we have had a recurring theme this past fall, winter and spring. last week, while cleaning the burner plates on our old stove, i found a cache of dog biscuits hidden underneath. now, you wonder how that happened? next to our stove, we keep a beautiful pottery tray that judy gave us. on it we keep dog biscuits (“cookies” we call them.) since i have talked about mysterious appearances of dog biscuits before, i am sure you are connecting the dots.
oh yes. somehow those little dickens carried about ten dog biscuits from the tray to under the burner plates. they had little picnics under there, until they realized the weather under there was pretty arid, even acrid, as the dog biscuits turned darker and darker and were burned on the edges. ummm….that could have been a disaster! what on earth is babycat doing all day and night? clearly he is not paying attention!
so, as incorrect as this flawed cartoon may be, it really does make me laugh. babycat needs to take a lesson…a little more cunning could go a long way.
so, we were trying to have a nice backyard. the pond, the deck, the grasses, the hosta, the barnwood planting stand, the old piano….we were headed in the right direction. but then there’s dogdog. he has this THING. every time we let him out and michele and john’s dogs are out, he races around in a circle, digging into the grass that was there, creating a velodrome (kenosha is known for its velodrome, only not this one.) we tried various ways to address this, to try and dissuade him from running around in the circle, from ruining the grass that we had painstakingly planted.
finally, we decided it would be far less painful for us to just embrace it. i went online and ordered an actual highway sign (the european roundabout sign, because he runs clockwise every time and the roundabouts in our country are counter to that.) we planted a few grasses, put up temporary rope to help the grasses have a chance, pounded in our new sign and sat back to watch.
i mean, EVERYbody has their thing. sometimes it’s just easier to not fight it. it’s easier to just, well, laugh.
my big brother had a guitar in the olden days that i still pine for. it was just a folk guitar, but he had painted it and applied stickers and graffiti’ed all over it. one of my favorite sayings on this old guitar was “you are what you eat.” considering that was the 60s and 70s, and rice-a-roni and kraft macaroni and cheese and other fabulous packaged pre-prepared foods were a way-of-life, he was way before his time. now is a whole ‘nother story.
first following the whole30 precisely for the prescribed 30 days, we are over a year later still on a modified whole30 diet….not diet necessarily for weight (although middle age has changed the mighty metabolism) but diet for how we feel. one of the joys of our weeks is to go to jen and brad’s and have “potluck dinner” together. for two sets of people on distinct food diets, the fun of this is to bring all the leftovers you have and then just eat together. we drink wine and tell stories of the week. it’s total bliss! we have talked much about the way we are now eating…we are infinitely more aware of what we buy and how we prepare it.
but there are those moments….and thank goodness for google…when we look up images or tell stories of twinkies and hostess cupcakes and reggie bars and m&m peanut candies and good ‘n plenty and buddig meats and wonder bread chip sandwiches…and relive the good old days.
i have literally sat across the restaurant table (or the kitchen table or the living room or or or) from him, on date night or any other night or morning or day, staring at his face, thinking, “geeeeeeez. you are DEFINITELY an acquired taste!” but then, a few moments (ok, or longer) go by and love swirls around me and i like him again.
i KNOW you have been there…whether on a date or with your significant other…the times you think “whattheheck??!!??” thank goodness that is balanced out with “you are totally my type!!!” or there would be NO relationships in the world.
i’m guessing he thinks that about me too (but only RARELY. lol.)
now, my sweet momma was pretty directive at times. she knew what she wanted and was pretty specific about it. even from the seat in her wheelchair in later days she would direct traffic or let you know exactly where she wanted to go and if you were doing it right. then there was the electric wheelchair. she got to be in charge.
it took scaling a mountain and zooming off into outer space and back to make all the arrangements that would eventually deliver an electric wheelchair to her assisted living facility. but all of that fades in the memory of her phone call. she had been practicing and practicing, trying to grasp how to make the chair go forward or turn or go backward without running into things or people. we kept telling her, “you got this!” her confidence was thin and i know she felt like she would never really be able to master that chair. until that day.
she called to say that she had gone down to breakfast. in her chair. alone. and when she got there, a woman at her table told her about how there had been an author there, sharing her newly published book, reading, autographing; it had all been quite exciting, she told my momma. my sweet momma looked at her, i’m sure smiling broadly and sitting up as straight as she could in her electric wheelchair and said, “that was me!”
never underestimate a granny gps. there’s so much possibility.
heidi, in moments of stress or joy, always asks, “what’s the learning?” a good question to lead with, to sort with, a question that helps things make sense.
this Flawed cartoon, the picture of a teaching moment. good grief, there are so many! teaching moments. learning moments. every single day.
there is a dog biscuit on the floor in the laundry room in the basement. i was about to put laundry in the washer when i saw it. “hmmm…” i thought. “what is a dog biscuit doing down here?” i wondered. our courageous dog has never ever been in the basement. he dislikes stairs. he is an aussie and, well, if you know any aussies, you know that they have interesting….issues. one of his, apparently, is that he doesn’t do tight stairwells. so, knowing this, i am aware that dogdog did not bring a dog biscuit to the basement. (not to mention the fact that had he had a dog biscuit in his mouth he would have consumed it.)
so. the mystery. i can only assume that one of the mice we seem to have accommodated this winter carried this downstairs for a later snack. when i picture a mouse carrying a milkbone i’m amazed by its tenacity – it had to be under tremendous stress with its milkbone-burden. and…where did it get its milkbone from? we have a tray with dogdog’s “cookies” in the kitchen; i shudder to think of a mouse sitting there evaluating which cookie to steal. and…furthermore…there are no mouse…ummm….poopies (as i call them) anywhere nearby. what to think….
by looking at the tiny bites off of dogdog’s cookie in the basement, i think that mice will go to great lengths for a snack. i guess.
life below zero has captured our attention. sheesh. we are not ‘those people’ who have to follow shows, but we find ourselves searching the channel-changer for the national geographic show or… wait-for-it-this-is-no-surprise … this is us. (so i guess, in essence, we are ‘those people’.) anyway, that’s not my point.
when david drew this, i laughed aloud. it is truly funny to think about what animals dream (like our dogdog who runs in his sleep and babycat who snores up a storm) and if their dreams distort reality, just as ours do. in the morning, over steaming mugs of coffee, we often tell each other what we remember from our dreams. talk about distorted reality! i crack up thinking about what jessie holmes (the most avid -and very-sweet-to-his-dogs sled dog guy on the show) would do if he saw this cartoon.
the last little vestige of winter is in the air here (well, maybe.) as i write, there is snow in the forecast. even though we had this amazing hike-gift the other day in sunny 65 degree temperatures, truthfully, i don’t really mind that winter hasn’t ended; it is a time of fallow and that brings great anticipation for spring and newness.
interrupting is an art form on long island. i know this. i grew up there. and, apparently, i carried this forward. it took d a while (read: a few years and meeting crunch) to realize i was paying attention, that i wasn’t ignoring what he was saying when i interrupted…i just knew where he was going with it and jumped ahead. now, i do realize that sounds pretty rude. it’s not my intention to ever be rude, so i have tried, in recent times, to w.a.i.t. before i speak…at least a little bit longer. if you are nearby when jen and i talk, you will think we are interrupting each other, talking in a circular path and arriving back at the point; carol and i have, for decades, conversed in short snippets of interrupted tangents. regardless of our intent, no one wants to be asked to “pay attention!”
yet, we have all these ways, nowadays (using this word makes me sound old), to not pay attention. how many videos have you seen where people are walking in a mall (or somewhere) texting or reading on their cellphone and fall into a fountain (or some other obstacle.) we sit with others and try to hold a conversation, but they are busy on their phone or some device checking facebook or texts or twitter or the news…so many ways to not pay attention, so many distractions. we see the tragic effects of split focus while people are driving cars.
we are no longer just giving our attention to the moment. we are interrupting conversation, our work, the activity we are involved in, each other’s safety. we would be well-served to pay just-a-little-more attention.
sisu sue swore by them. turtlenecks. she has them in every color, every kind of weave and fabric. she looks fabulous in them and wears adorable chic jackets over them. she is one cool and trendy lady and i adore her.
having already started the hot-flasharama-period of my life when we were working together, i would ask her how she could stand having a turtleneck on; it was (and mostly still is) out of my realm of imagination being able to wear a turtleneck and not ripping it off in the middle of -say- the choir room or the train to chicago or in the car while driving. this oh-so-wise treasured woman told me that someday i would understand.
THAT DAY HAS COME.
i look in the mirror, a few steps of days away from 59, and stare at (you might want to stop reading now) my NECK. what has HAPPENED? suddenly, my neck (and chin, for that matter) have become O-L-D. where has the time gone? where did my old neck go? and where did that new chin-under-my-chin come from?
my sweet momma, at 93, looked at me one day and said, “i looked in the mirror and (in a horrified voice) i saw an OLD woman.” “momma,” i reassured her, “at 93, you are an old woman, but you are a BEAUTIFUL old woman.” personally, i thought my momma was striking. every last wrinkle told a story. every last thing she saw as a flaw. but my words fell on deaf ears. she just stared back at me. probably feeling much the same as me. delusionally thinking that time would stand still in our necks and chins and -yup- everywhere else. time and menopause take their toll.
the next time you see me try not to stare at my neck (although i have likely set you up for that.) i may or may not be wearing a turtleneck. the ironic part is that a real turtle’s neck really does look a lot like mine. sheesh.
reverse threading 