Personal Statement

Personal Statement

Friday, June 24, 2011

Things I'm Digging: The Bloggess

Friend Melissa forwarded a link to The Bloggess' blog site. Roll over this sentence for the link - find it?  You're welcome.  Now check out her June 21st post about a five-foot metal chicken named Beyonce.

Awesome.  Simply awesome.  Hell hath no fury like a woman who has been advised that she is not entitled to buy bath towels.  And I LOVE with a capital L (followed by a capital O, a capital V and a capital E) a woman who exacts her karmic revenge in (purposefully, or not-so-purposefully) whimsical ways.

This post was particularly of interest to me because we will soon be celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary.  My parents just celebrated their anniversary as well, prompting The Little One to ask:

"What's an anniversary?"

"It's kind of like the birthday of your marriage."

"Oh.  Well, what birthday is your marriage on?"

"Coming up on fifteen."

"Wow.  Your marriage is OLD."

Yes, wise little grasshopper.  In this day and age, fifteen is old indeed. And, apparently, "15 YEARS IS BIG METAL CHICKENS."  Thanks, Bloggess, for solving the dilemma of what to get Parnell for an anniversary present.  Big metal chicken, it is.  Now:  where to procure said chicken?  Anyone headed to Brownsville or Laredo this summer?  Are you heading there in an SUV?  Do you have a sense of humor?  If so, message me.

I am actually kind of surprised that we don't already own a Beyonce, given that we own a Sir Rust-a-Lot.  And, also, The Legs.

Sir Rust-a-Lot is five feet of rusted armorial awesomeness.  He looks to be Spanish - like a dwarf Don Quixote.  I say "he looks to be Spanish" like he's an authentic suit of armor, with a provenance of somewhere other than a Garden Ridge Pottery, but I'm 99.99% sure that he did, in fact, hail from GRP Way.  We acquired Sir Rust-a-Lot from Friend Christi's mom.  Mom Carolyn acquires set pieces, like random suits of armor, for parties and other events.  And then she gives them to me, because she knows that I have similar tendencies - and a very large carriage house.

Sir Rust-a-Lot resided with Uncle Patrick for awhile, in a house near the TCU campus (and, quite possibly, for a short time in an actual fraternity house).  We offered him to Uncle Patrick, because I knew from experience that frat boys like to decorate their residences with suits of armor.  Second best frat-boy house I ever saw had a suit of armor and a life-sized statue of Buddha, flanking a ginormous entertainment system.  Opposite the entertainment system you had a flock of La-Z-Boy recliners.  In the breakfast nook, you had a small pool table in lieu of a dining table, and over that you had one of those stained glass Budweiser lamps where the Clydesdales move on a little track around the lampshade.

There was a foosball table where the kitchen island should have been.

Best frat-boy house I ever saw was an homage to seventies Blaxploitation films and cop dramas everywhere.  As in, the sofa was covered in awful olive green velvet, the shag rug matched the sofa, there were mirrored beer signs on every wall (featuring women with giant Afros), and on top of the walnut-cabineted television you had a VCR with no buttons - only dials.

I like whimsical frat boys almost as much as I like whimsical female bloggers with spousal revenge on their minds.

Sir Rust-a-Lot ultimately was returned to us and now guards the carriage house, when he is not standing in front of the house, holding a bouquet of balloons to direct guests to a knight-themed birthday party.

The Legs are a bit harder to explain.  My husband bought them for me when we were dating, because (1) they were mannequin legs (just legs - well, plus butt and hips - but completely devoid of torso), (2) they were eight dollars (a menswear store was going out of business and selling their fixtures), (3) they were (badly) faux-painted to look like malachite, (4) one hip was jutted out to the side, creating a stance that was jaunty-bordering-on-swishy and (5) in the front you had a smooth, ambiguous Ken Doll Bulge, to create the appearance of an actual "package" when The Legs were wearing clothes.  During the period of our ownership, The Legs only wore boxer shorts.  We bought themed ones - shamrocks for St. Pat's, bunnies for Easter.  For a couple of years in the mid-nineties, The Legs were known to wear red-and-yellow Houston Rockets shorts.

The Legs actually accompanied us to our first married apartment, and then to our current house.  We thought about gluing a serving tray to the flat upper surface, to make The Legs actually functional, but we never got around to it.  Really, the only purpose The Legs served were to scare the bejeepers out of people who entered our casa blissfully unaware of the fact that we owned The Legs.  "You have such a cute place [one thousand one, one thousand two] - OMIGOD, WHO OR WHAT IS STANDING BEHIND THE DOOR TO YOUR ARMOIRE?"  That's where The Legs tended to reside - behind the open door to the TV armoire, and given that The Legs rose up almost to where the door started, I suppose that it was reasonable for folks to think that an entire person was lurking in the corner, with half of their body blocked from view.  Notwithstanding the fact that that body was entirely covered in green and black paint.  The better to blend in with our then-forest green walls, I guess?  The ultimate in sophisticated home invader camouflage.

The Legs are . . . somewhere.  Possibly in the attic.  Or in the carriage house, being gnawed on by squirrels.  I finally mustered the courage to tell my darling spouse that, while The Legs were an incredibly sweet, and well-received, gift, my decorating tastes had sort of evolved past faux-finished dismembered body parts.

But a five-foot metal chicken named Beyonce - now that I could get behind.

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