Boobies

"Stress is when you wake up screaming, and you realize you haven't fallen asleep."

-Unknown

Tee Hee. Remember the show WKRP In Cincinnati? In it's pilot episode it introduced a number of characters who all worked at a struggling radio station in Ohio. Among them was a displaced, washed-up DJ named Johnny "Dr. Johnny Fever" Caravello. Johnny had lost a great gig as the rock & roll DJ for a hip radio station in Las Angeles until he lost his job for saying a certain word that the FCC frowned upon in the 1070's that word was "BOOGER." LOL. Now by today's standards that wouldn't even raise the eyebrow of an FCC censor, but back then it didn't take a lot to give the general public the "vapors." Johnny had a wonderful moment a little later in the episode when the new station manager, Andy Travis, gave Johnny back his rock & roll music and he gave him permission to say the word Johnny had longed to say..."Booger."

While blogging on AOL I was very happy. I got to share my weird sense of humor and I made a few friends in doing so. That felt really good, considering how many people I have chased off with that very same sense of humor. Believe me, the humor I show here and what I am liable to do in person could be two very different things. I can be...outrageous at times. I have learned to reel it in somewhat, but every once in a while it would come out and have it's way. I only got a couple complaints over the two years I was with AOL, and I took them with a grain of salt and was actually happy to try and write so that I didn't offend anyone, and still let my humor have it's place. I learned a lot from that creative criticism...instead of taking the attitude of..."it's my blog and I will post what I want," I chose to see what a little hard work in the humor department could do for me. It was worth the effort. I took the criticism and grew as a writer.

Still, one thing I always wanted to do was post a photograph of a "Pet Chesticle." What is a "Pet Chesticle you ask?" Well, see, it happened like this. One day my husband, Alan, was on his way home from work when he got a flat tire. He pulled off the freeway and began to change the tire. As he stopped for a minute to catch his breath, he noticed a brown carton sitting in some bushes a few feet away. Curiosity got the better of him, and he peeked inside the lost box to find it full with fake boobs. Yep, and entire box of different size fake boobs. When he called me to tell me what he had found, he asked me if "he could keep them?" I said, "sure." I had NO idea what would become of them...but why not keep them? There was no address or even and invoice in the box.

One night Alan was raising the roof with his snoring. Jeepers can that man snore. It is one of the reasons I began cleaning the house, writing, and editing photos between the hours of 10:00 PM and 5:00 AM. There is no way to fall asleep until after he leaves for work. I don't watch daytime TV anyway, so it was a good solution for us. One such night, when he was hitting an ungodly pitch, I got up, went into my office, got out the glue gun, and started making a little person out of the fake boobies he had found. I think they came out kinda cute. I named the first one Naomi. After that I offered them as a prize for the monthly game of MADLIBS that I played on my AOL journal Ellipsis. I also offered an original photograph by me or some other nifty prize, but only one person in all that time ever chose a "Pet Chesticle" as a prize.

I always wondered if I had been able to have posted a photo of the little cutie if that would have made folks request one of them, but I was always worried it would be some sort of TOS violation, and GOD knows it would just be wrong to send the AOL Granny running from the room with a case of the vapors, the way she did when Mara quoted Chris Rock one time or like when Granny pulled the plug on Armand due to some misinformation that somehow supposedly violated her laws of decency. Anyway, here for the first time is a picture of the very first "Pet Chesticle" ever made, Naomi. She still sits on the back of my desk, and she smiles and tells me it will all be "ok."

I will learn Blogspot's curious, mysterious ways, I will learn to do coding, I will not be alone in the world of blogging, I will rebuild, my friends are still only an email away...but most of all she just makes me laugh. I mean she is kinda goofy...a little bit naughty...and quite perky. A girl after my own heart. I can be all those things, and after this week I feel a little like I was boxed up and left by the side of the road. Not just because of how ugly things got on AOL, but with the cold I am fighting, and the friends I am missing, who have been lost to me. Thanksgiving makes me think of my mother. Sigh. I never know if I am supposed to miss her in November (when she died) or in December (when I found out she died). She hated humor. Shrug. This will be our first Thanksgiving without some member of my "circus folk" family being a part of our lives. Sigh of Relief!

It feels good to be over here, I kind wish I would have moved sooner. It is a fresh start for me, one I had been needing for a very long time. I got more then one fresh start this week. I am taking all things slow, so they never go wrong again because life is too short to loose people you really love, and life is too short to waste it on people who never loved you anyway, and life is too damn short to not stop and hear the laughter, as well as sometimes cause the laughter. So for the AOL GRANNY and all the sad sacks like my family BOOOOOOOOOGERRRRRRR!

Always, OndineMonet

"Naomi"
Berkeley, California
Spring 2004