I have it here in my hand. The piece of paper a dermatologist gave me when I complained about an ominous bug bite that was doubling in size each hour size and turning the hue of Welch’s grape juice. “Apply mustard, or white vinegar, or chew some tobacco and put the nicotine juice on the spot.”

You just said what?

Strange as it may seem for a Yankee to admit, “I don’t dip snuff or chew, or play with those that do”.  In fact, the closest I have ever gotten to chewing “tabbacky” (besides watching TV baseball players spit ) is playing with a turtle shaped spittoon my Grandmother had. When you stepped on the head (the spittoon’s, not my grandmother) the shell popped open to reveal a small brass bowl. We kept marbles in it. I have the turtle in my home today (yes, I keep the marbles in it and okay, I may have lost a few over the years). But I have to confess, it really never occurred to me in this day and age that anyone might walk into my home and actually spit into the thing, or need to.

Now I am all for homeopathic cures and I don’t doubt that nicotine enhanced with spit can cure a great deal of woes, but since I was “afeared” that my malady was created by the likes of a brown recluse spider bite (read: Ebola breath) the thought of adding insult to injury made me a tad bit squeamish.

Thus I resisted the temptation of going down to the General Store and standing downwind of the good ‘ol boys with a gnaw of chew the size of a Buick in their mouths and hoping for a strong breeze and that perchance “a little dab’ll do ya”.

Instead, I went directly home from the doctor’s and waited for nature to take its course. Fortunately that process did not include an agonizing death with an equally agonizing twangy dirge which would have killed me all over again. Yes, I am happy to report that the itching and swelling subsided of its own accord. That after nearly killing myself with a plethora of remedies of my own invention: peroxide, rubbing alcohol, aloe, lemon juice. (I  know, I  know a ‘C’ student in chemistry should never be allowed in the kitchen to experiment on medical breakthroughs while they have a fever affecting their judgment)

So after I was on the mend, in the name of science and gathering fuel for my blog, I asked several of the natives in ‘these here parts’ what they would suggest to cure an inflamed itchy bug bite. And while several of you of the scarlet-upper- vertebrae-persuasion, (i.e. red neck wisenheimers) suggested I simply stay away from bugs in the first place, including such sarcasm as: Bite them first preemptively, wash the floor with PineSol and moonshine, burn Citronella candles and kerosene in the Tiki torches, or move back to Santa Barbara where they only have 2 resident mosquitoes on Leap Year. The rest of the sincere contributions are fascinating, I can assure you. So now (drum roll please) in no particular order and with zilch for a guarantee on results I present to you “The cure (s)!”

Apply: crushed ice which has been packed into a more or less clean muslin dish towel, mineral oil, mud, clay, a beer bottle cap filled with boiling water inverted to scald and numb the area (this from a biker acquaintance’s blog where scalding flesh and beer caps are often found in the same sentence), Crest, Absorbine Junior, Preparation H, Solarcaine (okay, not all of these are ‘natural’ cures, but either are their active ingredients indicated for bug bites, when last I checked), we might as well add Windex courtesy of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, witch hazel (which is who or what?), gin, tequila (externally, bummer!), lye soap, used tea bags and last but not least Tea Tree oil (Yes, from the very Tea Tree you have growing right outside your own back door). I am not so sure if these remedies are meant to help the infected area or just burn off a fair portion of epidermis to remove all evidence of the original bug bite.

Additionally, there are a sundry of poultices made from: Chickweed, Plantain, Wintergreen, Yarrow, Yew, Watercress, Chamomile, Lavender, Hyssop, Mint, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (what no Parsley?). These are often mixed in various machinations with animal lard, olive oil and/or bees wax (bee bite cures will be covered in another blog).

And if you think that is bad, I heard of a local cure for the mumps…rub sardine oil all over your cheeks and neck. Thing is, I don’t if it cures the mumps or just keeps everyone away so they can’t hear you moan.

Me? When it comes to bug bites I think I’ll stick to that old remedy in the 50s song, Poison Ivy. “I’ll get me a potion of Calamine lotion.”

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Let’s talk about critters. Okay, let’s up the ante to varmits (AKA vermin, for those of you raised north of the Mason-Dixon line) in May of this year a warm steady breeze swirled around the backyard and my sister (who has lived in “these here parts” for longer than I have) said as light as a sprite , “the critters will be coming out soon” and then she departed for higher ground.

CRITTERS: The first critter I ran into was a pernicious ground hog the size of the GoodYear blimp. He was ‘a-fixin’ to ravage a young tender (green) thing in my garden. I ran out of the house with words retching from my gut that only very old wizen sailors should know and even they might blush at the thought of such verbal carnage.

Arms swinging like a Tilt-a-Whirl I attempted to use size, aggression and fury to intimidate my opponent. His eyelids fluttered as if thinking he might look up and surmise the threat, but instead kept gnawing and assaulting my newly planted delphiniums.

I stopped abruptly at about four feet away when a glint of springtime sunshine bounced across his front fangs like a scene from movie “The Great Race” every time Tony Curtis smiled. It occurred to me the critter was waiting for me to get within mauling distance.

I screamed, “I’m gonna shoot you, you %$#@#$% (feel free to fill in your favorite adjectives for this sort of encounter). I swear to God, I am going to get my 22 and blast you to kingdom come (wherever that is).” That’s when I realized I was morphing into Daisy Mae Clampett (oh, alright, morphing into Granny Clampett). One year here in North Carolina and I was ready to shoot a critter. Never mind that I don’t even own a rifle. I was out for revenge. Heaving several large copper bottom sauce pans in the general direction of the garden, I was delighted to see the ground-HOG waddle away and sequester himself under the garden shed

Not to be bettered, I grabbed a broom and ran toward the black hole where he had disappeared. I poked. I made long sweeping swings into the dark crawl space. That is when the residue of my New York savvy brain surfaced and shouted:”Yo, shitforbrains! Hello? Crawl Space? Things that crawl live in there and can grab onto the pole, climb out and attack you. Rule number one of street-smarts-survival: give up your valuables and run the other direction.” I went into the house.

VERMIN: Webster’s states that vermin are collectively noxious or troublesome small animals or insects. Within days of the “Attack of the Crazed Critter” I ran into the local vermin. (No not the vermillion necked vermin down at the All-You-Can-Guzzle-Gulp-or-Grab-Saloon) This was a more sinister group and they had hundreds of peeps. There were (and still are) flying vermin…yellow jackets..in the &^%$# ground! I ask you what kind of self-respecting bee lives underground? Answer, the kind that also like the shade of my zucchini plants and the moist loam I bought at Home Depot at a premium, thank you very &^%$#$ much. Needless to say, several cans later of ‘KILL ALL’ I was wheezing ankle deep in a carpet of seizuring yellow jackets. I have not checked the zucchini in a month for fear of reprisals.

Next was the red earth worm the circumference of a kabasi. “Wow,” I gushed, “look at that, they really grow ‘em big down here. Well, that’s good for the soil, good for the flowers, good god it’s moving like a &^%$%# side-winder. SNAKE!” I now boomed to no one. I beg you, dear raeder, to understand. I like a lovely green garter-garden snake as much as the next girl scout, but we don’t just have vegetarian snakes down here, we have poisonous demonic vicious, fanged, venom-ators in scaly skin.

I caught the squiggling vermin on my metal rake, lifted it up high, like Moses leading the Israelites through parted waters. I steadied my feet and using my best lacrosse form flung the snake towards my goal…the other side of the fence. It shot across the air like a piece of rusted rebarb. As noted in other tales of mine referencing critters and vermin it can be duly noted that my immediate goal is to rid my marked turf of any obstreperous outsiders. And these automatic impulses are often ill planned. So, I will admit that as Sir Snake headed airborne through the woods a small voice (again, with the New York accent, already) said, “That’s right throw him over the fence, I am sure he and his older brother will never find their way back here.

CRITTERS AND VERMIN TOGETHER: There is one place that critters and vermin love to dwell in harmony, albeit an opus to kill me slowly and softly. Donde esta? Esta en the melting pot, the DNA soup, the swimming pool. In the last few weeks I have fished out (and given flying lessons to): warty toads, yellow-bellied slime drenched frogs, a snapping turtle (well, that puts the kibosh on any skinny dipping in the dark, I hope to shout!), snakes (can you say diamond backs?), spiders with pretty colors on their huge bodies and LONG hairy legs, worms, crickets, mice, wasps, fireants (one bit me on the jaw and my entire face went numb. The site of the bite was a lump the size of a CD which finally subsided leaving a lovely tone of “purple-browny” as my astute grandson was so quick to point out), an injured bird (no I did not jetison him over the fence…I do have a modicum streak of humanity under my permanent case of the willies!), bumble bees, mosquitoes the size of a Pontiac, poisonous centipedes, rolly-pollies (the insect version of the armadillo), and a massive, and I might suggest an aptly named, dragonfly.

It is a strange world when the streets of Bed-Sty and the South Bronx seem safer than your own backyard. But in the 8 years I lived at 96th and Lex and worked for the City Department of Aging in all lower income neighborhoods, I never had the queasy feeling that every single thing out there wanted me dead. But just so you don’t think I am going all ‘Rambo and DuPont’ on Mother Nature out here (and you are sicking Animal Protection on me as we speak)…I am fervently researching natural ways to keep the aforementioned wildlife and my ‘personhood’ in different realms of the Animal Kingdom.
This is what I have come up with. A young man at the corner “Gas ‘N Go” suggested I use goat piss. He said, and I quote, “Since I got me a goat I ain’t had no trouble with snakes ur other vermin.” Hey, why argue with success? Now the question at hand is do you rent a goat by the hour and pump him up on Aquafina, or do you just chase him around someone’s yard with a bucket?

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North Carolina, as with most of the south, seems to be crackerjacks over firecrackers.

The fact that there is a drought, lo kindling for miles on the InterState as far as the eye can see, does not deter the pyromaniacs from their passion. The booms and bangs in the night with the obligatory fire engine/ambulance whistles to follow started in May. Church youth groups sell fireworks on every corner as a fund raiser, oblivious to the irony of God-fearing folks selling explosives.

Now I love a well organized fireworks display (I know, I know–they symbolize bombs bursting in air). In fact, I am nuts about fireworks as long as you leave it to the professionals, AKA the people with knowledge and experience of, chemicals, computers and, say, trajectory. In truth, I am probably gun-shy of the random Darwin-Award wanna-be with lighter fluid in one hand and an M80 in the other because of the kid (read boy) I knew growing up who blew off several of his fingers . Then there was the other kid who blew a hole in his hip carrying a cherry bomb in his sweaty jeans pocket. Nonetheless, the thrill of fireworks remains, “Ah, Ooo!”

So here is a rhetorical question: (I think that’s the only kind there is in print media, duh!) Is your life filled with emotional fireworks? (OK, that segue was a bit rough, but hey there’s someone setting off bottles rockets next door; I’m stressing out a tad.)

Because I just read that according to a Poll funded by the Pew Foundation Baby Boomers are miserable. Are you miserable? I’m not. But then I work on keeping the fireworks in my life every day. It’s an art form and a discipline I learned from my Grandmother. Excitement and joy doesn’t just fly through the window. (Misery however does.)

FYI: These are the people I have found to be miserable. People who dwell on the past as the ‘good old days’ (so what’s today, chopped liver?). People who when they screw up rehearse a lifetime litany of similar errors, as if God’s love isn’t big enough to forgive AND let it go. (Extra bonus points if you self-talk negatively calling yourself derogatory names.) People who live in rainy, dank, dark climates. People who are postponing joy. This last one brings me to an epiphany I had the other day.

HERE GOES: Life is like an amusement park ride. It can be scary, hairy and fun all at once. The thing is when the ride is over you have to get off (apologies to Shirley McClain who is in the back screaming, “Again, again”). The fun doesn’t come after the ride, it comes DURING the ride. Be it a sailboat ride, a horseback ride, a Roller Coaster ride (OK I have to admit I close my eyes during this one and miss the entire thing). The thing is this, if you are not happy or joyful every day for small wonders then you have missed the ride. By the time you ‘wake-up’ it will be over.

So, your assignment Mr./Ms. Phelps is this: create fireworks in your life.

I planted 2 blueberry bushes and 12 strawberry plants this Spring. Now every morning on my oatmeal I have FRESH berries. Today I even leaned over and ate a few right off the bush (Look Mom, no hands). This week I put up 2 hummingbird feeders and I have had flying emeralds and rubies ever since. I wrote and received back a letter from a niece who attends the camp I went to. Another niece just wrote to say she is expecting her 2nd child. Life is sweet and wonderful and worth acknowledging EVERY MOMENT of EVERY DAY.

And oh, yeah, I still am on heavy drugs for the pain of a destroyed spine. And yes, I am going through a 2nd divorce. And yes, one of my kids has stopped talking to me. And yes, I grieve over every woman who is being abused, every child whose innocence is being stolen and every single one of our troops stuck in a war without end. But there is no dichotomy between caring about the world and rejoicing they are two sides of a coin called compassion and passion. So be on guard…misery loves company and I’m going to have to send a ‘Regret’ to that RSVP!

YOU HAVE THE POWER! Light up your life with 10 simple things a day, 20 things to be truly grateful for and look for 3 miracles and 2 answers to prayer. Choose to see the possibility of all you are and look for ways to brighten the path of all the ‘invisible’ people in your life (you know the mailman, the check-out person, the bank teller, the cable installer).

Choose fireworks, don’t become a miserable Baby Boomer statistic!

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‘June Gloom’ is a rolling marine layer coming off the ocean that settles as one huge cloud often from ground level half-way up the mountains in Santa Barbara, Ca. This large sleeping giant usually inhabits the center of the tourist district. But if you were to hike to the top of a nearby mountain look-out, such as Paradise Point, you’d be well above the mist. You can also drive a few miles up the coast to Goleta and enjoy perfectly blue skies all day. But at Stern’s Wharf, at the end of State Street (the main drag) it can be as thick as pea soup, much like the streets of London in every over-dramatized Jack-the-Ripper movie.

Let it be noted that June Gloom can come in Feb, May or September, as well. Most Santa Barbarians are non-plussed by this moist phenomenom but the tourists are terrified that they have been dupped by photos of Speedo clad volleyball players and promises of Pamela Lee Anderson look-alike life guards. Six hours of gloom puts visitors into sheer panic. Where is the sun? What have we done? I want a refund!

Patience little grasshopper. By noon (or admittedly, on occasion, by sunset) the fog dries out and all is well. I am pretty sure that without this ‘gloom’ Santa Barbara would look like Bakersfield before irrigation…brown dust.

“We need the gloom to get the glorious flowers and to appreciate the sunshiny days,” store keepers chirp while tying up parcels (the only recreation during inclimate weather is shopping).

Speaking of overcast days, I have been in Scotland during May this year. And even though I hear tell it has been the warmest sunniest May since 1914 (I had tea Saturday with a woman who is 93, she verified as much of that record as she could) it is miserably rainy now and has been for 2 days. I hate the rain, at least the drizzle kind. Give me a gale force wind with plenty of lightening and I am meserized. But two days of this spitting down my neck and I am ready to rebook my flight home, ASAP to the sunny albeit muggy USA.

Go ahead, ye lads and lassies of Glasgow, say it: Californians are weather weenies. I concur. And you can throw in most of the southern US states while you’re at it. It is a stout and staunch people who can survive a long dark winter and then suffer through an entire summer of only 20 sunny days or less (last year I am told there were none, zero, zilch, nyet).

The threat of grey skies in summer is an obvious life metphor. Let’s face it, one advantage of being a Baby Boomer is that we have seen so much freaking ‘June Gloom’ in our 50 + years that we finally know the ’stuff’ hitting the fan will eventualy evaporate. (Come on things have been tougher, my first mortgage was at 16 percent.) And, Praise God, we are fairly sure the sun will come again. Life will have a balanced keel once more (granted until the next storm).

The question before us, however, is this: will the fog of your current situation disappear into thin air before or after your credit card bills catch up with you? Will you end up buying a standard shift volkswagon so you can coast down the hills and save gas, again? If this recession continues will we all be working for twenty more years? How much cash buisness can a person do under-the-table before the table is found…and where can I get such a table (hypothetically of course and do you offer finanacing?). YISH!

Maybe I should stretch the metaphor to include going up the mountain and driving up the road to look for sun when you are stuck in a fog. I’m not sure what that looks like for you: a good laugh, a good cry, a long walk, or a game with grandchildren. Whatever, I am going to have to find a way to create some indoor sun and make some good luck happen, because as of June first, gasoline is $9 a gallon in the UK, it’s still raining and the dollar is two, to one pound (A movie for 2 adults and one child is around $40). It guess it’s back to shadow puppets. I do a mean parrot.

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Still May, but cold as a witch’s…broom stick.

When is it good to carry a few extra pounds? When you’re in the UK, because dollars are all but worthless here. (Well, yes, they are worthless at home as well.) But here is something to cheer you up…gas is now near $10 a gallon over here and rising. That’s mostly TAX, as it is in California. And yes, they have their own oil in the ground. And if that isn’t depressing enough…here in Scotland they want to raise the taxes on booze so high that it stops binge drinking. Like a binge drinker couldn’t find, buy or steal enough booze to binge. Well, that’s it! I am not going to start binge drinking in THIS country.

And don’t even get me started on the Parliment’s vote on Savior Siblings genetics. I’ve taken it on the chin from more than one sibling and I can tell you it’s NOT FUN! So I vote NO. More later I have to go research the “Bowls” not cereal…bowling. A bit like Bocche,and billards all-in-one. More on that later..

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