Do you watch AMC’s The Walking Dead? I do and adore it, along with my husband, siblings, and a lot of my friends. Great show! But that’s not what I want to blog about. The topic I want to discuss is the little six or seven inch action figures that AMC is marketing. I gave the Daryl Dixon figure to my girlfriend for Christmas a couple years ago because we both like Norman Reedus. It cost around sixteen dollars. I later found two more, one each for my husband and myself, and we started collecting the entire set
Our set is incomplete now, even with the extras we bought, because we’re selling those suckers off! Have you looked at prices for them on Ebay? Daryl Dixon goes for up to Three Hundred Dollars! We just sold one for two hundred and sixty. The other main characters sell for up to two hundred and the zombies for up to one hundred. If we sell off the entire first series we’re looking at a profit of around a thousand dollars.
So my question is: Are people insane?
My kids keep freaking me out. They read things on the internet and then tell me about them. An example – “Mom, did you know that in The Lion King, when Simba became king, they had to eat the hyenas?” Gross, right? This is something I never considered, never wanted to consider, but unfortunately sounded true.
I had an interesting run-in while grocery shopping the other day. I was walking by one of those sample give-away booth setups and saw that the featured product was Jergen’s lotion. My hands were dry, so I stopped and was hijacked into a long uncomfortable conversation with the woman running the thing. I don’t know if she was manic or bipolar or just very, very lonely, but I couldn’t break away without being rude. Thankfully, I stayed to listen because she gave me some great skin care advice. 
I’m a hard-headed realist who tends to strongly doubt the supernatural. Psychic mediums, ghosts, alien abductions, are all beyond belief. But…there have been occasions that have caused cracks in my idea of reality. In the past I’ve had an extremely scary seance with a Ouija Board that still scares the pants off me when I think about it. I had a puppy that was throwing herself at the front door in the middle of the night trying to get out, and when I opened the door she slipped past me and chased a thing off my front porch that was thigh height and made a noise like nothing I’ve ever heard – and it ran on two legs. A long time passed and then I was walking that same dog in the early morning hours when a silent craft flew over, just a few stories above my head, which I later saw on TV as a child’s drawing of an alien ship in another country. 
A charter school recently saved my sanity. I have a brilliant daughter who experiences anxiety when she attends regular public high school. Something about the huge crowds of children, or the chaos during class changes, pushes her panic button. Because of this problem we spent the better part of the school year dealing with truancy, constant illnesses, falling grades, therapy, and medication. I finally withdrew her from public school and enrolled her in a local charter school. What a relief. 
A previous post was about how difficult it has been adding a spoiled, anxious, African Grey parrot to our household. He’s tricky, he’s vicious, he’s latched onto me like a deranged stalker, and yet – he’s the best present my husband has given me in years. Although our introduction to parrot parenting has been problematic, I would recommend African Grey ownership to anyone who enjoys having toddlers around, but doesn’t want to deal with them growing up and needing college tuition. If you enjoy the whimsy of an insane conversation at midnight, if you like to laugh at animal antics, or if you want a pet companion that can talk back to you, an African Grey will fit the bill. 
Thrift stores are the land of magical things. On any given day you can luck into such finds as an antique leather pouf from Turkey, sporting fringe and little bells and embroidered all over with camels, or vintage blue and white mixing bowls, or collectible porcelain. I even found a grotesque wallet once, made from the entire skin of a large bullfrog with a zipper in it’s stomach.
A few months ago my husband gave me the wonderful and terrible gift of a twelve year old African Grey parrot. It belonged to a client that advised my tender-hearted honey that with a new baby in their house, the bird would have to be put down. When hubby approached me about adopting the bird, at first I was adamant – No birds in the house. No way. Never. They’re filthy. But he appealed to my pet-loving side and I finally, reluctantly, agreed to yet another animal in the house as long as it didn’t become my responsibility. It was not going to be my bird!
Sandy’s recent blog about hot guys got me thinking. Does anyone else like the truly bad bad guys that I enjoy watching? I’ve long amused and confused my friends and family with my preferences, and it would tickle to me to find someone who agrees with me.
