by Kathy Brasby | Jun 10, 2019 | Country life, Humor
When things go wonky in our lives, we like to blame our shortcomings on our parents. My parents were pretty normal, but I’ve realized that I can blame my explosions on my dad. It’s a generation thing.
Being the daughter of a farmer means that I have a plethora of different skills from chick dipping to hay bucking.
When I was a child, we lived several miles from the nearest town. There was no trash pickup so we had a 55-gallon barrel where we burnt trash. When I was 10, Dad showed me how to dump trash in the barrel and start the fire.
He struck a match and held it over some old newspaper. The flame grabbed the paper and began to spread to the rest of the rubbish.
“If you have a lot of trouble getting the match to catch,” he said, “you can sprinkle a little gas on the trash, and it’ll get things going.”
Oddly enough, the match always has trouble catching. At first, I sprinkled a little gas just like he showed me. But sometimes your wrist slips and a little more gets sprinkled. That worked better with a satisfying whoosh.
My brother was in on this too, and soon we were diligent in soaking the trash before tossing in the match. We never had a failure. The time that the boom was so big it blew out the flames scared us a little.
Not enough, apparently.
Shortly after college, I moved into a house that has a natural gas grill in the back yard. I was a total rookie with such a convenience item.
I had heard from someone that there was a hole in the back of the pipe supporting the grill. You stuck a lit match in the hole to start the grill.
I made sure the lid to the grill was closed so the flame wouldn’t go out once I got it going. Then I turned the gas knob on, crawled around to the back of the pipe and stuck the lit match into the tube.
A massive fireball shot out in all directions over my head. The lid swung up and crashed down. Yep, the flame went out.
I kept that story to myself for a long time.
Several years later, the kids and I were working on a house rehabilitation. The day was cold, and the furnace was off. So I trekked down to the basement and pulled the cover off the furnace. I searched the innards of the furnace because I wasn’t sure where to light it.
No problem. Inventive was my middle name. I turned on the gas, stood beside the furnace (not in front. I’m not a fool.) and tossed in a match. Whoosh. Flames leaped out and then settled into a nice little fire in the furnace. Just like I expected.
The bang brought the kids racing down the stairs.
They thought I might be dead. No worries. Just a few singed eyebrows and some frizzy hair. And the furnace was roaring. We had heat.
Alas, they took away my lighting privileges that day.
I hadn’t lit a grill in years, but recently we were having guests for dinner, and nobody was around. I needed the grill hot for steaks. And I knew how to do this.
I turned on the propane tank under our grill and twisted the knobs to start. This grill has an ignite button so I should be good. It clicked, but no flame blossomed.
Obviously, it was time to go looking for a match. But where on earth did I manually light this thing? Farm kids have a good eye, and I figured out how to remove a plate under the grill. I tossed in the match. Boom!
Just for the record, the steaks were delicious. But my daughter eyed me that evening. “What happened to your hair?” It did grow out quickly, so no real harm there.
But I was banished again.
I recently ran across an idea for a burner that obliterates weeds. All you have to do is point at the weed and press a button. Poof. A little flame shot out to burn the weed.
I thought that was kinda slow. One weed at a time?
However, the dial went to 11, which theoretically could leave a 10-foot crater in the back yard. That ought to take care of all the weeds. I was ready to order one.
My kids have ordered a straitjacket instead.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 3, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
A few weeks ago, I was teaching chicks how to drink. That probably makes no sense to you but baby chickens pop out of their eggs with no clue how to drink. When the hen is not in the picture, their human owner gets to fill in.
Chicks are amazingly cute little beings. There’s no room for brains in their head, but they make up for it with cuteness.
Photo by Kathy Brasby
If you’ve ever gone to the feed store with your six-year-old, you know how amazingly cute the chicks are. Six-year-olds never miss the chick cages. Once there, they unfurl all the tricks a child knows. Anything is fair here. They might scream or plead or remind you that you hadn’t bought them anything in decades, maybe centuries.
Parents: don’t trust traditional responses. Don’t tell your child, “You’re not old enough to care for this chick,” because the child will assure you that this is their chance to reveal the profound changes in their heart, character, and behavior that have emerged since breakfast when they left their cereal bowl on the table and spoon on the floor. They are changed creatures, just like that chick that just transformed from an egg to a fuzz ball.
Don’t tell your child, “We don’t have a place for any chicks,” What your child hears is “yet,” as in “We don’t have any place for any chicks yet.” They have hope! All they now need is a cardboard box, a saucer, and a bag of chicken feed.
Stay away from the chick aisle!
Amongst the research regarding chickens is the discovery that chickens wearing red-tinted contact lenses fight less, eat less, and produce more – the chicken trifecta.
Can you imagine the scientist putting contact lenses on chickens? I wonder if they were soft or hard contacts. What if a chicken lost a lens? Would she attack the hen on her right while giving sweet words to the one on her left?
Would you have to change contacts every day? Maybe mellow chickens would stand in line to get their contacts in for the day. Right after brushing their teeth and combing their hair.
If scientists could put contact lenses on chickens, you’d think researchers could find a way to teach chickens how to drink when they first pop out of the egg. Apparently not.
Chicks remain as ill-prepared for life as ever.
But back to my teaching moment. I had two dozen cute yellow fur balls wandering aimlessly in the desert of their cardboard box, about to start crawling wing over wing in the sand, lips swollen and canteens dusty. The overhead light probably looked like a huge angry sun to them.
They needed a mama to teach them how to drink water.
My son watched. “They don’t know how to drink?” he said.
“They don’t know how to find water,” I said. I dipped each chick’s beak into the water and let each one shake its head in amazement at finding water just before dying of desert exposure.
My son shifted gears. “And why did you put paper down in their pen?”
“So they wouldn’t accidentally eat the wood chips underneath. They don’t know the difference between wood chips and their feed yet.”
He stared down at the yellow wave of chick energy. “So you’re telling me that they don’t know how to eat or drink?”
“Well, I guess…..”
He headed for the door. “I’m amazed they know how to breathe.”
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by Kathy Brasby | May 27, 2019 | Humor
We have a great Mexican restaurant in our town called El Jacal. I had to find out what the name meant because I don’t speak Spanish. What if I was ordering burritos in a place called The Sloth or The Dirty Laundry?
You see my point. I looked it up. It meant The Shack.
Much better than The Horse Hoof.
One day recently, I made arrangements to meet my nephew at El Jacal for lunch. Full of myself, I asked him if he knew what it meant.
“It means the mansion or something like that,” he said.
“No, it means the shack.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.”
He obviously needed enlightening. I asked, “Who told you it meant the mansion?”
“My buddy Jose,” he said. “Who told you?”
“Google Translate.” It stinks when you might be less right.
Photo by Kathy Brasby
Translating is a tricky business. Once a Chinese translator turned our American idiom, “out of sight, out of mind,” into “invisible, insane.”
That translation was handy when the kids were young. They knew the story about the Chinese translation so I thought I was being cute when I responded to their chaotic race through the house by calling out, “Be invisible, insane.” It was less helpful when they said they thought the last part described me.
A few years ago, I bought a small (cheap) PA system and dug out the instructions.
You’ll want to see these. And I did not make anything up:
- “Features: Lithium battery, long battery life. Loud-speaker works pretty good.”
- “To extend the battery life, please charge after the battery is use out.”
- “Attentions before wearing the ear-hanging microphone: Before wearing, please don’t turn on the power and volume.” I am still not making this up.
- “Don’t change the battery by yourself under warranty. Be sure that the pole is right when the change the battery.” (Why would I have to know how to change the battery if I’m not supposed to, under threat of voiding warranty?)
- “Turn the volume button clockwise or anticlockwise can increase or decrease the volume.”
- “Cut in and pull out the plug often may cause the disbad connection between microphone and amplifier.”
I kept the instructions long enough to copy these juicy phrases and then figured out the little PA system on my own.
My theory? These instructions were translated. Maybe by Google Translate.
In any case, I think they fall in the “invisible, insane” dustbin.
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by Kathy Brasby | May 20, 2019 | Humor, Stories
As we get better acquainted, you’ll know things about me that my kids may someday pay you to keep to yourself. This is a great reason to keep track of me. Think of it as retirement planning. Just fill out that email signup over there and the money may well come flowing one day. No promises, though.
Don’t you, by the way, get annoyed with promises coming at you in the mail and on your phone and email? You know what I mean. I have gotten a garden catalog in the mail for years. Most of the catalogs have a big red sticker on the front: “Warning: this may be the last catalog you will receive unless you order.” Yeah, yeah, big promises. I’ve never ordered. I’d be OK if this were the last catalog but no such luck.
I don’t make promises like that. I promise.
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
I’ve had several jobs in my life, none related to the one before as far as I can tell. I’ve been a property manager for four years. Managing rental units provides endless story possibilities. That’s almost a good enough reason to keep managing.
As you can imagine, we occasionally have tenants who don’t pay their rent. This particular tenant not only got behind on his rent, but he had creative excuses. One month, he assured us that his check must have gotten stolen since we hadn’t received it.
In fact, the police had contacted him about the stolen check, and he was getting another one issued. We asked, could he send us a copy of the police report? No, since the police were in another state.
What, they hadn’t heard of faxing or email?
He did finally get that rent payment paid. It was sort of the sweet-and-sour-sauce with that tenant. One month, he was great and the next, lots of complaints and no rent.
I reported the final events to my business partner, who is also my sister, Ann, via texts:
Me: “Guess what? No rent today again.”
Ann: “Still nothing? Didn’t he promise?”
Me: “Yep.” Captain Obvious is my texting handle.
Ann: “Can’t you just email him and tell him to send us his kidney.”
I was typing, “I’m OK with a kidney,” when Ann answered, “No! Ack! Money. Not kidney. Money.”
I liked kidney better.
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by Kathy Brasby | May 14, 2019 | Stories
This blog is getting a reboot. I’ve tried to be serious and grown up, but I gotta go back to my roots: stories.
I see the world in stories. I laugh at the goofiest things – and you might as well come along.
This morning, my sister, the artist, showed me a new set of paintings. “They’re about new life. Butterflies.”
Me, I am a big fan of cliches, as you’ll see. I said, “I don’t see any butterflies.” She had painted a green background with a round yellow area in what might have been the sky. It might have been irises for all I could tell. She’s an abstract painter.
So then I looked closer. I’m not sure if you are supposed to look closer with abstract work or step back but I was sitting at my computer so stepping back would have required getting up. Not sure it was worth all that.
“There are red splatters on the painting.” My mind flew to cliches because I’m a big fan of cliches. “Is this post-butterflies? What happened to the butterflies?” I started thinking of big predator birds which, by the way, weren’t anywhere in her paintings. Maybe they already flew away. I didn’t ask. I wanted to be a support like any good sister would.
So I asked her if butterflies were good symbols for new life.
“They’re safe,” she wrote me. Did I tell you we were texting on our computers? You may have figured that out from the not-getting-up-from-my-computer comment, but now you know for sure.
Anyway, my sister sometimes types goofy. What she actually sent me was “Sage.”
I almost asked her if butterflies smelled like sage, but she can get testy about her typing. So I just asked her if sage was helpful in creating abstract paintings.
Her exact words, and I’m not taking this up, were “You are such a help.”
So I’m on a quest today to find out how sage and butterflies and abstract skies combine into a new painting. I might even let you see her results. (Probably not mine, though.) Stay tuned.
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