By Laura Grimes
Dear Mr. Scatter,
I finished dusting my balls, recurating them, and I added an avocado pit to the collection. Can you guess which one it is?*
I know you think I just lobbed you a big fat softball (I have two in my collection) so you can make a smartass comeback, but then I would just have to emphasize softball, so let’s leave it at that.
By Laura Grimes
Quick. Mr. Scatter is on the road, so let’s post while he’s not looking.
Some people call. Some people text. I believe in the more sneaky form of communication — surprise blog posts broadcast to the world. Consider them entertainment and information all scrolled into one.
Dear Mr. Scatter,
What’s news since you left this morning?
Holy hot tub, I received an email with the below attached picture of a souvenir for the upcoming royal wedding (it’s good to have friends in low places). If you can’t tell, they’re tea bags.
By Bob Hicks
The other day we posted news of the Oregon Legislature’s impending adoption of the Code of the West as the official state, um, thing we adopt.
The code’s as rugged as rawhide, which means it tends to get frayed if you leave it out in the rain. And it does rain hereabouts. Besides, some fella in Texas came up with the idea, and sells merchandise to go along with it. (We might actually go for a Code o’ the West jeans-pocket whiskey flask.)
The thing’s pretty much stampeded through the state House and is now sitting in the Senate holding pen. And while it’s tough to argue with the likes of “take pride in your work” and “do what has to be done,” in the interest of healthy public debate we’d like to propose for the Senate’s consideration a Counter Code o’ the West — something the rodeo clown in all of us might appreciate. (And let’s just say right here and now that being a rodeo clown requires an immense amount of grit, fortitude, courage and foolhardiness, not to mention a good supply of chewin’ tobacco.)
By Laura Grimes
This newsflash is for everyone who knows my woes. Everyone else can ignore it. I ordered bras online.
Normally, this is not something I would discuss in public. My flushed cheeks and Mama-taught-me-better ways insist on it. But, given my past experiences shopping for underitems while coping with Large Smelly Boys, this might possibly be an occasion for a raucous public celebration. Before we jump around, though, let me first put on a sports bra.
I learned about these gizmos reading a big, elastic glossary dedicated solely to the language of bras. Who knew there was such a thing? And so long? A garment so confounding that it requires 90 terms to explain it. What it says, in part, about sports bras: “When you move, so does your bust. It’s called ‘bounce.’ â€
By Laura Grimes
“Why are we parking here?” (Mr. Scatter is of the misperception that another part of the parking lot is better.)
“So we can walk through the lake on the sidewalk to get to the store safely.”
I scanned the grocery list as we stepped around puddles in the light rain on our way to the One-Stop Shopping Mart.
“I think I’ll get a separate basket because I need to get some things that you won’t want to deal with.”
As if to be helpful and save me the embarrassment of explaining further, Mr. Scatter quickly jumped in.
“Women troubles?”
Continue reading Mr. and Mrs. Scatter go shopping, and they blush to tell the troubled tale
By Laura Grimes
“I thought you’d like to write about it because storytelling is your thing.”
My thing?
My thing is very occasionally, if properly goaded, spinning a knotted-up yarn after a beer or two.
Mr. Scatter was trying to encourage me — nay, uncharacteristically apply pressure on me — to write about Love Jones, which we were seeing that night. He stood above me, strongly silent. He raised his eyebrows.
I scrunched mine and looked back at my non-pressing paperwork as if to say, I’m busy. Go away.
By Laura Grimes
The Great Pickles As Social Vehicle Experiment continues with swap …
No. 6: Peppers. As my apple crisp cooled on the stove and I messaged my fellow crisp baker, another message popped up.
Peppers were in the mail from another old chum I hadn’t seen in more than 30 years.
By Laura Grimes
Shhhh! Be vewy vewy qwiet! Maybe I can sneak in here when Mr. Scatter isn’t looking. Won’t he be surprised?
Won’t you?
I thought I could sneak in when Mr. Scatter was on the road, but dang if he didn’t crack the wi-fi code at the secret hangout. Then I thought I could sneak in when he was busy scraping together a paying gig, but dang if he wasn’t a prolific typerboy on the side.
So now I’m interrupting Mr. Scatter’s regularly scheduled blog fodder (what I call “the thoughty bits”) to bring you the scatter part (I’ll refrain from calling it “the ditzy bits”).
By Bob Hicks
Once again Mr. Scatter has scarpered off to the rainy northlands, abandoning hearth and home and leaving Mrs. Scatter to the unruly task of caring for the Large Smelly Boys. (Two words, Mrs. Scatter: fumigation service.)
The wide world is cold and scary, and yet sometimes one can find one’s self at home in the most surprising of places. For instance, Mr. Scatter and his Crumpled Toyota galumphed unexpectedly into the roadside attraction shown above – Scatter Creek Safety Rest Area – and felt not just refreshed, but also downright welcomed. It was like finding a lost branch of the family and settling in for a neat bourbon and a friendly getting-to-know-you chat. Mr. Scatter assumes that Scatter Creek itself lies somewhere in the immediate vicinity, but he’s not entirely sure: the whole place was so drenched with downpour, it was all creek to him.
This particular wayside shelter is a few miles south of Tumwater, Washington, a town known in Mr. Scatter’s youth as home to a strictly prohibited and thus perversely desired pale yellow liquid known as Olympia Beer — or more familiarly, Oly, which sounded like a misspelled Norwegian lumberjack. (That was not an entire unlikelihood in this neck of the woods.)
Tumwater was many, many miles ago. Mr. Scatter and the Crumpled Toyota have surged ever forward into the dark wet north, on beyond Chuckanut and the wrinkled geoduck and a four-flush of sad-eyed, brightly blinking casino signs. Mr. Scatter has dressed in his plaid flannel shirt and flannel-lined jeans in hopes of blending in with the wildlife, some of which also are sheathed in sleek and brightly colored water-wicking outer skins with the word “REI” or “Patagonia” tattooed on their breasts. It is a rugged and exotic environment, broken up occasionally by tiny pioneer settlements with names like “Bug” and “Jam.” *
Mr. Scatter is a coffee man, not a tea man, and so if he happens to come across a moose in his northern wanderings, he will not shoot. Instead he’ll pause to pass the time of day and enquire politely after the health of his old friend, Rocky. Even in the wilderness, one should be civilized. Are you listening, Large Smelly Boys?
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* This is an actual fact. The town of Sedro-Woolley, Washington, was originally known as Bug. The town of Ferndale, Washington, was originally called Jam. Not all change is progress.
By Bob Hicks
It wasn’t just the theater that merry King Charles II restored when he reclaimed the British throne for royalty in 1661. He brought back Christmas, too.
Many Scatterers undoubtedly know that when Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans took over power in England in 1645, not all that long after William Shakespeare’s heydey, they put a quick end to all that decadent theatrical nonsense (but apparently not, as the accompanying portrait of Cromwell reveals, to decadent ribbons and bows).
In 1644, Cromwell forced a bill through Parliament banning all Christmas celebrations, too: they were too popish, he proclaimed darkly, and besides, people shouldn’t be having that much fun. As Alan Rickman so brilliantly snarled as the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: “And call off Christmas!”