Monkey Mom

This week’s activities included a pre-Mother’s Day tea at a 105 year-old chapel. This historic Cloverdale Meeting House is currently available as a beautiful site for weddings and other social gatherings. In our event, friends congregated to sell wares, sip exotic rose milk, nosh on handmade chocolate and exchange bits of old fashioned gossip. Wanna hear some?

Let’s see…God’s Minion just became a grandmother for the second time (Congratulations!), Kimmmm’s husband is being presented with the Ashden Award for Sustainability (Way to go!), Bo Peep was commissioned by said husband to create a top hat to be worn for his audience with Prince Charles (Yeah, Baby!), Sister was bit bad by a dog (Ouch! Sorry, honey), Chakra Girl is learning to Salsa (move those hips, darlin’), cousin Mary designed us kimono’s from material brought back from Japan (Thank you!) and I overheard a musical friend talk about her “glory hole.”

Conversation was brought to a halt with that one. Huh? Upon further explanation, we learned that a glory hole is a warm place where something hard is put to melt. Yeah, that didn’t really clear things up too much. There might have been something about glass blowing in there as well.

Which brings me to this week’s spelling mishap. I’ve already mentioned Brande Roderick’s flexible use of the American language (remember “forgooed?”), but I think she may have been eliminated from the competition by pulling a Dan Quayle. While expressing frustration, Brande tried to spell crap and came out with “s-r-a-p.”

To rap, er, wrap this up, I’m pretty tired and don’t have the energy to share my windy lesson on intention and resistance. I’d rather snuggle up with Companion and watch “Project Runway,” dish on girls behaving badly (Ms. Joan and Melissa “Oh grow up” Rivers), contemplate who’d make the better, ahem, “coffee” date, the character Patrick Jane on The Mentalist or Detective Sam Tyler from Life on Mars.

I want a full body massage, to be fed chocolate, to sleep for awhile, to have toe-curling “coffee,” and not have to be anywhere or do anything or process information or learn any lessons or be challenged for a little while. Yes, I want to indulge in mindless television without losing brain cells and eat junk food without gaining weight.

On that indulgent note, I’d like to wish all the women out there a Happy Mother’s Day! Whether you diaper a goat (you know who you are), nurse a cat, pamper a dog, or have a human animal, it all counts. We nurture the earth, each other, our men, our creativity, our bodies, our businesses, our minds, our pocket books, our homes, our parents and hopefully, ourselves.

Speaking of moms, I was on the phone last night with Sister, checking on her wounded finger, when she told me this story about our mother that she’d just heard. After the telling, we argued as sisters are wont to do. “No way, that’s not true.”

“Oh, yes it is, go call and ask her yourself.”

“Fine, I will,” etc. etc.

I hung up with Sister and dialed Mother. Okay, more accurately, there was no dialing involved using a cell phone, but it doesn’t sound right to say “I hung up with Sister and punched Mother.”

“Mom, is it true?”

She verified that it was indeed.

“How come I’ve never heard this story before?”

Mom’s reply is so casual, “I don’t know, it didn’t last very long.”

“Tell me what happened!”

“I took Eldest child to the doctor and was holding her in my arms at the check in counter when I felt something tug at my leg. Naturally, I thought it was one of the other kids in the waiting room, but then the sensations dramatically changed and I turned my head just in time to see a monkey climb up my body.”

“A monkey? A real monkey? Are you sure it just wasn’t Sister as a toddler, she was so hairy and cute, you know, or another kid?”

“Oh no, this was way before you or Sister was born. It was a real monkey and all I could think was that it was going for my child.”

“What did you do?

“Oh, I don’t know, I think the woman it belonged to came and got it or something.”

“A monkey is climbing you and you don’t remember what happened?”

“It was a long time ago.”

Yep, that’s my mom, cool under pressure, doesn’t fuss much. If only I could get her to say in an Australian accent, “The monkey took my bay-bay.” Oh never mind. Love you mom.

As Mother’s Day is just around the corner, I’d like to leave you with a quote from the estimable Dan Quayle. “Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.”

Oh, glory hole!

Hats Off

Calendar wise, the Eugene Saturday Market opened this year on April 4th, but I was busy getting my wings, so our official first day was April 11th. I floated on air throughout the entire day, reuniting with friends, selling our wares, sharing hugs, sipping coffee and exchanging tiddly bits. Not exactly gossip, as that would be about other folks behind their backs, but more juicy bits of drama from the dark days of winter to the light of spring. Oh, another way of saying it would be “playing catch up” or having a good chin wag.

The one that sent me into bottle shock was Kimmmm’s news. My spell checker is having a fit and I’m telling it, yes, her name does contain a lot of mmmmm’s. How many precisely, I’m not sure, but quite a few. Alphabet conjugation aside, her news sent me reeling, kinda like I’d been kicked in the goolies. She delivered it with such panache and style, too. Kimmmm began with a fashion quandary and demurely asked, “What should I wear to meet Prince Charles?” Huh? What?

Bob’s your uncle, me mate is off to London Town to bear witness while her husband is recognized by the Royal family for his humanitarian work. Crikey Moses, I was chuffed to bits for her. Sounds like I was cheesed off, huh? Nope, it means I was really pleased.

After I got the lowdown and felt all squidgy (soft), I bumped into a friend, Bo Peep, I hadn’t seen for donkey’s years. “Guess what?” I said, all sixes and sevens. “Have you heard Kimmm’s going to meet Prince Charles?” I filled her in on the details, including the one where Kimmmm celebrated with London street revelers on his 30th Birthday in 1978. It had been a teenage fantasy of hers to meet the dishy Prince and now 30 years later, she gets to do it.

“That Kimmm is the bee’s knees,” I extolled. “She may be one of the best manifesters I know.”

Bo Peep was intrigued. “How so?” she asked.

What surprised me next, is that I didn’t jump into all the material goods that come to her as if by magic (although they do), nor describe any cracking procedures she follows along the Law of Attraction path. Instead I began to tick off a few of her qualities.

“Kimmm’s very accepting of people and situations. Her offence-meter seems to be turned down low and she allows people to be themselves without needing to control the outcome. Besides being beautiful and brill, she simply doesn’t spend the energy being brassed off all the time.”

Believe me, this woman has a career where being offended could be her full time job. Right then, I grocked how aerodynamically she glides through this world, without all the drag and clutter on her being. She avoids the aggro and therefore does not gather resistance on her way to what she wants.

Ah-ha moment. When I spend my energy and time in a beastly and barmy mood, poised and ready to be offended by what other people do and say, or especially by what they don’t do or say, I am creating a shambolic atmosphere for my rockets of desire. Bollocks! How are they supposed to land when I am in chaos, offering resistance at the same time I launch my requests?

Last June, during Royal Ascot, when the Brit elite don fancy hats and watch horseracing on Ascot Heath in the historic county of Berkshire, England, Kimmmm sent me amusing photos of posh women in their outrageous millinery. For several days in a row her emails included hats. I sashayed into her office toward the end of that week and noticed several round boxes stacked by her desk. “What’re those?” I nosied.

Horses for courses, if Kimmmm didn’t ceremoniously uncover the mystery boxes one by one to reveal heavenly chapeaus in luxurious textures and colors. “Where’d ya get those ace toppers?” I squealed.

“Oh,” she said casually, with a shrug in her voice, “So-and-So was cleaning out her closet and decided I might like to have them.”

Bite your arm off, Kimmm had just spent several days enjoying Royal Ascot pageantry, and voila! smart hats to rival the horsey diva’s arrived at her office step. Her clarity plus enjoyment equaled a friend daft with envy. Ooops, did I just write that out loud? I meant to say, her clarity plus enjoyment equaled a bunch of fabulous new hats, Easy Peasy, with no real effort or struggle on her part.

‘ello? Sometimes I’m just gormless. While I whinge and complain, struggle and resist, she’s over there looking jammy and twee. I sound like the little boy who didn’t want to do his math homework. “If you could whine every five minutes, how many things could you whine about in an hour and a half?”

“Eighteen.” Sheesh.

Deepak Chopra suggests that we “slip into the gap.” Umm, I don’t know what that means. Is he a paid spokesman for the apparel retail chain and I’m supposed to find happiness and contentment by wearing what everybody else is told to wear? You know the commercial, “Everybody in stripes.” Codswallup.

Upon further investigation, Mr. Chopra (I wonder if close pals call him “Dee” for short?), describes the gap as “the silent space between thoughts.” Hoo boy, I don’t have any of those. The thoughts in my head take up all the space and more. Sometimes it would be handy to use one of those innovative PODS storage units, where the company delivers a weather proof container and I could get rid of my excess thoughts and then “slip into the gap.” I’m certain there’s a healthier route to clearing out the mental clutter, but that’s what I came up with today.

So with a head full of crowded thoughts, I have created an alternative definition of the G.A.P. -- a life of Gratitude, Abundance and Purpose. Maybe if I’d offer more thanks and ta, I could be like the customer on Saturday who answered my, “How are you?” with “I’m doing really, really great, but don’t worry, I’ll get better.”

And as Vickie Getchell says about her guardian angel, “Her wings are broken, but her tennis shoes are smokin’.”

Cheerio my cheeky monkeys!