tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66655536747426610912024-03-13T07:34:15.429-07:00Land of shimpLand of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-49394293153979295092011-03-23T07:37:00.000-07:002011-03-23T08:41:27.574-07:00Chicken Bones At Any MomentI glanced to my left and noticed a diagram depicting an upside-down fetus in an ear. Let the Witchdoctoring commence, I thought. This illustration was not exactly allaying any fears I might have had about volunteering to be treated as a pin cushion. My acupuncturist's name, I noted, was White Eagle. Nicknames seemed out of the question on that one. He is, by the way, genuinely Native American/First Nation so at least I wasn't confronted by the alarming prospect of some dude from Cincinnati struggling with a protracted issue of a contrived persona. <br /><br />So where have I been? Being perforated, among other things, how are you all? <br /><br />My son's long saga with his funky moles continues as more are removed and the people doing the biopsies, aware that they are examining tissue from something of a medical oddity, are being extra cautious. A twenty-year-old with one instance of malignant melanoma caught before it could spread is the proverbial hen's tooth in the medical world. So as patches of skin surrounding the three traitorous moles are removed, they are examined with a thoroughness that is both awesome and terrifying. One came back with "severely atypical" cells and was sent to yet another university for study. <br /><br />This plunged two universities' medical schools into a pitched debate, the University of Colorado and the University of Southern California's had themselves a bit of a dogfight over what needed to be done. CU decided that enough skin had been removed, USC begged to differ and my son's doctor threw the decision into the lap of my twenty-year-old son, claiming it was up to him to decide. <br /><br />This is the same kid who frequently has trouble figuring out how to make the microwave achieve the setting he desires. Unsurprisingly, I made the call on that and since he now goes in for four skin checks a year, I decided to err on the side of "Watch that area." The patch in question is between his shoulder blades and due to repeated movements, is a bit hairy to take more away from anyway. I actually do trust the doctor in question and if there was any question in his mind that it needed to be removed, he have said so. Saying that it was up to Flint was the same as saying he thought USC had eaten their paranoia flakes that morning. <br /><br />Besides, he still has one on his head to go, on the top of his head, actually. I try to spend as little time thinking about that one as I can, as it hangs out rather too close to his brain for me to contemplate it all that comfortably. Its puncture biopsy also indicated that it is severely atypical. <br /><br />Severely Atypical. Perhaps a good band name, certainly a decent enough explanation for some of his behaviors but not a thing I like to dwell on too much. Because my son is a Type 1 diabetic, he heals slowly and so we take these choppings in stages. We have that luxury as severely atypical means only that it was contemplating being something bad, but had yet to make up its cellular mind. <br /><br />Let's hear it for bad cells that dither long enough to be discovered before enacting any nefarious plans. So good fortune, but a goodly dose of stress. This is probably a good description of nearly all of our lives, isn't it? At least I keep good company in all of you. <br /><br />However, I managed to aggravate most of my old injuries by doing moronic things like clambering up and down ladders, while working out too hard in a bid for endorphins. Insomnia came to visit and then moved the heck in. The malady was one we can all relate to at times in our lives: Generalized Yuck. Migraines, my old foe, were becoming a daily occurrence and as is my way, I finally got ticked off enough by a body in rebellion to do something about it. <br /><br />Die, stress, die! I declared. I've seen too many people fall to unintentional dependency when it comes to pain pills to trust the suckers, so alternative methods it was. <br /><br />That's how I ended up staring at the diagram and feeling as if it was, perhaps, full of dung or at the very least, misinformation. That was a given, really. I clean my ears regularly and no fetuses lurk there. I sincerely hope, that is, because I shudder to contemplate the delivery process if I'm currently cooking one up. <br /><br />After talking to White Eagle, I did ask, "So, are you gonna start rolling chicken bones in a moment?" "Yes, with smoke signals too. Would you prefer that I spit rum or vodka in your face?" "Rum, you can never be sure what vodka's been derived from, so you have to be careful." <br /><br />A fellow smartass, as you can see. We were going to get along splendidly and have. <br /><br />By the way, it's helped tremendously. So has the acupressure I had performed all over my darned body to help heal my Qi. This literally left me bruised from head to foot, with small fingertip bruises. I looked a bit like a leopard. <br /><br />I also promised my 6'4" husband I would do my best not to croak under mysterious circumstances until such time as they healed, as he'd likely be a main (and large) suspect, considering that I had a bunch of bruises on my neck and at the base of my skull. They've since turned a very attractive sulfur yellow. <br /><br />Boy, do I feel pretty. You likely won't be seeing this look on the runways of Paris anytime soon. It's made me look like cream cheese that has just gone over. Woo and hoo. <br /><br />I've always had a bad habit of going to ground, choosing to not really talk much about things going wrong. I retreat into escapism like TV or films. It's a hold over from an iffy sort of childhood, where when things went wrong, I'd simply hide with a book and my dog. <br /><br />Cricket from<a href="http://cricketandporcupine.blogspot.com/"> Cricket and Porcupine</a> is a friend of mine and emailed me, hoping all was well and it was only as I was attempting to hide behind him, saying (basically) "Hey, could you maybe mention that I'm not dead, just hiding for a variety of reasons?" that I realized I'd be giving White Feather a reason to name mw Stands While Clucking. <br /><br />"You have to learn how to redirect your energy, shut your mind down. Relieve the stress," White Feather told me. <br /><br />"Dude, if I could do that on my own, what are the chances I'd have a needle sticking out of my forehead?" <br /><br />His prognosis? "I think you might be Alien." <br /><br />Told you he was a smartass. At least, I think he was being a smartass. I hope. <br /><br />I try to show up around these parts when I'm up to being helpful or funny. Be well, good people of the internet! <br /><br />May the chicken bones have no need to be with you. <br /><br />I searched the internet for that ear diagram, but I only found this: <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Wo4v5rkKYcA/TYoSgFhppXI/AAAAAAAAAQc/64oj8AQ7wi4/s1600/2009182250192211.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 303px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Wo4v5rkKYcA/TYoSgFhppXI/AAAAAAAAAQc/64oj8AQ7wi4/s320/2009182250192211.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587298630154954098" /></a><br /><br />Anyone want a Qtip?Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com101tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-33275255450346435242011-02-07T09:34:00.000-08:002011-02-07T11:05:48.490-08:00In the Basement with Sisyphus<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TVA5ZZOQF4I/AAAAAAAAAQU/nADETWDgs1I/s1600/sisyphus.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 241px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TVA5ZZOQF4I/AAAAAAAAAQU/nADETWDgs1I/s320/sisyphus.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571015847487477634" /></a><br />One man versus a rock and a hill for eternity. It never pays to be a figure in Greek or Roman mythology, does it? <br /><br />I think most of us can relate to Sisyphus, at least a bit. That feeling of futility that can overcome all of us in our jobs, lives, relationships. Housework is Sisyphean. You're not even done with the stuff before it is busy undoing itself. As you finish flourishing a Swiffer around you, somewhere a dust mote laughs maniacally and settles happily in your wake, it's the way of things. <br /><br />Never-ending stacks of paperwork, quarterly reports, laundry baskets that never seem to be emptied before they are full again, most of us have that sort of things in our lives. There are figures in mythology I have very little in common with and that's something for which I'm tremendously grateful, as most of those folks seemed to be hosed but I can relate to Sisyphus's punishment if not any of his crimes. Still, it's not often and it's not without some form of relief. <br /><br />Except my basement, that is. As far as I know, that is the true Underworld and for the rest of time I'm going to be painting that sucker. Not just because it's a large area, either. At any moment I half expect Hades himself to pop out of the storage area, flip me the bird and throw a pomegranate at my head just for chuckles. <br /><br />When we first moved in here I bored the liver out of friends, family and readers here talking about painting, painting and when I had exhausted that subject? I talked about more painting. When you buy a large house inhabited for four prior years by a family with two teenage boys and a general aversion to all home maintenance, you'll likely end up painting a lot. Add in the apparent super-smoker who owned the joint before that and it becomes even more of a necessity. <br /><br />The basement yawned beneath us, unpainted but fully finished, inhabited by my son for the first year and a half. However, he had an Icarus moment in the basement, or perhaps it is better described as a Prometheus moment, or even more bluntly: he nearly burned us to crisps in our beds one night causing me to release the Kraken within and boot his butt to one of the upstairs bedrooms. He didn't manage to set off <a href="http://landofshimp.blogspot.com/2009/12/panic-if-you-see-krampus.html"> the most hated of alarms</a> at least, so at least the gods were smiling on me that night. Or smirking in my general direction, or something. <br /><br />So he moved upstairs and we ventured downstairs and began to paint. And paint. When we were done with that we cursed a bunch and <i>then</i> we painted some more. The Super-Smokers I referenced before, who owned this house for five years and smoked in every square inch of its four thousand and some square feet, had the basement refinished, but for whatever reason they never had it painted. The only thing adorning the walls and baseboards down there is the drywall primer. I had hope it was just cream colored paint rendered dingy from the long ago dedicated Puffer, but no, it's primer. <br /><br />This is only important because drywall primer is porous stuff. If it isn't rather promptly painted, it becomes more so. <br /><br />If you listen closely on a still night, you might actually hear our gigantic basement taking another big slurp of paint. It drank the first two coats on both the walls and the ceiling almost as quickly as I could put them on the walls. They disappeared, letting the yellowed primer bleed back through. <br /><br />On the third coat it looked like I was going to reach the summit with my rock, but alas it was not to be. By the time I got the third coat on I discovered something entirely horrifying. When I got a gander at the actual color, when it wasn't being sponged up by the drywall, I didn't actually like it. I'm sure there's a mythological figure that would cover that one too but instead of trying to think up one, I basically stuck a wide straw into a bottle of rum and toasted the death of my sanity with my husband. Cheers, Bacchus! <br /><br />Luckily, the fourth coat is a good color. Of course, I'm going to need to do two coats of that color and then there are the stripes we have planned for one area of the echoing space. <br /><br />So if you need me, I'll be in the basement with Sisyphus and my husband, who is far too nice a man to be featured in mythology, only he did do a bit of an Achilles impression just yesterday. Rob's tall enough to paint the ceiling easily without a ladder, but he'd hopped atop a stepladder to do some detail work at the top of a wall. Behind him lurked a pool table underneath sheets of plastic and that was easy enough to keep in mind. What he forgot about was the covered free weights. <br /><br />I heard a horrible clang and turned to look at my husband, who had turned a dreadful tomato red. <br /><br />"Ow," he said rather briefly, but he's normally not the color of a fruit often mistaken for a vegetable. <br /><br />"What did you do?" I asked with concern. <br /><br />"Nothing normal," he gritted out and I let the matter drop. <br /><br />It isn't that I was uninterested, or unconcerned but his answer indicated that he'd done something embarrassing in addition to being painful. You know what doesn't help in those instances? Someone grilling you while you're still actively in pain. <br /><br />However, later Rob brought it up again. Now, as it happens, my husband is a runner. He runs six out of seven mornings. He's also very stubborn and runs despite the fact that he has persistent pain in his right heel. It hurts him almost all the time and since he is cussed (and large) he won't do anything as rash as see a medical professional, no, he wants to see if the pain will magically evaporate one day. <br /><br />So, presumably a good fairy is lurking around in our basement along with Sisyphus and his eternal fate. What happened was that Rob hopped down backwards from the stepladder and jammed his heel on two, stacked concealed twenty-five pound weight disks. It hurt so much he turned dead white after he finished being various shades of scarlet. Then a strange thing happened; it stopped hurting entirely for the first time in over six months. <br /><br />In fact, it stopped hurting altogether and still doesn't hurt. Even after running this morning. <br /><br />Since we've been joking about the mythological figures in our basement, we tried to figure out which myth might cover that one. <br /><br />Anyone know of a myth about the Ironically Lucky Duck? No? The Fortunately Clumsy Warrior? No? The No Pain, No Gain Painter? Still no? <br /><br />Here I thought there was a myth for all occasions. I'd insert the completely obvious and over-used pun you're all expecting now, but I've got a date with a rock I have to get to. <br /><br />Take care and have fun.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-86931170465353075072011-01-23T13:12:00.000-08:002011-01-23T14:14:40.994-08:00May You Live In Interesting TimesEvery now and then life becomes a little too interesting. Fascinating, really, and perhaps not in the ways one would hope. "May you live in interesting times" is alleged to be, depending on the source, both a blessing and a curse. It's supposed to be of Chinese origin but then again, anyone other than me remember that, "In China it is considered a compliment to the cook if you burp after eating!" legend? <br /><br />Ah well, at least it was an <i>interesting</i> claim, even if I can't help but envision tourists, pleased as punch and belching for the gold, smiling broadly at their completely horrified Chinese hosts. I guess I should be thankful that the same prankster didn't try to pull something like, "And in Albania the only courteous thing is to chew with your mouth open while eating solely with your feet!" "In Russia it is the custom to fling Bortsch at passing strangers!" "In India unless you hang your host out the window by his or her heels you have committed a grievous sin against etiquette!" <br /><br />I'll bet he or she tried, but the burping was the only thing that caught on. Anyway, yes, while interesting as a claim, it wasn't exactly a good thing. <br /><br />However, while you still have a pulse you stand a chance at regaining some comforting boredom. Less intrigue, more sameness. Bring on the rut, I say! <br /><br />I'm going into that because as all parents know all too well, occasionally your kids will become so interesting that contemplating joining the circus, the French Foreign Legion, or one of those strange cults that focuses insane amounts of energy on constructing temples from dryer lint seems the only reasonable option. My son has been posing some <i>interesting</i> problems of late and that's where I've been. Being riveted, so to speak. <br /><br />I apologize for my long absence from the blogosphere and for being as vague as I can be without actually disappearing from view altogether. Sometimes you want to talk about problems, sometimes you want to get busy solving them. At still others you want to kick the stuffing out of a problem, take its lunch money and insult its mother to boot. I leave it to you to figure out what stage I'm in with my son. <br /><br />I did want to thank blogger and all the people who dropped by after being named a blog of note. I'm truly honored, particularly since I've neglected the bejeebers out of this blog while being otherwise entranced by ye olde life problems. I've chosen not to tell anyone other than a few close friends the specifics and I'm doing that not to be mysterious but rather to spare you, and them, the necessity of having to join me in the "Oh what the hell, really?" chorus. <br /><br />We all sing it sometimes though, don't we? Here's hoping all of your lives are free from that particular rendition at the moment. <br /><br />Hey, to up the interest of the situation? Smack dab in the middle of the WTH Chorus my son had a mole removed and it came back as Malignant Melanoma. Yes, he's still twenty. He didn't invent a time machine and come back to visit me well into his seventies. Don't skip your skin checks, folks. No kidding, sunblock is your friend. For even more interest, it was caught as a surface grouping of cells that hadn't spread yet. For a moment or two there the <i> Hallelujah Chorus</i> easily drowned out the <i>What the Hell</i> singers. <br /><br />There have been some funny things in life, of course. It wouldn't be the holidays without some absurdity. In fact, it wouldn't be life. <br /><br />So for everyone who has followed the journey of Puddles, the wonder mutt I have something for you: we now know what Puddles is. You see, one of my online friends informed me that there is such a thing as a DNA test for dogs. Although Rob has fun answering, "North American Good Dog" in response to "What breed is she?" I couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy a test as soon as I knew they existed. A mystery solved for sixty bucks? Less than your average interactive Murder Mystery Theater evening, right? Besides, I shudder to think how badly I'd have to hurt Rob to get him to go to one of those things. I'd likely need to be drunker than a medieval laird too, so there's that. <br /><br />We awaited the results anxiously. Friends also asked, "Any word?" after being told that, indeed, there would be an answer. A drum-roll would be in order, but so would some warming up of the singing pipes because that chorus I mentioned? Here it comes: <br /><br />My dog is a Labrador Retriever, English Setter, and American Eskimo Dog. No, I'm not currently drunk, by the way. For real, that's what the results said. My thirty pound, Fraggle-impersonating, terrier-masquerading dog is a mix of things I never would have guessed. I was sorely tempted to mail a picture to the lab so that the technicians could join in the chorus. <br /><br />For those of you not in the know, this is my dog: <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TTyjoaftbJI/AAAAAAAAAQA/cXVBpjnz2qs/s1600/DSC00367.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TTyjoaftbJI/AAAAAAAAAQA/cXVBpjnz2qs/s320/DSC00367.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565503154225507474" /></a><br /><br />I even know what percentages: Labrador is the most at a level 2, constituting 37-76% of her DNA. English Setter is somewhere in the realm of 26%- 36% and American Eskimo Dog is less than ten percent. <br /><br />Two bird dogs and a yapping cotton ball. What is even more astounding? We read the breed attributes and Puddles has the personality (and tail) of an English Setter. <br /><br />You never can guess the outcome sometimes, can you? I thought she was part Terrier of some description and part Sneaky Neighbor Dog. But it all lines up and makes sense. <br /><br />Thank again to Blogger, to the people who stopped by here and to Hilary, who was actually the person who emailed me in order to say I needed to stop my comforting, escapist routines, get my butt back over to my blog and take note. Only because it was Hilary, she was far kinder and diplomatic than that. <br /><br />I've always felt like if you are supposed to be doing something, the universe will let you know, somehow, some way. I have no idea why Blogger chose a blog that had been inactive for nearly two months but I was and am, really touched. <br /><br />I have some absurd stories saved up. Time to get back to remembering that sometimes the outcome of an interesting situation can both a surprise and delight you, after all. For now, I leave you with the cutest image I currently have in my possession: <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TTykaHBJz8I/AAAAAAAAAQI/AlN_9xZYe68/s1600/DSC00374.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TTykaHBJz8I/AAAAAAAAAQI/AlN_9xZYe68/s320/DSC00374.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565504007990529986" /></a>Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com99tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-13816655662682927382010-11-09T06:32:00.000-08:002010-11-09T08:07:01.450-08:00The Hallway of the Mind<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TNlxlfcw2PI/AAAAAAAAAP0/JyruhAj2Itg/s1600/DP_Dennis-hallway_s3x4_lg.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TNlxlfcw2PI/AAAAAAAAAP0/JyruhAj2Itg/s320/DP_Dennis-hallway_s3x4_lg.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537582105739974898" /></a><br />In the corridors of my brain a Medieval Knight dwells, sword at the ready, armor blessedly silent as he makes his rounds. <br /><br />Startle me and you might meet him, although what you'll see is a mid-sized, pale-faced brunette looking entirely wigged out, in my head the warrior peers through his visor, weapon held high. In the fight or flight instinct we all have, some long ago ancestor evidently is responsible for a genetic predisposition inside of me that runs towards conking any threat on the head. Luckily the ensuing generations have honed the art of not letting that blood-thirsty guardian loose on anyone. <br /><br />If you've ever been inside a Walgreens Drug Store, you know the vibe of the place, if you haven't: Even a brand new Walgreens seems vaguely dingy. The lighting inside was designed by people who secretly hate all of humanity, and want us all to look like we perished sometime earlier in the day and are now the Walking Dead. They aren't bad places, they're useful, packed shelves that almost always manage to look rickety enough to cause concern are filled with the foot creams and antihistamines most of us need from time-to-time. <br /><br />Most of us have prowled through these stores, or ones like them, as we drop off a prescription for an illness, and in those times we end up waiting for it to be filled. That's how we end up perusing the shelves, occasionally making some daft purchase like a Snowman that sings in a high, piercing electronic voice while swaying back and forth on battery operated hips, and playing the ukulele. Generally we were waiting for a prescription for antibiotics to be filled, and as we waited, our fevered brains whispered, "You should totally buy that." <br /><br />Me, I tend to huff the potpourri, sachets, and scented candles while there. They're awful. Seriously, beyond description levels-of-bad but it does make me feel as if I have discerning taste each and ever time as I grimace at the chemical-laden scent while replacing the product on the shelf. It is an ironic form of fun for me. It probably hails from the ancestor who first said to another of my ancestors, "Does this milk smell sour to you?" <br /><br />I was taking a whiff of an alleged cranberry candle, contained in a glass jar and wondering if the cranberries had been grown in a radioactive bog when a piercing, rattling sound blasted out seemingly seven inches from my right ear. <br /><br />"<i>Zoop!</i>" <br /><br />"Zounds, interloper!" Yelled the Knight-in-my-head, "Declare your purpose, fiend!" <br /><br />Luckily for the person making the sound the Knight never got to say anything in the real world, as he was then occupied by pounding the swearing sailor he hangs out with in there into silence. I jumped six inches, the candle flew briefly away from my hands and blessedly back into them unharmed as I turned, wild-eyed and accusing. <br /><br />"Guh!" the sailor managed to blurt before the Knight threw himself bodily atop the seafarer. <br /><br />"Sorry," A rather plain-looking woman a polite five feet from me said, "I have Tourette's. It's a syndrome, a disorder." <br /><br />"Oh! Okay," I replaced the cranberry-chemical-bomb. I consciously stood still, making sure not to retreat, or turn away. A little bit of an effort as the panic system within my head powered down, "I'm familiar with it. Sorry." <br /><br />"It's okay. It's a <i>syndrome</i>, a disorder," the woman said again, "I can't control it." <br /><br />"I've heard of it," I said again. <br /><br />I continued to stand in the household goods aisle, understanding that this woman encountered too many people that scurried away in her life. <br /><br />"I take medication," she said, "it helps a little bit." <br /><br />And then she made the sound again at the end of the sentence. Loud, startling but this time I was prepared and my feet remained on the ground, my expression hopefully unchanged. <br /><br />I never found out her name. I stood with her for five minutes, helping her to find something by explaining how to read the labels on the shelves to find out where something should be. I honestly don't recall what it was but as I worked in a drugstore when I was a teenager, one of the pieces of information in a file in my brain is about labeling systems. There came a point in the conversation when I realized this woman was eager to be having it. That for her, this thing we all take for granted, this exchange among strangers, was something of a treat. <br /><br />She explained to me what Tourette's was, and I listened, although I was already familiar with the disorder. Not that I knew anyone with it, but I had encountered people with it before. I knew it was an inherited disorder. <br /><br />All of my ancestors, they gave me things, passed them down. Most of them are good. I'm an acceptable size and shape, intelligent enough to feel up to most of life's challenges. There was a crazy person or two in the mix, a recluse here or there. At least one murderer, evidently. Soldiers, sailors, teachers and more. A predisposition towards being articulate lurks within me too, and it comes in handy. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how fate and genetics were primarily good to me. <br /><br />Maybe our minds are like houses, full of hallways with doors leading into rooms. For the most part we mill around in the foyer, thinking in our regular thought patterns. Encountering the odd Knight within. <br /><br />But every now and then we'll meet someone who opens a door within that hallway and introduces us to a room we didn't know existed in our minds. A new thought, a fresh concept. A room that was always there, but we never looked in before. Our challenges often make us throw the doors open on all needed rooms, as we search for tools within, and most of us find them. <br /><br />Forget whether or not I am comfortable talking to strangers, as it is likely clear by now that I am, what about the fact that I can with ease? A thing I take for granted, everyday as my right, and my own. <br /><br />Every now and then I meet someone that makes me peer into a room and realize I don't know much about limitations, not in any real sense. The rooms that contain my unquestioned good fortune are the ones I need to look in more. <br /><br />Eventually the pharmacist called my name over the loudspeaker, mangling the pronunciation, a thing I'm used to. A small, tiny thing about a name I otherwise like. <br /><br />"Well, that's me," I nodded and smiled. I wish I could describe the look on that woman's face well, but I can't. She was so happy having an easy conversation. For her it was a rare treat, so she looked both happy and a little sad. <br /><br />I so seldom think of true isolation. I'm a self-entertaining unit, I don't mind being alone, I rather like it often enough. <br /><br />"I'm sorry I frightened you," she said. <br /><br />"That's okay, no big deal," and I wished her a good day as I went on my way. <br /><br />I collected the prescription and left, thinking of that room in my head I so seldom enter, the one called loneliness. <br /><br />Today I thought of that woman from an encounter two years ago. We had been talking here about being an introvert, while having to pretend to be an extrovert. A trait many of us share, it seems. Something occurred to me, and I ran a search entitled: <br /><br /><i>Tourett'es Syndrome Forum</i> that returned 114,000 hits. Over one hundred thousand places, and option where acceptance, understanding, peers and friends await. Clubs, gatherings, in real-life too. Options, and rooms with possibilities. <br /><br />The rooms in our heads are wide and varied. Some are lovely, some rather grim. Some we haven't opened for years and we find them again, while wandering down our mental hallways. <br /><br />That was a delightful, hopeful room you all sent me to. Thank you.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com80tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-26589503882313603662010-11-05T07:12:00.000-07:002010-11-05T09:07:39.848-07:00Stands Knee-High to Little<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TNQqi5mcngI/AAAAAAAAAPs/XObe5C8QonU/s1600/cartoon_boxing_gloves_button-p145373526738893024t5sj_400.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TNQqi5mcngI/AAAAAAAAAPs/XObe5C8QonU/s320/cartoon_boxing_gloves_button-p145373526738893024t5sj_400.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5536096621011181058" /></a><br />The first time I met Anna* I wouldn't have been surprised to look behind me and find I was being trailed by a blue ox. Although my husband is nearly a foot taller than I am, I'm not actually short, I'm of average height. Still, I'm not used to feeling enormous next to anyone. Anna's height definitely has her shopping in the petite section, but more than that, she has a tiny frame. This doesn't change the fact that she could likely kick my butt, and yours too. Probably at the same time without breaking a sweat. <br /><br />"Hello, I'm Anna, you know my dog," She began. An auspicious start, I thought. I knew I was bound to like anyone who had already figured out that she was easily identified by dog association. She was right, I do know Mo, a.k.a. The Running Dog. I first met him following a snowstorm, as I shoveled the driveway. Nose streaming (me, not the dog), tail waving frantically (the dog, not me), I heard the familiar cry of <i>"Noooooooooo!"</i> as Anna's teenage daughter arrived seconds after Mo did. Mo is a gregarious creature. A fast, gregarious creature. He would eventually grow to be a gigantic size, but that first day I could have easily shoveled him aside. Instead I wiped my nose and played with the puppy. I have priorities, after all. <br /><br />The day I noticed that Anna could be packed into a teacup for transport, she invited me to a barbecue she was hosting as a neighborhood get-together. Those sort of things are common around here, generally hosted by real estate agents, or people trying to sell candles, jewelry or political candidates. Networking in the suburbs, you get used to it. <br /><br />"What's the occasion?" It's not that I'm against sharing a cup of coffee with folks just trying to build a client base, but I do like to know if I'm walking into one of those situations. Mainly, I confess, so that I know how much time to schedule before I can make a polite retreat. Coffee with the real estate agent across the street will take a quick twenty minutes. A political get-together means that I'm chronically ill with some Victorianesque malady for which there is no cure. I'm not above claiming the vapors, allergies, a decline of an overall nature.<br /><br />Truthfully I just state that I'm unaffiliated but a liberal and take a pass. However, I <i>always</i> have a wicked urge to claim that I'm unable to attend due to a lack of smelling salts. <br /><br />"Just trying to get to know everyone," Anna said with a smile. <br /><br />I was a bit afraid that I was signing up for a literal Come-To-Jesus meeting, but I readily agreed. Then I had to convince Rob not to develop fictional rickets, scurvy, or consumption and get him to go. He agreed warily. He likes Mo too, after all. <br /><br />No one was trying to save my immortal soul. Or get me to vote for anyone, sell me jewelry I'll never wear or candles with names like <i>Harvest Fiesta</i>, <i>Spa Melody</i> or <i>Christmas Cookie</i>. It turned out to be a get-together of people from around the town, and they all knew Anna from somewhere different. I was the only person from the neighborhood. Introduction after introduction marched by. <br /><br />"I'm Steve, my wife and I play tennis with Anna," the people I played a game of pool with informed me. <br /><br />"I'm Heather, Anna and I take Pilates together," said another. <br /><br />And then something happened that made me understand what was going on, why I was encountering people from exercise classes, church, clubs and hobby groups: <br /><br />"I'm Sandy, I know Anna from our divorced women group," A kind-eyed woman told me, "How do you know her?" <br /><br />To each and all I answered truthfully, "She rang my doorbell and I already knew her dog." <br /><br />She wasn't trying to sell anyone anything. Anna was just rebuilding as she'd done for years when her ex-husband's job took them around the country and the world. Nigerian art decorated one wall in her home, her teenage daughters talked about the schools they'd attended in Africa, and elsewhere. Then not long after she landed here Anna found out that her husband was behaving like a middle-aged cliche and all the nubile blonds that entails. At the age of 47 she showed him the door, found a job, and completely new to Colorado, set about building a new life for herself. <br /><br />I'm not sure what really constitutes bravery. There's the kind of courage that it is easy to recognize, and appreciate. People who tackle terrorists aboard planes spring easily to mind. Soldiers who draw enemy fire trying to give their compatriots a chance at survival during heavy engagements. We know that kind of courage but there are all kinds. <br /><br />Rob and I manned the grill at that first barbecue and talked to some of the most diverse people assembled all because they met a tiny woman who runs, bikes, plays tennis and invites people she meets to her home regularly. It turned into a rather regular occurrence. <br /><br />Later today I'll be putting together some appetizers, and venturing across the street again to the home of a woman who told me something that stunned me: <br /><br />"I'm shy," Anna admitted, and I nearly fell sideways into my bookcase as we stood in my home office. I'm being literal, thanks to reconstruction on an old injury, my balance isn't the greatest but it isn't just a bunch of pins and plates that had me tottering. I was genuinely astonished. <br /><br />All of my life I've been an introvert that can do a stunning impression of an extrovert. It never occurred to me that fittest, tiniest, most outgoing specimen in the neighborhood was doing the same thing. <br /><br />After that admission yesterday, I remembered something. That first time that I opened the door to Anna I'd noticed a small detail. As you approach my front door from the inside, there is a side window that allows whoever is on the other side to be visible from both sides. I'd spotted Anna, and remembered her from one of the times she'd come to fetch Mo. I smiled as I approached, and raised a hand in greeting. The straight-faced woman on the other side broke into a smile too, which is not unusual. <br /><br />But I remember fleetingly thinking that she looked relieved. At the time I'd put it down to being preoccupied. Yesterday I learned that, in truth, she was doing something that was difficult for her, but doing it nonetheless. <br /><br />When I told Rob that Anna was having a get-together, he sounded a little regretful that he wouldn't be able to attend. <br /><br />"It's good of you to go," he said. "I know parties aren't your favorite thing." <br /><br />It's true, I prefer to get together with friends one-on-one but I liked Anna from the first, with her dog as a calling-card, ready-to-return-a-smile personality. <br /><br />"Do you feel sorry for her?" Rob asked, knowing that, generally speaking I only attend parties because I feel like I should. <br /><br />I thought back for a moment, to all the people who had introduced themselves to me. How the woman that knew Anna through Pilates had suffered a rather dreadful injury in a fall. She was a little plump, but told me of how much weight she had lost and felt confident she could lose more. <br /><br />"Anna was there encouraging me every step of the way," she said proudly. I found it easy to believe. This from a woman who is every bit as fit as an Olympic athlete. Truly, Colorado wins the leanest state slot every time those things are estimated. We have an unusually active population and Anna is still considered unusually active here. <br /><br />"No," I answered Rob, "I don't feel sorry for her. I like her. I'm not sure I have all that much in common with her, but I like her." <br /><br />It's her ex-husband who has my pity. Upon realizing that he had made a dreadful mistake, he had promised the Earth and Sky if only he could be forgiven. Offers Anna turned down even though she was in a state where she knew no one, she preferred to go it alone. <br /><br />Every now and then in life, you meet someone who is remarkable in the quietest of ways. Who has the kind of courage it is easy to admire if only we take a couple of moments to recognize it. <br /><br />Anna is, at most, a size zero. She stands maybe 5'1" after a deep inhale, yet she's awfully easy to look up to. <br /><br />So I feel a bit sorry for her husband that he realized that too late.<br /><br /><i>* Not her actual name, but all else is true</i>Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-91007746378623139032010-10-21T07:02:00.001-07:002010-10-21T08:11:31.036-07:00Weapons Grade Cute<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TMBWa16l7gI/AAAAAAAAAPE/b3W49XzyR38/s1600/DSC00352.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TMBWa16l7gI/AAAAAAAAAPE/b3W49XzyR38/s320/DSC00352.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5530515361560391170" /></a><br />We're suckers for cuteness in this house, always have been, always will be. Heck, the way I got my dog was because my husband, while allegedly searching for a picture of an English Bull Terrier managed to come up with three Scotties, a Blue Heeler and a nervous looking mixed-breed named Puddles. In the pictures the rescue society had posted on Petfinder, my dog looked decidedly apprehensive. A series of photos that eventually showed her trying to submissively show her belly. She was just so cute, I was a total goner. <br /><br />As to how my husband managed to turn up all sorts of breeds other than an actual Bull Terrier, I mostly leave that to your imagination. He's a poor typist and all, but let's be real here; I was set up. He'll never cop to it, but even if he had a massive seizure mid-typing, I still can't see how English Bull Terriers somehow managed to produce three adoptable Scotties, the breed we'd always had in the past. <br /><br />Somewhere in Puddles ancestry is an alleged Scottie but I'm positive that there's actually an Air Raid Siren somewhere in her lineage. She looks like a terrier, but that dog's bark would not be out of place in the midst of a hunt for some overly harassed fox. <br /><br /><i>Wooo! AWooooooo! ArWooWooWooWoo!</i>, Puddles proclaimed the entire time the pool guy was fiddling with the gauges out back. <br /><br />I ineffectually bayed in my own turn, "Puddles, shut up! Stop it! Cease! Cut it out!" and variations thereof for a half an hour. It was a landmark day. <br /><br />I've had a rescue dog prior to this and at the time I remember reading that a rescue dog can take up to six months to adjust to their new environment. It took Angus, our other rescue dog, three days to figure out we were suckers. Throw a snuggle, a wag, a delighted dog-dance our way and we're putty in their paws. It took Puddles five months to ascertain that we might bluster, and yelp, but no one here believes in striking animals. <br /><br />For the first few months I had an almost entirely silent dog but the Day of the Pool Gauge was the day that Puddles discovered that whereas we don't like her barking in the house, the worst that happens in retaliation is some frenzied shaking of a coke can, half full of pennies and taped shut. This gets her to stop giving cry for upwards of ten seconds, but thankfully this only applies to actual people, not any of the other things she wants to give a good talking-to. <br /><br />Whoever had Puddles prior to us hit her. We knew that fairly quickly. We'd rap out a brisk, "No!" and she'd practically hit the deck, while scuttling sideways. The day she knocked over the garbage, I let out a house echoing, "No! Bad dog!" and then nearly perished in a cuteness assault as I wiped Puddles face, her tail thumped the floor desperately, and she cringed away from the towel in my hand. <br /><br />"I'm not going to hit you, you daft dog," I said with affection, wiped her face clean, and tried to keep my voice disapproving. It's all supposed to be in the tone, you know. <br /><br />Which makes it a pity that Puddles neither sees, nor hears well. She's all nose. <br /><br /><br />"GaWoooooo! BaaaaaWoooooo!" Puddles proclaimed when my husband lingered in a cracked door too long, trying to see if I was awake before busting through to the closet on his way to get ready for work. <br /><br />Well, I was awake after that. <br /><br />"Say something!" I barked, in my own turn, "She has no idea who you are!" <br /><br />Puddles does better with sound than she does with sight, so we now enter rooms talking our heads off if we think we're about to take the dog unaware. <br /><br />It's truly not all that bad, this barking in the house. It happens maybe once a week, but fall has brought blowing leaves and her poor vision has Puddles leaping to high alert whenever a particularly large one goes scurrying by outside. She must think it's the world's tiniest home invader. Only when there is an actual person attached to the movement is there absolutely no chance to get her to stop giving cry.<br /><br />"Wooooooooooooo!" <br /><br />"<i>Puddles, no!</i>" Whatever biped happens to be at hand will add as a rejoinder. <br /><br />"Wooooooo!" <br /><br />"Oh for god's sakes." <br /><br />It only takes a few strenuously bellowed reminders and peace is restored. <br /><br />This morning there was a suspicious leaf spotted at ten minutes past six, when the sun had yet to actually shine much light on the proceedings. <br /><br />"Gaaaaah!" Rob hollered, as the cat shot him a look that would have laid waste to entire villages, I'm positive the cat blames Rob for the dog's appearance in his life, "Stop it! No! No!" <br /><br />Puddles stopped baying and looked at Rob questioningly. Someone had to protect us from the rustling things of the world, surely. <br /><br />"I hope she doesn't decide to bark at every falling flake," I commented, clutching my only lifeline to lucidity, my coffee cup, "or else we're going to have a very loud winter." <br /><br />"Oh what are we going to do with you?" Rob addressed the Wagging Leaf Siren. <br /><br />"We could change her name to Free To a Good Home, I guess," I suggested, "but other than that, I'm out of ideas." <br /><br />Puddles craned her neck over the back of the sofa and let out a miniature, "Woo?" as she mercilessly thumped the couch pillows with her tail. <br /><br />Rob, stunned by a Jim Henson Creature Shop level of adorable, immediately hugged Puddles, and she stopped barking. We're strict disciplinarians around here, you know, get out of line and suffer the snuggles. <br /><br />Rob left for work, and my dog put her head on my shoulder for a moment. I'm surprised I survived. It was a full blown cuteness assault. <br /><br />"You're a good girl," I said, and the couch pillows took their seventeenth beating this morning alone. <br /><br />A Blue Heeler. I pondered and sipped. Now when searching for an English Terrier, it is indeed possible that a Scottish Terrier would come up on the search. It even makes sense that Puddles, a dog listed as a Scottish Terrier mix might even get caught up in the displayed results. If you're searching only pets close to your geographical location, that is because we all know when only looking for information that its geographical location has an impact on its validity. <br /><br />The funny thing about "I was just looking, you're the one that picked her out" search is the Blue Heeler. I don't know if Rob really believes that he was just looking, or not. I will say that looking for dog breeds on a site called PetFinder pretty much says all that needs to be said. Having that random Heeler in there might actually add credence to "I was just looking" claim. <br /><br />At dogs within driving range, of course. <br /><br />But I haven't ever really called Rob on it too much. <br /><br />"She's your dog, you picked her out!" Rob will say as Puddles dances around with a pink Croc in her mouth. "How'd you pick out such a bad one?" <br /><br />"I must just have a gift," I'll generally say, letting him get away with blaming me for an animal he clearly adores. <br /><br />After all, I think he's cute.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-35627201622639818592010-10-09T09:33:00.000-07:002010-10-09T11:38:06.711-07:00Flattened<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TLCoCF6unhI/AAAAAAAAAO0/n7w1TKm6eF4/s1600/flat-tire.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 225px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TLCoCF6unhI/AAAAAAAAAO0/n7w1TKm6eF4/s320/flat-tire.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526101496685305362" /></a><br />My hand had just come in contact with the glass when the phone rang. A Friday night, prime for kicking back and watching a movie with my husband, an adult beverage seemed like a good idea. Hearing my ringtone trill caused me to freeze before I'd even had a sip. I knew the chances were good that my son was calling for some form of rescue. My husband answered my cell phone. <br /><br />Last July I wrote a post called <a href="http://landofshimp.blogspot.com/2009/07/generation-phone-home.html"> Generation Phone Home</a> and among my real life friends, and a couple of online friends that descriptor took hold. A couple of my friends with kids will refer to their own experiences with their children with things like, "Generation Phone Home struck again." <br /><br />It's just something that modern-day parents can relate to, evidently. <br /><br />My son had a flat tire last night, and needed to be talked through things like loosening the lug nuts. Then another call when he was done because, "Mom, now my keys won't turn in the ignition!" I rather reasonably asked if his steering wheel was locked in place, which it was. Jiggle the wheel back and forth, son. Jiggling proved key. <br /><br />I hung up and my untouched drink sat beside me. I knew better than to think the matter was closed until my son walked through the door. Sure enough, five minutes later, my son phoned home again. <br /><br />"The spare is flat," he said from the depths of his understandable despair.<br /><br />"Okay, where are you?" I sighed, but my husband reached for the phone and informed my son that he would be coming to get him. He advised me to go ahead and drink my cocktail. <br /><br />You see, it's been a month since my son hasn't needed some form of rescue at least once a week. He locked his keys in his car as the opening bid and I took a spare key to him. I made sure to hang around and get it back, so I could return it to the file I keep it in. He lost his wallet on campus, and the campus police called me. He needed to be driven to get that, as trust me on this, my son attempting to drive without his driver's license in his possession is just a recipe for disaster. There have been a couple of other things, too. <br /><br />This morning, as my husband woke my son up in order to drag him off for tire repair, we sat together and discussed what we were both like at twenty, wondering if my son was more, or less of a disaster. By the time I was twenty I lived across the country from any of my family. If something went wrong, I had to fix it myself. That's all true, but something occurred to me as I told my husband about the flat tires I have known. <br /><br />The first flat I had was at nineteen, and I quickly discovered that I didn't have a crowbar in my possession. Brainstorming I remembered I had passed a service station a mile or so back. I grabbed my purse, and began walking. I made it precisely a half a block before passing a road construction crew. <br /><br />"You have a flat?" The crew boss called to me. <br /><br />"I do, I don't have a crowbar though, so I'm going to the service station," I replied and thought I'd keep walking. <br /><br />"We've got a crowbar!" The man, clearly he was quite amused as I was dressed for work in a Chi-Chi's waitress outfit. Hey, it was my summer job but if you'd seen that uniform, you'd have a good idea what was cracking up the road crew. I looked like an extra escaped from a John Ford film in which I should soon declare something about not needing, "no stinkin' badges". "C'mon guys, let's go change a tire!" <br /><br />And with that, four public works employees downed tools with a clatter, and trouped as one over to my Mercury Lynx. That's right, my car had about as much dignity as my outfit. I followed meekly and watched. <br /><br />The next time I was driving down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, heading back to Colorado after a visit back East in my late twenties, when my tire blew. I had literally not finished pulling over before a pickup truck was pulling in behind me, and a large man leaped from the interior. <br /><br />"I saw your tire blow, figured I'd lend a hand," He proclaimed and over my protests about how I appreciated the help, but I had what I needed said, "Honey, I've got a daughter your age. I'd want someone to help her." <br /><br />He wouldn't take any money from me, just directed me to the next exit's Firestone to get the flattened tire repaired. By the way, that man was secretly a member of the Tire Changing gods because I've never seen anyone so efficiently do something, while fielding an attempt at polite protest the entire time. <br /><br />By the time I had my next, I was thirty. I'd had a business meeting in an office park that ran late, and when I came out to my car, found that my tire was busy settling into permanent disuse. Flat is too mild a term for how thoroughly that tire had given up on life. I must have run over a school of glass-shard-coated piranhas in a spike-lined puddle to bring about that level of flat. <br /><br />Well, dammit, I wanted to change that tire. I was in a parking lot, there was no danger under the street lights, and the time had come for me to prove to myself that I, an empowered woman with a fully working knowledge of how to change a tire, could do so. I'd jumped a huge variety of cars, taken care of a host of other maintenance issues, but I had yet to successfully change my own tire. Come hell, high water; damnation or flood, I was going to do this for myself. Only I couldn't get the hubcap off. <br /><br />Never fear, I walked into a nearby office building, interrupted some sort of meeting in progress and asked the assembled group of men if anyone had a screwdriver, as I wasn't able to pry my hubcap off. Outside it began to bucket down rain. <br /><br />Do I even need to add that instead of handing me a screwdriver from his truck, the man who came outside with me insisted on changing my tire, as I made small sounds of protest, and held an umbrella over his head? Or that when he was done, he handed me the flat-blade screwdriver I have to this day and said, "You should keep this, just in case." <br /><br />I like to tell myself I am part of what I referred to as Generation Save Your Own Butt, but the truth of the matter is a little closer to being that I evidently can barely hit a public street without someone attempting to rescue me instead. <br /><br />There are a lot more stories like that. Just earlier this year I was at the Home Depot, buying a ladder that was quite lightweight but ungainly at an almost epic level, and I ran a near gauntlet of offers of help trying to get it to my car. I'd wheel my cart four feet, balancing that bad boy, and every single person I passed offered to help me. Young men, older men, a particularly muscular woman. I must have a homing beacon implanted in my spine that sends off waves of perceived helplessness. That or there are a lot of good, helpful people in this world, and I don't discount that possibility. <br /><br />So was I really any better at working a problem, or was I set down on this earth with a particularly delicate-looking countenance that makes other people practically stampede to my rescue? Truthfully, it's a bit of both. After my encounter in the rain, I spent the next Saturday practicing changing my own tire, just to prove to myself I could if the need arose. <br /><br />Rob told me his stories, all of which involved simply muscling off a tire, replacing it with a spare, and heading back down the road. I shared my theory that perhaps I was fooling myself that I was any good at riding to my own rescue. Many a protest issued forth from my tall husband, why I was the most capable woman he knows, he'd seen me put out a literal fire with his own eyes. Watched as I'd ducked passed him to get to the main water shut off when a plumbing problem occurred, and he didn't even know where it had been. My husband defended my independence so much, but it did seem a rather charming example of protesting too much. <br /><br />Sure, I could do things for myself, when I had to. <br /><br />"Yeah, thanks, but there's just one thing..." I began and faltered. <br /><br />"What's that?" <br /><br />"When you offered to go and get him for me, I let you." It was true, I hadn't protested much at all, just asked if Rob was sure, and then gratefully picked up my drink when he told me he was. <br /><br />"Oh you can't count that!" My husband leaped to my defense, "Four times in four weeks you've had to go and take care of things for Flint, and it was dark outside and..." <br /><br />He went on as I listened with growing skepticism about my own independence, remembering how I'd gladly allowed him to ride off to my son's rescue. Sure, the ready cell phone may have arrested self-sufficient development to some degree in my son's generation. <br /><br />But maybe a fraction of it was learned behavior, after all.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-48096144225909459632010-10-01T09:39:00.000-07:002010-10-01T10:53:14.562-07:00The iFollyBefore descending to wreak havoc upon the enemy the Barbarian Hordes were said to let loose with a chilling array of vocal sounds meant to terrify the enemy and Confederate soldiers whooped out the Rebel Yell during the American Civil War as their battle cry. Neither group has anything on the average Apple store in terms of an unholy din. <br /><br />It started last February, my trusty Sony Vaio felt decidedly unwell. It wasn't actually belching out clouds of smoke and requesting the last rites, but to say it was sluggish would be to imply that it still moved and that's not accurate either. It was six-years-old but that turned out to be the extent of its lifetime. Even launching Firefox caused it to crash, and lie motionless in a fit of machine malaise the likes of which I had never seen. <br /><br />So I decide to buy a Mac, my first mistake, really. It's just that everyone who has one of those things swears up and down, and down up that they are the answer to prayers. I don't think any item has quite the brand loyalty that Apple does but I'm here to tell you I'm in the dark as to why. <br /><br />I decided not to take the offered tutoring classes, which was a mistake, in retrospect. It's just that since dinosaurs roamed the earth with 14400 baud modems strapped to their backs I've been using PCs and I get by just fine. <br /><br />"We'll teach you how to do anything you like!" The young man said with a smile. <br /><br />That should have been my first indication that I was <span style="font-style:italic;">iScrewed.</span> . Three times I'd been shooed off of a stool since entering the store, "I'm sorry, but those are for a class that's about to start." I'm actually not blaming Apple for that. They must get a lot of looky-loos and their classes are for customers that have already purchased their products. <br /><br />I heard the offer of classes, looked around at the babbling insanity that was the Park Meadows Mall Apple store and thought that only if attending classes there was a condition of the ransom for my favorite nephew (it would have to be my favorite) would I ever volunteer to hang out in the joint, trying to <i>learn</i>. <br /><br />"You tutor people here?" I asked, and the young man cheerfully assured me they did. I couldn't figure out a polite way to say I'd rather transport directly to a Medieval Rendering of the Bowels of Hell than try to do anything there, so instead I said, "I'll be fine. If I get stumped, I'll get a book." <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">iGoofed</span>. <br /><br />That was nine months ago. Nine months of searching for drop down menus that don't exist. Doing the old trial and error, but having it only end in error. I'm pretty tenacious so I kept at it, consulting the web for answers and finding helpful passages that began with things like, "Macs are very intuitive..." which I can only assume means "keep guessing" because good lord, I couldn't even save and use an image on this computer. Right clicking? There is no right click menu. Or options to delete, or really anything other than fevered prayer, as far as I can tell. <br /><br />So I bought a book for Dummies, because it was clear that I qualified when it came to Macs. The first thing I did was to look up "Save Image" and that went nowhere fast. I'm an <span style="font-style:italic;">iIdiot. </span> Do they make books for me? <br /><br />For nine months whenever I wanted to use an image, or really, a computer I scurried to my trusty HP laptop. Vista, the most dreaded operating system in the world, was still the preferable option for me. Finally I decided I'd had enough and this entire week I've been beating my brains out on my Mac. One of us is going down, and I fear it is going to be me. Half the time when I touch this mouse, it immediately goes flipping back. I've lost enough text in these past nine months to crush a small nation with the sheer volume of words. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">iTried. iFailed. iSwore. iTried </span>again, and again. Finally I had some marginal success. <br /><br />After a week of trying I have three things to show for my efforts. Are you ready? Here is the picture I wanted to share with you. The one that started my week long battle. I need a member of the Barbarian Hordes to scare the wits out of my Mac long enough for me to accomplish anything, but we're going to try. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYZ7JB2wfI/AAAAAAAAAOM/J-jRdUcy_JE/s1600/DSC00341.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYZ7JB2wfI/AAAAAAAAAOM/J-jRdUcy_JE/s320/DSC00341.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523130496843170290" /></a><br /><br />If that didn't work there's going to be some <span style="font-style:italic;">iDrinking </span>in my future. <br /><br />Then I wanted to change my profile picture so I used Photo Booth to take some picture, straight from my home office to you, and I settle on this one because I look appropriately baffled in it: <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYagaV0iII/AAAAAAAAAOU/w2ZD9-htGzQ/s1600/Photo+on+2010-10-01+at+09.17+%233.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYagaV0iII/AAAAAAAAAOU/w2ZD9-htGzQ/s320/Photo+on+2010-10-01+at+09.17+%233.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523131137145473154" /></a><br /><br />However, I took photos like this: <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYaubZInJI/AAAAAAAAAOc/SIFrnguiSKE/s1600/Photo+on+2010-10-01+at+09.19.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYaubZInJI/AAAAAAAAAOc/SIFrnguiSKE/s320/Photo+on+2010-10-01+at+09.19.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523131377945975954" /></a><br /><br />Which was clearly a mistake. And this: <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYbFk91tHI/AAAAAAAAAOk/bN3NoNyl9iE/s1600/Photo+on+2010-10-01+at+09.42.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYbFk91tHI/AAAAAAAAAOk/bN3NoNyl9iE/s320/Photo+on+2010-10-01+at+09.42.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523131775652836466" /></a><br /><br />As I tried to figure out the timing on the iCamera. I think I look best in over-exposed light, by the way. That can't be a good sign. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYf2usMAUI/AAAAAAAAAOs/ymkOgaNO-yI/s1600/Photo+on+2010-10-01+at+09.41.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TKYf2usMAUI/AAAAAAAAAOs/ymkOgaNO-yI/s320/Photo+on+2010-10-01+at+09.41.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523137018123256130" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />That's when I realized something. I can't even figure out how to delete the blasted things! <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">iScreamed. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">iQuit. </span><br /><br />At least for now.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-85153337789808219952010-09-17T08:37:00.000-07:002010-09-17T09:38:54.377-07:00Translating for Jim<a href="http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com/">Suldog</a>, aka Jim, tagged me for a meme. Now, I normally don't complete those. I find the answers to them interesting when other people do them, but generally speaking the questions are not ones that will provide much of an interesting window into me, so I pass them by. <br /><br />However, Jim is in the midst of quitting smoking. This is an endeavor with which every person who smokes or has smoked, or known someone who did or does, wishes him the absolute best because it is famously difficult for good reason. It has given him <i>Nicotine-Deprived Brain Syndrome</i>, of course, and that's a malady that requires the assistance of friends. One of the times I saw a friend of mine in the grips of this affliction he was desperately trying to pry the hatch off of a remote controlled car, in order to install new batteries. Brian was using a hammer, when a screwdriver was needed. <br /><br />This guy had a masters in something or other, I believe it was geology but can't completely recall, and as he thwacked the little car, rather lightly, with the hammer he seemed to be crooning to a god of misfortune as he did: <br /><br />"I'm getting frustrated, stumped! Hate this, haaaaaaatttteee this," in a small, sing-song voice. <br /><br />A nearby friend gently took the hammer away, and started replacing the batteries on the car for Brian's waiting son, who was looking at Brian as if he was completely convinced his father had popped a crucial artery. <br /><br />So when friends have their thought process eaten whole by withdrawal, when normally nimble minds are turned into a raging, fire-breathing beast, stumbling through the Japanese urban centers of the filmscape, I stand at the ready offering my support in the only way I can. By making fun of them in as kind and truly supportive a fashion as I can. <br /><br />Let's Go: <br /><br />Jim asked: 1 - You have a choice. You can have your nose replaced with a second set of your genitals, or you can have your genitals replaced with a second nose. Which would you choose, and why?<br /><br /><i>The Greek chorus supplies: Oh no, there goes Tokyo, Godzilla!</i><br /><br />Helpful notes from Jim's sane brain: So you get that I didn't give a lot of thought to asking women this question, right? That I'm not trying to be demeaning, or anything? Because I'm really not. <br /><br />Duly noted, Jim, I do know that about you. Never fear, and also, most women do know that men are obsessed with their Wee Willy Winkies, even as they run through the town. They don't seem to get that women really aren't. However, despite being descended from literal Puritans, I have no problem admitting that I have all bits and parts in working order, and they are staying where they belong, Jim. I don't have a problem saying, writing, thinking or referring to a vagina, but I don't want one on my face. Now lest you want me to pop you in the slats, wherever they may reside, let's translate, shall we? <br /><br /><i>Translation into non-withdrawal-induced question: Which is the worse fate: Being naked in public, or being stricken with food poisoning miles from the nearest lavatory?</i><br /><br />Answer: Food poisoning wins by a mile on that with or without nearby facilities. Whereas it wouldn't be a treat for the general public if I was to be beamed in, stark naked into the average thriving metropolis, that's unpleasant for other people more than it is for me. <br /><br />Jim asked: 2 - Do you think I give a tinker's damn?<br /><br />Notes from Jim's sane brain: This one I stand by. Semantic arguments can be fun, dammit. Do I smell toast? <br /><br />Answer: It depends on whether you believe the phrase to be "Tinker's Damn" or "Tinker's Dam". To the first? No, I do not believe you give a tinker's damn. Now, do I believe that if I set you to repairing a dam that you would do a tinkerer's job on repairing it? Let me think about that as I clutch my oars, grab a boat and load all of my prized possessions into it, okay? <br /><br />Jim asked: 3 - If you suddenly found yourself transformed into a cockroach, would you step on yourself?<br /><br />Jim's sane brain: Normally I'd reference Kafka playing softball somewhere in there, but I'm under a strain. <br /><br />Answer: Only if I get to pop in from an alternate universe to do so. In the alternate universe I have a goatee, because those are the rules of the alternate universe. People with goatees are known for stomping, really they are. <br /><br /><br />Jim asked: 4 - If fuschia was a smell, and avocados were polar bears, why not Toronto?<br /><br />Jim's sane brain said: *whimper* I think I've started hallucinating. Somebody get me a donut, please! Donuts fight off the DTs, I'm sure they do. <br /><br /><i>Translation: Are you a fan of surrealist art? If you are, does that mean you keep trying to melt your clocks? Do dream about people speaking backwards while falling from the sky, clutching sheep?</i><br /><br />Answer: I'm only a fan of light surrealism because my brain tends to go off on tangents anyway. My ability to free associate is rather too well-developed as it is, and now that you've mentioned that? Yeah, incoming sheep from my sleeping brain, thanks a lot, Jim. <br /><br />Jim's sane brain: Hey! I didn't even ask that question! <br /><br />Answer: But my magic eightball assures me that you wanted to. Take this pastry, it's glazed, you'll feel better. <br /><br />Jim asked: 5 - Does the fact that Deep Purple isn't in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame piss you off? How about the fact that Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers ARE in there? I mean, come on, not a bad singing group, but that's like putting Eddie Brinkman in Cooperstown.<br /><br /><br />Eddie Brinkman, whom I really liked as a player, but come on...<br /><br />Jim's sane brain: Don't you dare translate that!! That one I really meant! <br /><br /><i>Translation: Oh, okay then, never mind</i><br /><br />Answer: Eh, no it doesn't tick me off. Not in the way that Christine O'Donnell ticks me off. I save my outrage for things that matter to me personally, and whereas I like Deep Purple, I'm not about to get het up about them on any level. <br /><br /><br />Jim Asked: 6 - If you were Eddie Brinkman, would you be pissed off now?<br /><br />Straightforward answer: Seeing as I'd have to Google him to even have a chance at knowing, you're stuck out of luck there, Jim. I'm too busy trying to help a friend quit smoking in any way, shape or form I can to bother much with the inner workings of Mr. Brinkman. <br /><br />Jim asked: 7 - Artichokes or Hand Grenades?<br /><br />Jim's brain: I wish this day was over already! <br /><br /><i>The Greek Chorus Supplies: You can do it, Duffy Moon!</i><br /><br /><i>Translation: How hungry was the poor sod who first tried to eat an artichoke?</i><br /><br />Answer: I know, right?? I'm guessing he was hiding from someone lobbing hand grenades or finally got tired of playing with his...never mind. <br /><br />Jim asked: 8 - What's that smell?<br /><br /><i>The Greek Chorus Supplies: Everything's coming up roses!</i><br /><br />Jim's sane brain: No really, is someone making toast? <br /><br />Answer: You can do it, Jim. Just hang in there and keep trying.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-83164467144552946212010-09-14T08:15:00.000-07:002010-09-14T08:52:40.078-07:00Dawn Patrol<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TI-aJ2VAaMI/AAAAAAAAANE/xlLJo9eV7yM/s1600/DSC00350.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TI-aJ2VAaMI/AAAAAAAAANE/xlLJo9eV7yM/s320/DSC00350.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516797562545268930" /></a><br />When a dog landed on my head promptly at five in the morning, for the fourth day in a row, it occurred to me that this routine was getting old at an astonishing rate. <br /><br />"Gah! No," I whimpered, pulling the pillow over my head, "Zaphtbleghack." <br /><br />My husband's moans of distress were somewhat deeper, but not meaningfully more articulate. <br /><br />"Stop it, you evil dog!" He cried, "Stop it!" <br /><br />But he was heaving himself out of bed as he said it. You see, Rob had the bright idea to start jogging in the morning, instead of in the evening, and had declared, "I can take the dog with me! She loves to run." <br /><br />Oh, she loves to run, alright. She can also evidently tell time, too. This led to her two new nicknames: BeealzePud and Pudcifer. Rob made it through ten days of these merciless Dawn Patrol awakenings, initiated by the World's Cutest Alarm Clock. She needs to be that cute to escape a Throw-Rug's fate, as I take my sleep rather seriously. However, it's impossible to be angry with anything that damned excited to see you. Bags began to form under Rob's eyes. Exercise is supposed to be good for you, not drive you into an early grave. I intervened and together we formed a plan to break up Puddles's routine enough that she would never know if it was a walk day, a run day, a sleep-late day or a "leave us in peace as we drown our sorrows in coffee" day. I took her on walks, Rob took her on runs. Pretty much everyone got in some coffee drinking. Don't think I didn't see you, cat. Leave my mug alone. Throw-rug-in-the-making. <br /><br />We all get into routines and sometimes have to alter them when the routines start controlling us too much. Whereas I'll miss the summer, and days spent reading in the shade between dips in the pool one thing I won't miss is our crazed plum hunt this summer. <br /><br />We have a plum tree in our backyard and that darned thing could feed a village. Seriously, if anyone has any advice on how to stop a plum tree from bearing fruit, I would just about erect an altar and worship you daily if you tell me <i>how</i>. Not even the biggest plum enthusiast known to god or man could possibly want that many plums. I don't even recall if we had such a bumper crop last year, but this year, having gotten the aforementioned living Fraggle, Puddles we were keenly aware of the fruit. Let's just leave it at: Puddles over-indulged one day and the hunt was on. We were a couple possessed by the desire to destroy all plums for reasons best left entirely to the imagination. <br /><br />The problem was that the dog was far more skilled at finding the plums with her nose -- an organ so large we don't call it a "sniffer", we call it her "snoofer" -- than we were with our pitifully limited, human eyeballs on the wood-chips that constitute our ground-cover. Eventually the blasted things fermented, and that actually made them easier to find, seeing as (I'm not kidding) there was the never-to-be-forgotten Day of the Drunken Bees. <br /><br />Overall it was a good summer, a wonderful summer, really. There is a hint of Autumn in the air, the mornings are once again chilly and small patches of leaves begin to turn. The chicken wire over our window wells prevented any more baby bunnies from meeting a gruesome fate, and the neighborhood is populated by the ones that made it to adulthood. <br /><br />Every other morning, a routine that proved to be much kinder to his over-forty knees, my husband sees two plump, blinking Owls perched in the trees, slightly larger than our dog with a wing span that made him gasp. <br /><br />It's not just the weather I'll miss about summer, it's that the world around me tells so many stories during the season. <br /><br />I hope you are all well. It's been a real treat reading your blogs, and your stories again.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-67485851032770519672010-08-23T10:12:00.000-07:002010-08-23T11:27:42.320-07:00Shouting from the Depths of August<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/THK9knwzteI/AAAAAAAAAMU/MZqZ4FagcYs/s1600/DSC00045.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/THK9knwzteI/AAAAAAAAAMU/MZqZ4FagcYs/s320/DSC00045.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508673731074176482" /></a><br />Good people of the internet, greetings and salutations! The summer is getting away from me, and I apologize for a long absence. I wanted to wait until I actually had time to catch up on blogs before posting again, but today I received my third request to say something, anything at all. <br /><br />I usually don't like to do that without being able to return the favor and read blogs, but it seems I have a friend in need of a funny story, actually, three friends requested "tell a funny story, would you?" and whereas that generally results in extreme duds when it comes to humor writing, I'm going to give it a shot. <br /><br />For, hopefully, your giggling pleasure I present to you three tales of my idiocy, one for each friend in need of a giggle. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">This happened last night: </span><br /><br />Don't read if you are sensitive to vomit stories! <br /><br /><br /><br />So, my cat hurls a fair amount, as do most cats. Since he's my evil Gray cat, he likes to actually throw up on something absorbent, because that's how he rolls. I've seen him scurry off of hardwood floor onto the carpet to throw up. I get the concept, that way he isn't throwing up on his feet. To him it's more comfortable, for me it's a reason to get out the steam cleaner. <br /><br />Well, he just managed to toss his cookies on the stair landing last night, so I've already done the weekend "spot clean the cat's hork spots" cleaning and as it happens? I'm out of the special pet cleaner shampoo because of that. <br /><br />He hops up onto the arm of the sofa and does that "Huck-AH HUCK-AH..." retching, and I immediately jump to my feet to get him, at least, off of the sofa. He scurries along in front of the sofa, me in hot pursuit. He stops dead short of the hardwood in the kitchen, with about two feet to go, so that he can puke without soiling his paws. I scoop him up, like I'm recovering a fumble in mid-stride, trying to get him the last two feet into the kitchen....when I trip...and the cat goes sailing through the air, and vomits mid-air, so that it has a scatter-shot, shotgun effect, covering about six feet of the hardwood (yay!) in a spectacular arc, that ends on Rob's shoes (boo!). <br /><br />The cat hates me a lot right now, that's for sure. <br /><br />All cleaned up, but if you've ever wondered what a cat might look like sailing through the air, spewing chow as he goes? I have a sad level of familiarity with that now. <br /><br />Still beats the sofa, I guess.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">This happened a three weeks ago: </span><br /><br />On a beautiful evening, enjoying the calm, warm weather I went outside to ask my husband a question of some great import. It probably was something of great import, at least. I don't really remember, but I'm willing to give myself the benefit of that doubt. As I passed by the pool, I decided to drag my toes through the inviting water. <br /><br />Just as my foot hit the water, my gaze was caught by motion. A small, drenched creature, about the size of a swimming avocado, with eyes roughly the size of dessert plates was making its way along the side of the pool, swimming for all it was worth. As is my way, I swung into crisis solving mode, and in such instances that involves yelling my brains out and hoping that I will be rescued. What? That is too a solution. Try it and see. <br /><br />"Rob?!?, " I screamed with enough force that someone in Vail with the name of Robert probably sat up with an expectant look on his face, " ROB?!? Critter! Critter in the pool! Hurry hurry hurry, it's gonna drown! The Critter is going to drown!!!" <br /><br />To which he replied, "Is it a baby bunny?" <br /><br />Like he'd just misplaced one. Sure enough, the creature swimming desperately towards the pool filter (which wasn't going to work out well for him) bore some resemblance to a drenched bunny. <br /><br />"Yes, yes, it's a bunny!!" For all I knew it was a strangely shaped, and furred python, but if agreement was going to rescue us both, agreement was called for. <br /><br />Now, you may ask, "Why didn't you do anything? Are you simple? Are you daft?" <br /><br />Uh, maybe? The fact of the matter is that I froze, badly. I should have gotten the pool skimmer. I should have snatched up a nearby bucket and scooped the little creature to safety. What I did instead was hop in place and bellow. Yay? <br /><br />Luckily my husband is trained to answer the bellowing of his wife's call and for the sake of one wee bunny, be glad. He was fished from the drink by my husband, with the aid of a Tupperware pitcher. <br /><br />Now he likes to reenact my, "Critter! Critter in the pool!" Cry for help. Well, fine. See how much better you do when the water stares back at you. <br /><br />As for how my husband knew there was a baby bunny about? It seems my dog had recently flushed one from a bush in the backyard. He had a slight advantage over me in that he was fully expecting one teeny, freaked out bunny. I was expecting a refreshing foot bath. <br /><br />The third funny thing qualifies as humor of the darkest variety, and involves some poor mother bunny, who seemingly dropped a litter of kits in our front bushes, and then left them there. I've been assured that rabbits are actually very good mothers but as our neighborhood is stuffed with both bunnies, and SUVS, I leave it to you to speculate as to her fate. I don't know for certain that's what became of her, but I do know that not long after our baby bunny encounter, we had still more. Baby bunnies wandered about, sans parental supervision, it seems. <br /><br />My son emerged from the basement and informed me that he heard scuffling sounds coming from the window wells. He was off to work, and that left just me to go and provide the lifesaving scooping. I donned my garden gloves and a grim expression as I've done this before. You need good reflexes as it seems all small rabbits have ingested some form of superball, and bounce accordingly. <br /><br />Unfortunately for the bunny population, my son is not highly attuned to sounds in his environment and judging from the scene of mass bunny destruction before me, he'd missed at least four plummeting bunnies. One stared disconsolately up at me from what can only be described as the Killing Fields. That's all I'm going to tell you about the grimmer aspects of my bunny rescuing activity that morning but I will say that I atoned for my inability to move when Swimmer Bunny was trying to dash himself to Bunny Kingdom Come in the pool filter. <br /><br />I was yodeling like a cross between the Swiss Miss and those freaky six foot long horns featured in cough drop ads, but jump down amongst the grimness I did. Puddles cowered in mortal terror above as I sounded as if I'd ingested an air raid siren. <br /><br />Amidst many screams of my own protest, I scooped out the bunny and then surprised myself by vaulting, without aid of pole, directly out of the window well where I did the Heebeejeebie Dance of Yuck for approximately five minutes. <br /><br />Then when Rob got home, I abandoned all Gender Equality and played the girl card, "Honey? Deal with that freaky level of gross would you?" and good man that he is, he did. <br /><br />If anyone is missing two lizards, one bird, three baby bunnies, and a toad that miraculously survived the slaughterhouse powers of my window well, do let me know. <br /><br />I'm sorry I'm absent. There is luckily no dire reason for this. This last winter seemed to drag on forever, and ever. So I've been making sure to enjoy the summer while we have it. I will return come fall, and I promise faithfully to go back to my habit of both reading, and commenting at length on your blogs. <br /><br />Until then I will be wishing you all great fortune, and absolutely no encounters with baby bunnies.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-70277995857155968722010-07-14T03:30:00.000-07:002010-07-14T03:40:20.718-07:00Most Recent Post DeletedHello! If you noticed that a post called <i>Ride of the Valkyrie</i> has been deleted, I apologize for that and thank everyone who commented. I did reply to everyone but actually, my husband asked me if I would delete it, and as he's never asked for anything like that before, I complied. <br /><br />He was concerned that it had the potential to hurt my son's feelings, and in thinking it over, I think he's right. <br /><br />Thanks to everyone who commented, and really lifted my spirits on that. It is truly appreciated.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-2770552025004639602010-07-10T07:28:00.000-07:002010-07-10T09:16:36.112-07:00First the Sound Then the Fury<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TDic2f15q7I/AAAAAAAAAME/InCyjr4BicU/s1600/troll+image.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 94px; height: 125px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TDic2f15q7I/AAAAAAAAAME/InCyjr4BicU/s320/troll+image.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5492312205652765618" /></a><br />The man on the phone had absolutely no way of knowing how deeply he had just terrified me, or why I was acting like a complete schmuck. The top of my scalp was tingling and quickly going numb, it felt as if the air had been forcibly sucked from my lungs, and my knees had quite literally buckled together in an effort to keep me upright. There was no way he could have known any of that because the entire response by my nervous system had taken less than two full seconds. <br /><br />Everyone who has anyone that they love knows how this feels. The late night or early morning phone call, those seconds in between registering that the phone is ringing at an off hour, and finding out why that is are among the most horrible seconds in life. So when my cell phone rang at 7:46 on a weekend morning, immediately I was on alert. It didn't help that I knew my son had been out all night, as he had told me he would be. Or that I knew my husband had left early in the morning to go and do maintenance on the rental home we own. Steve from Insert-Name-Here Painting just had no way of knowing that the two people I love most in the world were out in it, and I hadn't had so much as a sip of coffee. <br /><br />"Hello?" I said into the phone, the number identified merely as "unknown" on my cell phone display. I was only partially steeled for the worst. <br /><br />"Mrs. _______?" A very serious male voice inquired. An officious voice. A deadly calm voice. The voice of notification. If the Grim Reaper makes prank phone calls, he likely sounds one hell of a lot like this dude. It probably doesn't help that a lot of people have no idea how to pronounce my first name if they've only ever read it, and rather than try, this guy decided to err on the side of formality. Bad choice, painter man. <br /><br />Somewhere inside of me a woman nearly deranged by fear managed to answer. We've all gotten the bad calls in our lives and they start like that. It's the greeting of a police officer, a coroner, a fireman. For all I know it's how the flipping Coast Guard captain sounds, before telling you that entire chunks of your life have been found bobbing in the surf. <br /><br />"This is Steve Eckland from InsertNameHere Painting," he continued in a decidely dour tone. <br /><br />Just like that every person I love hopped directly out the ditch in which I had mentally placed them, but Steve Eckland doesn't know that to this moment. He doesn't know that my son is a Type 1 diabetic, who doesn't take very good care of his diabetes. Or that I've been told by medical professionals that I'm simply going to have to standby as he flounders through that. He doesn't know that my husband had just been driving on two separate major highways, or that his father actually died doing precisely that. Or that, because the universe has an exceptionally dark sense of humor at times, Rob even had my dog with him. Really, there was just no way for Mr. Steve Eckland (not his real name) to know that in the space of less than ten seconds he had frightened me so badly I actually felt like I might faint. <br /><br />What he does know is that Saturdays are a work day for him. That he works for the painting company that is contracted to paint the exterior of our house this coming week and he also knew something I did not: he was returning my husband's call. The other thing he likely knows is that he got the most ill-tempered, icy, unfriendly woman in the world on the phone, first thing in the morning. <br /><br /><i>Numfar, do the dance of rage</i>, silently yelped that woman inside my head, freshly returned from the Isle of Terror. <br /><br />"Yes?" A small word, yet I know it dripped fury and icicles. My tone of voice at that moment is actually the thing that killed the dinosaurs lo those many years ago. <br /><br />Anger is the big brother of our emotional response system. It's rarely a pure emotion. Sure, we all have that righteous anger response from time-to-time. A news-piece about a nefarious individual cheating nuns out of money meant to save the baby seals brings it out. Someone dropping kicking infants, or preying on helpless young children. That pure, outraged anger that comes from the place of what is right, versus what is absolutely wrong but most anger is actually about protecting our other emotions. Fear, shame, vulnerability, anger is in charge of guarding the tender parts of our souls. Most of the time when anger sweeps over me like a raging tidal wave, it comes from somewhere cowering. <br /><br />Want to make someone gibber with rage? Make them feel a right fool first and foremost. Or accidentally make them believe that their treasured and adored loved ones are in peril. I was in complete control of what I was saying, but my tone was about as friendly as a wolverine tweaked out on Meth. <br /><br />Poor Steve from InsertNameHere Painting, from his perspective I am a shrew with the thinnest veneer of courtesy. That woman who just apparently hates all bipeds and is hard-pressed to bestir herself to even a semblance of civility. I was a harridan, a near banshee. I sucked all joy from time and space. People, I was pissed right the hell off and for no other reason than for the briefest of moments I thought my very worst fears in the world had been realized. Those thorny, malicious demons that come and perch on your chest when you lie awake, staring at the unvarying ceiling above after awaking from a nightmare with nothing to do but listen to your own thudding heart were present in that tone. <br /><br />Powerful suckers that they are, I was struggling to keep them in check and although I heard my fishwife tone, at the moment the blinding anger towards the person who had frightened me to the core of my being held sway. If I'm being entirely honest, I wasn't actually trying that darned hard to stop it. At that moment I was a ballistic missile. <br /><br />Over a question about power-washing, but that's the nature of the beast. Whether it is protecting hurt feelings, paralyzing fear, or thwarted love, that kind of anger is the hardest kind to club down and just force it to behave. The "thank you" I uttered at the end of the conversation sounded like it hailed from the Ironic Universe. The words said one thing, the tone was very much insulting his lineage. <br /><br />And I felt like the biggest jerk in the world because at that moment, I was one of them. <br /><br />I believe in accountability. I think when you do something wrong, the word does not end but you do have a responsibility to own up to it, make it right. However, in just a couple of seconds Steve, whose own phone manner could actually use a little freaking work, had me envisioning life support machines and possible caskets in my future, was also being a tiny bit remiss in treating his work day as mine also. In addressing me with all the friendliness reserved for a perpetrator of Nana Muggings. <br /><br />I'll see him this week, and I'll have a chance to utter an apology for being grumpy. I can put it down to the very real, "I had yet to have coffee, I'm sorry." <br /><br />He has no way of knowing that, like a lot of people, I've had more than one person unexpectedly perish. Really, Steve the Painter doesn't understand how he stepped on the hornet's nest this morning. Or that after I hung up, and grabbed that much needed cup of coffee I was a little sick-to-my stomach. <br /><br />Anger is complicated, and sometimes amusing to consider in the aftermath. I have a generally cheerful disposition. I don't get angry all that easily, generally speaking at least. But evidently the access to my coldest form of fury lies directly down the road from my greatest fears. <br /><br />Everybody has their sacred ground. The stuff we protect within us with the sabers and guns of our emotions. <br /><br />Poor Steve but, screw it, I tip well and although it is almost two hours later, I'm still a little miffed that I started the morning with a blast off into terror, that then made me feel foolish, which in turn woke up the Troll sleeping under my personal bridge. The goat community reports no survivors. <br /><br />Next time maybe he'll wait until the back of eight o'clock in the morning to make a call with his Undertaker's tone in full swing. I'll be over here waiting for the Gruff Killing Troll to return to the land of Nod.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-55812787501553016852010-06-18T10:49:00.000-07:002010-06-18T13:05:10.205-07:00Touring the World Via DMV<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TBvRa63uH-I/AAAAAAAAAL8/4eq9JpHvkY8/s1600/dmv3.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TBvRa63uH-I/AAAAAAAAAL8/4eq9JpHvkY8/s320/dmv3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484207231663480802" /></a><br />The Division of Motor Vehicles, no one who drives can escape it. A huge cross section of humanity is present there during the hours of operation. Rich or poor, fat or thin if you want to legally drive a car in the United States sooner or later the bell tolls and the time has come. A grumble here, a sigh there, we gird up our loins and sally forth to take care of our required documentation, registration, and identification. A necessary evil, not unlike going to the dentist, only with much worse lighting and less laughing gas, to be sure. <br /><br />However, visiting three different DMVs in the course of one day is not recommended. I know this from bitter experience. <br /><br />"What's your number?" I asked my son, as he returned from the information desk. <br /><br />He consulted the scrap of paper, "543." <br /><br />A little more than a minute later the clerk droned, "501, now serving 501. 501, now serving 501." <br /><br />Oh this was going to be a long day's journey into night, all right. <br /><br />I had been settling in to write an email to my friend Angela. I'm so far behind on email at this stage in the game, there are people who likely will accept nothing less than a written note from the alien that abducted me by way of apology. Finally I'd carved out an afternoon's worth of correspondence time, and I was looking forward to it. That's when my Mom Ears alerted me to an increasingly rare occurrence: The sound of my son's voice, with that tone to it. That "I'm actually afraid to tell you how much trouble I'm in right now, but you might want to prepare to freak out." That tone. That spine tingling, adrenaline alerting, sense sharpening tone. <br /><br />"Mom?" He said. Just one word, but it's all in the inflection. My son had only left the house an hour earlier, and he was back, with that troubling quaver. <br /><br />I immediately closed my laptop and set it down, "Yes?" <br /><br />Weirdly, I tend to keep it short when tense. Something that never fails to unnerve those who know me well. An almost perfect stranger to brevity at all other times, I become one of the most concise communicators when things go south. <br /><br />"Do you have an extra copy of my car insurance card?" <br /><br />And we were off to the races. Flint had been pulled over back in December, for a variety of things, speeding was the primary reason, but the officer had found three other things to cite him on. My husband and I pay for almost everything in my son's life. The roof over his head, the tuition at his college, his car and medical insurance, almost every morsel of food that goes into his mouth, heck even his clothing is still provided by us. He's only nineteen, and he's a full-time student during the school year. However, he does have two things for which he is financially responsible, his cell phone and his car registration. Guess which one he let lapse? <br /><br />To try and condense his tale of woe: he had neglected to pay entirely for his ticket , having taken the installment plan with Jefferson County. On the morning, six months after receiving his violation, that he was finally going to be able to pay off his fine altogether, he was pulled over again. This time with an overdue balance at Jeffco, a car that <i>still</i> needed to be registered, and having misplaced his insurance card. Since we're in Douglas County, my son was earning a rep both far and wide. <br /><br />Rather than impound his vehicle and arrest him, the good-souled cop who pulled him over for grossly expired tags, gaped in horror and said, "Kid, you do realize you could actually go to jail for this? I'm putting your license on probation." <br /><br />With that he walked away, toting said license, and off he drove. <br /><br />As my son outlined the story, I listened in almost complete silence, and then without a word, went to the file that contains extra copies of our insurance cards, and fished one out. I stopped by the bathroom, combed my hair, checked my makeup, secured the dog in the large master bath with water and toys, then grabbed my purse and keys. <br /><br />"Mom, I'm going to need a ride to..." His girlfriend had rescued him from his encounter with the LawDog but I knew he needed someone who couldn't choose to dump him halfway through the proceedings, just to escape. <br /><br />"I know, let's get going." <br /><br />I suppose I could have swung into the lecture to end all lectures. I could have let loose with the regular song and dance about responsibility and growing up, but we had a problem to solve and only about six hours left in the day to solve it. Besides, I knew even as we embarked on the journey, that this entire adventure would likely suck with such a vengeance that he'd never forget it. <br /><br />First we went to the courthouse, a mere thirty minutes away, where my son paid the remainder of his fine. Then we went to a DMV near our home which turned out to not do registrations, then to another that could not solve my son's myriad of problems, and were referred to the full service DMV another forty minute drive away. When we arrived we were greeted by a sea of humanity so diverse I half expected the crowd to burst into a rousing rendition of <i>It's a Small World After All</i>. All of them clutched a battered number. Surrounded by teens there to take their first driving tests, people of all shapes and sizes, many in regrettable fashion choices, and an LED screen that bizarrely kept scrolling trivia questions, sans answers we waited, and waited, and waited some more. Most of that time was spent perched on a window sill as the place was so packed with people, they'd run out of seats. I think my backside is now permanently dented. <br /><br />Hour one passed at a snail's pace, and I perfected open-eyed meditation while listening to my iPod. <br /><br />"515, now serving 515. 515, now serving 515. Last call for 515. A89, now serving A89..." <br /><br />Yes, they had two separate sets of numbers going at once. For three clerks. <br /><br />"Mom, I'm really sorry," my son said, yet again, "thank you for doing this." <br /><br />"You're welcome, Flint." <br /><br />Hour three and something about Yak's milk scrolled by on the trivia screen, that otherwise existed solely to inform people to have their documents ready when their number was called. <br /><br />"527, now serving 527..." <br /><br />A nearby child screeched at such a volume I could only assume he was expressing the pain of existence for everyone there. <br /><br />"A92, now serving A92..." <br /><br />The same child vomited, and I'm fairly certain his mother began to cry. I proffered tissues thinking that either one of them might be in need. They were stickily accepted. A janitor rolled forth, as if this was a common occurrence, and mopped the area with enough bleach to render all of the county incidentally sterile. <br /><br />"Mom, what's taking so long?" A nearby teen whined, in a voice made from broken glass, "We've been here forever." <br /><br />"We can go home, Karen." Her mother said, busily tapping away at a Blackberry. <br /><br />For the fourth time the scantily clad teen huffed out that sigh all teen girls have perfected. The one I'm sure I must have emitted on more than one occasion myself, it sounds something like, "Mom-uh." That "uh" uttered with a shrill exasperation. I made a mental note to call my mother and thank her for sparing my life throughout my teen years. <br /><br />My iPod battery gave up the ghost before 531 made it to the desk. The trivia scroll asked what the Donner Family was famous for, and I got a wholly inappropriate case of the giggles. <br /><br />We were fortunate in that several times when a number was called, the person in question was nowhere to be found. I envisioned mummified corpses being stacked in the backroom, daily. Poor old number 537, it was just his time. <br /><br />Finally after a period roughly the length of the Jurassic Age 543 was called, and off Flint went to get himself out of Dutch with the Division of Motor Vehicles. We'd still have to travel to yet another DMV in our own county to register his car, but that would have to wait until the following Monday. <br /><br />"Mom-uh, how long is this going to take?" Karen inquired, yet again, as if her mother was a Magic Eight Ball that merely needed to be shaken to get a fresh answer. <br /><br />"Karen, shut up." Her mother finally snapped. <br /><br />On the drive home my son thanked me yet again, and then asked, "Are you mad at me?" <br /><br />"No," I answered honestly, "I'm pretty sure every nineteen-year-old on the planet does something like this." <br /><br />"Did you?" <br /><br />"Well, not exactly but there was this time in Buttzville, New Jersey where I got pulled over at three o'clock in the morning." <br /><br />"There's really a place called Buttzville?" <br /><br />"Yes, and it's weirdly really pretty, it's up by the Delaware Water Gap..." <br /><br />And I told him the rest of the story. I was home on a break, and had driven to Pennsylvania to visit my boyfriend at the time. While there I had either lost, or had stolen, my wallet. As luck would have it, this occurred in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, a town just as rural as it sounds. I'd been at a bar there. At three a.m. two days later I was pulled over, in my brother's car, because the officer thought I was weaving while driving. Thankfully, I hadn't had so much as an ounce of alcohol, I was just tired. <br /><br />But my brother had not only let his registration lapse, there was no proof of insurance in that car and God help me, I'd lost my Driver's License with my wallet. There I was, in an entirely illegal vehicle, without even any way to prove who I was and having to say the word "Shickshinny" multiple times, which even for a State Trouper patrolling Buttzville sounded suspect. <br /><br />When I told the story to a male friend of mine he said, "Oh my God Alane, if that had been me, I'd <i>still</i> be in jail. What did he do?" <br /><br />He followed me to a diner, to make sure I was grabbing a cup of coffee, that's what he did. That was all he did. He didn't give me a warning. He didn't lecture me. He didn't throw my butt into the county jail. All of which he would have been perfectly entitled to do. Instead, he followed me to a diner, and then told me to drive safely, and stop if I got too tired. I never forgot that. <br /><br />There are a lot of occasions when you're young that you screw up. You did it, I did it, the children who come after us will do it too. We learn our biggest lessons from our own mistakes, it is just part of how we grow. <br /><br />Yelling about it won't often help, it will just make things louder as well as stressful. <br /><br />"Mom?" My son said. <br /><br />"You're welcome." I said before he could thank me again. <br /><br />One word, and it's all in the tone. You might want to remember that, Karen.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-50715058767438858902010-06-04T08:29:00.000-07:002010-06-04T10:12:03.667-07:00Not Exactly an Oracle<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TAkyJg5iTwI/AAAAAAAAAL0/02eebXW3bT8/s1600/fortune.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/TAkyJg5iTwI/AAAAAAAAAL0/02eebXW3bT8/s320/fortune.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5478965560704388866" /></a><br />No matter what anyone thinks of the concept of psychics most of us have been intrigued by the idea that someone could predict the future. In fact, there was a recent TV show that flopped spectacularly with that exact premise. The entire world passes out, and sees three minutes of their lives, six months in the future. It was called <i>Flashforward</i> and it was so unspeakably dull nearly all of the initial audience fled in the first few weeks, knowing that at least their futures wouldn't hold endless bleatings about Mark drinking in his fast forward. More than anything the show was about self-fulfilling prophecy. <br /><br />We all know someone who says they woke up at the precise moment a relative, or loved one shuffled off the mortal coil, thousands of miles away. Or had a feeling of dread that kept them from doing something that ended in full scale doom for others. A ship that sank; sank without them. A plane that crashed, plummeted sans one passenger. Even small things like deciding to take a different route home that helped us avoid a huge traffic jam. Most people have something to report about feeling as if they have been warned by a cosmic force, or they know someone who has. <br /><br />I'm the only person I know that has had a premonition about the comedic stylings of Janeane Garofalo, though. An entirely useless portent of funny. <br /><br />I rather like household tasks in that I can let my mind wander as I do them. You don't generally need to be mentally present to do things like dust, vacuum, or unload the dishwasher. Invariably something odd will pop into my head, and I'll find myself mulling over the practice of foot binding, or how to make cheese, the French Revolution, or what Dali's dreams were like. I'm going with blazingly ordinary, in case anyone cares, by the way. <br /><br />So as I put away some plates, and recalled for no earthly reason Janeane Garofalo's making fun of bar patrons tripping out into the night, hurling snowballs in an attempt to prove how whimsical, and therefore attractive they are, I thought nothing of it. Just a comedy snippet stuck in my brain from ages ago. It seemed unrelated to anything, but that's just how disengaging the brain works at times. <br /><br />Last night my husband and I watched TV, and eventually found ourselves tuning into HBO's Comedy channel. Well, who doesn't need a laugh, right? I didn't even think it was odd when a half hour special, circa 1995 by Janeane Garofalo came on. She's done a bunch of shows for HBO, and clearly I like her comedy enough to just have her pop into my mind. <br /><br />I didn't recognize the routine throughout. It was dated material, but I enjoy acerbic wit, and that's Garofalo's forte. About thirty seconds before she segued into the bar/snow/whimsicality piece, I realized that's where she was going, paused the TV and turned to my husband to proclaim: <br /><br />"Okay, that's creepy. Creepy and entirely useless," I went on to outline that I seemingly had a random thought about an old comedy routine, and then ended up watching that routine that same night. We both agreed that it was hardly the stuff that would have either of us canceling flights, or hopping in the car to procure a lottery ticket. It was just one of those "Huh, that was strange and completely without purpose." mind flukes. <br /><br />I once had a dream about the fire hydrant in front of our old house. Later that day, when I was wide awake, the fire hydrant popped a gasket (or whatever) and sent water gushing everyone in an entirely harmless manner. <br /><br />My point is that Miss Cleo, of the alleged prognostication abilities wouldn't exactly want to hire me for a psychic friends network. <br /><br />Just saying, if by any stretch of the imagination anyone is willing to term that a premonition, and even if you aren't, there is one thing we can all agree upon: How boring. It got me thinking about all of the things in my life it would have been nice to have a heads up for prior to something happening. Almost every sad, traumatic, or even painful thing that has happened in my life actually ended up leading to other good things. I know I've mentioned before that a particularly painful car accident, while seemingly without value of any kind in my life, is also the thing that helped put me in the time and place to meet my husband. Out of most bad situations in our lives, eventually something good comes, if not directly, then in the manner in which it changed the course of things. <br /><br />Except for shocks to the system. I can't think of even one instance where having the hair nearly scared off of my head ended up being of any value. The time last week when I was underwater in our pool, popped to the surface and discovered a complete stranger standing in my backyard? Yup, served no purpose other than to make me glad that I was unable to actually fall over at that moment. A landscaper was lost, thought he had the right address, and when he realized he didn't, waited for the woman in the pool to come up for air, so he could ask for help. Thankfully he wasn't holding anything that could be construed as a weapon, or else I'd have likely screamed the sky down. Instead he had gotten "Drive" confused with "Court" and needed to go visit a cul de sac nearby. <br /><br />As someone whose mind wanders whenever I'm not doing anything that allows it, I tend to have the stuffing scared out of me on about a weekly basis. Like this morning. <br /><br />Head phones on, back to the street, waiting for my dog to finish up her attempts to fertilize a neighbor's lawn, I stepped forward with the least elegant of items almost always in my possession: the poo bag at the ready. It's never fun, but hey, it's the polite thing to do. Then you get to tour the world with a bag of excrement, until you reach home, which is an equally "I feel pretty" sort of feeling. <br /><br />"THANK YOU!" A voice boomed over my shoulder, drowning out <i>The White Stripes, Seventh Nation Army</i> which is no small feat, and nearly making me take a header into a steaming pile. <br /><br />I made a sound eerily reminiscent of Beaker from the Muppets. <br /><br />"Meep?" As I pushed my headphones out of my ears, and wondered if it was actually possible to morph into an invertebrate as it felt as if my spine was puddling around my heels. Even the dog jumped slightly, and wagged questioningly, one paw raised in the universal canine signal of "Huh?" <br /><br />"Thank you so much for picking up after your dog," the man said with great gusto, "just wanted to let you know how much it's appreciated!" <br /><br />About this time he seemed to take note of the fact that even my hair looked alarmed. <br /><br />"Sorry if I startled you," he said in a congenial fashion. <br /><br />"Oh don't worry about it," I said as I tried to fold over the top of my doggie bag in as subtle a fashion as possible. There's just something strange about trying to exchange pleasantries while holding the least lovely of dog decorations. <br /><br />My neighbor continued on, happy for a morning chat, thrilled not to have dog landmines seeded across his lawn and eventually my pulse rate settled back into its regular rhythm. We discussed a community garage sale that is being planned, which I don't have any wish to attend, but where apparently there are going to be lots of lemonade stands. This means that my neighborly duty will involve nipping across the street to buy some from our neighbors incredibly adorable children. Prevent scurvy, support your local munchkins, don't let the dog crap on anything valuable, it's all in a day's doings. <br /><br />Now why couldn't I have had a premonition about that? Instead it's stupid stuff about the lengths bar patrons will go to in the quest for romance. <br /><br />I'm sure someone has a great story about how they saved a bus load of people from a dire bout with food poisoning when they knew, just <i>absolutely knew</i> that the chicken salad at the Denny's was a stone cold killer. Not me though. <br /><br />Call them inklings, foresight, messages from beyond, or what-have-you, mine are ordinary enough to be discovered by perusing the TV Guide. <br /><br />Sort of pointless, really. Much like this post.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-87930548349192194442010-05-27T08:12:00.000-07:002010-05-27T09:46:39.253-07:00Backsliding<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S_6gHOpkmWI/AAAAAAAAALs/dJ_Qm1Eeqaw/s1600/slippery_slope.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 235px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S_6gHOpkmWI/AAAAAAAAALs/dJ_Qm1Eeqaw/s320/slippery_slope.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5475990242981091682" /></a><br />Although I am reasonably sure that The Broadmoor doesn't actually flog employees when they make a mistake, the pretty blond woman in front of me was visibly shaking nonetheless. A ribbon pinned to the blazer of her uniform declared her to be "in training" and she had told us earlier that she had been there for two weeks. Sheila and I were quickly shaping up to be nightmare customers for anyone in the service industry as we attempted to check-in for our spa getaway. Oddly enough, we were trying our very best to be exceptionally pleasant. The young woman's distress being readily apparent, we only wanted to lessen it. I think that's what most people do, as most adult possess empathy. <br /><br />"You left your credit card," the clerk said, in an accent I assume hailed from the Baltic states, as she handed over a sealed credit-card-sized envelope. <br /><br />Every year at the start of the high season hospitality workers from all over the world land at the Broadmoor, many in pursuit of hotel management degrees. I've hit that window of training before, and although the service at the hotel is stellar, there are occasional stumbling blocks with the trainees. For whatever reason, we had been making this young woman perilously anxious since we'd appeared before her. I have no idea why, Sheila and I were actually two hours early for check-in, and knew it. That one of the rooms wasn't ready was rather to be expected, and far from pitching a fit, we'd both assured the clerk that it was fine that there would be a delay before my room was ready. She promised to call me when the room in question was prepared, and off we set, to tour the grounds on what was a beautiful day last week. The clerk had started shaking when she was unable to spell my rather straight-forward last name. It's generally my first name that plays merry hell with the ability of people to interpret it. However, when you think about it, for her it isn't usual, is it? <br /><br />By the time we returned, the poor woman clapped delightedly when she saw us. Her joy was short-lived as the proffered credit card was actually not mine. There are a couple of things I've managed not to do in my life, although I've great faith in my own idiocy, and leaving behind my credit card happens to be one of them. So when I opened the envelope, it was with a flash of irritation directed towards myself, not the clerk. The Gold American Express card bore the name of Joe Somethingorotherski. <br /><br />"This isn't mine," I said, and realized a fraction of a second too late that the young man next to the blond was evaluating her. A look of barely repressed anger flashed across his face, the blond began shaking again, and whereas I did everything I could to deflect that by making a rather large show of saying it was fine, checking my wallet and saying with relief that indeed my credit card was there and that Joe was not in possession of it, the anger persisted. In fact, I wasn't sure if I was making it better or worse, and again too late, decided to shut up before the manager beside her stuffed the woman in a larger envelope and shipped her home. <br /><br />We had a lovely time, ate great food, were pampered at the spa, and came home relaxed, and ready for more of the same. That's exactly how the weekend played out, but Monday contained something different. Something we seldom talk about because approaching the subject is a sticky proposition. <br /><br />I have long since known that my ethnicity is a question for some. Anyone who reads here regularly likely knows that I am actually a rather bland mix of Scottish, English, and German. There may have been a swarthy milkman somewhere in my genetic past, but I doubt it. It was just a genetic fluke that I inherited my Scottish mother's exceptionally pale skin, combined with my father's dark-brown-nearly-black hair. If you've a burning desire to know what I'm talking about, please feel free to check this post for a closeup of my avatar <a href="http://landofshimp.blogspot.com/2009/08/greetings-salutations.html"> picture.</a> <br /><br />From the nice Norwegian man who declared that I couldn't be American because I spoke English too well, to the woman at the auto-mechanic's who asked me where I was from when standing next to a Pakistani friend, because "you have such beautiful skin" and then was visibly shocked when I replied, "New Jersey...oh! Scottish, that's the origin of the pale skin." my perceived ethnicity tends to be influenced by the context within which it is viewed. It's no coincidence that when hanging out with a Japanese friend I'm frequently mistaken for being part Asian myself. Although most of my ancestry is decidedly WASPish, I tend to trip the "Otherness" meter for some. The most common question does have to do with being somehow Asian. People from India ask me if I'm part Indian, people from Iowa sometimes assume that I must have a more exotic mixture somewhere within me. It used to be more frequent, back when I wasn't covering up any gray, and my natural hair color is actually a shade darker. <br /><br />It had been an odd, but pleasant day. Sheila had to attend a conference in town, and would be checking into her hotel on Monday evening, before flying out again on Wednesday. She's not from Colorado, and therefore I wanted to make sure she had a chance to see one of the more impressive sights in the state: The High Plains. Climbing up through the Rockies, heading towards Breckenridge on 285 you round a bend and there they are. Vast beyond the telling of it, incredibly beautiful, and incongruous considering that the elevation is close to 12 thousand feet. <br /><br />Of course, there were some challenges. We've been having insanely high winds, and we were accompanied by the sound of wind howling throughout. Just as we reached the plains, a small snow squall descended, plunging temperatures and proving that the old, "If you don't like the weather in Colorado, wait a minute." tends to be true. Breckenridge turned out to be having some extensive road work done on their main street, so we decided to have lunch back in Fairplay, on our way back down the mountains. <br /><br />Fairplay has exactly two claims to fame, and one of them is only mine. That's the town I drove to pick up my dog Puddles, and it is also the town upon which the creators of South Park based their show. It's not big, or impressive, but it's there, and it has two readily accessible restaurants. We stopped at a cafe, hungry, wind blown, slightly chilled and in the middle of their smallish lunch rush. <br /><br />The food was neither good or bad, simply filling and welcome for that. At first we both admired the rustic interior, the mountain-ambiance, and the low ceiling to keep in the warmth, hold out the cold. By the end of the meal we were both glad to be shut of the place as one patron there was attempting to kill us both dead with the power of her stony stare. Unfortunately she had plenty of company in that endeavor.<br /><br />She was an older woman, and from the moment we walked in, she had a new hobby: giving us the hairy eyeball. The stink-eye. An uninterrupted, affronted concentration of disapproval. What was worse was that as we sat, the cafe filled up. There was no waiting area, the waiting diners lined the walls, and three other people joined in staring in as unfriendly a fashion as possible at our booth. We weren't the only out-of-towners there. It was apparent that there were several other people thwarted by the construction in Breckenridge. The hostess hollered at people to get out of the way of the kitchen, and as locals joined the waiting throng, more unfriendly stares joined the older woman's. It was bizarre, they barely gave it a break. On the rare occasion that I looked up and She-of-the-Stony Glare was actually engaged in eating, I needed only to move my gaze a fraction before I found somebody else had taken her staring place. <br /><br />For once in my life I was cowed into silence. I know how unlikely that seems, but at that point I had only one hope, that we could get the hell out of there before Sheila noticed the seething stares around us. Sheila's Filipino. Although born in the U.S. and as much a citizen as I am, with a Masters in French Literature to boot, I knew exactly why we were on the receiving end of the death glares. <br /><br />As we left, the woman who had started the glare fest was departing before us. Evidently only aware that there was someone behind her in the doorway, she held the door open, and I had a moment of hope. When I thanked her, and she saw who she was holding the door for, that woman yanked her hand away as if the door handle was red hot. <br /><br />Of course it turned out that Sheila had been well aware of what was going on. When we got to the car she mentioned wanting to get out of there, a feeling I shared. <br /><br />Every other time in my life when someone has clearly questioned my ethnicity it has been in a friendly fashion. An attempt at inclusion by the people who have asked me if one of my parents are Indian. A simple curiosity from the people who have assumed that somewhere in my veins runs a tie to another land. It was the first time in my life I had experienced hostility. When Sheila brought that up, I said, "Well, that wouldn't explain why they were staring at me, I'm about the whitest person most people have ever seen." indicating my skin color, but my eye color and hair color have raised questions before, and I knew. I think my friend did too. <br /><br />There is something ugly happening in American. A reemergence of overt racism. Jan Brewer passes into law things in Arizona that will have people within the United States forced to present their papers. A person running for Governor in the South declares that one of his goals is to have the driver's license exam given in English only. People protesting actions taken by the president carry signs depicting him in the most outrageous of racial terms. We all know this to be true. <br /><br />I set out to show my friend what great beauty my state contains, and accidentally showed her the ugliness that can exist side-by-side with that. <br /><br />I'm not sure what can be done about this, but we have to admit it is happening. We have to have the bravery to have the conversations. To bring up the subject. To admit that this cancer still thrives within our borders. It may have been in remission, but that is no longer the case. <br /><br />Do you know why I tried to divert Sheila from believing the Cafe patrons had been staring at us due to racial factors? I didn't know what else to do. <br /><br />This post is an attempt to rectify that. I knew, Sheila knew. It was such an ugly thing, I wanted to look away from it. Pretend it wasn't there, pretend it could have been anything else. It was my turn to be shaken. I was the hospitality ambassador worrying that the guest I was caring for would be having a less than optimal stay. I wanted so much for it to be anything other than what it was, that I tried to pretend it could have been. <br /><br />Therein lies the road to ruin if we continue to let this grow. This isn't really about what happened in a roadside cafe in an almost absurdly small town. I should have glared back. I should have stared that first woman down. I'm actually quite good at that. <br /><br />I didn't because more than anything I wanted to believe that I was mistaken. That it wasn't happening. That in 2010, we were simply better than that by now. <br /><br />It's one time. One occurrence, right? Does it really matter? <br /><br />As much as I want to say that it does not, I fear that it really does.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-42525934876978920862010-05-17T07:51:00.000-07:002010-05-17T09:12:17.240-07:00A Life More Ordinary<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S_FqlfQXJdI/AAAAAAAAALk/1CZZG3PCc54/s1600/surreal_art_5.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 226px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S_FqlfQXJdI/AAAAAAAAALk/1CZZG3PCc54/s320/surreal_art_5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472272214509692370" /></a><br />If someone had told me ten years ago that I would like life in an HOA controlled suburb, I'd have looked at them as if they had permanently parted company with their sanity. Yet, here we are, living the most conventional life imaginable, by all appearances, and happy in it. <br /><br />Although Colorado carries with it a certain panache, bringing to mind hearty souls bounding up and down mountains effortlessly, hiking trails, plunging down ski slopes, the fact of the matter is it is the Midwest, with all the attendant cliches. It's impossible to escape the taint of a lack-of-cool that goes along with that. <br /><br />When we lived in the metro area, in a house that was one hundred years old, and vaguely haunted to boot, there was a certain cool factor with that. I've come to discover that reliable electrical wiring may not carry with it any street cred, but it has a lot to recommend it. As does the peace, quiet, and unvarying atmosphere of a community where the houses look oddly similar, but the people turn out to have a wide range of viewpoints, despite needing to have their landscaping approved beforehand. <br /><br />I was standing by a wrought iron fence, contemplating the beautiful morning, the pleasant wind, and the clear blue sky as my dog gave a shrub a rather thorough examination with her nose. The quiet neighborhood, with people departing for work, children shuffling off to school, garbage cans neatly lining the street awaiting pickup was strangely soothing, until a decidedly unfriendly growl caused me to turn to my left. About a foot away stood a black Great Dane, one I've encountered before, usually with a sullen teenager attached to his collar, hauling him away with admonishments not to eat the passerby. Said teenager was nowhere in evidence and the Dane rather elegantly cleared the fence in one fluid motion. It would have been quite impressive, that an animal so huge could move in such a delicate fashion, and clear a five foot fence if it wasn't for the fact that he was eying Puddles like she was a Scooby snack. <br /><br />At the same moment, the House of Yorkie across the street suddenly deployed all four of their furry ballistic missiles when the garage door went up. I've met that pack before, and the first time I'd seen them I'd stared in amazement as the garage churned out a seemingly unending stream of yapping killers. As if they were being manufactured within. A vending machine of furry fury. <br /><br />I had been so lulled by the quiet morning that the explosion of canine aggression around me caught me slightly off-guard, and instead of reacting in anyway, I stood helpfully gaping rather than actually doing anything. As the Great Dane decided to advance, and the Yorkies imperiled my ankles, the street came alive with owners shouting "No!" in various tones of alarm. Previously sullen teenager appeared as if from between blades of grass, urged into action, he cleared the fence in an ungainly manner that I'm afraid might cost him future generations. Clutching his sensitive bits, he still managed to grab hold of his mammoth dog before the Black Knight could devour my own. Team Yorkie froze solid, quivering with the anger peculiar to all tiny terriers, but locked in place by one command from their owner. Everyone concerned spared me a quick, "Sorry! Are you okay?" and then as quickly as the serene morning had been shattered, it was restored. All the residents of the area had sensed a disturbance in the Force and had hurled themselves forward to slap a containment lid on the proceedings. <br /><br />That's what I like about the suburbs. Yes, I'm sure that long lives of repression don't do a body good, but they do make for more pleasant walks. My dearly departed Scotties and I would take a morning walk also and whereas tranquil mornings frequently had similar uproars, it was far rarer for something to be done about them. In particular there seemed to be no less than five pitbulls who were all wildly skilled at escaping their yards, a fact that thankfully never ended in bleeding tragedy but did have me practicing my canine command presence, regularly. The house that was covered in Christmas Tree stands attached to every available surface had indeed presented some visual interest, but it also housed a miserable drunk who would sometimes roll forth from the house, spouting obscenities at all hours of the day. <br /><br />On no less than six occasions, I exited my metro home to a street alive with patrol cars, on two occasions officers had guns drawn. I'd retreated to the basement until an armistice of sorts had been declared on both occasions. <br /><br />It turns out I suit a conventional life. As much as I'd like to think myself a free-thinker, a raging individual, and someone who could never be described as ordinary, I am fully content surrounded by rules and regulations. Fewer drunks, more Yorkie drill sergeants. I happily traded visual interest for tranquility. <br /><br />Last weekend my friend Cynthia stopped by for a visit, and watched as I let my dog in and out, over and over, trying to teach her about being in the garden without me. <br /><br />"You're the last person I thought would like the suburbs," she commented after asking if I'd gone to war with the HOA, and I replied that they'd yet to bother me in anyway, "this just doesn't seem like you." <br /><br />There was always something happening around my house in Denver, some of it fun, some of it a nuisance, most of it disruptive. Strangely enough it wasn't a good area for anyone with a reclusive bent to their personality. We knew all of our neighbors, what they did, where they worked. If an ambulance was parked in front of someone's home, the neighborhood turned out, regardless of the hour, a horde of people all murmuring essentially the same sort of things, "Is Tom all right? Do you know what happened?" <br /><br />At some point being a loner started to carry with it a vaguely alarming connotation, but like most people who favor reading as a pastime, I am frequently happiest when alone with a book. Neither social, nor anti-social. I like people a great deal, I find nearly everyone endlessly interesting. I think we are all only ordinary on the surface, concealing our very individual feelings, thoughts, hopes and dreams. Strangely enough, I have always believed that if you meet a person with purple hair, that individual is likely closer to ordinary than the guy in the golfing shorts. Purple hair is wearing his or her self-perceived difference as a badge of sorts, a contrived kind of personality. When you get to know people, get to know their stories, it seems no one is commonplace. They just wear clothes, drive cars, and live in houses that suggest that.<br /><br />Maybe I give people too much credit. After all, I confess that by the standards of most, I am closer to being the wild-haired, oddly attired, lady in a cabin, talking to logs than I am a soccer mom. Whatever a soccer mom truly is, as opposed to what she is perceived to be. <br /><br />I like the suburbs. It turns out they are less social. Although the Yorkie brigade tries to kill me on four mornings out of five, I've never exchanged more than a casual pleasantry with their owners. As far as I know each and every one of those dogs is actually named, "Nooooooo!". As I walked my dog past the recycling bins of the neighborhood, they all told a different story, but I've no names to attach to those bins, either. <br /><br />I know why I like the suburbs, they are oddly distant, and surprisingly mysterious. I'm left guessing about more. It wasn't exactly a surprise the day I found out that the tree stand house in my old neighborhood contained someone consistently pickled. It made sense. It fit. Here, where so much looks the same, I know less about these distant people. <br /><br />I like this life, in all its ordinary glory. The mild intrigue of a bin filled with champagne bottles, the ever watchful, distant-but-pleasant people who live here. I like guessing what is beneath the veneer of sameness. <br /><br />The dog owners withdrew, and the picture of an unvaried life was restored. It is somehow more pleasant to guess at what goes on behind those doors than it is to know. Life, or perhaps Yorkies, teem. <br /><br />I like the suburbs because they are strangely more intriguing.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-46070620472063293702010-05-06T10:37:00.000-07:002010-05-06T12:00:58.800-07:00A Mind Freshly Boggled<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S-MI2mjwztI/AAAAAAAAALc/D6u52h0e4O0/s1600/pot+leaf.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S-MI2mjwztI/AAAAAAAAALc/D6u52h0e4O0/s320/pot+leaf.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5468224106714418898" /></a><br />A couple of days ago my son introduced me to one of the more awkward moments in the life of a liberal parent. <br /><br />"Hey mom," he announced cheerfully, "I've been approved for Medical Marijuana!" <br /><br />Well, isn't that just <i>swell</i>? My inner-voice supplied dryly, but what came tripping off my tongue was, "Okay. I wasn't aware you were applying. You know this carries with it the same rules as anything else, no driving while under any kind of influence, and you do understand the legal implications?" <br /><br />He assured me he did. We did the entire "as a responsible parent, I tell you..." and "as a polite kid, I listen attentively and you'll just have to hope that's sticking..." verbal exchange. Every parent of a nearly full-grown adult out there knows all the steps, backwards and forwards to this particular Parental Polka. <br /><br />Serves you right for voting for it, doesn't it? Ye olde helpful, inner-voice of self-questioning handily offered up, and I replied with a thundering eyeroll to myself. A tricky move to pull off, but I feel as if it was warranted. <br /><br />Five years ago, at the age of fourteen my son crashed into a tree while skiing. A helmet saved him from any truly tragic injuries, but he did manage to rather thoroughly break his collar bone and the bone in the socket of his shoulder. It now requires surgery, but the Insurance Industry feels the need to try and pull out their extra-special favorite term "preexisting" to try and avoid this. We are engaged in a wrangling session that will doubtless end with said insurance ponying up the dough with as little grace as humanly possible. In the meantime my son's shoulder is in bad enough shape that a doctor approved him for weed. I feel certain my son finds reason to not exactly bemoan his fate, if you catch my drift. <br /><br />In my annual phone call to my mother, before she departs the shores of the U.S. for her half year in Scotland, I informed her of this and discovered that there may be something to genetics. Her response was in line with my own, "Better that than prescription pills, I suppose." Seeing as my son can currently dislocate his shoulder with an overly enthusiastic sneeze, I'm sure it does pain him enough to warrant something. In the contest between prescribed narcotic pain-killers, sometimes referred to as "Hillbilly Heroin" or reefer, I'm going with the Chronic as the lesser of two evils. <br /><br />I'm hard to shock. My mother is also somewhat difficult to shock. It seems she is more difficult to shock than I am, though. Must be something to do with age. <br /><br />Prior to me telling my mom that my son would be a legally sanctioned stoner, my son ended up chatting with my mom for a length of time, and I went about my daily chores. Around the corner of the laundry room, his astonished face appeared for a moment, and then withdrew. I thought little of it. He might just have been astounded by the sheer number of words she can produce, after all. I'm a less wordy version of my mother. Contemplate that, and take a couple Advil, no doubt. <br /><br />When I did fill her in, she had a bomb of her own to drop. Admittedly, it was not a bomb to her, but mine was a mind freshly boggled, and my jaw was still sagging a bit when I got off the phone. <br /><br />My son went first, "Mom, did you know Grandma met the Beatles?" <br /><br />Well yes, actually I did know that story. She met them before she ever came to the U.S. while she still lived in the U.K. A friend's father owned or was part-owner in a venue they played, and my mother and a friend were taken backstage to meet the Fab Four. I think one of them flirted a bit with her, causing the friend she was with to turn a decorous shade of green. My mom was really quite the knockout in her youth. <br /><br />"That's nothing," I gaped, "My mother, your grandmother, <i>watches The Daily Show!!</I>" <br /><br />The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The one that recently featured a story on Medical Marijuana in Denver. The one she brought up as soon as I told her that my son had a license to toke. If I'd been hoping, even on some remaining adolescent level to shock her with my liberality, I was the one who ended up flabbergasted. <br /><br />The same show that recently had a choral arrangement, complete with robes, of Jon Stewart singing the <i>Go F&^K Yourselves</i> hymn to Fox News for almost ten full minutes. <br /><br />Even my inner-voice of helpful suggestions and self-mocking was stunned into silence. <br /><br />When I told my son this, he adopted his own fish-faced expression, featuring the Goldfish Mouth of O. <br /><br />"I know, right?!?" Flint also watches The Daily Show. "And Colbert!" <br /><br />"Get outta here!?!" <br /><br />"I never would have guessed it." I was glad that he was also halfway between impressed and astonished. At least I had company on that. <br /><br />He left to meet some friends, and I continued about my day in something of a haze. <br /><br />My mother has always seemed vaguely prim to me. We don't have the sort of relationship where we trade jokes, or even talk that easily. I've always put it down to our differences. <br /><br />Maybe it's actually your similarities, whispers that inner-voice of self-examination. I willfully ignore it, and get back to my day.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-5071112449670273342010-04-13T07:49:00.001-07:002010-04-13T19:25:37.269-07:00Project Puddles has me MIA: Now with Pictures!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S8UnmvxnPuI/AAAAAAAAALU/UkY_IvnIQvI/s1600/DSC00039.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S8UnmvxnPuI/AAAAAAAAALU/UkY_IvnIQvI/s320/DSC00039.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459813669869666018" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S8Unflp8MNI/AAAAAAAAALM/eJPH3cOk4j8/s1600/DSC00034.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S8Unflp8MNI/AAAAAAAAALM/eJPH3cOk4j8/s320/DSC00034.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459813546894045394" /></a><br /><br /><br />Greetings, salutations! <br /><br />This is a very quick update just in case anyone is wondering where I've gotten to, which you likely aren't, but just in case? Here we go: <br /><br />For the past week I was working on outfitting our home for our newest addition, our new dog, named Puddles. She came with that name, and I think I'm going to go ahead and keep it. <br /><br />Puddles is a mixed breed, nine month old puppy, who is on her second (and final) rescue home. Initially she was left in a field in New Mexico, in a box with her litter mates. A rough start to a life, you will agree. However, it got better from there. She was found, and turned over to a rescue society. Puddles first placement was one of those misfires the universe sometimes brings about. Although her first people were good, and loving, they didn't have much experience with dogs. That combined with some personal strife led to the need for Puddles to find a new home. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S8UnW4nErqI/AAAAAAAAALE/cbL9Aw0gLNw/s1600/DSC00033.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S8UnW4nErqI/AAAAAAAAALE/cbL9Aw0gLNw/s320/DSC00033.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459813397363469986" /></a><br /><br />Two weeks ago, my husband was looking at rescue sites, allegedly to see what a Bull Terrier looked like. I say allegedly because he had just been to a local business that was hosting the Bull Terrier rescue group, so I'm guessing he would have recognized one on sight, but I digress, as is my way. <br /><br />So in his quest for Bull Terriers, he very accidentally stumbled across two Scottish Terriers available for adoption. Two Scotties, a Blue Heeler, an English Bulldog, and a Westie, as it happens. Accidents are funny that way. Particularly when you are entering "Scottish Terrier" into the search engine when allegedly looking for Bull Terriers. Less of an accident, more of a plot, I'd say, but what do I know? <br /><br />You may recall that I have just had my carpets entirely replaced. Contrarian that he is, this seemed to put Rob on the path to dogdom once more. Contrarian that I am, I married that stubborn cuss because we are rather similar. <br /><br />Rob emailed me this varied list of dogs, just in case I wanted to see them. He was doing so from the great distance of exactly one story of stairs over my head. When he returned from his home office Bull Terrier quest, he asked about the dogs he had seen. Had I opened my email yet? Oh, and there was a dog with the inauspicious name of Puddles, up for adoption. <br /><br />An hour later, the name Puddles kept popping into my head, and I finally just went and looked for her myself. <br /><br />And the rest, as they say, is rather predictable. On Sunday, after completing our adoption paperwork, home visit and interview, we went to pick up Puddles who is purported to be a Scottish Terrier/Basset Hound mix. Somewhere in her lineage there may have been a basset, and there certainly was some sort of terrier, but mostly Puddles is a dog with many ingredients in her genetic makeup. <br /><br />She has separation anxiety issues that are already starting to show improvement. Part of what happened with Puddles is that her people were on their first ever dog, and didn't realize Puddles would need some good routines to rely upon. All of her routines tended to be negative, and reinforced fears of abandonment. She's learned about walks, toys, having her teeth brushed (there is an exceptionally long story to go with that, but I'll spare you) and some other "It's good to be a dog" type of things. <br /><br />This isn't about to turn into the Days of My Dog Blog, but you may not have seen me in your comment sections lately. I'll be back, in all my wordiness, but for right now I'm establishing my pack leadership. You will be relieved to know this does not actually involve my having to pee on anything. <br /><br />As for the carpets, I purchased a steam cleaner, just in case Puddles lived up to her name. <br /><br />Everyone take care, and I will see you around soon!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S8UnMNhJDrI/AAAAAAAAAK8/4oEe6p68AKw/s1600/DSC00032.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S8UnMNhJDrI/AAAAAAAAAK8/4oEe6p68AKw/s320/DSC00032.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459813213997174450" /></a>Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com54tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-88762270687480894482010-03-27T15:20:00.000-07:002010-03-27T16:02:04.791-07:00Banishing the BordelloRight, so now that anyone seeing that title elsewhere will think I'm on a crusade against a House of Ill Repute, the time has come to reveal the aforementioned Light Fixtures and the Sickly Beige. <br /><br />When I described the light fixtures we need to replace as being befitting of a Western Bordello, did your mind conjure anything like this: <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66FbOdO1YI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/USyDtYgp9B0/s1600/DSC00031.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66FbOdO1YI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/USyDtYgp9B0/s320/DSC00031.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5453442901575914882" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Or this? <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66F7ndykjI/AAAAAAAAAKE/ukQuBhggLfk/s1600/DSC00025.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66F7ndykjI/AAAAAAAAAKE/ukQuBhggLfk/s320/DSC00025.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5453443458044957234" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Please note that you might be perceiving a slight haze in the air. No, it is not evidence that a malevolent spirit lurks in my home. I had the oven set to clean, you see. Since it was one of the few times the sun has deigned to grace us with its presence, I had to act quickly, ghosts of roast tomatoes in the air or no. <br /> <br /><br />Here's a picture of the new paint job: <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66HqfhFRRI/AAAAAAAAAKM/EiGq9xTCT4s/s1600/DSC00026.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66HqfhFRRI/AAAAAAAAAKM/EiGq9xTCT4s/s320/DSC00026.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5453445362876761362" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />And here you get to see the sickly beige, and the tremendous mess of moving, all in one. Yes, it was the messiest of times, it was the most chaotic of times, etc. etc.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66IArxl3BI/AAAAAAAAAKU/vr4HQjYbBkQ/s1600/accent.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66IArxl3BI/AAAAAAAAAKU/vr4HQjYbBkQ/s320/accent.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5453445744124353554" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Just for grins, here is what those two rooms looked like when we looked at the house: <br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66JeuTOv1I/AAAAAAAAAKc/YO1Z-O3tkro/s1600/olddining.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66JeuTOv1I/AAAAAAAAAKc/YO1Z-O3tkro/s320/olddining.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5453447359710019410" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66KAmchLDI/AAAAAAAAAKs/0OenlSEtJp4/s1600/oldliving.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66KAmchLDI/AAAAAAAAAKs/0OenlSEtJp4/s320/oldliving.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5453447941717044274" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Furniture for the living-room will be delivered this week, so if you're picking up on the entire wide open, empty spaces thing, there's a reason for that. At present there is nothing in the living room. Other than a haze of oven smoke, that is. <br /><br />Then finally we bring you the baby of the hideous light fixture family. The wall-hugging sconce. His days are numbered, oh yes they are. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66OKSKA-lI/AAAAAAAAAK0/kksFDDuvsgc/s1600/DSC00027.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S66OKSKA-lI/AAAAAAAAAK0/kksFDDuvsgc/s320/DSC00027.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5453452506115930706" /></a>Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-88719656088383118022010-03-24T09:28:00.000-07:002010-03-24T10:15:53.907-07:00Without the GlueI think I'll call him Ivan for the purposes of this story. Yes, Ivan seems a fitting enough name. He's a tall, silver-haired man. A six foot three veteran of Vietnam, who says that life has proved more difficult than war. I take his word for it, and this coworker of my husband should know. Not only was he once a very large target, crouching in a jungle, probably pondering the inconvenience of being huge when hunkering was at a premium, he lost a wife to cancer. He saw a son of his go to jail. <br /><br />Ivan also had chandeliers recently installed in his large home by, "Three men and a boy." <br /><br />"I think that's an expression," my husband said uncertainly as he related Ivan's words about installation, as well as the cost. The next thing we need to have done here is to begin replacing light fixtures. Ours are hideous and look as if they belong in Western Bordello run by a Madam with a Puritanical streak. Try to conjure that image in your mind, now multiply the ugliness by two and you'll be about there on these rustic, yet garish monstrosities. <br /><br />"It's either that or a labor law violation," I remarked as I search my memory banks for any expressions involving a quartet. Visions of high wire trapeze acts were dancing around in my mind, I firmly squashed them and got back to the matter at hand, "Ivan had three chandeliers installed at once?" <br /><br />I don't know Ivan all that well, I've met him twice, or perhaps thrice. On one of those occasions I made the mistake of saying, "Have we met before?" and evidently introduced the concept, rather late in this gentleman's life, that someone could forget such an impressive figure of a man. One of my failings is that I don't recall faces well, but I hadn't forgotten anything important about him, I assure you. <br /><br />Ivan lives in a massive house on a golf course in another suburb. He loves his vast home, far too large a place for just Ivan and his remaining son, but he adores it. Ivan has a tree room, a room in which he plunks down his fully decorated Christmas tree once the seasons passes, and from which he retrieves the same fully decorated tree when the season rolls around again. Just blow off some dust, and you're good to go. <br /><br />I like Ivan. He's a tad eccentric, and a little bit strange. Just my kind of fellow. He purchased that mammoth house with seven bedrooms many years ago. Ivan has three children, he met a woman with three children. Plans were made to form a living Brady Bunch scenario, but not long after Ivan made his purchase things went rather spectacularly wrong in the relationship. I don't know the specifics, but that's how Ivan phrased it when telling my husband that although he left the relationship behind, he was always glad of the house. Something happened, he was hurt, and he carried on. Maybe he finally felt hidden in there, I don't know. Less exposed, more secure, less cramped. I do like a man that will tell you he has a Tree Room, and imply that a circus act has installed his lighting, all without further explanation. <br /><br />Ivan's not like me. He's not a man prone to elaboration. He'll tell you that being Large in a war zone is not an easy thing, but that's all he'll tell you about that. It's up to you to fill in the details in whatever way you choose. Things went spectacularly wrong, he found that the lady in question was not who he thought, and that's all he'll tell you on the other thing. His son made a mistake, and Ivan hired a lawyer, but there was still a substantial price to be paid. You do what you can, he said. That's where the story ended. Ivan cuts rather close to the bone in just a few choice words. <br /><br />Yet he once said something that contained such a huge truth within his spare words, that it is worth sharing. He has three children, one son with MS who lives with him still, another son who erred in some corporate setting, and was packed off to jail for eighteen months for it. A daughter with whom he has a strained relationship, but they're trying. The reason he'll give for that caught me, and held me. <br /><br />"Every life, every family has someone within it that is the glue. The person who holds it all together, and makes it right, makes it work," he said. "When my wife died, I found out that person wasn't me." <br /><br />And all that followed makes sense, but he likes his life, he loves his children. He's got good advice to give, such as, "Don't let your cat outside here, or the Coyotes will get him. Happened to my girlfriend, all we ever found was the paws." <br /><br />Funny, and gruesome, eccentric and wise. Some people are good with words in the most casual of ways. <br /><br />Every time I think of Ivan, even when it comes to chandeliers, I end up thinking about my life and who in it is the glue. <br /><br />How I might manage if I had to. How grateful I am that I have not had to find out precisely how that might look, or feel and may I never. <br /><br />He makes me think of the good in my life, hold it closer, value it even more dearly. <br /><br />All as I admire a man who learned to live his life without the glue.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com109tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-54397433723738672812010-03-14T07:12:00.000-07:002010-03-14T09:38:50.775-07:00Painting with Passive AggressionAt long, long last we have banished the last of the beige in this house. There was much rejoicing and some shouting with glee to be heard, that's for sure. The last remaining area was the vast, echoing living-room, dining-room area and the transformative powers of having a color I don't despise on the walls cannot be underestimated. I wish I could hug the entire room at once, now that it has stopped offending my eyes. I'll attach pictures in a bit, after I take them, that is. <br /><br />In photographs that color just looks dull, or neutral. In life it looked like the sad after effect of food poisoning following the consumption of oatmeal. Grayish-brown, tinged with an underlying bile-yellow. Despite looking like a course of antibiotics was needed to cure the walls of some dreadful infection, it had been in place for years before we got here. <br /><br />Although we frequently do our own painting, we opted for pros in the two-story room. Visions of plummeting from scaffolding or high ladders danced in our heads, so we called in people who merrily balance atop these precarious perches as a profession. Really, that's just not something you wish to discover is outside of your skill set in the middle of a project. Gravity being a harsh task master, and all that. <br /><br />At our old house we were the veterans of many a remodeling project. During one six-month period we had an addition constructed that was close to 1000 square feet. On another occasion we had the kitchen and bath ripped down to the studs and reconstructed from scratch, thereby releasing dust circa 1912. Even the dust was made of tougher stuff a century ago. Swiffers were not equal to the task, by a long shot, I had to mop the walls to be rid of the last of it, and even then, I have my doubts. There is likely a pile of it remaining in that old house, and it is probably hatching a plot for world domination even as I type. The darned stuff clung with such determination that I can only assume it had an actual, sentient quality to it. It seemed to elude me with ease. That's a story for another time, though. <br /><br />Just saying, we've danced our way through many a quote process, and dealt with contractors of every description. We even had one general contractor (briefly) die mid-project. His heart stopped entirely in the midst of a round of golf, and four retired Navy SEALs waiting to play through brought the man back from complete heart failure. We could never quite decide if that meant we had been cursed by some really perverse fairy or not. After all, I've heard a lot of remodeling horror stories but we are the only people I know who experienced a work stoppage because their contractor was recovering from a brief bout with death. <br /><br />In a complete aside, my very favorite part about that story is that the four men who saved Hal went on to play the rest of the round before stopping by the hospital to see how he was doing. I'm no shrinking violet, but I think having someone briefly perish in front of me would likely fell me like a tree for, at least, the rest of the day. For these guys, a man down on the seventh hole was something that happened before the eighth, I guess. <br /><br />We've been around the block and heard the various stories that people will put forth to try and disparage their competition. It's just the nature of the business, and in a tough economy, it becomes more so as various contractors wrangle for jobs. Now, with painting, there are only so many ways a job can go wrong. It's not like construction, where other contractors will hint that so-and-sos company didn't lay duct work correctly, and their poor clients now live in an airless box, to this day. Pretty much the worst a painting contractor can imply about an interior job is that so-and-so won't provide proper coverage, or will buy inferior paint while charging for the superior stuff. Or paint everything puce before disappearing into the ether forever, money in hand. <br /><br />The quotes ranged around so wildly there was absolutely no way to determine how much the actual job was worth. The highest quote was well over three thousand, leading me to remark that I assumed the paint would be kissed onto the walls by a host of angels for that price. The lowest turned out to be eight hundred and I can only assume that involves hopefully hurling paint around by the bucketful and calling it a day. <br /><br />But the strangest sales technique I encountered was from a painter I had used previously, one I knew to quote a bit high, but do good work. He actually didn't end up quoting on the job. I had him scheduled, he had to cancel, and we re-scheduled. In the interim, I met the painter I hired, and who did a beautiful job, I might add. So I sent off an email telling the other painter that I had no wish to waste his time, and that hopefully we could work together in the future. Thus began the weirdest volley of emails I've ever had from any contractor. <br /><br />I probably shouldn't have mentioned the fact that the reason I was canceling was that I'd received a low quote that, having worked with him before, I was sure he wasn't going to be able to match. I completely understand that anyone trying to keep a business afloat in tough times would be irked by that. I wish I'd thought of that before, you see, it might have stopped this painter, who I'll call Ted, from implying that the men I hired were likely vagabonds, thieves and would-be murders. <br /><br />This is one of those instances wherein people reading can end up thinking, "Oh har, har, surely you are overstating for humor." You'd think, right? So I'm going to cut and paste from the emails: <br /><br />"<i>Does he have current liability insurance?<br />Do you know the reference and/or the kind of work he has done for the references?<br />Has he given you a thorough estimate that spells out the project?</i><br /> <br />Okay, now first of all that's none of his concern, but I'm not rude by nature. They are also fair questions to ask when hiring someone. I answered in the affirmative on the first two, and knew enough about contractors and estimates to know that the third one is actually one of the bigger tricks contractors pull. For instance, one contractor looked me dead in the eye and gave me a piece of paper that listed the paint cost as $775 dollars, which only if the meaning of life is contained in the pigment could that be true, and I've done enough painting to know that. Another told me it would be over a thousand for paint and materials. The painter who did the job gave me the receipts and the actual cost on paint and materials: $238.49. Just because there's a number in a box on an estimate, it doesn't mean much. <br /><br />I didn't bother to tell Ted that because implying that a person is in a trade involving much broad fiction is not exactly a polite move. <br /><br />I again bid him a good day, and told him I was pleased he was so busy, as he assured me he was. I'm quite willing to believe that, his company does very good work. I was a little surprised that he was fighting so hard to try and dissuade me from hiring someone else, but hey, in that kind of business you really do have to expect that contractors will do their best to win your business. It was actually the paragraph proceeding it that made my jaw drop: <br /><br />"<i>I am not trying to scare you, but a lot of times when guys are in the desperate mode, they do irrational things. I would be highly suspect if the guy is half of what others have quoted you. I know we are not the least expensive out there, but know that we provide exceptional value for the quality we provide. Not to mention the caliber of individuals that I would bring into your home.</i>" <br /><br />Holy crow. Desperate and irrational? Plus an implication that I was hiring criminals? Also, in my personal experience, when anyone says, "I'm not trying to scare you..." and it isn't a close friend? They're doing their level best to scare the tar out of you. <br /><br />There's always some risk attendant to letting people you don't know well into your home. It's just part of the risk of being alive. Or in leaving the house, for that matter. I'm even willing to believe that Ted was honestly concerned about our welfare, because I had mentioned that I knew this guy had quoted low because he needed the work. I knew this because the man had told me that, to my face. In turn I had asked him, "Okay, so what would your quote be normally?" He said, "On labor, it's a twelve hundred dollar job. Don't let anyone charge you more than that." <br /><br />That's the guy I ended up hiring, and I paid his regular price. He'd showed up on time, been very forthright, and he didn't impugn anyone else's character to get the job. <br /><br />In my own turn I lobbed back something to Ted that, while true, is also a way of pulling a passive aggressive end to a debate. I told Ted, truthfully, that this was a painter my husband had found, and that when stubborn people marry you end up ceding to each other on a regular basis. It's true, but it was also an attempt to shut the door on the conversation. Another thing I've found is that male contractors tend to back down when someone, in this case me, produces a stubborn 6'4" husband as the buck-stops-there. People may assume, because my appearance doesn't quite match my interior, that I'm easy to push around. Oddly enough, no one ever assumes that about my husband. So yes, I played the card that essentially reads, "Yeah, take that up with my large, obstinate husband, it'll go well. Ha. Ha. Ha." <br /><br />There's only one thing that gave me pause. Back when I met Ted and had him paint our kitchen/family room I had asked him another important question, "Do you use subcontractors for any of your work?" <br /><br />I asked him because it's an important question, and one I urge people to ask. Some contractors use subs for labor, which is fine, but make sure they use the same ones over and over. That they are not contracting people they don't know well. Hal, our risen contractor, made a big mistake on our addition. He hired a sub contractor on drywall that he'd never worked with before. The crew did great work, but Hal, due to the entire "briefly dead, back soon!" footnote on our project, didn't pay this contractor in a timely manner. Causing the biggest drywalling crew boss in the land to walk into the half completed addition, knock on an interior door, and try to muscle a check out of me right then and there, by means of threatening me. <br /><br />I'm married to a big guy, I barely even notice when someone tops six feet these days, because my daily reality is a guy who dwells far above me. This drywaller was Gigantic. Paul Bunyan's cousin who went into contracting, essentially. Probably somewhere around 6'8" and he was clearly trying to use that to his advantage. He encountered the fact that, realistically, I may look a bit China Doll-ish, but that conceals my inner Roller Derby Queen, who only comes out in special circumstances. For instance, when a mammoth contractor demands a check, while attempting to chase me backwards through my house. For the approximately six seconds I was backing away in confusion, I'll bet he thought it was working. The seventh second proved him wrong when I blew up like a volcano directly in his face. People across the street heard me, and we lived in a brick house. The man's hair practically blew back in the gale force of my extreme fury .<br /><br />I simply lucked out in that the guy was all bluster, and not dangerous, but believe me when I say, the entire reason I flew into the loudest, and most threatening rage of my life was that as I took one last step backwards in shock, it occurred to me: The security door on the front door behind me was locked, if I didn't back that man out of my house, and he actually had any ill intent, I was in very, very serious trouble. <br /><br />He retreated, practically cowering. I called Hal to inform him that the man needed to be paid by the end of the day, or there would be consequences beyond the telling of it. Make no mistake though, that had scared the bejeebers out of me and I've been very careful ever since. A further footnote to that is that my husband does not yell. I've heard him yell on exactly three occasions, the man doesn't shout unless safety is on the line and, to understate it, he got a little loud in his own turn. Poor Hal. <br /><br />I mention this because, after I had retrieved my jaw from the floor, and rounded up my eyebrows from the lap they were taking around my entire skull after reading Ted's email, I remembered something. I'd told Ted the story of the Towering Drywall Man. <br /><br /><i>"I'm not trying to scare you, but..."</i><br /><br />I do have to wonder if the end of that sentence should really have been, "...I know how to." <br /><br />It remains possible that Ted truly was just concerned that the painter I'd hired was going to murder us all in our beds, and that I'd end up having my body identified by means of the remnants of my tattered left earlobe. <br /><br />The last I heard from Ted and his portents of doom was to not pony up any dough until the job was done. That's sound advice. <br /><br />I've dealt with a lot of contractors, I've seen a lot of sales techniques that range from the above-board to the sly implication, but I'll tell you something, I don't think Ted would have chosen that approach had he been communicating solely with my husband. Gender intimidation as a sales technique? <br /><br />I'll pass.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-24198345321012270912010-03-11T10:04:00.001-08:002010-03-11T12:40:23.057-08:00An Unimaginable ChoiceI feel like I should slap a warning label on this particular story. I love to write non-fiction humor but this is a story from the land that funny forgot. The point isn't the trauma, or the horror though. At the root of this there exists something beyond admirable, if difficult. It's the story of a difficult woman, who made some sad choices, some self-destructive ones too. That could be anyone's story, really. It describes most of us, but this woman did something I'm not sure I could do, and it is the stuff of nightmares. Some of them mine, I suppose. <br /><br />It's the story of how my grandmother saved the life of a woman she hated, and in doing so made my entire life, as it stands, possible. She just had to do the unthinkable to accomplish that. <br /><br />The thing is, with this sort of story, why tell it? There's the "well, it could help someone know that it's possible to overcome." That's entirely true. We are, all of us, more than the sum total of our traumas. I am, and I always have been. This part of my life is no more important today than any of the other things you might know about me. That I like to make people laugh is really how I'd rather be thought of, and about. <br /><br />I'm very protective of other people when it comes to my childhood. I talk about my love of books, and the good memories I do have but I don't share many stories often, and there are only a select few who know of this memory. I don't like to upset people, why should I? I'm fine. Folks, I'm beyond fine. I'm happy, and I have a lovely life. It took hard work to get there, for instance, I wouldn't really recommend my twenties to anyone. It was what it was, and I made a good life, with some incidental tears, sweat, and the occasional horrific dream. <br /><br />But this isn't really about me. I've tried to figure out a way to tell this story without referencing the center part of it, and there isn't a way to do that. So, with many a disclaimer, warnings galore and not a little trepidation on my part, I'm going to launch here in a moment, and tell you how thirty years after her death, I realized how much someone cared about me. I guess bravery can wear a lot of faces. That when I say, "We are more than the sum total of our traumas." We are also more than the sum total of our failings. <br /><br />When I was six-years-old my mother left my father, an event with much drama around it. She took with her my half-brother, and I remained behind with my father and grandmother . She left because, as she will tell you, my father was going to end up killing her. She's not wrong, and her life has been hard. Please don't judge her. I don't, I love her even if I feel rather distant from her. If you knew her? You'd like her, she's a pretty good person on top of everything else. <br /><br />I caught a bit of guff from a longtime friend not long ago when I referenced some of the more positive things about my father here, and didn't mention the bad. I wasn't concealing anything, the good parts of my father, of both of my parents really, are what I remember these days. <br /><br />I suppose people could say that my mother is overly dramatic. That she's overstating something, but sadly, she wasn't. Whatever the official diagnosis on my father's problems might be it is lost to time. He's long dead, but he had a long, sad story and a violent one. Every now and then my father would snap, and it was as if he was an entirely different person. Honestly, I remember that, and it really was like being in the presence of someone I didn't know. My mother describes it as such, also. He fought in a war, and was pulled from combat following a breakdown. He was hospitalized for over a year, long before I was born, but ever after he had exceptionally violent episodes. Stress brought it out in him, and three times he very nearly killed my mom. He once beat her head on an asphalt driveway, as a for instance. A neighbor intervened. It was the seventies, the approach to domestic violence was quite different. <br /><br />When you're five-years-old life is pretty simple, or rather, your assessment of a situation is pretty simple. The person who is bleeding is the wronged person. Whoever has the biggest owie has been done wrong, and that's all there is to it. <br /><br />I've heard this story more than I've ever told it. My mother tells it frequently. She will tell it to people who know me, on the rare instances that they are in the same space. I really wish she wouldn't. For one thing, it scares the stuffing out of them. What exists in my memory is a slippery, rather terrifying thing. I was playing "boat" on the bed in my room, with my brother and two neighbor children. Heaven help them, by the way. Oddly enough they weren't allowed to play at my house again. <br /><br />There was an argument about an oven, of all things. My father had cleaned the oven, and my mother was irritated, tired, and snapped at him about that oven. It could be something that small for him. The landing in front of my room was next to a staircase, with a radiator up against the bannister. It was a bending staircase, a back staircase. What I saw was this, my five foot tall mother, being choked by my six foot tall father, and a great deal of screaming. The force of the attack propelled my mother backwards into the radiator, and my father continued to choke her, bending her back over the staircase. The only thing that might have saved her life was actually if she had fallen, it would have been a fall of about six feet and she might have survived that. She wasn't going to survive being throttled, and my brother and I (along with our poor, terrified guests) were locked in place, screaming our collective lungs out. <br /><br />The next thing I remember is a lot of blood spurting from my father's head. This is where the fact that I've been told this story so often comes in. I can tell you that what happened is that my grandmother hit my father in the head with a lamp, hard in order to stop him from killing my mom and that blow was no joke. <br /><br />I have no memory of that blow, I only remember the blood afterward and screaming, "You hurt my daddy!" at someone. I didn't really understand choking, but I understood bleeding. <br /><br />And having heard so often, "Nana hit your father in the head with a lamp." I assumed that it was my tiny, Scottish grandmother, over for a visit. I don't know why I never questioned that. I knew my grandmother lived in Scotland, but she visited, so that was possible. However, my grandmother from Scotland is four feet ten inches tall, and alive to this day. My other grandmother was 5'9". I don't know why I still have no memory of the fact that it was my father's own mother who brained her son with a lamp, and saved a bunch of lives that day. <br /><br />My mother has a habit of repeating the same stories, over and over when I talk to her on the phone. Don't we all? I've gotten into the habit of trying to prod her along when I've heard one too often. I know why she brings up that memory so often. She feels guilty about having left me. People judge her for that, too. I forgave her long ago. I don't see her all that often, but I send her flowers on Mother's Day, give her the occasional spa certificate. My mother was in a terrible situation, and she had to make a terrible choice. It happens in life. She'll tell you that there was no way to take me, and she's right. I was my father's only child, and he never would have let me go. <br /><br />My mother was telling me this story again, I don't know why. I tend to hear it every couple of years, and she doesn't need to ask for my compassion any longer. I prompted her, "And then Nana hit him in the head with a lamp." <br /><br />"And he picked her up by the hair, and threw her." Yup, another delightful gem that I'd just as soon not revisit but, it is what it is. I probably sounded a little bored, or impatient. <br /><br />"Yes, Pat...", my mother continued, and if life had a soundtrack, there would have been a needle screeching for me. <br /><br />"What? What did you just say?" <br /><br />"Pat hit your father in the head." <br /><br />Pat was my father's mother. The woman I lived with growing up until I was twelve, and she died of cancer of the almost everything. She was an alcoholic, as it happened. One rather funny sticking point is that my mother remembers her as not drinking much before I was in bed, but I suppose that's because when my mother knew her best, that's what she did. Pat went on to drink all day, every day but she took care of me when I was little, almost from the time I was born. My mother worked and went to school. <br /><br />A lot could probably be said about that, about my grandmother who had lost the husband she adored years before I was born. She wasn't fun, but she wasn't horrible either. She did sort of nearly kill me as one of her last acts, but it wasn't intentional. Pat was a smoker, who would take a bottle to bed with her. She managed to set her mattress on fire three separate times, and on the last occasion, didn't realize she'd done it. I assume she felt sick (because she truly was, the cancer was in her brain by the time it was discovered), and after she dropped her forgotten cigarette, she went downstairs to her den to watch TV. The house caught fire, with me on the same floor. I'm fine, but that's yet another thing I don't recommend. Waking up with the house on fire. <br /><br />It is a sad, but true fact, that is the only time I ever lashed out at my grandmother. When I awoke to bedlam, I threw open the window -- dumb, but I was twelve, and couldn't breathe -- sucked in enough air to remain conscious and ran to the downstairs phone to call the fire department. When I discovered my grandmother, asleep in her den in our very large house, I woke her by yelling at her, "You almost killed me, you stupid drunk!" <br /><br />Not my proudest moment, and luckily not the last thing I ever said to her. She was taken to the hospital by the firemen, as was I, for smoke inhalation and there she was diagnosed with a cancer that took her life six months later. <br /><br />But for all her faults, when Pat saw her son attacking my mother, she tried to stop him. He evidently had pushed her down, hard, down the hall, out of my sight. Then she got up, grabbed a lamp, and did what I can't even imagine doing, she hit her own son with as much force as she humanly could. My mind always inserted my mother's mother into that, no image required. I knew the story, and it's very easy to think that a mother would attack the man attacking her daughter. It is a very different thing entirely for a mother to do that to her own child. My father was not the product of an abusive home, by the way. All of his problems seem to have started with Korea, his childhood was happy, even though he was a kid in the Depression. <br /><br />It becomes important to tell you that both of my parents were only children. I have no uncles, aunts or cousins. I have no idea what would have happened to me if my father had killed my mother. None. I suspect it would have changed a great deal. Foster care seems likely, although poor drunken Pat probably would have fought for me. I also suppose it's possible that my father would have simply stopped killing my mother, and jeez, you'd hope. Rather unlikely, and you'll just have to trust me on that. He never really just snapped out of his fits by himself. <br /><br />Pat stood by the side of her only son through all of his troubles. She hated my mother because Pat blamed my mom for many of them. Evidently my dad had been doing well for years. He'd studied in Ireland, he'd gotten his doctorate. When he came back from Ireland with his Scottish wife, and her son, he stopped doing well. If you think I'm blaming my mother, that's not the case, at all. My poor, tiny, rather brilliant, and exceptionally pretty mother had no clue what she was getting herself into when she married my father. <br /><br />I cannot imagine the horror of the choice Pat made. If you're a parent, heck, if you're able to read this and therefore human, I doubt you can imagine it either. I cannot imagine hitting my son with a lamp, or anyone for that matter. There'd have to be imminent peril for another human being involved. I cannot imagine the desperate moment in which she realized it was the only way to keep him from killing that Scottish woman. And then she did it, and he threw her across the room. <br /><br />So she didn't stop him, did she? No, but she set in motion the thing that did, and she tried like hell to stop him. The thing that stopped him, as he turned around to get my mother was a five-year-old's reaction to blood. When I saw my father bleeding, I ran directly into the proceedings, and it all ground to a halt. <br /><br />Why tell this story? Well, you see, when I hung up the phone, I had to sit down. Everything in my life, the one I cobbled together through sheer force of will. My determination to be happy, meeting my ex-husband who is the father of my son, meeting my husband now and being loved, and happy? All of that is a path that would have changed forever had my father killed my mother. I never realized that the person I had to thank for that was a woman who made a very hard choice, a choice I wouldn't wish upon another soul. Even if my father hadn't managed to kill my mother, that was the catalyst for leaving my dad. If it hadn't been such a complete horror show, she might have continued to stay, particularly if he had stopped on his own. Because he had to be stopped, my mother knew that he was capable of killing her, or at least she came to believe it firmly that day. <br /><br />What really struck me is that it clicked with something else. When I woke my grandmother up, tearfully shouting at her in a the sort of blind howl of outrage only a truly terrified kid can muster, she did something. Something I never mention when I tell the story of the night I woke up to the house afire. I never thought it mattered, because I had already called the fire department. And I have always been angry about that fire. <br /><br />Pat got up, and ran towards the fire, to try and put it out. She collapsed, and as she lay on the floor struggling she yelled, "Call the fire department." <br /><br />She was still trying to crawl up the stairs when the firemen got there. I never thought about how I lived with a very unhappy, troubled, but almost insanely brave woman until I found out about that lamp and her impossible choice. One of many, I suspect. Until that phone call, I never thought about my grandmother in any positive sense, or her courage in continuing to stay in an impossible situation she hated. Pat didn't like me much, but I guess she must have loved me. <br /><br />I doubt I ever knew her very well. There was more to her. There was more to her than the unhappy drunk who set houses on fire, and always made me feel an unwelcome burden. <br /><br />There's more to everyone, isn't there?Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-58458977739476323452010-03-07T08:45:00.000-08:002010-03-07T11:05:37.592-08:00My Label Reads...Sitting at a kitchen table in Texas, gathered for the wake of a man universally acknowledged to be quite the curmudgeon, the bomb was dropped. <br /><br />"Tell me one thing about your dad he wouldn't want us to know," David prompted his nine-year-old nephew. <br /><br />There wasn't any air conditioning, everyone had long since run out of things to say about David's deceased father, who had lived a long life and gone on to the hereafter without much tragedy being involved in the event. Everyone was at loose ends, sitting around talking over cups of coffee and beers that were rapidly becoming either too cool, or too warm to be enjoyable. <br /><br />The young boy looked around, and with a decidedly delighted grin announced at such a volume it went booming out to the living room, "My dad has a pimple on his butt that won't go away!" <br /><br />This is probably why whenever I think of Carl (whose name I am changing for extremely obvious reasons), I can't help but remember him as the unfortunate butt-pimple man. I don't know him well, to me he is one of my husband's Texas cousins, there's a passel of them, after all. <br /><br />"Carl's been transferred to Phoenix," my husband told me. <br /><br />"Carl..." I said vaguely, trying to search my memory banks, "which one is Carl, again?" <br /><br />"You know, the guy with the..." <br /><br />"Oh! Yes, him." And we went on to talk about Carl's promotion, as I wondered whether his backside was still blemished. What an association to have for a human being. If I ever see Carl again I'm going to have to stop myself from inquiring about the hindquarters in question, but you know I'll be wondering, wouldn't you? <br /><br />As an aside, Carl's likely a wonderful human being. He was in that kitchen to witness his son's over-share and didn't promptly ship his son off for medical experiments. In fact, at the present time he's paying to put that same child through college. Parents are, generally speaking, a forgiving lot. <br /><br />But we all know someone who exists in our memory with that sort of tag. So-and-sos niece, "You know, the one who used to be a stripper..." That woman's husband who had the unfortunate habit of writing bad checks. The neighbor who suffered from Lyme's disease, and in the grips of a delusion attacked his mailbox with a hammer at three o'clock in the morning. <br /><br />You know you've got someone in your memory like that. Someone who is known by whatever ill-fated thing happened to them, whatever misfortune has befallen them, whatever weird tag is the thing that pulls them up in your memory. Their most easily identifying characteristic. <br /><br />"You know, the one who lives in Seattle? Not the lawyer, the son who was going to make a fortune raising turtles? Him, anyway, turns out..." <br /><br />Those identifying labels. Some of them are good, of course, and we all hope we're known to someone by a good label, a positive tag. <br /><br />"Carolyn's son, the guy who married that beautiful Swedish girl? Yeah, that one. Anyway...." <br /><br />"Larry, you remember him, don't you? He has that big house in Tahoe..." <br /><br />For the most part we don't know how other people label us, remember us. Sometimes we do. Like my friend Tilly who found out she is known by the tag, "Oh, you did the raw food diet! Yes, of course, how are you?" and when she heard that, she had to flinch. Mainly what Tilly found out about the raw food diet was that it was only suitable for people living a hermetic existence, as it had certain side effects, you see. Luckily this did not seem to be the association being made. At least she hopes, better to be known as a Health-Nut than as being Self-Propelled. I changed her name, too just in case you were wondering. If it has to do with an individual's posterior, or the workings thereof, I tend to do that, funnily enough. No one wants to be known by anything relating to buttocks, that's my motto. <br /><br />Yesterday, I found out one of my labels. Whereas I might like to think that people remember me with some sort of wonderful tag, some highly flattering means of identifying me, chances are good someone, somewhere associates me with something I'd just as soon they didn't. I'll spare you what the majority of those might be, as I'd just as soon not promote the idea of remembering me as, "Oh! That woman who set Marta's stove on fire at New Years?" Yippee, like it's my fault the flambe went that far wrong? Clean your drip pans, woman or "Oh yeah, she split her skirt on the subway, didn't she?" and then half of NYC got to see what I was wearing underneath for the hour it took me to troop back to my hotel. What a spiffy walk of shame that was. Thanks for burning it into the recesses of your brain for all time. I know that's what happened to me with that one, too. <br /><br />I was taking a walk around the neighborhood, enjoying the beautiful day when I encountered my neighbor from across the street, Miranda, out for a stroll of her own. A lovely person, I might add. She had her mother with her, and took the trouble of introducing me. <br /><br />"From across the street." Miranda indicated me. <br /><br />"Hello, are you having a nice visit?" I asked, as Miranda's mother squinted at me. <br /><br />" You're from Florida, aren't you?" She asked, and I allowed as how I wasn't. Miranda pointed out that I lived in the beige house. No, not the smaller beige house, the big one. The one with the pool. I am evidently not particularly memorable. Then a look of recognition crossed her face, "Oh, you're the one with the spiky things, aren't you?" <br /><br />I managed to muster a laugh, as I nodded. I am indeed the one with the spiky things that I keep sticking up in the eaves, that kept falling out because the temperature had been too low for the epoxy to set properly. <br /><br />"Yes, that's me. Winning the war, at last." I admitted, and began forming the sentence that would bid them both a good day. <br /><br />"You're the one with the thing about birds, you're The Pigeon Lady." <br /><br />Ah c'mon! Couldn't I at least be known by something that sounds imposing, intimidating? Something that would send a warning out into the avian world that I am not a woman with whom to trifle? Something featuring The Impaler? The Conquerer? <br /><br />The Plucker, maybe? <br /><br />Oh well, at least it doesn't involve my butt. I hope and pray. <br /><br />Here, by the way, are the Spiky Things. That at least sounds vaguely imposing, right? <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S5PqHGQctII/AAAAAAAAAJU/kc6rwuzTgqU/s1600-h/100_0968.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S5PqHGQctII/AAAAAAAAAJU/kc6rwuzTgqU/s320/100_0968.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5445953782080648322" /></a>Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6665553674742661091.post-73496646886138495722010-02-20T16:31:00.000-08:002010-03-01T08:52:34.033-08:00That Need to Know<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S4vsYLBRwRI/AAAAAAAAAJM/BNkQGAEI0uo/s1600-h/humpty-dumpty.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EwW2G8KPkFk/S4vsYLBRwRI/AAAAAAAAAJM/BNkQGAEI0uo/s320/humpty-dumpty.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443704474626539794" /></a><br />Every now and then something catches my attention, and I am gripped by a need to know things that actually have nothing to do with my life. I referenced it a while back as being a desire to see both sides of a story before making up my own mind. That sounds terribly fair-minded of me, but I'm really not sure that's accurate. What it comes down to is this: my favorite dog breeds tend to run towards terriers, and there is no coincidence in that. I like tenacity in people, I tend to like it in animals too. <br /><br />In other words, watch it when I get a hold of a bone, because I may not stop until such time as you wish to brain me with something heavy, only stopping when you are absolutely certain I've lost the ability to bring up the subject ever, again. <br /><br />I know this about myself and sometimes, not often but sometimes, I will endeavor to stop myself when I find that I am teetering on that abyss. It's always something small that catches my attention. A doctored portrait, the mention of the role of early feminism in children's literature, or a line in a movie that contradicts something I already know. <br /><br />Such was the case with <I>Julie and Julia</i>. See? There's no telling what the subject matter will be. Pop-culture, recorded history, people suffering the misery attendant to marrying someone they never loved; just something that catches me. In the aforementioned movie, I wondered why Nora Ephron and company weren't telling the level truth about Julia Child's reaction to Julie Powell's blog. <br /><br />It bugged me that I somehow knew, through something I'd read, and forgotten the source on, that Child hadn't really been focused on the profanity in Powell's blog. Julia Child had not really gotten herself in a twist over flying F-bombs. No, somewhere in the recesses of my brain existed the knowledge that Julia Child had thought Powell did not love cooking. That she took no joy in food. That she was an opportunist who pulled a stunt, for attention, for fame, and that she had dragged Julia Child into the mix. Oh, and she wasn't thrilled that Julie Powell swore with wild abandon, either. <br /><br />So it nettled me, and I wasn't sure why. I came home, I found the material that had led me to believe this in the first place, and I was right there, about to take the leap, about to do my regular swan dive into whatever inane thing had caught my attention when I clicked a link that brought me up short. <br /><br />It was an interview with Julie Powell about her second book called <i>Cleaving</i>. The interview said it detailed her apprenticeship with a butcher, and her two year long extra-marital affair following the publication of her book. That little burning need to know was extinguished almost immediately, but for a weird reason, it wasn't revulsion, it was that it became screamingly clear at that moment that I had no clue what I was about to get myself into, and I was pretty sure that I simply didn't want to know more. <br /><br />Which makes it sort of a pity that my son gave me a copy of the movie for Christmas. I watched it and was bugged again. Why hadn't the movie just dealt with it? It was a straightforward enough thing. Not addressing it just mystified me because I didn't believe Powell simply was an opportunist. I read a bit of her blog, after being told by a friend that I would love her sense of humor. I actually didn't, it's a little too close to my own brand of humor for me to find it particularly funny. I don't sit around endlessly cracking myself up, and the similarities in phrasing meant the Powell was unlikely to reduce me to a giggling pile. <br /><br />So I listened to the commentary. <br /><br />A word about that: Don't do it. I am the sort of movie and TV geek who listens to commentary. Lighting, camera angles, back stage difficulties, the writing process; I love it all. However, Nora Ephron should be legally banned from doing commentary because she has an almost fatal failing in doing it. She continually forgets that she's actually supposed to be speaking, and filling in details. There are long periods of time where, basically, you'd be sitting there watching a Nora Ephron film right along with Nora Ephron, and whereas you might start musing about the neat time-activity-parrallels, you aren't going to learn much. Unless you actually give a hang that the suitcase seen in the film belonged to the real Paul Child. Now that's the kind of stuff I groove on but I learned exactly two things of that nature in the course of the entire film. When Ephron uncorks it and actually remembers to speak? It's fun. <br /><br />And then she got to the part about Julia Child's reaction to Powell's blog and, as luck would have it, said the only fascinating thing she said in the entirety of that commentary: She knew about Child's reaction, of what, and why her complaint was comprised and Nora Ephron quite simply decided that Julia Child would have changed her mind. <br /><br />Well, that was me hosed. I had to know why, because learning that Powell had used her own affair to try and sell more books had not disabused me of the notion, that's for sure. <br /><br />I read Powell's archived blog, and her book based upon that blog. I should have stopped there. I had my answer, after all. I agreed with Nora Ephron, it is likely that had Julia Child lived a few more years, and read Powell's first book, she would have changed her mind. Stunt or not, Powell had real affection for Julia Child, and whereas Julia might have been right about Powell having no true respect for food, she likely would have understood the quest to find something of her own. Something she was good at, something to ground her in her life, and provide purpose for her. <br /><br />As I often do when considering a book, I go to Amazon and check the reviews of that book. I did so with a fair amount of trepidation because, no matter from which angle you view it, the subject matter of <i>Cleaving</i> is deeply uncomfortable. Not just the marital shenanigans, but the subject of butchery. <br /><br />I really don't recommend perusing those reviews unless you want to be exposed to every negative descriptor that can be leveled at a person. Words like "despicable" as well as every known synonym for prostitute, or a woman of low moral standards were just flying free and loose in there. <br /><br />I think that was the moment I decided I'd better read <i>Cleaving</i> before making up my own mind. It is one of the stranger books I've ever read. Beyond the skin-crawling subject matter of much of the book, it's not well-written. It lacks any cohesion, with long descriptions of the butchering trade, contrasted with the destruction Julie Powell brought down on her own life. Then, bizarrely, there are recipes simply inserted willy-nilly and in the final chapters of the book, Powell takes off traveling and tries to provide a humorous travel log. Nothing in the book works well, and for anyone that cooks, it's easy to spot that even the recipes are rather suspect. <br /><br />I think it would be easy to say that Powell's self-depricating sense of humor turned on its ear, and that the book is about self-debasement. Possibly an act of contrition, or atonement. Powell doesn't defend her actions, if anything she sounds rather disgusted with herself. Yet, the other inescapable part is that she is seeking to profit from this often lurid tale. She's complicated, and frequently the architect of her own misery. She seems to understand this about herself, that she took the opportunities afforded to her, and proceeded to wreak havoc within her own life. Powell eventually finds her way back to her husband, and he to her but only after he has had his own longterm affair. <br /><br />The situation is not remarkable, or unusual, but the choice in writing about it is on both fronts. Julie Powell's next book was going to sell, no matter what she chose to write about. <br /><br />I said I like tenacity both in people and in animals, but this willful self-destruction is a form of tenacity that left me confused. Somewhere inside of us all exists the memory, the knowledge of the least admirable thing we've ever done. When we're being honest with ourselves, even the best people have something they regret, something for which they would like to atone. <br /><br />I'm not sure that is what Powell was trying to do, but I do think there was an element of that in it. <br /><br />Nora Ephron sounded sadly thoughtful when she said Julia Child would have changed her mind about Julie Powell. I think I understand why now. <br /><br />This isn't really a book review. When I set out to find out more about something that caught my attention, whenever I do that, I am doing so to try and understand a situation. <br /><br />I think I have that in common with Julie Powell. <i>Cleaving</i> seems to be about Powell's desperate quest to understand her own actions. That the book is a confusing mess of a thing is not surprising as the subject matter certainly indicates that's going to be the end result. So I have trying to understand in common with Powell, and thankfully, that's all I have in common with her. <br /><br />On the day I finished reading <i>Cleaving</i>, I went to Powell's active blog and read the entry for that day. The entry was about her dog dying. Just an everyday event in a life. She talked about her reaction, and her husband's reaction to losing their treasured friend. Something to which most of us can relate. Something easy to understand. Loss, pain, love. <br /><br />It was oddly fitting as an end cap to the strange experience of reading Powell's self-dissection. Most reviews of Powell's second book contain the words "more mature" which I found amusing. Julie Powell's flailing journey through butchery, infidelity and trying to understand herself seems anything but to me. <br /><br />Sometimes it is better not to know.Land of shimphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15671954452597068904noreply@blogger.com31