Whine and Cheese

Softball was last night. We played well, but I'm sore. I had a great dream and woke up (I think) due to Milo the Cat head-butting me. It's 5:30 AM, but I didn't want to forget the details. Sleepy, I rubbed the bruise on my left shin from last night's bounce that hit me while catching, climbed out of bed, and stumbled past the cats to my desktop in my comic book room.

I think I was in college and had been sent on an assignment to my hometown of Corbin, KY to interview an author, a humorist who had written three books. I had never read any of this books and stopped by Barnes & Noble (which my hometown doesn't have) with a friend and the author himself to buy his books, so I could read them first.

The author, whose name I don't recall, looked an awful lot like Kurt Vonnegut, an older gent with thick, curly gray hair, a wrinkled face with sunken eyes and a thick mustache, and a good sense of humor. While the author wasn't Kurt Vonnegut, I'll refer to him as Kurt. Having not read his books, I thought I was giving the author a great first impression. Luckily, the bookstore had his three books together in a compendium at a discount price. I'm sure he enjoyed that as well.

While I'm trying to steamroll through his book, we were giving him a tour of my hometown and all of the local characters that it seems to have. One of the stops was a small market across the street from my Mom's house, a white building with white bars on the teller's window. Like all local small markets, it had odds and ends.

At some point, we ended up in a beat up Ford Pinto with my Mom driving. The floor of the car was littered with various trash. A neighbor was there in front of the house and was either drunk or crazy, likely both. She was yelling at my mom for something, so I immediate took the offensive and told her to f-off and called her "crazy bitch" several times as she shouted obscenities back at me while readjusting her bra strap that had crept out of her sleeveless shirt. The insults from her tapered off as she walked away. Again, I was embarrassed as this was not the best second impression I could make.

"We should get out before she comes back with a gun," I said to Kurt the author.

Kurt got out with me before Mom parked the car. As I shut the door, the door slammed shut on a cinnamon coffee cake in the door frame, unleashing a cloud of powdered cinnamon in the air. I was shocked at first, reopened the car door, moved the cake, and slammed the door shut again, releasing a second cloud for the remainder that I missed.

We went into the house and Mom gave me a mini-recorder, which had her copy of the Kurt's book on audiotape to help me and so I could record the interview. I looked at my copy of the book and I was already near the end of the second book of the three, but it looks like Kurt had tabbed the rest of the book in the lower corner with dates for me. Causing more of a delay, we ran into a few locals on our front porch who had invited the author to a drag show downtown.

Kurt and I went to a small office in the building behind Mom's house to do the interview. The office was full of various papers, stacked high and falling over, and a small TV set that seemed to enamour Kurt with some 1980's television shows. We sat down at a desk. I had about 20 minutes to get this interview as it was getting close to dinner time and Kurt wanted Skyline Chili.

I grabbed the tape recorder, thinking this would be the fastest, then realized the only tape I had was the one inside and it had Mom's bootleg recording of his audiobook. I excused myself from the author and left him continue watching the TV show while I ran back to Mom to get a fresh tape. She handed me the remainder of a thee-piece candy bar, which stated that it came with two mini-audio cassettes on the front wrapper. Excited, I thanked her and ran back toward the office, unwrapping the last chunk for the fresh cassette, only to find that this was the last bit of the candy bar itself. Groaning, I chucked the candy into my mouth and ran across the street to a small market we had gone into earlier to see if they had them.

The small market was now FULL of stacks of tax forms and papers. I'm literally stepping over them to get to the register. As I poke my head through the white bars between us, a black and white spaniel pushed his head against me wanting to be petted. Several people were in the office, dressed like postal workers and carrying more forms. One of them saw me struggling with the attention-wanting puppy and asked what I needed. I asked if he had any blank mini-cassettes. He said no and held up regular-sized cassettes, asking me if they would do. I said no and must have looked disappointed. One of the other postal guys said that I had six minutes to get the cassette. I asked why six minutes and he said that was how long it takes to get to the store that has them.

Realizing how short a time I had left, I resigned myself to just taping over Mom's audiobook and that I'd have to buy her the actual audiobook to replace it. I ran back to the office to find Kurt still sitting there watching TV.

Apologizing profusely, I hit rewind on the tape recorder, suddenly remembering that I had no questions prepared and was going to have to wing it with what little I could recall from trying to power-read his books throughout the day. Instead of hitting him with all the usual questions whose answers I could get from the book jacket, I landed on one that I thought might get him at ease.

At that moment, I woke up, which ended my chances of getting the interview.

For those curious, the question was "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

My "Franken-knee" returned on Friday. I could feel the pain in the back of my left knee pit start. I tried to exercise my way through it, but I think I made it worse. My knee swelled up Saturday morning. I was seriously considering not going to my hometown to see family, as I didn't want to be hobbling around all day. However, having not been home in several weeks I really felt like I should go, so I made an effort and drove down.

It was good to see Mom, who is no better or worse. It was fun to see my sister, as we tend to laugh no matter the topic. When I got in to her house, I had to explain my swollen knee, which made her cringe a bit. After I caught her up on my knee, she started a new topic of discussion with the following question:

"Guess who died..."

I looked at her and smirked, stating "You know, I hate this game."

It's something that my mom always used to do and it usually caused me to roll my eyes.

Later that night at dinner at Applebee's, my sis, brother-in-law, and I got into a good laugh about my knee. We had talked about my brother and his reticence to discuss anything gay-related. My brother-in-law joked that maybe the twin might want to play in the league. I laughed and said that he would never want to discuss it, joking that I got my swollen knee from a softball injury while giving head to the umpire.

My sister picked up this joke and ran with it.

She said, "You were on first base, on your knees, giving the umpire a blowjob, and you didn't see the line drive coming. It hit you in the knee."

My brother-in-law and I were cracking up as she told it, but we lost our breath over the next line.

"And I really would feel bad for the umpire after what happened to him."

*Think "The World According to Garp"*

Over the weekend, LJ'er aceofspace came in for a visit. We goofed off on Friday, then drove to our hometown Saturday morning.

Our first stop in our hometown was to visit my mom at the nursing home. We found her doing a word search book in the common room by herself. It looks like the lunch rush had passed and she was just hanging out on her own.

During our discussion, she talked about how my dad used to joke about "Sweet Evening Breeze." Not knowing what that term meant, I asked her about it. Mom was dodgy on the topic and was whispering which made it even harder to hear her.

Based on what I could hear, I asked, "Is that a person?"

She replied in hushed tones, "Yes, you know, he was 'different.'"

"Different like me," I asked. Mom whispered that he was "gay."

I replied that "Sweet Evening Breeze" sounded like a drag queen name.

And it is! Sweet Evening Breeze was the drag persona of Lexington personality James Herndon, a very colorful, African American who was known to wear weomen's clothing in the 1950's. I was surprised to find this information online and pleasantly surprised to see that she was well-liked, even adored, in her native Lexington.

While I'm sure my dad joked about "Sweets" as she was referred to, the fact that he knew a drag queen in the 1950's impressed me a bit. I wish it were possible to ask my dad about her as he was always full of stories about the folks he met.

I never expected a drag history lesson at Mom's nursing home. It made for a fun visit.

So after running 3.5 miles yesterday, followed by 2 hours of pressure-washing the house exterior, I felt sore. Actually, I felt weirdly light-headed too, but attributed that to being dehydrated. After a shower and lunch, I took a nap and felt worse. The chills surprised me. I managed to crawl out of bed eventually and checked my temperature, which was 100.2 deg F. So I bundled up on the couch, took some ibuprofen, and settled in to catch "RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars." The fever broke before the top two lip-synced for their legacy (ugh, that just doesn't roll off the tongue easily).

I went to bed early, despite the nap. The dream I had last night was odd, but I don't think being sick was the cause. I dreamed of my first house, a small two-bedroom, one bath that was literally next door to the house I grew up in. My mom and dad lived there for six years, including my first four, before we moved.


Courtesy of Google Maps
A realtor was showing the house and I asked if I could take a tour. She took me to the roof to enter, which was silly. We went back down and through the front door. The previous owner had obviously done some renovating. They had torn out the ceiling and created a vaulted ceiling to the roof. The living room was basically a show room of cabinets full of clothing and jewelry for sale. It was obviously a dream as the inside of the house was larger than the outside.

I looked the house up on Google maps this morning and saw the house had been remodeled. My cousin did the first remodel years ago, but it looks like the current owners did more. The elephant-ear trees had been cut down in the front yard. The stumps are still there.

From 6th grade to my senior year in high school, I was part of an afterschool program called SOAR (Students with the Optimal Ability to Reason). Essentially, it was a chance for the smart kids in school to take a class in an odd or innovative area outside their normal school work. It met on Monday afternoons for an hour at our high school and usually involved some outside work between SOAR meetings.



My mom found the original course schedule from the first year and gave it to me over the holidays. I was part of the program from the beginning, taking a school bus from my elementary school to the high school by myself every Monday. I was the only student from my elementary school to go that I remember. It made me feel very grown up to go to the high school. The only class I recall taking that year was typing.

aceofspace and I were both in the SOAR program, though our participation dwindled a bit when we were juniors and seniors in high school. By then, other activities like the school newspaper and the yearbook seemed to take precedence. Still, we took rocketry or something for the third or fourth time I think. My high school diploma has a seal on it from the SOAR program.

It was a neat program. In looking back, I wish I had taken other classes, like German. I swapped out of the Media class because it involved speaking in front of groups, which terrified me at the time. This particular Media class was taught by a man named Roger Marcum, a tall kind man with a thick black mustache, who intimidated the heck out of me for some reason. He tried to get me to stay, recognizing that I needed to get out of my shy shell I think, but I dodged him quickly. In the few classes I had with him there, he walked around with his fly open for a good ten minutes, the class snickering until he figured it out. He laughed about it, asking why no one had told him. The guy eventually became the chairman of the Kentucky Board of Education, so I know he knew his stuff.

I’m not even sure they still do this program, but it was a nice taste of college for me, getting to pick and choose different courses to take for fun. I’m surprised my mom still had this to be honest.

Whew! I just got home. Overall, Christmas went very well back in my hometown. I'm still a bit wiped out from jumping from house to house as I usually do, but Mom was in fairly good spirits all things considered. What really made me laugh was unwrapping presents last night at the twin's house. My 8-year-old nephew Bradyn has a really smart mouth and it gets him in trouble with his parents. He comes by it honestly as the twin's mouth was (and is) pretty much the same way. Here are the two examples that left me laughing when I shouldn't have been:

The twin was getting irritated when my nephew was acting all hyper and huffy, so he told him to sit down on the couch next him.

The twin: Sit down! You sit down right here and don't you move! (The nephew complies reluctantly)
Twin's wife: (from the kitchen) Bradyn, come in the kitchen for a minute!
Nephew: (sarcastically) Caaaannnn't!

Later, after everyone had eaten and we'd unwrapped presents, I saw my nephew had gone to the kitchen and made himself some pop tarts. I've long learned to shrug my shoulders at anything he does, so I said nothing. His mom came by a moment later and made comment.

Twin's Wife: Bradyn! Why are you eating a pop tart??
Nephew: (insert eye roll here) I'm not eating A pop tart. I'm eating TWO pop tarts!

Yeah, my twin deserves every minute of this.

Merry Christmas everyone! :)

I had an odd dream last night. Not freaky as they usually are, but interesting.

I *think* I was back in college and I was planning a project to test creek water for heavy metals. The creek I had chosen was Lynn Camp Creek, which is the creek that I basically played in growing up. It’s not a small body of water for the most part, as it runs through my hometown and extends as far as a couple of towns to the North and South. It is very wide and shallow in some places, and narrower and deep in others. When it rains it can really fill up. Kids are fascinated by running water and I was no exception to that. I loved playing near that creek, catching crawdads and the occasional catfish. The feeling of mud and moss squishing through your toes is actually very satisfying.

Engineer Street Bridge over Lynn Camp Creek, Corbin, KY

Anyway, back to the dream. When I ran this plan to the mayor’s office, they balked and said I couldn’t do the testing. Now why I needed their permission to sample water from a public creek I’ll never know. I easily could just go to the county portions outside the city limits and ignore them anyway. Undeterred, I’d already mapped out where I was going to sample and even included on the diagram the locations where I’d fallen in as a kid. This part is real by the way, as you can’t play near water on a nearly daily basis as a kid and not occasionally slip.

Before I could get the plan into action, I’d stopped by the lab to check on the analytical part of my plan and ran into my sister who was a scientist there too. This part is pure fiction. My sis hated chemistry.

The dream didn’t go anywhere after that. I woke up and was in a rush to work or I’d have posted this earlier with more details. It was a good dream nevertheless.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Mom's Five Kids, January 2000 (L to R)
Joe, Ronnie, Rhonda, Donnie, and Me

Last night around 1 AM, my older brother Donnie passed away from cancer in a crowded hospital room at the age of 54.

Donnie and his twin Ronnie have always followed each other. If one moved away, the other would soon follow. When one moved home, the other was there in months. Ronnie died in his sleep about two years ago. Donnie almost immediately started going downhill. I can't fathom how losing an identical twin must affect a person, but as in life Donnie followed Ronnie.

At his request, Donnie is being cremated with no funeral. We will have a family get-together to bury his ashes in the coming weeks when all the family can be here.

First, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I hope that everyone has traveled safely if they traveled and can unbutton their britches to relieve the pressure from eating way too much. I certainly know that feeling, thankfully. I've been to my hometown and back in the last two days. There have been a few fun little things happen over the days, which made it a great time.

( Cut for brevity )

And it's good to be home after three hours of driving, two of which in the pouring rain. Work tomorrow. Hopefully an easy day.

For some reason, I thought of this image earlier this week and had a tough time remembering where I'd seen it. I knew it was from my childhood. It's Queenie Bee, the character from the Burger Queen restaurant chain. I'm not sure how far-reaching this chain was, but they're only a handful left and the character seemed to vanish when the chain became "Druthers." I wasn't sure a bee was the best character though, they're hardly cuddly, but you have to love her big 70's hairdo.

I found out today that the fourth season of Charlie's Angels is being released on DVD next month. This is the first season without Kate Jackson (sadly), but I always felt that Shelley Hack did a great job as an angel, certainly better than Tanya Roberts did in the forgettable fifth. I'll be picking it up (the fourth not the fifth).

I finally picked up my comics this week after being out of town. A welcome surprise at the comic book shop was finding Resident Evil, starring a burly mercenary named Holiday Sugarman. I'm enjoying the story and I love the artwork for obvious reasons.

Why more comic book characters aren't drawn with facial hair is a mystery (though Wonder Woman with a beard would be scary). It does inspire me to draw more. The first two issues of the six are already available.