Ode to an Awning

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

I know how much you all love my poetry, since Train and Tumbleweed got such rave reviews… (<—dripping with sarcasm), so I wrote another poem for you. This is what happened the other night to my neighbor’s awning during another huge storm in Texas.

Ode To An Awning

A fine product by Dometic,
All shiny and new,
It blocked out the sun,
Providing shade for a few.

Holding twinkling lights
And wind chimes by the ton,
It was a silent witness
To all sorts of RV fun.

One stormy night while doing its best,
My neighbor arrived home only to see,
His awning lay in a crumpled mess.
Mother Nature won against the Dometic A&E.

Twisted metal and canvas covered the side of his rig,
His poor dog trapped inside had started to wig.

What's left of the Dometic A&E.

What’s left of the Dometic A&E. Do you think you could cut straighter in a thunder storm? I don’t think so.

But, wait! There’s more…

The Life of Pye: 30 Hours Without Pye

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

The Life of Pye is about a cat. The cat who adopted me.

And this is a short, sporadically posted series about her. The first post is Pye has a foot fetish.

This is why Pye has to be an "only kitty".

This is why Pye has to be an “only kitty”.

Pye is still quite pudgy.

She’s been on a diet for several months (1/2 cup of kibbles as per the instructions on the bag), but it’s having little effect. (Her blood levels were tested when she got fixed in November and came back normal.) She gets a lot of exercise, still racing around the RV a few times a day — she uses it like an obstacle course.

Pye needs excitement.

She gets bored or anxious or lonely when I’m gone and tears the place up. I recently read an ad selling dog vests in which it claimed the vests helped calm down anxious dogs. My thinking immediately substituted cat for dog, and harness for vest, with the hope that wearing a harness would help Pye calm down when I’m gone.

To keep her from getting bored, I sometimes take her outside on a leash and harness. No, she doesn’t really walk on the leash. But hope springs eternal so I keep trying. She kind of crouch-walks. And only where she wants to go. I’d really like to have a cat that walks on a leash like a dog. I know it can happen, I’ve seen other people “walking” their cats.

Pye, aka Drama Cat, in her new harness.

Drama Cat says, “I’m going to tear up the place the moment you leave and this harness won’t slow me down. That book was wrong.”

Pye ran away for about 30 hours.

Last month during supervised outdoor play (a euphemism for “trying to get my cat to walk on a leash”), she broke off her harness in a panic. (NO, she does not get that from me.) But, wait! There’s more…

I just got felt up by TSA

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

I’m at the Sioux Falls airport checking in for my return flight to Austin (via snowy Denver).

At the security check point I put all my stuff on the conveyer belt and turn around to go through the metal detector. But there is no metal detector. In its place is something I’ve never seen…

It’s a big, cylindrical glass container, with the outline of a pair of foot prints on the small carpet at the bottom. It’s one of those new-fangled x-ray screening machines.

Oh. Hell. NO.

I stop dead in my tracks a few feet from the entrance and ask “What IS that?!” just as realization begins to dawn on me. Now I begin to back up, hands in the air, as the TSA agent calmly tries to explain how benign the monster device is.

I don’t hear a word she says other than “You don’t need to back up.”

The hell I don’t.

I’m looking again at the footprints on the small carpet inside the big, glass screening machine. I wonder to myself if those are what was left of the last guy’s ashes when the “screening” was over.

Perhaps not so oddly, the movie Soylent Green suddenly pops into my head.

Me, shaking my head: “Uh-uh. I know what that thing is. Can’t I just get wanded or something?”

Other agents, But, wait! There’s more…

Too Cold To Snow and I’m Turning Blue

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

‘Too Cold To Snow.’ I heard that phrase for the first time just before I left for the Frozen Tundra. (no, this is not about football – it’s about snow and ice)

I now know there must be such a thing as too cold to snow because yesterday I landed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, aka ‘The Frozen Tundra’, and am experiencing bone-chilling cold as I’ve never known.

Here are some pictures taken before I knew better than to stand outside.

The Frozen Tundra, aka Sioux Falls, SD.

The Frozen Tundra, aka South Dakota.

Ok, ok, so I took the photos from inside the rental car. It was still really cold out. 

The temperature last night was 28 degrees. WTF? I don’t own clothes for 28 degrees! I own bikinis. (It was originally going to be 16 degrees but I panicked and changed my flight. Twice. I TOLD you people I’m not well.)

Do you know what temperature it was a couple nights before I left Texas? 73 degrees! SEVENTY-THREE degrees at night!

This is the current temperature in Sioux Falls. (Why, you ask, are my butt-cheeks turning blue in Sioux Falls? Another one of those “anniversaries of my 29th birthday” is rapidly approaching and I need to renew my driver’s license. Why South Dakota? Because South Dakota is one of the few states that caters to full-time RVers. SD is awesome!)

Can you guess where Chickenbone (my sister) is? She’s in HAWAII. Again. What is she doing in Hawaii? She’s posting pictures ‘from the lanai’ where she’s having breakfast. Bitch.

Chickenbone's picture from 'the lanai' in Hawaii. Did you see where I am? Not there.

Chickenbone’s picture from ‘the lanai’ in Hawaii. Did you see where I am? Not there.

A park in Sioux Falls, SD.

A park in Sioux Falls, SD. Not at all like Hawaii.

This is just so wrong. She likes to snowboard, she should be in Sioux Falls. I like the beach and have no plans to ever try skiing again. Once was enough.

I will now tell you about my one skiing trip… But, wait! There’s more…

The Life of Pye: Pye Has a Foot Fetish

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

The Life of Pye is about a cat.

Well, the movie titled The Life of Pi isn’t entirely about a cat. Ok, the movie isn’t really about a cat at all, it just has a cat in it. Whatever, we can’t be picky.

But this post is about a cat. It’s about the life, so far, of Pyewacket (aka “Pye”), the kitten who arrived on my doorstep adopted me in September of last year. This was originally going to be one Ten Things post, but she’s done so much goofy stuff I decided to make it a series. Lucky you.

Plus, her one year birthday has just passed. She showed up September 23, 2012 and she was probably around 5 or 6 months old at the time. I’ve decided to make her birthday March 23rd. It’s a rough guess, but she deserves an actual birthday.

A rare moment of calm in February. She's curled up along my side and arm. We're napping.

A rare moment of calm in February. She’s curled up, upside down, along my side and arm. We’re napping in a black “faux mink” throw blanket.

Here’s some of what’s happened in the last six months… (more posts to follow)

Pye has a foot fetish. No, really – and I’m beginning to get concerned. She loves my stinky shoes. She attacks my feet and ankles almost constantly. Sometimes she licks them, or just puts her own paws on my feet. She likes to do this most by laying behind my feet and placing all her paws on the edge of my foot when I’m trying to cook. But, wait! There’s more…

All hat and no cattle

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

Your lesson for today is a Texas saying: All hat and no cattle.

It means pretentious. Like a guy who just bought himself an expensive cowboy hat, but doesn’t have any cattle.

Used in a sentence, generally after some pontificating dork has just left the building, in your best Texas accent, “That guy is all hat and no cattle. My family has known his family since his grand-pappy and my grand-pappy were toddlers and they ain’t never had a pot to piss in. There’s no way in God’s Creation that kid has sixteen oil wells on his property. He don’t have no property!”

All hat, looking for missing cattle.

All hat, looking for missing cattle.

That’s it, that’s the lesson for today. It has nothing to do with the rest of this post.

Then what am I writing about? A very serious matter: My visitor and blog stats have dropped by over fifty percent during the last month or so.

I agree, it’s tragic!

My writing isn’t the most scintillating or magnetic, but that hasn’t seemed to stop most of you from coming back anyway. So we can’t blame my writing – this time.

The drop in visitors to my blog is possibly due to a trojan. Sadly, I don’t mean the prophylactic trojan. I’m referring to the much less enjoyable internet trojan.

I swear But, wait! There’s more…

The smell of money is a lot like methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide.

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

The smell of money stinks.

No, really. Money smells like shit. Literally, like shit.

Cow shit, chicken shit, and the gasses produced by drilling for oil all smell horrid and are toxic if inhaled for too long. But methane (cow), ammonia (chicken), and hydrogen sulfide (oil drilling) are the smell of money. Big money.

You wouldn’t know it to spend any time in the middle of Nowhere, Texas (aka Cow/Chicken/Oil Country), but there is big money here. This county was recently named one of the top three oil producing counties in the world.

The. WORLD.

Unlike California, you can’t see any of the money here. People aren’t flashy and dress casually out here in the country. Many of the wealthy cattle ranchers and newly prosperous oil land/mineral rights owners still work their ranches. They wear regular blue jeans and drive pickups, sometimes old beat up pickups. There’s not one Ferrari or Porsche here. You might see a few of the new muscle cars, a couple older Mercedes, and a couple (random) Hummers driving around town. But most vehicles are Dodge Rams or Ford F150 trucks.

A chicken house for organic "free-range" chickens... the doors are so they can go out if they want. They don't want.

A chicken house for organic “free-range” chickens… the doors are so they can go out if they want. They don’t want. Your “free-range” chickens don’t give a hoot about ranging.

But you can smell the money wafting through the air from the cow ranches, the chicken houses, and the oil derricks. Since I’ve already shown y’all the cattle ranching, farming, and the oil derricks, this post is about the ammonia, err I mean, chicken houses… But, wait! There’s more…

A smile a day keeps the buttheads away.

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

(…and there’s a title which Google will never serve up in a search)

Or it keeps the blues away. I don’t know. I can’t be expected to remember these things. It’s all I can do to remember what I had for breakfast this morning. (Go on, take a moment… can you remember what you had for breakfast? I rest my case. Probably. Maybe. Oh, never mind.)

The small town of Bastrop, Texas, population around 7,300, is thirty miles southeast of Austin. Sadly, it is apparently most known for a huge forest fire that happened over a year and a half ago. The fire devastated the area and the beautiful pine trees that are rare in this part of Texas. Every time I mention Bastrop the other person in the conversation always mentions the terrible fire. Poor Bastrop may never live down that fire.

Much of the land remains just as it was after the fire was extinguished over a month later, charred and barren. I’m not sure why they haven’t been able to clear the land and restore many of the homes. The drought may not have helped because the burned area is devoid of any emerging greenery.

But Bastrop and the surrounding area is smiling about something. It seems they are all about the smiley face water tower.

It's a smiley marshmallow. (This one kind of reminds me of a Stay Puft marshmallow.)

This water tower kind of reminds me of a smiley Stay Puft marshmallow.

Bastrop has a charming downtown area, But, wait! There’s more…

Chocolate covered bacon is like sex.

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

Yup… Chocolate covered bacon is like sex.

(Maybe better, depending on the skill level of those involved.)

They fry everything in Texas: all fish, pickles, bacon, candy bars, mallow pies, strawberry shortcake, cheesecake, oreos, twinkies, s’mores, etc.

Y’all know I love a good festival. Since attending some of Texas’ festivals, fairs, and rodeos I’ve had some of THE BEST fried desserts ever. Fried cheesecake and fried oreos topped the list.

That is, until yesterday at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

Peeps! Sooo cute!

Peeps! Sooo cute!

I could tell you about the darling peeps (baby chicks). But, wait! There’s more…

Pescetarian or Bacontarian, can’t I be both?

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

Pescetarian: It’s like vegetarian, but with meat.

Pescetarian (from Wiki): (pron.: /ˌpɛskɨˈtɛəriən/) (also spelled pescatarianism) is the practice of a diet that includes seafood but not the flesh of other animals. A pescetarian diet shares many of its components with a vegetarian diet and includes vegetables, fruit, nuts, grains, beans, eggs, and dairy, but unlike a vegetarian diet also includes fish and shellfish. The Merriam-Webster dictionary dates the origin of the term “pescetarian” to 1993 and defines it to mean: “one whose diet includes fish but no other meat”.

Bacontarian: A person who supplements an otherwise normal diet – like the one above – with bacon. Lots of bacon.

Before coming to Texas, the land of red meat and BBQ, I ate bacon only once in a while. I was pretty much a healthy pescetarian (but with copious amounts of chocolate).

But in Texas? I was probably the only pescetarian – at least the only one in cow country. No one here has heard of that word. Before I stopped describing myself as a “pescetarian”, Texans gave me the strangest look whenever I uttered (and then had to explain) my diet.

So now I’m a bacontarian, something Texans can respect.

But I’m still adding copious amounts of chocolate to my diet. I heard there is chocolate covered bacon but I have yet to taste it. I looked it up on Amazon… what do you think??

Chocolate covered bacon

Chocolate covered bacon… mmmm.

Chocolate Covered Bacon on Amazon.com

Is there such thing as a Choco-bacontarian?