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Headless Mike – A Halloween Story

My writing group had a Halloween story challenge.  I was stumped about where to begin (we usually get more of a prompt than that) and was talking about it with a friend who always seems to point me in the right direction. She asked why things always had to be dark and scary and then suggested that I could write something about Headless Mike (the centerpiece of my Halloween decorations).  I’ll tell you what, sometimes inspiration is just that easy!

Here is my Halloween story.  As Loretta Lynn would say, it is all true, even the parts that didn’t really happen.

Headless Mike

In 1918 Vern Pickle, died in Long Beach.  He was 19 years old.  Vern had gone to the cyclone coaster at the Pike on his day off to try to retrieve a hat belonging to a young lady friend (what a chivalrous guy).  He rode the car up to the top and hopped out.  When he bent over to retrieve the hat, the car coming the other way on the parallel track decapitated him.  His body washed up on the beach the next day, but his head wasn’t found until a month later, lying among the rocks at near the jetty. It is said that Vern’s ghost still roams the City, ready to lend a hand.

Source: Claudine Burnett, author of Died In Long Beach

Our first Halloween on Vermont Street, I was surprised to be the only house on the block putting up decorations.  But the idea caught on and these days is fairly competitive.

The signature of my Halloween decorations is Headless Mike, affectionately named after my husband, Mike with a head.

Headless Mike is made from some of Mike’s old clothes that I pilfered from the Goodwill bag, stuffed with newspaper.  He even has “hands” made from old gardening gloves. Headless Mike spends the month of October sitting comfortably in a chair on the front porch. I’d like to say that he keeps an eye on things, but since he doesn’t have a head, being a lookout really isn’t his thing.

Now, even though I am the one who created Headless Mike in the first place, I continue to be regularly startled by the specter of this “person” sitting on my front porch.  There is something about his size and the fact that he is wearing real clothes that lends an air of authenticity to the month-long porch-sit. I’m not the only one, real Mike and especially our poor mailman are also often startled throughout October.

Real Mike is a friendly and easy-going guy.  He cares about his neighbors and his neighborhood.  But there are a few things that get him really riled up. One is people who don’t pick up after their dogs, another is littering.

Last October I put up all of my Halloween decorations, including Headless Mike.  Real Mike and I were out front admiring my handiwork and discovered that someone had left a giant dog turd on the parkway. 

Oh, the rant that followed!  How he was going to install cameras, that if he caught whoever it was, he was going to follow them home and leave it at their front door, how people who don’t pick up after their dogs shouldn’t be allowed to have animals … and so on.

I looked over at Headless Mike and asked him if next time he would please scare that guy out of letting his dog poop on our lawn because real Mike isn’t as young as he used to be, and he can’t take all the aggravation.

A few days later, I was out talking to my neighbor who is always up on the latest neighborhood gossip. She told me how her son Charlie had been walking to school the day before and when he passed the house around the corner where the big German Shepard lives, he smelled, then saw a GIANT pile of dog poop on their front step.

“Mom, it was piled right against the door, probably three-feet high!  You KNOW that when they opened the door that it all came spilling in!”

I couldn’t stop laughing.  But my gosh, who would pull a prank like that?

A few weeks later, the party girl with the Toyota Camry thought that we had forgotten about the last time we caught her littering and parked in front of our house again.  This time I didn’t notice any trash on the ground when I left for the gym, but Mike discovered her discarded Del Taco leftovers after she drove away. 

“Why wouldn’t she just put this in the trash! Doesn’t she know that all this stuff winds up in the Ocean?”

She came back that night and when I was heading to the gym the next morning, I noticed that her car seems kind of full of stuff. That’s weird. Oh well, gotta get to spin class.

Well, when I got home, Mike couldn’t wait to tell me how apparently someone had filled her car with trash.

“She was FREAKING out! She started tossing it out on the ground and all the kids and parents on their way to school started heckling her! She was crying, it was a whole scene.  I went out there with a trash bag to try to help her out, but she just shoveled it on the ground and drove off. Lots of people stopped to help me pick it up. She won’t be coming back this time for sure.”

All month long, I kept finding empty Coors Light cans on the front porch next to Headless Mike’s chair.  It was a little creepy. Mike doesn’t hang out on the front porch. Who was leaving empty beer cans out there?

Then one morning, I was leaving for the gym a little earlier than usual.  When I stepped out on the front porch, I found Headless Mike with a half-full can of COLD Coors Light in his gardening glove hand!

Ok, so this creature made of old clothes stuffed with newspaper was roaming the neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, magically avenging wrongdoing. Sure. Why not?

But HOW WAS HE DRINKING BEER?  HE DOESN’T HAVE A HEAD!

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Cleaning Cats

This post isn’t about how completely adorable cats are when they clean themselves although that probably should be a topic for another post very soon. Instead, it is about how cats can contribute to cleaning the house.

This morning while I was trying to get myself organized to start work, Sally came around looking for some attention.  Which of course meant that I had to stop whatever I was trying to start doing and give him some.  I scratched his chin a bit and when he was walking away, I grabbed the end of his tail and shook it.

There was something about the way the morning light was coming in from the windows that lit up all the dust that came flying out of his fluffy tail.  It was like shaking out a feather duster!  Of course, my first thought was bath time!  But I also realized that I hadn’t really thought about how much dust these kitties must pick up as they go through their days waving their fluffy tails around the house.

Mr. Man and I tend to only think about the messes that the cats make – cat hair on everything, cat food all over the floor by their bowls, the little bits of cardboard that they rip out of their cardboard cat scratchers…we never think about what they do to help clean up around here. I decided that today I would give the kitties credit for all the ways they help keep things clean.

Aside from their fluffy, feather duster-like tails, they also have very fluffy tummies that make excellent dry mops as they slide and roll around on the wood floors. You would think that they wouldn’t like chasing their toys around on the wood floors, where it is harder to get a grip. But the slipping and sliding is part of the fun.  Anabel has some moves when she is chasing after her ballerina mouse where she starts to slide, then sprawls out and spins around.  She winds up facing the opposite direction.  Sally prefers the belly-flop slide when he is playing catch with Mr. Man.  He chases after the toy mouse, sliding in to capture it.  Then he picks up his prize and returns it to his playmate.  Mr. Man can get the whole floor dusted just by varying where he throws the mouse!

Anabel and Sally also have that well-documented cat quality of not tolerating cluttered surfaces.  When we leave something laying around where it shouldn’t be, we aren’t surprised when we find it on the floor.  Many times, we find it because we step on it (ouch!). One of these days the cats will finally train us to put things back where they belong in the first place.

And perhaps one of the most under-appreciated ways that they help out with keeping things cleaned up around here is their paper-shredding talents.  Anabel is particularly concerned with potential identity theft and will regularly shred any papers she finds sitting out.  She was quite fanatical about it when she was a kitten; I have the scraps of book covers to prove it.  As she’s matured, she has become more selective about what she feels needs to be shredded, although she continues to have a big hang up about post-it notes.

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World Ballet Day 2019

Guys!  It’s World Ballet Day again!

I’m glad that I didn’t mark my calendar after last year’s World Ballet Day because World Ballet Day 2019 is certainly not on the same date.  But there are a bunch of new ballet videos on the internet today for our viewing pleasure, some from companies that we got to know last year and some that are newly discovered.

*Disclaimer: I don’t have hours to spend watching videos of ballet classes and rehearsals either. But by linking a bunch of them here we can all find them whenever we do have time to squeeze in a few minutes of ballet viewing in our day.

The Royal Ballet is back again with four hours of content. I love watching their class so much.  I also really love all of the studio fashion statements.

The Royal Ballet

The Australian Ballet has also posted four hours’ worth.

The Australian Ballet

A new discovery for me this year is Teatro alla Scala.  I skipped ahead to a terrible turns exercise – double attitude, double arabesque, double a la seconde, double pirouette en de dan – the stuff of my dance nightmares.  Fortunately, it looked like many of the professional dancers were having a hard time with it too.

Teatro alla Scala

The Wiener Staatsballett has given us a rehearsal of a Balanchine ballet that they are adding to the repertory.

Weiner Staatsballett

I hope you’ll take a few moments to watch a little ballet today and remember these links are here if you need a fix in the future.  Afterall, ballet season is just around the corner.

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Improving My Workspace

I’ve been taking baby steps to improve my workspace. It started a few months ago when I decided to stop storing my sewing machine on the corner of my desk.  It’s not like I can even sew here if I want to. Sewing is a dining table activity.

After making the bold move to allow myself to use my entire desk for my workspace (I know, right!) my bad habit of making piles started to take over. I’m still working on getting the tickler file situation situated (because that is where these piles should go to hang out) but in the meantime, I’ve gone from five piles to one (and not because I made it taller).  I feel that is a substantial improvement.

It feels very luxurious to me to spend time or effort taking care of my workspace. When I was working, I never felt like it was a legitimate use of my time to tidy up my office, which is sad because I certainly can tell that I am more focused and productive when my surroundings are in order.

I have great admiration for those minimalist-workspace people. Nothing is left sitting around on their desk, everything is in the drawer in clearly labeled files. For me, out-of-sight means out-of-mind; if I put paperwork for things that are in-process away, I can completely forget that they exist!  Suddenly I don’t have anything to worry about working on and I can just head out to the beach.  I am working on building a more tidy workflow process one baby step at a time.

This past week I decided to splurge on a little acrylic drawer-thingy to wrangle my paperclips and post-it notes and such.  It also created a great spot for my fancy, flamingo glitter globe to come to work with me. So far having her near has been a great help, a little bit of swirling glitter sure can produce a lot of inspiration.

Now the flamingo gets to hang out with the solar-powered lucky cats, my magic rocks and other lucky charms (a rock from my nephews, a shell from Mr. Man, head’s up pennies from my walks), and the positive vibes scented candle that my sister sent me for my birthday (note the cat-safe candle container).

On the other side of the desk, resting on the ledge is my “emergence tiara” – another gift from my nephews (I have a suspicion that their mom might have been more involved with creating this treasure than they are giving her credit for).

Emergency tiara and fun card from Mom.

As you can see, my workspace is bright and tidy and pleasant.  Anabel thinks so too.  She thinks that it should be her workspace now.  It might have something to do with the cushion that I’m trying out on my chair.  At any rate, Anabel has now decided that this is her favorite daytime sleeping spot.  Apparently, I have made my workplace too pleasant.

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Cat Book Report

Today will be a cat book report on an important work of feline literature: Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag. This is a book that is always highly recommended by any bookstore cat.

There once was a book about a very old man and a very old woman.  It was the oldest, continually published, illustrated book.  Because cats.

“If only we had a cat, then we would be happy,” she said.

But not hundreds of cats,

Or thousands of cats,

Or millions, and billions, and trillions of cats.

That is too many cats.

One cat is quite nice.  Personally though, two cats is purrfect.

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Buy/Sell/Date

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a very entertaining one-woman show by Sarah Jones called Sell/Buy/Date.  I had learned about Sarah Jones when listening to an episode of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons podcast.  In it, she was telling Elizabeth about her current project – a comedic theatrical production about sex trafficking.  Because that sounds like a hoot, right?

It turns out that Sarah Jones is also a Tony and Obie award-winning performer.  Her previous one-woman show, called Bridge & Tunnel was produced by Meryl Streep.

On the podcast, Sarah was very witty and smart and made liberal use of her amazing facility for accents to create all sorts of different characters.  When I saw that she was performing locally, I enlisted a friend and we went!

This performance was of the project she had mentioned on the podcast.  It was a one-woman show about people affected by the sex industry.  I knew that she would be inhabiting a tremendous range of characters, but I had no idea what to expect as far as the storyline.

The story was smartly rendered under the conceit that she was a professor in the future who was presenting a lecture.  In the future imagined in this work, technology enables the presenter to become inhabited by the recorded testimonies of various individuals.

I’d like to consider the two components of the piece: 1) the highly researched and provocative subject matter; and 2) her virtuosic performance, separately.

Sarah’s performance was amazing.  If I had been listening only and not watching, I would not have believed for a moment that all of those characters were being performed by one person.  Even the “lead” character had an impeccable British accent, although Sarah is not. But the virtuosity of her performance was not restricted to her vocal delivery.  Her physicality and facial expressions were also tremendously effective.  It was fantastic the way that that this tall, graceful, and elegant woman could move around the stage in a manner that left no doubt that she was, at that moment, actually an older, overweight, and not particularly athletic man.

In terms of the subject matter – she very deftly presented a highly provocative subject in a very insightful, balanced, and scientific way. There was nothing prurient about it.  Based on comments that she made in the podcast, I would have expected a more overtly biased perspective.  But by presenting the topic with an almost clinical tone, she left the audience to sit with their own feelings and biases, forcing all of us to think about the topic more than if she had shown her hand.

I was certainly eager to have the opportunity to discuss the performance with my friend. For me the topic leads down a rabbit hole of relationship power dynamics. As we talked, unraveling the threads of what we had just watched, we realized that there wasn’t any bow to wrap things up with, just more questions.

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Mind the Gap

I was walking and listening to my current favorite podcast, Earth Tribe Radio. Fiona and Jill are wonderfully wacky ladies who make my walks terribly interesting. I started listening to them because they had an episode about how cats are psychic. You know that got my attention!

The particular episode that inspired today’s post was about meditation and mindfulness. They often bring up an idea that sparks something for me to mull over while I walk and, in this episode, it was when Fiona suggested that another word to use when considering this concept is “awareness.” They expanded on that thought, talking about finding little moments throughout the day to be mindful rather than having dogmatic expectations about when and how someone should meditate.

Fiona presented her technique of “stop, drop, and go” that involves just taking a moment to appreciate what is going on around you and then continuing with what you are doing.  Jill shared a similar technique where you exhale and then intentionally pause for a moment before inhaling.  While she was describing this, the term that sprang to my mind was “mind the gap.”

I know that is not what the original “mind the gap” is about, but I think this is an effective appropriation of familiar aphorism. Why not use “mind the gap” as a mindfulness prompt? Don’t you think that it would make a great slogan for a t-shirt or a wrist tattoo? 

Minding the gap is using that pause as a moment of awareness.  I like the idea of using moments of interest throughout your day to be present.  I mean, I can’t be completely tuned in to everything all day long, I’d never get anything done!  Being open to taking moments to notice wonderful, little things here and there though can be enough to create a sense of calmness, of centeredness, of connectedness.

As I was contemplating “mind the gap” as an awareness practice, I noticed this very interesting rock and had to stop.

My initial reaction was that I wanted to grab it.  But why did I feel the need to possess this interesting rock?  I mean, I like a magic rock as much as the next girl, but I also try to respect the sovereignty of objects out in the world.  When I notice a beautiful flower, I take a photo rather than picking it.  Why shouldn’t I show this rock the same respect?  I refrained from picking up the rock but did stop and take a photo of it.

And then I was on my way.  I had minded the gap, given this rock some attention, and returned to my business.

We don’t have to change our path or our intention every time something catches our attention.  We also don’t have to go through our lives with blinders on to all the fascinating things around us. If we mind the gap, we can enjoy those small moments of appreciation without getting sidetracked.

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Who do you listen to, your body or your mind?

Recently, I have been working out less.  I listened to my body and noticed that it wanted a break.  I didn’t quit going to the gym all together, but instead of five or six days a week, it was more like two or three.  I would still set my alarm for all the usual days, but when I got out of bed (I made myself actually get out of bed before the decision was made), I would listen to my body if it told me that it didn’t want to exercise that day.  The trick is to actually get out of bed before deciding to tap out. Otherwise, I couldn’t tell if my body really wanted a break or my brain was trying to trick me.  I find my brain lies to me a lot.

Aside from the get out of bed test, the reason that I could tell that I was listening to my body and not my brain is that I was still feeling good even though I wasn’t exercising as much.  I tend to get really antsy when I don’t get enough exercise, sometimes I feel like I want to crawl out of my skin. I was able to focus and be productive and I was still moving enough to keep my back from getting too angry with me, so it was clear that my body was still getting what it needed.

Now this is no way to achieve one’s fitness goals, but it is a good strategy to keep things copacetic if you are of a certain age.  I am still listening to my body and I am starting to feel like I need to ramp back up to my higher activity level.  I can feel it in my arms a lot right now. 

Thinking about how I need to listen to my body instead of my brain when it comes to exercise led to contemplating other areas of my life in which my brain likes to lie to me. No surprise, food is the next biggie.  When I listen to my body, I tend to eat more fruits and veggies.  I don’t get as hungry and I don’t get tummy aches.  When I eat what my brain wants, it tends to be more white food – things with a lot of sugar, things that are processed … things like French fries.  My brain always tries to convince me that I want to eat fried food.

It’s funny to think that I shouldn’t listen to my brain.  Isn’t that where my smart is supposed to be after all?  It can be more challenging to hear what my body has to say to me, especially when my brain is shouting and jumping up and down. But when I am quiet and listen, it never steers me wrong.

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Adventures with Eggplant

I have to tell you, I have avoided attempting any culinary adventures with eggplant for a long time.  Sure, I’ve always been a fan of eggplant parmesan, who isn’t?  But it is something that I hadn’t wanted to try to make.  But recently, my obsession with the delicious, fluffy babaganoush at the Mediterranean restaurant down the street has motivated me to overcome my avoidance.

Babaganoush

Once I decided to look up recipes for babaganoush, I realized that there was nothing to be afraid of.  I love any recipe that involves roasting something, and bonus points are given for anything that you don’t need to do anything to before throwing it in the oven (ok, a few punctures so that it doesn’t explode, but stabbing a squash is sort of a bonus stress-relief activity, don’t you think?).

  • roasted eggplant before
  • roasted eggplant after

Of course, since I was trying to find the laziest way possible to make it, I had some uneven results:

Experiment #1

I mostly followed a recipe from Pinterest. I roasted the eggplant at 400 for 20 minutes or so, until it was soft.  After it cooled, I scrapped the flesh out of the skin and put it in the food processor.  Then one clove of garlic and a sort-of homemade tahini (ok, it was just crushed sesame seeds), salt, and olive oil.

Results: the food processor wasn’t good at pulverizing all of the eggplant seeds. It came out with a gritty, lumpy texture.  I was going for light and fluffy and this wasn’t.  Also, the garlic was STRONG.  Like overpowering.  I’m a bit of a garlic wimp.  This wasn’t for me.

Experiment #2

Roasted the eggplant same as before.  Also roasted one clove of garlic with it.  This was a stroke of genius if I do say so myself.  You still get the garlic flavor, but it is softer, not so pungent.  This time I went after the eggplant flesh and the garlic clove with the immersion blender.  It worked great!  I didn’t even pretend to try to put any sesame anything in it this time. This batch wound up smooth and almost fluffy.  Now if only I had remembered the olive oil!

Experiment #3

Roasted 2 eggplants.  Threw in 2 cloves of garlic for last 5 minutes.  I’m not sure what happened but it came out pretty soggy.  Maybe because I didn’t let them cool all the way before peeling them?

I was a bit flummoxed and decided to take a break.

It turns out that babaganoush is a gateway dish that leads one down the slippery slope of exploring other adventures with eggplant.

A few months later, the eggplant display at Trader Joe’s called to me.  The eggplants were large and heavy and inexpensive (it must have been eggplant season).  I brought one home.  It was too hot to consider turning on the oven, time to find some instructions for cooking eggplant on the grill.

Grilled Eggplant

There are some fairly involved recipes out there.  You know how I feel about too many steps.  But I did decide to make the effort to brine the eggplant before throwing it on the grill.  The most challenging part about this step is figuring out how to keep the eggplant slices submerged in the brine, those guys really want to float!  But the effort to outcome ratio for delicious grilled eggplant is very reasonable.

  • First slice the eggplant into rounds, maybe ¾” to 1” thick. 
  • Then brine them for 30 minutes to 1 hour (dissolve 2 tablespoons of salt in warm water, then add cool water until you have enough to cover the slices). 
  • Then dry them off, get some olive oil and salt and get ready to grill. 
  • Here is something that I think is an important step: don’t oil the eggplant slices until right when you are going to put them on the grill.  And only brush and then salt the side you are putting on the grill. 
  • Then close the lid and walk away for 5 minutes.  When you come back, oil and salt the up side before you flip.

That came out so tasty that I’ve made it again.

I’m tempted to puree the grilled eggplant, but it is already so delicious why bother with the extra step?

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Cat Loaf

Sally cat loaf

This morning when I sat down at my desk, the kittens were very eager to get to “work.” But they didn’t go to their usual first-thing-in-the-morning spots, they went to their early evening spots and both assumed the cat loaf position.  I suppose that it’s good to change things up every so often, get a fresh perspective and all.

I was surprised when I looked over at Anabel and found her in an adorable cat loaf position.  I peeked around the corner and so was Sally!  These kitties tend to favor the sprawled-out-on-one-side position so two, very proper cat loaves caught my attention.

Fortunately, I took photos right away because these loaves degenerated into sphinx, then quickly to sprawl positions.

It turns out that the cat loaf position is just another relaxed cat posture, much like the sprawl.  It tends to be favored when it is cooler as it is an excellent position with which to conserve body heat.  I guess it was a cooler morning, like maybe 70 degrees.  Personally, I like it when the house drops below 78 overnight, but it has been pretty hot for so long that I suppose a kitten could feel chilled.  

Another indicator of a cat loaf being relaxed is having their paws tucked under.  My favorite variation of this is when their paws are curled inward, just in front of their chest. Of course, you can always find something on the internet to worry about and one of the articles that I read about cat loaf warned that it may also be an indication of a cat who has an injured paw.  So, if your cat suddenly and consistently assumes the cat loaf position, if may be time for a paw check.

cat loaf variation
technically sphinx pose

As I write this, Anabel has taken up in the same spot.  She and Sally are both in their more common sprawled-out-heap-of-cat posture.

sleeping cat
Anabel’s regular sleeping position