I imagine her savoring the moment.

My husband and I are in love...

...with our exterminator, Dennis. And Jack.  And Raysheen.  Or Rayray as he likes us to call him.

Oh, where to begin?

Let's start with Baltimore.  We live in a city built on a swamp.  We never had bugs in Ohio. But as someone said to me years ago "When you build a city on a swamp in the mid Atlantic, its bound to happen."

Our problem was two-fold: ants, and these mother fucking spider crickets. Have you ever seen a spider cricket?  Never saw them before we cam here, and Jesus, those mother fuckers scare the shit out me the first time I laid eyes on on one.  Literally I screamed.  That scared the shit out of the sogs, but think looks like a cross between a daddy long legs and cock roach.  And when you squash them they god SPLAT!

"You've never seen a spider cricket," said a coworker.  "First time I saw one wet myself.  Those mother fuckers are fast son's of bitches. Shit.  And they are all fucked up.  God's insect answer to a platypus."

In any event, we had problems.  Most 90 year old houses do have problems. 

Maybe it is that the people before us, who were peace loving, never angry Quakers, and they knew about the bugs, but never did anything to combat any problem they had in the house. You know how they abhor violence.   If a light switch went, they left it for fear of hurting the wiring.  Evidently "friendly persuasion" and reason don't work on broken light switches, cracked plumbing lines or on insect infestations.  They just put up with it all.

It quickly became apparent that everything from Bay leaves, to talc, to borax, to hedge apples, and every other natural way of getting rid of the bugs short of buying an aardvark wasn't working.

What we needed were chemicals.  We tried Raid and Tero, but no luck.  Clearly we needed to step up our game before it became an "issue".

So we shopped around, found a company both highly rated and affordable and they seemed nice enough, and the service visit did help.  We thought once and done was it.

Wrong.  At Christmas, the ants were back, swarming on the counter like a wave.  So we called the guy again, and out comes his brother - a smallish, round man who looked like Danny DeVito, who was just as nice as the first guy, who laid down more chemicals and sure enough, the ants went away.

In the spring, the problem raised its ugly head again, so we called, and instead of the owner, they sent out "Kyle".

Unlike the owner, Kyle was more like Zeus.

And reader, Cookie couldn't speak. 

Tall, ravishingly handsome, polite, helpful, and the owner of a body that could barely be contained by his shirt, or his pants.  I don't know how the zipper on his fly could withstand the pressure that his package was putting on it.

Kyle treated the problem and as he drove away I breathlessly called the husband, because we keep nothing from one and other.

After fifteen minutes of me raving about Kyle awakening something in me - the horny housewife who yearns for an affair with the cabana boy -  long dormant, the husband injected a "Really?  He made you feel like Shelley Winter's in the Chapman Report?"

Yup.

The following fall, here came those little six legged mother fuckers and I called for the exterminator and this time, there was no Kyle.

Instead, they sent me Rowkeyse, who said - after I nearly slaughtered it because I was drooling - "Nah, my mamma gave me that name.  Everyone calls me Key."  Key explained that Kyle was on his honeymoon so he was picking up his houses.  Key was six foot six inches of delicious man, with lips that would have put Englebert Humperdinck to shame.  And the man had hands that were an accurate portend - I hoped of what was in his pants.

"You see," Key started to explain, "An the cold weather blah blah blah..."

My eyes were transfixed by his body.   I wondered about his nipples.  Were the smallish and taut, or were broad, stretched by his magnificent pecs, or fleshy and...

"blah blah blah trying to find shelter."

Uh, huh.

Again, I let him do what I needed done to the house (no, not me) and when he came to me and said, "let's go in the dining room so I can show you something," I almost closed the curtains.  Good thing I didn't.

Instead he laid out the bills for the last three calls and said his boss "wanted me to show these to you.  Each time we're here, you are paying "X+1".  Well, two times "X" is enough for an annual contract, and blah, blah, blah...."

I was transfixed by his beauty, his presence.  This was a man who would be a firm, but gentle lover.  I was his, if only in my mind, and this is a top who would have tumbled for Key.  I was sunk.  So I did the only thing I could do: I yielded to his logic.

And in fact, had we signed the contract, we would have saved the $99 house call fee.  Duh.

"...blah, blah, and we would come out four times a year instead of the tree, plus any emergency calls in between are covered."

That dark chocolate god wanted to sell me a contract, and this savvy consumer who normally throws people out of the house for less said "Where do I sign?"

I mean, yes, from a money standpoint, it made sense.  But four guaranteed visits from Kyle, or Key, even if it was only in the professional sense was well worth it to brighten my humdrum days.

My husband was a bit less thrilled, until I showed him the numbers and their promise that they would be here at the drop of a pin.

"Of course, you know, now they send the ugly exterminators."

I stopped fantasizing and came down to earth.  It sounded like something I would fall for.  And what a business model.  Send in the gods with the killer good looks and the award winning personalities, get the contract signed, then send in the employees with "summer teeth and B.O.  How diabolically brilliant.

Thankfully, over the last seven visits, Kyle, Key and a host of their coworkers have only gotten better.

There was Billy, a sun tanned man in his late thirties from Southern Virginia, salt and pepper hair, the bluest eyes and deepest dimples.   "I think you have a paper wasp nest that could be a problem should that limb come down," was what he said, but what I heard was angels singing.

There was Rasheen, who Billy sent to take care of the wasp nest.  "Make sure your windows are closed for the next couple days just in case someone comes looking for their home."  Uh-huh. He had a million dollar chest with nipples I could latch onto, and a mega watt personality and smile.

And then is Jerry, late twenty something, ginger with freckles and shoulders and the most perfect ass I have ever seen.  Jerry is asstastic.  And he has a personalty that is so sweet, and eyes so green that he could tell me the house is about to crumble termites and I wouldn't care.

"I normally work in Howard County," he said the last time, "but I love coming here. You guys and the people next door and the woman across the street are just the nicest people."

So I asked Joannie who lives across the street what she thought of Jerry.

"You know, I hate the name Jerry, but on him, it's good. Even if he were named Nestor, he'd make it the sexiest name in the world.   He's like that guy in the Diet Coke commercial," she said.  "I work from home when Jerry is scheduled.  That way, when he's spreading that stuff to kill the vermin outside, I can have him all to myself in my mind."

Billie, who lives on our other side is a commercial artist who works from home as well.  She does illustrations for romance novels.

"I could make Jerry a star like Fabio. But when I am done with him he'd end up opening grocery stores, maybe get asked to appear on Dancing with The Stars.  Or worse, a bit part on a Lifetime movie."  She sipped some ice coffee and swirled around her mouth like a fine wine.  "I couldn't ruin him like that.  I hope his girlfriend is sweet and lovable and they they make lots of babies.  So the world will be a better place."

Then she added "I want to hate her, whoever she is. But I couldn't do that to Jerry."

Today we had Dennis.  Dennis, an Irish lad with a killer accent and the perfect narrow waist to broad shoulder ratio that puts every other man to shame.  Dennis, I told my husband is the man I would marry if I weren't married.  And as it happened, the husband was home today working in the yard.  To date, he had never seen any of these guys.  Today, he got an eye full of Dennis.

He got so smitten with Dennis that he turned off the core aeration machine, which we rented by the hour, to walk over and chat about bugs and vermin.

"Dennis told me," my husband said, "That there is an outbreak of rats over in , but that he'd make sure we were taken care of.  We talked about Ireland.  His people are from County Roscommon, like my people."  

As the husband went back out to his big honking yard machine there was a swagger in his step.

Its good to share interests with your mate.  Even if its oogling at the hired men.  Yup, neither of us can't wait to see some ants come this spring.

Weight training at home...

... - Quietly.

Sounds awfully sneaky, sneaky, right?

As in Patricia Neil as "Livvie Walton" in the original broadcast movie of the Waltons movie "The Homecoming" asking "What'ya doing behind locked doors, John Boy?"

As in you mother wondering why you guys got so quiet in the basement. 

Yes, lifting weights at home - Quietly.

Jock Check

A posting on Facebook, leading to an article in The Atlantic on locker rooms and the culture of "manliness" brought back a whole bunch of childhood memories this morning, and not one of them good.

Normally, I push my bad Shaker Heights memories back - way back, and then I lock them down, deep down, and throw the key away.  We know now that while an unhealthy way of dealing with trauma, almost everyone does it because its a brains way of moving on.

For my fathers parents, the horror of escaping Russia before World War I was locked up and filed away.  For their grandson, it was the American version something just as traumatic, junior high gym.

First of all, we didn't have teachers in gym.  We had physical education coaches.  The problem with this nomenclature was that it was assumed that by seventh grade, you knew all the basics of every sport.  The coaches didn't seem like they wanted to teach us how football was played, the just want refine our skills.  So if you had zero understanding of how football worked (as a couple of us were), you were SOL.  (If you were a seventh grade girl in the early 1970s in Shaker, SOL meant "so out of luck."  If you were were a 13 year old boy, yes, it was shit out of luck and if you were me, it just meant "fuck me," in the ironic sense.)

Second of all, the "Coaches" were not bad people.  Let me say that again: the coaches were not bad people.  In fact if they were teaching in a Shaker School, they had to be qualified and well liked by their peers.  Shaker didn't hire second run personnel.  Even Blanche Brown, my sixth grade teacher was an outstanding teacher.  She was Evil, and no grass grows on her grave, but she was no slouch if you fit the mold of what one of her students should be.  If you were outside that mold, you were fucked. 

But the coaches they had back then were MEN, damn it, and that was the era that we lived in.  They were there to instruct you, not mollycoddle you. 

The unease didn't start until a friend from high school on Facebook brought up the topic and mentioned the practice in boys gym of the "jock check".

At the Junior High I attended, we had a first rate athletic complex in its own wing.  There was a girls gym was closest to the classrooms. The last building, at the end of the bus dock, was boys gym. A first rate natatorium, complete with guest bleachers split the difference.

On my first day of gym at the junior high, we were brought into the gym and told that in addition for changing into our gym uniforms (which in those days we short blue shorts, white tee shorts, whit gym socks and tennis shoes to be used only in gym) that we were also to be wearing jock straps.   The coach who made this announcement, while pacing up and down the single file lines that we were sitting in ("Indian style") made the announcement, followed by the statement "For some of you that will mean a rubber band and half a peanut shell."

This was the first minute that I felt totally unsafe and scared shitless.  Why?

First of all I had gone through early puberty.  How early? Started when I was 10, which was fourth grade, pimples in fifth and by sixth grade I was the boy with the lowest baritone voice in music music class, which delighted Mrs. Hamm, but brought even more unwanted attention down on me.   And then there was my dick and balls, which on a 30 year man would have been a gift.  But on a gawky gangley 13 year old made me feel like a freak.

Secondly, once we had said jock straps, we were all given twice weekly jock checks.  Whats a jock check?  It varied from school to school, but at our school it meant during roll, as the coach walked down the row, when he got to you, you had to reach your thumb up your shorts leg, hook it around the leg strap and pull on it and SNAP it.  It was degrading.  And twice each week I hated class, a little more, and I hate the coach even more so.  I don't know of anyone who enjoyed it.

Finally, there was the mandatory shower.  Teen boys stink.  I may have been over the puberty hurdle, but the two hundred other boys in Junior high weren't.  So the showers were just another hygiene thing they had to teach us.  So it was a quick in and out.

And this reader, is how I developed a hatred for sports locker rooms.   Combine all this with bad body image issues, and you get a recipe for a Cookie freak out.

But what The Atlantic magazine article gets at is, how did the locker room (baths excepted) become the place where men are at their manliness?   Where straight boys learn to be men?  By walking around the Y locker room with a towel over your shoulder?  Gross.  Dude, their are kids in there.  Wrap it up, OK?

What I really don't get is why do really old straight men love hanging out in sports locker rooms?  What is the deal with their love of the lounge?  They're not gay, but somehow, this is the only place that they can be at ease, surrounded by younger, and fitter men.  I just don't get it?

I mean if nothing else of the selfie era, we know that straight, gay and bi men LOVE posing for selfies in the sports locker room.  But the straight male dance of superiority in locker rooms has an erotic edge to it.  Like bull elephants, trying to out flex, out pose and out impress one and other, the whole thing becomes comic when a scrawny little guy walks in with the biggest dick in the world.  And at that point, everyone in the room knows that their muscles no longer matter.  Their perfect tans mean nothing.

The little insecure guy with the porn dick just won the show and tell.

Things I am thankful for

Happy Rooms.  You know it's happy because it says it's says it's happy.

Truth.

Children honoring their mother's with their own art.

Meat.

That I could be a puppeteer and I could amaze my friends that I had become a puppeteer, but that we live in a country with freedoms, and I choose not to be a "puppet", or it's "teer."

and, of course:

Carleen Fredricks.  Because she kicks ass when she takes the stage.  You wanna go up against Carleen?  She will kick you into next week, but humming beautiful music.


What are each of you thankful for?

Find your victories in life...

...where you can.

Find the fashion and social...

...no-no's in this picture.  Where does one begin?

Cookie's Must Have Colors for Spring 2018

Hot on the heals of PANTONE's must have fashion colors, Cookie releases his set of colors with finely crafted, evocative names:

So who among you is going show us what you spring fashion colors are?

Well, Thank God the Minotaur Showed Up

Just a brief check in.

This weekend we have/are hosted/hosted back to back night get together's at Cookie Manor.

Last night it was the Husband's event - Cocktails with the Captain.  This where we invite all the people who live in the Husband's block captain area to our house for a get together.

Tonight is my turn and we are hosting a brief get together of my former co-workers from the Beef House Strip Club.

So we have been grocery shopping for two days in a row.  Our problem is that we have a very limited amount of space in the Frigidaire.  So we can't prepare much in advance.

So we figured if we do back to back events, then we can clean the house ONCE, unpack the serving ware ONCE and then we can put everything back together in order ONCE.

I have to tell you, Cookie is DYING, as in tired.  It'll all come together.

And tomorrow, I sleep in. 

PANTONE introduces us to the color least likely to thrill anyone.

PANTONE has presumptuously named it's in colors for New York's Spring Fashion Week 2018, and again, we must ask "And...?"

Really?  That's the best you could come up with?

The color GIANT has been doing this for a while and every year their choices get more and more pathetic, and in equal parts needy.

Its like that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda drones on and on about a color and what it did and how it got used and how it was copied and copied until it became passe.

A couple of years ago PANTONE announced that a shade of Emerald Green was the "IT" color of the year!

Fat chance.

Wear too much Emerald anything and you look like a Leprechaun.  In fact, anyone who would wear that shade would be horribly out of place on any day but March 17th.  And even then, Emerald has never enjoyed as much popularity as it did when the Great and Powerful Oz made it so.

Now, PANTONE has released its colors for spring, and like always there is a red, a blue, some pastels, a color that looks like Easter grass, and then something caught Cookie's eye.

And I let out a Nathan Lane chirp of a laugh.

They have called a color "ALMOST MAUVE" (Pantone 12-2103).  As if Mauve, the color that terrorized the 1980s isn't bad enough.  And what color is "Almost Mauve"?  It's what house painters call a "blush white" or a "pinkish white".   My friend Annie calls it "Spoiled Milk".

Now, intentionally, really, on purpose, another color aspires to be like "Mauve" of all things, but can't bring itself to fully become it?

Can you imagine if Norman Lear had dreamed up a sitcom about a mealy suburban housewife, simpering, unable to make up her mind, afraid to offend and called it "Mauve"?  The theme song would go "And almost Mauve, and almost Mauve..."

Even Bea Arthur would be offended.  MAUDE was VIVID.  Almost Mauve? Milquetoast.  Actually, milquetoast would have been a better name.

I mean we are talking about Mauve.  God Damn Mauve.  The color of my father's last wife's bedroom, MAUVE.

If a color could have a smell, Mauve would be the color that says "smells like grandma". 

But "Almost Mauve"?  "Could smells like grandma."

Come on PANTONE, you pay people hundreds of thousands - nay, MILLIONS of dollars and they can't come up with anything that's better than "Almost Mauve" for the name of a color? 

I call BULLSHIT!

Even "Boaty McBoat Blush Face" would have been better name for the color.

Runner up for the other silliest name?  The color that is the same color as the old Crayola "Flesh" color, but PANTONE called "Blooming Dahlia".  And trust me, the tubers are angry about that farce, as well.

See the rest at PANTONE.