Recently, I’ve been too busy to post here. I have yet to re-register my old domain name, and am not sure I will put this blog on that domain again anyway. (I’m not keen on people knowing my full name.) Eventually, this will be located SOMEwhere other than the wordpress server. Eventually.
For now, this blog will remain here, while I work on my new sites……………….
Froggie is having a party tonight. Born in 1992, but in love with the 80s… the child (like her ma) was born a generation too late. E is hooking up the sound system as I write. iTunes 80s, blasted into the living room from the bedroom computer. Every song puts a smile on my face and transports me to a different time. Each song has a story attached to it. When the speakers were first plugged in, Starship’s “We Built this City (On Rock & Roll)” was playing and it made me chuckle out loud, thinking of the kids from the neighboring town who claimed the song as their anthem. (But maybe you’d have to be from here and know about Gregory, Texas, to know just how funny that was.) The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” is playing now, and I’m both happy and sad. My high school friend, Soraya Lalmansingh, and I used to sing this song in the back of the band hall. She, with her Bon Jovi concert shirt and I with my homemade denim mini skirt (a reconstructed long denim skirt, pilfered from the back of my mom’s closet — which I took with post-de-facto permission). I have looked for Soraya online for years. The closest I ever came was finding out that her parents were selling their Houston home. Geez, I miss her. I haven’t seen her for over 20 years.
Froggie’s party starts in 3 hours. The invitations specified that all attendees had to wear 80s attire. Froggie will be wearing a big white shirt cinched with a wide black belt, hot pink tights, leg warmers, and a denim mini skirt (neither homemade nor pilfered from her mother’s closet…). She’ll wear her hair up in a side ponytail (“like Deb” is what Monkey says.. he loves Napoleon Dynamite). She wants to play a few games during the party. I glued a bunch of pics of 80s items, celebrities, etc. on a neon green poster board. Whoever can name the most of them correctly will win a prize. I made up another game, too. E says I’m “crazy” for inventing it… but hey… read the title of the blog: Crazy can be a good thing. The game is thus: I will hang a picture of modern-day Michael Jackson on the wall and ask everyone if they recognize him (of course they will).
Then I’ll hold up this picture: 
and tell the kids that people who were kids in the 80s knew Michael Jackson when he looked like that (then I’ll put that picture aside). The object of the game: pin the original nose on Michael Jackson. In the same spirit as trying to give the unfortunate donkey his misplaced tail, the blindfolded kids will attempt to give the modern-day beaked visage of Jackson his original, God-given schnoz.
Our yard tends to be a home to various critters. I think it’s because of the kinds of plants we have. Bugs and birds like the veggie plants. Frogs and snakes like the bugs and catepillars. We sometimes get the occasional squirrel, though I’m not sure what they’re after since we don’t have any nut trees. And, on top of everything else, we have a few red-eyed tree frogs out there. (These don’t freak me out or scare me like the regular frogs do. Probably because I’ve never unwittingly squashed a tree frog to death with a nearly-bare foot.)
The tree frogs must like all the tropical plants we have out there. Unfortunately, a neighborhood kid (a friend of Monkey’s) once saw one, grabbed it, and took it home. He bragged to the other kids in the neighborhood, and now we get “frog hunters” every once in a while. The first time, it was cute. A rather mature (and a tad creepy) little kid came and asked if he could “look for a tree frog because Eli found a tree frog here,” blah blah blah. I said it was fine. He knocked again a few days later, and asked me to show him exactly where Eli had found his. I didn’t know; I hadn’t witnessed Eli’s conquest. He asked where –*specifically*– I had seen some in the past. I pointed here & there and went back inside. After 20 minutes or so, he knocked once again to tell me –with a hang dog expression– that he hadn’t found one.
This kid has come by every few weeks. For months.
Today, when I was at the grocery store, Froggie called to tell me “I just wanted to let you know that Lily and Carter are out there again.” (He brings his little sister every once in a while.) Forty minutes later, I was pulling up to the house as they were leaving. Empty handed.
The doorbell rang about 10 minutes later. It was Carter and Lily. Again. With their mom. (This was a first.) Froggie opened the door, and the kids’ mom asked if we minded if they looked around our plants for a tree frog. Froggie smiled and said, “It’s fine,” then she shut the door and said, “Mom, this is getting really weird. Why don’t they just go BUY one?!” I peeked out the window. Lily and Carter are poking through my potted plants, while their mother is crawling on hands and knees through the mud, poking, prodding, and pulling on my big tropical plants. I know these people have the $20 it would cost to go buy one (their house is right on the water, for Pete’s sake). I guess at this point it’s just the thrill of the hunt. I’m hoping they give up and never find one. I sort of like seeing our little tree frogs out there once in a while.
Photo taken the day after Thanksgiving, 2006
