“Auds of Barking Mad is a dollface. She should get ‘doll’ tattooed across her forehead she’s so much one. Reading her makes me happy. I don’t mean just that she makes me laugh – I mean that I come away from her blog on most days with a cheerier disposition. I hear she has that effect on many…”
Hi there. My name is Auds and I am, hands down, an idiot. So it came as a huge shock to me when, during the course of a few back and forth emails with Maria, that she asked me to guest-post for her whilst she took a bit of a holiday from the blogosphere.
Of course I said yes, after which I immediately flung myself out the window for my sheer stupidity in thinking I could pull something like that off. What the hell was I going to write about that wouldn’t a.) Be yet another illustration of my absolute lunacy, or b.) Make her loyal readers run screaming from their Macs and PC’s begging for Holy Water to be thrown in their eyes after reading my drivel?
Once I picked myself up off the ground and dusted pieces of broken glass off of my face and arms, I realized I had a bigger problem at hand. Just what the fuck was I going to tell my husband happened to yet another window? I don’t think he’s noticed that the broken windows coincide with the times I’m asked to guest post. I was able to blame a wayward bird for breaking the first one. Oh sure it was a huge bird. It would have to be to have created a hole that large. The hubby is from the UK; what does he know about American birds? We supersize everything, why not birds? The hubby would just be glad he had a wife who kept the windows so streak-free that birds flew into them. Well, in this case, through them.
The second window I launched myself through took a bit more creativity on my part, to explain. Finally, about 10 minutes before he was due home from work, I dug the bowling ball out of the closet and threw it through the gaping hole my largesse had left in yet another window.
I told him that I was emptying the closet of things we might want to put in the (mythical) yard sale (we keep saying we’re going to have but never can quite get around to actually having) and was carrying the bowling ball and tripped over the pile of shoes I’d carelessly tossed aside and the ball went flying through the window. I thought myself rather brilliant for that. He’d have to believe it. After all, he is married to the woman who;
- Glued herself to her steering wheel
- Lit her hair on fire
- Drove around with a dead cat in her car engine until the smell nearly killed her.
- Accidentally shaved off her eyelashes.
- Nearly drove herself into the Atlantic Ocean, thinking it was just a little puddle, and thereby drowned her trusty Subaru.
- Awoke to find a dead mouse floating in her toilet.
- Managed to find her hair sucked into the relentless grip of her vacuum cleaner.
It’s safe to say that nothing surprises the hubby anymore and yes, rest assured, we do have a very generous homeowner’s policy, as well as a window repairman that never asks any questions, so long as the checks clear. I’m sure he just assumes, as does everyone else, that Mrs. Barking Mad is a huge clutz. After all, he has seen her fall up the stairs on one occasion.
The third window, the one I fondly refer to as the “Maria Window” took some time and inventiveness to plot.
For a brief moment I thought I could blame one of the cats. Griffy is rather large. In all honesty though, it would have taken more than a 20lb cat to have broken the window. Possible? Oh sure, had he been launched from a catapult. However, I don’t happen to have one of those lying around the house. I was still tempted to tell the hubby that Griffy had spied a Blue Jay whilst sitting on the windowsill and the silly cat went on the attack, right through the bloody window! The biggest problem with that scenario is that the cat would likely not have survived it.
Then it hit me! This was the week the Blue Angels were in town! We live not too far from the Naval Air Base where they were holding the annual air show and for 4 days before the show, the Blue Angels as well as the other planes would practice. We were able to literally, sit on our back deck and watch the loops, dives, spins and spirals of the aircraft as they shot overhead. A couple of times the aircraft would scream past, seemingly buzzing our treetops, shaking our homes and rattling our windows. BINGO !
Using a low-flying aircraft pulling multiple G’s, as an excuse was totally plausible because, they had in fact had a little “oopsie” the day I lobbed myself through that last window. It was even on the news! Blue Angel number 4 had flown too low and as a result had shaken up some local residents, so much so that they called the Base and local TV networks.
Blimey, this was brilliant! Fancy that, I’d just tell the hubby the roar of the jet had busted the window. In the end, he believed it.
He also did something else I wasn’t expecting, and I really don’t understand. Tomorrow, he’s arranged for a bloke to come out and quote us on bars for our windows. We don’t live in a crime-infested neighbourhood! So what the hell is up with that? Why do we need bars? The hubby reassured me it was only because he didn’t want an Albatross hurling itself through our windows.
I don’t suppose now would be a good time to tell the hubby that Albatrosses are totally absent from the North Atlantic and most especially from our part of coastal Maine, now would it?
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