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 |  It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper. |
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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 |
| Can’t read the headlines lately without seeing another rock-n-roller bite the dust, and they’re not that much older than me, and that’s got me to thinking, and when I think I write. Writing saves wear and tear on my fifty shades of gray matter. So, there you go. My funeral will be a free-for-all, knowing my family, unless I put my foot down now while I still can. NOTE: A free-for-all is a disorganized or unrestricted situation or event in which everyone may take part, especially a fight, discussion, or trading market. FREE. FOR. ALL. First of all, I want a closed casket; I do not believe in people looking at me when I can’t look back or am unable to make a smart aleck comment or two. But more importantly, during the memorial service the following subjects will be OFF LIMITS: MY DENIM BUTTONS: I like to wear vests for a variety of reasons; especially vests with large, spacious pockets. Pockets are the most important invention known to man, in my opinion. Seriously! When you’re vacuuming and you come across ten dollars in dimes under the couch, left there by the darling grandchildren who forgot they were stealing the dimes from Poppy’s change jar, you can stuff the dimes in your vest pockets instead of tossing them in the potted palm pot. I like pockets. You can put eggs in your pockets. That’s very helpful. I had one vest that I wore until it rotted off my body. It has denim buttons, which did not rot. Their molecular cohesion continues to this very day. My children mock my denim buttons, my vests, and the fact that when I am wearing a vest I do not have to wear a bra. True story. MY COOKING: I hate cooking. I’m too short to cook. Because I’m short I’m too close to the fire for safety, and the sparks get in my eyes and set my hair ablaze. Sure. Sure. That’s all true. I don’t want them talking about my cooking. It’s not my fault they liked to eat and would eat anything—even if I hated cooking it. PREPPING, PARANOIA, AND THE POSSIBILITY I HAVE BUILT A SAFE ROOM UNDER THE BARN: I believe strongly in number ten cans of dehydrated sausage, and in the world ending badly. I believe strongly in the other shoe dropping. I’m Irish, after all. OTHER ITEMS NOT TO BE DISCUSSED AT MY FUNERAL: My being a hermit; my bohemian decorating style; my hobo pots and pans; my dewlap. Which brings me to Conner, my oldest grandson, who is absolutely forbidden to speak of my double chin. He calls it my dewlap . . . you know . . . just like a lizard’s, another good reason to keep that coffin lid down. I’m sure there’s more to forbid, but I think I’ve got a few days yet. I’ll think on it. Oh, and there is the working theory that I’ll never die, according to my son-in-law, Phillip. This being his greatest fear. Linda (Good as Gone) Zern |
| It’s the twenty-first century. Not a headline, I know, but the world is wildly new and—at the same time—endlessly the same. Part of the newness is that our phones follow us around in our pants. Satellites beam endless cute cat videos straight into our back pockets. It’s like a new day has dawned in our pants controlled by cats and their god. And a lot hasn’t changed—not one small bit: cats and dogs still fight, the wind still blows, and sand still gets in the cracks. At our house it’s more and more and more about telecommuting and “the conference call.” Why go all the way to Greece just to have a bunch of Monty Python style protestors who jump on public transportation to travel downtown to throw Molotov Cocktails at government buildings AND YOUR HOTEL, when you can sit at home and be invaded by goats? It’s a great question for a great twenty-first century. At one point in my husband’s career, when people asked me what he did for a living, I would say, “He tapes receipts to paper.” That’s what I saw him do after he traveled to the ends of the earth to help foreign governments get the computers going, to send the bills, to charge the people, for having the phones in their back pockets downloading cat videos. He stays home a little more now and telecommutes. This is a method of doing business that requires a home office, headsets, and the finger point. The headsets let him talk to foreign geeks in ancient Babylonia letter-speak via satellites. The finger point is to shut me up when I come in to request his help putting out the grease fire in the kitchen. “Sherwood, the flames are taller than—” He twirled in his office chair, stabbed one finger at the general direction of my voice while saying, “That will never work with the QPTTS-R49-7TMMR.” He pointed repeatedly to the headsets on his head with one finger as he spun away from me in his office chair. He returned to tapping wildly on his keyboard. The conference call went on. The kitchen burned down. NO. I’M KIDDING. But it’s a lot like that. Yesterday, my husband was on a conference call when our three goats busted into his office and started snorting around looking for goat nibbles. I saw them wander in and went to help. Sherwood the husband spun around in his chair attempting to stab a manly finger at the goats. Tramp the ram sniffed his finger. The conference call went on. Tramp started to sample paper, pencils, wires, headsets, and electrical outlets. I closed the door—softly. It’s all new, business transacted around an entire planet through air and space. And it’s all old; goats will still go anywhere, trying to eat everything. Linda (Call Me) Zern |
| MONGER: noun 1. a person who is involved with something in a petty or contemptible way (usually used in combination): a gossipmonger. 2. Chiefly British. a dealer in or trader of a commodity (usually used in combination): fishmonger. verb (used with object) 3. to sell; hawk. Monger is an excellent word that should be used more frequently—in my opinion, of course—because I certainly wouldn’t want to foist my beliefs on others because that would make me an opinionmonger and since opinions are personal and protected speech under the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States, we are all free to believe what we want about words like monger. I like it. The word. Monger. I’m kind of partial to the first amendment as well. In this coming new year of anticipated happiness, I am making a resolution to use the word, monger, more frequently. It’s good to be a goalmonger. Here’s a few possible uses of the word . . . monger . . . Anti-free speech mongers: Those that object to my opinions when my opinions oppose their opinions. These people include most of my professors on the first day of class, especially the one who said, pointing to the class, “Anyone out there a conservative?” I watched several students in the class cringe, which prompted me to think of them as pansymongers. Or my Comp I professor who enjoyed wasting class time quizzing the students on the best spots to procure drugs or discussing various students plans to get rich by producing Internet porn on their webcams. I then became a gripemonger when I went to the head of the English department to complain, only to be told by the department chair that “creepmonger” professor was quite popular with the students. No doubt. No doubt. I tried to get my money back, making me a gypmonger. When security marched my Introduction to Computers professor off the campus under guard, having been accused of sexual harassment so severe they had to fire him, I became bittermonger. I paid good money for Doctor Race Bannon (he swore it was his real name) to waste my time. He was a real slickmonger. I have seven classes to finish my degree. I’m trying to gird up my loins to be able to justify the cost. Seriously, when I paid $1,600.00 for an “advanced” creative writing class at a very fine local institution, I thought I’d be able to get help with writing point of view. I even asked, “Can we please talk about writing point of view?” Sorry. Wasn’t on the syllabus. Thankfully, I found a little book on Amazon called “Rivet Your Readers With Deep Point of View” by Jill Elizabeth Nelson. Cost: Six Bucks. Here’s to Amazon Prime and capitalism. And that makes me a POVmonger. Linda (Get Real) Zern |
| I live in a small town. There is one game in our town when it comes to grocery shopping and buying cheap fire ant killer. It’s a box store of highly recognizable signage. I shop there. After all, it’s the only game in town, and now that I’m older and closer to death, I find that driving to other towns to shop at their only game in town is a lot less interesting. I don’t waste time sorting my silverware either. I figure if the only way you can tell the difference between a fork and a spoon is to have them sorted into specially shaped plastic slots, I’m not sure I want you eating at my house anyway. The Walmart in my town keeps my family in cooking oil and silverware. Amazon and the Internet do the rest. The problem is that I can’t seem to get out of the only-game-in-town without causing some kind of scene. I don’t know why. It’s like being the town dunce. I always wind up embarrassed and feeling like it would be better if I were sitting in a corner, wearing a pointy hat. I think it’s because I buy a lot of cooking oil. Because . . . well . . . I’m pretty sure that our government has sold all America’s surplus cooking oil to Iceland. I have no proof. But I really like home cooked fried chicken, so I worry, and I tend to stock up. I don’t buy good cooking oil, but I buy a lot. And I drop it after I pay for it. Twice. It’s happened twice. The first time, cheap cooking oil, bottled in cheap plastic, slipped through my fingers like oily sand. Well . . . actually . . . the bottle dropped right out through one of those plastic shopping bags that had started to bio-degrade before I’d finished paying for the cheap crap in the bags. The cheap green cap on the bottle of cheap cooking oil exploded off the top like a bullet, and oil glugged out onto the floor—everywhere. I screamed, “Hurry. It’s oil.” Walmart employees screamed, back, “Don’t touch it. Do. Not. Touch. It. Get back. Get back.” They acted like I’d spilled a bottle of sarin gas. It made me wonder what they’re putting in the cooking oil at Walmart. I just wanted to fry some chicken—not overthrow Iceland. Anyway . . . that was the first time. Today, I did it again: same cheap oil, same crazy plastic cap bullet, same yowling employees acting like I’d just dropped a canister of mustard gas, same giant pool of spreading, smeary canola oil. That’s it. I can’t take another oil bomb incident. I’ve got to look into Amazon’s cooking oil shipping policy or maybe Ali Baba. Linda (Fry Cook) Zern |
| Some time ago, I was watching an Elvis impersonator get arrested, interrogated, searched, accused, and observed for possibly whipping up a batch of Ricin in his kitchen. It made me wonder. What would our neighbors say about us on cable TV, if we were hauled off for cooking up crazy crap in a crock-pot? Allegedly. See something. Say something. I’ve been trying to imagine what the neighbors are “seeing” at our place when they peek over our wire field fence, realizing if I said something every time I saw something at my neighbor’s house, I’d have the See-Something-Say-Something folks on speed dial. I mean how weird does it have to be to qualify as something? It’s not hard to imagine one of those breathless, throaty cable reporters stuffing a microphone in my next-door neighbor’s face and asking, “So, is it true that the Zern family had some unusual weekend rituals? Allegedly?” “Rituals, no, but they seemed to be overly found of circling.” Reporter nods and asks, “Satanic symbols? Hex signs? Crop circles?” “No. Nothing like that, but when they sit outside in their crappy lawn chairs they always wind up in a circle. But it migrates.” “What does?” The reporter will look perplexed but intrigued. “The yard circle. In the summer they circle under that big maple tree, but in the winter they land on the septic tank.” At this point our neighbor gets tired of pointing and drops his hand. “And did you see that as an indication that they were cooking up crazy crap in a crock-pot.” Hesitating, my neighbor will scratch his head. “No. But those grandkids are constantly peeing on stuff.” There it is. Public urination and yard circles. Our family would be good for at least one charge of felony mischief. But that’s not as bad as what goes on at our next-door neighbor’s house. Allegedly. Our neighbor’s eight-year old son informed my daughter that on Sundays his family likes to practice “knifing.” She asked, “What’s knifing?” “You know,” he said, “when you make a target and practice throwing knives at it.” I’m a little embarrassed to admit that our family is way behind on its knifing practice. Don’t tell. Linda (Don’t Look. Don’t Tell.) Zern |
| In our church we believe we have a duty to look after each other. Once a month, we try to visit or call each other, by assignment, to make sure everyone is okay, find out if anyone is in need, or try to get free baby-sitting . . . oops . . . umm . . . I’m just kidding. I don’t have little kids. I don’t need free babysitting; I need someone to feed my horses and rub lotion in Charlie’s ears. But I digress. Anyway, it’s called visiting teaching. I have two sisters (yes, we call each other brother and sister for deeply meaningful reasons having to do with being spiritually related in that big family in the sky sense—but I digress) that I “visit teach.” One of my dear sisters has hit a rough patch that has put her in a rehabilitation center following some health issues. Off I went to check on her. She’s in room 600 plus. I stood at the first rehab center I cleverly thought of visiting, checking the room numbers. They went up to 200 plus. I stood puzzling and puzzling until my puzzler was sore. The lovely, gentle woman, who runs the joint, recognized a stumped puzzler when she saw one. “Are you lost?” she said. “You don’t have six hundred rooms here do you?” With a knowing twinkle she gave me the number to the other rehabilitation center in town. I called. Ahhhh . . . they had a room with 600 plus on it and my friend. Laughing, waving, and blowing kisses, I sped off to the next rehabilitation center. And found . . . my friend. We chatted. We read scriptures. We laughed over this and that. We caught up. We discussed her possible release date. I met my friend’s lovely roommate. We had visited for an hour when my friend’s roommate, a lovely woman recovering from a little of this and a little of that, pointed at my tie-dyed motorcycle vest. “Sweetheart,” she began, gently. “You have your vest on inside out. Your buttons are on the inside and the tag is out.” I looked down and realized that I had—for about two hours—been wearing my vest inside out to two different establishments where people are tutored in the fine art of dressing themselves properly and re-learning to walk. “Right you are,” I said. “You know something.” I pulled my vest off so I could re-dress myself in the manner of a two-year old. “Every time I get to thinking I’m hot stuff my shoe falls in the toilet.” True story. Everyone in the room nodded their head at my obvious grasp of my own dopiness and understanding of humiliation. Laughing, waving, and blowing kisses, I made my exit. On the way out, I’m pretty sure I heard an occupational therapist say, “She’ll be back.” Linda (Buttoned Down) Zern |
Book of St. Zern, Chapter Now 1. Verily, verily, I say unto you that readeth this missive doeth it in the month of December in preparation for the ringing in of the end of the year of our Lord, two thousand and fifteen, both that and the celebrating of the birth of one baby Jesus, and doth read it for the knowing of both the family of Zern and she that keepeth the record, one Linda of Antioch. 2. But he that readeth doth readeth to his good humor for we did laugh much in this self-same year. 3. For verily, there were many lambs in the flock of our tribe, yeah the lambs doth number twelve and they were called: Zoe (12), Emma (10), Conner (9), Kip (7), Sadie (7), Zac (5), Reagan (5), Hero (3), Griffin (3), Scout (2), Leidy (1) and Ever (infant). 4. But we did waiteth with great expectation for yet the thirteenth lamb. He, being born in Texas to his goodly parents, Lauren of Saint Cloud and Aric of Orlando, on or near the day of birth that is my own. 5. And one mother, yeah, one Heather Baye of Geneva, did speak much to say that she is “a shell of her former self,” because of the antics of her five lambs. For they did wrestle much and cause much destruction in the land of Antioch—not by purpose but more by chance. Or as one, Conner of Saint Cloud, their brother, doth report, “My brothers be like an angry mob.” 6. And these good parents—one Heather of Geneva and Phillip of Bountiful, and Adam of Orlando and Sarah of Saint Cloud, and Maren of Geneva and Thomas of Titusville—did go forth teaching, and feeding, and clothing, and correcting, and mopping, and praying, and worrying much over their lambs. Watching forth always for wolves and the like that doth wish to harm the sheep. 7. And Zoe, in her eleventh year, did becometh like unto a young woman and did entereth into the “danger zone” of both the teenage years and the drama queen days that passeth away without understanding and she did leadeth the rest of the flock into that selfsame way. And we did both rejoice and mourn and hope to endure it well. 8. Then saith Sherwood of Winter Park unto the rising generation, Who wisheth to ride the lawnmower around the house until the gas doth give out. And the lambs did waiteth in line for their turn, some with joy and thanksgiving and some with the pitching of mighty fits. And the rest, even the fathers and mothers among us, did sitteth much about the fire pot and watch as Sherwood of Winter Park did driveth in large and mighty circles upon the mower, trying to keep those that driveth both straight and true and out of the fire pot. 9. Therefore, I did write much of their doings and did post much, yea, even now on my blog <www.zippityzerns.blogspot.com> for almost the twentieth year and my family dideth ask me oft at Sunday dinner, Art thou not on Twitter? 10. And I did restrain from destroying them with my fiery wrath for not following after me both on Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin and . . . 11. But I did stay my hand. 12. For I know that should my writing become of a kind that is called viral, they would come more oft for dinner and so I do forebear. 13. And many ask if my family doth object to their stories being told far and wide at my hand and I do report that they do not object, save they receiveth a dollar each time I uttereth their names. And so they selleth their birthright for a mess of dollar bills like unto those that dance in the marketplace. 14. And so my tribe doth both increase and prosper and laugh much, it being our way in the land. And so my days did pass away as if in a dream—of circus clowns. 15. And I make an end, even, Linda of Antioch. |
| Juke! It’s a great word, meaning so many delightful things. The first definition of the word is: 1) To defeat an opponent by using subtlety, cleverness, or a trickery. According to this definition, my fifty-seven year old husband was juked by a five-year old boy, who happily confessed, “Mr. Sherwod, we chased your chickens, but you weren’t looking.” Of course, this five-year old might need to work on his subtlety a bit. Juke is a verb. It’s what you do to someone. In this case, it’s what a bunch of kindergarteners did to my husband. Chase is what they did to our chickens. A second meaning of the word juke is: 2) To steal from someone else. The problem with this definition of the word is that there are so many examples these days of folks juking each other’s time, energy, money, and stuff, it’s hard to narrow it down. For example: Wow, watching that last Hollywood comedy was a colossal waste of my time, and that’s two hours I’ll never get back and I want to sue someone for pain and suffering and the theft of two hours of my eighty plus or minus years on this earth, and I got juked, or the government has juked my tax money to finance studies of shrimp running on a treadmill. A third meaning of the word juke is: 3) To dance while grinding one's [back parts] against another dancer's pelvis. This slang is common in Chicago. I’ll be darned. I thought this was called “dirty dancing.” And finally: 4) To stab another person. This slang is common in South London. 4) He got juked and mugged between the tube station and his flat. Crime abhors a vacuum and since London is a gun free zone, being stabbed with a knife has gotten its own slang term. Don’t juke me, or I juke you not. Here I was under the impression that juke meant going to hear my grandfather play his tenor sax in a speakeasy or juke joint where you might find a jukebox, which plays music for a dime, in Chicago during the depression. Apparently, things have changed a bit in Chicago since my grandparents lived there. Juke. It’s a great word and I plan to use it more in casual conversation, starting soon. Because it’s good to have goals, and I’m not juking you. Linda (The Trickster) Zern |
| As a college dropout: Because - I refuse to go into massive debt; waste time writing crap for people who will read my essays once and then give me a score like a Russian figure skating judge; or hear one more time why Republicans suck, Mormons are bigots, and that I should donate tons of money back to the institution that spawned me should I ever graduate and get RICH . . . oops, sorry, as a college dropout I like to reflect on my years in higher education. NOTE: I can use semi-colons according to one of my professors for emphasis, while another of my teachers said that semi-colons are out because they’re ugly. Anyway, I like to reflect. One of the moments I like to reflect on from my experience as a higher education student is of my friend. We’ll call her Morning Glory. She was wicked funny and a lesbian and a comrade and a left wing liberal down to her communist comrade hat. I loved her, and we laughed—a lot. One day, I walked into class. Morning Glory looked at me, a quizzical expression on her face. She said, “What is it with you?” And then she made a circling gesture over her face. Puzzled at first, I touched my face and then realized she was asking me how I could come into class, smiling, a lot. “What?” I said, “Happy?” “Yeah, that.” And then she narrowed her eyes at me and said, “And don’t tell me that you are high on Jesus.” “Okay,” I said and sat. Here’s the funniest part of the story, I would never use the phrase ‘high on Jesus.’ It’s not in my lexicon. Here’s the saddest part of the story, that my friend was so unacquainted with happiness that she did not know it when she saw it plastered across my face every morning. Ahhhhhh, higher education! So much knowledge, so little learning . . . I’m thinking of transferring to BYU Hawaii to finish up. I hear the weather is lovely. Linda (4.0) Zern |
| Write a book. I dare you. It’s a labor of blood, sweat, and tears, and sometimes, actual blood dribbles down into the keyboard, gumming up the works and sending authors racing to the Apple Store for new stuff like a laptop. But mostly, it’s a labor of tears and sweat. After that, there’s a book and it’s beautiful and lovely and of good report. And then the reviews come in. “The descriptions are amazing. I could smell, hear, taste, and touch the humidity.” “There could have been more description of humidity.” “The action lagged in only one spot.” “The action was almost too much. I liked when the characters sat around and talked.” “Too hot.” “Too cold.” “Too many bears.” And so it goes . . . Seriously, and so it goes . . . I love feedback from readers and reviews are publishing’s lifeblood, but there’s a trick to keeping reviews in perspective. Don’t try. Don’t misunderstand. I am a big believer in studying and refining craft. I have about a hundred books on writing to prove it, but honestly it’s a crapshoot trying to get the number of bears right for every single person that will pick up and read your book. It’s important to know that the world is full of experts, critics, and people with peeves. Keep writing. Keep in mind that every reader brings his or her own experiences and hang-ups to the story. “You’re such a nice lady. How do you write about such terrible things happening to children . . . and bears?” “Too much cussing.” “Not enough cussing.” Just keep writing. “Cliff hangers make me breathe hard and dream furry dreams.” Keep on writing. “Why aren’t there fifty shades of gray zombies in your story?” Write and write and write. Then, on a fine humid day full of expectation and lemonade, a reader will grab you by the shoulders and say, “Linda! Your book! I couldn’t put it down!” making you run not walk back to the keyboard and proving that crying blood-sweat to get your story told is a small price to pay. Then sit down and write. Linda (Keyed Up) Zern DISCLAIMER: All the above quotes are fictional and represent no actual opinions from any actual readers about any actual review stuff. Mostly, it’s based on smart aleck stuff my kids have said. Sigh. |
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