my hair turned snow white.  After the last complete revolution I was tensed up so far into the fetal-position I could have fit into a 12” box. “STOP!!!!!” I screamed, white hair flying. The gravel and dust cloud he created has finally subsided somewhere over the ...

Once, I forgot to put out the garbage. “That’s o.k.,” I thought, “It’s still really cold outside.”  This statement backs up my basic philosophy that winter serves only one good purpose...to make sure my garbage stays frozen. I imagined raccoons, opossum, and rats lined up outside my house, on their hind legs with little knives and forks begging for access to the fermenting chicken carcass and fridge-rejected vegetables stored in dumpster from Hell.   “YIKES!!”  I awoke the next garbage morning to the sound of the sanitation truck pulling away, while my dumpster stood rumbling with noxious gases still in my garage.  I raced down the street in my pajamas, pulling the 90-gallon beast like a mad ox towing an 800 lb. plow, calling “Come Back!”   The third week, things got even worse .  The recent warm temperatures coaxed “All Things Wicked and Rotten” to spawn inside my trash container.  Fly larvae spontaneously multiplied, came to life and...

Returning from the Erma Bombeck Humor Writer’s Workshop in Dayton, Ohio, I was assigned my very first front row plane seat. Like a kid who just got a triple-scoop ice cream cone and the means with which to eat it dribble-free , I beamed. Good fortune was sure to follow me today.  My luck-cup bubbled and spilled over when comedian Mo Rocca of CBS Sunday Morning sat next to me. "Play it COOL, Heidi," I coached myself. I nonchalantly opened a book I purchased at the workshop. He would recognize it, realize we’d both been at the Erma festivities, and ask my opinion. I would then say something SO HILARIOUS, so hilarious , that he would beg me for my blog address. “Someone in the first two rows is going to have to move to the BACK of the plane--we’re “Nose” heavy, ” the flight attendant announced. No one moved.   I feel it necessary to point out at this point that although I am a plus-sized woman, I am not “Jabba the Hut".  But, as the unanswered request loomed, of...