Say Hello To My Little Friend

I have had “Mairsy Doats” going through my head all morning, which has to be some kind of record for “weird earworms”. I am winning the contest, people, the contest to see who can get the weirdest thing stuck in one’s head for the longest period of time. If you don’t know “Mairsy Doats” it is a song that was commonly sang by grandmothers of my generation, and it goes like this:

Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy. A kid’ll eat ivy too. Wouldn’t you?

And repeat. But it has to be sang very quickly so the words slur together, like this:

Mairsy doats and doasy doats and little lambsy divey. A kiddly ivy too. Wouldn’t you?

In other words, I’m slowly going insane. I’m searching for something, ANYTHING to get this out of my head: the theme song from Cheers, Hey Joe, Clap for the Wolfman, and nothing is working. Nothing. I keep attempting snippets from songs, and this is what happens:

Clap for the Wolfman, he’s going to rate your record high. Clap for the Wolfman, you won’t dig him till the day you mares eat oats and does eat oats…

I feel like Scarface, but instead of saying “Say hello to my little friend” and shooting everyone in a violent fashion, I am saying “Say goodbye to my little brain” and drinking coffee. So not at all like Scarface, I guess.

Yesterday I went to buy pumpkins for carving; I’m pretty behind on my usual fall festivities. I haven’t even put up our decorative scarecrows, and it’s only two weeks until Halloween! This is unacceptable. The scarecrows must – MUST – go up this weekend. Apparently having a freak snowstorm and then even more freakishly warm weather is great for fall colours, because the leaves that are left on the trees that are left are gorgeous. I stared at my friend’s beautiful mountain ash this morning; it’s gloriously orange with the most beautiful red berries. I took a photo but it just didn’t do it justice; you will have to trust me that the city looks gorgeous.

Back to the pumpkins; I went to the Co-Op yesterday, thinking it would be an easy trip. Pick out four cute pumpkins, boom, done. I ended up staring at the pumpkin selection for an uncomfortably long time because they were all enormous. Where are all those cute small pumpkins? Not the little tiny decorative ones; those are adorable but I need ones that are actually carveable. It’s a family tradition that we each get a pumpkin to carve so we have a family of pumpkins. A family of weird looking pumpkins, but a family nonetheless. However, at Co-Op all the pumpkins were absolutely huge. Huge is not always a good thing, guys. I could barely lift them. After staring at the pumpkins and weighing my options – huge pumpkins versus driving somewhere else to hopefully find smaller ones – I decided that laziness was a virtue and started hauling out the less-enormous pumpkins. They were all battered and weird-shaped, but I feel that this will add character. I set them all on the front step but I think their still-mammoth size is distressing to Barkley. He keeps randomly barking at the windowed front door, and when I go to look, nothing is there but the pumpkins. Poor doggie. He’s trying to protect us all from being overrun by giant orange spheres.

Last night when I was driving the kids home from karate, MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This came on. When I changed the channel, the boys protested. They love that song! Love it! So I turned it back and listened as they sang along. How do they know it? It’s a mystery. I clearly remember Hammerpants being a large part of the fashion scene, back in the day. All the boys in my Grade Nine class walked around in those pants, so patterned and colourful. Sadly, I’m sure this will be back in style before we know it. The other day my girlfriend’s beautiful daughter was wearing acid wash skinny jeans with combat boots, and while she looked adorable, I felt like Methuselah. It’s funny how the crazy styles of the 80s can look great on the young, but when I saw a woman my age walking down the street wearing relaxed-fit, elastic waist acid wash jeans that were clearly a vintage/ saved item from 1986, I felt sad for everything. We cannot go back there, people. We must leave the acid wash – and, probably, the Hammerpants – to today’s youth. On that note, I am going to the mall to pick up some nice blouses, slacks, and sensible shoes.