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Melissahttp://www.missmeliss.com
Pink

DDOP-1608 – Pink

by

Pink

 

Transcript:

For the longest time, I actually hated the color pink. When you’re five feet tall, people tend to lump you into the ‘cute’ category no matter what you do to break out of it, so for most of my life, I was given pink clothes, pink toys, even a pink took kit once when I was little.

The irony is that none of these pink things came from people who actually knew me. My mother wouldn’t even let me have a Barbie doll (which is about the pinkest doll on the planet) until some relative gave me one, because she felt they were sexist.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked dolls just fine. Once I had acquired my ‘gateway’ Barbie, more followed. The Christmas I was seven, my mother even sewed an entire wardrobe for the Barbie and Chuck (I never did get a Ken doll) wedding party. To this day, I remember her cursing as she folded fabric to accommodate impossibly tiny darts.

A few years later, after she married my stepfather, we lived in a rental house where I was stuck in a bedroom that had a day-glow pink carpet and wallpaper that featured orange elephants and pink giraffes. Or maybe it was pink elephants and orange giraffes. Either way it was the kind of thing most people can only see after several alcoholic beverages and a few mind-altering drugs.

After that, I was pretty much done with pink.

Or so I thought.

But the thing is, while I’ve never liked baby-pink, I’m a big fan of bold pink. My favorite lipstick was this sort of faintly metallic fuchsia color that I’ve never been able to find a second time, and my favorite sweater is a pink, cotton, v-neck that is perfect for wearing over a tank-top whenever you go inside a business in Texas, in the summer.

The fact is, I always get complimented when I wear pink.

Still, pink and I were on the outs for a really long time. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties, spending every weekend on stage at Comedy Sportz that I embraced pink, and even then, I didn’t wear it… I just put it in my hair.

Now, this is the part where I confess that I’ve wanted technicolor hair pretty much all my life. I went to a performing arts high school where self-expression was so revered that the dress code was pretty much, “Mokawks can’t exceed three inches in height, you must wear clothing over your leotards outside of dance class, and gang colors are forbidden.” Other kids had blue, purple, green, and, yes, pink hair, but my mother didn’t want me to go that far.

And as a teenager, I wasn’t ready to commit.

Twenty years later, though, I found myself getting shyer and shyer. I’d just quit my job at a major mortgage lender because I could see the subprime market sinking, and I was doing improv, and I was sucking at it.

I felt boring and flat and ordinary.

So I went to my stylist and said, “I need a change. I’d like to dye my hair pink.”

We started with just a few streaks of a deep rose color, but over the next year, we kept playing – my hair grows really quickly, and my philosophy has always been, ‘it’s only hair, it grows back,’ but fortunately, I’ve always been lucky, having hair stylists who are very protective of their client’s heads.

Even when we bleached my hair out to platinum, so we could do my entire head in Special Effects Atomic Pink (it glows under black light) we never melted the ends, and it never got dry or brittle.

The thing is, you cannot be a wallflower if you have pink hair. It forces you to find the well of boldness inside yourself, and use it.

Or at least, it worked for me.

I mean, I still get trepidatious about things, but pink hair has become my anti-Kryptonite. One glance in the mirror at my cotton-candy-colored locks, and I’m on fire.

Or at least, I can pass for being on fire, because beneath the pink hair there’s the woman who has never quite fit in. The one who isn’t really geeky enough for the geeks (I don’t play video games, and I hate animation) or goth enough for the goths (I like the look, I don’t mind dark things,  but I also like laughter that isn’t maniacal) and yet, I’m hardly mainstream either, especially compared to most of the people in  the Suburban Texas town where I live.

Still pink hair forces me to live in the world outside my head, and that’s kind of a good thing.

And when it’s not? Well, those are the times when I slip my hand into Fuzzy’s as we’re driving home, and I glance into the night sky and find it lit up by random flashes of heat lightning.

The flashes are painted pink, of course.

Links & References:

Credits:

  • The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
  • Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
  • Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.

Contact Me:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:07 — 4.3MB)

Eclipse

DDOP-1607 – Sunday Brunch – August Nocturne

by

Eclipse

 

Transcript (excerpt):

With the flip of a calendar page (or a swipe of finger on a smartphone) July is gone for another year, and it is August, my month. The first summer month when, even though the sun is still reluctant to set, the days are discernably shorter, and the nights incrementally longer.

I’ve always been attuned to the night. While some people are morning people, happy and chirpy at first light, the only time I typically see dawn is when I haven’t yet been to bed. I have never been afraid of darkness; rather I crave it.

I come by it naturally.

The night before I was born, there was a full moon and an eclipse. If that doesn’t lock you into a special relationship with nighttime, I don’t know what does. (Recently, I asked my mother if she remembered any of that, and she reminded me that she’d been a little preoccupied with being in labor.)

You can read the rest of the post at Modern Creative Life, and if you’re so inclined, consider submitting an essay, poem, or piece of short fiction to our next issue, which launches in September and has the theme of  Wisdom.

Links:

Credits:

  • The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
  • Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
  • Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.
  • Image Credit: solerf / 123RF Stock Photo

Contact Me:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:35 — 3.7MB)

DDOP-1605 – Purple

by

Violets

Transcript:

“Pretty babies, bella babies, how are you today?” My grandmother singing to her African violets was better than an alarm clock on summer morning when I was a kid. She would hold a mister or watering can in her deep olive hands and pet the undersides of the soft leaves. (You never touch the tops, no matter how tantalizing the deep green velvet might seem.)

The table was oval with a marble top and a dark wood center support that split into feet. You’ve probably seen tables like it in home decorating magazines. Most people, these days, paint the wood white.

On top is where the African violets lived, center stage in the living room, right in front of the picture window. In my entire life, I never saw that window without draperies, or at least sheer curtains to filter the light, and I have vague recollections of it being covered in sheets of plastic during the winter – but I might be remembering wrong.

The violets, though, the African violets, are indelibly drawn in my brain and my heart. The deep purple flowers may have been dainty, but my grandmother kept them alive through year after year, and while they may have begun merely as flowers to her, and to all of us, they became a universal constant.

Through grief and loss, through joy and delight, in summer and winter, heat, humidity, rain, snow, and ice, those flowers kept blooming under my grandmother’s tender care.

It was the same care she offered to me, and to all of my cousins, whenever we stayed in her house. I joke about her penchant for cursing at us in Italian or threatening us with wooden spoons when we tried her patience (spoons that never once came into contact with any child). I laughingly recall some of her pet phrases the ones my cousins and I refer to as ‘Estherisms.’

“Oh, you’ve got a mad on.” when I was in a snit.

“You’re a miserable wretch,” when I was being a complete brat.  (Okay, you have to admit, that one’s kind of fun to say.”

“I need a little something,” when she was Jonesing for a cookie and afternoon coffee.

But the same voice that would let a string of Italian (which I cannot begin to spell) roll off her tongue when she was annoyed would also be the one to coax you into laughter by reciting poetry:

“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

and what can the use of him is more can I can see.”

Or sing a lullaby to soothe away tears:

“Lula lula lula lula-baby

Do you want the stars to play with?”

And at some point, in my head, the purple flowers became not just something my grandmother loved, but something that represented her presence, even after she was no longer living on this Earth.

Most people don’t realize that violets have a kind of tease built into their scent. When you first smell them, they actually numb your olfactory senses, so instead of a continuous flow of their earthy-sweet aroma, you get little bursts of perfume.

Knowing this, I think I can be forgiven if, when I wake in the middle of the night to a sky so dark it may as well be purple, I feel like I can catch the faintest wisp of my grandmother’s presence, feel the echo of her cool hand against my forehead, hear the ghost of her sing-songing greetings to her violets.

“Pretty babies, baby bellas… how are you today?”

 

Links & References:

Credits:

  • The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
  • Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
  • Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.

Contact Me:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:21 — 3.6MB)

Green Light

DDOP-1604-August Break-Green

by

Green Light

 

Transcript:

It’s the first color association most of us are taught: red means stop, and green means go. (According to the movie Starman, and most drivers, yellow means ‘go very fast,’ but that’s another story.)

When I was contemplating my interpretation of today’s August Break prompt – green – I originally considered using a photograph of some green beans I cooked recently. I love that they look green, smell green, taste green, and lend themselves to an audio interpretation:

  • The rush of cool water over them as you rinse off the dirt.
  • The satisfying snap as you remove the prickly end bits.
  • The soft hiss of steam being released as they heat up during cooking.
  • The muffled squeak when you chew them (my husband hates that part).

It would have been an appropriate, if awfully literal, interpretation of the prompt.

But then I saw the green ‘ready’ light on the microphone I recently acquired – a microphone called the Blue Mikey that plugs into the lightning port of an iPad (in my case, my brand new iPad mini). I hate the name, but I love the microphone because it means I don’t have to sit on my hands when I record in my living room or kitchen, and am using this setup instead of my lovely FocusRite Scarlet mic and pre-amp upstairs.

I come from an Italian family. I talk with my hands. A lot.

I mean, I use the upstairs rig for audio drama, but for this daily project, which isn’t quite on the fly, being able to sit at my table and watch the light shimmer on the swimming pool (which is no longer green thanks to the awesome pool guy I hired a year and a half ago) while I record is a very good thing.

There’s a green light on the mic and a green mic symbol in the app I’m using – BossJock – and green bars to tell me if my levels are okay, and then there’s the other kind of green as well…

The green of being inexperienced.

My podcasting is… lackadaisical at best. I joined Dog Days (late) a few years ago after Tabz and Nutty encouraged me to try it, and while (every year) Nutty encourages me to continue beyond the project and (every year) I mean to and don’t, I haven’t ever put enough time into learning the technical aspects of things to please myself.

It’s not that I’m not technical. I used to be a tech support trainer for a major computer company.

It has everything to do with how I choose to spend my time, and I find that writing and acting are more valuable to me than learning how to create a promo or even a slickly produced podcast.

There may even be an element of dread involved – if I have to spend that much time on it, this project becomes work and not fun. (Yes, this is ironic coming from the woman who writes book reviews and edits an ezine all day long, and then writes fanfic for fun and relaxation afterward, but, there it is.)

And so, instead, I look at the green light on the mic with just a little bit of trepidation, because I’m pretty sure the only person who digs what I’m writing is me, and I try to be cognizant of the way the green bar is rising and falling on the iPad screen, and when I finally press the green button labeled finish it’s with equal parts excitement and relief.

Links:

Credits:

  • The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
  • Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
  • Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.

Contact Me:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:09 — 3.5MB)

Yellow Sunflowers

DDOP-1603-August Break-Yellow

by

Yellow Sunflowers

Transcript:

Yellow has never been my favorite color. I know it’s supposed to be a happy color, and I’m told it really warms up kitchens, especially, but I’ve never been fond of it. It might be because I have just enough olive in my skin tone that, with the exception of icy pastel yellow – the color of lemon sorbet – yellow clothing makes me look really sallow.

Even jaundiced.

I just don’t think the dying-of-scurvy look is that attractive.

But there are some yellow things I really appreciate.

I like the rich, saturated Tuscan yellow of the walls of my dining room.

I like the way lemons even smell yellow, and I especially like the way a bowl of lemons looks when it’s sitting out on the counter.

And I love sunflowers.

I’ve always loved sunflowers.

I’m an August Leo, so my birth flower (yes, that’s a thing) is the poppy. Actually there are two birth flowers for August: poppies and gladiolus. Now, I like both of those. I specially love buying tall stalks of glads for this ridiculously tall turquoise glass vase that lives in the Word Lounge.

But if it were up to me, the official birth flower for August would be the sunflower.

I mean, really, what could be more appropriate? Sunflowers are bright and cheerful – exactly what you need to chase away the deep summer doldrums. They follow the sun worshipfully, and, let’s face it, there isn’t a single Leo out there who doesn’t appreciate a little bit of worship from time to time.

But most of all, I like them because as far as flowers go, sunflowers, the classic bright-yellow discs with the thick green stalks, are fairly egalitarian. I mean, think about it. Sunflowers grow wild in freeway medians and along fields, but they’re also grown purposefully, so that their seeds can be put to use.

Sunflowers can be planted and cultivated, but they’re just as likely to spring up naturally. My grandfather once had a healthy crop of them spring into being in his compost heap, which we all thought was terribly funny at the time, though I don’t remember why.

A friend of mine has sunflowers growing in her front yard. Some years they’re more robust and more prolific than others, but in 2014 they were glorious and bountiful, and she brought me a bunch for my birthday, presented in a mason jar, which she apologized for, though honestly, I cannot imagine a more appropriate way to present them.

That mason jar full of sunflowers made me smile for days, until they finally faded away, as all flowers, and all summers do.

And sunflowers are the first thing I think of when I hear the word, ‘yellow.’

Well, that’s not entirely true.

The very first thing is the line from the first chapter of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when Arthur Dent notices the bulldozer outside his house.

But sunflowers come right after.

 

Links:

Credits:

  • The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
  • Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
  • Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.

Contact Me:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:18 — 2.9MB)

The Red Chair

DDOP-1602 – August Break-Red

by

The Red Chair

 

Transcript:

Just inside the front door of my house, partnered with an antique writing desk, is a red leather wing chair. The seat is more than a little bit saggy. There is a large slash in the leather on one side of the chair. Many of the upholstery tacks that trace its contours are scratched, or have their once-shiny surfaces worn away.

To you, it’s probably just an old chair.

To me, it’s a piece of family history, and it’s a symbol of home.

Actually it’s a symbol of a lot of things. Having this chair in my house is one of the things that draws me back to reality when I’ve been living too much inside my head. It’s a tangible reminder that while I’m still, always, my mother’s daughter, I’m no longer anyone’s child.

You wouldn’t think I’d need a reminder of that, but every so often I have this disconnect, where I feel like Fuzzy and I aren’t really adults staring defiantly into the fast approaching face of fifty, but twenty-somethings in some off-kilter version of ‘playing house.’

But this chair is more than that.

This chair is where my grandfather sat and held me when I cried, or bounced me on his knee to make me giggle, or read endless stories to me. (He didn’t do all the voices, but you could hear the joy in his voice whenever he read to me – or to any child.)

This is the chair that served as a cave for me to hide in, a sheltered lumber yard for Tinker Toys, and a depot for the model trains that my grandfather collected, and taught me to love almost as much as he did.

In my head, this red chair is always positioned next to the drop-leaf table in my grandmother’s living room, the great picture window behind it, the couch across from it, and the table full of African violets to its right (if you’re facing it).

In my memories, my grandfather is still sitting in that chair, feet firmly planted on the ground, back supported by the chair, the latest issue of Newsweek or Model Railroader in his hand. In my mind’s eye, I can see the cotton button-down shirts he always wore, the white undershirt peeking out at the collar. I remember his sturdy work-shoes and the smell of his aftershave, and the way, if you complimented him, he would get this smug look on his face and say, “I’m a pretty kid.”

At some point, the red chair came to live with us – first with my mother, and later with me. I don’t remember the circumstances of its relocation. I only know I’m glad to have it.

I don’t sit in it very often. The desk it partners is more a catch-all for mail than an actual workspace. But it feels right to have it in my house, and sometimes, when the sun is at an oblique angle and the shadows are just so, I feel like my grandfather is still there, in his chair, waiting to read me a story.

(In memory of my grandfather, Edward F. Klindienst.)

Links:

Credits:

  • The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
  • Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
  • Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.

Contact Me:

Or, you can leave a comment on this post.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:09 — 3.4MB)

1608-08-FavoriteTaste

DDOP-1601 – August Break-Favorite Taste

by
1608-08-FavoriteTaste

Favorite Taste

 

Transcript:

It’s no secret that I’m something of an amateur foodie. I love exploring the foods of different cultures, and trying new recipes. There are some kinds of food I always come back to – certain kinds of sushi (unagi is my ultimate favorite), a really good chicken shawarma, and Neapolitan pizza like I grew up with, the way they make it at the Jersey shore.

But my favorite taste isn’t gourmet, nor is it something I make from scratch. It’s a combination of flavors: espresso or cappuccino – for the last year I’ve been drinking flat whites, which are basically a dry cappuccino – a banana at just the right amount of ripeness, so it’s still firm, but also completely sweet, and Milano cookies.

Milano cookies are my favorite commercially produced cookies. For years, I did what everyone did, bought the bag of fifteen cookies and tried (usually unsuccessfully) to make them last. A few months ago, though, I was in Costco and they had a plastic bin of 40 milano cookies wrapped in pairs, for only a dollar more than the bag of fifteen cookies I typically buy.

Not only did it come home with me, but it’s been at least three months and I haven’t yet emptied the bin.

Coffee, Milano cookies, and a banana- that combination is my favorite taste. What’s yours?

Links:

Credits:

  • The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
  • Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
  • Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.

Contact Me:

Or, you can leave a comment on this post.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:52 — 1.9MB)

TBM 1512.20 – Christmas at Mission City Coffee

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The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Holiday Tub

Show Notes

Christmas at Mission City Coffee

I recently published a book of holiday essays, The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the (Holiday) Tub. This is one of the pieces – an essay about an impromptu coffeehouse concert.

Credits

Music

Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com.
Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney
Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom

Production

Recorded and Produced using BossJock and Audacity.

Links

The original version of the essay: Christmas at Mission City Coffee
The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the (Holiday) Tub – Kindle
The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the (Holiday) Tub – Paperback

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:43 — 9.2MB)

TBM 1509.16 – On Crayons

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Crayons

Show Notes

On Crayons

Audio essay loosely based on a 2002 blog post (of my own) about Crayons. “I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it’s at its most powerful.” ~A.S. Byatt. The first box I remember having is the child-sized ‘basic eight’ which were large and long and only half-round, like a bunch of wax logs, split for easy use, and wrapped in colorful paper. They’re supposed to be easier for young children, those who haven’t yet developed fine motor skills, to handle. You know you’re growing up when those fat coloring sticks become too heavy, the tips too large, for the work you want to do.

Credits

Music

Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com.
Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney
Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom

Production

Recorded and Produced using BossJock and Audacity.

Links

MissMeliss: On Crayons
A.S. Byatt
Bill Watterson
Crayola (formerly Binney & Smith)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:07 — 13.9MB)

DDOP-1509.04: Turnabout – A Conversation with MissMelysse

by

Dog Days of Podcasting

Show Notes

Turnabout – A Conversation with MissMelysse

For my last entry of the 2015 edition of the Dog Days of Podcasting, my good friend Debra Smouse turns the tables and asks me the same questions I’ve asked everyone else.

Credits

Music

Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com.
Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney
Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom

Production

Recorded and Produced using BossJock and Audacity.

Links

MissMeliss.com
Bibliotica.com
19 Nocturne Boulevard
Between the Lines Studios
Gypsy Audio
Pendant Audio
Dog Days of Podcasting

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:31 — 29.8MB)