%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper. |
|
My friends, When we were young and newly hatched—also young and in love—my husband and I lived with our four young children on the Space Coast of Florida. The massive propulsion of rocket and shuttle launches from Cape Kennedy often rocked the windows and doors of our little love cottage. We were always properly respectful and impressed by the reach of mankind’s achievements. It was a point of pride to stop whatever we were doing (dishes, dinner, dancing, sleeping, fist fighting, etc.) to watch the eastern horizon—hands on hearts, tears in eyes—as the United States of America raced into the frontier of space. One deep, dark morning (about 2:00 am) I shook my husband awake to watch yet another triumph of human advancement. “Get up,” I mumbled to Sherwood, “the shuttle’s going up. We gotta’ watch.” Sherwood moaned, “The garbage is out all ready. Let me die.” He did not open his eyes. “Come on. We should watch. Night launches are amazing.” He dragged himself upright and clung to the window ledge behind our bed. We knelt, with our chins braced on the ledge, our bleary eyes fixed on a blazing light in the eastern sky. We watched. The light did not appear to move. We stared some more. The light remain fixed. We struggled to focus. The light blazed away. We waited for the light to fade into the blackness of space. It did not. We watched and watched and watched. The light stubbornly refused to move. At last, collapsing back into my pillow I said, “Honey, go back to sleep.” Sounding confused, miffed, and a little whiney Sherwood asked, “Why?” “Because for the last eight to ten minutes we’ve been staring at our next door neighbor’s bug zapper.” He went back to sleep. And I lived to worship at the altar of space exploration another day. This story pretty much sums up who we are, and how we got this way—excessive staring at bug zappers. And this is my blog, a space-age way of recording one’s thoughts, ideas, embarrassments, and foibles for the entire known world. Once upon a time, I would have made this record on papyrus, rolled it up, stuffed it into a ceramic jar, and asked to have the whole thing buried with me in my sarcophagus. I still might. Disclaimer: Some of the stuff you will read here is true. Some of it is not. Some of it is the result of wishful thinking. Some of it is the result of too much thinking, and some of it is the result of too little thinking. But all of it will be written with joy and laughter, because the alternative is despair and weeping, and isn’t there more than enough of that stuff out there? Thank you for your support, Linda (Zippity the Zapped) Zern |
| I wrote a book with a hard ending. Mooncalf is a work of historical fiction for middle grades. It is set in the mid-60’s, halfway between the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. America was racing the Russians to the moon. Skirts were short; hair was long. Schools in Seminole county, Florida, were still segregated. After reading Mooncalf, one reader told me, “I liked Olympia and Leah so much. I just wanted them to go off in the orange grove and start a babysitter’s club.” Spoiler alert: That’s not how it ends. Comments from readers have included: “I cried.” “I was so angry.” “I was crushed. You warned me, and I was still crushed.” “Shocking.” “It didn’t have to end that way.” One young woman refused to read the book, having heard that it had a sad ending. She doesn’t do sad endings. As an author, I sometimes wonder if I should have softened the blow, written a happier ending, given the readers a way to dream away the reality, but then I listened again to my readers. Tears. Anger. Shock. I knew then that it was exactly as it should be. In the world of my childhood, little girls of different colors did not go off and organize inter-racial glee clubs. We learned the hateful lessons our adults taught us and we cried. |
| The Democratic strategist exclaimed with confidence, “Politicians lie. Everyone lies.” He was defending the lying lies of a lying politician he was preparing to lie about. If you follow this guy’s statement to its logical conclusion then this guy is lying about the lying. Right? I mean if everyone lies, and he has to be included in the set of humans we refer to as everyone . . . well . . . I felt my grey matter start to cramp just thinking about a world without the certainty of truth telling. (That could be a lie. How would you know?) In our family we tell the story of The Big Fat Liar, a tale of a young man my husband encountered on a Boy Scout camping trip. The boy in the story was told to stop jabbing sticks in the campfire and catching them on fire. “Stop catching sticks on fire. Go to bed,” my husband said. The kid nodded. Later that evening, on a quick trip to the potty, my husband saw fire stick boy; he was holding a flaming, smoking stick torch over his head like an invading Visigoth about to burn down the village. “Hey, I thought I told you to quit catching sticks on fire.” “I’m not catching sticks on fire,” the kid said, while holding a burning stick in his grubby Visigoth hand. “Then what’s that in your hand?” “Nothing.” “Okay, let’s go slower,” my husband said. “Do you have a hand?” “Maybe.” “Is there something in it?” “In what?” The kid tried looking confused, a favorite stalling tactic of big, fat liar types. “Is there something in that thing hanging at the end of your arm?” The kid looked up at his own hand. “Yes,” the kid said. “Is it a stick?” “Maybe.” “Okay, let’s try this. Are you holding a recently detached hunk of wood from a tree trunk?” “Yes.” “Is it on fire?” “I don’t know.” The kid is probably a politician by now. It’s exhausting, trying to sort out the wicked web of half-truths and big, fat whoppers that everyone is telling. At Rollins College, where I occasionally go to make straight A’s—true story, we have an Honor Code. It’s thirteen pages long and includes a section defining fibbing. There are nine bullet points just to define terms. True story. Nine bullet points and THIRTEEN PAGES! The Ten Commandments has ten bullet points and was carved on stone, thus saving paper, trees, ozone, and Mother Earth. Beat that, Honor Code! Beat that! Linda (True That) Zern |
| Easter is a lovely Christian expression of faith and love and hope eternal. Oh Death, where is thy sting? And then we hunt Easter eggs. Let the race begin. At my house, we don’t give gifts to children for Easter. The gift is that Jesus of Nazareth walked out of a sealed tomb—alive! As gifts go, resurrection is pretty stunning. But then we throw eggs into bushes and candy under the garden bridge and say to the children, “Go. Hunt. Gather!” Around here, the Easter Bunny YaYa tosses bags of candy under spring flowers for the children to find with the express instruction, “If you find a BAG of candy it’s for everyone—not just for you. We will pour it into a giant communal bowl of Easter happiness and,” I add, holding my breath dramatically, “share.” They all nod. But still, a whole, unopened bag of Skittles just for me, me, me. It’s tricky. The children, who are the parents of the children, accuse me of fomenting rebellion with my one for all and all for all approach. Their solution is to throw empty, plastic Easter eggs about and hope the kids don’t notice the hollow sound when they pick them up. Several of the children, after finding their empty eggs this year, brought them to me and wanted to “cash them in.” I pointed to the giant bowl of Easter happiness candy. “Share,” I said. This year I only had to snatch one bag of M&M’s out of one young man’s hands. Not bad, really. Could have been worse. I could have had to chase that crazy kid around the yard and rip the bag of candy out of his hands. The older I get the less I enjoy the holidays. I like the regular days where we’re supposed to be grateful, happy, kind, loving, and Christian—because we’re supposed to—not because we’re looking to cash in our golden eggs. Linda (Back to Work) Zern |
| Horses are pretty sure that they are going to be eaten by wolves—every single day. It’s what they are. It’s how they think. Pretending that horses are big dogs or cuddly kittens doesn’t change horses into big dogs or cuddly kittens. Horses are horses are horses. I know that seems obvious but, these days, you’d be surprised. People have gotten a little muddled when it comes to animals of all species, including their own. Dogs are like easy babies and real babies are a punishment. Horses, on the other hand, are twelve hundred pound prey animals that worry about wolves and Mickey Mouse balloons—until they learn to surrender to someone “bigger,” “stronger,” and/or more “dominant.” It’s psychology: horse not human. Mommy horses discipline rowdy babies by chasing them until they are whipped: sides heaving, sweat slicked, and submissive. When a horse is ready to “submit” to a more dominant horse it will drop its head, turn toward the “boss” and lick its lips. A horse that submits is saying, “You are in charge. I trust you to watch for wolves, get me to fresh water, and protect me from Mickey Mouse balloon goblins.” It’s magical: horse not warlock. In the wild, young horses aren’t allowed to be out of control, selfish fools. Out of control, selfish, fool horses are dangerous to the herd. They distract the grownup horses from watching out for wolves and killer balloons. It isn’t allowed. I like horses. They make sense. People, who think they know about horses from watching Disney movies, find the concept of round penning mindless and mean. It’s the human equivalent of time-out for teenager horses where humans push a horse around and around in an enclosed circle until he’s paying attention, ready to surrender, ready to join the herd, ready to become a valuable member of society. It isn’t mean. It works, because horses are sensible—also humble. In human society, selfish, fool, twerp, offspring put the entire herd at risk by distracting everyone from the real troubles of the human herd: the work of growing the herd, the necessity of educating the next generation not to be out of control and selfish, and the endless need to watch out for the prowling wolves ready to eat us all—not to mention those crazy balloon goblins. When we treat animals like animals they can teach us a lot about the right way to live and be happy. It’s simple: herd not twerp. Linda (Mount Up) Zern |
| Aric married Lauren in March, two years ago. He’s the oldest and the last, and after he got married I knew that I could rest in the shade of the tree from which I cut the laurel wreath of my success as a mother. Let me rejoice, I thought, and take up oil painting or green bean growing or apply to be on the Osceola county volunteer mounted posse. You don’t have to tell me twice. In my “retirement” from mothering I intended to collect free horses and try to turn them into the sorts of beasts that don’t run away when people fly helicopters at them. When my first child was married I was given a book, informing me that my duties as the mother-of-the-newly-married-person should include ONLY the sharing of an occasional home remedy and a recipe—if I knew any—anything else constituted meddling. You don’t have to tell me twice. Nagging is exhausting and meddling is nagging’s ugly, warty cousin—also exhausting. I would be too busy becoming Grandma Moses anyway. Then the phone calls started coming. “Mom, you’ve got to help me,” The newly married Heather said. “Only if this is for a recipe and/or a remedy,” I said. “How do you roll crescent rolls?” “You mean the kind in the can?” “Are there another kind?” She sounded a little bit miffed. “Well, find the point on the triangle,” I instructed, wisely. “The point? There are three points. It’s nothing but points,” she pouted. “Yes, true. There are three points, but I don’t think that it’s an equilateral triangle.” Finally, a use for my college mathematics; I felt smug. “What the flip are you talking about? I rolled one up and it looks like poop.” “That can’t be right,” I reassured. WHAT I SAID NEXT: “Just roll up the long edge, so that the little apex of the triangle is on top, and then bend it into a little crescent, moon shape.” WHAT SHE HEARD: “Roll up the quadrihexial axis of doughy junk around a stick and fling it at the moon.” “Okay Mom, listen I have to go now, because I have a nosebleed,” Heather said, sounding muffled and stuffy from the ensuing nosebleed. “Okay dear. Just apply pressure to your nose, but don’t tilt your head back. Goodbye and good remedy.” Regarding the book with tips for mothers of the newly married—my daughter (wise beyond her cooking skill level) finally reassured me, “Forget the book. The book is crap. That’s not our family. It will never be our family. Just be yourself that kind of meddling has always worked before.” True. I can’t say we always roll our crescent rolls the way everybody else does, but we do have a certain style, and that’s always worked before. Linda (Leave A Message) Zern |
| I have a blog called zippityzerns.blogspot.com. I write stuff for my zippityzern’s blog. Once in a while, I advertise a book, but I keep that greedy capitalism to a minimum. The stuff I write for my blog is funny stuff, because that’s what seems to come out of my head, like sneezes in the pollen soaked spring—the funny stuff that is, not the snot (that was just a metaphor). The hardest part of writing a blog is figuring out what code words you should list in the word code list so that people in Romania will be able to find your funny stuff in the haystack of blog stuff, funny and otherwise, that floats around the Internet like pollen looking for nostrils to torture. Code words are key words or search words or label words with magic in them that capture the attention of readers, Romanians, also trolls. On Mondays, I think code words work. On Thursdays, I’m sure they don’t. On Saturday, I suspect trolls of making my knuckles hurt. I don’t know why. Based on my most “viewed” blog post (2995 page views) called “Hamster Infestation” with the key words—free wash machine, hamster, infestation, rat, and rodent removal—people seem attracted to the words free and infestation. I keep trying to figure it out. Is it the possibility that I might be giving away an infested wash machine that intrigues people or that the infestation is hamster-ish in nature? I’m still working on the formula for attracting an infestation of blog followers, so that I can point to my blog follower infestation and say, “Look, I am funny and people do like me and that’s why the people clog my blog like an infestation of hamsters in a free wash machine on the curb of life. Don’t you want to give me some money?” Linda (Word Puzzle) Zern |
| So many time saving, work reducing, stress minimizing gadgets—so little time to figure out how they work or how to fix them when they don’t work or how to rid them of hamster infestations. Troublesome, especially when you’ve become completely dependent and addicted to the use of afore mentioned gizmos. Washers and dryers are real stress relievers—or they can be. When we were young, poor, newly married, and our clothes were often embarrassingly rumpled, someone gave us a FREE washing machine. It had a rat living in it. The rat left piles of rodent flotsam in and around the machine to make sure we understood who owned what. We owned our rumpled clothes. The rat owned our washing machine. I found the situation stressful—not to mention frightening. What happened, or could happen, or might happen when adding that last pair of random biker shorts to the load, you discover that there’s a rat doing the sidestroke during the wash cycle? Those suckers can jump—the rat, not the biker shorts. My newly wedded husband had to trap the washing machine rat and then bonk it on the head with a barbell. Afterwards, I thought I heard him shout, “Today, I am a man.” Some years later, Brownie the “Knocked-Up” Hamster managed to escape her cage into our brand new squeaky-clean (never used) house. She re-located to the back of my brand new squeaky-clean (never used) stove. Driven by instinct and early labor, Brownie began to nest in the insulation of the stove. Occasionally, Brownie would stick her nose through the grating on the back of the stove, wiggle her whiskers at me, and giggle. My phone call to the service center is legendary. “You don’t understand. There’s a hamster nesting in the back of my new stove.” “Serial number please.” “No, no serial number. This is an emergency. Brownie the Hamster is pregnant. She may be crowning.” My voice became more strident with each word. Brownie pressed one eye to the grating and watched my panicked pacing. A whisper of pink insulation drifted from the back of the stove to the kitchen floor. “I can’t find any record of an extended warranty for you Mrs. Zern.” “What difference does that make? Does your fancy warranty cover hamster labor and delivery?” “We can have a repairman out there Friday of next week.” “NEXT WEEK! By that time, I’ll have a flock of hamsters setting up a condominium association in my beautiful new glass top stove. Argggggh!” I thought I heard Brownie the Hamster asking for an epidural. “Listen, let me ask you something, Wanda,” I said, trying another tack. “That’s right, isn’t it? Wanda? So Wanda, what might happen, I mean what might the possible ramifications be, if I turn the oven on full blast and set it to self-clean?” It took hours to pry Brownie out of that time saving invention. Finally, when a car repairman, while checking the engine of our family van called out, “Hey lady, did you know you have a rat living in your engine?” I knew enough to play it cool. “Of course I know there’s a rat in my engine. She’s our hamster’s second cousin, twice removed. Visiting from Bithlo.” There are days when I’d rather wash my clothes by beating them with rocks down by the river, cook my buffalo on a stick over a fire pit, and drag my kids around between two tree trunks lashed to a goat. There’d be less stress, less work, and a lot less time wasted—also less rodent drama. Linda (Driving Miss Rat) Zern |
| My husband is brilliant and good. When he’s on the phone to Uganda he speaks a language neither English nor Ugandan. It’s binary. His father, my father-in-law, thinks that my husband is going straight to Heaven. I will not be joining him there—also according to my father-in-law. What I can’t figure out is why, oh why, my husband, the brilliant computer geek angel, CANNOT remember to put the sprayer nozzle back on the end of the hose in the barn. (WARNING: POINT OF VIEW SHIFT) “Why,” she yelped, her voice echoing down through the corridors of endless time, despair coloring the consonants blue. “Why can’t he put the stinking nozzle back on?” A nozzle, gentle reader, is one of those garden hose attachments that allows a person, who might be watering the rabbits, to turn the water off at the end. You know! A sprayer nozzle. Twist to turn off. Twist to turn on. Easy. Peasy. They’re handy. Because when the hose doesn’t have a sprayer nozzle on the end it’s difficult to water the rabbits (located inside the chicken’s outdoor run) without splashing water into the chicken stuff under the rabbit cages. Chicken stuff is made of dirt and stuff that is not dirt and quickly liquefies when hit with water, turning to chicken mud sludge. Chicken mud sludge is disgusting. Chicken mud sludge has the consistency of poop pudding. And it splashes. Sure. Sure. You can crimp the hose with your hand (old school) but then the hose kinks, curls, twists, catches, or curves into a fetal position, so that you have to yank it—yank it hard—causing your crimping hand to slip. Water erupts—thus chicken mud sludge, splashing up, out, and over whatever you happen to be wearing. CHICKEN. MUD. SLUDGE. All of which can be eliminated with a twist on, twist off sprayer nozzle. My husband—the brilliant binary speaking, heaven bound angel man— never puts the nozzle back on the hose before flying off to Uganda or wherever angel men fly off to. Granted, this is a second rate, first world problem, and I should be roundly ashamed for my carping, whining attitude, but since I’m not going to Heaven anyway, according to close relatives, I might as well make a public outcry of my nozzle frustration. Excuse me. I have to go take a shower now. Linda (Hell’s Bells and Cocker Shells) Zern |
| Everyone is writing a book, has written a book, is planning to write a book, or has written a book that they are now trying to get someone/anyone to read. It’s true. Even our bug man, who sprays vast amounts of poison on my house, attempting to control the mushrooming population of black and brown widows that live in every crack and gap of the exterior, is writing a book. Good grief, the spiders are probably writing books. My bug man writes poetry. Disclaimer: Please don’t misunderstand; I think everyone does have a story and should tell it, sing it, or write it. I do. I really do. A poetry writing bug man has a story. You can bet on it. However, I am a little concerned over what I like to call craft and the practice of craft. I was raised on great southern literature: “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” “The Yearling,” “Where the Red Fern Grows”, “As I Lay Dying,”” To Kill a Mockingbird” . . . I grew up wanting to write great southern literature or a wildly best selling porn novel, you know, whatever, and so I went to college to hone and grow and mold my craft at the feet of great writers of wordage and professors of word mongering. Yikes. I knew I was in trouble when one professor expressed wild enthusiasm and encouragement to a young man whose crazed character was having a discussion with himself over which animal he was most likely to have sex with, should he have sex with an animal. “You shocked me. You surprised me. You’ve written something shocking and surprising. I’m shocked and surprised.” Ahhhh! I raised my hand. Secretly, I had thought the piece poorly written and hard to follow. But I can secretly think that kind of stuff. I’m old and crabby. I asked, “I’m struggling a bit with deep point of view. Could we talk about that, please? I mean when this character has sex with a panda, should the panda have an accent?” Absently, the teacher nodded and flipped his hand dismissively, possibly at me. We never did talk about deep point of view. I sighed, and bought a helpful little book off of the Internet for six bucks called “Rivet Your Readers With Deep Point of View” by Jill Nelson. My college writing class cost one thousand, six hundred dollars, plus parking. After eighteen years, here’s what I know about the craft and art of writing. 1. Do it. Put pen to paper. Keys to screen. Charcoal to cave wall. Do it. 2. Don’t rely on the tired rubric of ‘shocking or cutting edge equates to value,’ unless you’re just looking to make enough money to buy a private jet full of money . . . then shock away . . . and hope you beat out all those other writers trying to shock their way to the top. Note: Bestiality has been done; see the Bible. 3. Be your own teacher. No one wants you to get better the way you do. No one. Not even if you pay them. 4. Find your own way. In college you hear a lot of “panster” talk: write until it’s done, outlines are for panda lovers, you’ll know when it’s done, dream your way to the end. Bull. Note: Pansters are people who sit down and write by the seat of their pants or without any pants. I’m not quite sure. But they don’t plan much. 5. Truth: Pick up a book you love; look at the last page; note the number of pages; multiply by 250 words per page. That equals the number of total words. The middle is somewhere at the center when you crack the book in half. The beginning had better have someone hunting a panda through the Everglades with a laser and the end needs to have a panda/people wedding or aliens repelled by bullets made of human teeth. There is a formula. Figure it out. Larry Brooks has some excellent resources on the subject. Google him. 6. Get tough and prepare to have everyone you know roll their eyes when you say that you’ve written a book because they’re afraid 1) you’ll insist they read it or 2) they’ll read it and it will be better than their book. Either way, write your book and let the bug man write his and the fan fiction chick and the guy from Jamaica who painted the house and the teachers who really helped and the fellow students with something dazzling to say and the mail lady who wishes she was a spy and the panda man and . . . Linda (Pass the Keyboard) Zern |
| Make sure the paper doesn’t fit if you want to raise thinking, problem solvers. Friday is YaYa’s Science Club day. Why? Well, it isn’t for a grade, or a public checklist, or to satisfy some arbitrary list of academic requirements, or the paycheck; that’s for sure. Why? Because science is freaking awesome, that’s why. Seriously, I don’t know what they’re teaching in public schools; because it isn’t science, not when so many public school graduates I talk to all say the same thing when you mention the subject. “I hate it. It’s so boring.” Wrong. Science is the study of . . . well . . . everything! And nothing turns kids on to learning faster—in my experience! IF you do it right. If you start with the universe and follow the science down to quarks or start with quarks and follow the logic all the way out to the universe, never forgetting to honor “the unmoved mover” along the way. In our science club we made ID badges. You can buy the sleeve at Walmart for $3.88. We took pictures and had to fill out our names and ID number. It took a lot of time. I didn’t make the badges for the team members. They had to make their own and the pictures were too big and the paper didn’t fit the slot. “It’s too big.” “This doesn’t work.” “I can’t do it.” Tears. Frustration. Furrowed brows. The impulse to quit. Time passing. And then one team member piped up and said, “Well, you know, that light bulb guy, Edison, he failed about a million times.” The team considered, reassessed, studied on the problem, and solved it. The badges are really cool. They’re on a stringer, so you can pull them out and pretend to scan your way into our lab. Do you know why glow sticks glow, or sodium acetate crystallizes so fast, or ping- pong balls float in the airstream of a blow dryer, or which planets are the gas giants, or how the sun probably works, or . . . We do. Linda (Time to Teach) Zern |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
