It was a scene to remember

There is that frozen moment in time between this second and the next when all possible scenarios play out as a movie in which I am in a long, long hallway and being sucked toward an inevitable fate . . .

I was on a reconnaissance mission of sorts in my garage, digging for hibernated winter coats and boots that were gaining fast appeal on cold and crisp November mornings.

I found more than I bargained for. I should have known it was going to be one of those days as I reached in behind one box to check out another without a visual line of sight and felt something furry at my finger tips. Upon further investigation with a flashlight, I found three dead mice—one in a trap by itself and two “Hatfield and McCoy” saps in another that must have fought for the last piece of cheese and landed a dirt nap.

But it wasn’t going to be the mice to blame for the next discovery.

Low and behold my winter boots and my skates were impacted with  whole dried mushrooms and pine cones. I needed a sharp pointy instrument to chip away the cemented crud before I could see the insoles. That was a squirrel’s doing for sure.

I was still hot over the destruction last fall of my favourite red plaid wool coat that I’d stored to my satisfaction in the garage until I found it shredded like parmesan cheese by said squirrel who had used it to build a winter nest in a bag of Christmas garland on a different shelf.

Obviously my “100^th time” extermination plan remained a failure—this time stewed in mushrooms and pinecones.

It wasn’t until I found the hole in the fascia board outside, did I realize that my ongoing battle to batten down the hatches of my garage was about to meet with victory. 

But by the time I’d found the hole, I also had pulled nearly everything off the shelving and discovered multiple hiding places for squirrel stashes including in a box of old dishes where all the newspaper I’d wrapped so carefully on each plate and cup was now diced by squirrel teeth into bits of confetti layered with dried mushrooms, pine cones, and sunflower seeds akin to a vegan lasagna.

By the time I found the hole I was so hot under the collar that I was climbing the ladder with my roll of chicken wire and steel wool, hammer and nails, using very bad words and vacant of all sensibility and caution.

I reached the top of the ladder and shoved my muzzle up into the hole with vicious contempt and came face to face with a beady eyed, vibrating, chattering hot mess of a rodent on drugs.

There is that frozen moment in time between this second and the next when all possible scenarios play out as a movie in which I am in a long, long hallway and being sucked toward an inevitable fate . . .

This and that and fat

I’m back in Boot Camp, where most of the food is green, protein is lean, and exercise takes a sweaty heart pumping front seat to an evening of good tv and a glass of wine. Or two. 

Leave it to me to procrastinate until just four weeks before Christmas before putting my big girl panties on. Correction. It is because I cannot get my big girl panties on without lying down on the bed and writhing akin to a spoiled child, that I’m up for change. There’s no turning back until I can see my toes again. 

I began this umpteenth health kick one week ago and was doing so well until about 5 p.m. that day when I went to Menard’s to buy cat food for “G-man’s” cat and passed by the chocolate bars on my way to the pay clerk. A ‘Whatchamacallit’ had my name on ii (being my favourite American chocolate bar in the world.)

It never occurred to me how empty-headed I was until I’d left the store, driving down the road with half the chocolate bar shoved in and the other half at the ready--the wrapper already thrown aside.

Oh folly! Oh fate! My eyes bulged out.

“What are you doing?!” I shouted to myself. “What is that chocolate bar doing in your mouth?!” I squealed. “Have you lost your mind?!”

I ranted and kept poking in the “Whatchmacallit” because heaven forbid I couldn’t waste it!

That’s the way the world has gone ‘round for the first week, as if there are two of me—the healthy wannabe who starts to make a salad and the “chocoholic” who drags her knuckles along the cutting board thinking up every possible sabotage to leafy green vegetables she can muster.

 

I have a desk job and it’s making me fat. I swear, no sooner did I sit down two years ago and the Buddha belly morphed into 10 more pounds of jiggle goo. Everything in my closet is getting bigger, creeping up sleuth-like as if I wouldn’t notice—one size beyond the beyond mark I swore I wouldn’t go beyond ten years ago.

Just this morning, staring down at the scale, sucking in my ‘buddha” so I could actually SEE the numbers and I was still trying every trick in the book to fake it out—naked, hanging on to the wall with one foot off the scale while holding my breath until blue-faced. I couldn’t hide anymore.

Right then and there I blamed every man I’d ever married or dated—for who else was there to blame for everything I’d eaten in moments of relationship roller coasters, but the MEN!

Okay, so maybe it’s a little bit of this and that. This chip bowl, that vat of dip, this glass of wine, that one too, that desk job, this comfy chair at home after work, that chocolate bar, this one too, and no sweat.

The “this and that” list is going to change.

Life in the animal kingdom

Life is busy and there isn’t much down time. 

I used to think the busiest chunk of my life was when my kids were “littles,” but even then I found time to read a novel while they all played together at the park. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a book unless it was to dust under it. There’s just no time.

As if juggling two and a half jobs, country home upkeep, and three needy cats isn’t enough for one mere woman. As if I didn’t already have more than enough shenanigans living with me by the name of “Millie,” “Muffin,” and “Louie,”—three felines who believe it is my job in life to feed them pate from a can and allow them carte blanche on counter tops and furniture.

I drove two hours to pick the next two instigators. I drove my brand new 2017 SUV—complete with pristine upholstery and that unmistakable smell of a new bank loan. I drove two hours having never seen the animals in person; knowing them only by story and photograph and that I wanted them very much. 

My lower jaw is still sore from where it hit the ground that day when I laid eyes on them as their caregiver did the introductions and I realized I’d just adopted a small lion and a gazelle.

It was a “What the . . ?” moment as the two six-year-old Great Pyrenees/Border Collie mix canines bounded out the door of their caregiver’s house and unconditionally into the back of my brand new SUV.

“Tank,” weighing in at nearly 100 pounds should be in the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ for the longest strings of dueling drool ever carried on the lower lips of a dog. The slobber swayed precariously near my ear on the drive home as ‘Tank’ loomed panting over the back seat. 

By the time we reached my house he’d managed to slap a trail of goo on every inch of upholstery he could reach, and on both back seat passenger windows where the drool dripped down the immaculate interior into the storage compartments on each door, pooling in the yet unused water bottle stations. 

And that, as they say, was just the beginning. I’ve had the dogs for almost 60 days, three hours and 10 minutes, but who’s counting. 

They have extraordinarily good temperaments and gentle ways—a tribute, no doubt, to their upbringing with their first caregiver who did an awesome job.

I’m addicted to those loving, saucer eyes and soft noses—drool and copious hair shedding not so much. The wag of tail at sight of me after work and the doggie hugs—priceless.

Now only if they came ready to feed themselves and knew how to open the door and go outside for a poop in the dark on their own without bolting off into the field swift on the scent of something unseen. 

I wish it had been the squirrel from my garage. Alas, a skunk.

    

Still learning what it all means

I just turned 56 years old. Where has the time gone? Where have I been all my life? How did I get here?

Just like the song, “7 Years” by Lucas Graham, I turned around and I was 10, chasing after crayfish shells along the creek and reading fairy tales that I believed in. I turned around again and I was 21, and married. Married at 21?! Wow.

I turned around and I was 30, with three little children, 34 and a single parent. Spin ‘round again and crowding 50 and so many questions; and now here I am suddenly closer to 60 and oh my, I’m still feeling as if I haven’t yet begun to know who I truly am.

I was born the day before Halloween and as a kid my birthdays always were full of spooky celebrations with my girlfriends. 

We would sit in the dark and pass around bowls peeled grapes, cold spaghetti, jiggle Jell-O, (eyes, guts, and brains) --pseudo body parts--that my mom had prepared for us giggly goofs to sink our fingers into while we sat in a circle and told ghost stories. It was gross. It was so much fun.

Then, my mom would top it all off with a birthday cake that had a new Barbie doll standing in the middle of an inverted sponge cake that billowed outward and was decorated like Barbie’s party dress. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and best of all; the Barbie was mine when all the cake was gone.

Inside the cake, my mom had hidden ten-cent pieces wrapped in wax paper. Magically we all managed to find a dime in our piece of cake. It was amazing and I, for one, felt rich.

Ten cents would buy a handful of candy at the local store near the school. I think it even bought a chocolate bar.

When I was one year old, I put my face in my birthday cake. Plunk. Just like that. Oh, the undeniable free spirit of the young at heart. I did it again when I turned 18, a calculated move. Plunk. Hilarious.

I still have my Barbie dolls in a box. I still love birthday cake, spooky stories, and chocolate, and fairy tales.

I still wonder where am I going and what this woman who is me is going to learn about herself today. Some of it I will like, and some of it I won’t.

I wonder about the tomorrow river and the circumstances that are sure to come along, as they always do, that I will not understand and if I will remember to do as Pema Chodron wrote: 

“The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart—to the degree that you didn’t understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart. You are given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.”

Here I go.

Hello Me, I'm back

 I’ve been away.

I’d love to say it was because I was in the places of my heart--hiking the Pacific Coast trail or the magnificent mountain territory of Wyoming or long highway under the clear blue skies of Iceland.

Nope. Alas, those destinations remain in my shoebox full of goals called a bucket list.

I’ve been away from the page because I was very unhappy and I don’t write well at all when I am unhappy.

A part of my life had become unmanageable, like really bad hair. I left it uncombed too long, it got matted and mouse-nested and instead of giving it loving care, I just gathered up my unhappiness in a bun and pretended it was okay, and made excuses for why I should live with it. It stole my sense of things and buried it in the manure pile behind the barn.

I kept my mouth shut and my head down and I got sideswiped by a severe case of codependency. I got lost and I didn’t really know how to find my way back to being true to myself.

I would look back at my path over the last few years and think, “Seriously? Haven’t I had enough rough patches? When is my turn for once? Why does life have to be so hard all the time? I must deserve it.”

I fed the bad wolf. I played the victim role to a “T.”  

I wore that long, flowing black cape of unhappiness like a pro. Sometimes it was two city blocks long, double-knotted around my neck. Sometimes my unhappiness cape was there with me in the shower, it covered my pajamas at night, and lay around my feet at the kitchen table in the morning during breakfast.

Even when I was driving in my car my cape followed behind me billowing in the wind and as soon as I slowed down it snapped to a stop and fell in around me.

But let’s be clear on one thing. This was not depression. This was failure to be true to myself and I used all the tricks and excuses and scenarios in the book to convince myself why I could not just stand up and say “No” to this black caped sleuth.

And then something happened. That one needle in the haystack of unhappiness poked me in the toe and woke me up. It was time for change, to follow through on difficult decisions, and be true to me. I got my wings back.

Every story starts with that first word, maybe three.

I’ve been away.