Snow People

I recently received an email from a lady in Atlanta who said that she was searching my online shop for snowmen and, because she hardly found any, she wanted to custom order a wall hanging for her sister in law's collectioin. My first thought was: “She must be mistaken.”

When I went online, I found she wasn’t mistaken at all: I saw two snowmen painted on glass ornaments, and one little bisque snowman. Where were all my snowmen? I was sure when I was painting holiday decorations from July through October, I had included some cute snowmen! Sad to say, I obviously had totally omitted this favorite group of holiday collectibles, so I quickly set about correcting the situation.

The lady in Atlanta wanted a snowman wall hanging and when I suggested authentic North Carolina roof slate for a surface, she got excited. I remembered seeing a handmade cloth doll in some magazine that “spoke” to me, so I set about interpreting her as a snow lady on the slate and put sisal rope in the original nail holes as a hanger. The result is pictured below.

When the nice lady in Atlanta received the snow lady, she loved it so much, she decided to keep it for herself and wanted me to paint another wall hanging for her sister in law. In the meantime, I had taken out all of my resource books and patterns and began making plans to paint snow people on a variety of surfaces so I wouldn’t be caught short again!

Since I knew the sister in law was married, I decide to paint a snow couple for her on this wonderful wooden heart I had found in a flea market which the Atlanta lady thought sounded charming. It was obviously handmade as it was pretty rough and even had a cut that went too deep at the top of the heart which I found priceless.

When I bought it, I had made up this story in my mind about an impoverished young man who had no money to buy his wife something for Valentine’s Day because he had lost his job as an apprentice carpenter some time back. While wandering one day, the man found a piece of heart pine by the side of the road and picked it up. He knew he would be carving the wood into a heart but he had no tools to make it smooth and perfect, other than his trusty pocket knife. And he sat for several days on his back porch, whittling away one chip at a time, while his wife worked cleaning other people‘s houses. He had no paint, so he hand rubbed the wooden heart to bring up a natural shine and on February 14th, 1940, he presented his heart to his wife. She cherished his simple, hand hewn gift and kept it on display for all their married years.

So, I sent the snow couple wall hanging to the lady in Atlanta along with my imaginative “history” of its background. Upon receiving it, she called to tell me she wasn’t going to share this with her SIL either... but she would give my website address to her so that the SIL could order her own snowman decoration. I took this as a compliment. This is the snowcouple on the heart.

So, it's back to the drawing board for me. I got lots of snowmen to paint in the days ahead.

Jane

Gaston Studio

Dear So and So...

Dear Hardee’s Window Employee…

I understand the need to ask someone in the drive thru to pull up and wait for their French fries when there are cars in line, but for the life of me, I find it very hard to understand why I have to pull up for my French fries every single time I order a burger.

It doesn’t matter what time of the day or evening, it doesn’t matter that are absolutely no cars in the drive thru but me, and I have to pull up and wait on you to cook the damn things. Now I appreciate hot, fresh fries as much as anyone, but while I’m waiting, could you also tell your cohorts to change the oil before they cook them?

A Devoted Thick Burger Consumer



Dear Mother of Blue Transformer Kid…

While I appreciate curiosity in children of all ages, I found it totally annoying that you stood there and calmly watched your 8 year old pull and pluck at the fake blood drops from around the headless dummy on my front porch on Halloween night. Not one time did I hear you say: “Joey, Tommy, or whatever, don’t touch the decorations!”

Nope, you were too busy eyeing the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in my candy cauldron to notice that your little brat was totally destroying all the painstaking work I had done for the benefit of scaring the bejesus out of the rest of the neighborhood brats! Believe you me, when I see you head up my walkway next Halloween, I’m turning off the lights!

Your Friendly Neighborhood Candy Giver



Dear Blue Haired Old Lady…

Did it ever occur to you to use a pillow to sit on in that Land Yacht of yours? Maybe then your 4’8” foot frail body will be able to see out your damn windshield so that the next time you don’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign, you’ll be able to see me in my little gas energy Ford Escort before you scrap my fender.

And by the way, if you need to wear glasses, you best have them on the next time we meet at said stop sign, or I’m calling the cops on you and be damned that you also left your license at home. You better be glad it was just a little scrape!

The Neighbor You Never Wave Too



Dear Bagboy at Food Lion…

Thank you so much for putting the milk, the laundry detergent and all the cans in one of my cloth bags when I was checking out the other day. You had the nerve to look me in the eye and smile while doing this, knowing full well I was engaged in swiping my debit card and knowing full well I’m a senior citizen with flabby arms, hence no arm strength. Then you snuck the bags so quickly into my trunk, I had no idea until that I had one 50 lb bag and one 5 lb bag until I was lugging them up the long walkway to my door, bent over in excruciating pain.

So, enclosed is the bill for my Chiropractor who had to make quite a few adjustments to get me to stand up straight again.

A Former Customer of Food Lion

The $26,624.23 Cat

In my post about Soupy Sales’ passing , I mentioned my best male friend, Curt, who was production manager of WSAV-TV in Savannah, Georgia. Curt and I became fast friends after I started appearing on his television show frequently, Midday, while I was Executive Director of the Georgia Lung Association, SE Branch back in the early 70s.

Midday was a local talk show and every Friday, he would have a kitten and a puppy from the Humane Society which needed to be adopted. On one such Friday that I was appearing, I fell in love with a beautiful little kitten and subsequently, adopted him. I hate to admit it, but I don’t remember what I named him, but let’s just call him Sami for reference.

This was during the time I was engaged to the Chiropractor That Never Was  (this is in two parts for those of you who have never read it), and he had a German Shepherd named Ginger. Now Ginger was an extremely well trained dog and she put up with this little kitten climbing all over her as well as the other annoying things kittens tend to do to dogs that are well behaved.

Sami was an ordinary kitten and grew into an ordinary cat: that is to say, he did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it, and be damned on requests from his owner. When he was about 5, he got up on the kitchen counter one day and was nibbling on some filets that were left to marinate. I know they should have been covered but they weren’t. Of course I scolded him, and this made me think of a prank I could play on Curt.

I then proceeded to send Curt, on made up letterhead, the “invoice” you see here but which you'll have to click on it to read. Go ahead, it'll only take a minute.

Needless to say, Curt called me when he received the invoice in his mail and said:

“When I saw ‘invoice’ at the top of the page, my eyes jumped down to the bottom and my heart almost stopped! You really got me on this one Jane and I’ll never forgive you for coming up with the idea first!”

Curt also said he contemplated sending it to some other people who had adopted pets from his show, but he was afraid it would give them ideas.

Don't you just love a good prank?

Jane
Gaston Studio

Desert Storm

I’ve already written a post about my experience during the Riot at the Pyramids in January, 1986, but prior to my arrival from Bahrain, Adel had undergone a personal experience himself with the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in October of 1985. He was directly involved because of his position as GM of American Express.

Many of the elderly had booked their passage through American Express, so he was called immediately when the hijacking was discovered. You may remember that once the murder of 69 year old Leon Klinghoffer was discovered and his body tossed overboard, the US Navy became involved and intercepted an EgyptAir 737 which was taking the hijackers to freedom in Tunisia. They forced it to land in Sicily where the terrorists were arrested by the Italians.

Before this two day drama had fully culminated, Adel took several of his top agents with him to Alexandria, where they assumed responsibility of taking care of all the Achille Lauro passengers, not just those who were their customers. I wasn’t there, but Adel was clearly shaken by the experience and should have given me an idea of just how vulnerable the tourist industry in Egypt truly was and still is.

Egypt was the first Arab nation to have access to CNN Headline News 24/7 but this didn’t happen until October, 1989, and we were among the first to sign up at L360 annually. We watched the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, 1989 and never dreamed that only a few months later, we’d be watching Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait in August of 1990.

Like everyone else, we were in total shock when we first heard the news. We all felt Hussein to be capable of such an act, but we also thought he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to actually invade an Arab country that was an ally of the United States.

By this time, I had lots of expatriate friends and my phone was ringing off the hook with calls of, “Are you leaving Egypt?” It actually shocked me that so many Americans and British were actually leaving the country because they were scared. I kept saying to them, “But, Kuwait is 1000 kilometers from Cairo! Why on earth would you leave?”

For the most part, my expat friends were in the news business -- reporters and photographers -- and many of them had been using their talents in Cairo for several years; many more had been posted in a variety of other countries prior to Cairo. A lot of these were freelancers, so it was their choice to leave or stay; a lot of them left.

As a whole, they were basically saying the same things: Egypt was a volatile country; that the situation may be in Kuwait now, but it (the conflict) could easily hop over to Egypt if not kept in check; and if it did, we would be living in hell on earth because there were fanatical factions in Cairo just waiting on any excuse to erupt. I heard them but I was still a bit naïve about world politics, so my pat answer was: “We (the American government) would never allow that to happen.”

But the real reason I was going to stay was because I knew that Adel would be at the top of the A List when it came to being notified about any reason to leave, and that we’d be on the first chartered plane out of there. Plus, I had just gone public with my magazine, Places in Egypt. It was on the news stands for the first time in August, 1990 when Saddam invaded Kuwait. I wanted to protect my investment.

When the tourists began cancelling their trips to Egypt by the thousands, all of the hotels and airlines that bought and put my magazine in the rooms and on the planes, cancelled too. If I had not made the decision to go public, I would have lost my business because it took at least a year for the tourists to start booking trips to Egypt again. Maybe I was psychic and didn’t know it!

It was still a surprise to me when CNN called and wanted to interview me about remaining in Cairo. My 20 seconds of international fame consisted of me at my office desk, talking about my magazine being the main reason I was staying and how I was not afraid. They used it, over and over as CNN Headline News tends to do; I was one of about 4 American and British expats they interviewed. The shot where I held up my latest magazine remained on CNN's cutting room floor, but they didn’t edit out me saying it's name. No way I could have afforded that kind of publicity and it definitely helped sell magazines, even with all that was going on in Kuwait.

Every evening after arriving home, Adel and I would watch CNN and discuss what was happening with President Bush amassing international support. In mid January, when we heard Marlin Fitzwater announce, “The liberation of Kuwait has begun…”, we cheered like a couple of children: Desert Storm was underway. In the days that followed, we were absolutely amazed that we were able to watch an actual war being played out in our area of the world.

However, even though we stayed in Cairo, we adopted a more cautious approach to everyday living. Usually in the evenings after dinner, we liked to walk along the corniche, often going over the bridge into the heart of the city; now we rarely walked at night outside of our own neighborhood in Zamalek and we never walked anywhere alone, even to a neighborhood shop. Adel didn’t want me taking taxis so his driver, Ali, became my driver too.

After the first Gulf War was over, my friends all returned, every last one of them, and picked up their lives and work as if they had never left. Places in Egypt was saved, and so were the Kutwaitis.

Jane
Gaston Studio