The Green Fairy

Have you ever been invited to a goat’s birthday party? Seriously. Our invitation came engraved on linen paper, egg shell 28 bond with pageant rose ink instead of a multi-purpose desktop version. The words were flourished with Declaration of Independence fancy font, announcing the date, time and location with a request to RSVP.

Baby Goat was turning 365 days old, twelve months or one year, take your pleasure. As I’m not raising kids myself, I tend to get confused when I hear how children’s clothing is sized. Twenty-eight months, thirty-two, forty-seven, I lose track. When do months finally morph into years?

Math quiz: If I’m 543 months old, what size shoe do I wear?

Back to the invitation. I’m kidding. It was a Blue Mountain greeting card, delivered via an electronic mailman named Yahoo!

At the party, Baby and Honey Bunches of Goat were presented with a shredded carrot and almond butter birthday cake to share with a carrot candle planted in the middle. Most attendees behaved well, although there was lots of spontaneous pooping going on.

Have you ever seen a goat make deposits? Their tail-flaps lift up and out pop little pellets just like a Pez dispenser. MamaFriend thinks the pellets are the cutest things in the world. I’m surprised she hasn’t had them bronzed for coffee table art or shellacked, drilled and beaded into a necklace. When Grandma pooped spontaneously, it wasn’t as cute.

I haven’t completely made up my mind on the dog issue yet. Keep up, it’ll make sense in a moment. I know a woman who is really, really into her dogs. So much so in fact, when she grooms them, she extracts their fur from the brush, pays someone to spin it and then knit sweaters out of the doggie yarn.

I don’t know if that’s weird or not, where do you weigh in? On the one hand, people wear wool, angora, mohair – a posh word for goat fibers, and polyester. I know, those poor little darlings, does it help ease the guilt to know that polyesters are farm bred for just this purpose??

On the other hand, is there a term upscale enough to make dog hair more palatable? Not that I’d want to eat it, even though I’ve recently nibbled on goat flesh, I mean is there a phrase that inspires wearability? A “lab coat,” perhaps, suggests Groom? He’s a sick puppy too, and that’s one more reason I adore him.

So what happens when Acquaintance wears her dog fur sweater when it’s raining, won’t she smell like wet dog?

As an adopted “Auntie,” I was in the booth with my 15-year old niece when Acquaintance stopped by wearing one of her “lab coats.” When I asked Niece’s opinion, she just stared at me in the way only disapproving teenagers can do and summed it up, “That’s just wrong.”

Which reminds me, Groom woke himself up laughing the other morning. Apparently he was dreaming of Playmate Brandi Roderick’s lapse in language skills and her use of the word “forgooed” to replace “foregone,” and his psyche came up with a joke.

In his dream, Vinnie the Mobster said that a particular situation needed a “four goon conclusion.” Okay, that’s hilarious.

Wait a sec…Groom is dreaming about a Playboy bunny? Why am I laughing?

Oh, that’s because we’re in the car driving up the Columbia River Gorge. We stopped in Hood River, a town very happily hovering in it’s own economic bubble, supported by tourism. Kiteboarding and windsurfing in the summer and snowboarding and skiing in the winter. Their downtown received a large sum of money to improve its looks, and boy does it show!

We pulled over, lulled by the view of the water, the piercing blue sky and lazy breeze. How could we not stop at a place called Passport Café with a French bistro in the front and a British pub in the back?

That still does not answer why I’m laughing. That’s because their specialty is Absinthe, or what is better known as “releasing the green fairy.” I’m told it tastes like black licorice, which in translation probably means cough syrup. Since I’m such a history romantic, if I’d lived in the olden days, I’d be one of those gals sipping laudanaum out of a spiffy flask hidden in my bustier.

If it weren’t for morals and calories, there are many things I’d like to try, but I’m too chicken. The most giddyup I got is playing a rousing version of chopsticks on the piano. So right now, as I’m floating, the fact that Groom dreamed of a Playboy bunny and a “four goon conclusion” strikes me as funny.

As we continue up the Gorge, there’s the Columbia River on one side and a bouquet of rocks on the other. There are many signs to catch our eye, not the least of which is the lottery jackpot coming in at $222 million.

We’ve already done the math.

In order to receive the cash in one lump sum, the winner is presented with half, which whittles the total down to $111 mil. Then Uncle Sam will be the first in line to get his share, so that further reduces the amount by another 40%, so a cool $222 with lots of zeros is magically transformed into a paltry $60.

We could live with that.

The only problem we predict is nobody else will do the subtraction. If the world thinks we have a couple hundred million bucks at our disposal, well, Uncle Sam won’t be the only ones a knocking…

Other signs that tell us we’re heading in the right direction are the ones announcing “Highway to Happiness” and “Vacationville,” which sound good to us.

With six times ten million in our pocket, we’d want to spend a little on shoes, frippery and geegaws, but then we’d do some serious good with the windfall like set up foundations to save the polyesters, provide “lab coats” for equality, or support groups such as “Adult Children of Parents.”

We’d also shower our loved ones with a little of the loot. So if you ever receive an engraved invitation from us on linen paper, eggshell 28 bond with pageant rose ink and curly cue letters and a request to RSVP…

What would you do with $60 million?