Heidi in Real Life

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 buzzed menacing.  There were nightmare nois

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