The Zebra says “Meow”

Apparently, the See and Says sold in Oakland are a little out of wack. 

On Halloween, I dressed as a Zebra (or Zebula in Zambian English).  All day at the Raiders game and at the BART station in Oakland, I kept getting meowed at.  It didn’t help that there was a Batman in our group at the game.  That prompted quite a number of cat woman comments.  The most unbelievable comment came from an elderly gentleman at the Coliseum BART station who told me I looked like Halle Berry.  In his defense – I guess – he was smoking pot at the time.

Mr. Trizzle, Batman and me at the game.

 

 

 

A cat? Really?  A cat?!  How many cats with zebra stripes have you ever seen?  Me, I’ve seen one.  And he was wearing a zebra striped jacket.  Maybe I should save my outfit and go as Cat next year.  (By the way, I saw a Raiders jersey at the game that said “Lister” on the back.)

Anyway, despite the not-so-bright people at the game, I really liked my costume.  It was soft and fuzzy and warm.  I’m still a little bit stuck in Wisconsin mentality.  I think Halloween costume and I think “ok, either needs to be really warm or needs to fit over a snow suit.”  So my costume was really warm.  A full-length, fuzzy, turtleneck body suit.  It even had a beige bodysuit underneath it for an extra layer.  It was in the mid 70s the entire day at the Raiders game, sitting out in the sun.  Whoops!

Sewing Time

Making the costume was a bit of an adventure.  As usual, I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like and had to go on a bit of a hunt to find the right materials.

First task, the pattern.  It took a bit of online searching, but I finally found something that looked like it would work, KwikSew Pattern 3052.  Unfortunately, the pattern is discontinued, so it took a bit more searching to find one actually available for purchase.

Second task, the fabric.  I wanted fuzzy.  Obviously, it had to be zebra print.  And it had to be at least somewhat stretchy.  I found something that worked at the Jo-Ann across the BART station from my house.  Soft, fuzzy, zebra, some horizontal stretch.  I could work with that.

The beige under-body suit was easy and came out pretty good, after I lengthened the legs about 5”.  It was a little bit baggy in some areas, but the fabric was so thin, I figured it would work fine underneath the zebra suit.

Whoops!

Then I set to task on the zebra suit.  I took the pattern in a bit where it had been baggy on the under-body suit but didn’t adjust anything else.  Fail.  Major, absolute fail.  I forgot to take into account that the zebra fabric didn’t stretch at all vertically and had only about half the horizontal stretch that the pattern called for.  The result would fit Munchkinhead.  (I asked her if she wanted a zebra costume, but she was already going as a ‘40s pin-up girl for Halloween.)

Back to the fabric store.  I bought all the rest of that zebra fabric that they had.  Nearly twice what the pattern called for.  Then I resized the pattern for my actual measurements, compensating for the lack of stretch.  I had to add another 6” to the inseam, lengthen the sleeves about 4 inches and the upper body a good 2 or 3”.  By the time I was done, the pattern didn’t fit on my kitchen table.  Which, I guess makes sense since it’s a neck to ankle pattern and I’m longer than the kitchen table.  I almost didn’t have enough fabric!

Success!

This time, the zebra fit!  It was actually a bit big in the mid-section, but that was easily solved by taking in the center back seam. I had a fabulous zebra-suit.  Final touches: some black gloves, black socks and black heels for my hooves, and some banana clips to make a mane.

Me as a fabulously cute zebra

My First NFL Game

Last Sunday, I got to go to my first ever live NFL game. It wasn’t a Packer game, but hey, we can’t all be Mommy.

I missed the tailgating, because the bell choir was playing in church.  We played Phantom of the Opera for the end of the service since it was Halloween.  I love that music!

Anyway, I got to the parking lot just as Mr. Trizzle and his friends were packing up to head into the stadium; perfect timing.  Our seats were way, way, way up top near the goal line.  It would have been perfect for watching marching band.  Wasn’t too bad for watching football either.  I had a lot of fun watching the game with Mr. Trizzle and his friends.

I was surprised how few Raiders fans were in costumes.  On tv, it looks like the fans always come dressed up, and this was Halloween!  There certainly were a lot of people in Raider’s jerseys, even old Jamarcus Russell jerseys.  The oddest thing to me, being from Wisconsin, was that there were open seats, and lots of them, in nearly every section.  Now that’s something you’ll never see at Packer game.

It was the Raiders vs. the Seahawks and the Raiders were playing really well.  Not as well as the week before when they set a scoring record and completely creamed Denver, but good enough that it wasn’t a very close game.

But the game wasn’t the most interesting thing to watch.  The most interesting thing was the birds, filthy birds.  Seagulls had swarmed over the parking lot as the tailgaters left their vehicles.  By the middle of the third quarter, the seagulls were starting to migrate to the field.

They perched on the scoreboard at the end of the field.  They swarmed around the outer edges of the field.  And then, they began to swoop down into the stands.  Soon, there were flocks of seagulls everywhere you looked.  Worst of all, they were exactly where you didn’t want to look.  Up.

By the fourth quarter, the seagulls had lost all fear.  They came low, they came often.  They were landing and resting on empty seats not far from people.  And they had started dropping presents.

Mr. Trizzle got a small present on his trouser leg.  Being the big, tough man he is, he got a napkin and took care of it.  The people four rows in front of us fled after one guy got two presents.  Then more people started to flee.  I was getting scared.  Cleaning goo out of long hair is not as easy as wiping it off a pant leg.  But  I was sticking it out.  More people fled.  We fled.

The game wasn’t over.  There was a minute and half or something like that left.  We traipsed down the long, winding ramps to a lower level and ducked under a covered area with open seats.  The Raiders got another touch down, right before we ducked into the viewing area.  We did get to see the extra point, though. 

The Seahawks may have lost, but the seagulls sure won.

Growing Up Vampire

My little munchkinhead grew up convinced she was a vampire.  I still remember the first time she bit me.  Waddled in on her little legs, chomped down on my hip, and waddled back out.  Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t believe me until I showed them the bleeding teeth marks.  She was two.  Today, she’s twenty-two.

Munchkinhead.  My pretty little munchkinhead.  She’s a senior in college now.  She’s been around the world, lived on three different continents, spent weeks on a fourth – she’s still trying to get to Antarctica – and she is still in love with vampires.  Though I think she’s stopped biting people.  Maybe…

They say the best way to be happy is to make your passion your job.  Well, Munchkinhead ought to be very happy, because she’s done just that.  Her senior capstone paper, the big, long paper she has to write in order to graduate is about, you guessed it, vampires.  Not just any old vampires.  Her paper is specifically about the roles of females in ‘60s era American and British vampire films. 

For the past couple days, I’ve been helping Munchkinhead with proofreading her draft.  In addition to having lots of vampire-filled nightmares, I’m also really impressed.  Despite the fact that it is a pretty feminist paper, it’s really good.

I don’t think I’ve read a paper of Munchkinhead’s since her If You Give a Mouse a Cookie-styled essay from freshman year of high school.  That was cute.  This is better than cute.  This is a well-written, thought-out paper that uses examples to illustrate a point.  And, best of all, it’s interesting.  A sneak peek:

[Marianne's] reaction to [Van Helsing’s] suggestion is not one of fright but of gladness to be rid of her horrible fate, once again allowing and needing a male to intervene on her behalf putting males in the dominating role. This was especially important for Hammer[A1] during the early 1960’s and late 1950’s because the Cinema audiences were changing from families to young male teenagers, and so Hammer began to orientate their movies toward a certain age group of one gender leaving the other gender under [A2] developed.[1] This male dominated role continued though the 1960’s in other Hammer films and in a few American films. Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Blood of Dracula’s Castle are two such films.[2]

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[1] Barta, Tony. Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History. Westport: Preager, 1998. P.122 and 111

[2] Blood of Dracula’s Castle. Directed by Al Adamson and Jett Hewitt. Produced by Paragon International Pictures. 1969

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Now, don’t get me wrong.  It’s not perfect.  This girl still needs to learn the difference between “then” and “than”.  And for someone who hates run-on sentences, she sure hasn’t befriended enough commas.  But, it’s on its way to being a really amazing paper.  About vampires!  Maybe if you ask nicely, she’ll let you read the whole thing.

Perhaps someday Munchkinhead will find the perfect job as curator at a vampire museum in Scotland.  In the meantime, keep enjoying those vampire films and,…

Happy Birthday Munchkinhead

 

 

 

Even as a pirate she has vampire fangs, gold vampire fangs.

 

If you click on Munchkinhead’s link in the toy box, you’ll see lots of vampire pictures and get more vampire stories, like The Not-So-Little Vampire.

Sweet Story, Sweet Magnolias–Book Review

Not every book is a classic.  Not every book is so fabulous you want to read it over and over again.  But even books that aren’t strikingly brilliant or must re-reads can be enjoyable.  Honeysuckle Summer by Sherryl Woods was one of these.  A nice entertaining read to take you away from reality for a little while.  A quick read with pleasant, real characters and a plot that makes you feel like you’re hanging out with your friends.

Honeysuckle Summer is part of a series about a group of friends called the Sweet Magnolias.  In this story, one of the Sweet Magnolias, Raylene, faces her fears.  Facing down her ex-husband and agoraphobia while trying not to botch the first chance she’s had a real relationship in a long time.  It’s a cute story.

There’s a few other background stories, but unlike some books I’ve previously read, they stay in the background and don’t create a jumbled soap-opera styled mess.  And they’re related to each other enough that the reader doesn’t stop and think ‘now what’s that doing here now?’

It’s a short review, but it’s hard to say much when there’s little to rant about but not much to rave about either.  It’s a sweet novel, and although it’s not unforgettable, it’ll stay on my mind for a bit yet.  If I happen to come across another Sweet Magnolia novel or one of Sherryl' Woods’ other 100 published books somewhere, I’ll probably read it.

 

P.S. Don’t worry Mommy, I’m not sending it to you.  Putting it for sale on Amazon.

Swearing on the Grave of Elvis –Book Review

You know how some movie reviews say ‘wait for it on video’?  Well, for this book, I say wait for it to enter the public domain.  I know that’s a really long time, but trust me, if you die first, you won’t have missed anything.

Curing the Blues with a New Pair of Shoes has nothing to do with any one having the blues and there isn’t a single pair of new shoes in the entire book.  That’s the least of the misleads.

The book’s summary describes it as a mystery novel about Elvis’ blue suede shoes going missing just before the start of a huge celebration for Elvis’ birthday in Salt Lick, Texas.  It talks about how these two friends who run a beauty shop and a detective agency are going to have to figure out what happened to the shoes.  - Apparently this book is part of a series about these two women. – It adds that maybe they’ll have some time for some match making on the side.

Ok, the book begins with the shoes going missing, that plot’s there for a second, and then the whole book is pretty much about that match making part.  There is almost no sleuthing for the shoes, with the whole missing shoe thing being barely a background story while the two out-of-town reporters being match-made take over the story.  It doesn’t matter though, the reader will figure out what happened to the shoes before the plot even goes off track.

Just before the end of the book, it’s as if the author suddenly remembered the original plot and has the detectives find the shoes, exactly where the reader expected them to found back at the very beginning.  There, the chapters end, without resolving that whole match-made love affair that was the main focus of most of the book.  So there’s a rushed little epilogue added onto the end, basically saying “and they all lived happily ever after.”

So the book was distracted, predictable, a little boring.  None of that was that bad, and listening to the story (this was my audio book for bus rides) was better than listening to people on their cell phones.  Mostly.  There was one thing that absolutely drove me crazy about the book.  The two main characters, the detective, beauty-shop, middle-aged women had the foulest mouths I’ve ever encountered.  And I listen to rap music!  If I had switched all their swear words to vampires, this could have been a Twilight novel.

I don’t know why the author felt the need to write the f-word and other four letter friends so often.  Maybe it was supposed to some how be more realistic (do adults in Texas really swear that much?!), but all it was in reality was  very, very distracting.

Note: I finished two books today, one physical book and this audio book.  Tomorrow’s book review will be much happier.