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Leave it to me to figure out how to sprain my kidney and shatter my nebula all in the name of thrifty household repair.

It all started when I put a load of sheets in the dryer… Two minutes into their cycle, I heard a buzz. “They can’t be ready yet,” I said to the disposal.

“Buzz,” said the dryer again.  “Well, I guess they are ready,” I whistled to the sponge.

But, nope. I was wrong. The dryer just kept on buzzing…and the sheets were still wet as could be. I did a lot of “harumphing,” banging, clanging, climbing around. I unfastened the dryer vent that goes outside, peeked in there for good measure.  (Nothing visible because it’s very dark in that long, winding thing.)  Turns out it was a mistake to look inside that long thing. Never ever do that.

To peek inside there, I had to climb on the dryer and somehow my left slipper was stuck on the dryer door and my right slipper was stuck on the window sill… This is a bad thing, especially when the dryer door flings open. Thank God I had a hip bone to cushion my fall. Only now my whole left side is numb, black, blue and purple. There goes my centerfold modeling contract with National Geographic.

I decided that 5 days before Christmas is a terrible time to buy a new dryer so I kept at my fix-it plan despite having the wind knocked out of my epidermis.  I realized that the dryer knob felt funny so I took it off and got a wrench-like device and turned the little knob under the knob. Voila!  This fixed my dryer.

At least I will have dry sheets to line my coffin.

I suggest calling a dryer repair man if you hear a buzzing coming from your dryer.

If you want to have the best morning of your life, one where you roll back to a time before you were ever born…one where you feel yourself slipping inside an old movie or becoming part of a Norman Rockwell painting, head out to the lazy town of Wilton and mix it up with the locals at Bert’s Diner.

This throwback diner is everything you ever dreamed a diner should be. From the gleaming rounded stainless ceiling, the red leather booths, the black and white checked floors and glass block windows to the gigantic drippy cinnamon rolls, frisbee-sized pancakes and piping hot cocoa - Bert’s is a diamond in the rough and ready world of rural small town America. But guess what? It’s only a 20 minute drive from Sacramento at Grant Line and Wilton Roads.

Yes, the round soda fountain counter chairs spin. As do the tales from the locals who holler out jokes to each other as if they were on a sit-com set of Cheers.

One of the best parts about this place is Andy Burcher, a 40-something waiter who has worked at Bert’s for the better part of 3 decades. While Bert’s is his real love, Andy moonlights in a “real” career in the business world but can’t stay away from the good vibes at Bert’s. Hard to imagine what it would be like without him bouncing through the place, taking orders, sidling up beside old pals. Andy, it seems, knows everybody and everybody knows him.  His easy way makes us feel “way” at ease.  (Someone should make a sitcom out of this guy!)

“Hey kids,” he says to a couple of old folks. “Don’t tell me the number of the order, I can’t count.”

“What’ll it be? Bourbon, coffee or beer?”

“You’re easy to cook for, that’s what I like about you, Millie,” he says to someone else.

Laughter flows like the coffee….filling up your cup when you’re not even looking.

Bert’s is owned by Mark Seib who bought the diner 20-plus years ago when it had a loyal following of regulars. Mark didn’t have the heart to change the name from Bert’s. So Bert’s it is.

How can you walk away from Bert’s without a smile on your face? Especially if you skip jogging and have a pancake instead!

Tiger Woods is making me skinny!

True enough. Let me know if this is happening to you. Here’s the reason he’s affecting my average weekly weight gain.

Before Tiger I was never so bad at baking cookies. I swear! But something about society today has really changed the world inside my kitchen. It’s not my fault at all that I have burned another tray of what-would-have-been-perfect peanut butter cookies. I am not, not, not responsible for this latest disaster. But I’ll tell you two people who are:

Bill Gates AND Tiger Woods. First of all, without today’s high tech world and Bill Gates, I would not have such instantaneous access to info about Tiger Woods. Do you guys have any idea what you are doing to ladies’ kitchens all over the world? We’re talking smoking towels, burnt rice, smoldering cookies, scorched noodles?

If it weren’t for Tiger Woods and today’s snazzy technology, I would not think I could read stories, write stories and bake cookies at roughly the same time. I would not have put in a wireless hub, bought a wireless laptop and then set up my office right up near the cookie dough. If it weren’t for instant news online about everybody’s everything, (Tiger!) I would be more interested in thinking about stuff like butter and baking soda. If it weren’t for the beeping email forwarding me the latest joke (Bill Gates!), I might have remembered to set some kind of alarm to tell me when to check the cookies. If there were no entertaining blogs that could sweep me away from my apron and my beaters, I might be paying closer attention to the potholder.

What I need is an App that will take the cookies out of the oven for me while I wile away my time in the world of instant information addiction.
Maybe Tiger Woods can hook up with someone on that…

For more blogs by Duffy Kelly click here.

Oh bother.  

I have a very large tree in my front yard that is dead.  I am afraid it is going to fall down this winter and land on my sons’ bedroom.   This is no laughing matter.  And since finances are too tight to hire a tree man, I have been out there with my pocketknife.  This is going to take a very long time.  I have so far cut three centimeters of it down.  

I stand under this 30-foot tree and look up at the spindly leafless branches and I get to a-wonderin’:   Should I start at the top?  And, if I start at the top, where am I going to get a ladder long enough?  And even if I could find a really long ladder, which I doubt I could find, how am I going to put it in my car to get it home?   Never mind that I might sway this way and that when I get to the top of that ladder. Which I probably wouldn’t on account I don’t have any ladder shoes fit for climbing.  Plus, when I went to look for some safe ladder shoes, I went to the mall and whenever I go to the mall, I smell chocolate which made me go to See’s candy, pretty much against my will. (Turns out I’m like a hound dog when it comes to See’s.) So since I was  at See’s,  I got some scothmallows. Only four of them.  But still, I have that heavenly after-See’s glow coupled with a teensy-eeensy-weensy stomache ache.  So, I should probably worry about the tree, the ladder, the car, the shoes - the whole lot of it - another day.

The things my kids and I talk about are so exciting I can barely leave the house. Let me give you an example.

The other day my four youngest children were cleaning out—a polite term used to describe “snooping through”—their older sister’s drawers. She’s away at college, so this is now our family sport.

After a few minutes of ”cleaning,” the oldest, Nola, ran to me, horrified.

“MOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!!!! This is really bad! She’s hiding so much stuff in here! Brace yourself.”

“What? what? Tell me quick! I can’t stand the suspense!”

“You are going to die. She has her very own RECTAL SUSPENDERS!” Nola said. .

“Ooh Geeze! Not rectal suspenders! Lordy be, what’s the world coming to?”

“Mom, rectal suspenders are something for the weenular area,” Nola explains.

“The weenular area? What area is that?”

“The area where the weenis is!”

“Well, of course it is. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of a weenis, Mom?”

“I have heard of words that kind of rhyme with weenis, but, no, this is the first time I have ever heard the word weenis. I like the word, though. Don’t get me wrong. I love that word.” Maybe I was giving them too much information.

“So you say she has something for the weenular area? The area where the weenis would be? How can you be so sure?”

“It says right on it. Rectal suspender!” She was so shocked and horrified that I had to stop what I was doing, which was nothing, and get out of bed.

“The nerve of that girl! That sister of yours is up to no good again. Imagine, she’s hiding weenular items from us,” I exclaim, acting grown-up. “The weirdest part is she doesn’t even have a weenis. By the way, is a weenis what I think it is?”

Then things get confusing because the youngest walks in and says, “Everybody has a weenis. The weenis is the flap of loose wrinkly skin that …”

“O.K., O.K. Enough about the weenis,” I command.

“No, really mom. A real weenis is the flap of loose, wrinkly skin on your elbow when you put your arm straight.”

“But there’s another weenis and the suspenders are probably for that kind of weenies, Nola says. “You know, the weenis in the crotch-al region?”

“Thank you for clarifying, I say. “The crotch-al region?” I love this kid because she has a very creative use of the English language. Always careful not to offend. Always looking for the “Stuffy-Mom-Approved” way to say things. Thank you, Nola.

“Crotch-al region weenis rectal suspenders. You sure she has these upstairs in her room?”

”Sure. One hundred and three percent sure.”

“But Grace doesn’t have a weenies,” I say. Wait a minute, now. Do these kids know something I don’t? “She doesn’t have a weenis, does she? DOES SHE?”

“How are we supposed to know? That’s your job.

Nola suggests I go upstairs and see for myself the rectal suspenders. I have to admit, all kinds of images cross my mind. “Rectal suspenders. Right there in her top drawer!”

I get a teensy, eeensy bit curious so I start racing through the house, screeching around the center island and jumping four stairs at a time up the staircase, breathlessly yanking open her top drawer. The kids all follow, eyeballs popping out of their heads.

“How do you suspend a rectal?” Nola asked. “Got to be a crazy thing she does to her boo-doddum and she’ll probably get pregnant.”

“Where are they?” I ask.

“See these white bottles? That’s it. We don’t want to touch them, though.”

Sure enough, there are some white bottles in her drawer. They do say rectal on them. But the other word is not suspenders. It’s suppositories. And the reason they are there is because they are a medicine that was prescribed a long time ago and that she obviously did not use. (I don’t blame her one bit on that, I might add.) Then comes the long part where I have to explain what suppositories are to the four younger children. And then the word rectal. This takes a while.

”Ewwww. Yuuuuuuck. Grooooooosssssss!”

“O.K., fine. But explain these!  RUBBER TEETH!” Nola says as she whips out a tooth-positioner from another drawer.

If you liked this stroy, you will love my book, “Don’t Take It From Me,” due out in October!   Check Duffykelly.com for more funny mom stories.

It’s one of those wonderful days when my son wakes up and says, “Today I am as happy as a duck!”

“You mean “clam,”‘ his brother says to him.

“No. I mean duck. I’m as happy as a duck.”

Nothing is as clear as that.

Why is it that so many folks want to get their hands on my fingers?  And your fingers, too?

In the last few years I have had to have about nine sets of fingerprints taken. As a teacher in the San Juan Unified School District and the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, I have had to have three sets of prints taken. One for each district, two for the Department of Justice (for which I paid twice!) and still more for the various schools where I volunteer.  The reason I had to have two taken for the Department of Justice is that they lost my prints, (hmmm ???)  so I had to have them taken again for a cost to me of $78.  

Meantime… Sam’s Club sent me a letter telling me that about 37 years ago I bought a 32 ounce jar of pickles which might be contaminated with something-or-other.  

And meantime again… every bank, credit card company and business that wants us to buy something from them knows exactly where to find us and every detail about our lives.   How can it be the databases for all these entities are so efficient while the database for the Department of Justice and schools are so clogged?  Who is making all this money on these fingerprinting machines? How many people are we paying to do the same jobs over and over again?  

Does anybody else have these concerns or am I specially marked as some kind of terrorist?

Do you have any idea how hard it is to go to the bathroom when a possum is in there with you, his tail wrapped around the toilet?

Neither did I.

Find out just how difficult this can be in my Country Life column coming in September.

For quick links to past Country Life columns, click here

Welcome to Duffy Kelly’s Blog

There is perhaps nothing quite so fine as spending about 37  hours getting ready to go somewhere important, putting on my new shirt, even combing my hair and then having my teenage daughter say, “So Mom, what decade is that shirt from?”

This is the way it goes at my house.  No matter how hard I shop for a new shirt, no matter how long I spend choosing pants from under the bed, I still don’t look modern.  Hip? Wow? Forget it.