Miss Know-It-All learns a lesson

Monday, January 31, 2011

I fell in love with snowshoeing in the early 1970s, when I was about 12 years old. I loved the sport most because it was something we always did together as a family.

The wooden “Beavertail” snowshoes with leather belted bindings were too big and my winter boots often got stuck in the toe hole because I didn’t push my foot far enough to the bar. My snowshoes were too long for my height and I couldn’t do the 180-degree turn around like my dad could. And when I tried, I invariably ended up in a contorted heap in the snow, like a long-legged newborn giraffe, unable to untangle myself and get up.

I still loved the whole experience.

Those long winter walks over the frozen creek bed, across the field and into the thick forest behind my childhood home remain crystal clear recalls for me, as if they happened yesterday. We had the same destination every time in that forest. We negotiated up and over the snow-covered rocks and the barbed wire fence that kept my grandfather’s cattle in check, before arriving in the big pines where we’d build a little fire from sticks and pieces of wood lying around.

The canvas pack sack my dad carried on his back would come off and be opened to the eagerness of both of us kids, as the hot dogs went on roasting sticks and the buns, ketchup, and a thermos of hot chocolate made the picnic around the warm fire.

The family dog always came along, and I imagine the hot dog or two it would be passed from the outstretched hand of a child were more than enough reward for the work it took the dog to get there with us through the deep snow.

In all the years since those good old days my love for snowshoeing has never waivered.

But here’s the thing—I haven’t had that pair of snowshoes on nor any other pair of snowshoes on since 1977.

Thus hatched the circus in my neck of the woods on Saturday when, for the first time in 38 years, I decided to try my luck at snowshoeing.

The snowshoes I wore in the 1970s still hang in my parents’ garage. That pair would probably fit me perfectly today, but of course I opted to buy a modern pair with aluminum frames as a graduation present to myself.

I brought them home three weeks ago and hung them on a hook in my kitchen and never once did I think to practice getting to know how they worked.

They were snowshoes. How different could they be?

By the time I’d dressed in multiple layers on Saturday morning, I couldn’t bend over to jimmy my feet into the plastic bindings, let alone figure out how the system worked, and had to take most of my clothes off while standing in the outside doorway in order to figure it out.

I couldn’t put the snowshoes on inside the house because of the crampons, or steel teeth underneath that helped with traction and I didn’t need a set of giant teeth tracks across my kitchen floor.

All I know for sure is that I had an attack of the “cramp-ons” from all the work it took to get the stupid things on.

Then, all at once I was off on my solo quest, chest puffed out, my Olympic-sized ego in tow, headed for the bush line far across the creek with no pack sack, no food or matches, and no note left behind to tell loved ones where to come looking for me should I go missing.

I hadn’t walked more than 30 ft into the deep snow when my butt muscles started to spasm and my legs turned to cement.

I had two canine capers that followed close behind me, refusing to blaze their own trail for fear that I would eat the dog treats they could smell in my coat pocket. In fact, so close did they follow, that they stepped on my snowshoes, hurling me face first into a snowdrift.

The dogs just sat there behind me like ice statues, waiting for me to get up and blaze on.

And I hadn’t even made it out of my own yard at that point.

By the time I made it down to the creek, I’d fallen three times, lost one mitt, and dropped my camera in the snow.

The dogs then bolted off down the creek bed with their noses to the ground fast on the scent of creatures unseen. They disappeared around the bend leaving me standing there listening to the sound of my heart pounding “can I go home now,” as my thigh muscles burned holes in my long underwear from acute overuse.

I was standing there motionless and cold when the dogs came roaring back in my direction, followed closely by what I thought was a wolf—and they were leading it straight to me in the wake of their own terror.

My first thought was to release myself from my snowshoes and use them as shields but I didn’t even know how to get them off.

My heart was in need of a defibrillator by the time I realized it was not a wolf, but a much larger neighborhood dog.

All three canines arrived at my feet with tails wagging for those treats I still had in my pocket.

I threw in the towel.

I looked back at the house 150 ft. away and thought how nice it would be if Isaiah Mustafa suddenly arrived on a white snowmobile and offered me a ride home.

Unfortunately that’s not what happened.

The script for the next half-century

Monday, January 17, 2011

I’ve just come from the doctor’s office and the first “Well Woman” checkup of my 50’s, having reached that inaugural aging mountain last October.

And while I don’t believe “it’s all downhill from here,” it would appear that if I want the grass to stay green on this side of the fence, the days of casual indifference to health issues must take leave on the night train bound for the past.

Medical statistics dictate that once you hit the half-century mark, your reasons for “kicking the bucket “depend more on the diseases in the bucket than you tripping over the bucket and meeting with an untimely end due to the accidental fall.

This tidbit of information was a huge eye opener for someone like me, who has no intention on cutting short her earth visit over the next 50 years.

Well Woman changes are then a must—including to my usual after supper menu of three cups of bold “Caldwell” coffee, four chocolates, and three slices of the blackened carcinogens of over-cooked pork roast that I’d forgotten to take out of the oven because I was slouched over the Internet.

In other words, now I really should be drinking green tea and plenty of water, eating more blueberries, wild Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds, and walnuts.

And exercising more than the effort it takes to lift my tired carcass onto the couch after a long day at my office desk.

Yes, body mass index reducing exercise.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the Well Woman doctor visit was learning that for the last 35 years I’ve been living the lie of being taller than I actually am.

The jig is up. Somebody turn off the sirens and warning lights.

The reality check of being even shorter than I thought I was, means my height/weight ratio has catapulted me into the red zone on the BMI scale.

Suddenly “Buddha” is no longer the unsung hero of my childbearing days, but the target for every shape-shifting exercise and weight loss plan I can find.

The question remains, will I put myself to the task? I am the one student who in high school waited until the night before to study for exams—and it wasn’t because I was gifted with scorching intelligence.

I’ll readily admit that I could be a poster child for procrastination. In a former life I’m sure I was the Greek goddess “Akrasia,” who knew what she ought to do and didn’t do it.

I continue to be challenged by self-regulation failure and when it comes to balancing my love of food and the “Despicable Me” who rears her ugly head at the thought of exercising on purpose, my inability to avoid or stop undesirable behavior needs to go to rehab.

Yet, while I may drag my feet too much in some areas of my life, I do not do that with my desire to lead an honest living, and yet as I have come to realize, even honesty doesn’t always pay.

Or at least it doesn’t pay me.

Like a good citizen I wrote the taxman to advise of my marital status change to “separated” and they acknowledged my truthfulness with a bill for $465. Go figure.

My honesty also dictates that I ask the burning question that faces me as I pull a homemade pizza out of the oven.

If I live alone does that mean I can eat the whole pizza by myself without feeling guilty?

Bon appétit!

The cat rules get tested

Monday, January 10, 2011

There are a few things I’ve had just about enough of; snow banks that block the view of oncoming traffic, my frozen fingers in cheap winter mitts, the dog’s back leg, and persnickety old oil furnaces.

And oh yes, the cat hairs on my bed pillow aren’t winning an award just now either. I love cats. I loathe cat hair—that same loathe of cat hair that I had during the weak and brainwashed moment last fall when I was convinced another house pet would complete me.

As I sit here writing this column, “Oliver’s” beady little cat eyes are staring back at me from the flop of my bed blankets that he has stirred up in the pandemonium to locate the small bell toy he is constantly fetching and carrying around in his mouth.

The number two cat rule around here goes something like this; “Cats are not allowed on my bed.”

Oliver knows this. He is a smart cat. Any cat that can drink water out of the toilet must be smart, right?

Yet there he rolls in the no-cat zone of my unmade bed flicking cat hair all over my pillow—and as I thoroughly enjoy the morning entertainment.

I hate to admit it, but cats could teach us a thing or two about being in the moment and enjoying it—even if it means facing a total body shaving or wrap in duct tape when we are through.

I contemplate these radical fixes for the “shed” dilemma several times each day, including when I find cat hair protruding from my right nostril when I wake up in the morning, or when a cat hair gets stuck to my contact lens as I am putting it in at 6 a.m., causing me to flail about as if a fire poker has just been inserted in my cornea.

Cats are not allowed on my bed.

And it never fails that at 11 p.m. as I lay supine under the weight of a snuggly bedspread, drained of energy from a busy day and drifting off into my fantasies—I will be attacked by a flying cat.

Just five minutes prior to this mayhem he will have been passed out on the chair he is not supposed to sleep on in the kitchen.

The ruckus begins with what sounds like the distant rumble of horse hooves and as my drowsy mind pictures Isaiah Mustafa from the “Old Spice” commercial riding in to rescue me from my troubles, a small feline terror leaps diagonally across my bed, meets with the opposing corner and falls straight down the crack between the bed and the wall to floor.

With my dashed dreams of a beautiful black man on a white stallion, I drag my skeleton from bed and coax kitty to the kitchen with a treat and lock the door behind him as he bolts off to entertain the barn cat, on winter sojourn in the basement.

This “nuttier than squirrel turds” scenario happens at least three times a week and, it would appear, only on the nights when I dream of Mustafa. The remaining nights when I’m lying in bed thinking about the reasoning in buying a 16-oz bottle of “Le Chien et le Chat” laundry detergent for $16 and a $600 vacuum cleaner meant just for animal hair, all is quiet on the feline front.

And then there is the dog’s back leg; with a mind and performance all its own during Cash’s ear scratching episodes as it flails and jigs about in referred delight.

Inadvertently, the back leg of the canine becomes a door knocker at 3 a.m. when this human is in the deepest dungeon of sleep and wherein I am suddenly impaled on the bedroom ceiling out of instant panic at the rapping that also sends “Dot” into a bark and warn frenzy.

Morning arrives and I sit up groggy, rubbing my face, chanting, and “I feel wonderful I feel wonderful,” mimicking a scene from the movie “What about Bob.”

And then I wonder why I drop face first into my chicken soup at lunchtime in a wave of narcolepsy.

Sherri Ziff Lester, a Hollywood life coach, says we should find a quiet space and ask: What do I want for my life? How do I want it to be different? And rather than seeing the new year as the time to radically shift gears overnight, to make a six-month plan with small, doable action steps. Then, on the first day of each month, we’re supposed to treat ourselves and reflect on our progress.

As I look over at my bed Oliver is rubbing his face all over the “J’Adore” perfume sample page in my “Elle” magazine and scratching at the image of Natalie Portman on the magazine cover after which he dove into the space between my blankets and bedspread and fell asleep.

I think one small, doable action step for 2011 would be to give up on the number two cat rule.

Here's to new chapters

Sunday, January 2, 2011

I haven’t written in this space for three months but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it. 90 days of “noggin notes” disguised as monkeys swinging from limb to limb. The ideas for this space dangle and sway in my brain and accumulate as loads of unfolded head laundry.

And when opportunity presents itself I’ve released the writing wash onto whatever scraps of paper are at hand including gum wrappers and old grocery receipts and stacked them in a pile on my computer desk for “later.”

Well “later” has arrived—either that or I will have to get a bigger desk.

So here’s to new chapters that begin with my agreement in the common narrative that comes ‘round in more ways than one this time of year.

“I ate too much over the holidays.”

This I admit while picking potato chip crumbs out of my computer keyboard and grazing on another five of those delicious “Ferrero Rocher” chocolates, three “Cadbury” fingers, and the left over crab wontons from the New Year’s Eve menu as I suck in the evidence otherwise known as “Buddha.”

But as I have admitted in the past, I’ve given up trying to fix that area of my Roman goddess figure I blame squarely on the childbearing years of my youth. I expect that even after a year’s confinement to a tummy and butt spa in California, I’d have buns of steel but I’d still be able to grab a handful of baby fat below my belly button.
And pushing back that number on the weigh scale has been dragged through the mud, stepped on, run over by a truck, and raked through the coals a million times over. I’ve tried every trick in the book including hanging on to the wall naked with one foot off the scale while holding my breath.

So here’s to new chapters that include self-acceptance first, healthy choices—and chocolate on any day ending in “y” as long as it’s more than two hours before bedtime.

Meanwhile, a new kitten roams the halls in this neck of the woods, sacked with the name and persistently hungry personality plucked straight from the Charles Dickens novel, ‘Oliver Twist.’

Every morning since Daughter #3 convinced me—in a moment of weakness—that one more cat would complete me, “Oliver” has met me at the fridge at 6 a.m., where he performs jumping jacks and pirouettes in a bid for kitty treats.

“Please Mum, I want more,” he begs in relentless feline speech. I give in to his cuteness daily.

However, his favor faded briefly at one sunrise during the holidays when I found Christmas tree ornaments from the living room scattered across my bedroom floor—and no cat in sight.

Upon investigation of Oliver’s whereabouts, while returning the ornaments to their rightful place, I found him staring at me wide-eyed through the branches in the middle of the Christmas tree with that classic wild look that precedes the pounce.

I had a flash of anticipatory terror. It was a scene from the movie “Alien,” when that seed pod thing jumped onto the face of the innocent astronaut.

The cat-a-pult from the tree onto the front of my housecoat happened so fast that I was sure I would never recover from the shock. In fact it took me most of the morning not only to calm my nerves, but also my frightful “Don King” hairdo!

Hence, asterisks have been added in the holiday notebook reminder for next year. Leading up to next Christmas, a certain feline will spend his nights in the basement—under the autonomy of the canine capers.

And last but not least, as I kick off a fresh curve in column writing in 2011 I must reiterate a ‘Thank You’ to the Universal Plan that waits patiently for those of us who choose to see the absolute grace and empowerment in stepping outside the box and accepting life change.

Here’s to new chapters.

What happens when you least expect it

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

“What happens when you least expect it” is the caption for a feature story on actress Laura Linney published in this month’s issue of “More” magazine. The headline jumped out at me because it was as true to what happens in my neck of the woods, as “that way” is the direction to the North Pole.

And my neck of the woods doesn’t necessarily always have to be right here, smack dab among the big and tall evergreen trees. My neck of the woods, (a.k.a. the ridiculous, the unbelievable, the folly) apparently follows me to any location in which I happen to be taking up space—and skulks about with haphazard adventures. I don’t need to be sitting on my wicker couch by the creek for that scenario to stop by for a visit.

It followed me all the way to Winnipeg a couple of weeks ago. As if driving in that one-way jungle is not enough for this country mouse.

I confess I’m not a fan of only being able to go in one direction—especially when behind the wheel—and when I’m in the driver’s seat in Winnipeg, my passengers know they haven’t the remotest chance of discovering new places there to tour or shop unless they take a cab. I have one goal in mind and its Route 90 to my hotel.

I arrived at the hotel lobby that day without incident. I had stayed in my lane, followed other vehicles traveling in the same direction, and didn’t have to stop for geese crossing the busy thoroughfare like I did the last time.

It was when I got out of the truck and went around back to open the hatch that my neck of the woods jumped out at me and up my nostrils smelling like three-day old road kill in 34 C sunshine.

By the time the stench hit my odor receptors, it already had melted off my makeup and stirred up all the chocolate snacks in my stomach that I’d eaten on the 4-hour drive from home.

To quote Will Smith from the movie ‘Independence Day,’ “AND WHAT IS THAT SMELL!”

Did I have road kill in my tire treads? Did somebody put road kill in the back of my truck as a joke? How did I make it through Customs at Warroad with that stench?

My daughter and I could hardly contain our insides as we pulled our overstuffed suitcases from the hatch, slammed it closed and backed away blue in the face from lack of oxygen.

I could not get over it. Never had I smelled something THAT rotten and never had I expected to smell it coming from my vehicle.

It was so bad that when I made my ingrained and patterned two-city block drive to my shopping experience at Polo Park that afternoon, I left the vehicle in a far corner of the parking lot for fear of reprisal by other drivers parked beside me. And I’m sure I could have left the truck unlocked. No thief in his right mind would steal something that smelled that bad.

By 9 p.m. that night, as I relaxed in my hotel room thinking about the stench and how many guests were sure to complain about having to park beside me in the hotel parking lot, I called the front desk to give them the heads up about the situation.

And in trying to explain away the mysterious reek to the front desk clerk I burst out laughing hysterically and surely caused the poor fellow to believe I was in need of a straightjacket.

As I lay in bed that night, I envisioned a crime scene investigation unit would no doubt be in place by morning, cordoning off my truck with crime tape, complete with helicopters and men in white suits.

I had turned over in my head all possible causes for the disgusting odor and concluded that “Dot” had chased a large rodent up into the under-bowels of my truck where it had died waiting to escape her wrath. It would be jammed in some inaccessible location under there and I would never get it out.

Turns out it was a Styrofoam bowl of unspeakably rotten soup that had been sitting on the pavement in the exact spot where I had parked at the hotel. I had smashed it open and splashed its contents on the underside of the truck and oozed into the tire treads.

I was so relieved by the realization that I would not be the subject of a forensic investigation that my exaltation came in ahead of my purchase of anything on sale at the mall.

I almost was elated enough to be carried courageously down an unknown one-way street to visit a shopping mall I had never been to before. But that possibility went out the door when I tried to turn left while in the wrong lane. Luckily the rest of Winnipeg was on alert that it was I behind the wheel and managed to stay clear of my country mouse driving.

I arrived at my house safe and sound and was unpacking the truck as the dogs raced around the yard expressing their joy at my arrival when I realized that leaving the doors open to the house to transport my wares inside, was clearly a mistake.

The red squirrel, followed closely by Dot, made a beeline for safety through the kitchen door.

My neck of the woods was home again.

Eddie Vedder hit the nail on the head

Monday, August 23, 2010

Right up front, I will advise that this week’s column is a bit of a stray from my regular scrape of words on skunks, spiders, dogs, and chocolate.

This is where you can jump off if you like, and return next week for the usual script that will include my version of a recent trip I took to the big city.

But at this moment I am on the “Eat, Pray, Love” train and in my foreseeable future, I will not be getting off.

After all, Elizabeth Gilbert did the write the book just for me. I understand that some people would rather stick a fork in their eyeball than read it, and that’s okay too.

I’m on my second go ‘round of the paperback, crossing over at “Attraversiamo” on page 331 right back upon the Introduction in one fluid sweep—and this time armed with a highlighter to mark all the passages that were light bulb moments. Truth be told, I’ve also been to see the movie three times within a week, and I suspect I just might go back again.

And if I could afford it, I would buy the book for every woman I know who has an open mind—and for one man in particular who would definitely benefit from the read, given his current trajectory.

Rarely do I become so infatuated with a book—or a movie for that matter.

The last time I was in movie “gaga” was when “Titanic” hit the screen in 1997. I think I saw it four times. Before that, it was “The Lion King” in 1994. It’s the only movie I’ve ever been to in the ‘Cine5’ theatre where, on first viewing, the audience stood up, clapped, and cheered at the end.

So here I am in unchartered waters where my ship hit an iceberg and the circle of married life cracked and blew my heart wide open.

I’d bought the book when it was first published over three years ago, but put it on a shelf and never picked it up again until a month and a half ago when I was about to lose myself to the flies of sadness that were constantly swirling around in my mind.

There was a day when I would have rather eaten live tarantulas than give way to this path of change, but as I am discovering every day since I’ve been on the “Eat, Pray, Love” train, the road is one that rises ever so gently to meet me when I give the Universe a chance to show me what is possible.

"You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control."

Ms Gilbert’s philosophies have opened my eyes and my soul to hope, and at the very least have helped save me from wallowing endlessly in a pity party that begins and ends with the sentence, “I can not imagine my life without you in it.”

This is not to say for a minute that I don’t still have a broken heart. I do. But now I can live with it.

I am learning to give that “hurt and pinch” some light and love and then drop it. It’s not easy, and on occasion I still go for a drive in my truck and cry big crocodile tears, or mow my lawn and pretend my soon-to-be ex-spouse is every blade of grass.

But no longer am I willing to let those emotions be the energy vampires in my day-to-day world. Life is too short and I love myself too much to lose another day’s grace in a dark room full of self-loathing.

And I say “Thank You” out loud a lot. I’m not even sure to whom or to what I am saying it, but I say it anyway and especially when the moment is seemingly about to make me a victim of own optimism.

I have discovered that it is my word.

Robert Frost used three to sum up everything he learned about life and he’s right. “Life goes on.”

My future is paved with better days.

Ice cream doesn't fix everything

Monday, August 16, 2010

Skunk smell on dog.

Ice cream doesn’t fix that. Nothing really fixes that indescribable stench, including the hydrogen peroxide/dish soap/baking soda concoction I found on Google.

Of course in my wisdom I added vinegar. I’d heard what a dishful of the liquid could do to absorb household cooking odors.

I learned very quickly—at the moment my dog’s fur puffed out like an erupting volcano on four legs—that the chemical reaction between vinegar and baking soda is best left to the high school science lab.

I’m convinced, after this latest spray park episode in my neck of the woods, that my dogs are cousins of the deer family. Neither genus remembers nor passes down to their young, the traumatic events that involve skunks or traffic.

I hardly ever see the skunk. The standard is that it just lifts its tail from deep in the long grass of the field where the dogs are playing and BAM!

But of course, my neck of the woods is about as far from the norm as one can get.

The latest prequel consisted of me minding my own business on the lawn tractor, catching a whiff of skunk, rolling my eyes, cursing the umpteenth encounter of the summer and then moving on to the uncut portion of grass.

The latest prequel also consisted of me minding my own business on the lawn tractor, coming ‘round for a second cut, and seeing the canine stupors literally in a tug-of-war with the skunk, which was gnashing, spraying, and quite rightly and most seriously furious.

But as I have alluded to in other chicken scratch columns, the rodents of this world are no matches for Dot. She of course, was at least smart enough to have picked the skunk’s head in battle. Cash was headlong at the tail end of the fight and hence became my science project on four legs.

And then there’s the rat story. Ice cream didn’t fix that either, but it did cross my mind to use it as bait.

Instead I turned once again to Google, and typed, “rat poop” and “weasel poop” into the Images link. Clearly the little black droppings on the laptop screen looked exactly like the gazillion count I found in a corner of an old horse stall in the barn. I had a rat problem.

Time for the big guns.

I called the Lone Ranger, known to have one of everything, including a live trap. But by the next morning after we set the catch, I was convinced I not only had a rat, but a smart rat.

In what I took as a sort of middle finger gesture—it had climbed on top of the live trap and pooped all over it instead of venturing inside for the juicy piece of pork rind left for the little devil.

Time for the bigger guns.

I made a beeline straight for the hardware store and stocked up on little green squares of rat poison and placed them strategically on the snack table of my enemy.

Just then, while down on my knees and in full vulnerability of “Willard” and his sociopathic brood of rodents, a small fast thing whirred past my peripheral vision. I froze.

A chipmunk? Was that a white flag he was carrying?

I hadn’t even considered googling “chipmunk poop,” and as it turned out the little striped sassafras was the culprit all along.

Of course it’s a given that I now cater to “Elvis” with a daily supply of unshelled, unsalted peanuts.

And when it started to rain a few days ago all I could think about was how the wet weather would thankfully put a damper on the wood tick population in my neck of the woods.

In a minute of panic that rivaled the shower scene from the movie “Psycho,” I recently fought with a wood tick that was stuck to the arch of my foot. I didn’t have my contact lenses in and thought it was sock fuzz until when I tried to flick it off, it got stuck to my index finger. I freaked out and tried to boil it off with the showerhead before watching it slide down the drain. I then imagined it clinging to the side of the drainpipe until the middle of the night, when it would crawl back up the drain hole and be waiting for me on the toilet seat in the morning.

It’s amazing how scared I get of something so small—just like thong underwear. Scary. Very, very scary.

Ice cream doesn’t fix that picture either, but a big bowl of it sure would taste good right about now.

Doubt if you must, but trust me on the sunscreen

Monday, August 2, 2010

Eating a third, frozen chocolate chip cookie from a zip lock baggie in the freezer did not help me decide what to write about this week. But it did convince me that my diet vows are, at times, pointless drivel—particularly the one I made last night in front of my daughter when I proclaimed that I would not allow anything unhealthy to pass over my lips during the next seven days.

Obviously that diet declaration fell out of my mouth and onto the floor, where it scurried under the bed to hide among the dust bunnies—and with it my baker’s logic that if I put cookies in the freezer, I would be deterred from eating any.

Who was I kidding? They taste better frozen.

Come to think of it, I put the blame for my latest across-the-board junk food wagon ride squarely at the feet of the two potato chip and chocolate bar addicts whom I took camping with me this past weekend.

Both of them carried around a beach bag full of forbidden snack food at all times, with goodies often fanned out in front of them like a dealer’s hand in a game of Blackjack.

Before I knew it I’d gone from a lettuce and carrot salad menu on Friday afternoon to an hourly intake of Tootsie rolls, salsa-flavored potato chips, Hershey’s chocolate bars, and cinnamon buns by Saturday morning.

So as I sat here in front of the living room window on the holiday Monday in August, flexing my typing finger and watching my stomach inch its way outward and over the top of my jeans in protest of my latest foodie over-indulgence, an unknown dog of large and lanky measure appeared on the grassy knoll at the edge of my property line I share with my new neighbors. It sniffed about and promptly peed upon my blue spruce seedling.

My flat stare expression pressed up against the glass and my rapping knuckles went unnoticed except to the four little birds merrymaking in the grass, that I startled and sent in a flurry straight for me.

I ducked as the birds hit the window. Fortunately for my yet-to-be- allotted window budget and the birds, my fine-feathered friends flew off unscathed, save a few less downy feathers.

One would think I had just shouted ““SQUIRREL!!”

Most of the time the noun is my roll call to the dogs to help drive said rodent up a tree when it’s been spotted stealing sunflower seeds from the birdfeeder.

It also works as a “cat-a-lyst” when “Ozzie” the feline is lining up his stealth move against the lone finch I’m trying to save from his clawed grip.

The sudden commotion sent my own canine capers, which were sleeping soundly in the kitchen, into a barking frenzy that reached the ears of the four-legged scoundrel and sent it high-tailing back across the county line.

But I digress.

There I was standing at the living room window, lamenting no storyline for my column, overdone by too many cookies, my hair looking like the “Wrath of Kahn” and with enough static in it to wipe out a radio station, as I smeared sunscreen all over my face and neck before I headed outside to cut the grass with Big John.

Then the telephone rang. On the other end was a potential employer seeking me for a job interview in the next 30 minutes.

Was it some kind of weird loyalty speed test?

Regardless, I jumped at the opportunity to impress and made a mad dash for the bedroom and the one set of dress pants I owned.

I nearly took my own breath away when I looked in the mirror at my emerging “Don King” hairdo, and the creases around my eyes and that of my chicken neck streaked with white sunscreen residue.

And for the first time in nearly 14 weeks I got down on my knees and thanked the floor that I didn’t have a husband walking through the door right then farming for a kiss.

The budding single life does have its perks.

A re'butt'al on the study of women's hips

Monday, July 19, 2010

It was a day that began as regular as rain—coffee so strong and thick I could part it with a knife, my favorite morning show, and my surf of the internet for the news of the moment.

And then my muscles contracted as the first sentence of the online article jumped off the screen and nearly caused me to spit my Caldwell coffee all over my laptop keyboard.

“A woman’s body shape may influence how good her memory is. ‘Apple-shaped’ women fared better than ‘pears’ on cognitive tests.”

My bottom lip began to twitch and my eyeballs began to jitter back and forth as I scanned the remaining paragraphs for the punch line. Surely this was some kind of joke.

Nope.

“And pear-shaped women – those with smaller waists but bigger hips – scored particularly poorly.”

I was doomed.

Not only was the incessant growth of grey hair on my head far in advance of the schedule I had for myself at age 49, but now my ample hips were about to get in the way of more than the narrow doorway. They were about to impair my memory and render me unable to remember where I left my sunglasses and house keys.

It wasn’t fair. Just the other day I had finally come to the conclusion that these cougars in a gunnysack were here to stay, and I was okay with the ample part of my anatomy. I could displace my neck when I turned around and looked at my curvaceous baggage in the full-length mirror and then go on with my day and forget about what was back there.

Now it would seem, I really was going to forget about it!

It was happening already, I thought to myself as I sat in my computer chair flexing my gluteal nemesis “Maximus” and his cousins “Medius” and “Minimus.”

I’d forgotten what day it was and to make matters worse, when I looked out the living room window at how much the grass had grown overnight, I couldn’t remember “Did I just cut it yesterday?”

I began talking to myself. Was that also a sign that carrying excess weight on the hips was making matters worse?

“I don’t know,” I said to myself, “but I really doubt it. If I can’t remember that it’s you I’m talking to, then I’ll consider it a problem.”

Then my pathologically positive side kicked in—similar in speed to last week when I realized that not having a husband meant I could turn the barn into a girl cave.

“Think positive,” I shouted out loud at 6:30 a.m. “The junk in the trunk is one of your biggest assets. It’s the foundation of your being, the underside of your existence, the land under the water of your better half!”

And of course, true to their canine nature, the dogs translated my octaves into a call to breakfast and jumped around the kitchen like children on Christmas morning.

I could turn ‘re-butt’ this argument.

Thanks to my Irish and Scottish ancestors I would have a mind like a steel trap until the age of 110.

No pear-shaped behind of mine was going to be the iceberg to my titanic of a brain.

I thought about all the great construction scenarios my hips would be good for in the future, including when I held open the barn door and heaved out bar stools and old tools as the movers carried in the pink couch.

Squirrels, snakes and the superpowers of a canine nose

Monday, July 12, 2010

Each morning at 6 a.m. when I let Dot and Cash outside to pee, there is that moment before they head to their respective bush latrines when their noses filter the surrounding air chemistry and, I imagine, make a mental note on their tiny brains, of everything that has trotted, flown, crept, skulked, and swam by this neck of the woods within the past 12 hours.

If I’m lucky, nothing untoward is on the breeze and they will not take off like bats out of purgatory and bark their loud cries of warning that echo down the creek—noise that has been known to wake the neighbors, cheating them out of the last good moments of morning slumber on any given Sunday.

Experts say the secret to a dog’s exceptional olfactory process is a wet snout, which catches all the scent molecules in the air. Experts also believe that in order to keep their snouts moist, dogs produce about a pint of nose mucus every day.

That explains why I can be more than two meters away from a sneezing dog and still feel like I need to douse myself in antibacterial hand soap and take a shower.

I also was curious enough to query just how much a pint was, thus comparing my jar of breakfast jam to dog nose mucus and thereby ruining the enjoyment of spreading the fruit preserves on my toast each morning.

Dot’s incredible nose is the bane of the resident red squirrel’s existence, unless of course we count the sting of the Lone Ranger’s 22-calibre perfect shot.

But so far the rodent has remained in the lead-free zone of my birdfeeder, where on rare occasion it can enjoy a day out of the tree tops if Dot isn’t around.

And I should learn to leave my kitchen window closed at bedtime to keep the bouquets of the night air from reaching the nostrils of my dogs at the darkest hour.

On one such evening, when I was without fear of the night unknown, I gave way to the dogs’ insistence to track the scent, while I followed behind with my big flashlight.

I stood there shining the 15 million-candlelight on the rustling bushes as Dot and Cash jumped about barking and looking at me as if to shout, “Do you smell that?! Do you hear that?!”

I heard it alright. It was the sound of a skunk revving up its scent glands.

I think the remedy for that incident included baking soda, dish soap, water, vinegar, and hydrogen peroxide and two dogs that slept out in the porch for the rest of the week.

Groundhogs beware. If Dot is on your trail, your time on earth is limited to the split second she smells your “rodescence”, as was the case on Saturday morning when she cornered the four-footed menace behind a piece of discarded fencing.

For quite a time after it bit the dust, Dot stood tirelessly over the rodent trophy in ultimate victory. When I picked up the carcass and flung it into the creek, unbeknownst to me she skulked down to the water’s edge, swam out and waited for the thing to float by, fetched it and brought it back up on shore where she again stood over it until I caught sight of her one hour later.

Dot’s super sensitive snout can not be subdued, even for the quiet times I wish to spend these days sitting in my old wicker chair reading books about inner peace and harmony.

There she appears, gingerly drawing her snout along the lawn edge where it meets the long grass and begins to bark incessantly at “the nothing.”

For a fleeting moment as I listened to her ominous tone I envisioned a large black bear would suddenly leap out of the tall grass and swallow her up, attitude and all.

As I watched the dog have what I considered to be a rather brainless moment in which she would not advance upon the thing she smelled, I stepped forward to see what all the commotion was about.

I peered down into the unknown to see the tail of a thick, slithering garter snake slink deeper into the field grass.

After the dog had gone on to other olfactory adventures the snake must have emerged and molted its skin, which in turn provided much anxiety for Dot, who came back upon the lifeless shedding only to bark at it for the rest of the afternoon.

Cash on the other hand did nothing more than sit on his haunches in his “Ducks Unlimited” regal position and stare out at the field across the creek, quite content just to be, his long nose twitching as he drank up the deer pheromones on the breeze.

That’s the self-controlled Cash I would like to see when I leave a roast chicken sitting on the picnic table while I run back inside to get a carving knife.

But I don’t think he’ll get the benefit of the doubt on that one.

I hang my laundry out to dry with my own clothespins

Monday, July 5, 2010

“Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth,” urges Sheryl Louise Moller.

Okay then. Here it goes.

It’s been six weeks since I’ve had any gumption to plunk out this column on my laptop because six weeks ago I found myself smack dab at the end of something that meant the world to me. My marriage.

Elizabeth Gilbert had the right idea in her book “Eat, Pray, Love,” and it is within the context of her writing that I give you my truth, because I can’t seem to find the right way to put my reading public on notice on my own.

“The many reasons a man called Peter did not want to be this woman’s husband anymore are too personal and too private to share here. I would not ask anyone to believe that I am capable of reporting an unbiased version of our story, and therefore the chronicle of our marriage’s failure will remain untold here. I also will not discuss here the reasons why I do still so very much want to be his wife, and why I am still unable to imagine life without him. Let it be sufficient to say that, he is still my love, my lighthouse, and my albatross in equal measure.”

But I’m an adult and I know when to let go and I’m practicing doing that every day with as much respect, and gratitude, and good wishes as I can rally for the man who means the world to me and who wishes to journey forward on his own.

However I don’t profess to do anything of the sort without bouts of dismal interior dialogue and visits from my old friend ‘Misery,’ though I must admit she is not coming around as much anymore since I was discovered by ‘Shift,’ who has helped me immensely by giving me tours in the department of ‘Thinking Positive.’

I also lean on my women’s circle, chocolate bars, and ice cream for support.

I’m always writing about the Universal Plan and how much I believe in it. My current circumstance is testing me on whether I practice what I preach even when things get really %$#@! difficult.

It can’t always be that life is going to give us cherries and I think this qualifies as the pits.

But I am determined to use the leftovers to build myself a lovely, new orchard.

May I start by saying "Thank you."

Who are you if you're not the one who wrote this?

Monday, May 24, 2010

And I repeat,

“Four little words just to get me along . . .”

That’s the first line of a song called ‘That’s Not My Name’ sung by British craze duo ‘The Ting Tings.’

‘That’s Not My Name’ is a fun, upbeat tune that drives me to grab my pseudo-microphone hairbrush and karaoke my way back and forth across my kitchen floor, pretending to be a pop star.

“They call me Stacey, Mary, Jo, Lisa. They call me Her, they call me Jane, always the same. That’s not my name. That’s not my name. That’s not my name,” I croon.

This time it should be “That’s not my column. That’s not my column. That’s not my column.”

Hence, I again feel compelled to poke some fun at myself and the misfire of editing after another contributing writer’s column appeared under my byline in last week’s newspaper.

“Moo.”

In a small town like this, it’s how rumors get started. In a moment of panic I thought I might have to vanish into obscurity as the next volunteer to protect the island on the television series “LOST.”

First off, I didn’t submit a column for last week’s newspaper, which made for the bewildered tilt of my head when a regular reader stopped me in the local grocery store on Thursday afternoon and queried, “I thought you were married.”

And while I have been known on occasion to “have a cow” when my temper gets the best of me—I do not own cows.

And while I do own a barn, my barnyard is not a mess unless you count the small patch of dog poop I forgot to clean up.

And while I have often thought of Daughter #3 as my summer student, she still hasn’t been able to see much of what I do around here because I have all cleaning and bagging done before she gets up at noon.

However, I do have something in common with the Rainy River District Environmental Stewardship Committee. I bought 80 tree seedlings from the group this year. And last summer I purchased and planted 200 seedlings here in my neck of the woods.

I may be cash poor, but I am land rich and in my book there are few earth-friendly accomplishments more satisfying than planting trees.

Last but not least, I do not have a Maddie or a Marlee in my brood, although I do enjoy reading about their little lives when they visit Auntie Kimmie.

But I do change poopie diapers and wipe runny noses and occasionally rescue pussy willows buds from a two-year old’s nostrils.

Most importantly, the news from my herd is that I have a brand new grandson named Charlie, born 15 days ago.

The first tree seedling I planted in my yard was for you, my newest sprout.

The little wonders in my world continue to entertain me

Sunday, May 9, 2010

At mid-week, my brood of grandchildren will have grown by one, as Daughter #1 will give birth to a baby May 11th.

The new addition brings my grandmotherly doting issues to five little peppers.

In the days to come, eight pounds of the newest little someone with the mess of dark, fine hair and star-lit eyes staring back at me from the baby blankets in my arms won’t seem as heavy as the 4kg of sugar I carried in from the truck—and conversations will be all about possibilities.

By mid-week, I’m quite sure I also will be on my second case of the energy drink ‘Red Bull’, as the only vim I expect to have left will be that of the cleaning brand of the same name in the cupboard under my kitchen sink.

Reasons? Two charges—a.k.a. sister and brother of the new baby—both under the age of four-and-a-half years, who will have been visiting Granny Daycare while Mommy is in hospital.

I am beginning to realize with some disbelief that the energy it takes to look after small fries exceeds any other vigorous activity I engage in.

Sometimes I can’t believe I too once was a mother with three small children and that I survived that maternal power supply drainage project.

Please excuse me while I duct tape the kids to the living room wall and go take my morning Granny nap.

The funny thing is, I had a dry run at this chipmunk festival last week, when Daughter #1 unexpectedly went into hospital for complete bed rest. My daycare centre only lasted for one night and two days and yet I was completely worn out.

This is not to say that Adam and Julie were unmanageable. In fact it was just the opposite. They ate their carrots and slept until the sun came up at 5:24 a.m.

However they did try to convince me there was no such thing as manners at their house and compared everything I did for them to the routine they were used to with their mom, including how small and in which shape I cut up their meat.

Say it with me. “Ohm.”

And on the visit to the toy aisle at the local department store with me during his mother’s absence, Adam picked up a “Leapster” computer game and said most casually, “Granny, my mom told me that the next time we come here to shop, she’s going to buy this for me.”

“That’s very nice,” I said, looking for an empty shelf that I might curl up on for a five-minute siesta.

“That’s today,” he said in a serious matter-of-fact tone.

He then proceeded to repeatedly trip over his bottom lip when the tactic didn’t work—as we moved on to the hardware section to look for more duct tape.

Julie on the other hand hasn’t gone the wily route just yet. She’s just happy if there’s a snack to be had.

Clearly I was not prepared. I had flax seeds, lentils, and red kidney beans in large quantities—none of which seemed to thrill the child.

She ran over to the "Lazy Susan" kitchen cabinet—the same one where the old square cookie tin sits in the same spot as it did in my youth when my grandmother ruled this kitchen—and spun the shelving.

“Cookies in there?” she queried as the shelf slowed down and stopped like a roulette wheel, bang-on the cookie tin.

She looked up at me with those brown eyes, as I poured another can of Boost into my coffee cup.

“No. There are no cookies in there. I don’t have any,” I said.

Julie spun the shelf again and when the cookie tin came round again she shouted enthusiastically, “There it is! Cookies in there?”

It was as if it was a new discovery every time over the span of six to eight more spins.

Oh yes, and never underestimate a two-year-old’s ability to find the one thing you don’t want them to touch when you turn your back for 10 seconds. It was a record-breaking spree as she picked off all multiple new leaves of the flower sprouts I had just replanted in peat pots after six weeks of difficult germination.

Later that afternoon when the little mice coaxed me outside to run about the yard, we decided to play hide and seek in the half-light of the barn.

Once inside, I encouraged my energizer bunny duo to go and hide and that I would close my eyes and count to 10.

No sooner had I put my head into the crux of my arm and counted to five, did Julie come running up to me and said shout, “There you are! I see you!”

It was too funny.

As I write this, I am sharing my blood supply with my leather couch and another bottle of Boost and reading quotes from Erma Bombeck about motherhood.

“All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.”

She might be right, but I don’t have any carpets in my house.

However, what I do have is three less buds on a dried pussy willow arrangement and which I didn’t know were missing until Julie sneezed and all three came flying across the room out of her nose.

Say it with me, “Ohm.”

The day when the usual attire didn't make the cut

Sunday, May 2, 2010

I am quite comfortable, thank you very much; in thinking that Christmas is the only date I have with social formality. The rest of the year I live quite comfortably at my “mom-jeans and sweatshirt” retreat.

My little fantasy bubble was popped April 22^nd when I realized that the annual Ducks Unlimited banquet, to which I had been invited, was to be held the next evening and I still had not looked in my closet to see if there was something appropriate to wear.

“Clearly I do not get out enough,” I said to myself that fateful day, when the only formal clothing hanging in there was the pantsuit with poinsettias on it from December 25^th.

And in addition, clearly I don’t get out enough on a social event level to know that such things require slightly more planning and decision-making time than what I give to my breakfast food.

With just 20 hours to spare, it was time to go shopping for myself, which is another strange activity I continue to have little experience with. Unless it involves buying dog food or dish soap, don’t expect to see me again for days. It takes me a lifetime to decide on any fabric that is going to connect with this “apple-bottom” and “headed south” figure of mine.

I also shuddered at the thought that I might be faced with the reality of a thigh-master pantyhose and Spanx battle, before it snowed again.

Daughter #3, sensing an urgency of epic proportions, volunteered to come along on what was becoming an impending panic attack on local dress shops.

And when the five dresses I chose to try on that afternoon made me look like a Dalmatian with a gunny sack stuffed under my knickers, I threw in the towel and tried on the one little black number that I was sure was a lost cause, that Daughter #3 had chosen for me off the rack.

I rolled my eyes. Never in a million years would I have picked that one.

But as soon as I put it on, Poof! I stood corrected and pleasantly surprised with the transformation from frump to fabulous.

I tripped on home with a skip in my step and once there and prancing around in my new look, took one glance in the mirror—and oh, good heavens.

My hair had more evil grey matter than the leftover tomato paste that had been in my fridge since February. At 18 hours and counting, I jumped on the Internet to get advice on hair color and matched myself up to a “Medium Brown #20” and blew back to town for the goods.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, the instructions on the box of hair dye should read “not to be used by a social oddball the day before attending a public function.”

It wasn’t until I had applied the brown concoction to my head did I read in the pamphlet that recommended not washing my hair for at least three days after coloring.

“What if smell like ammonia at the banquet?” was the only frantic thought in my head, until 10 minutes later just before I was to wash the sauce out, did I see the brown streak of dye across my forehead, eyebrow, and on both ear tips.

Short of scrubbing off three layers of skin with a SOS pad, I can now attest that a small dab of the well-known stain removal product “Goo Be Gone” saved the day in facial recovery for this gal.

I also own one pair of “dress-up” high heel shoes that I’m sure have been around since I graduated from college in 1980. I take them out once a year to wear at Christmas and then seal them back up in a large freezer bag and stuff them away for the next 365 days.

Clearly I don’t get out enough.

But when I do I shine up pretty well, if I do say so myself.

And I might try fancying up a little more often in the future, even if only for the benefit of my canine capers, who barked and nearly cornered me as a stranger the evening of the banquet when they didn’t recognize me dressed in something other than old jeans and a plaid bush jacket.

Believe that you have the power to choose a new path

Sunday, April 18, 2010

It was to be a dud column week.

I walked over to the flower garden on Sunday in the sunshine of the afternoon and talked to the little perennial plants sprouting up under the decay of last year’s growth. I encouraged them to make great gains in the next few weeks and how I’d be there for them.

I thought about the coming spring, of green and growing—and the tulip bulbs I forgot to plant last fall.

I thought about finally digging out my spring jacket and remembered I gave it to good will in October. I should never listen to the organizer gurus of this world who suggest an annual culling of seasonal clothing. Thanks to their bright idea that I put into motion last fall, I gave away virtually all of my summer clothes, save for an old tank top covered in paint splotches and a pair of cut-offs to match.

I figured it was time to put away my turtleneck sweaters and then realized there’s only about 35 days until the fall and winter catalogue is available for perusal “on a stand near you.”

And then the phone rang.

When the conversation was over with the dear-to-my-heart soul on the other end, it was quite clear that the Universe had other plans for what would drive me in the next few paragraphs.

Her situation was different and yet the same as those of a hundred other women who are victims of verbal and/or physical abuse in a relationship.

Studies suggest that the brain can handle only two tasks at one time. Add a third and things don’t go well. Obviously I was not a part of that study, because at any given time, I have at least four tasks on the go.

However, right now I have only one charge at hand.

Once upon a time many years ago in the big city, there lived a young wife and mother who did not believe she had choices.

It was a curious thing—not to believe there could ever be something better for her life—because she had been raised to think otherwise.

What she did believe was that even after eight years of marriage there was still room to explain away the times when he made her feel so small and useless.

She still believed she could fix it all by herself with a book on relationships or better yet, just by being quiet.

And so she never told anyone about the times when he got really mad.

And the one time when he exploded in a thundercloud storm of rage, and hurled derogatory words, with the digits of his left hand curled inward as he sucker punched her upside the head and knocked her to her knees—well—she never told a soul about that time either—even though she had dropped like a stone, with a child in her arms.

And when he said he was going to get his shotgun and the words drowned her lungs in terror and she could not breathe, she leapt from the floor with her child, flung open the doorway to a flight of stairs that lead outside, and ran.

Another of her children sat playing on the kitchen floor, yet there was no time to stop.

She leapt in bounds up the stairs, a child to her chest, and burst into the yard in a suburb of the city, and ran.

Instantly, he was behind her. She expected to be shot.

And she ran. There was no one around to help and no one there to save her.

She made it to the neighbor’s front yard across the street before he grabbed her. When she turned to face him, he did not have his shotgun after all.

She pushed herself to the ground, determined to cement herself there, arms wrapped around the child, as the one who scared her so spewed abusive violations and continued to pull at her shirt.

And when everything calmed down—yes, she still believed she had no choice but to remain seated in that marriage anyway.

After all she really couldn’t believe he’d done it. Had he really meant to do that?

What had she said to make him that angry?

And when he didn’t apologize, she never broached the subject with him. Not ever. Not ever. She didn’t want to make him mad.

She stayed small and kept her mouth shut.

It would take her another five years before she believed in herself enough and gathered the courage and made the choice to stand and walk away.

Today, she is a phenomenally strong woman who knows for sure that choice is possible and that “stepping onto a brand, new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”

This is a true story.