His eyebrows had transmorgified once more. As a youth, he had pleasant eyebrows — two clean, mildly arched lines populated with fine, neat hairs. Later, his eyebrow hairs thickened and a unibrow developed. He didn’t much mind the unibrow because he was often favorably compared to another unibrower, actor Tom Selleck, a flattering comparison. His forties found his unibrow’s center fading. Meanwhile, thicker brows appeared. A wild bramble of hairs took over. Suddenly the comparisons shifted from Selleck to the Soviet leader, Brezhnev, or television commentator Andy Rooney.
Those brows faded and changed, too. Now his brows had taken on another actor’s look, developing a Sam Waterston flip, where the eyebrows darkened and thickened again, but pointed up.
Like his eyebrows had their own life and pursued their own style. He wondered what they were going to do next.
“Out in the fog, the fog dancers begin moving. They only appear when it’s foggy. The thicker the fog, the more fog dancers there will be. They want humans to come out, walking in the fog, so the fog dancers can grab them and make them one of their own. If you become a fog dancer, you’ll dance for the rest of your life and never see sunlight again.
“That’s why I don’t go out in the fog.”
I don’t remember this, as I apparently did it on a whim, but my sisters insist that I told them this story when I was about twelve. My three youngest sisters said the fog terrified them for years. They said that I also said that adults know about this and that’s why they don’t go out into the fog. It worked well because Mom would always say, “Oh, I don’t like the fog,” and shiver whenever she looked out and saw fog.
As I said, the sisters claim that I told them this, and I don’t doubt them. Sounds like me. I think of it today because pretty deep fog is out there. Some trees and bushes look like fog dancers.
Remember the movie, The Fog? The sisters said that as soon as they heard of that movie, they remembered my tale.
It’s December 22, 2022. Just three days before the C holiday. And then, boom, the after Christmas shopping rush begins. It’s nutty.
36 F out there today, with timid sunshine squirming through the fog. S’posed to rain today. That’s the weather rumor. 49 F is to be our high before the sun peters out of the valley at 4:42 later today, just seven hours and five minutes after the sun kicked over the eastern mountains.
Got “Rockafeller Skank” by Fatboy Slim from 1988 occupies the morning mental music stream. I know exactly when The Neurons turned it on this morning. I’d raised the blinds, looked out and saw the fog. The Neurons responded to this by opening, “Right about now, the funk soul brother, check it out now, the funk soul brother.” Fog and funk. Sure, makes sense. I think The Neurons are losing it on some days, but I enjoy the song. Not many lyrics and easy to learn. I had a friend a few years after this song was released who always insisted, “That’s not really music.”
He always defends what he says by proclaiming that he’s just giving ‘the unvarnished truth’. But when others deliver the unvarnished truth to him, his defensiveness spikes to Mt. Everest levels.
Not a great surprise, as he lives in a very varnished bubble.
The differences between them are growing after almost half of a century being together.
The Jack Spratt nursery rhyme goes, “Jack Spratt could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean. And so between the two of them, they licked the platter clean.”
It feels to him like they’re living in a modern version of that, with heat substituted for food. She needs the high heat. He’s fine barefoot and in a light sweater, the heat at 66 F. They put the heater on for her even as she dons more and more layers of clothes, and he strips down.
It’s like, “Mike S doesn’t feel the cold, his wife could feel no heating. And so between the two of them, he sweats as she is freezing.”
He read the coffee shop’s employee instructions for washing their hands. This was in the restroom. The final step of their hygiene guidance was to use a paper towel to turn off the water. These were part of the instructions posted on an air dryer. The restroom had no paper towels.
It struck him as funny that they stopped with turning off the water using a paper towel which wasn’t available and didn’t mention opening the door. With what were the employees to seize the handle? Apparently, the door handle was safe, where the water handle was not.
Floofstack (floofinition) – 1. A pile of animals sleeping or playing together, or animals side by side or nose to tail.
In use: “Colder days brought the animals into a floofstack as they sought warmer spaces, decided other warm bodies weren’t bad, and put aside disagreements in comfort’s name.
2. An accumulation of activities needed to be done that were delayed because of animals.
In use: “Barb had a dozen things she planned to do on the computer but it was like every household animal was given the word, because all of them came in asking her for things and she soon faced a floofstack as other tasks were added.”
3. A list of actions needed to be done for animals.
In use: “With a household full of critters, Stacy and her children had a constant floofstack to work down, beginning with morning feedings and cleaning food and water bowls and refilling them, to walking animals, and cleaning cages and kitty litter boxes.”
