Update -- and a Brand New Kelley Story to Enjoy!

Finished a 20 hour, $500 project today and started another one. WOO HOO!

Also went to the movie today with the wee ones again. Wendy, Jamie, Casey and I saw Horton Hears a Who, a Dr. Seuss classic that's even better with the voiceovers of Jim Carrey, Steve Carrell and Carol Burnett. I've seen the movie before, but twice is not too many times. I'd probably enjoy seeing it a third time, and a fourth, way down the road sometime. Very clever, very well done.

I fertilized the lawn and watered it today since the temperature was slated to reach only 75 degrees today and tomorrow. After that it's soaring into the 90's again. I wish it would stay 75 for the next four days, but that isn't going to happen. My garage sale is Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m...

If I think I can survive it, I want to help out at the northbound Rochester rest stop (south of Olympia) on Monday from 6 a.m. to noon or 2. Don't know if I can make it past 10 though, if the temperature is going to skyrocket. I dehydrate and overheat very easily these days. The rest area is in the trees, so that should reduce the temperature by 15 or 20 degrees, I think. I'll call Vernita on Sunday and see how they're faring. I just need a little encouragement to know I won't die doing a good deed. (It's a fundraiser for the women's ministry at CFAN. They're offering free coffee to travelers and accepting donations.)

What else? My hair is getting too long. I have given it four months to hang down to the lower part of my jaw, but I just can't handle it anymore. I tug on it all the time and it feels like straw. I don't think it looks that much better on me, either, although others disagree. I just don't want to have to mess with it, and so I don't, and then it looks like I don't mess with it, so shorter is better for me. I'm gonna get it chopped off next time I go in. Yes. And the sooner the better.

The baby birds are almost too big for their nest anymore. I'll catch a few more photos of them -- better ones this time, I hope -- before they fly away. I expect they'll start thinking about that in the next week or so.

Yesterday I took photos of the garden and of Jackie with its first fruits -- an armful of zucchini and a quart or more of peas. We had mushrooms and zucchini for dinner last night with peapods on the side. Scrumptious. There's nothing like homegrown produce. And those peas are producing so fast it's hard to keep up.

Guess that's about it for now. Oh... I owe you a new De story, don't I? *sigh* OK... Here you go..

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Trekker Treat

The Kelley Home

A friend and I were going to knock on A.C. Lyles' Bel Air door one year at Halloween time dressed in the most pathetic (by design) rabbit costumes possible, and say we were there to audition for a sequel to De's movie NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (a.k.a. in fandom as Attack of the Killer Bunnies), which AC produced and directed. (I was also AC's star polisher at the time, so he knew me and my friend well enough that he wouldn't call Bel Air Security or shoot us when we arrived at the door.)

We fashioned ears out of white panty hose/leotards and placed cardboard into them so that when we pulled them onto our heads, they'd look really, really dumb! (Again, by design.)

We got mens white BVDs/briefs and pulled those on over white jogging pants and glued gaudy, misshapen bunny tails onto them. We had something on for t-shirts but I don't recall now what those looked like. (That's why I wish I could get to my journals or the unedited version of HARVEST OF MEMORIES right now... but I can't.)

Ready, set... all that remained was to call AC's wife to make sure they'd be home so we could surprise him with this outlandish stunt.

We called. The phone rang. Martha Lyles picked up the phone, listened, laughed, and then said, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this but AC isn't even in town right now. He's back on the east coast campaigning for President (George Herbert Walker) Bush. I'm sorry you went to all that trouble for nothing."

Deflated, disappointed, and frustrated, we hung up. Then my friend perked up noticeably. I asked, "What"?'

She said, "Let's do it to De."

I said, "No way."

She said, "Oh c'mon! It was his movie, too -- and we've spent a small fortune here on these asinine costumes."

I repeated: "No way. Absolutely -- no -- way -- in -- hell with you catch me in the Kelley neighborhood in these getups."

"Why not?"

"Because I visit there. His neighbors think I'm sane. No way am I going to give them any other way to think of me."

My friend moped... and moped... and moped... until I began to consider her dumb idea.

She saw that and perked up again, like a dog about to be tossed a bone or a ball.

Damn...

"All right..."

She jumped up.

"All right," I repeated, "but it goes against everything I believe in. I can act like an idiot in Bel Air, because nobody knows me there, but Sherman Oaks is different..."

She already had the door open against the possibility that I might back out on the idea.

We went...

We drove to the Kelleys address, got out of the car... My friend grabbed a handful of Science Diet kibble and held it tightly in one fist. That did not bode well at all, but I had no idea...

We walked up to the front door of the Kelley abode and knocked.. waited... knocked again...

Suddenly we heard the garage door open "behind" us. (Take a look at the configuration of the Kelley home in the photo above, and you'll see where the front door is -- to the left side of the garage up a little walkway -- and you'll know what I mean.) We turned to face the street and the direction from which the sound of a garage door opening was emanating.

Around the corner came De, blocking our escape. He didn't look any too happy. He threw a look across the street to see if any of his neighbors were witnessing the atrocity, and saw they weren't. That seemed to relieve him. But he still didn't look overjoyed to see us.

My friend fake-hopped over to where he was, fist of Science Diet kibble held under her tail, and when she got to him, she "crapped" it onto the sidewalk and said, "Oh, Mr. Kelley, I'm so excited to see you again!"

Fastidious De looked down at the bouncing, rolling kibble, frowned, and knelt down to begin retrieving it. I was mortified. My friend (by now she was quickly becoming my former friend, for having dragged me into this embarrassing fiasco) knelt, too, and started to help him pick up the fake poop, but De would have none of it. He stood back up, frowned like the great badass actor he was, and pointed toward his front door. "Get inside the house. Now. Get. Inside. Now."

It was as close to Toby Jack Saunders as I ever saw him get in real life.

We. Went. Inside. The. House. No further questions asked. Yes, sir, Mr. Kelley!

Once inside, a cheery voice called out, "Hi, girls! Come on back!"

We scurried to the work room, where Carolyn sat. She howled when she saw us. "What on earth are you two up to now?" she asked.

I quickly said, "We were going to go trick or treating at AC's and do a NIGHT OF THE LEPUS number on him, but he's back east campaigning for the President..." I glared at my friend so she'd finish the story, but she didn't... so I added, "So 'we' -- cough cough -- decided we shouldn't waste our efforts and ... came here instead."

oh please, oh, please, Carolyn, figure this one out and realize that it was not my idea!

By this time De came into the house, into the workroom, and joined Carolyn in a chair across from us. I decided he really wasn't mad; he had just been "portraying" pissed.

He looked at both of us sitting there in our pathetic costumes and shook his head. Then he offered, "You know, in those rabbit ears, you two look a little bit like nuns."

My friend laughed and replied, "No one has ever thought of me as a nun before!" and De retorted, "I'm sure of that!"

I was blushing horribly and since I was dressed all in white, it showed.

That's the first and last time I ever trick or treated at the Kelley home. And it was under duress, I can assure you.

Still... as I revisited it again just now, I was laughing so hard and so loud that Jackie came over to see what was happening over here... so it's a memory that I treasure to my toes now!

I tell you... we were insane back in the good old days of yesteryear...

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