Bright eyed and Bushy haired.

"Buffaloooo Soldier, in the heart of Ameeeericaaaa."

P.S. I had to scare you. It's Halloween after all!

Oh, and a little disclaimer: Osama bin Laden's likeness was never used.

The result is that most kids rode the school bus to school, but only after parents, guardians, grandparents, older siblings, neighbours or even farm hands drove you to the main road via the dirt farm roads. Talk about a bumpy ride!

So it wasn’t unusual at all to get stuck in mud or deep sand a few times a year. My sisters and I always had heated debates about whose turn it was to open and close the gates (there were at least two on our farm road). A single icy glance in the rear view mirror from my parents was usually all it took to speed up a decision.

Anyway, I’m digressing.

So kids were driven down the respective dirt roads to the main road that led into town (anything with tar on it was considered to be a main road, by the way). There we would then wait for the school bus to take us to the one and only school in town.

In the afternoon after school, we would board the bus again so that the same thing could happen in reverse. The ride was long - it was a good half hour before I got to my drop-off point (which feels like an eternity when one is that young), and that was only halfway down the bus route. But most of my friends were fellow "non-townies" who also had to ride the bus to get home, so it made the journey much more bearable.

I remember one girl in particular who used to ride the school bus with me. She was a few years my junior (so of course we didn't socialize) and the cutest little thing with enormous blue eyes and a mop of unruly short, blonde, curly hair (if it had been red like mine, she would have been snatched up to play the lead in "Annie", for sure). Her hair was a source of endless hypnotic fascination for me, because the ringlets sprouted and bounced in all directions whenever the bus would hit the slightest bump.

I remember her name, but for the sake of anonymity, let’s call her "Little Lulu".

Because Lulu’s family lived close to the end of the bus route, she was dropped off much closer to home than the rest of us. In fact, she could have walked, but her rather protective parents (she was their much adored youngest child) preferred to pick her up. And that bit of information is crucial to our story.

As you can imagine, typical of such a small community, there are many versions of this story floating about. There were no eyewitnesses that day (circa 1987) to verify or substantiate any of the events, so I’m going to tell you the version I believe to be closest to the truth: my own.

Legend has it that Lulu was about 8-years old when this happened.

One afternoon after school, following another bus ride and – I’m almost certain – more hair-raising entertainment for me courtesy of Lulu’s coiffure, Lulu’s parents weren’t at the gate to meet her when the bus dropped her off.

Lulu, who before that day wasn’t really famous for her sense of bravery or adventure, dropped her books right there at the gate in a state of panic and started sprinting home. All elbows, knees, quivering lips and bouncing ringlets, she left a cloud of bushveld dust in her wake.

When she finally reached the house, she was even more alarmed to find everything to be deserted, despite the fact that the family car was parked in the driveway. Which normally meant that her parents couldn’t be very far away.

She searched the house for about sixty seconds flat (those were the good old days when no one ever locked their doors), before she made the life-altering decision that would make her a revered girl forever after that (and the subject of this blog post some 15 years later.).

Because that’s when Little Lulu took matters into her own hands and grabbed the car keys.

Lulu’s family car was a sturdy machine. An automatic Ford Grenada. To anyone who has never had the pleasure of encountering a Grenada: just picture a cargo vessel on wheels.

According to the rest of the legend, Lulu had enough foresight to bring along two pillows to sit on so that she could at least peer over the dashboard while she drove. (I’m sure that mop of hair was visible above the wheel and dashboard, even if nothing else was.)

And thus she set off on her maiden voyage as a driver to go and find her parents.

I don’t remember how far she got. Perhaps a mile or two. (It was an impressive distance to all of her young peers, though.)

I think all went relatively well until she reached an unexpected sharp corner in the dirt road. But since she’d managed to build up some momentum, Lulu couldn’t manage to slow down enough to get the Ford safely (or at least on two wheels) around the bend. I think she would have had a chance, had it not been for a pesky tree right there next to the road...

And that’s where they found her. Unfortunately she had a few nasty scratches and bruises, but luckily that was the extent of her injuries. I think the Grenada survived, but then, it will take at least a tornado to wipe out a car of that calibre!

No one ever dared to ask her about that first solo road trip. But I know that no one looked at her quite the same way ever again. And this time our curious glances had nothing to do with her hair… or very little, in any case.

She wasn’t even punished, because apparently her parents weren’t home due to a minor misunderstanding - they thought she had a play date over at a friend’s house that afternoon - and they felt incredibly guilty about the whole thing.

I don’t know what’s become of Lulu and that Grenada, but I have a feeling that both of them are still alive and well.

In fact, as we are speaking, they are probably kicking up some dust clouds on a rural road somewhere in Sunny South Africa…

This book is any Hypochondriac's dream. You can start off optimistically enough on page one - as I did - thinking that you are in excellent health, never suspecting that an all-consuming illness is slumbering inside you just waiting to rear its feverish, poisonous head when you least expect it to.

But trust me, no matter how optimistic you think you are in terms of your own health and well being: by page two you will firmly believe that you are definitely dying.

I'm so bewildered right now (and I'm only at the chapter on Osteoporosis. Page 188. And I have just as many pages left to go, not counting the glossary), I have completely forgotten why I picked up this book in the first place.

I've FORGOTTEN?!? Must be the first sign of Alzheimer's?! Yes, what do you know! There it is, on page 50 under Head & Nervous System and next to Headaches (and if you have a headache right now, I'm afraid I have very, very bad news for you: you possibly have a brain haemorrhage, or Meningitis, or a brain tumour, or a temporomandibular disorder, or... Oh, just call an ambulance.): "Alzheimer's Disease: Signs and Symptoms: Memory problems that become progressively worse! And Confusion, faulty judgement (according to my parents, I most certainly have both of those!) and an increasing tendency to lose things!"

I'm convinced. That's me! I have all those symptoms! The car keys have been gone since last Thursday and my mom always says if my head wasn't screwed on... Well, even that is of no help anymore, because here goes my mind anyway.

The book starts off pleasantly and helpful enough.

"We want to show you how you can best take care of yourself and your family." (Ha ha. That last bit is very funny. I think my family would rather expire than allow me to come near them with medical advice! I can hardly follow a basic cooking recipe, let alone step by step instructions on how to correctly apply first aid under pressure during an emergency.)

But halfway through that seemingly sincere introduction, they start dropping the hints - that you are about to find out that you are actually very ill - as subtly as nuclear bombs.

In order to best terrorise you, they list all the things that can possibly be wrong with you (and, if it isn't already, will be soon!) in alphabetical order: from Animal Bites to Appendicitis, to Yellow Eyes to Xenophobia. (Okay, Xenophobia isn't REALLY listed in the book, but it might as well be, because I'm a foreigner in the United States, and right now I'm terrified of myself!)

Here's some of what I've learned from the book so far: If you are feeling a little bit blue, you are actually manic-depressive.

If you are exceptionally happy... well, you must be deliriously insane then.

If you are thirsty... you might as well forget about it, because you're already dehydrated.

If you are hungry, you are either malnourished OR you are imagining it, which signals a definite obsession with food, in which case you are:
Obese,
Well on your way to obesity,
Anorexic,
Bulimic or - once again -
Manic-depressive.

If you have two glasses of wine in one sitting, you are a full-blown alcoholic.

If you have NO wine, ever, you will definitely die soon because that means you never get any of those important antioxidants found in red wine and which the French seem to flourish on.

Too much exercise can lead to such severe and multiple injuries, I tremble just thinking about it. (Trembling: the first indication of Parkinson's.)

Mild exercise isn't good enough, so don't bother.

No exercise is terrible and will also kill you soon.

If you're too hot, you have a fever (which indicates many other things, none of which is ANY good.).

If you're too cold, it means you have the chills, poor circulation or - I hate to break it to you - that you are simply not alive anymore.

See what I mean?! (And if you don't, you probably have cataracts.)

I've just read that my freckles, which I've always naively assumed to be nothing more (or less!) than an unfortunate side effect of having red hair, could actually be skin cancer.

I think I'd better lie down now and wait for the ambulance to arrive.

See you at the hospital, but take care not to include any Self Help Medical Books in your stack of bedside reading material. You may not last through the index.

P.S. This is dedicated to Joelle, who happens to be quite ill (for real) right now. Get well soon, Moxie girl!
Oh, and also to Natalie, who recently bade a fond farewell to some brain bits. Luckily for us, it wasn't any of the important bits containing her marvellous vocabulary and writing ability.

On last night's episode of "Jeopardy!" he surpassed the two million dollar mark with a winning total of a modest $2,006,300.

Go Ken, go! May your winning streak continue, because you deserve it, ye freak of nature!

You join for free, but they're a bit on the conservative side and actually approve your site first by studying its contents.

They say they allow profanity, but they don't seem to like nudity, be it real or implied or even downright fake. I reached that conclusion after her site was turned down. We suspect it is due to the fact that the pin-up on her current skin is showing a little (and "a little" being the operative term here) skin. Lighten up, folks! It's JUST a drawing!

Anyway, since the most lewd thing I do on here is openly discuss my addiction to coffee and how-to books, my humble little bloggie was selected. Phew!

Once that happens, you get a log-in name and a password to the member's section of the BlogExplosion site and then you earn credits by surfing other member blogs. The idea is that for every member blog you visit, your site will be visited twice in return.

They have their own navigational bar above the blogs you surf, with a 30 second timer and everything. I suppose they did this so that people won't "cheat" by just clicking on blogs and moving on without at least having a look around. Quite noble of them, really, but according to my blog stats, the visits of most of my BlogExplosion referrals last all of 0 seconds. So obviously their plan is working nicely.

If you are one of those people who only hit the site and move on, they'll tell you that you are "surfing too fast." I incurred their "surfing too fast" wrath a few times when my browser acted up and didn't open the site. I'm sure they withheld five mystery credits for that one, and every time it happened, a voice, sounding suspiciously similar to that of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi, roared in my head: "No Credits For You!"

Oh, another thing? You surf other blogs by clicking on a set of numbers. I conducted a little rebellious experiment and purposely clicked on the wrong sequence of numbers (okay, fine... so maybe it wasn't all wreckless rebellion! My "dislecksickness" could've had something to do with the fact that I clicked on 39 instead of on 93). Anyway, if you do that, they actually get very mad again and taunt you with a "you've clicked on the wrong number" and refuse to take you to the next member blog until you behave and click on the correct number. They're a strict bunch, I tell ya!

I've been a member for a few days now, and although I'd be the first to admit that my site traffic definitely has spiked from five hits a day to like eight hits a day (naah, I'm just kidding, it's a little more than that. Maybe at least eleven, ha ha), so has the amount of spam I'm getting. But it's foreign spam (mostly from Germany and Belgium) so it's decidedly more exotic than regular ol' American spam, and I read their carefully crafted words (in which they proceed to slaughter the English language almost as much as I do) out loud in the different accents. It's a lot of fun, really.

All in all though, it's quite addictive to surf the different blogs and to discover some new ones or even to run into some old friends. "Piehorns" from Wetwired found my site on there, and so far I've come across hers (twice, actually) and hers.

Gotta go! More exotic spam has just arrived from Germany!

Married!

ME? MARRIED?! NO! WHOAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Alas, I've NOT made an honorable gentleman out of the boy by turning him into a husband, nor do I intend to any time soon!

I don't think my dear Cherryflava read the entire post. Because after wondering what possibly could've led to this slight misunderstanding, I've concluded that he probably read the post title and assumed that when writing "Desperate Domestic Diva," I was referring to myself.

Or maybe, if he did read the whole post, he - being a South African IN South Africa and all - may not be aware of who exactly Martha Stewart is. Although, you've lived here too, Cherry, while Martha S was at the height of her "it's a good thing" success. Don't you remember her? The robotic blonde whose folded napkins make intricate origami seem like childish kindergarten art and whose idea of letting her hair down is to eat a whole pomegranate by herself?

Anyway, I know that wedding fever is in the air with her not-so-secret elopement to Vegas in a few days, and what with her and her recent weddings, but no Cherry and Martha, the only aisle I'm likely to walk down soon, is the how-to section's aisle in the bookstore.

ESCAPEE.

A 28-year guy named Marc Horowitz who worked as photo assistant during a recent shoot for this fall's Crate & Barrel catalogue, decided to conduct a little experiment and, without Crate & Barrel's knowledge, he found a creative way to sneak his telephone number into one of the photos.

For a picture displaying a home office armoire, he scribbled "Dinner w/Marc" on the whiteboard inside one of the armoire's open doors and wrote his real telephone number underneath. His reason was that the armoire looked a bit bland without it. And well, he wanted to see what would happen.

The picture made it to publication without a hitch.

He thought that it would pretty much continue to go by unnoticed, so imagine his pleasant surprise when his phone started ringing... and ringing... and ringing.

More than 500 telephone calls later, Marc (a bachelor) has 70 dinner dates lined up all across the United States - and that excludes the large number of journalists who've called so far. The dates are with single women or even couples (anyone he finds interesting) and he plans to keep all of the appointments.

Apparently Crate & Barrel was a little upset at first, but they soon came to their publicity savvy senses, and a spokesperson for the chain was quoted as saying that they do have a sense of humour, after all, but that Marc now owe the Crate & Barrel CEO a dinner.

Never one to shy away from publicity himself, it seems, Marc plans to document his dates on film.

When he isn't sneaking his number into home furnishing store catalogues, he spends his time dreaming up and executing other wacky, weird and wonderful stunts and experiments: like running errands in San Fransisco... with a mule and a donkey in tow. Or trying on polo neck shirts while wearing a space helmet. Or how about serving up homemade coffee to strangers in the park? With his coffee maker attached to a very long extension cord running from his apartment kitchen to the nearby park.

One thing's for sure, dinner with this guy certainly won't be boring. If he's not too booked up by now, the boy and I might just give him a call as well.

How about 71 dates, Marc? If during our phone conversation you deem me dinner date-worthy, I promise I won't cook.

An original ink drawing of your house made especially for you by the boy.

P.S. Thank you and you and you and you for all your advice on how to finally upload this picture! It was worth it, no?

The boy drew a beautiful picture, and since I wanted very much to share it with you, my five (yes, a full five now! I'm steadily working my way up the ranks!) adoring adorable readers, but since cavern-ous (not to be mistaken with carnivorous! Or even cavernous, for that matter) inhabitants that we are, we possess no scanner.

So what's a scannerless cave-girl to do?

No problem. I hastily photographed the drawing with our digital camera. (Okay, so we might be living in a cave, but we've progressed well beyond the Stone Ages. Now we are happily cruising through 1985 - minus the leg-warmers. But my hair, when left unattended for a mere second... let's just leave it at that.)

Anyway, where were we? Oh, 1985 and digital cameras.

So yeah, I photographed it. And even managed to upload it from the camera to the computer.

Okay... who am I kidding? So the boy managed to upload it from the camera to the computer. (Were you REALLY not going to buy it?)

I did however - and I admit it very reluctantly because of all my modesty - manage to name the photo file all by myself. It's called "Photo File." (I never claimed to be original, did I?)

So anyway, I excitedly started typing a post in MT so that you could see the picture. And then MT uploads the file and asks me that next thing it asks, you know? About whether I want to see the HTML or open a whole new post just for the picture (I tried both) and then it tells you how big the photo is and whether you want it embedded or as a pop-up, right? (Again, tried all the different variations.)

And then you click UPLOAD. And that's the thing, 'cause that's where it stubbornly stops.

Of course I thought that I had done something wrong as per usual, so I tried different photographs and by George! They all went beyond that step!

So now I'm fuming, cursing calmly wondering: "What's up with this?"

And of course, being me and all, I'm not coming up with any answers. My one uneducated guess is that it probably has something to do with the fact that it's a photograph of a drawing... but then I wonder why it uploaded without a problem up to that point? I mean, if it wasn't going to read it or whatever, wouldn't it have flatly refused to upload the picture from the very beginning?

Oh, and by the way, it's an ink drawing, so it shows up very clearly.

So, summoning all my internet guru readers once again! What gives? What am I doing wrong (or not doing at all?)?!?

Unfortunately, the original drawing was a gift to someone, so there's no way that we can now scan it anymore. I only have the photo to work with. Is there any chance that I could still do it though?

Oy... why did they ever make me lay down the pen for a pc? Clearly the likes of me shouldn't be allowed anywhere near technology...

A friend of mine who works for a very esteemed museum type institution has assumed that, since I have a blog, I'm supposedly quite the internet guru meself.

Yes, ha ha, verrry funny, I know.

Just goes to show that one should never make assumptions. It's very dangerous and misleading.

Anyway, since I refrained from correcting her little wrongful assumption immediately (hey, I can't help that I like how "Red the Internet Guru and Web-Goddess" sound! You gotta admit, it kinda rolls of the tongue really nicely...), I got roped into doing her a favour.

And since I'm generally a very helpful person and I may have also suffered from a bit of my usual caffeine withdrawal (you know, I was between sips and all), and since it sounded pretty easy at first (sit at the pc and surf a couple of things on the net), I agreed to help her out.

Thing is, now I'm struggling a bit.

Okay... a LOT.

You see, the little thing she wants me to do is to look up postal addresses for a few VERY WEALTHY AND THEREFORE VERY UNLISTED people. And she needs it by Thursday. As in yes, tomorrow (since most of you will only see this on Wednesday.)

She told me I could find a lot of those people's addresses by merely going to Google and typing in their names.

Er... no. Teresa Heinz Kerry's home address doesn't just happen to pop up when you Google her name. Not even when you type "Teresa Heinz Kerry's home address" in quotations like that.

How rude of Google to protect people's privacy like that! They'll show you Alyssa Milano's boobs (I've heard... I'm not really interested in seeing Alyssa's boobs. No offense, Alyssa, I'm sure your rack is very nice, but I'm not into that sort of thing) and tell you how to find Paris Hilton's latest romp staged for the camcorder, but they won't tell you where she lives!

A lot of "Teresa Heinz Kerry told a reporter to "shove off!" came up. A lot of opinions about her hair came up.

But alas, no personal mansion address. Not to even a single one of her mansions. (Seriously, I'm just about ready to settle for her summer home in Nantucket's address.)

Of course, I wasn't too surprised. I tried Whitepages.com and Yellowbook.com and a host of other directories (most of which tells you that the honour of being awarded an unlisted mailing address will cost you $7.95, thank you very much), but since I'm every bit as unwilling to buy these addresses as this esteemed institution my friend works for is, and since it's doubtful that my money troubles which I won't tell you about because I'm so cheerful, ha ha (see?) won't be solved by having the personal addresses of some of the wealthiest people in these United States, I'm coming up a bit short here.

So please help!

Any other Sherlock Holmes types out there who are experts at tracking people down here at their earthly addresses via cyber space?

Any help to point me in the right direction will be VERY greatly appreciated.

Until then, back to Google, White Pages et al.

Next up, the Marriotts.