Good Things Come in Mini Packages

The Manager, Lurlene, and I were driving together toward a long summer weekend at Nurse and Zeb’s.  Whenever we’ve gone there, the house is crowded, and the crowd is chaotic and fun.  Nurse puts up with a lot from us, and is always gracious.  The weather there reminds me of the weather in the Buffalo area where I’m from:  glorious, cool summers, long, snowy winters, and plenty of wind.

On our way there, we stopped at my mother’s and stepfather’s.  Lurlene was impressed (as is everyone) with my stepfather’s carved working wooden locks modeled after old antique locks.  Each one has a spring mechanism, and a key (which he also carved) that opens the lock.

My mother’s four cats, two of whom stayed hidden, and two of whom were happy to see company, were topics of conversation, as was Busser and his “friend” Jimmy the stuffed monkey (about whom we need say nothing further).

My mother’s paintings, the subjects of which include her cats, were also on display.  The detail she painstakingly includes in her animal and human portraits is rare.  When I see a pet portrait from someone else, it usually looks hastily drawn in comparison.  In her teens in Buffalo, my mother was a student of Laszlo Szabo, an artist who almost never took on teenagers as students.  When her money for lessons ran out, he offered to continue teaching her for free.  She declined (she felt she should pay for the lessons), and now regrets not having continued her artistic training.  Others on the Sicilian side of her family have had renowned artistic careers.

After we left, we had a bite to eat at the Pink Cadillac and took photos posing with Humpty.  Then, on to Nurse and Zeb’s and our crazy weekend of fun.

As we got back on the interstate, we passed a field with what appeared to be a lot of small cattle.  I said, “Maybe they’re miniature cows!”  My mother lives near a large Horse Center and I once went to a miniature horse show there.  They’re so cute; it would be fun to have one in the backyard... if I had a backyard.  So I figured, if there could be miniature horses, then why not miniature cows?

Well, Lurlene could not believe what she had heard.  She made fun of me all weekend, believing I had displayed a truly scatter-brained moment... which I have been known to do.   (Once, when I was in high school, there was a fly on my bedroom window.  I wanted to kill the fly and thought it would be perfectly reasonable to hit with a book... on the window!  It didn’t occur to me until afterward that the window would break.)  Miniature cows!  Who ever heard of such a thing!

Now, keep in mind that this was before the days when everyone takes the internet with them everywhere they go.  So there was no way to prove it while we were there.  But when we got back home, I looked it up on the internet and discovered that there are indeed miniature cows, and they are especially prevalent in Virginia and North Carolina.  I couldn’t wait to tell Lurlene!  Someone ended up eating crow... oops, I mean eating petite filet mignon, and it wasn’t me!

Happy Birthday,

Paul