Starting and Stopping

I am a wuss. Example: I claim that I like to have my errand-running all planned and efficient, but this somehow leads to a billion different reasons to delay the running of the errands:
Am I sure this is all the dry cleaning?
Surely there is a coupon somewhere for that.
It would be better if I waited until I was going out anyway, that way, I will waste less gas. Besides, it’s awfully unpleasant out there.
With these and other thoughts like them, I stay home for days. Stuff piles up at the door. The pantry contains only dried kidney beans I once used for pie weights and Jell-o.
That was 2011. This is 2012.
January 3rd, 2012, I am conquering you, I thought. I will go to the dry cleaners with the two items I want cleaned. I will fill up my tank with gas. I will relish the cold. I will pick up groceries at the most consistently inexpensive store and not worry about the coupons.
All this before 10 a.m.? Victory! I turned west toward home, the day’s battle against lethargy won. But a new war awaited.
A creature appeared in the distance, walking in the eastbound lane. A single car sat near it, then sped  from shoulder to shoulder, swerving around the animal.
I was a little miffed. Surely the dude (I assumed it was a dude) could have stopped to let the poor thing by.
As I drove closer, I realized the poor thing was a wild turkey. Unlike the dude, I, the conqueror of the errands, could offer a little benevolence. The turkey ran toward the ditch, so I stopped and gave him (I assumed it was a him) some room to be sensible.
The turkey froze. He turned and looked around. He looked at me. And then, he ran … directly at the grill of my car.
Now I looked around. I wasn't sure what to do, so I treated him like a distracted driver and honked my horn. The turkey turned out to have a case of road rage. He stopped momentarily, then charged my car and disappeared.
I honked again. A greyish-white head popped over the hood of my car, gave me the eye, and then vanished.
I imagined him pecking at my bumper with demented fervor, or reenacting that scene from Cape Fear. I checked the rearview mirror. The nearest vehicle was far enough away: I put my car in reverse and eased back a few yards. Retreat only angered him more. He charged me again. People were now coming eastbound, so I put the car in drive and tried to sneak by on the shoulder. He headed me off like a sheepdog.
I slowly returned to my lane and hit the brakes as the jake once again disappeared. Eastbound traffic paused. The turkey head shot up again. The driver opposite went wide-eyed. I was playing chicken with a turkey.
Now a line of cars formed behind me. I realized that from their point of view, I was merely a crazy woman impeding their progress for no obvious reason. So I honked again. The eastbound driver moved, and the westbound drivers took their turns staring at me, first in disgust, then with disbelieve.
Finally, all traffic cleared. I threw the car into reverse and aimed for the shoulder. As the turkey came my way, I threw the car back into drive and — like the dude five minutes before me — gunned it. I swerved and flew back into my own lane, leaving, I’m sure, a distant motorist with the same temptation as me.
To her (I assume it’s a her) I say, it’s easy to rush to judgment, but for 2012, I’m quitting that. Cold turkey.

Pomp and Circumstance and Meatballs

June heralds a special period in my little town. No, not summer (that lasts for exactly 9 days in late July). Not road construction time (that's May-November). June marks the traditional beginning of open house season.

Areas rendered in pink
indicate communities
that prefer
swedish
meatballs

Michigan Open House Customs
Here's what you can expect if someone invites you to an open house:

• A high school graduate who looks annoyed at being at his or her own party
• A beautifully clean garage with tables full of food
• Paint cans, weed whackers, bottles full of motor oil, and other junk crammed into a locked basement
• Mystery relatives
• Cocktail meatballs in chili sauce and grape jelly

Six Open House Do's For Moms

1) DO display embarrassing photos of your graduate. This serves a dual purpose. It's fun for you, and it will drive your kid out of the house sooner. 

2) DO have an open bar. When someone passes out, you can fetch the permanent markers and keep the little ones busy with a round of "Tattoo Parlor."

3) DO plan major renovations for May. Dealing with invitations, commencement, food, a surly teenager, and the looming specter of your emptying nest is not enough. 

4) DO start the day with a nice mimosa.

4a) Continue as directed by a physician.

5) DO have a list of chores ready for each member of your family. If they dawdle, start mixing large quantities of Red Bull with injectable B12.

6) DO rent a dumpster. Anything lying on the ground the next day gets thrown away. Hint: wake up "Tattoo Parlor" patrons before applying this rule.

Six Tips for Grads
7) DO NOT coordinate party dates with your friends. This will limit attendance and embarrassment.

8) DO NOT forget to pick up your slightly delusional one legged grandmother. DO check her O2 tank to make sure she has enough to last the duration of the party, or until she hops back to the center.

Ceiling mildew,
dead moth,
or your spirit,
crushed?

9) DO NOT crack jokes about the mildew in the bathroom being a fun inkblot test for Grandpa. Your mother has lost her sense of humor.

10) DO NOT ask why you have to wash the floor when people are just going to walk on it anyway (see above).

11) DO hide all cash, car keys, collectible train sets, and tools. Free food attracts all sorts of unsavory family members. This mature thinking will go a long way toward repairing the damage you've caused in points nine and ten.

12) DO push food on everyone. You don't want to eat this stuff all summer.

Savvy Advice for Open House Guests
13) DO ask the graduate about future plans. Guffaw.

14) DO let your preschooler have free reign over the dessert table. Yes, red velvet cake will stain, but hey, those aren't your drapes.

15) No meal planned for the next day? DO show up late. Act surprised when they offer you leftovers, and marvel at the coincidence: your purse is full of Tupperware. 

Congratulations, graduates. Enjoy your mostaccioli, and have a meatball for me.

This is my second collaborative post. You can read the first, on writing your own biography blurb, by clicking here. Thanks to Jennifer B., Lisa B., Shawn B., Tina C., Pam C., Connie D., Kathleen R., Dean S., and Kimberly T.  for the clever conversation.

A Sense of Revival

December heralds a season of preparations and celebrations, bursting with family and friends and fun. For some. For me, it is a harbinger of doom, an implosion of dread. My husband works for a shipping company. 

We are thankful for my husband’s job, but our gratitude does not change the fact that it is tough work in December. The weather, the volume, the long hours, all this devours our Christmas. For him, the music comes too early; the decorations come too soon; instead of smelling cinnamon and vanilla, he breathes fumes of diesel and cardboard. People complain of late night soirées and near-gluttony, he’s getting home as the kids are going to bed and eating whatever can be rewarmed. His fingers crack and split. His body is still cold after a hot shower. He dreams of boxes and wakes exhausted. His sense of humor shrinks. He is infected by a holiday-induced Scrooginess.

Revival comes from unexpected places. Over the weekend, he attacked the house: scrubbing, cleaning, tearing through backpacks. Among the dirty clothes, uneaten snacks, and balls of paper, he unearthed a homework assignment for our kindergartener, requiring the attention of the whole family. 

We were to decorate a large construction-paper Christmas tree, keeping in mind the current “Five Senses” unit at school. The kindergartener wandered as the rest of us tried to think.

“What does that mean?” I said. “We need to decorate it with noses?”

“Or fingers?” said our oldest.

“Toes!” said my husband. “Big toes.”

The kindergartner returned and my husband asked her, “Which sense do you want to use?”

“Pennies,” she said. She held out her hand, and showed them to us. She had found exactly five.

Huntin' Math

I've been married for 18 1/2 years to an outdoorsman. Some of the implications of that have been enjoyable. I love to cook, so preparing venison and pheasant has been a satisfying challenge. It might be a little 1950's housewife, but I enjoy how much this makes him feel good about providing for his family.

Secretly, I like being married to a fella with his kind of passion. Time spent outdoors transforms him from tired working man to enthusiastic kid: jumping up and down after a successful hunt, imitating the squirrel that almost walked right into his treestand.

Ah, but the downsides. Consider the month of August. In my mind, it's still summer. I'm taking in the last bits of sun before the kids go back to school. I'm enjoying those cool evenings where you throw on a sweatshirt and hang around the fire. But while I'm thinking gourmet s'mores bar, the change in nighttime temperature does something to him. He raises his head and sniffs the air. If his ears could twitch and flit like a dog's, they would. He starts looking for the Cabela's catalog and I know I've lost him. It's 'pre-hunting season' season. 

March is the August of fishing season. He had to go to Bass Pro before all the good stuff was gone. He's working on a signature laugh, like Jimmy Houston (I'm trying to get him to go Rosco P. Coltrane.)

All this has reminded me of one other thing I've learned from him: hunting math. Here are three principles:

1) When discussing the harvest, round up. For example, a 25 1/4 inch fish is 'about 30 inches long'.

2) When discussing the cost of equipment, round down. A $299 gun is 'about 200 dollars'.

3) Since hunting and fishing provide food, the budget for these areas should be as great a priority as grocery money.

Of course, I've taught him a few things too, like this formula: 

Saying #3 out loud + Couponing wife = No new gear and an indian burn

Why didn't they teach that in school?

But It's on Clearance!

I just love finding special products like this one, for dogs too good to drink from the hose, dogs bored with mud puddles, dogs with a discriminating palate ... I wonder if there's special doggie stemware for this - and if you have to switch glasses for the parsley flavor.

Maiden voyage ends in disaster

This delightful truffle of fiction was written by my friend Jennie, the winner of the Blog Attic contest. "Oh, oh," you may complain, sounding like a Sweathog, "we were supposed to vote and she went over the word count." Boo-hoo all you want, Horshack, she's the sole entry. Plus, it's funny. So quit whining and get reading. And next time, enter the contest.

Neither of us wanted to invite Edgar. Our plan was six months in the making and Edgar is always a fly in the ointment, but the axle went out on my trailer and he’s the only other guy around who had one.

The story really starts last fall when we were out frogging on the river. Dave’s son got his first air rifle, so we wanted to help him break it in. It turns out that the kid is a terrible shot, and we had to get right on top of the frog before he could hit it. We were up in a grassy shallow when we saw it. It was completely submerged and in good condition. I’d heard my dad telling stories about the loggers riding scows up and down the river along with the logs, but I’d never seen one before. A scow is a flat-bottomed long boat. It almost looks like an upside down fishing dock, and as a matter of fact, that’s what I thought I was looking at when I first discovered it. It took me another couple of weeks before I could fish it out of the river and get it into my garage.

She’s about 16 feet long and three feet wide. That’s just wide enough for a lawn chair. Dave and I worked on it for most of the winter months. I didn’t see any holes, so we figured the old girl must have gotten waterlogged and gone to the bottom.

We outfitted her with a secondhand Johnson outboard and painted her new name on the front. The name is a point of contention, not because we couldn’t agree, but because Dave is an idiot. He’s got some talent with a paintbrush and decided he could do a fine job freehand, and I have to admit, what’s there looks good. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave enough room for the whole name. We called her The Dock, but since Dave is an idiot, he didn’t have room for the “k.”

Our goal was to get her on the water by Memorial Day.

When Egg showed up (that’s what everyone’s called Edgar since he was a kid), we learned that he had a few ideas of his own. Instead of trying The Doc out on the river, he wanted to head over to the lake. I wasn’t in love with that idea, since every vacationer and his brother would have a boat in the water, but Egg was adamant and he had the trailer. Egg found a wine fridge on someone’s curb and felt it would class up our operation. Dave said that we should leave the fridge and take the cooler instead, because the fridge wouldn’t keep the beer cold. But old Egg was a step ahead of him. He brought a 25 HP generator. Still a skeptic, Dave complained until he saw that Egg had already stocked the fridge. None of us is above drinking free beer. Egg threw in a couple bottles of wine, but he told us that we didn’t have to drink them, since he just put them in there for show.

We loaded up and prepared for the ride in Egg’s truck. The lake was only five minutes away, but 30 seconds in Egg’s truck is too long. Egg has a coon hound/German Shorthair mutt that goes everywhere with him. Like other men of his geography and social class, Egg has developed a taste for squirrel. Now Skinner is one helluva squirrel dog and that keeps Egg in squirrel sandwiches and his truck smelling like a doghouse.

We got the scow on the water with all of its gear, including the lawn chairs, fridge, and generator. Egg forgot to gas up the generator, so we had to siphon some gas out of the outboard. Dave lost the draw on that one, so he siphoned the gas. I should have done it myself, because he made a complete mess of it. He spit it all over the back of the scow and let it leak everywhere.

The outboard fired up after a couple of pulls and The Doc was moving across the water. The lake was busy with expensive pontoon boats, speedboats, and skiers. We made our way through a mess of jet-skis and idled her back to a nice cruising speed. I guess the trouble started when Egg plugged in the fridge. The plug end of the fridge was gone, so he took the exposed wires and fed them into the plug on the generator. That wasn’t a bright idea. The thing started snapping and sparking, so Egg dropped it pronto—right into the gas puddle that Dave made.

Now I’m not sure if it was the flames or the yelling and jumping around Egg was doing that drew attention, but one of those tricked out pontoons headed over in our direction to lend a hand. I didn’t put a fire extinguisher on the scow, so the fella from the pontoon gave us his.

He pulled up along side and was holding out the fire extinguisher when Skinner took a shining to the dog they had on their boat. I found out later that it was called a Pomeranian, but Skinner thought it was a squirrel. He made an impressive leap onto their boat and started shaking that Pomeranian with a passion. Fur was flying and women were screaming. Dave was the closest one to their boat, so he jumped on and flung Skinner into the drink. Unfortunately, he hadn’t considered that Skinner might not let go of the dog. Realizing his mistake, he jumped in after Skinner, but when he surfaced he was yelling, “my ear, my ear!”

I don’t want to say Dave is a vain man, but he lost the top half of his ear a few years ago in a badger accident. Not long after that, he took the money his wife had saved up for a family vacation and bought a prosthetic ear. That day we learned that prosthetic ears do not float.

Skinner was halfway to shore before the pontoon caught up with him. Luckily they recovered the Pomeranian and Egg avoided another round of community service. The Doc was still smoldering after Egg doused it with the fire extinguisher, but she was seaworthy. We picked up Dave who was trying to figure out how to tell his wife that he lost his vacation ear in the lake. We found Skinner waiting for us on shore, loaded up and headed home.

Our first outing was a disappointment, but Dave and I have agreed to hold off launching her again until my trailer is fixed. Our new goal is the Fourth of July. Dave and his brother went south and bought a whole mess of fireworks and I got a brand new fire extinguisher, so we’ll be ready for anything.

WT5: upsides to a power outage

Here in my little town, we lose power when the wind changes direction. Any wind. Any change. Last November, they predicted that we'd be out for at least three weeks if Obama became president.

Imaginary scare tactics aside, living here means dealing with bugs, and critters, and hours or days without electricity. Here are my Top 5 upsides to a power outage:

1) Disguises the dust. Candlelight and battery-operated lanterns are better than Pledge.

2) Reduces hunting season chafe. No power=no television. No television=no having to watch the 16th million whitetail deer stalked through binoculars from a blind by a guy breathing heavy as dramatic music swells. Will he shoot the deer? Will he track the deer? Will they try to sell you Doe In Estrus before they give you the money shot? Land sakes, menfolk, is it your plan to drive us all batty with these shows so we'll beg you to leave? Haha - you've been thwarted by poor infrastructure of DTE.

3) Forces you to focus. Not that I have a problem with this, but let's say 'a friend' is a freelance writer who obsesses over work and haunts her email and social networking sites desperate for her next story idea. She knows that she needs underwear, but gets sidetracked every time she heads toward the washing machine with the aforementioned unmentionables. During an outage, she would have to set aside both tasks and clean out her car. Or something.

4) Eliminates the video game wars. For whatever reason, video games inspire the child players in my house to behave like l’il world powers. Each decrees what the others must do. If said proclamations are not heeded in an accurate, thorough and timely manner, there are consequences: threats, toy-sharing embargoes. The situation quickly escalates into pain. UNO does not stir the same response. 

5) Increases gratitude upon its return. The lights come on, and there is a triumphant cheer. It's like a parade, a cavalcade; the refrigerator ought to shoot confetti and balloons. Electricity, oh how we've missed you and the running water you bring forth from our well. A gift! A miracle! That which was once curséd as the harbinger of Versus Cable Television and PS2 is now recast as hero. 

Yes, indeed, there is much rejoicing. And bathing.

WT5 – Ways to Survive a Family Photo Shoot

The thought of doing a family portrait fills my husband with anti-joy. It’s not exactly my bag either. The posing, the bad jokes, the sales pitch – all of it operates against our much more candid style. Something must be done to keep us entertained, unless we want to appear forever in the church directory as people who just ate sour persimmons.

These were our top 5 survival strategies:

5) Using our child’s propensity to imitate for our own amusement. My dear husband taught our little girl that the most appropriate pose for pictures is the Cat’s Eye dance from Pulp Fiction. Now don’t call CPS – we didn’t let her watch Pulp Fiction. Paul just did it once or twice for her before we left, and then let her go.

4) Adopting bizarre terms as new monikers (part 1). Based on the term repeatedly used to direct our oldest son, we have assigned him a new nickname: ‘Back Row’.

3) New monikers (part 2). We applied the same principal to our younger son. Sadly for him, he is now labeled ‘Sister’. We are hoping therapy will be cheaper than an Italian acrylic finish on our portrait. Perhaps he’ll write a tell-all book, with the Great Photo Shoot of 2009 as the inciting incident, and make enough money to pay for it himself.

2) Shooting the ‘what did he just say’ look at each other. The photographer continually strived for our attention by shaking a teddy bear and repeating the phrase ‘look at my pickle’. I shot Paul the look. He returned serve and mentally noted the squeaky toy in our photographer’s pants pocket. I took a deep breath, suppressing both my outer creeped-out parent and inner eighth-grader. With some effort, I decided ‘Pickle’ must be the name of the stuffed animal. Then I realized he was pointing at his nose. Whew.

1) Pondering the guarantee. The sales pitch included a 100-year guarantee against fading, and we wondered: when our great-grandchildren come a-complainin’ in year eighty-seven, what will happen? Will they perform a voodoo ritual involving the bear, the squeaky toy and a pickle, reanimate us for retakes and then make us sit through the sales pitch again? Maybe it’s all part of a bold marketing strategy.

“Remember to upsell: retouching is a felt need for most zombies.”

true anniversary

Today my husband and I are celebrating 18 years of marriage. In honor of that, I've declared Paul as co-author of this blog post. The idea came to me after he called this morning:

"I just called to wish you a happy anniversary," he said.

"Aww," I said. "Happy anniversary to you."

"Thanks," he said. "Can I have my spine back?"

Here are our favorite comebacks:

"I ground it to a fine powder and made it into bread. Enjoy your pb&j."

"I've never seen it. Call your mother."

"That old thing? Useless. I threw it out with your baseball cards, moron."

This truly reflects the nature of our wedding day. In brief, 18 years ago, the handoff from parents to groom resulted in my floor length veil, hanging from a crown of flowers, sailing off of my head. I picked it up and Paul slapped it back on like he was slam-dunking a basketball. The pastor called Paul my wife, the groomsmen hung a Michigan banner in the back of the church and later, at the head table, watched their beloved Wolverines lose (ha, ha - I've been a 'noles fan ever since). Pizza was delivered, the garter was caught by a 12-year old, and the afternoon ended with Paul and I, still in wedding finery, riding a Model A fire truck around town.

We laughed and laughed and somehow, even through challenges, kept it together and kept laughing. Skip the porcelain: make me laugh.

P.S. Paul is, right now, making a porcelain bus joke.