September 29, 2008
Does anybody hear?
"TIMBURRR!"
And down it came, crashing like the clod of earth thrown into the sea by legendary Irish giant, Finn McCool.
My silent concentration was splayed like a bolt from the blue.
"For the love of Pete!," I spluttered aloud, spewing out eight tiny nails I'd been holding in my mouth. They landed, pointy side up I'm sure, in the long grass at my feet, where they instantly disappeared.
I'll find them next summer when I'm running around without my shoes on.
The piece of window screen I'd had in my hand went flying like a frisbee, yanking the dogs’ attention to retrieve. I paused, listening for expletives born of a tree headed straight for the roof. None came.
Another tree had just bit the dust in the name of "The Glen."
Slightly cranky, I picked up the skin I had jumped out of.
My canine follies woofed incessantly in the general direction of the commotion and glanced back at me for reward, garnering only a flat stare.
"You think?" I said snidely.
As it was, Dot and Cash were in the bad books for remuneration of their patrolling duties. That exclusive contract had gone right out with them when they'd jumped through the screen door window during a recent hot pursuit of Ozzie the cat.
I still can't fathom how two dogs, one of which is the size of a small car, had managed to explode through a rectangular space 22-inches wide by 11-inches high without losing a limb or something.
Maybe they were magicians in a former life.
When I'd arrived home to find the screen door massacre, I'd wanted to test their magic skills by hanging the mutts upside down from a four-storey roof like illusionist David Blaine did of himself during a stunt last week in New York.
Of course, I wouldn't do that, and it went out of my head as fast as the dogs' legs that carried them around the back side of the barn when they realized their screen debut wasn't getting rave reviews.
Ozzie, in his own vanishing act, was AWOL for the rest of the day.
In fact, I found him the next morning at dawn-- after considerable investigations based on the feline drawl "MOWW, MOWW"-- locked in the garage with my truck.
I'm not even sure why I spent half my Saturday afternoon replacing the screen in the stupid door. The entire structure was begging to be torn down. The door's 17 coats of white paint were peeling off in curly layers. Next to it, another ginormous section of screened window was flopping loose in the fall winds.
One of many cats that had boarded here over the summer had rubbed against the screen long enough to lift it from the slats, making a convenient entry way for small animals to come and go as they pleased.
Oh, brother. Where's Pete when all these jobs need doing?
He emails me every night. "I miss you, I love you. How was your day?"
I flat stare the computer screen and type.
“Same as usual. I sat around all day eating chocolates and painting my toenails. The dogs did the vacuuming, cleaned the bathroom and retrieved the mail. The cat folded laundry and mowed the grass and then all three did yard repairs while I had a nap.”
Pete replies, “Sounds great honey . . . I can barely make out your email because somebody stepped on my reading glasses . . . "
I pumped out another email that said, “Thanks so much for the go ahead on hiring a contractor honey, you’re a gem.”
Can you hear me now?
Monday, September 29, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Note to Self: Make a List
September 22, 2008
This is not news.
I am methodical, organized, and multi-tasked. And like women everywhere, I too can begin by washing the dishes, leave the room to get another dish towel, and while I’m gone for 30 seconds-- finish folding the laundry, vacuum the bedroom floors, and clean the bathroom.
I am first born, and I am a list maker.
I make lists for the day and for weekend chores I want to finish. I have a pad of paper at my computer desk and one on my dresser just in case I think of something I should do and can't get to the mother list. I invariably, at any given time, have a list sitting on the front passenger seat of my truck of things I need to do in town and one for the things I must take on my next trip to my little village of solitude.
As back up, I have a file in my laptop's Office OneNote where I keep a computerized catalog of "to-dos," just in case.
Of note is that, thanks to Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, I've joined the ranks of tomorrow's overzealous onlookers who've started compiling a Bucket List of must do’s for this lifetime, before I'm reincarnated as a tree.
So far, I have eight things on my list including popular destinations like seeing the Grand Canyon.
But I left 'parachuting out of an airplane' off my list.
Now way am I going to purposely propel myself towards anything at a speed of 190 km/hr just to be able to say "I did that."
Anyway, knowing me I'd deploy the chute, make a wrong turn, and end up in Dryden.
Come to think of it, there's one instance where I will propel myself at high speed and that's at my husband when he steps off the plane at the airport in three months.
Unlike the movie's own list, I don't desire to see Rome or drive a Shelby Mustang. But Ireland and a Hummer would do just fine.
And of late, I've developed a palate for deliciously bold coffee and I'd love to sample some of the world's very best roasts as part of my Bucket List.
However, I am not inclined to try ‘Kopi Luwak,’ the coffee made from the pooped-out beans eaten by civets.
If I want to get that close to nature, I can do it in my own backyard where as recently as yesterday I forgot to wash my hands before eating lunch and in licking my fingers, thereafter remembered the toad I'd rescued from the canine brigade that had peed all over my hand.
As I await the frog flu, I shake my head at the oblivious child who wanted to be an animal doctor and thought she could raise the occasional stunned bird that hit the living room window of the house, by giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Bird flu anyone?
And if there is a coffee made from bear scatter or deer droppings, I just might be able to find enough ingredients around here to be a local supplier of that brand.
I worked on my Bucket List a few days ago, while on a hiatus to my little village of solitude, a place that at this very moment seems like overkill, given that I am in the presence of myself nearly all the time here at home.
No need to go away to do that, but anyway . . .
I was sitting outside enjoying a bonfire, when I put the half-cooked list down to tend to it and got too close to the flames while jamming another log in the brew.
A whiff of burning hair singed my nostrils and I dashed from the patio into the trailer flailing my arms at the smoldering patch I was sure to find when I looked at my head in the mirror.
Much to my relief, the only hair missing was what had been growing heartily on my fingers between the knuckles.
In my moment of relief, I was drawn to heed nature’s call and when I stood up and turned on a dime to flush, with it went the last 10 of Uncle Sam’s dollars I’d had in my back pocket. I dove to retrieve the cash as it dropped down with everything else into the loo’s holding tank.
I stopped short when I realized that if my arm got stuck in there, being alone, it would be days before someone would come looking for me.
I washed my hands and went back outside to the fire and my Bucket List, ripped off a corner of paper and wrote ‘Note to Self.’
On it I added ‘buy a lottery ticket and a wallet.’
On my Bucket List, on the chicken scratch side reserved for selfish desires I wrote ‘buy RV with bigger bathroom.’
I put the list down again and trotted off to rake up some old leaves, hoping to find more sophisticated ideas lurking under all the fodder.
All I stirred up was an angry nest of fire ants, which I flat-stared and continued to rake havoc on, all the while oblivious to “Sid Vicious” and his gang that had crawled up inside my pant legs.
Suddenly, I felt bursts of tiny, pinpoint pain going on where I couldn't see. I ran into the trailer contorting uncontrollably and jumped out of my pants to find three little ants clinging and biting maliciously to the skin around my kneecaps.
My Bucket List has ‘saving a species from extinction’ on it.
That’s doesn’t include ants, right?
This is not news.
I am methodical, organized, and multi-tasked. And like women everywhere, I too can begin by washing the dishes, leave the room to get another dish towel, and while I’m gone for 30 seconds-- finish folding the laundry, vacuum the bedroom floors, and clean the bathroom.
I am first born, and I am a list maker.
I make lists for the day and for weekend chores I want to finish. I have a pad of paper at my computer desk and one on my dresser just in case I think of something I should do and can't get to the mother list. I invariably, at any given time, have a list sitting on the front passenger seat of my truck of things I need to do in town and one for the things I must take on my next trip to my little village of solitude.
As back up, I have a file in my laptop's Office OneNote where I keep a computerized catalog of "to-dos," just in case.
Of note is that, thanks to Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, I've joined the ranks of tomorrow's overzealous onlookers who've started compiling a Bucket List of must do’s for this lifetime, before I'm reincarnated as a tree.
So far, I have eight things on my list including popular destinations like seeing the Grand Canyon.
But I left 'parachuting out of an airplane' off my list.
Now way am I going to purposely propel myself towards anything at a speed of 190 km/hr just to be able to say "I did that."
Anyway, knowing me I'd deploy the chute, make a wrong turn, and end up in Dryden.
Come to think of it, there's one instance where I will propel myself at high speed and that's at my husband when he steps off the plane at the airport in three months.
Unlike the movie's own list, I don't desire to see Rome or drive a Shelby Mustang. But Ireland and a Hummer would do just fine.
And of late, I've developed a palate for deliciously bold coffee and I'd love to sample some of the world's very best roasts as part of my Bucket List.
However, I am not inclined to try ‘Kopi Luwak,’ the coffee made from the pooped-out beans eaten by civets.
If I want to get that close to nature, I can do it in my own backyard where as recently as yesterday I forgot to wash my hands before eating lunch and in licking my fingers, thereafter remembered the toad I'd rescued from the canine brigade that had peed all over my hand.
As I await the frog flu, I shake my head at the oblivious child who wanted to be an animal doctor and thought she could raise the occasional stunned bird that hit the living room window of the house, by giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Bird flu anyone?
And if there is a coffee made from bear scatter or deer droppings, I just might be able to find enough ingredients around here to be a local supplier of that brand.
I worked on my Bucket List a few days ago, while on a hiatus to my little village of solitude, a place that at this very moment seems like overkill, given that I am in the presence of myself nearly all the time here at home.
No need to go away to do that, but anyway . . .
I was sitting outside enjoying a bonfire, when I put the half-cooked list down to tend to it and got too close to the flames while jamming another log in the brew.
A whiff of burning hair singed my nostrils and I dashed from the patio into the trailer flailing my arms at the smoldering patch I was sure to find when I looked at my head in the mirror.
Much to my relief, the only hair missing was what had been growing heartily on my fingers between the knuckles.
In my moment of relief, I was drawn to heed nature’s call and when I stood up and turned on a dime to flush, with it went the last 10 of Uncle Sam’s dollars I’d had in my back pocket. I dove to retrieve the cash as it dropped down with everything else into the loo’s holding tank.
I stopped short when I realized that if my arm got stuck in there, being alone, it would be days before someone would come looking for me.
I washed my hands and went back outside to the fire and my Bucket List, ripped off a corner of paper and wrote ‘Note to Self.’
On it I added ‘buy a lottery ticket and a wallet.’
On my Bucket List, on the chicken scratch side reserved for selfish desires I wrote ‘buy RV with bigger bathroom.’
I put the list down again and trotted off to rake up some old leaves, hoping to find more sophisticated ideas lurking under all the fodder.
All I stirred up was an angry nest of fire ants, which I flat-stared and continued to rake havoc on, all the while oblivious to “Sid Vicious” and his gang that had crawled up inside my pant legs.
Suddenly, I felt bursts of tiny, pinpoint pain going on where I couldn't see. I ran into the trailer contorting uncontrollably and jumped out of my pants to find three little ants clinging and biting maliciously to the skin around my kneecaps.
My Bucket List has ‘saving a species from extinction’ on it.
That’s doesn’t include ants, right?
Monday, September 15, 2008
. . . and then there were none
September 15, 2008
Let me begin with a big round of applause to a certain 17-year old the possibilities for whom have only just begun.
Proud of you? Nothing this talented writer can come up could convey how my rewarded heart pounds for you.
However, I doubt you will empathize with anything I'm writing about in the next few paragraphs and most likely, if I know anything, you won't even read this column until 15 years from now, when stuff your mother did back then, seems cool to you now.
That's okay.
It's a mom-thing.
------------
"Hey Beth! Write a story about me! Something really exciting!" shouted Dan the H20 man—and the world's most excellent conversationalist--as he zoomed past hanging his head out the driver's window and gesturing to me. His work van swerved slightly in his excitement and nearly ran over the writer's foot as she stepped out onto the street from the sidewalk.
When I talk to (or mostly listen to) the H20 man, I’m always sure to come away with a new perspective on things, be it outer space or the cost of gas.
Come to think of it; gas prices are headed to outer space, but anyway . . .
The H20 man always is in good spirits and it tends to rub off on you.
As far as I know he and the Mrs. have an empty nest. Maybe I should talk to them about what to do next.
Maybe they have some alternatives to the path I'm beating around the house as I pace the cage.
------------
Me. MmmmMe. That's mmme. Uh huh, me.
I am among the lyrics in a Bruce Cockburn song and the one for whom the website flownthenest.com was written.
My final shift --Daughter #3-- headed to the big city two weeks ago for University.
Alas, my house is very quiet. Remarkably clean, but very quiet.
Maybe, like something from a Van Morrison song, I'll find some 'Enlightenment' in this empty nest.
“This must be what paradise is like. It is so quiet in here, so peaceful in here.”
I have proven myself so many times as a mom since 1985. Parenthood is all I have known, all I still know about, it's who I've been, and where almost all of my emotional and intellectual skills have resided for 23 years.
23 years.
I'm like an old debit card. A mother whose magnetic strip has worn thin. Time for a replacement card that includes free space, time, and all that.
Now I have to live with myself. Can I do it?
In fact, I never have really done that-- really had the opportunity in my lifetime to do that.
Even before I was done College I had met the first guy I would marry, so I never really had time to get to know myself. By the time I was separated and divorced I had very young children to raise.
Motherhood took notes and Beth was 82nd on the dictation list.
I never got past 81.
Then I met Peter. Thank God for Peter.
Yet, I was still a mother with young kids and now a wife again. Roles rolled on.
Last Friday, the dogs heard the school bus coming down the country road and they stopped and waited for Daughter #3 to get off.
The bus passed the driveway. They still sat and waited.
I expect they'll do that for weeks.
I miss my kid. A lot.
It's brand new desert, a new dawn, the high road, the road less travelled, blah, blah, blah.
I can run around buck naked if I want to, not worry about picking a certain someone up from work at 10:30 p.m. six out of seven nights a week, cook a meal or not, and be done with arguments about whose turn it is to do dishes.
No more head-banging rap music to roll my eyes at, no 'how was your day at school?' repertoires at the supper table.
My house is very quiet.
My husband, who was unexpectedly put on hydro tunnel duty on the Pacific Rim is gone until Christmas.
I miss my husband. A lot.
Now I really, really do have to live with myself.
And Heaven help his side of the bed!
The days do indeed drip slowly on the page Mr. Cockburn.
And I pace the cage.
I quit drinking alcohol in January. It changed my life, my health, my weight, my destiny. But I sure could use a drink right now.
Company for one. I will not go there.
Life without kids at home will take some getting used to. I’m trying that on for size every day. Looking forward not backwards at all the possibilities that lay ahead for me, too.
Forward instead of backwards—that’s the view I should have taken when I returned to Fort Frances from the big city after hauling Daughter #3 and all of her stuff to University.
Instead, I got lost.
The Lone Ranger had warned me before I left the big city heading east, to watch for the sign or I'd end up in Dryden.
So what happened?
In my faked anticipation of life without kids--driving like the rear view mirror was torn off and ‘I ain’t never looking back’ attitude-- I thought I'd overshot the junction.
I kept driving until I found a long stretch of abandoned highway, just outside of Dryden I was sure, and did a U-eey and took the first left on a road I was sure would lead me back home.
I drove on into a town I had no recollection of on the way into Winnipeg and suddenly feeling even more alone than I already was, with emotions of a dejected mother brimming at my eyelids, I started to cry.
It was the city of Kenora and I still didn't know how to get home.
The guy pumping gas at the Kenora gas station must have thought I was a dork, when I stopped to ask directions to Fort Frances, especially when I blathered on about living there nearly all my life and how I couldn’t find my way home.
He just started to laugh and pointed ‘that way, keeping going around until you get to the highway, hang a right and then watch for the sign (or you'll end up in Dryden) and then hang another right.’
This alone time will take some getting used to.
Days drip slowly on the page.
What is my story? It’s going to be fun to find out.
As Jonathan Galassi said, “Eyes ahead companions, life is now.”
Let me begin with a big round of applause to a certain 17-year old the possibilities for whom have only just begun.
Proud of you? Nothing this talented writer can come up could convey how my rewarded heart pounds for you.
However, I doubt you will empathize with anything I'm writing about in the next few paragraphs and most likely, if I know anything, you won't even read this column until 15 years from now, when stuff your mother did back then, seems cool to you now.
That's okay.
It's a mom-thing.
------------
"Hey Beth! Write a story about me! Something really exciting!" shouted Dan the H20 man—and the world's most excellent conversationalist--as he zoomed past hanging his head out the driver's window and gesturing to me. His work van swerved slightly in his excitement and nearly ran over the writer's foot as she stepped out onto the street from the sidewalk.
When I talk to (or mostly listen to) the H20 man, I’m always sure to come away with a new perspective on things, be it outer space or the cost of gas.
Come to think of it; gas prices are headed to outer space, but anyway . . .
The H20 man always is in good spirits and it tends to rub off on you.
As far as I know he and the Mrs. have an empty nest. Maybe I should talk to them about what to do next.
Maybe they have some alternatives to the path I'm beating around the house as I pace the cage.
------------
Me. MmmmMe. That's mmme. Uh huh, me.
I am among the lyrics in a Bruce Cockburn song and the one for whom the website flownthenest.com was written.
My final shift --Daughter #3-- headed to the big city two weeks ago for University.
Alas, my house is very quiet. Remarkably clean, but very quiet.
Maybe, like something from a Van Morrison song, I'll find some 'Enlightenment' in this empty nest.
“This must be what paradise is like. It is so quiet in here, so peaceful in here.”
I have proven myself so many times as a mom since 1985. Parenthood is all I have known, all I still know about, it's who I've been, and where almost all of my emotional and intellectual skills have resided for 23 years.
23 years.
I'm like an old debit card. A mother whose magnetic strip has worn thin. Time for a replacement card that includes free space, time, and all that.
Now I have to live with myself. Can I do it?
In fact, I never have really done that-- really had the opportunity in my lifetime to do that.
Even before I was done College I had met the first guy I would marry, so I never really had time to get to know myself. By the time I was separated and divorced I had very young children to raise.
Motherhood took notes and Beth was 82nd on the dictation list.
I never got past 81.
Then I met Peter. Thank God for Peter.
Yet, I was still a mother with young kids and now a wife again. Roles rolled on.
Last Friday, the dogs heard the school bus coming down the country road and they stopped and waited for Daughter #3 to get off.
The bus passed the driveway. They still sat and waited.
I expect they'll do that for weeks.
I miss my kid. A lot.
It's brand new desert, a new dawn, the high road, the road less travelled, blah, blah, blah.
I can run around buck naked if I want to, not worry about picking a certain someone up from work at 10:30 p.m. six out of seven nights a week, cook a meal or not, and be done with arguments about whose turn it is to do dishes.
No more head-banging rap music to roll my eyes at, no 'how was your day at school?' repertoires at the supper table.
My house is very quiet.
My husband, who was unexpectedly put on hydro tunnel duty on the Pacific Rim is gone until Christmas.
I miss my husband. A lot.
Now I really, really do have to live with myself.
And Heaven help his side of the bed!
The days do indeed drip slowly on the page Mr. Cockburn.
And I pace the cage.
I quit drinking alcohol in January. It changed my life, my health, my weight, my destiny. But I sure could use a drink right now.
Company for one. I will not go there.
Life without kids at home will take some getting used to. I’m trying that on for size every day. Looking forward not backwards at all the possibilities that lay ahead for me, too.
Forward instead of backwards—that’s the view I should have taken when I returned to Fort Frances from the big city after hauling Daughter #3 and all of her stuff to University.
Instead, I got lost.
The Lone Ranger had warned me before I left the big city heading east, to watch for the sign or I'd end up in Dryden.
So what happened?
In my faked anticipation of life without kids--driving like the rear view mirror was torn off and ‘I ain’t never looking back’ attitude-- I thought I'd overshot the junction.
I kept driving until I found a long stretch of abandoned highway, just outside of Dryden I was sure, and did a U-eey and took the first left on a road I was sure would lead me back home.
I drove on into a town I had no recollection of on the way into Winnipeg and suddenly feeling even more alone than I already was, with emotions of a dejected mother brimming at my eyelids, I started to cry.
It was the city of Kenora and I still didn't know how to get home.
The guy pumping gas at the Kenora gas station must have thought I was a dork, when I stopped to ask directions to Fort Frances, especially when I blathered on about living there nearly all my life and how I couldn’t find my way home.
He just started to laugh and pointed ‘that way, keeping going around until you get to the highway, hang a right and then watch for the sign (or you'll end up in Dryden) and then hang another right.’
This alone time will take some getting used to.
Days drip slowly on the page.
What is my story? It’s going to be fun to find out.
As Jonathan Galassi said, “Eyes ahead companions, life is now.”
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