The Funny Side

Beware of the Blog!

Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to me!
This blog's five years old now...
Oh, how can that be?!

It can be, I guess, because on September 20, 2011, I sat down and started clacking away at a keyboard, and a teensy little spot in the blogworld was carved into place.

No one who happened upon that first ramble had a clue of the secret I'm about to tell you now, here on this very screen. Which is that I wrote while shaking in my blogboots. I didn't even do e-mail at the time. I knew nothing about the big wild world of the Internet. I'd felt "nudged" for months to blog, but I barely knew what a blog was. I had never even read one, so how could I have gotten such an idea?

Considering the fact that anything involving the Internet was a mystery to me (and I really wanted to keep it that way), I had begun to think this wild notion THAT WOULD NOT LEAVE ME ALONE might, in fact, be an inspiration from God. 

I could at least give it a try. Except that I didn't. I had gone through the spring and summer of that year trying to convince myself that I must be mistaken, it was just a silly idea. And all the while the thought kept following me around like a puppy. It lodged in my mind like a melody, like one of those tunes you just can't get out of your head - and in fact an old song popped in to keep "reminding me" that I was being chased by a strange notion. The song's lyrics, which I found amusingly appropriate for what I was feeling, sneaked into my brain and (when others were not within earshot) out of my mouth. Because my husband and I once had a "retro" jukebox loaded with old 45s and this record had been one of them, I knew the words to this theme from a campy 1950s movie. So for months, as I drove or cooked or sorted laundry, I found myself constantly singing this - but with one changed word.

All you have to do is change the last letter of the title and you'll know just what I was fearing five years ago. It's a fun tune, not spooky, from surely one of the campiest films ever made. 

Shall we check out what I was humming as I wrote that first blog post five years ago? 

It's a splotch! A blotch! 

BE CAREFUL OF THE BLOG...





(to our e-mail subscribers: this post features a video, which can be viewed by coming to the blog itself)

(disclaimer: any other videos that may come up after the song entitled "The Blob" are not chosen nor endorsed by me)

Not like Cardboard

That Pre-Lent Peatzah

I'm taking a BIG CHANCE.  Feeling in need of a bit lot of pre-Lent silliness, I'm stepping totally outside the breadbox blog-box .. just for today, I promise... and sharing, right here, right now, something I posted on a "just for fun" blog I tried very briefly about a year ago. 

After all, today is mardi gras.  A day for celebrating food and smiles and (in this case) my favorite Veggie Tales Silly Song (you surely don't want to miss that).  So away we goooooo.....

Once upon a time, in a land known as 1950s America, there were seven food groups.  Meat, alphabet soup, peanut butter, Twinkies, school lunches, Cheerios, and jam.  Milk was a drink.  Vegetables were something we tried to avoid if we were under 12, and some of us could actually get by with such avoidance if we gagged while trying to swallow lima beans.  If anyone had uttered a weird phrase such as "tonight we're having fast food," we would have figured we'd forgotten it was Lent.

That all changed with the invention of pizza pie. 

Oh, I know pizza was around long before Americans "discovered" it; and it was a hit in large cities before middle American towns like mine caught whiffs of its oregano tinged trails.  I was a child when I first heard of it, from my much older sister who was bringing it home for the family to taste.

Funny how clearly I remember that day.  There I was in the living room, jumping up and down on the slipcovered sofa.  My sister had called to say she was bringing something special for dinner.  Which was amazing in itself... I mean, dinner was not something anyone "brought home."  Dinner was tuna casserole or meat loaf.  But the attention grabber for me was that wondrous and magical word PIE.  I had no idea what "peat-zah" might be, but lo and behold.... we were having PIE for SUPPER!

Was peatzah something like chocolate?  O, I most sincerely hoped so.  Chocolate was my favorite, creamy and dark with meringue on top.  Of course, peatzah might be a kind of fruit, like cherries or apples.  Big sister said peatzah pie was "all the rage" in places like New York, and New York was pretty special (I wasn't sure why, but that's what I'd heard).

My first glimpse of this new mysterious pie might have been my first clue.  What in the WORLD was THIS?  No chocolate, no berries, no meringue?  Just a funny looking slab of.... something.... lying limp and flat in a cardboard box.  And what's this red on it?  It doesn't look like cherries. "That's tomatoes," explained Big Sister.  And the yellow stuff was cheese. 

CHEESE!!?!!!!

I was definitely not about to act like a baby, so I bravely picked up a piece of the greasy weird gruesome horrid non-fruit, non-chocolate, all-the-rage pie and heroically took a bite.

I was devastated.

I know that sounds dramatic.  But as a child (I'll admit it), I was just a tad bit  whole lot  .. "dramatic."  Dramatic enough to run sobbing into my room, most likely hurling myself across my bed (I'd seen that in movies, I knew how it was done).  I wasn't even getting DINNER tonight, when I'd been promised PIE!??!!!  Even creamed corn would have been an okay alternative to NOTHING when a person had been expecting some brand new exotic New York kind of FRUIT!!

Eventually, of course, I made peace with peatzah. Pizza parlors were a fun place in my young years. Pizza became (is) my go-to meal on hectic days.  

And is there a particular point to this story?  Not even remotely.  Not this time.  I just wanted to write it down.  I hear that's a blogger's prerogative, so I'm trying it out, and with more courage than I had when sampling that first taste of peatzah pie.

The Beast of peatzah .... non-chocolaty, non-meringued, unfruity peatzah pie .... has turned out to be the Beauty of a delivered meal that I don't have to cook.

We are living happily ever after.








(photo of Frankie Laine, Annette Funicello, Danny Thomas 1959. Public domain)

There's Angels There!

My son "Frankie" was five when he made what I hoped was not a hard-and-fast decision.

"I don't wanna go to heaven," he announced one day during lunch.  Frankie had Christmas on his mind, having just been in his preschool pageant.  He made his lunchtime declaration in much the same way he would have said I-don't-want-to-go-to-Gran's-for-the-holidays.

I got it.  Earth was the only home Frankie had ever known.  Heaven was a vast and mysterious place, perhaps scary to a child.  I tried to reassure my little one as he swallowed his Spaghettios.

Frankie just looked at me, and then went on to further explain his reasoning.  "There's ANGELS there!"

Oh.  Angels.  Now I really got it.  Frankie must have seen a picture, or maybe a Christmas program, and the huge powerful angels frightened him.  O, my poor boy!  I tried again to reassure him, spending time calming what I envisioned as paralyzing fears.  Frankie listened as patiently as he could, then put down his spoon and looked at me as if I were hard of hearing.  Raising his voice so I would maybe get it this time, he shouted:

"ANGELS ARE GIRLS!  YUK!!"

This was more complicated than I'd thought.  Maybe what Frankie really needed was a Theology lesson about how angels are neither boys nor girls, a lesson carefully tailored to a five year old's understanding.  I tried my best to give him just such a dissertation.

When I finished what amounted to a treatise about angels not really being girls, Frankie looked at me over his bowl.  This time he pronounced his words with simple, final, definitive authority.

"Angels are TOO girls.  THEY WERE GIRLS IN MY SCHOOL PLAY.    YUK."  

I got it.


This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Network Monthly Roundup

Blue Velvet Ribbons on Purple Cake

I often sang along with the radio in my preteens, long before most of you were born (really).  Never mind that I was a far from engaging vocalist.  Never mind that I was shockingly oblivious to lyrics as well. 

I croaked along merrily with a soft ballad describing "white on white, lace on satin, blue velvet ribbons on purple cake..."  I even went so far as to discuss this unusual lyric with a friend.  

"Doesn't that sound like the ugliest wedding cake ever?!," I tsk-tsked, never questioning the validity of my perceptions.  Either my friend had the same hearing problem as I, or she was too kind to correct me.  But we seemed to both envision a towering cake of dark purple, ringed round with turquoise bows.  I'm ashamed to admit how old I was before I found out the truth about this, but let's just say that it was my husband who told me.  And we were already married.  "...it's 'blue velvet ribbons ON HER BOUQUET'," he clarified.

Oh.

It seems my hearing lapses were not limited to lyrics.  I learned the Act of Contrition in first grade, and recited it in Confession at least bi-weekly.  I was in fourth grade when the priest on the other side of the dark shadowy veil stopped me just after I'd begun with my usual:  "O my God, I am partly sorry for having offended Thee, and I..."  

He broke right in.  

"Are you only partly sorry?", he asked.  I knelt there in panic.  Well... well, of course!, said I.  That's what the prayer says, that's how I learned it, yes Father I'm sure I must be partly sorry, I'm at least partly sorry and that's a good thing isn't it Father? (am I passing this test?).

Father was kind in his correction.  And I've been heartily sorry ever since.  Although...

There are times when I think about Father's gentle question.   It's not a bad one for an examination of conscience.  I mean - how many times do I confess sins and faults for which I'm only partly sorry?  If I'm really honest with myself, how much thought do I give to what I have done, to the pain it might have caused someone?  To the pain it might bring to Our Lord?

Yes, perhaps I have before me a good point for reflection.  If I said the Act of Contrition right here, right now, and if I were really honest with myself... what kind of sorry would I be? 

"If we are truly humble our sins will infinitely displease us, because God is offended by them"  (St. Francis de Sales)

© 2013 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved. thebreadboxletters.blogspot.com


(Jean Etienne Liotard painting in US public domain)

The Curious Case of the Vanishing Sidebar

Solved.  Yesterday's mystery:  solved.  At least that is my hope and verily, my dream.

There are clues I have uncovered regarding the Curious Phenomenon of Disappearing Blog Sections:  a troubling situation that some of us have noticed during the last few days.

In simplified verbiage, it could be stated as follows:

If part of your sidebar has gone missing, you might try moving the "followers gadget" down the page.

I say.

Yet I am perplexed even in the midst of victory.  Questions linger.  What has happened to the followers gadget?  Shall it ever be recovered?  Is Blogger even now working to solve the problem?  

Having investigated several times since beginning this ridiculous informative post, I see that sometimes "your" faces are there, now placed at the very BOTTOM of the sidebar (lest everything below disappear again).

But more often, alas, the gadget vanishes again.  The Blog Ticker (thank you, Catholic Bloggers' Network) is there, and the Followers Gadget occasionally shows up just below it.  But then it vanishes like a vapor.  And I'm left trusting that you are there, even if unseen. 

Old Stamp Collectors

"Old stamp collectors never die," I said to a friend one evening; "they just get returned to Sender."  She immediately popped back with: "Nancy, that was first class!"  

I am an old stamp collector, I'll admit it, even though the collection is long gone.  I suspect the fascination hit with my first postcard from an aunt vacationing an entire state away.  I saved the card (after all, receiving my own mail then was a Very Big Deal).  Having a great time, said aunty; the weather is good.  Wish you were here... and oh, how I wished it too.  Such exotic lands my relatives visited.  Ohio!  Peoria!  Kansas!  Des Moines!  The very names were colorful, as were the stamps on their cards.  I began a collection of both, poring over paper fragments of adventure on lazy afternoons. 

I knew I loved to travel; never mind that I never did.  I loved caves, too, although I'd never been in one.  I loved astronomy even if my view was limited to the blob of quivery moon I tried to focus on through a cardboard cereal-premium "telescope." ("send in 3 boxtops and 25 cents").  My sense of adventure was unbounded.  Actual travel?  Well, that was limited by my dad's job and a second-hand Chevrolet.  

My stamp collection is gone now, and I am very practical.  I buy stamps I really like, then stick them on envelopes to put them to good use.  I no longer have to imagine travel, I simply call it up from memories.  I've gone to numerous states and well beyond.. even to the other side of the earth.  Maybe I'll travel a lot more - who knows?  But regardless, there will always remain one Great Adventure.  I just pray for grace to look forward with anticipation to that one, and to the amazing experience of seeing face to Face my Sender.  He is bigger than the earth, more brilliant than the moon, grander than Des Moines.

"And men go abroad to admire the heights and mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the long courses of rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, and the circular motion of the stars, and yet pass themselves by..."  (St. Augustine) 

(photo from US postal service via Wikimedia Commons)

fighting fit and full of beans

I went on another breadbox dig and discovered something.  That is:  adventures in communicating bring smiles just when I need them.

USA

Dear Leena, 
   You said Minnie was ‘fighting fit,’ and I’m afraid this is an expression I do not know.  Oh dear.  Does this mean she’s not well? - Nancy

AUSTRALIA
Dear Nancy,

   I am sorry I did not allow for the fact that you might not know what ‘fighting fit’ means.  It means very well and ‘full of beans.’ Full of beans does not mean that one has devoured a can of Baked Beans for dinner, but it means that one is ‘on top of the world,’ which doesn’t mean one is sitting on the North Pole, but means that one feels as if one is ‘sparking on all fours,’ which doesn’t mean that one is a dog, a kangaroo, a squirrel or a chipmunk, but that one finds there are not enough hours in the day to achieve all one wants to achieve, so one becomes so frustrated that she goes in search of a toy to play with and discovers a yo-yo which is a thing on a string that one has to learn to ‘kinda bounce.’ Kinda bounce is a bit like ‘kinda dumb,’ which is what a favourite husband (namely yours) says when a car turns into his path and visiting Aussies gasp with ‘American fright.’ American fright is what Leena looks like when she gets out of bed every morning while visiting friends in the USA.

    I had better go and slam up a sandwich for lunch - Leena

The 4-Dwarf Cold

Today I noticed that I have a cold.  Not just any cold, mind you, but a genuine four-dwarfer.

My husband and I began long ago to weigh our colds on the dwarfiness-scale.  Snow White (we decided) was not the only one who spent time with seven little guys.   Sneezy arrived at my house this very morning.  Sleepy is here as well, and throughout the day I’ve been more and more aware of Dopey.  And lo and behold, even as I write this, I’m feeling Grumpy pounding on the door.  Yep, I have a four dwarf-cold, all right.  I just hope it doesn’t go into a five-dwarfer, meaning I’ve had to call in the Doc.  But of course, it will all be over in a few weeks; then I should be Happy enough.  

And I really should be Bashful admitting this to you.  

In a letter from (the real) Paul, I read:  “We even boast of our afflictions!  We know that affliction makes for endurance, and endurance for tested virtue, and tested virtue for hope.”  (Romans 5:3-4)  Now, a cold is usually no huge deal in the grand scheme of things – not like the afflictions Paul had to endure.  But sometimes, when the throat burns and the head pounds and muscles cry out for rest, the tasks of daily life can feel a bit…. challenging.  I am helped in times of physical hassles when I remember the behavior of Paul and Silas in prison.  They’d been dragged, beaten, thrown into chains.  Their muscles must have throbbed with pain, their skin would have been scraped and burned.  Then, “about midnight…Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God…” (Acts 16:25).  Chained, imprisoned, sore, they were praying and singing hymns.  Their fellow prisoners listened, and an earthquake opened the doors and shook off everyone’s chains.  

I think of this tonight and realize I have a challenge before me.  I have a cold and various “aches and pains.”  Am I letting Grumpy get the upper hand?

Sneezy, Dopey and Sleepy come whether I want them to or not.  Grumpy knocks, but he can’t settle in for a visit unless I open the door.  As grumpy as I may FEEL, I can make the choice to be as kind (or at least as silent!) as I am able.  I can pray, and in my heart I can sing hymns of praise to God.  

If I do this, I have a feeling Grumpy might just limp on away…..

some breadbox excavations

Going through “the breadbox” these last few days, I’ve been touched all over again by correspondence I’ve received.

Some letters illustrate truths.  “During the earthquake, a friend’s crucifix fell off the wall over her bed as she was sleeping.  She just grabbed it and held on.  I thought ‘and that’s how it is to be.’  During all the upheavals of our lives, we must hold on to HIM.” 

Some sweep me away to faraway places.  “G’day from the windswept, rain drenched north of the capes.  We’ve been out to the rocks, and watched the beach disappear under the hiss, froth and bubble of unrepentant waves…”  

Some bring a laugh.  “Our local government decided to override the people regarding time change.  Some of the objections to daylight savings time were:  Curtains fade with the longer hours of daylight.  Cows get confused about the time to come in for milking.  Now, I ask you…?!?”

In days to come, I’d like to share some rediscovered treasures.  I hope you’ll come along!