I think that will probably depend on how well I follow instructions from here on out. The dance thing, I mean.

You see, messages come in all forms and from many sources. In fact, depending on your belief system, you may even be convinced that you receive messages from beyond the veil between the worlds. And, sometimes those messages come along with a set of instructions that need following.

I suppose at this point you are wondering what messages from the great beyond have to do with the picture of Evil Kat’s shapely gams over here on the right. Well, to be honest, both everything and nothing. You see I’m not actually going to go on about being contacted by the dead. I am, however, going to go on about messages. In particular a message I received just the other day, and it just so happens that it has quite a bit to do with E Kay’s shoes.

In particular, her Mary Janes.

(BTW, I’d have put the whole picture up there, however if you have seen the revamped cover of Perfect Trust, for which this was one of many shots taken to create the final collage, you know things were far less pretty above the waist… Not gory or anything… You’ll just have to read the book if you don’t understand what I’m getting at… But, yeah, E K was one of the models… How cool is that?)

And, back to our regularly scheduled blog…

So, E K has several pairs of Mary Jane styled pumps. Dress up, work, leather, patent leather,  canvas, heels, flats, wedges, brown, black, and so on…

You get the idea.

I couldn’t begin to tell you about the fashion statement surrounding these, primarily because I have absolutely no fashion sense at all. I will pair stripes and plaids in a heartbeat, so I am definitely NOT the go-to guy where this sort of stuff is concerned. However, as shoes go these seem to work for the Evil One, and I am perfectly willing to admit that I think she looks pretty damn good in them. This latter fact may have something to do with one of those childhood memories, that being the little blonde-haired girl next door when I was growing up. We were all of about 7 and I was crushing on her pretty hard. Being the style of the 60’s she always wore frilly dresses and patent leather Mary Janes. They say you never forget your first love. Well, I wouldn’t call this playmate from my childhood a “love,” so I guess that old saying applies to crushes too.

So, there you go. Nothing sick or twisted, just Id, ego, and superego colliding to stir fond puppy love memories in my heart whenever I see the evil redhead in her Mary Janes.

Okay, enough with psychoanalyzing the Murv…

Now, the thing about E Kay’s shoes is that while most of them reside in her evil shoe closet, there are a few pairs that occupy strategic locations around the house – i.e. wherever she happened to take them off. Of course, her evilness is still more conscientious about her shoe placement than the O-spring. If you go stumbling through the dark in the middle of the night around our house, while traversing the living room you will trip over every pair of shoes the child owns. E K, however, does place hers pretty much out of the way. One such “out of the way” location where her feet become un-shod – and the aforementioned shods remain – is the general vicinity of her desk in our shared office.

And yes, Virginia (No, not you Doc… No, not the state either… I mean the metaphorical and collective Virginia) this is from whence I received a message. I just didn’t know it at the time. See below…

If you look closely at the left shoe you will notice a piece of paper lounged out on the insole as if it belongs there…

You see, the other day I rolled back from my desk on a mission to put something in the cabinets on the other side of the room. Since our office is relatively small our desks are against opposite walls. When I stood up to make the 4 steps to the cabinets I had to step around the shoes. When I looked down I noticed this bit of paper occupying the insole.

I didn’t really think much of it at first. Her shoes were sitting next to the paper recycling bin and since she is a shredding maniac I figured that in a frenzy of potential paper-mâché production the previous evening a scrap had escaped her evil clutches in a daring attempt at freedom. Unfortunately for the scrap, however, it plummeted into her shoe where it was overcome by odoriferous fumes and expired before it could get away.

Do NOT tell her I said that…

I continued about my task, tucking some papers into a cabinet, then returned to my desk. once again stepping around the pair of Mary Janes. This time, however, I noticed that there appeared to be writing upon the bit of paper. Again, I didn’t really think much of it until several seconds had passed and I was seated back at my desk. Some manner of subliminal trigger clicked, clanked, or whatever it is they do and I stopped everything I was doing. The image of the paper with the writing on it flashed through my gourd and I screwed up my face in thought as I wondered, “Did that really say what I think it said?”

Now I was curious. So, what else could I do? I rolled back, turned around in my chair, then leaned over to look at the scrap in the shoe (all while holding my nose, of course…) And, much to my surprise, it did in fact say what I thought it said.

“Leave Treat”

I’d heard “trick or treat” before, but never “leave treat,” although it definitely sounded like a pretty clear instruction to me. For a minute I started wondering if she was trying to get in touch with her Dutch roots and thought it was Christmas or something. But I came to my senses and remembered she is primarily Welsh and Irish, not Dutch.

Then for another brief moment I considered stuffing a banana into the shoe just to see what would happen when her evilness came home. However, since I wasn’t sure if that would spark some sort of Freudian dilemma or not, and I didn’t have any Vodka or Scotch miniatures on hand, I elected to simply laugh and snap a picture or two, because it was obvious to me at that juncture that this would be blog material.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that maybe I should have put some individually wrapped Dove chocolates in there or something.

Why?

Well, what you can’t see here is the knobby tread this pair of shoes has on the sole. The reason that is important is that I am now sporting a mirror image of it all over my face. All I know is that E K was doing a lot of unintelligible screaming while she was dancing on my head, but I did manage to catch a little snippet about her shoes being empty when she arrived home and when was I going to learn to follow instructions?

More to come…

Murv

I know this is going to come off as hubris in the worst way, but I was recently quoted in a news story and I thought I should let everyone know in case some of you missed it but might still have a passing interest in what I had to say.

The Associative Press

SAINT LOUIS, MO – The recent discovery of a new quantum mass in a small suburb of Saint Louis has yielded sufficient evidence to prompt leading physicists to abandon the “God Particle Theory”. The Higgs boson, nicknamed the “God Particle” by researchers was once considered the “Holy Grail” of the scientific community and was hoped to be experimentally proven when the much touted Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva eventually comes online. However, the Higgs boson has now joined the ranks of such debunked scientific hypothesis as “Flat Earth” and “The Moon being composed of green cheese.” The demise of the “God Particle” was brought about by the newly discovered Briggs stratton, which was detected via a hybrid science that blends quantum mechanics and chaos theory.

Doctor Earl-Bob “Bubba Doc” Fröedingschlösser, lead researcher on the project credited his assistant, Rhonda-Sue Crawford with the initial discovery. “We was on our way over to the stop ‘n shop to pick up some more beers when she saw ’em,” he said. “Rot there on the curb, purty as a pickshure.”

“He’s rot,” Ms. Crawford agreed. “Them metal tubes, they was jes sittin’ there.”

Doctor Fröedingschlösser further explained how the tubes led to the discovery of the Briggs stratton. “Well of course we stopped,” he said. “They was enough scrap there to git us change for at least a six pack. Maybe even a six and a coupl’a Big Buford’s from the burger stand if we was lucky. Anyways, we went to puttin’ them tubes inta the back uh my truck, an I guess we was bein’ a bit noisy. That’s pretty much when it happened.”

“Earl jes tossed ’em in there, ya see,” Ms. Crawford added to the explanation. “Made a whole lotta noise. Next thing you know, there it was.”

Doctor Fröedingschlösser agreed with his colleague. “Yep, there it was all right. Scared the beejeezus outta me. We wuz lucky though. Rhonda-Sue was textin’ her momma ta’ see if she wanted us ta’ pick up some diapers and Marlboro’s for ‘er, so she was able ta’ git a pickshure on the camry part of ‘er phone.”

The Briggs stratton      Photo Credit: Rhonda-Sue Crawford

“It’s jes a little blurry,” Ms. Crawford added. “But it all happened so fast I was lucky I got the pickshure took at all before it started hittin’ Earl over the head with a shoe.”

According to Doctor Fröedingschlösser the newly discovered, and highly charged particle was dubbed the Briggs stratton due to the deafening, lawnmower engine-like sound emanating from it as it accelerated toward them. He commented, “This here’s one of them particles that don’t even need no collider. It’ll collide ya’ all by itself, an’ lemme tell ya’, when it does you hurt like hell for a week at least.”

When asked if there were any plans to assign a nickname to the Briggs stratton such as happened with the Higgs boson, Doctor Fröedingschlösser replied, “Well, I ain’t so sure jes yet, but we been thinkin’ on callin’ it the Psycho Bitch.”

Mury Sallers, a resident in the home on the property where the Briggs stratton was discovered declined to comment on this astounding scientific breakthrough. However, when asked what he thought it should be dubbed he did state, “It actually likes to be deferentially referred to as Queen Bitch of the Whole F*cking Universe, but sometimes when it’s in a good mood it lets us just call it Evil Kat. We still have to bow and scrape though.”

Doctor Fröedingschlösser was not available for further comment due to an extended sabbatical courtesy of the Arkansas Department of Corrections. In his absence, his assistant, Rhonda-Sue Crawford, is continuing the research at an undisclosed location.

Of course, they misspelled my name, but that’s pretty much par for the course.

More to come…

Murv