A Cookie Day Memory

Here is one of my lovely nieces, Iris, wearing my clown hat on Cookie Day this year....it was early in December, a much warmer day than normal (note her shorts and my hot, red face from the oven!)....it is now bitterly cold here in Austin and I am cozy here in the house, baking pork chops and potatoes and looking over all the pictures from this most happy holiday time. I am still sad that I have no boyfriend kinda guy in my life and can only cuddle my dog-baby, Viva, on these cold nights, but I am so lucky to have my darling friends and they share their adorable babies with me and I get to do theater and have the good fortune to sing and entertain people when I can...so, pretty good times.
The best part of Christmas was watching my seven year old niece, Jane, opening her stocking, and she would shout over to her sisters, "Look! Look! I got candy!" then, "Look! Look! I got a starfish ornament!" and then, most excited of all, "Look! Look! I got an orange!!!!!"
I agree with Jane, it is the little things, like the orange, that bring me great happiness. I hope my mother will soon email me the photos of Jane's Christmas morning smiles for me to post here....

Daddy's Anniversary

Seven years ago today, my father died in a hospital room in Dallas, Texas. We were all around him when he passed. His breathing simply got slower and slower and then there was just not another breath.
Look at my cute daddy! And my cute mama, who called him "my Elvis". These swim photos are from 1962, they are nearly married a year and a half, and my sister is almost one. Daddy always took us swimming; Mama didn't go often by the time I was ten or so as she didn't like her legs or some excuse. Thankfully, she got another swimsuit this year, her first in over twenty years. Whew!
I also like the photo of Daddy being silly by the snowman. He was so smart and funny. I still know the first twenty elements of the periodic table because of a rhyme he made:
Here He Lies Beneath the Deep Blue C, Not One Friend Near, Napoleon Mg, ALways SiPs Clear Arkyhol, Kitty Cat.
I know it doesn't make sense, but do you see the first twenty elements? C'mon....
(if I could figure out how to insert a periodic table here, I would, but I'm lazy)
I am getting over lots o' sickness. The antibiotics seem to be working. I am going to take another nap. Plus, Daddy loved a nap, too.

Photo Today

It has been two weeks since Grandmother's funeral and I still think of her each day. Here is a great photo, very new to me, recently developed from an old slide. I am about three, I think. We are at a big family reunion picnic, so I'm told. Grandmother is really paying attention to my every word! For my entire life, so interested in my writings and singing.... I love you, Grandmother!

This photo is to inspire you to attend the "Get Mortified!" show at the Coldtowne Theater on Airport Blvd, next door to I Luv Video! Friday November 16th, 2007 at 8pm, ya'll! Some funny folks (and me!), well, we will be there revealing our tween and teen journal musings for your entertainment.....go check the "Get Mortified!" website (like, uh, getmortified.com I think...) to figure out what it is all about. See you on Friday!

Genesis of my Dorkness

So...here I am, circa 1984,1983, maybe 8th grade, probably 9th grade...no, I think 8th grade...when all I wanted was a pair of argyle socks for Christmas. I don't know if it was due to the fashions of the time (velveteen knickers, button up polo shirts with ribbon bows at the neck----a strange manifestation of glam rock gone bad ten years later?---who can say?) ....Mayhaps it was due to my love of British everything (and they always talked about argyle socks at some point in a Lord Peter Whimsy detective novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, my fave in those days)....anyway, this is an iconic moment in my dorkhood. Now, let's talk about how that dorkness shows itself even today....
Or, rather, yesterday. Yesterday, I went to my current favorite photo developing shop, Wolf Camera near Central Market on Lamar.....it is my favorite because they develop photos from ancient slides and negatives and don't give me guff. They don't roll their eyes and act all superior. Thank God, as that was my experience at a certain location in Dallas.....but anyhoo, let's stay on the positive side here...So, I popped into Wolf Camera to see if my photos had arrived from wherever they go to be developed. And there was Cute Blue-Eyed Man-Boy. He works at the counter. He takes the orders, answers the questions, does not roll his eyes. Plus, he is super cute. I try not to notice his cuteness. In fact, I am really self-absorbed upon the receipt of my photos because I have never actually seen these pictures before, they are treasures culled from mysterious and strangely sized negatives. I make him look at the cute photo of my mother when she is 20 years old and in a bathing suit, holding my older sister (as baby) on her lap.....I make excited chit-chat. I drop off my "disposable" camera and agree to return in two hours to pick photos up; they should be of the State Fair and Halloween, so I am jolly in my anticipation and trot on home to clean house and do nothing much.....
I return to Wolf Camera in three hours. I am in route to Katie and Jason's Free Lunch Party, where we all get to eat free at Chipotle thanks to Jason randomly dropping his business card into a fishbowl.....I think, "Get photos, run to lunch/dinner, wheee!" But when I run into the camera shop this time, and see Super Cute Blue-Eyed Man-Boy, it seems busy. Some girl looks at me all crazy when I want to get my photos and then she DOES roll her eyes when Cute Man-Boy brings them over to me. I lack the carefree attitude of the morning. Cutie Blue Eyes, however, is charming as ever. He asks what I have done in my three hours, and I blather something about organizing costumes. He, with good conversational skills, prompts me to explain. I say something about how my photos should document some of these costumes, and I quickly show him some of the pics....but my heart is racing a bit too much, from flirtation or social anxiety disorder, I can't say which.....I mumble something about being in a band called the Sexy Finger Champs, and of course he has not heard of us but notes our suggestive title. I mumble that our last show was two weeks ago. I try to shove my photos back into the envelope. I stutter that we have songs about Jean-Luc Picard and Nipples. Yes, I used those two titles as my examples. Am I retarded? Yes, to some degree, I need social skills training. Because, instead of just being friendly and telling him something like,"Oh, but even tho' I am no longer in a band, come see me as a dancing reindeer in the YellowTape Theater Co. production of "The Ultimate Christmas Musical The Musical!" or the comedy stuff at Coldtowne Theater or my reading my teen angst journals at Coldtowne in November (Nov 16th at 8pm, to be exact)....instead, I said, after he expressed interest in the Jean-Luc Picard song, "Well, you have good taste if you like Jean-Luc Picard....urgh, see ya!" and trotted out of there.
Ugh. It cannot be good to get that nervous from casual chatting. I will try, in future, to do some Zen breathing or something. Because I do have a box full of slides that still need to be developed before Christmas...and I hope that the Cute Blue-Eyed Man-Boy will still be there.

Hard Times

This is my wonderful niece, Shelby, who is currently in hospital. I can't really blog about this. It is upsetting and many folks are praying for her. No time to blog lately. Just send good thoughts out to Shelby.

Let me entertain you....Hey kids....ahh, my once creative life, as seen here in photo...did I not appreciate it enough? No, I think I just had lots of pain and spinal surgery that took me out of the game for a few years and now I am trying to find creative outlets again.....but I miss the heady days of yore when we Sexy Finger Champs would play here, there, and yonder....here is Chepo's first show with SFC, Dallas,TX at the Bar of Soap....Daniel Clark on bass at the time and Luke Alexander hiding back there on the drums....this is probably about 1998! Jesus, time flies. Our next show is September 1st, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend! It was supposed to be an opening gig for the Pocket FishRMen reunion, but I think that is postponed; however, I still wanted to rock, so come out and see us with (I think) the Free Range Bastards....c'mon, I have reviews from both Japan AND Austin that say I am some sort of punk rock Bette Midler, so you will have a rockin' AND comic time!
See, here is more proof of performance, the later Sexy Finger Champs configuration(photo taken in 2000 maybe?) with hot and sexy Rebekah W. on bass (behind my bunny ass) and Chepo's booty in the right foreground, hiding Snoopy on drums....this was a fun show at Club DeVille....well, enough of memory lane, off to participate in life right now.....

Well, well.....it has been about a month since last I posted.....I have had out of town guests almost every week in July, except for last weekend when we had a family emergency in Dallas; my most beloved and wonderful Grandmother (age 96) was hospitalized and then put into hospice; she is slowly shutting down and leaving us. And I have been very sad. She taught me so much! And she has always believed in my dreams even when I didn't---encouraging me to sing and make up songs and do theater and to write and to love movies and the beach and.. and.....well, she is the most pleasant and happy woman in the world despite so many hard times and I hope I have somehow learned a little about being as pleasant and passionate and active and funny and a great hostess and....I just cannot do her justice. Let this picture from her "tween" years express her fun-loving nature and sweet disposition (we think this is from 1921 or so, when she was 10? or 11? Not too much older or younger but hard to know....) It is the best photo ever!
(Note: Okay, I will go enroll in a computer class right away; I really don't know how to get this photo NOT to have lots of pixels or get it UNDER the text, etc etc...oh well.) To my few friends who read this (sorry I don't know how to do "links" yet, either...) well, I will try to keep you up on news of Grandmother in the coming week.

I found this today during a search for my high school diaries and journals (hoping to participate in a "Get Mortified" event, but more on that aspiration later.....) yep, and I found this little scribbled note that I copied out of The Doomsday Dictionary, probably whilst I was listening to the Smiths or something:
"Thanatos (also, death instinct)-- One of two primal instincts attributed to man, the other being Eros. The function of Thanatos is to restore higher organic organization to a simpler, pre-vital state. In this, Thanatos is expressing a tendency evident elsewhere in nature for organization to run down into a greater simplicity.
The laws that regulate the compromise are obscure."

I think I left something out of the full entry, but this is all that I selected. I still love the final sentence: "The laws that regulate the compromise are obscure."

This is my attempt at some postcard art for this swap thing----my first ever attempt at participating in a bit of blogosphere hoo-haw---actually, I have already sent out most of the "art" attempts (look, I just like mail)....harumph. I am not great in the realm of visual art. Just like the time when this fancy Theatre de la Jeune Lune director once scolded me, "Aiiyee! Noooo! You are pure comedy!!" when I was suposed to be doing an exercise in high drama for a theater full of acting students, well, again I feel that "I've failed!" feeling. Of course now, years later, I am happy to at least have been pure comedy for one fleeting moment in my life, even if it wasn't at the appropriate moment...so maybe I will feel some sort of satisfaction later at having attempted to participate in an online swap of mail. Still, I sort of feel as if I am a lonely ol' friendless spinster who has to sign up on blog posts just to get any mail at all.....oh, what a maelstrom of emotion am I this rainy Monday! But I can't help it---je suis pur comedie!(opps on the spelling?)

So, here is a photo from 1987; Haven is on the far left in her Smiths shirt (de rigueur for us then)...Stacy is sweet, as always, in the pink and then me, giant oaf with hair covering face (I felt this was supremely fashionable at the time.....)
Below is another photo of us, now 2007, at the same Flag Pole Hill in Dallas,TX at our 20 year high school reunion...I am so happy I don't wear my hair in my face now...we all look sorta hot still, which is nice.....And I think my friends have had pretty good adventures since high school. Me, not so sure. Still reeling from the fact that the guy who wanted to divorce me, mr. total ass-lack-of-compassion and "oh, I changed my mind about kids but haven't told you for over 6 months how I feel and, instead, am being passive aggressive about it and won't respond to your attempts to do anything to save this marriage", that cocksucker has a really nice girlfriend (poor girl) and I am shitty all alone still and probably won't get to have a family, one of my big dreams...I can't even get my butt in gear to organize another band. Chepo is too busy but I wish he could give me tips on what to do to start one; I was pretty lucky the last time and everything just fell into place...Well, what started as musings on a high school reunion has turned to simmering rage over an ass of a failed marriage and depression over no creative outlets. Whoo-hoo! I better chipper up, have to be a nanny in about an hour.....

PUT A PET IN IT
I don't know how to make a title for a blog posting, but if I could I would title this "Put a Pet in It". You may wonder, "Why? Why title this 'Put a Pet in It'? Doesn't Kerri love her pet and pets in general?" Well yes, yes I do love my pet and pets overall, as a general rule. However, I don't know how I feel about the prominence of pets in advertising these days. Sure, I could give Faith Popcorn a run for her money as a "Trend Predictor", so I knew pets were the way to go ages ago,... not to mention that in one of my journals in the early-to-mid 1990's I had already predicted that there would soon be a pop-dance hit song using samples from the music of India/South Asia (uh, think "Toxic" by Britney Spears, among others)...oh, yeah, and I predicted peanut butter being packaged in the same manner as stick lard/shortening YEARS ago.....anyway, thus, it is not too surprising that pets are running rampant in advertising these days. But I continue to be slightly disturbed by a recent television advertisement for Haverty's furniture that features creatures on couches and beds and pillows....you do not want to spend the ridiculous amounts of money that Haverty's would have you spend on a couch and then just allow your white, long-haired, freakily-fuzzy puppy to loll about on it.....would you? Is this how we take care of our belongings in America today? Please, put a little blanket down on the cushion first, protect that investment. In fact, join that craft revolution out there (the one that makes you think you are getting a finely handcrafted item that will last forever and be an heirloom piece, only to discover that some stoner just used fancy glue to rig it together and it falls apart after one gentle handwashing....) Oh, I am getting off topic. And I have to get off the computer now and actually work. But, please, remember:
Weave yourself a decent little throw or diligently sew a quilt for your pet before allowing him or her to lollygag about on your furniture!!! Thanks.
More trend predictions coming soon as well as my dissertation, "The History of Rick-a-Rack and It's Impact on Economic Success in the Craft Realm Today".
Sayonara!
ps. Note that I yet again am unable to post a photo at this time! Go me! Whoo-hoo!

Well, I started out this morning, my third day trapped in my casa due to "Ice Storm 07" here in Austin, TX, with the intent of updating the blog, making mental resolutions to adhere to strict blogging routines daily, etc etc....and I was actually trying to upload a photo of my nieces staring in wonder at the animatronic "James Brown" singing/dancing puppet thing my ex-husband and I once owned....(oh, where is it now? did I let Greg have that, too? God, not a good idea to split up personal belongings during divorce whilst recovering from spinal fusion surgery;didn't he realize I was seriously on drugs at that time??).....anyway, instead, since I never name my photos when I store them on computer.....instead, here I am circa 1971, in the same bathroom where I clean myself even today whenever I visit my Mama in Big D...It was the norm, pre-pedophile-mania, to take cute nudie pics of kids in bathtubs and here is mine. I miss my sweet Daddy...Having been trapped in my house for a few days has allowed me to actually read books and shred all those annoying credit card promos one gets in the mail. I just wish I had not run out of butter......But,since logging on and finding it difficult to upload photos due to no names, I suddenly have yet another task to help me whittle away this freezing day! Let's hear it for re-naming all the photos on the computer! Whoopeee! Then, in future, I will be able to find the correct photo and write brilliant and hilarious things about said photos and then someone in Hollywood will steal all my brilliant ideas and I will be pissed......I mean, that is what I wonder...why do people blog freely? I swear, I would pay to read some of the stuff I see. Not my own drivel---I mean, I save all the best stuff for my journal which I just KNOW will be published upon my death and everyone will be like, "Oooh, I never knew...especially from reading that blog..."---yes, I have been diligently journal writing since about the age of 8 or 9 with the deep rooted belief that anything I ever attempt to write and/or publish openly will ne'er compare to the wondrous, comical, touching, etc thoughts that I scribble into my big spiral notebooks and hide in my closet or, occassionally, next to my bed. So really, dear readers, you are putting up with a bunch of nothing on this blog, but just wait until I am dead someday! Really! You won't be able to put my diaries down! Of course, that is, if anyone finds them and gets them out there for me....maybe we can put them out at my wake for folks to peruse...Or maybe, just maybe, I should shed my fears about folks criticizing my sentence structure and attempt to entertain all ya'll out here on the Interweb with somethin' good. Maybe next time.
And, I solemnly swear, on my honor, not only to live by the Girl Scout law but to write more often than every three months.
If I can find the right pictures to go with posts.....shit, another excuse.....