Tales of Miniature Quiana: Pragmatic Travel

By Paul's request.

It was a cool fall evening in the mid to late 80's in Eastern Washington. My mother and I had come to a stand off about something. She told me to go to my room. I said "no". Years prior I had determined that she could not force me to do anything. Since she wouldn't hit me and wasn't likely to physically enforce Time Out, I declared that she could not "boss me around" anymore.
But this time she caught me by surprise. She actually grabbed me by the arm and tossed me in my room.

This was a HUGE shock and could not be endured.

I immediately pulled my Rainbow Brite bag from under my bed and went straight to work packing. As I recall, I grabbed only the necessities:
Gram crackers
Blanket (baby sized)
Collected works of A.A. Milne
Extra underwear
Flashlight
Small cast iron real working sewing machine (for work?)
Hamster carrier containing: hamster and hamster food.

I changed into my best adventure outfit (replete with boots, overalls, and pith helmet) put the bag on my back and the carrier under my arm and climbed out my first floor window.

I walked across the lawn and down into the ditch along side the road. I would guess I made it 2 blocks (though it seemed really far at the time) and it started to get dark. I decided to make camp for the night. There was a culvert over the ditch (to accommodate spring flood water) and that seemed like a good place to hide out.

I can't remember if the man was already there, or if he came in after I was in there, but he did have white hair and a hat.

"Shouldn't you go home?" the man said, stooped over in the short culvert. "It's dark now though," I feebly protested.

"Well, I'll walk with you then."

And we walked all 2 blocks back to my window. I climbed in, he handed me my bags and a while later mom brought me French toast.

I told her that I left and that some man told me to go home. I even showed her my packed bag. But she didn't believe me- which was for the best, because I would have been in for the whupping of a lifetime.

I remain convinced to this day that this occurred- I can remember the light during sunset, the damp smell of the ditch, and the fear of being alone.

I'd like to think that some kind homeless man rescued me, though he was more likely just an old man on a walk through our tranquil small town neighborhood.

*************************

Bonus Addendum

Having now discussed this story at length with various people I wanted to write a couple of things:

1. I am absolutely positive this happened- it is my mother who categorically denies this occurred.

2. I declare that this is a happy story:
I didn't get molested or left for dead in a ditch.
I didn't get in trouble, because my mom didn't believe me.
The hamster got to experience some invigorating travel (and live to tell the tale).
And in the end, everyone (except the hamster) got French toast (which is arguably the best thing my mom knows how to cook).
This is a story about a plucky little kid doing funny things. These are the exact sort of crazy things that I would do all the time.
Enjoy my cute story, damn it.

Tales of Miniature Quiana: Bunny Edition

When I was quite young I lived in a big white house separated into three apartments. We lived in the right hand apartment, beneath a rosy cheeked bird enthusiast. I’d hear her and the bird chirping cheerfully to each other from my top bunk.

The rosy-cheeked woman went on vacation and asked my mother to check in on her bird, and of course the bird died under mother’s care (she isn’t terribly skilled in the art of keeping stuff alive- although I continue to believe that the bird died of natural causes). At any rate, one day it just crawled under its paper and went to sleep. Mother was flabbergasted, but the neighbor handled it well.

The giant cage sat in our backyard, an object of curious dread for my friend Phillip and me. Phillip lived across the street. He was blond and happy and average, and I envied him fiercely.

One day as we romped around the backyard we saw a flash of brown and white. Holy cow! A rabbit! We jumped up and down and ran into the house and breathlessly told my mother all about it. It was probably mother that put the idea of catching it into our heads. Mother and I share a very similar sense of humor.

Having seen many 80’s fantasy movies about women and nature, Phillip and I staked out the yard from the porch, leaving lettuce and such just beneath the porch steps. We thought that while it was eating I could walk over and hold out my hand, then it would hop over and that would be that. As an adult I know that if I had managed to get close, it would have bitten me and given me The Rabies, but I was too taken with the Unicorn scene in Legend to understand that.

As one might have expected, this strategy didn’t work. Having now been tantalized by glimpses of its soft fur we were more determined than ever. We decided it was time to be scientific, so we climbed the steps to my neighbor’s apartment and told her excitedly that we had spotted a rabbit. Brown with a white butt, and we would catch it in her cage, if she’d let us.

She obviously thought that we were not going to be able to figure out how to catch a rabbit, so she tolerantly agreed to let us use her cage.

We got string and pulleys from my science kit and a carrot from Phillip’s mother and set to work. Toiling all day, we made a rabbit trap that Wile E. Coyote would be proud of. At dusk Phillip’s mother called him in for dinner and I was about to go into the house when I remember the carrot. Phillip would be at church all morning and wanted to me to wait for him to get home before setting our trap. I ran back to the cage, crawled inside and was promptly hoisted by my own petard.

I yelled for my mom for a while and eventually gave up. Then it started to rain. I’m not sure how much time passed, but it was full dark when I started crying. It's scary when you’re little and trapped in a bird cage in the dark. Eventually my mother came out and found me. She was laughing so hard at my pitiful situation that she took forever to get the cage open.

The next day I told Phillip that I didn’t think that the rabbit would like to live in a cage and we scampered off to a new adventure.

Tales of Minature Quiana: DOOMED

I remember being curled up in a tight ball, my knees tucked up to my chin. My little fingers covering my eyes as I fearfully cowered in my scratchy theater seat.
Upon the screen hundreds of life-size furry tree dwellers were being annihilated by the forces of the Empire. Their little teddy-bear like faces scrunched up with tiny little Ewok tears as huge tree trunks and AT-ST's fell upon their fuzzy bodies.
My cousin David (a whole 6 months older) leaned over from the seat next to me and clumsily patted my back saying, "It's ok KiKi. It's only make believe."

This is my earliest memory; seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater in 1983. ( I would have been... 3.)
This is the exact moment that I believe I became damned; cursed to forever walk this planet a complete and utter geek.

Dear Tommy,

In 1985 you gave me chicken pox. For that I was already grateful, but for you to have given me chicken pox that stowed away in my spinal fluid, then creeped up inflaming a nerve and sprouting pox upon my back, exactly along my bra-line, I cannot be thankful enough.
Tommy, you suck.

My life sucks, and since chicken pox is technically herpes, I am on herpes meds and now my pharmacist will never want to be my boyfriend and it is ALL YOUR FAULT, TOMMY!

I hope you have the real herpes with warts on your man bits.

I should have predicted this would happen when you ALWAYS made me be the Decepticon.

Dear readers,
I have shingles. A quite painful chicken pox related (non contageous) virus... not the zombie plague, as previously reported. (Yes, I am a little disapointed too.)

I am worn out and headed back to bed.

Tales of Minature Quiana: Beginings of the GDI

When I was 5ish we lived behind a frat house in Idaho. Good times. I think that is when I first starting hanging out with frat boys.

They used to hang out in the backyard, barbecuing and playing football. They used to give me cookies and let me play too. It was great.

Strangely my most vivid memory of living behind the frat house was when we were leaving the detached garage and I found the most fascinating thing I have ever seen. A HUGE frozen pool of vomit.

My mother, was significantly less fascinated and we moved shortly there after.

Depressed transgendered multi-appendaged deer commits suicide, is tasty

Wisconsin hunter bags deer with 7 legs
8 minutes ago

FOND DU LAC, Wis. - Rick Lisko hunts deer with a bow but got his most unusual one driving his truck down his mile-long driveway. The young buck had nub antlers — and seven legs. Lisko said it also had both male and female reproductive organs. "It was definitely a freak of nature," Lisko said. "I guess it's a real rarity."

He said he slowed down as the buck and two does ran across the driveway Nov. 22, but the buck ran under the truck and got hit.

When he looked at the animal, he noticed three- to four-inch appendages growing from the rear legs. Later, he found a smaller appendage growing from one of the front legs.

"It's a pretty weird deer," he said, describing the extra legs as resembling "crab pinchers."

"It kind of gives you the creeps when you look at it," he said, but he thought he saw the appendages moving, as if they were functional, before the deer was hit.

Warden Doug Bilgo of the state Department of Natural Resources came to Lisko's property near Mud Lake in the town of Osceola to tag the deer.

"I have never seen anything like that in all the years that I've been working as a game warden and being a hunter myself," Bilgo said. "It wasn't anything grotesque or ugly or anything. It was just unusual that it would have those little appendages growing out like that."

Bilgo took photos and sent information on the animal to DNR wildlife managers.

John Hoffman of Eden Meat Market skinned the deer for Lisko, who wasn't going to waste the venison from the animal.

"And by the way, I did eat it," Lisko said. "It was tasty."

And by "hunter bags deer," I see they mean hunter hits deer with truck/eats roadkill.

If this were a comic he would get super deer powers. I don't know what those would be.

I'm a bit sad, though. I think this beats the 6 legged frogs we used to find just off the Hanford nuclear reservation. Well, at least by one leg.

Uhm, but we didn't eat the frogs.

Opportunity for learning completely squandered.

I was all excited because today I was going in for my emissions test.

When I was a child I dreaded the emissions test with far greater force than I dreaded cauliflower or the SATS. The emissions test was a yearly event wherein we paid 15$ to be told that our car sucked (the duct tape might have been advanced warning, however) then paid another 200$ towards repairing the sucky car, thus we went without something. Food or sundries usually got the axe.

Today, I was going to look into the very guts of the emissions test and in all likelihood, for the first time ever, actually pass.

I waited all aflutter in my car for my turn, then I asked lots of questions at the first stop. At the second stop, the man turned on my car for approximately a minute and then passed me.
The man in front of me got to do this nifty driving on rollers and had an interactive video. I got nuthin.

Even looking at my receipt I still can't figure out what they are actually testing. And they wrote down my mileage incorrectly.

I'm going to have to cruise their website to figure this all out. Let no opportunity for tedious trivia go un-obsessed upon- that's my motto.

Oh, and the picture above has nothing to do with anything, but... Holy Crap! It's Lego Dr. Who and the Lego Tardis being advanced upon by Lego Daleks! What's not to love?

Local Blogger Damn Tired of Death

So two weeks ago it was my uncle, this weekend it was ghoulish tv specials, now it is Mo Betta. My fish.
This morning I came into the office, opened his bowl, dropped food in, turned my computer, and in the slowest double take ever, finally turned around and threw the lid of his bowl back open and peered in anxiously.
There he was, floating nose up, tail down. A co-worker stopped to see what I was doing as I vigorously shook the bowl. Mo did not move. "Maybe he is just cold," she suggested,"Do fish hibernate?"
When I was young our heat was turned off. In north Idaho. In winter. And my fish bowl froze solid. As my mother defrosted the bowl in the sink and I hid in bed weeping pitifully the fish came back to life.
"Fish can freeze solid and come back, he is not hibernating."
I went to the workroom to get a plastic cup to scoop Mo out of his bowl so as not to clog the burial receptacle with fish rocks.
As I was walking back my co-worker yelped and cried, "He just moved!"
I shook the bowl, and his gills flapped. I was thrilled. My own Halloween Miracle.
And then he kind of slid sideways to the bottom of the bowl.
This is not a miracle. This is a replay of the death of my Great Grandfather. The joy you take from tiny upturns in a fatally ill person's health. The belief that they can pull through that will only result in eventual disappointment.
My fish is 4. Bettas live to two years, absolute tops.
And now I get to watch him suffer and finally die.