I love swimming in the moonlight. The water is a black ink enveloping my body, and I feel so alone — but in a good way. The water is warm, and I feel safe.

This is one of the few things I miss about the high school/college days. In the summer I’d get home at 4 in the morning, eat Krystals on the dock, then go for a swim with a few friends. Afterwards, I would be shivering in the cool night air, running to get into the house and into a soft cotton t-shirt, snuggling down into the bed.

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Miscellany by Courtney

I can only hope that one day I have so much money that I can let the spirits design my house.

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Miscellany by Courtney

Pleasure Island, Orlando, FL

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Miscellany by Courtney

My job tends to be a drain on me. All I want to do when I can finally shut down my work is drink. Anything to try to kill the braincells I have accumulated during the day. I only wish when I drank I could pinpoint which braincells to kill.

So this morning, I decided I would just start drinking early. It makes my day smoother to say the least. I’ve never had gin and soda, but it’s pretty damn good, as long as there’s plenty of lime. To put a smile on my face, I used the stirrer I received from my neighbors when I was 2 or 3 — it’s my first of many pink elephant memorabilia.

You can tell he’s been through hell and back — and I can’t believe he’s in this good of shape a quarter of a century later. I wish I remembered more about that couple that lived next door to me — I just remember the woman in a bikini.

Mr. Pink Elephant sat in my kool-aid as a kid. I would use him to stop up my straw (by sticking the stirrer into the straw). I thought I was the bees knees with Mr. Ele-phant.

This, of course, was until the infamous kool-aid incedent. When I poured an entire pitcher of kool-aid onto the carpet in the kitchen (accident, I swear). I wasn’t allowed to drink kool-aid for another 10 years. I wonder if it would have been such a big deal if we still had the vinyl floor in the kitchen instead of the new carpet?

So, I had this stirrer for a good 25 years. It wasn’t until 6 years ago that the pink elephant obsession was revived. I was walking down Chartres in New Orleans. In the window of an antiques shop, I saw a pink elephant martini shaker. It was over $200.

I obsessed over it. I wanted it; had to have it. It was one of the first things I purchased on eBay. Actually, it was the first 2 things I purchased on eBay. I have 2 pink elephant martini shakers — different designs.

The second of these martini shakers is the reason I am teased to no end by the boyfriend. It just illustrated one of his main points: I am a klutz.

The top had rusted on the martini shaker. I couldn’t get it off. I had tried numerous things over the years to pry it off. This day, I had soaked it in WD40. No dice. So, I did what anyone would do. I pulled out my hammer and my flat top screwdriver and went to work.

As I was working on the lid, the boyfriend says, “Be careful. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

This was at the exact same second that I scraped the skin off of my knuckle with the screwdriver. Shit, I thought. I will never hear the end of this.

So, I snuck into the bathroom, and bandaged the hand. It’s not nearly as bad as the time I exacto’d my finger off trying to get the label off a vox bottle.

I went back to work, and a minute later, the lid was off! Victory is Mine!!

Of course, the boyfriend did notice the bandage later that evening. I can’t complain; he definitely pays attention to me.

🙂

Of course, none of this has a thing to do with heffelumps and woozles. Other than the fact that they make me smile too.

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Miscellany by Courtney

This time last week (well, almost, it was actually Friday morning) I was driving up 75 in Florida. I’m staring to have great nostalgia when I go back to the southeast, since it’s been almost 10 years since I left, and I don’t go back as often now. As I drove, I passed all the familiarities — Cracker Barrels, Chick-Fil-As, and Krystals on the signs. I came out of the airport and there was humidity (admittedly, not much) in the air.

As I drove, I kept smelling that weird smell I used to smell every year when we drove from Tennessee to Florida for vacation. I still don’t know what that smell is, but as a kid I imagined it was rotten buttermilk. Why? I don’t know. I had never even had buttermilk, let alone smelled it in its normal or spoiled states.

But never mind that. I would hunker down in the backseat of my mom’s Buick Skyhawk, underneath the gold blanket in the above pict, scrunch up my nose, and squeal, “Eeeeewwwww! It stinks! It smells like… ROTTEN BUTTERMILK!”. Then I would proceed to try to hold my breath, but I could never hold it long enough.

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Miscellany by Courtney