Tonia Brown, Mistress of Occult Fiction
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D is for Daffy Duck

2/28/2015

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D is for Daffy Duck

This blog isn’t about the beloved Warner Brother’s character. This blog, as you suspected, is about Tony Brown. By now I am sure you’re asking yourself what in the hell does Tony Brown and Daffy Duck have in common? Aside from obvious snide remarks, I will say this much:

Something you don’t expect, but will laugh like a loon when you find out.

Let’s begin at the beginning shall we?

My husband calls me My Love. Never my name. Always My Love. He has since we professed our love for each other on that warm autumn day at Crowder’s Mountain. I remember sitting by the side of the lake, talking about this and that, when the conversation got around to our future. Specifically, our future together. He suddenly got quiet. I asked what was wrong. He said nothing. I felt the tension in the air and had an idea that he was thinking about the same thing I was thinking about.

I took the chance and said, “I think I am falling in love with you.”

His face lit up like a neon vacant sign at a Holiday Inn. “Are you? Because I don’t think I am. I know I am in love with you.”

I relaxed at this, then confessed, “Oh good. I was worried what you would say. I’m in love with you too.”

The man scooped me into his bear hug and squeezed the life out of me and declared, “I love this woman! I love this woman! I do! I do!”

Some guy fishing across the lake shouted in return, “Then take her home and tell her there! You’re scaring the fish!”

It was a lovely scene. Since that day he has always called me “My Love.” No matter if I am being a demanding bitch, or if we are just playing a board game with friends. My Love. Always, always, always My Love.

One day, about ten years ago, I grew curious. It’s a lovely affectation, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Still, I was wondering how or why he settled on that phrase in particular. So I asked.

He pursed his lips, then gave me that shit eating grin that means he will tell me, but I probably won’t like the explanation.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Daffy Duck,” he said.

I crossed my arms and waited. There was more. I didn’t just marry him yesterday.

He grinned wider. “Okay. You know that Daffy Duck bit where he is married and his wife keeps henpecking him?”

I narrowed my eyes at this. “Yes?”

“Well, in it, every time his wife calls on him, he answers, ‘Yes, My Love.’” He grinned again.

Yes. That’s right. He has been calling me a tired and worn phrase spoken begrudgingly by an overworked, underloved, henpecked cartoon duck.

I am not angry. Not then and not now. How could I be mad at that grin?       

In case you’re wondering which Daffy Duck bit it was, here you go. Enjoy!


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C is for Christmas Tree

2/21/2015

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C is for Christmas Tree

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What? Did you think C would be for Cats? Of course. Tonia is going to do a blog about cats. Nah, I can always talk about cats. In fact, I do! For this blog I decided to tell another Tony Brown story. I know you guy never get tired of them, and it’s a strange kind of therapy for me to let them out.

So here we go.

Every year we put up a live Christmas tree. Sure, we are pagans, but so is the Christmas tree. (I could say Yule tree, but firstly it’s a Christmas tree, and secondly the letter Y is weeks away.) We also drag our heels taking the tree down. Usually we have it down by the end of January. Usually. Sometimes we take it down around Valentine’s day. Sometimes. On occasion, it stays up a bit longer.

This particular year, oh say about fifteen or more years ago, the tree stayed up for a bit longer. I think it was, and don’t be too judgmental when I say this, I think it was around May when we finally took the decorations off of the tree and moved it outside. Trouble was, we had long since stop watering the thing. It was brown and old and drier than a batch of week old cornbread. This resulted in a peculiar problem; we couldn’t get the lights off of it. We got all of the decorations off, but the lights stayed on the tree. So, lights and all, we chucked it into the yard and then eventually put it behind the shed out back. The idea was to take it to the dump later. Later. Later. I don’t think later ever comes with us. This is nothing new.

The next year we had a great tree. It was very full and green. The thing was about six feet tall and huge. It was a good tree for a good year. Remembering the light debacle from the year before, I managed to get all of the things off of the tree and was ready to get rid of it the first week of January. Tony decided he didn’t just want to toss it into the yard and then drag it off to the dump later. Or rather never. He decided that this would be the year he would burn the tree. After this year, he said, he would burn all of the trees. This didn’t happen, and here is why.

Tony, along with our friends Watson and Blankenship (yes, we used the guys’ last names, because they are both named Eric!) dragged the tree out to our newly dug fire pit only to learn that the tree was way too big to place inside. Instead he left it in its holder, upright, as if it were still in the house. I was of the opinion that the tree wouldn’t burn because it was still too green. Tony and the guys agreed. That’s when he made his first suicidal suggestion.

“We should soak it in gasoline.”

And he did. Against my will. I repeat, against my will. He got the lawnmower can of gas and proceeded to pour what was left of the thing all over the six foot tall, several foot around perfectly green Christmas tree. But this still wasn’t enough for Tony Brown. No. He stood back, shook his head and then made his second suicidal suggestion.

“It needs more kindling. I am going to use the other tree.”

Wait, what other tree? Remember the one from last year? The old skinny, brown, needles nearly gone but still had the lights on it tree? That’s the one. Tony fetch it from its place of honor out behind the shed, brought it to the fire pit and proceeded to thread it, crosswise, into the bulk of the first now soaked in gasoline tree. I took a step back, then a few more steps, all the way to the top of the little rise that led down to our fire pit area. I thought about protesting louder than I already was, but my voice couldn’t go any higher and my words couldn’t get any louder without a megaphone and a dose of helium. So I hemmed and hawed until I was blue in the face, but he kept on keepin’ on, lighting a match, and flinging it into the fire pit.

Two things happened at once.

My life flashed before my eyes. It was a good life so no complaints there.

The world turned red and orange and blue as the tree caught life with the fires of Hell itself. The flames exhaled an enormous gust of breath toward me, blowing my hair back in a whipping wind of heated air. (Remember, I was several yards away at the top of the hill, the guys were standing right next to the damnable thing.) My eyes watered. My body tensed. And the world burned.

The men let out a primal whoop, which I would’ve done had I not been concerned about the mushroom cloud now rising from the nuclear disaster of a tree burning in my backyard! The whooping came to a quick end when the men realized the level of danger, as fingers of fire started to creep out of the fire pit and catch patches of grass ablaze. They stomped and kicked and did their best to put out the little fires. In the end they did good, making sure the flames didn’t reach the house. Meanwhile I looked to the heavens for help. I saw something that only confirmed how idiotic the plan really was.

The few pecans left hanging on the tree above me were smoking. They had roasted in the shells right there on the branches.

In this fire induced magic, my mouth became the megaphone I lacked earlier and my ranting reached full helium levels of high pitched squeals. “Why are you guys loving this so much! That fire could’ve burned our house down!”

“Don’t be silly, my love,” Tony said. He always calls me his love. In eighteen years I think I have only heard my name a few times from his mouth. “Don’t be silly, my love. There is no way that would’ve burned the house down.” He patted my hand for good measure. Then he nodded to the huge--and not to mention full of gas--tank standing in the back yard, and said his third suicidal thing.

“It wouldn’t have caught the house on fire, because by the time the flames reached that gas tank, it would’ve exploded and blown the house away instead.”

Somewhere in the background I heard the soft pop of Christmas lights succumbing to the heat.

Thus is my life with Tony Brown. It might be dangerous at times, but it is never dull.

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B is for Beavers

2/14/2015

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B is for Beavers

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GIVE ME YOUR ROD!
Get your mind out of the gutter, folks. It ain’t that kind of beaver. This is a story about a man, a dog, a porch and a furry little beaver. Or groundhog we still aren’t certain exactly which it was. For the sake of this blog, and this letter, I am sticking with beaver.

I should preface this by explaining that I work night shifts. I have to sleep during the day or I can’t stay up all night. Makes sense, right? It does yet some folks don’t seem to understand this. They call you at all hours and ask you why you’re still asleep at noon and complain because you won’t … sorry. Got off track. This isn’t about working the graveyard shift. I’ll start again.

I should preface this by saying I work nights, and as a result I sleep during the day. Usually about 10am to 6pm or so. This works out well during the week while the husband is at work, but on the weekends and holidays not so much. He isn’t loud. No. After eighteen years of living with a night worker, he is used to it. Tony is very quiet when I am asleep during the day. So imagine my surprise when I woke to a dog barking wildly.


Anyone who knows us knows we keep cats, not dogs. When it comes to dogs we will rescue them and find them homes. We don’t keep them. At the time of this tale, we had taken in a Siberian Husky we called Dora. She was sweet, but she wasn’t a cat. Eventually we gave her to a nice yuppie couple who asked us where we had her groomed. After Tony and I giggled at this question, they left in a hurry, whisking Dora off to a surely better life than the non-groomer one we had supplied for her.

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Not Dora, but pretty darned close.
Back to our story.

I woke to Dora barking furiously. I waited for Tony, who was home due to some banker’s holiday, to silence her. After almost a full minute or two of this constant yipping, I rolled out of bed to see what in the hell was wrong. I found her and Tony at the closed living room door, staring out the little window.

“What is the fuss?” I grumbled.

Tony turned to me with wide eyes and whispered, “Beaver.”

He always whispers when referencing wild animals in the house or yard. (Yes, in the house. That’s another story or two.

“There’s a beaver on the porch,” he whispered. “I tried to get rid of it but it growled at me. I think it’s mean.”


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It looked more like this, a groundhog. Though it is often called a land-beaver.
Tony and Dora stepped away from the door and I stepped up to peer out of the window. Sure enough, sitting on the porch was a little beaver. Again, could’ve been a groundhog. I was half asleep, how could I know? The one thing I do remember clearly is that the beaver was holding a long thin wooden rod. It chewed on the rod and glared up at me with a gleam in its evil eyes. I stared at the rod for a moment, then turned to look at Tony.

“Why is it holding a curtain rod?” I said.

Serious as death, Tony furrowed his brow and said, “How do you think I tried to get rid of it?”

He explained that he grabbed the curtain rod—a leftover bit of DYI decorating—and prodded the beaver, trying to coax it off of the porch. The beaver wasn’t amused. It grabbed the curtain rod, yanked it out of Tony hands and proceeded to chew on it as if to defy him. Tony dashed back into the house and hid behind the door.


Let me say that again so you can absorb it. He lost a wrestling match with a beaver, and ran to hide in the house.

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This is the man I chose to spend my life with. The beaver armer.
“After all,” he said, “a beaver with a curtain rod is far more dangerous than a beaver without a curtain rod. I armed him. It’s my fault.”

I blinked a few times, spun slowly on my heel and returned to bed. I had to go to work. This was obviously a dream. Though I knew the truth was I married a crazy man, and I was very tired.

Before I went back to bed I said, “It will eventually leave on its own.”

That night when I got back up, he told me the rest of the story which included calling various not very helpful government agencies. Eventually the beaver just left on its own.

Just like I said it would.



The moral of this story is never push your rod into the hands on a strange beaver. You never know what it’s going to do.

Happy Valentine's Day.
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A is for Apiary

2/7/2015

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I went and did it.
I started yet another blog challenge.
I know! I might be insane or I might just like driving people crazy with me.
In this challenge I asked folks to play for 26 weeks. Each week they are supposed to write a blog post using a different letter of the alphabet, starting with A and ending on Z. That’s 26 weeks of wonderfully alphabetic based blog posts.
So, this is my A post.

A is for Apiary

I was just saying to the husband the other day that I thought it would be neat to keep honeybees. I was, of course, just flapping my gums in passing because keeping honeybees is real work. Setting up the hives. Bringing in your colony. Maintaining the hives. Feeding the honeybees. (yes, you have to feed your honeybees!) Harvesting the honey.
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Honey is just bee spit. Think about that for a moment.
Mmmmm, honey …

I admire those who keep honeybees. I have a friend that keeps them so I have seen it done first hand. Well, second hand. I mostly hear her talk about her honeybees and look at photos of her hives, and of course eat her honey.
Mmmm, honey …

 I once made some candy for her honeybees. A fondant. It should’ve been called a fundant because we had hella fun making it. Get it? Fondant. Fundant? Get it? Hello? *taps mic* Is anyone home?

Okay, bad pun. *slaps own wrist*

Back to the honeybees.
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It's me! Feeding bees the candy I made!
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So when you keep honeybees you call the hive an apiary. Weird isn’t it. An apiary. Sounds like it should be full of apes. Though in truth a group of apes is called a shrewdness. A shrewdness.  Which sounds like a group of shrews. Funny enough, a group of shrews is called a colony. Which sounds like a bunch of honeybees.

Ain’t language strange?
Oh, here is something interesting about honeybees. They can recognize faces. Yup. Honeybees have the same facial recognition intelligence that humans use. They put all the little bits of faces together and stores that info for later use. Pretty cool, huh?

To make one pound of honey honeybees will have to visit two million flowers, fly over fifty five thousand miles, and will be made by about seven hundred and sixty eight honeybees. An average hive can make four hundred pounds of honey a year. That’s a lot of honey.

Mmmm, honey …
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Bees!
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A box of bees is called an apiary. Neato!
Sorry, I got distracted by honey again. Wow. Honeybees are pretty cool. They are the only insect that produces food that humans can eat. The honeybee will only travel about three miles from their hive. They are real home honeybees. Home honeybees. Like me. I have been known to travel no further than three feet from my laptop.

Honeybees. Honeybees. Honeybees.

The more I think about it, the more I wished I had the discipline to keep honeybees. But, like I said, honeybees are a lot of hard work. Like real work. I mean there is a real reward too but so much work. Work, work, work… hello girls!

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Work, work, work. Hello girls!
If you want to learn more about honeybees, here are just a few sites you can visit for just that information:

The American Beekeeping Federation http://www.abfnet.org/

Brushy Mountain Bee Farm  http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com/

Beginning Beekeeping http://www.beginningbeekeeping.com/


Oh wait, did I just make my A post about Bees?
I rather think I did. HA!

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