Well, That's Refreshing???

The outdoor temperature is so incredibly hot here.
Thank goodness fall is right around the calendar corner.
The only remedies I know of to get through hot sweaty days are air conditioning, sweet tea on ice, cold water through a straw and ICE CREAM!
Well, some ice cream.


Frog Spit?

What have I been missing all my life?
Frog Spit for one...
There are truck loads of frogs and toads, right out my front door, that sing beautifully in the evenings and eat lots of bugs, (activities that require copious amounts of saliva I am assuming) but I have never once thought of freezing and licking their spit.
The family dog licked a toads back once and started tripping (yes, in every illegal drug sense of the word), and foaming at the mouth.
It was terrifying.
So licking anything amphibian has never been on the family bucket list.

The penguin on the box also throws me off a bit.
Frogs and penguins usually aren't pals or even environmental neighbors are they?
Since penguins are known to prefer the cold, I can only surmise that the penguin was added just so I would not make the mistake of thinking Frog Spit was juice?
Ewwww.
I just imagined a front door frog drooling on my stoop and gagged myself a little.
But someone had to try the first mushroom or the first glass of milk...
So I shall boldly go where...no one I know has gone before and see if Frog Spit is palpable....
Here goes....
I'm stalling....
Wait for it...


Frog Spit Taste Test

The results are in:

Delicious!
Refreshing!
Who knew?
Not me...till just now.
Delightful!

I'm too excited about this.
It's like I discovered a new animal species or proof of life on other planets.
What a doofus.
I think the heat is getting to me.
I need to cool down with more Frog Spit...

Thanks for being here!

A Freaky Walk in the Woods.

As a follower of my blog, you are possibly aware that I sometimes like to post 'things' about nature and my participation in it.
Well today, thanks to the creativity and restlessness of nature, I would like to share one more of those 'things'.

Yesterday, my lovely daughter and I plus our 4 dogs,
(4, count them, 4 dogs who absolutely have no business being mentioned on this blog post because they spent the entire day doing random dog things, none of which was protection mode or scary growling at upcoming perils or even toothy barking because they sensed the presence of creepiness)
started out on a lovely walk in the woods...
and THEN the humans noticed this....


AAAaaaaawwwwww!!!!! Zombie Apocalypse!!!


AAaaarrrgghhh!!! Stop with the Zooming!!!


Make it Stop !!! Too Close!! Too Close!

I am in the woods every ordinary, freaking, non-zombie day and have never noticed this zombie skull of doom staring at me before.
It's eyes followed me until I turned a bend on the trail, all the while calling out the imminent death possibilities and trying to seem nonchalant about it to my daughter.
But I was obviously rattled and a bit panicked when my daughter gently calmed me by yelling telling me to, "STOP IT! Its just a rock or a piece of junk and besides, it looks more like a C3PO (Star Wars) head in the dirt than a skull or a zombie".
So now I am a nervous zombie droid hating idiot in my child's eyes as well as in the hollowed out eye sockets of the mostly dead, scary, lurking, droid, forest zombie with dinner on its mind.
I just kept walking.
Much faster walking, but no running for cover or brain preservation movement at all.
Why?
Because...?
Running would alarm the dogs?
My daughter would then know I'm an idiot?

The dogs noticed n o t h i n g !

Oh yes, I could have crossed the creek and checked it out, but why take a chance?
I had 4 self absorbed, treat munching, drool machine dogs and a lovely daughter to protect.
In my mind.
Nothing worse or more ineffectual than a startled, struggling, picture taking "cause no one will believe me", timber droid, forest zombie hater who panics and can't climb trees or run fast enough human that makes protection of anything a moot point.
I was also assuming that we were mostly safe because zombies can't cross water.
Or is that ghosts?
Or demons?
Not sure.
Don't care.
Not sleeping for a week!

I made it home and wanted to share this with you before things get ugly.
Well, uglier.
I'll let you know if I am brave enough for an update.

Thanks for being here.


BRAVE UPDATE:

Today, I got brave.
Went back to the woods to face the droid forest zombie and show him or her who's boss.

Silly me.
The forest zombie head was just a piece of junk thrown down a hill a bunch of years ago, sent to haunt me in this present day.
Stupid garbage + Stupid zombies = A sleepless 24 hours of fabulous speculation and imagination.


Zombie Garbage

Thanks again for being here.
With your intact brain...and eyeballs in your eye sockets.

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Earplugs.

Earplugs.
Ahhhh...yes.
The serenity.
The silence.
The..."WHAT?"
Just kidding.
Or am I?
Earplugs are an immersion into my very own convenient and personalized Sensory Deprivation Tank.
Mostly.
Mostly just the ONE deprived sense and no tank.
But I try to work with what I have.
As I get older the noises of this modern world have gotten very annoying and those sounds of life, including everything, have become completely irritating.
So since, in my opinion, old folks should be pampered, I have given myself permission to ignore all of the chaos.
Maybe one of the reasons that senior citizens become deaf is...
...Because they can...
It is a sweet relief.
My grandfather was deaf...most of the time.
My grandmother swears he could hear clearly when she said that the coffee was ready or the pie could be cut now or if someone knocked on the door with some fresh bait for fishing.
Selective deafness.
I totally get it.
Hence my affiniy for earplugs.
It is rapturous when you put them in and all the swirling, disturbing, bothersome sounds that you have tried to ignore through-out the day slowly disappear into silence and you close your eyes and........start thinking of the crazy person that is creeping down the hallway with a hatchet that you can't hear because you have your earplugs in.
Or maybe you're unaware of the sounds the dog is making as he shreds and totally ruins the sofa because the happy growling, thrashing and shredding noises have been blotted out and you won't notice anything amiss till you stumble over the piles of foam.
Or perhaps the fire truck siren that is silenced as it approaches your burning yard including trees and very nearly the chickens that will soon be nuggets before you get around to taking your earplugs out.
Just kidding.
Or am I?
It does take some mental preparation to get used to earplugs and the glorious isolation they provide, but after a few panic attacks and a couple of days 30 seconds you too can be relaxing and deaf, unconcerned and oblivious to every noise in the world, once those foamy little sound blockers of sanity have been put in their proper position.
Intentional deafness.
But while it is easy, this escapism is not to be taken lightly.
When my kids were small I never used them.
I had this elusive goal of being a good mother and I took very seriously the need to calm a cough or listen for muffled whispers of any rule breaking schemes, all of which I could hear from about a mile away.
My kids are old enough to take care of themselves now and most responsibilities that require hearing are handled with texting, closed captioning and the profusely overused, "What?"
So there are no guilt feelings when the earplugs go in and the world fades away.
Optional deafness.
There should be a National Earplug Day to celebrate this King of survival tools.
It is just that important.

Thanks for being here.
"Did you hear me dear?"
I said,
"THANKS FOR BEING HERE!"


Earplugs. The treasure of treasures.