Phoebe Kate

Anybody remember that TV show from the 80s with Dick Van Patten and Betty Buckley as the beleaguered parents of six children?  I loved it — and now I’m living it myself now.

I grew up the only child of middle-aged parents.  I constantly begged them to adopt some siblings for me.  They politely declined and got me pets instead.  After I got married, I determined I would attempt to populate the planet single-handedly — no having just one kid for me.  I succeeded in having three offspring, all of whom are grown or mostly grown by now.  Retrospectively, I think it was probably a mercy I didn’t have more.  The trio I had turned my sometimes blonde/sometimes auburn/sometimes brunette tresses prematurely grey.

Now, I’m finally getting to have what I always wanted.  With son Davio, his fiancee Aura and her 11-year-old daughter Jocelyn living with us until they find their own place, along with son James-Kent and his girlfriend Julie and daughter Jerusha home from college for the holiday, there’s eight in the house and it’s a blast.  Woo-hoo!!!

The goofy theme song of the old show is true, you know.  Eight is enough to fill your life with love.

–phoebe kate   

“Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.” — W.J. Cameron

I have no idea who Mr. Cameron was/is — a Google search on him yielded no bio, only some quotes about holidays — so I don’t know where he’s coming from with this thought, but I can heartily second the sentiment. 

The action starts two days before the event with menu planning (taking into account the various food preferences and allergies of the guests) and then shopping in at least seven stores for the necessary ingredients for the vast repast.  Cooking commences the day before — the pies, the casseroles, the condiments, the canapes.  No matter how far in advance you begin the process, it’s never early enough.  The day of the feast, there’s at least three more hours of preparation that you didn’t foresee, no matter how many years you’ve done this particular gig.  The chef du jour careens around like Road Runner, an amazing feat in an 8×10 kitchen.  Family and guests offer to help, bless their hearts, but the truth is they’ll just get trampled by the hostess and end up as a Thanksgiving Day fatality.

Glad to report that the banquet turned out beautifully.  This hostess looked like a wrung-out rag and was thankful that all the merrymakers only had eyes for the comestibles and not for her.  She was additionally grateful that they were able to carry the conversational ball with only an occasional small smile and litte laugh from her. 

Some other people did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen.  The day was perfect.

–phoebe kate

My DSL modem had a meltdown this weekend.  Fortunately we were home at the time to catch it before it burned down our house.  The box was red-hot and the smell of sizzling plastic was toxic.  I’d never viewed it as a household hazard before so it was a heads up for me. 

Anyway, I suffered severe internet withdrawal symtoms for a couple of days before Embarq provided me with a new one.  Whew!  I’m feeling better already…

More to come.

–phoebe kate

I’m a Southerner but have mostly spent my time in urban environs like Nashville and Raleigh – except for a few years in rural Florida when I was a little kid.  Though I loved riding horseback through the citrus groves, I can’t say I enjoyed the experience otherwise.  Alligators who crawled up into the yard and ate the laundry hanging out to dry on the clothes line because there wasn’t a dog or human to consume, ”palmetto bugs” (aka cockroaches) bigger than your hand, “house spiders” (aka tarantulas) as large as serving platters, stinging insects the size of Shetland ponies and a heat index of 120 every day are sufficient factors to spoil anybody’s fun.     

Now that I’m living in rural coastal NC, I am trying to overcome my wariness of nature and become in tune with it.  We have two acres of wooded land that abut a national forest.  Last autumn, which was exceptionally balmy, our many pine trees had a profligate burst of propagative fervor — for weeks, the air was thick with thousands of winged seeds blowing in the wind, trying to find a place to grow.  And grow they did — in the gravel of our driveway, in the cracks of our brick path, in the most unlikely and inhospitable places.  Shoot, if you weren’t careful, a seed would get caught in your hair – and lo and behold, there’s a minuscule pine tree growing out of your head.

The subsequent winter was unprecedentedly warm  – 80-plus degrees on Christmas Day.  Not very conducive to hearty turkey and ham dinners — I should have served a picnic supper of tomato aspic, chicken salad and deviled eggs instead — but definitely so for the growth of wee saplings in strange places.

This deceptively balmy autumn, however, there’s been nary a pine seed wafting in the breeze.  And, not surprisingly, it suddenly turned bitterly cold around Halloween and shows every sign of remaining that way for the rest of the season. The migratory birds, the foraging animals, the creatures who hibernate, even the trees have an infallible sense of timing and they seem to always be right.   

No more making fun of tree-huggers, people.  You’d be silly not to hug something that knows more than you and all the meteorologists on the Weather Channel put together.

 –phoebe kate   

Glad to see the clever ad men for the car insurance company with the highest profile TV presence are using stars from back in the day again. 

In the first round of celebs, they used Peter Graves, Charo and Little Richard, among others.  The funniest commercial was with Burt Bacharach.  (If you’re too young to remember him, he’s the guy who composed ”Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart,” “What The World Needs Now Is Love” and “I Say a Little Prayer for You” among dozens of other songs you know.)  A real life Geico customer, sitting at a piano with Bacharach, described her auto accident as the composer improvised music and lyrics.  It went like this:

   Woman:  Last year I was rear-ended by a Geico customer.

   Bacharach (singing in falsetto): I was hit in the rear.

   Woman:  First thought in my mind was that funny little lizard.

   Bacharach (singing): Lizard licks his eyeball…

   Woman: I was so impressed by how they handled my claim that I switched.

    Bacharach (singing): I hope I never get hit in the rear again.

The woman’s reaction to his last lyric is LOL hilarious. See it for yourself here 

This time around, they’ve got Peter Frampton helping a Geico customer tell her story.  “The tow truck damaged my car even more,” the woman says.  Frampton sings, “I wanted to pull my hair out.”  Priceless.  Check it out here 

Kudos to the Martin Advertising Agency for their zany creativity.  From gecko to cavemen to pop icons, the ads are more entertaining than the shows Geico sponsors.

–phoebe kate