A river of words is usually in flood. And while I write about nearly everything, my blogging impulse is toward humor. This spot abounds with absurdities and piffle. 

This week has thwarted me.  

Not on a personal level, but at the world-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket level. I'm not ready to josh around with words today.

I have high hopes. The sun'll, as Annie would belt out, come out –– tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be sun... Mashed up, inevitably, with the melancholic fall "Come What May" from Moulin Rouge. Be as kind as you can be out there.

​And as if their great-grandparents didn't say the same damn thing about the egg-head scientist working on penicillin, chemo-therapy, seat-belts, gel insoles. Jupiter!

References
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-secret-life-of-bees-99559587/
www.goldengooseaward.org/awardees/honey-bee-algorithm
www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/24/136391522/natures-secret-why-honey-bees-are-better-politicians-than-humans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/09/22/how-honeybee-research-improved-your-internet-experience/?utm_term=.01028bb510d3

For every genuinely cheerful Christmas song, there are thirteen gruesome dirges that –– for some of us –– tend to get stuck on the internal jukebox.  

For instance, I love me some "Santa Baby," especially the Eartha Kitt version, but then there's The Pogue's "Fairytale of New York."  

Both songs embrace the material feel-goods of the season, but with such different moods. 

The other dozen miserables? Challenge accepted:  The Chieftans and Elvis Costello's The St. Stephen's Day Murders, which sounds cheerful until you listen to the actual words. Shelby Lynne's Xmas nails the dark side of the material feel-goods of the season. 

Then there's Hayes Carll's Grateful for Christmas (dare you not to get choked up over your egg nog on that one) and Robert Earl Keene's fantastic Merry Christmas from the Family, which is painfully funny with the sad.  

I vote that the most suicidal Christmas song of all time is anyone's version of  I'll Be Home for Christmas. (Because they won't. Of course they won't. Everyone's heart is going to break for Christmas. Jeesh.)  

Second runner-up in the depression sweepstakes? Of course, John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Happy X-Mas (The War Is Over). Yeah, let's hope it's a good one.

Add in the tunes that are just so irritating: even the youthful Jackson 5's version of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus makes me claw at my ears. So does the spiteful Gramma Got Run Over By a Reindeer by Patsy and Elmo and Spike Jones' All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth. The best way to chase me out of Home Depot? Play these songs. 

I cannot be the only person who finds Wham!'s Last Christmas more than a little soul-killing. And while I am not hating on the King, seriously, who can listen to Blue Christmas without chiming in a broader, more sarcastic verson? Likewise, Brenda Lee's wonderful gappy voice just grates on me on Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.  

​Okay, uncle. I can't listen to any more.  

I close with a few seasonable choices that make me happy to deck the halls and bake cookies.

And the best song for the season...<she belts out: And given the choice between the two of you, I'd take the seasick crocodile.>

Imagine sitting in the tiered seat of a dark movie theater late at night. You are among a group of outgoing, cheerful, and odd strangers. It's a scene. Then begins a not-quite-chaotic game of call-and-response that seems a little like magic.

People in the theatre make a suggestion or ask a question, and the movie provides an answer.

"What's your favorite Ivy League?" the crowd hollers in unison and up pops the Columbia Pictures icon.

It's a giddy, cheerful experience that blurrs the line between watching a performance and becoming  the performance.

We have no particular audience cheering us on at the Would-Be Farm, and heaven knows our meals are both low-drama and Meatloaf-free, still, this tangent eventually leads to the Would-Be Farm...

Mr. Linton and I ventured North for Thanksgiving. We deep-fried a turkey, played in the snow, made pie, and visited folks we care about. 

And while we were up there, we fired up the chainsaw and did some more upkeep on the elderly apple orchards that came with the Farm. It's a long process, as these trees were left to run wild for decades. When we first found them, the trees were scraggly and snarled and over-crowded.

Three years later, they are slightly less so, but  –– evidently –– the Would-Be Farm will always call for some level of lumberjack work.

The process goes like this: I'll select a branch or a whole tree that needs to go. If I can use the loppers, I'll nip the bit off, but the big stuff I leave for Jeff and the chainsaw.

Unless my skill as a sawhorse is required, I generally watch Jeff work from a short distance away and wring my hands.  

It's not an irrational fear of power-tools. I once saw the result of a chainsaw rearing back and catching someone in the leg. Yurp.  Anyhow, each time he leans over the chainsaw to yank on the pull-cord, the phrase "Transvestites, start your engines," drifts idly across my mind. I rarely say it aloud, but it's a bit of comfort for a worrier.

We dodged disaster again this trip, and left giant piles of brush for the wildlife to enjoy over the winter. Some of the logs we made last year got hauled back to basecamp, and I only wish there were a scratch-and-sniff option on the internet to share the scent of that apple-wood as it burns in the campfire. 

Because I'm some thousand words deep into NaNoWriMo, and in lieu of writing practice, I give you...Russell Crowe. Gaze into his eyes and I believe a story will write itself. 

I remember carefully inking in the item number and the size on the paper order form from Miller's. I'd been wanting them for ages, but it took a while to save up the money.  I toted up the column of price, tax, handling, and wrote the check.
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I used them at fancy-scmancy riding lessons in New Jersey's horse country (It does so have a horse country).

They moved with me to Florida, where they once carried me fleetly away from the kicking feet of a pair of mustangs who were –– as I learned –– not even remotely green-broke, no matter what the barn owner had promised.

Alas. I recently went to put them on.

Ye gods and small fishes! –– my wardrobe migrated from "funky," skipped "vintage," to whizz directly to "antique." 

Too late, I know, but if Buffy has taught me anything, it's that a girl can dream. 

Not just any old city bird, this was a pure white dove that stomped in its pigeon-toed way across the thin, sandy carpet of the living room, past the mod, mirrored wall of the dining room, straight into the bathroom where my sister was showering.  

"Caa-hooo! Caa-hooo!" the bird insisted.

The bird was nonplussed by the Bottacelli vision of my sister emerging from the shower. The reciprocal –– less so. My sister found the pearly-white creature creepy and unsettling in her personal space, but it was unmistakably a bird of peace, so we put out a dish of water, scattered some crumbs on the patio, and shooed it back outdoors.

The next morning, the dove barged through the door cooing. It waddled straight to her bedroom and hopped onto the pile of blankets covering my sister. "Well, F-ing-A Tweetie," my sister said.

We had a propensity to speak the intensifying phrase "F-ing-A" in a John Wayne accent that year. The sobriquet "Pilgrim" was also heard rather more frequently than one might have wished. 

​The bird fluffed its feathers and settled more comfortably onto the hump of blankets.

"F-ing-A Tweetie," my sister said. "A Christmas miracle."

Eight million stories in the humid city and this is one. Me, I'm just a gal with a badge. And a stack of citations to hand out.

Because nothing says "Sacred matrimony" like a pair of lace hot-pants and a transparent top with a cape of hand-detailed Carrickmacross lace and entredoux.
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Oh, Miami. Just no.

I shudderingly wonder what the shoe choice would be.

The first time was pretty easy: my favorite skipper took an old Flying Scot and made like a mad scientist to create an Everglades Challenge boat.

​Of course it had to be called Frankenscot. What else?

This time around, he started from scratch. There was a stack of wood, actual plans from O.H. Rodgers, computer-rendered drawings from Dave Sawicki...and very little idea of what the creation would be called.  

When in doubt, call a friend! The naming contest generated something like 66 suggestions, proving again that the internet can rather handily produce brilliance (Ned Johnston's "Irregardless" and Tim Snow's "Jeff's Last Boat VI" seem particularly clever, while there were a touching number of references to the Small Dog and to Jeff's dad, as well as some excellent plays on words).

​The arbiter and sole judge of the contest himself however, went with one of the original place-holder names: Spawn of Frankenscot.  "Spawn" for stable-use. 

A simple name, albeit one with a superhero movie referent that's not quite awful enough (unlike, say,  Mothra, or the Frankenstein franchises –– or this charmer, Slithis) for us to adopt as a mascot. Still, it has a certain ring. 

Onboard Spawn will be my favorite skipper, WaterTribe name "TwoBeers," plus Jahnny Tihansky, aka "Moresailesaid," and newcomer-to-the-event, O.H. Rodgers, whose moniker among the Challenger gang will be "Ninjee."

Why "Ninjee"? Because of his affinity with the Ojibway First Nation of Ontario, O.H. went to Ojibway for his handle. And in Ojibway, "crazy boatbuilder" becomes "crazy canoebuilder," which translates to  "Ninjee Wanadeez Jeemani Kewininee."  "Ninjee" for short.  

Hip, hip, Hurrah for Spawn and crew!

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