A trip to the ethnic grocery store…

…always yields perplexing and hilarious finds. Here are some of the best I’ve seen from the place near home.

I don’t want to eat anything with the word “mutant” in it.

I’ve read poetry and written it, but I don’t think I’ve ever tasted it.

A little girl was poking these blue crabs with tongs, and saying “Sorry, crabs!” when they squirmed away. She was creepy.

Tastes like chicken.

I’ve been saying “danggit!” for years without knowing it was a food.
By the way, the rabbitfish species is closely related to the jackalope.

WebMD tells me that horny goat weed turns men into horny goats. It’s also good for other types of circulation problems.

Joe likes to go shopping with me, but he doesn’t like it when I shout across a crowded aisle, “Hey Joe, do you want some Horny Goat Weed?!”

My Qi works backwards

After a couple of chiropractor visits for spinal problems, my doctor suggested acupuncture. Which is how I ended up lying in a darkened room last week, looking like porcupine and trying to relax while thinking about the Boston bombings I’d just heard about on the radio.

He tapped these little needles into my skin – and yes, I did feel some of them – and then attached wires to them with alligator clips and turned on this little box that made them tingle.

“What’s this supposed to do?” I asked.

“It will align your Qi in a healing direction.”

Qi? Chi? My energy force?

Hm.

I have nothing against acupuncture or alternative medicine in general, but I do feel a little skeptical. I don’t know how these skinny little needles can really do anything except tingle a bit. On the other hand, Asians have used this therapy for, what, thousands of years? During all that time, if it wasn’t working, wouldn’t the practice die out? Well, on the third hand, some Asians still eat powdered rhino horn as a medication, which is a big reason the rhino population is dying out…

No wonder I can’t relax. I tried to ignore the long needle stuck between my eyebrows that was twanging back and forth. Do I really have Qi? Can it heal me? I began to imagine my Qi as this slowly swirling silver mist that was hovering around my ankles, where the first needles went in. I tried to will it to stop swirling and align in a healing direction, which seemed to be straight up to my head and out of the needle jutting from my forehead like an antenna.

Maybe I concentrated too hard. Maybe I sent the healing Qi right out of my body, or maybe my Qi works backwards. Because the next morning, I woke up with the first case of strep throat I’ve had since my daughters were kids.

That is NOT a healing direction.

Funny photos

Busy busy busy with lots of fun writing projects, which is why I’m not writing here. However, I’ve been collecting funny things to share with you. These things tickled me.

Friendly Fence says “hi”.

 

 

Marley’s favorite place to sleep.

 

 

Joe thinks I’m the “children” referred to here. Funny guy.

 

 

Beware the limbo master.

 

 

 

 

I hope this sign was altered, or that it means something different in Chinese.

I’m crafty. Kinda.

A few days ago I made this bird house, entirely without any adult supervision.

Joe won the kit as a door prize for the opening of a new charity thrift store. He was going to put it together for me, being a qualified adult, but I was extremely bored while he was working late. Besides, if it was intended for ages 8 and up, surely I could handle this.

 

I learned that I do not have the carpentry skills of an 8-year-old. I learned that if you measure things and center them based on those measurements, they fit together better. I also learned that it’s very hard to hammer nails into the grain of the edge of a board that is on an angle. But those nails sticking out over the roof would not hurt any birds and once I hung it up on a post, no one could see the problems.

I’d like to see an 8-year-old hang up a bird house five feet up a post, without any adult supervision. Ha!

 

 

I heard that your dreams came true.

Just a few weeks ago, my daughter texted me that she needed her passport. Her dad, it seems, is flying the family down to Mexico for a resort vacation this spring . This text, coming during a lean time for us, and after years of soul-scorching hard times, seemed particularly painful.

I’ll admit, I’m pretty used to ex-Ray being the absent father who was just as likely to be in a bar as in a car coming to pick up his children for the weekend. I was accustomed to him losing jobs and getting arrested and living with his mom because he couldn’t take care of himself.

But that’s not who he is now. He’s stopped drinking, he has a nice home and decent children and hobbies that have nothing to do with drinking and drugs, and he’s built a stable relationship with our daughters. He has a good life and for the first time he’s taking a long vacation.

Quite by accident, through formerly mutual friends, I learned that another person with whom I had a significant relationship seems to have achieved everything  he wanted. In fact, it sounds as though this man has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. I was surprised at how much this hurt, even though I am thankful I’ll never see the person again.

Then I remembered that all this news is answers to prayers I prayed for them for many years.

For each of these people, as I struggled with pain and forgiveness and anger, I was bound again and again back to the Bible passages in Luke 6:28. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

I remember squirming under that commandment. I remember wondering how the heck you actually bless someone, assuming I was willing to bless them. OK, I’d act as though I was willing, and eventually I’d BE willing, right?

To bless means to invoke divine care for, to speak well of, to confer prosperity or happiness upon. So I used to pray that God would bless their work and their families, that He would divinely protect them, that he would prosper all they did and give them the happiness they desired. I did this on the days I was willing and the days I was not. I widened my circle to others who had hurt, mistreated, or offended my family, and the blessings have spread.

Look at the results…who knew that God would answer so richly prayers like these? Maybe these people owe me some thanks. Maybe not. But just know that if you have hurt me, and something good has happened to you, I might have been praying for it.