Targeting Wonder Pets

Attention shoppers! This really happened. I am not lying.

I, a friend, and my granddaughter, Joanna Leigh, were in Target last week – again. Joanna Leigh and Martha headed straight for, yes, the shoes, even though they were supposed to be looking for a decent iron. Irons are not in small appliances where you’d expect them to be. They’re with, I can’t remember.

I stopped at the musical greeting cards to get one for a friend, and then headed for books and kid’s DVDs. Ah ha! Wonder Pets – for $5. Done! I then started searching for Joanna Leigh and Martha.

Shoes. Of course. I found them with the iron in the cart. We stayed in shoes a while. Joanna Leigh spotted the Wonder Pets DVD. “Oh, I LOVE Wonder Pets,” she exclaimed.

In case you don’t know about Wonder Pets, they are three adorable pets – a hamster, a yellow chick, and a turtle, on Nick Jr. Together they save the day.

And it’s OPERA! They sing their way through the plot, which always involves saving an animal in trouble. Can Figaro be far behind?!

First, they’re napping or hanging out. Then their phone – a tin can with a string and toy -- rings.

Each Wonder Pet in turn: “The phone, the phone is ringing.”

Then they discover an animal in trouble: “There’s an animal in trouble,

There’s an animal in trouble,

There’s an animal in trouble somewhere.”

They explain in song: “We’re not too big and we’re not too tough,

But with each other, we’ve got the right stuff,” followed by singing about Teamwork.

You’ve really got to see this! Two million-plus viewer have already watched it on YouTube.

 

Ok. We headed for checkout. A guy, about the age of a young father, begins the check-out process – scan, scan, scan the DVD. He breaks into song. “Wonder Pets, Wonder Pets, Wooonder Peeets!” And on and on.

I couldn’t help it. I sing, “The phone, the phone is ringing.”

Joanna Leigh is facing the people behind us in line. She’s singing along quietly, “There’s an animal in trouble somewhere.”

Then the young girl behind us says, “Hey, I know that song,” and begins, “What have we got? Teamwork!”

People in two lanes were laughing. The check-out fellow and I looked at each other and laughed. Martha was trying to hide, laughing.

I said to the fellow, “You gotta talk to management here and tell them you’ve got a great commercial idea.” He laughed.

Except that it would make a great commercial. Hey, a series of commercials. First, shopping at Target and singing Wonder Pets arias; then teenagers, still shopping at Target, watching “Fame” or something on Broadway; then, successful adults, owning shares of Target, at the Met watching The Magic Flute. Then, at their own funeral, kleenex from Target, someone from the Met singing, oh, I don’t know, something from Madame Butterfly. . . .

Meanwhile, I’m not holding my breath. I’m just trying to make a ringtone out of “The phone, the phone is riiinging. . .” for my iPhone. Anyone know how?

 

Technorati Tags: Wonder Pets,Target,TV commercial,Spittin' Grits

Drug Addiction’s Parallel Universe: The Fourth State: Wednesday, April 21, Part IV

This four-part series began here in Part I after my daughter was arrested on March 16 for manufacturing a controlled substance, aka, methamphetamines. Her bond at that time was $115,000, which could be met with a $15,000 payment (10% of the bond amount). I knew then that she was where she needed to be and assumed no one could bail her out.

She stayed a month. After a court hearing, the bond was reduced to some pittance of the original amount, like $1,500. How does bond go from $115,000 to $1,500? That smells to high heaven.

She was out one week, and we got the call that she had overdosed, which is described here in Part II. The question in Part III, here, was, How can we keep her off the streets? The only way was for her to go back to jail, but she would be released from the hospital’s psych ward very soon.

Our answer was the bail bondsman who allowed her to get out. As fate would have it, the bondsman, a woman, had been a friend of Mary’s in junior high school and had visited at our house. I called her.

This is all going to sound nuts.

“Brooksie, this is Mary mom. We need your help.”

“Hi, Mrs. Hutt. How’ve you all been?”

She obviously didn’t know about the overdose.

“Brooksie, I don’t know how Mary talked you into bailing her out, but she is back on drugs bad, overdosed, and is in North Harbor.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “She called me every day for about a month begging me to get her out. She said all she wanted to do was see her daughter. She said she’d go to your house three times a week and wouldn’t let her down. I met her at McDonald’s and she gave me $500. She’s supposed to pay me every week.”

“I think you got snookered, Brooksie. First, you’ll never be able to get your money. Second, we need to get her back in jail where she’ll be safe. She’ll be released from North Harbor tomorrow or the next day.”

“I’ll get the bond revoked,” she said, “and re-arrest her when she’s released.”

Orchestration

Now the race was on to have the bondswoman at North Harbor when Mary exited. If this all sounds nuts, it is.

First I called security at North Harbor to see if whoever was there could at least drag their feet when Mary was released. Blah, blah, blah. That wasn’t going to work. I asked that the social worker please call me. Then I called the desk in North Harbor and asked for whoever releases people. “Couldn’t you drag your feet when blah, blah, blah?”

She said, not surprisingly, “Oh, we can’t do that.”

The social worker called me back. That conversation was a worse disaster. She first asked if I wanted to commit Mary.

I repeated, “No one needs it worse than she does.”

She replied, “Are you willing to testify in court that she is mentally ill.”

“Good god yes,” I said. “And very likely brain damaged from 25 years on drugs.”

“Will you testify that she was mentally ill before she became a drug addict?”

I’m sure I just sat there, because I was nearly speechless.

“How can I do that? I have no idea. You’re the professionals with the tests.”

“Yes, but she has to have been mentally ill before she began taking drugs.”

That is nuts for sure.

Choreography

By insane maneuvers, we managed to get Brooksie to North Harbor as Mary was being released. She handcuffed her and took her back to jail.

This next Dance Macabre is really going to sound nuts. Mary was in jail a month. She talked another bail bondsman into posting the necessary amount with the promise she would pay him and go to treatment.

She was out about a month, in which time she found ways to communicate with Joanna Leigh. This baby was so happy to see her mother that I cried in secret. I knew that the next time her mother disappeared, her distress would be doubled, and I knew that Mary would undoubtedly disappear again somehow, either by being arrested or overdosing.

Four 

My daughter has been arrested yet AGAIN, and again for manufacturing of a controlled substance (methamphetamines) with a bond once again at $100,000. This arrest makes a total of four for manufacturing meth, two of those times being in the last three months.

And twice, her bond was reduced from $100,000 to less than $2,000. What does this absurd gap of $80,000 mean? History says it means she be out on the streets again.

It looks like to me that the system is also nuts.

So here I sit, feeling nuts and trying to figure out what’s next. The first thing is to contact the child psychologist for some serious guidance. I want this time to be the last time that my husband and I play any part in allowing our daughter to see her daughter again. This means watching our granddaughter grieve yet again.

I’m also thinking of writing the D.A. here in town suggest that the system find a way to keep Mary until she is sentenced for one or both of the manufacturing charges. She is a danger to herself and others, but jail is the only option for institutionalization. That’s nuts.

I’m certainly open to comments, suggestions, advice, information. Meanwhile, I sit here, thinking about grief.

 

Technorati Tags: drug addiction,manufacturing methamphetamines,bail,bail bondsman

Requiem Adagio: The Beach

-- continued from the previous post

As we wait to see if the cap that BP managed to snap onto the spewing oil well will work, the future of the Gulf of Mexico remains critically damaged by the estimated 4 million gallons of crude choking the life out of the region. Tar, toxic dispersant, and slimy oil will continue to maim and kill from the bottom up for a long, long time.

The constancy of The Beach is broken, perhaps for several generations. I grieve for the loss.

Back to Gulf Shores

One of the 1972 "Gulf Shores girlfriends" introducing her third granddaughter to The Beach, Inlet Beach, 2009.

One thing I learned from my mama was the importance of taking girlfriend trips, so in 1972 – and newly married -- I suggested to my close group of married girlfriends that we take a trip to the Graves house in Gulf Shores. All of us had young children, or were pregnant, or would soon be. Today I think of all those children and how they grew up loving The Beach. Now those children have been taking our grandchildren.

 "Girlfriend's" first granddaughter, Inlet Beach, 2010

 

"Girl-friend's" second grand-daughter, Inlet Beach, 2010

Gulf Shores was still relatively deserted in the early 1970s. We still had to take our food and water. It was still gross to brush your teeth in the tap water. We ate at Mimi’s. (See previous post.)

Since there was no telephone at the Graves house and no cellphones, even in our imaginations, we stopped at the State Trooper’s office on the way to the house to let them know who would be at the house, as we had all instructed those left at home to call the trooper’s office in case of a need or an emergency.

We knocked and knocked on the trooper’s office door. No one was there. It was after hours and a weekend. There was a line at the one telephone booth at the Hangout, so someone had to drive back to Foley to call home long-distance and spread the word that we couldn’t be reached that way. That meant, of course, we couldn’t be reached.

Our group made that trip for several years in a row. No, there were no grocery stores, but there was by then the Flora-Bama, a small hole-in-the-wall liquor store and bar.

 

An Ill Wind

It all ended at the Graves house on September 12-13, 1979, when the category 4 Hurricane Fredric bombarded the Alabama coast with winds up to 145 mph. The Graves house was among the huge losses; it was found the following week floating like a boat in the bay, books still in the bookcases. Total losses from Fredric were estimated in 1979 dollars at $2.3 billion, yes, billion.

Not even Fredric could break the constancy or the legacy of The Beach, any more than Katrina could turn New Orleans into a wasteland forever.

Fredric destroyed a lot of man-made structures on The Beach and inland, just as other hurricanes have done through the decades, the very worst being Katrina. Despite the losses of life and livelihoods, the constancy and resiliency of life and nature always survived. Until now.

 

The Redneck Riviera

It took another decade or so on the Alabama Gulf coast before condominium complexes, businesses, and a way of life began their comeback as part of the development stage and rediscovery after Fredric. Family, friends, girlfriends, and children continued to stay in those old cement block motels that remained -- until Gulf Shores grew and became known at the Redneck Riviera.

We continued to make girlfriend trips for decades and to take our children on Beach vacations – even until this summer.

The Beach has been for so many of us one of the threads that connected generations to each other.

A close friend's husband and grandchildren at Navarre, looking at blue crabs, 2010.

The grandchildren at sunset at Navarre

One View

Our granddaughter Joanna Leigh has seen the Gulf waters, sand, and surf only once. After going to a birthday celebration for a friend in Ft. Walton, my husband and I decided she needed to at least see it, even if we couldn’t stay longer. We left Ft. Walton and crossed the bridge into Santa Rosa. We got out at a public beach site and walked toward the water.

Joanna Leigh at Santa Rosa, first Beach experience, 2010

Like all the children before her, she was entranced.

Like so many of the children before her, she ventured into the water just as the breaker came in. The sand shifted. Her feet were pulled out from under her in a couple of inches of warm salt water. We grabbed her up, crying and shocked.

Unlike so many of the kids before her, she will likely not get all those other times to go under again, to learn how to maneuver even the smallest breakers, to gulp down salt water through her nose, to wade in a tide pool of warm water where shells gather, to see the water birds soaring and diving, to catch a blue crab in her net, to marvel at the magnificent sunsets.

I am heartbroken for this loss of one of Nature’s greatest creations, by human hands.

Technorati Tags: Gulf of Mexico,BP oil gusher,Gulf Shores Alabama,Inlet Beach Florida,Navarre Beach Florida,Hurricane Fredric,water birds Destin Florida