Featuring

The

Yard Yeti

Synchronized

Swim

Team...

Live!

On the Air

Broadcasting From

Tattletale Communications

It's the Yard Yeti Radio Show...

"Tick tock goes the clock...time won't stand still.

But we can...let's catch up. "( My signature opening line.)

It's Yard Yeti Time!

Cue the Noon Whistle!

Greetings friends and neighbors from across the globe. It's me, your favorite Yard Yeti, welcoming you from my studio upstairs above Ace Plumbing with my window on Main Street, where I can see the world from Coast-To-Coast and as far as the Flickering Flame can flicker.

I had to move my sound effects machine and my stack of soundtrack CD's to the floor beside me, as my formica tabletop is covered in fan mail.

It seems that my co-host, resident sound engineer and faithful sidekick, my pet parakeet Pepper, has developed quite a following. A little bird told me this was bound to happen, but frankly I am stunned.

Stunned at the requests.

Advice for the lovelorn.

Seriously?

How To Manuals?

Helpful Housekeeping Tips?

Medical Advice?

Okay. You asked for it. And looking at today's Hospital Report...maybe...just maybe...

So many knee aches, sore hips, busted shoulders, loss of range of motion, itches and ouches, searing shooting pains.

Formerly flexible folks suffering from inflexibilities. 

Oh, and dear me, glancing out the window for the Traffic Report, I see a few friends and neighbors, shuffling when they used to stride, hobbling a bit, needing a crutch or an arm to steady.

We, the Yetis, are needed.

We can help.

Doctor Pepper is in and will see you now!

Puffed up in his starched white coat, a stethoscope draped around his puny neck, clipboard in beak, Pepper is ready to take your temperature, to analyze your ills and to write you a prescription for whatever ails you. (No Pepper, nobody is getting naked while you check their vital signs.)

What you need...what Doctor Pepper suggests...is a ...

Membership in the Yard Yeti Synchronized Swim Team

Everyone in the pool!

While Pepper is busy practicing CPR on his favorite hand puppet, Miss Myna, I, your HOST, will carry on in his absence.

Perhaps some of you can recall my own personal medical history of frozen shoulders and busted knees. After many long months of poking and prodding, scanning and imaging and reading Highlights magazine once too often while waiting in a waiting room, I decided to take my life back.


Back to a place where I felt light as air.

The pool.

Where I met the Team.

The Yard Yeti Synchronized Swimming Team.

The Women Of the Pool.

It was a scary moment. Pulling on my swim cap, donning my goggles, and stepping slowly down the stairs into the warm water, hanging onto the railing for moral support and so very sure that at any second my knee would give way, my shoulder would freeze up and I would need to be rescued by a beefy lifeguard. Well, the beefy lifeguard idea was purely a fantasy, but I needed all the fairy tales I could muster just to take that first step. I walked from one end to the other, very slowly. Step after step, all the while, aware of the other swimmers in the lap pool across the way, gliding back and forth and back and forth with ease.

Until I felt a presence of someone beside me. Walking slowly. Step by step. And another. Some hanging onto the wall, some simply stepping up and down on the steps, up and down and up and down. I pushed off from the wall and took my first stroke.

Some things in life can't be explained.

Like riding a bike, once you swim, you never forget how. One smooth stroke after another until your fingers touch the wall. I pulled off my goggles and the first thing I saw was another underwater ballerina grinning back at me, with her fist pumped in the air.

You did it!

The Women Of the Pool taught me everything I know. 

They showed me how to put the pieces back together. The elements of the routine. Women healing from hip or knee replacements. Cancer survivors. Women with sore backs, artificial joints, arthritic knees and elbows. Not all seniors, either. Young Un's too.

We swam together. Back layouts. Ballet legs. Side fishtails. Sculling. Treading water. Day after day. A little more elaborate. Tadpoles evolving into mermaids. Mermaids with custom swimsuits. Nose plugs. Elaborate headpieces and painted toenails. Swimming together in a choreographed routine, with ballet legs and lifts and sweeping hand gestures. Flamingo kicks and eggbeater beats.

And Pepper, in his zebra striped Speedo, feathers swept into a mohawk, squawking into his megaphone ...and a 1...2...3...4...to the pounding beat of "Climb Every Mountain".

They call me the "Minnow" in the pool.

A little fish with a tiny wish. 

Which brings me to our guest this week. Elspeth Edelweiss, Yard Yeti Extraodinaire...the elusive reclusive star of the Sound Of Music. She, unlike all of those Hollywood types with their stunt doubles, she, Elspeth Edelweiss climbed the Alps.

Literally.

Elspeth is an endearing elfin of a gal. Eloquent and the epitome of quiet courage. She overcomes whatever crosses her path and continues to grow and flourish, even when the air is thin, the path is rocky and the faint of heart fall back. A tiny bit eccentric and often elusive, Elspeth finds her way to the top. Seeks the higher ground and when she arrives, echoes into the night an enchanting melody for others to follow.

Until they find their dream. 

Meanwhile, after a long day at the pool, Pepper and I are lounging in our pajamas on a floral chaise lounge in the corner of the studio, near the open windows. I am wearing my Nemo fuzzy fish slippers while Pepper reclines in his monogrammed bathrobe and leather Birkenstocks. Pepper is trying out a skin soothing facial mask from one of our new sponsors, Compost Cosmetics, a true innovator in the beauty industry. Waste not want not, why not? The mask is made from ground corn husks, birch tree bark, lawn clippings. dried geranium petals and assorted garden detritus slowly aged in a compost heap with a few taco shells and salsa for a touch of spice. Twenty minutes on, a quick rinse and your face is refreshingly recycled.

Please, listeners, remember it is always important to read the fine print, to follow directions exactly, to be precise and to proceed with caution. If I had, I would have read the disclaimer warning in Big Bold Letters on the back of the jar...Not For Use On Broken Skin... OR...

SKIN COVERED WITH FEATHERS 

Another show comes to a close as I lean in and whisper my trademarked Yard Yeti Sign Off...

...Your secrets are safe with me, except the ones I posted on the Internet...

You can find me on your dial at GVWM...

...Garden Variety Wisdom Media, Inc...with the Yellow Wellies Logo...

...and the threepots on the windowsill...

...is there a Doctor in the House?

*archived Yard Yeti Radio Broadcasts are here