Easter Verse

Happy, happy Easter
May all your dreams come true
With loads of eggs and sugared peeps
And chocolate bunnies too

Queen Fiorella, Waiting in the Wings

This genealogy stuff is an interesting puzzle.  Tee-hee--Fio almost wrote gynocology. which would also have been accurate, because births are what the whole thing is about.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand, Fiorella  compared blow-ups and measurements of the three photos she has of of Kate and realized that one of them is not Kate.  Prowling the annals of the family line a little, she thinks the stranger is her great-great grandmother, Anna Davis, the mother of the real Kate's husband.

And, playing around on the internet, Fio discovered there is a defunct baronetcy in the name of her mother's line.  Aha!  Obviously if the total royal family of England goes down, Fiorella, as the oldest child in her generation, can step in and take over.

Cheerio, old chap!

Hippity-hoppity

Chocolate is Fiorella's crack, especially if it's shaped like a long-eared rabbit.  She can usually resist Hershey bars and even bypass chocolate chunks, but rabbits--chocolate rabbits!

Bunny-wise, though, it's been a bad year for Fio.  She crowed about  buying six marked-down Russell Stover chocolate rabbits at HEB, only to discover later that they had crispies in them, which means Fio could not consider them to be true Easter bunnies.  After Son had taken the crispie critters off to work with him the next day, she went out and bought another set of chocolate rabbits, at Walgreen's this time, stowing them in the trunk of her car while she spent a pleasant hour visiting with Friend Jane.  When she got home, even though the day was cold, four of the rabbits had melted.

Yesterday. she tried Walgreen's again, but all the Russell Stover chocolate rabbits were gone.

Oh, well.  She'll try Target and HEB tomorrow.  Wish her luck.  Maybe she needs a rabbit's foot.

Our Sonia

Turns out that our Sonia is a mini-mastiff, not as big as we expected her to be--just ninety-five pounds, just twenty-eight inches at the shoulder.  But she's still got that beautiful black face, that calm disposition, that loving heart.  And, come to think of it, if she were any larger, she couldn't snuggle in bed with us every morning.

Television Snippets

Spoiler alert: Fio's noticed HGTV has a new gimmick going on with House Hunters.  The chosen house is the one the buyers dis the most, as if it being unfurnished wasn't enough of a give-away.
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Back to the old days, remember The Brady Bunch?  Six kids--three blonde little girls to maintain the illusion that Florence Henderson's hair color was  natural and three rowdy little boys to maintain the illusion that Robert Reed was heterosexual.
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More info on Bill and Jen's dwarf baby.  Apparently the new addition to The Little Couple is a boy, three years old, and from China, which makes Fio ponder circumstances--China will have finally reached its own stride when dwarf American-born babies are adopted over there.

Switcheroo

It's official--Fio is converting to morning baths.  After years of soothing her aches and pains with hot water, she's discovered those late-night soaks are making it hard for her to go to sleep--and if Fiorella's brain does not get a solid night's sleep, it lies dormant all the next day.  Therefore, for the sake of maintaining her ever-fertile brain--Fio is switching to morning ablutions.

More than you needed to know. 

Fiorella, Be Nimble/Fiorella Be Quick!

But don't jump over the candlestick!

Fiorella is agile.  She can pick things up with her toes, braid her fingers, and fold her hands slim enough to slip out of hospital bands.   Her back used to bend back easily into a bridge, and her hips can still swivel like a carnival dancer.  Before hip replacement, her preferred manner of sitting on the floor was on the floor, Indian style, both west and east (pow-wow and yoga), but after hip surgery, she she's sticks to chairs.

Fio is nimble and Fio is quick, but Fio is not stupid.

Prospective Projects

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the ever-busy Fio is going great guns.

First of all, Fio has finally come up with a method to compare and contrast the two major photos she now has of her ggmother Kate, the ones that look like they're of two different people.  She's planning to photocopy both pictures, enlarge the photocopies, then measure the lengths of the faces down the middle and their widths across the cheekbones. 

Another item on Fio's list is framing an 8"x40" digital painting by Younger Son.  Needless to say, Hobby Lobby doesn't carry frames of the appropriate size so Fio will have to improvise.  (Improvise,  as you know by now, is Fiorella's middle name. )

To top it off, Fio's decided to put together a booklet of her poems similar to the one she put together in memory of Wendy Dog. Not all of her poems, of course, just the personal ones--the ones that hurt.

She'll provide timely updates.

Dwarf News (Revised)

Fiorella forgot to mention that she caught up with the Roloffs the other night.  Amy and Zack were on an expedition to climb Mt. St. Helens while Matt was having a little red schoolhouse built for the  Western town display at the Roloff farm.  Jacob only appeared briefly, and Jeremy and Molly were nowhere to be seen.

Too bad.  Matt, Amy, and Zachary (who practically ran up the mountain), were not enough to carry  a one-hour show.  Fiorella understands that climbing a mountain is tough, especially for a fifty-year-old female dwarf, but grunting gets boring after a while, and switching back and forth between the mountain climb and the construction of the schoolhouse didn't relieve the tedium.  There was no real conflict--we knew Amy would reach the top, and we knew the schoolhouse would get built in time. In romance writer speak, the show had a sagging middle. 

Especially dreary was Matt's constant prattle about how he was trying to please his wife with a surprise.  Number one, he's used that line before to justify whatever he wants to do. Number two, it sounded like he was trying to soften the egomaniac image we all have of him. Amy also tried to polish up the family, casually mentioning that she has three kids in college now.  Since Molly always took the academic high road, that must mean that Jeremy and Zack have finally gotten their heads together.  Fio is happy for them, but she would have preferred a show with the old drama.

On to other dwarf news, Friend Paula told Fio that she's read that Jen and Bill have adopted a dwarf baby, just as Fio hoped.  No sagging middle there.

Note to readers to rise early:  This blog has been revised from an earlier version that was, unfortunately, edited last night when Fiorella's brain was fried.

 

Another of Fio's Superpowers

According to the Wall Street Journal, your Fiorella is not a fussy eater--she's a supertaster, and the girl can't help it.  It's genetic.

Not that either of her parents had this trait.  Indeed, her father ate everything except fish--Fio thinks his forbearance was because he didn't trust the slippery rascals, having grown up in a town built on a  river that had been poisoned by the paper mill upstream--and her mother had a few foibles such as not liking milk, but adored dark green vegetables such as Brussels sprouts, which Fio cannot stomach.  Mother tried to entice Fiorella to chomp down on the Belgian vegetable by calling it a little cabbage, totally counter-productive because Fiorella also found cabbage too bitter.  In case you ever invite your correspondent to dinner, remember that her only acceptable veggies are potatoes, cooked or raw, and carrots, celery, and lettuce--all raw. 

On the other hand, being a supertaster has saved Fiorella from  tooth-rotting super-sweet concoctions, most alcohols, and yucky, high-calorie dressings. Her teeth are in great shape, she doesn't have diabetes, and, as she's told you before, she's young, slender, and beautiful.

No Waves, Only Ripples

Fiorella was disappointed in the Georgetown Palace's production of South Pacific, and she thinks the rest of the SRO audience was too.  There was no show-stopping applause, no spontaneous guffaws of laughter, just perfunctory clapping after each number and polite chuckles for the jokes.

First of all, the children were darling, the French was interesting, the singing was great and Fiorella fell in love with the bell-like tones of Ismael Soto, who played Lt. Cable.  A tenor, and tall to boot, he's got it made.  However, the production as a whole was too loud.  Several cast members seemed to be unaware that they were wearing mikes and could be heard all the way to New Braunfels.  Second, there was no chemistry whatsoever between Emile de Becque and Nellie Forbush.  Their first scene should have been sizzling with simmer, but all Christine Jean-Jacque and Bob Beare did was recite lines, sing, and move around a lot, leaving Fio confused as to why Nellie suddenly announced her love for the Frenchman one scene later. Third, the characters crossed the fourth wall too often, singing not to each other or to themselves, but to the audience.  Fourth, there was too much untrammeled energy.  With every character bouncing with life like a star vying for attention, Fio couldn't focus on the leads.  Fifth, Fio entreats the Palace to bring back the the creative, disciplined dances of Jessica Kelpsch.  Having everyone do something different and flail their arms around a lot looks more like a free-for-all.  Sixth, why did the "male" cast include those two girls in boy wigs?  Fio spotted them in the first guy scene and, because their hair was identical, thought they were twelve-year-old twin boys.  Wondering about how underage boys got drafted distracted her for the rest of the production.  Seventh, some advice to the theater: just because your leading lady can turn a mean cartwheel doesn't mean she should do it in three different scenes, one-handed or not.

Fiorella and Husband invited Brother and his wife along for the show and Fio reserved her four season ticket seats with high hopes--perhaps too high, but the Palace has turned out stellar performances before--Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Technicolor DreamCoat, and The Producers come to mind.  What happened?  Was South Pacific too ambitious a project?  Is the play itself too old or too familiar?

Oh well, there's still Thoroughly Modern Millie to go.

TV Tidings

When Fiorella turned on TV last night, she switched quickly through the talking heads discussing chemical warfare in Syria and past Piers Morgan dissing Congress for backing away from banning assault guns and went straight to Scott McGillivray's Income Property, one of her favorites.  It's not that she doesn't care about chemical warfare or gun control--it's that she can't do a thing about either of them and wants to be in a pleasant frame of mind before she shuts her eyes at night.

Which is also the reason that she won't be watching the Duggars flaunting their nineteen children in one-child China.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

According to Hollywood, tattoos and light beards are in, but hairy chests are out. In fact, except for minimal underarm shadows, men are as hairless below the neck as the day they were born. Romance covers, of course, follow the trend. And, going by the photos certain authors post on FaceBook, male models are also bathing in olive oil.

As usual, Fiorella is counter-culture. Jase, her hero in Princess of Bosque Bend aka Honeysuckle Dreams, now Kinkaid House, is a big, hulking Esau.  Enjoy!

Species

How wonderful!  How fabulous!  How very human!  In Austin, individual volunteers are taking care of  baby red-tailed hawks that fall from their parents' window-ledge aeries.  In Africa, people dedicate their lives to caring for orphaned baby elephants.  Across the world, families take in the cubs of lions and tigers and bears.

Human beings are the caring species, the ones who turned wolves into pet dogs, the ones who now gather to push a beached whale back into the ocean, the ones who will spend millions trying to preserve every sight variation of newt, frog, and lizard.

So can't we then find it in ourselves to be kinder to each other?

Endurance

,

Fiorella used to hate "Ozymandias," Percy Bysshe Shelley's depressing poem about how nothing matters because nothing endures.

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

But after due thought, Fio disagrees with Percy.  Certain things do endure.  Not edifices built by mighty rulers, not the rulers, not even their histories, certainly not their people, but universal principles.  Thus: 

Love Endures

How long lasts love?  Past tomorrow's dawn? 
Past hurt and anger, betrayal, desertion, death?

This weakness of the heart--will it grow strong

Enough to last the years, and stay weak yet?

Love ripens in the lusty sun of youth

And is consumed, but blossoms always sweet

To be the springtime baby's first-fed fruit,

The sustenance of summer, winter's treat.

The music of the song survives the singer

And echos of itself divinity;

Thus Love and Beauty, Truth, and Courage linger

Long past their actors in eternity.

         How long lasts love?  My love is yours
         As long as Love endures; yes, love endures.

Fiorella's Record

Fiorella isn't fond of Facebook.  She's sick and tired of the egotism--as if anyone is interested in reading about the minutia of other people's lives. Oops, wait a minute--isn't that what Fiorella writes about daily on her blog--the minutia of her own life?

And speaking of Fiorella's blog, she has been exploring that list she told you about, the one that gave her access to "comments," and she's discovered information on her viewing statistics. In case you've wondered, seventy-two viewed yesterday's  blog, sixty-three people viewed Thursday's, and ninety-one viewed Wednesday's.  Last month she had 1,975 "pageviews," and her all-time total is 31,968. Actually, she usually averages only about eight viewers per day, but she consoles herself that several people, including Husband, check her out just once a week. 

She also discovered that she's had readers 'round the word: 183 in the US, thirty-three in Germany, twenty-six in the UK (thank you, Suzy G.), five in France, four in Latvia, two in China, one in Canada, and one in the Czech Republic.  Fio can only speculate that English students in Germany, France, Latvia. China, and the Czech Republic are using her blog to practice their English reading skill.

All in all, not bad for someone who doesn't advertise.

The Great Shredded Wheat Quest

You already know that  when HEB stopped carrying Fio's favorite breakfast cereal, Post's Original Spoon-size Shredded Wheat, Fiorella started making regular visits to Target to stock up on her early-morning crack, and she would buy at least four boxes at a time to be sure she didn't run out. (Thus are hoarders born, but that's another story.)  However, when Fio got down to her last box two days ago and Husband tried to replenish the pantry, the shelf at Target was bare.

Panic set in.  If neither HEB nor Target carried Fio's cereal, did that mean Post had stopped making it?  Would Fiorella have to switch off to Cheerios?  Thus when she drove into Austin the next day to meet Friend Joan, her secondary goal was to scout out a  supermarket that might still have a couple of orphan boxes of said Shredded Wheat on its shelves. But HEB drove driven out Albertson's and Randall's years ago so what was left?

WALMART! 

With breath bated, Fio entered WalMart's door, found the breakfast cereal aisle, and walked slowly down it, searching for the familiar bright red boxes.  No luck, no luck, no luck. . . .Was her quest to be in vain?  Would she be deprived of Spoon-size Shredded Wheat forevermore? But no!  Here the boxes were, at the end of the aisle!  Up high, of course, where they always are, but Fio is skilled at establishing a toehold on the bottom shelf and stretching her fingers to tip the boxes off the top shelf onto the floor.  She snagged five whole boxes,and would have grabbed the remaining two if God had just given her longer arms or two more inches in height.

Glowing with triumph, Fio drove home.  Yes, once again, the efforts of Fiorella Plum had saved the universe.  She lugged her paper bag (which cost 10c because the WalMart was in Austin) into the house, dumped the boxes on the kitchen island, and arranged them with military precision so the household males could gaze at her with respect and awe,  .But Fio had to take off for ARWA as Husband came in and before Son arrived.When she returned at about ten, Husband was in bed, but Son awaited her with a sly smile.

"Count your boxes," he said.

Fio complied and discovered that what had been five was now seven.

Son's smile broadened.  "I stopped by Target and they'd restocked."

What a relief!  Fio gets tired of continually having to save the universe.

Directionally Challenged

Can't walk right
Can't talk right
Can't see right
Can't breathe right

What's left?

Fiorella Thanks You!

This is amazing!  I'd noticed a while ago that I wasn't getting any comments about my blogs, which was sorta okay because I write for myself (I'm the Pepys of my time), but sorta not okay--had I driven away my faithful readers?  Then I noticed the word "comments" was in the list of options in the "new" (translation--at least a year old) set-up of Blogspot.  Opening it up, I was flooded by a cornucopia of clever comments, precious pearls of wisdom, and--well--a few sleazy ads.

So thank you to Janece and Gary and Pat and Jane and Suzy and Lynn and Janet and Kit F. and Older Son, and Anonymous (who invited me to coffee--who are you?) and everyone else who's commented.   I am not alone in the world after all!

Why?

If there's anything we all believe in, it's cause and effect.  An effect is easy to spot, but identifying the cause can be tricky, leading to massive conspiracy theories, literal witch hunts, and actual lynchings.  Determination of cause is theoretical, which can be dead wrong--as in the Morton case, currently sullying the legal annals of Williamson County.  As when old-time biblical scholars estimated the beginnings of us all from the scriptural begats.  As when Jews were blamed for Middle Ages ills, as when all blacks were suspect for STDs, as when mothers were held responsible for any and all problems their children developed (and still are).

Yes, we all seek immediate causes.  Thus Friend P's mother blamed her aging husband's failing health on a recently-installed defibrillator, just as Fiorella's father blamed his shingles attack on getting his arm bent back too far as he entered the senior van the day before.

Just as Fiorella blamed the mediocre haddock last night on the fact that she'd frozen it for a week.  An hour after dinner, it struck her that she hadn't breaded it.

Expecting and Anticipating?

Fio's heard that The Little Couple, the TV show featuring dwarf physician Jennifer Arnold and dwarf entrepreneur Bill Klein, is coming back to  TLC in mid-April.  Fio hopes there's a good reason the show has been MIA and its stars incommunicado for the past year and a half.  Like maybe a dwarf baby? 

Mental Overload

Fiorella has too many tentacles reaching out in too many different directions.  For instance, she's been listing thing lately, like the five places she's lived, like the names of her best friends and how she met them--toting up, so to speak.  She's also planning a blog about why she would never write a Fifty Shades of Grey-type book. And she's contemplating how integral decoration is to mankind.  Thank about it. We decorate our big rigs with colorful advertisements.  We decorate out buildings with graffiti.  We doodle on notepads.  We decorate ourselves with clothes and jewelry and make-up.  We're like ravens, always with an eye out for the next shiny stone, and Fio thinks it's born in.

Is sampling off the ever-fertile brain of Fiorella a bit too much for you?  Well, just think of what it's like for Fiorella!

Meteorite

Sarah Palin was pretty, but she wore glasses, which indicated she was serious, a person to be reckoned with.  Sure, her family was dysfunctional, but whose isn't?  She was charismatic, attracting a faithful following, and even when she screwed up the facts, she was articulate.  Yes, she went her own way and stuck to her guns, no matter how mis-aimed.

And now she's nothing but an irrelevant historical note, another wannabe who crashed and burned..

Too Much Excitement

Fiorella is weak and wobbly this morning, so weak that it took her several tries and a desperate prayer to finally heave herself up and over the side of her soaker tub.  That's what happens when you've had a heavy week, including a visit to a voice pathologist (who may be able not only to help Fiorella with vocal tremor, but restore her singing voice), then top it off with an outrageous rap at the San Gabriel Writers' League meeting.  That's what happens when you lie in bed planning your syllabus for the library-sponsored romance writing course that SGWL asked you to teach this fall.

Fiorella's caffeine is life, and, as usual, her cup runneth over because her candle burns at both ends.  Her calendar is clear today--let's hope the dogs let her nap a little.

Update:  Sonia slept on the couch beside Fiorella and Bosco slept at her feet on the floor.

Down the Middle

At one time in her life, the running joke was that Fio was so desperate to pick up classes that if a college asked her to teach Chinese wrestling, couch potato Fio would agree, then run out and buy a book on the subject.  Yes, she was the Tony Slattery of the college circuit--check that reference out on Google.  Fio even taught an individualized studies psychology course on behaviors, as she remembers.  It was out a books that said things.like if you look to the left, you're lying, and if you look to the right, you're telling the truth.

Of course Fio, being Fio, urged her student to question these assertions.  What if someone had a vision problem which caused him/her to favor one direction?  What if a shyster had read the book and knew how to look honest?  And if honesty could really be determined so easily, why weren't the police tossing their lie detectors--which, in themselves weren't always that reliable--in favor of eye detectors?

Strangely, her student went along with her, never questioning why an admitted linguist was teaching psychology.  In fact, the only thing she did question was Fio's explanation of connotation and denotation--she thought Fio had them reversed.  But if there was one thing on the entire course that Fio was sure of, it was connotation, which is an implied reference (e.g., dumb), and denotation, which is an exact reference (e.g., blonde).

And as Fio defended herself, she looked straight at the student the entire time. 

Weirder and Weirder

Back to that genealogy thing again, Fiorella's ggmother is proving to be something of an enigma. Some records say she was born in Farmerstown, Ohio, but she said she was born in Switzerland.  She said she was an orphan, but records show her mother was still alive when she was a child.  She told her grandchildren that her father was an Egyptian, but her last name was Bergdorf.  She also told them that the aunt who supposedly raised her was a witch who haunted a house, then bought it up cheap.  Also, the two photos of her that Cousin Sue and I have don't match up.

Were there two women with the same name living in that area of Ohio back then?  Or has Fio come by her talent for fiction all too honestly? 

IT'S B-A-A-A-C K ! ! ! ! !

Fiorella is left-handed again.  Yes, she realized the cellulitis was back when she felt a familiar pain in her right hand as she was driving home from the visitation for Friend Jane's husband.  Immediate ice packs and elevation helped, but this morning the hand looks plump and beautiful--interpretation: Righty is swollen.  And, darn it, Fio has a lot of stuff planned for the week, mostly involving driving to the ends of the universe.

Better work a doctor appointment into her schedule somewhere.

Relativity

Sometimes Fio thinks we live in a more complicated world than our grandmothers did.  We have to know how to use computers, to work dishwashers and clothes washers and driers and microwaves and convection ovens, to operate garage doors, to set alarm systems and in-ground sprinkler systems--well, Fio hasn't quite mastered that last one yet. 

Then Fio thinks about what women in earlier times had to manage. In caveman days, women had to possess encyclopediacal knowledge of which plants were safe to eat, which ones had medicinal properties, and which ones were deadly.  They had to know how to cure animal skins and turn them into clothing, how to prepare food from scratch and preserve it, how to read the stars and the moon, even how to defend themselves. And in relatively modern times, Fio's own mother had to learn how to use a typewriter and a telephone, to drive a car (which she quit doing as soon as possible), to work a wringer washer, to sew clothes on a treadle machine, to adjust a television.

Maybe every generation has its own complications relative to the circumstances of the time. And when we move on to new circumstances and new times, we forget the old skills. Fiorella, for instance, wouldn't make it through her first day of being a cavewoman.     

 

 

T

Looking through the latest edition of Smithsonian, Fiorella realized that the t-shirt has taken over the world.

When Fio was a little tyke, girls wore blouses and guys wore button shirts.  A t-shirt was what Dad wore under his button shirt for a reason nobody can seem to remember or what Marlon Brando plastered on himself in most of his movies to show off his pecs.  Then came the unisex movement and everyone donned t-shirts and jeans, both of which have stayed around in various incarnations ever since.

Which brings Fio back to her original claim, that t-shirts have taken over the world.  Yes, from pole to pole, horizon to horizon, t-shirts are standard wear, even by, according to the Smithsonian photos, previously uncontacted tribes in South America. 

Total Ennui

Some days, Fio whizzes around the house like The Flash, checking off fifty million entries on her to-do list. Today isn't one of them.  She barely had the strength to hold the hot water bottle in place while she filled it from the teakettle to treat her sinus headache.  And now it's noon and she hasn't done anything but read the paper, work the crossword, and answer emails.  It's like she's in a drug daze.

Must be the aftermath of the bagels she ate for dinner yesterday.  Everyone knows poppy seeds can make a person test positive for opium.

A Glance into Fio's Cracked Crystal Ball

What's Fio's prediction for life post-Big Bang Theory?

Maybe Johnny Galecki  and Kaley Cuoco will star in a spin-off featuring Leonard and Penny as a married couple trying to balance his academic career and her show biz aspirations.  And maybe Melissa Rauch (Bernadette) will put in a stint as a talk-show host.  Sheldon is too extreme a character to carry a show without a foil so Jim Parsons, who's already demonstrated his musical chops, will head off for Broadway, following in the nimle footsteps of Neil Patrick Harris.  Amy Farrah Fowler is also too extreme for singular stardom, but Mayim Bialik is so versatile that her pan is always full of fish to fry, in or out of show biz. Howard Wolowitz--Simon Helberg--could fill Michael J. Fox's shoes, but Fio wants to think he'll use that golden voice of his to do voice-overs. And Kunal Nayyar--just like the writers of the show, Fiorella doesn't know what to do with Raj.  Maybe he could join Bones as an intern.

One thing Fiorella knows--whatever she predicts won't happen, just like in the Sally Forth, when what Fio thought was pregnancy turned out to be some sort of seasonal disorder.

Or did it?