Untamable Hearts

There is a beetle couple having sex on my window pane...And it's been approximately 28 hours since I first noticed them. Admittedly I'm impressed, intrigued, and...well, feel a little bit sorry for them all at the same time. "Beetle style" doesn't look like very much fun. Beetles, at least this species, simply back up to each other and connect in a line, facing in opposite directions. I haven't actually seen them move, but every time I check on them they are at a different spot on the glass. I wonder if they communicate when it's time to stretch all those legs, trying to look backward at the other without breaking connection, possibly hollering in romantic bug-ese..."OK, on the count of three we're going to move right...no, your other right...no, your other two rights also!...wait wait stop, baby!...we're headed for a corner!"

Over the past week I've often been looking out this window that they are coupling on. It's really a waste of time, but it's become second nature for my eyes to scan the shrubs; the dark spaces under the sugarhouse, the vehicles, the porch, and all the other random things in our yard. But in my heart I know she's not anywhere on the premises. My cat, that is...Annie.

Annie came to us as a stray. A neighbor up the hill had moved away and abandoned her. We figured she was a year or two old...which would make her about 5 or 6 now. She's a beautiful cat...medium to long hair that is white-based with gray and brown patches. We had her spayed and declawed (the latter decidedly after I found her dangling from a shocked and crying toddler-Mae's knees one afternoon...all in fun, but painful nonetheless). She was happy as an inside cat, living the lap of luxury, and soon became Mae's. Annie was leery of anybody on foot except for Mae, but she'll find the lap of anybody in about two seconds after they sit down. She's a love, and she's funny. Her favorite position is what I call "the sloth" where she'll lay her belly and chin on whatever she's upon (your leg, a couch arm, or even something as narrow as a crib rail), with her legs hanging limp at the sides. She does this to me in bed every night, pawing my face...or did, before she ran away.

The first time she got out was soon after we adopted her (and just after we dropped $200+ on her at the vet, of course)...I think she came home on her own that same night, it being late in the fall and pretty cold. The second time she was gone for a week, and then I spotted her underneath our shed. We caught her in the have-a-heart trap. She had a few ticks on her, was skinny, but had refused to come to us. But after entering the house she was in pure bliss with all her creature comforts.

Last year she got out in late June - actually fell out of a screen window - wasn't even trying to escape. But of course after she was out, she didn't think twice about STAYING out. We figured we'd catch her in the have-a-heart again and didn't stress out too much over it. But after several mornings of finding really pissed-off strange neighborhood cats in the trap (although they didn't actually have any reason to complain after a good feed of trout and tuna) and no more sightings of our Annie, our hearts started getting a little heavy. We put up a sign at the top of our road but got no calls. Mae cried almost every night for several weeks. We figured she couldn't possibly still be alive, out in the woods with no claws, and after finding her so skinny after only a week the last time. But wouldn't you know it, 4 months later when the weather was turning cold, we saw her cross the driveway one night in front of our car. We put the trap behind the neighbor's shed that rainy night, and at 3 AM I brought our Annie home...full of (I'm talking 20 to 30) ticks, scraggly, dirty, and wild-eyed. She camped out in our closet (next to the food dish and litter box) for the first one or two months while she regained her strength and personality. Surely she would never leave us again.

But she did (and don't call me Shirley). Last week my husband had opened our bedroom window, just a few inches I thought. I noticed Annie that morning eating at the food dish, but just moments later I let the dog out and noticed our bedroom screen laying in the walkway. I searched the house - she COULDN'T have gotten out...but she was nowhere. And when she didn't show up after my shower, to stand on hind legs on our bed and bite and nose my hands for attention while I dressed, I knew she was gone.

And so our days pass by with the domestic things that mark the beginning of summer...Making lists of things to pack for camp next weekend (Memorial Day)...smacking at no-see-um bites milliseconds too late...dusting off and experimenting with the ice cream maker ("Mom, what did you PUT in this!?")...grill-charred dinners eaten on the deck with family and friends...filling in the last spots around my walkways with perennials transplanted from a good friend's yard (who actually knows all their fancy names and characteristics, while I simply say "whatever, as long as it doesn't need any maintenance")...breaking out a fresh bottle of sunscreen and chuckling over sunburned outlines of hands that didn't quite reach everywhere on dad's back...frosting drippy birthday cakes in a too-hot kitchen (time to dust off the ACs too!)...

Mae mentioned to her dad yesterday, "I wonder what Annie's doing today." I wonder this too, more often than I should admit. How does she spend her time now...out in the woods?...in a neighbor's shed or barn?...hunting in the fields despite her declawed front paws, desperate for something to eat? Does she have a place that she can sleep as soundly as she did while laying on Mae's quilt in the quietness of her bedroom? I wonder how many ticks she has on her already...how they must torment her, and do they make her feel lethargic? It's hard to think about...my sweet Annie-kins out there, alone, through rain and thunderstorms and chilly nights...when there are loving hand rubs, warmth, dryness, food and water dishes, and Mini (our 1-yr-old PITA cat and Annie's wrestle-with-and-race-around-like-demons-are-chasing-us partner) all here waiting for her, if she'd only give up the wild and come home.

The first teary night Annie was gone last week, I sat on Mae's bed and tried to comfort her, told her it wasn't that Annie didn't love us...kitties just love adventures, and she was an outside kitty once and hasn't forgotten all the fun things...that we need to just think of it as her being on a long vacation for now. She replied, between sobs and holding Annie's well-worn picture..."I know, I just miss her..." and in a calmer moment..."I think we won't see her again til it's almost winter, if she's still alive"..."Yes, I think that's probably right, sweetheart." Daddy told her some creatures just can't be tamed for good. But I just miss her too, Mae...so very much.

I suppose I shouldn't make fun of the beetles. They, unlike cats, don't have nine lives. This may quite possibly be their first and last enjoyable act, other than flight, which surely must be exhilerating. Enjoy the time you've been given to the fullest, I say...I promise not to flick you off my window for at least another 28 hours.

The House that Jack...or Somebody...Built

The kitchen door swings open. It's my 9-yr-old, with a very emergent seriousness on her face, shovel in hand that's taller than she is, spade gleaming. "Mom, Dad needs you to come right now...there's a snake!"..."I'm not going to kill a snake."..."He just wants you to come!" I don my shoes and go outside. It's a good-sized adder, hiding its head (but forgetting about its long body) under some boards that used to be the walls of our house...And my husband is surprisingly calm...no longer jumping around and squealing like a woman. I am so proud. We admire its spots, I touch it with a fingertip (the girls are aghast), and it slowly slithers under the floor, just as the dog comes over to investigate. All that is left of our house at this point is the floor, the roof, and the corner posts. But this is just a remnant of our old house, the living room...which has recently been serving as an eye-sore of a shed. The mobile home and the other addition were torn down and hauled off 5 years ago.

In the spring of 2000, my husband and I bought that mobile home (circa 1968?) with its additions, and moved out of our apartment. The first time we looked at it was in the winter. We had to walk up the steep unplowed driveway, peered in the windows, and then walked around the front of the house onto the deck. We saw the view of the river valley before us, and we both knew immediately that this was where we needed to be, in fact - why weren't we here already? To most of our friends and family this was a huge leap of faith. OK, actually they thought we were nuts. The view was great, but the "house" had actually been camp to a guy from Massachusetts. When he wasn't there, the squirrels and the mice ruled the roost. I spent the first week after the bank-closing cleaning up the mouse-turd runways in the kitchen and removing acorns out of all the nooks, crannies, and drawers in the rest of the house. There was a screened-in, warp-floored porch that ran the length of the trailer, which might've been nice to have had dinners on, but we really just stored all our extra big stuff out there. We were going for the white-trash look, and we did it well, I might add. But our 10 acres were private, in the woods like I had grown up in...the house cozy with its post and beam addition, woodstove, and brick fireplace. There was a big beautiful lawn and a little flower garden already planted. But most of all...it was just simply Ours.

In this one-bedroom house we conceived and raised our children through their toddler years. We hauled firewood from shed to porch to woodstove. We had little fans going all winter long to help insure that the warmth of it (and dust and soot) made it down the hall of the trailer to the bedroom, where our king-sized bed, and ONLY our king-sized bed, fit between its walls (later on we did squeeze a bassinet into the doorway).

There was a small room that housed the water heater and washing machine. After a year or two of drying laundry on racks in front of the woodstove and outside, I finally got a dryer, but that had to go in the kitchen. I didn't care. It was glorious.

Our bathroom was pink..the tub, the sink, the wallpaper...maybe even the toilet. When we moved in, there was blue shag rug in there too. This, not so glorious. However, there was a small rectangular crank-out window right in the wall of the bathtub. That was pretty cool. To this day I miss looking out while I shampoo...watching the sun come up over the valley, hoping to see a deer on the lawn (there were never any), and in the summertime smelling the warmth hit the abhorable and indestructible orange daylillies that grew (and still grow) on that side of the house.

We had a dining room. We served Thanksgiving dinners there and our very first Easter dinner just a week or two after we moved in. I think our families liked coming to our little ramshackle house. It really was cozy, if nothing else. That dining room is where I fed my babies their first bites of real food. Every day I'd set daughter #2's car seat on the table, turn the dryer on (in the kitchen), and watch her nap. In that room I stood and watched my oldest daughter walk (almost run!) to me for the first time (after I'd been out of town for the weekend), both of us laughing and proud. At our dining room table we sat and chose floor plans for our new would-be house.

The living room is where my desk was, where I sat and worked in the middle of the night so that I could be free during the day to take care of the girls. My fingers froze until the woodstove got pumping. Anybody who has had a woodstove knows it's either feast or famine (freezing, or so hot you're opening up doors to the outside). On the living room floor I watched my babies roll over for the first time. Daughter #2 took her first steps here, at about 10 PM after refusing to go to sleep until she did. Also on this floor was our king-sized mattress the last month before we moved into the new house (we had built another bedroom addition, but we had to tear it off so that the halves of our new ranch would have enough room to be hauled through the yard). On that mattress, what became the family bed, we watched the Red Sox break their curse, and during the day I would prop the mattress up against the wall and hope it didn't fall on anyone. It was in this living room that I sat rocking my 6-month-old baby girl, as I watched planes fly into the World Trade Center towers, watched them collapse...and I promised her, in all my uncertainty, that I would keep her safe, always.

The kitchen was the hot spot for critters. It was a constant battle for almost 5 years. D-CON, traps, and ant killer were staples on my shopping list. My husband and I can still recognize essence of dead mouse from two counties over. And I'll never forget coming home one fall day, about 3 months pregnant, to find a snake coiled up between kitchen closet and stove, which I manhandled back outdoors with tongs and oven mitts. This kitchen is where we blocked in Deacon when he was a puppy, til he was big enough to hop the gate. It was here that my husband rubbed my pregnant belly and told me how much he loved and supported me. The kitchen sink is where I bathed my baby girls (after I got the house warmed up to at least 65 degrees). It was here I made all our family meals, washed bottles and sippy cups, and baked little-girl birthday cakes. It was in this room that my husband came home from work one day to tell me he wasn't happy anymore, and I had turned and stared out the window above the sink, crying and asking why and how...but I knew...because I wasn't happy either.

It was in this house that too many changes all at once had threatened but ultimately failed to pull us apart. It was in this house that we fell in love with each other a second time, and even harder than the first. Love, lots of tears, even more laughter, and the sound of toddling footsteps had filled those walls, the walls that now lay in strewn piles across our yard.

Our new house isn't so new anymore, but I don't think we've started taking it for granted yet. I've sworn I will move or burn it down if I ever find a mouse in my kitchen. I love going over to the wall and adjusting the thermostat (not covered in ash dust). We kept our fireplace mantle and made it into a shelf on our living room wall. I painted all the rooms and decorated them myself...on the rare occasion I can even see and enjoy those details above the kids' clutter. This is our Home now. I cried my last old-house tears in 2005 when my husband crumpled the trailer with an excavator and stuffed it into an oversized dumpster. We still find bits of glass and the occasional treasure out near the driveway.

But today, after we stood watching the snake (which I thought was fitting as it reminded me of that tonged-and-mitted day in my old kitchen), my husband hitched a chain between his truck and what was left standing of our old living room, the last bit of that precious period in our lives, and...pulled it down. I'm not sure what was more thunderous...the sound of the fireplace and chimney crashing down onto the roof that fell before it...or the momentary aching in my heart. I'm pretty sure it was the latter.

Peeps, Pubs & Prose

PEEP PEEP PEEP! This is a blessed sound after listening to an incubator's constant obnoxious hum and whine for 28 days (in my dining room). An even more blessed sound after really doubting there was even anything alive in said annoying incubator...upon realizing after the first week of gestation that the egg turner wasn't turning...and then having two power outages, once with the incubator going below the proper temperature because it had to be plugged into your husband's pick-up truck outside for one whole cold night. I mentioned to some that if any of these 42 turkeys actually hatched, they were all getting named "Lucky." And wouldn't you know it, yesterday the first couple Luckys started sounding off, just as I was heading out the door to our town library...

A friend had informed me that Jo Knowles, a local young-adult book author, was giving a presentation on how she got into writing, got published, etc. Since I've wanted to be an author since, oh, my tween years or earlier, I was hoping it'd be insightful, and indeed it was. Jo explained all her college studies, her critique groups, her tools and tips; and the need to find an agent, who will find an editor - both of whom will help fine-tune and manipulate your work until it's worthy enough for a publisher to buy it. All this to get a measly, what!? 10% of the sales!? It seemed all very complex and stressful. In the back of my mind all these years I suppose I thought I could just be a hermit, here at my keyboard, drafting out my whimsies at will, maybe with a deadline or two, maybe just find a publisher's address in a magazine (who would of course immediately love my work) and voila! - I'd be the next Stephen King, Dean Koontz, or Patricia Cornwell. OK, maybe my hopes were not quite that high - I'm a realist after all - but still...who knew!? Now I do. It seems a bit daunting, but I was inspired nonetheless. Knowledge is power.

When I was young I wrote lots of short stories in school, even won awards, but I never actually thought I could go out and make a living at it, never considered going to COLLEGE for it (duh!). I did take a creative writing class my senior year in high school...well, only for one day...I just got such an uncomfortable vibe from the teacher (she was a large smelly woman, and far too happy - not dark and mysterious - to know anything about real writing) that I opted for a study hall instead. There was the Journalism class option offered in college when I was studying medical administration, but that sounded like newspaper kinda stuff, and that wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to write a NOVEL. That was the only respectable authorship goal...I thought.

After my comrades and I left the presentation, daunted yet inspired, we hit the local tavern for some grub and a brew (Guinness and UFO help with the soaking in of knowledge, I have found). We had front-row seats to open-mic night (but honestly if you're wondering if you really WANT front-row seats to open-mic night...the answer, my friends, is NO). Loud and crowded though it was, however, the singers WERE talented and ranged from hippy-inspired guitar solos to Michael Jackson tunes sung acapella. The acapella group was amazing, albeit a motley crew of college girls of all shapes, sizes, and sexual orientation...and I daresay very badly dressed (to think I thought Bostonians had clothing style confusion). I'm still trying desperately to give them the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they were going for a costumed look...oh please oh please? But back to the amazing part...they belted, puffed, spit, and serenaded their hearts out, in perfect harmony, together as one, even with all their differences, without inhibition. I was thoroughly impressed and should've bought one of their CDs. Each of them will go far on whatever path they choose, I have no doubt (except maybe clothing design).

Those college girls obviously have put a vast amount of time and perseverance into something they are passionate about and love to do...because they enjoy it, are proud of it, and fulfilled by it.

Jo Knowles puts YEARS into each book she writes...years of storyboarding, of writing and rewriting, of taking constructive criticism (and we all know a criticism is a criticism, no matter how constructive); and she waits months and months for a simple word of acceptance from her publisher, only then left to wonder if the actual reader will appreciate the end result.

And then there are my sweet little poults (those are turkey babies, to you non-poultry-loving folks)...Here they come after 4 weeks of wondering what the heck their foolish human mom was doing out here...so fragile and seemingly weak but strong of instinct, painstakingly pipping around the circumference of their shells, struggling out with their tiny little legs, flopping and flailing, wet and exhausted, finally free of their calcium wombs.

I realized I too need to persevere...to MAKE time for my passion...to find my war cry, as it were (PEEP?).

I've come to realize perhaps a fictional novel may not be where my real voice lies...maybe I need to find a little weekly newspaper to write a column for, or even a magazine someday. Until then, you few Followers will have to bear with these ditzels that encompass my blog...but even in this I find satisfaction. Thanks for your kind words of support. They mean more than you know. Someday soon I hope to have a real creation for you, something on paper, in ink that'll come off on your fingertips and leave black marks on your face because you had an itch. I will hug this creation, pet it, stroke it, and call it George (or, maybe since I already had a cat named George, something more original)...and be able to cross this one and only, tween-inspired, lifelong dream off my Bucket List.

Mine Mine Mine!

A whoopie pie is irresistible is it not? But then after it's consumed, the sugar makes you high and icky feeling, and all that shortening seemingly sits in your gut for the next 6 days at least. Bleck. I've vowed (for the last 10 years or so) not to let a single one tempt me again into buying it. But they just look so big and buxom that I fall for it every time. There is only one whoopie pie in existence that actually tastes as good as it looks (and it looks pretty damn good, ay?) and doesn't make me feel violently ill afterward, mentally or physically. They come from a little store in Island Pond, VT. Hubby and the girls bestowed me...just me...with one for an early Mother's Day treat today. These gems are filled with whipped cream...probably the industrial stuff from a bag...but it's light and fluffy, not overly sweet, and my hips don't seem to mind it as much as they do the Crisco. I ate half of this one after I got home from being treated to breakfast by my mother-in-law this morning. I had had a fruit-granola-yogurt bowl, so the extra bazillion calories of whoopie afterward was totally legit, according to my calculations.

Speaking of my mother-in-law, she's a gem also. She and my father-in-law are really great and seemingly love me as their own, and I them. Keep in mind that my husband is an only child, so I really beat the odds here. Not to say we haven't had our rough patches, but somewhere along the line over the last 18 years I grew duck feathers that have served me well.

They say men are attracted to women that are similar to their mothers and that women are attracted to men that are similar to their fathers. It's nothing incestuous; it's just nature, and I buy it for the most part...but my husband may be the exception to the rule. His mother is short; I'm tall. She's very dependent; I'm painfully independent (other than mechanical work on cars or appliances, I can pretty much get it done on my own without it turning into too much of a horror show). She's very particular...the woman actually has a methodical way of folding and storing her used grocery bags; my used bags are crumpled and crammed into my "bag bag," bulging and falling out of its ends that no longer have viable elastic. She sometimes has her car professionally cleaned; I like to keep at least one layer of debris on the floor of mine at all times - a poor-man's carpeting, if you will. She lays her husband's clothes out on the bed for him every morning (that's every morning for the past 40 years), and she adores ironing; my husband has to walk bare naked down to the laundry room in the cold basement every morning to dig through the 6-foot-tall pile of unfolded laundry to find, hopefully, two socks that match, and a wrinkled T-shirt. I sometimes wonder if she has to pop a couple Prozac before entering my house, and maybe spray herself down with Lysol upon exiting. But God love her, she never lets what must be her true disgust show - she never says anything (my father-in-law does that for her, but that's why I'm a duck). I can only hope to be so organized someday...until then, I'm just grateful their hearts are made of gold.

Back to the only-child thing...I think only-children get an unfair rap, to be quite honest. The stereotype is that they are spoiled, sniveling, selfish children who grow up to be only slightly less spoiled, sniveling, selfish adults. Maybe that's the case in some instances, but I really got thinking about it today, and it occurred to me that *I*, the middle child of three, do not like to share one bit. And this is my theory why that is: Survival of the fittest (or at least the one with the quickest tongue...oh yeah, admit it...you too lapped and/or spit on that last hot dog to claim it as your own - didn't you!?). I grew up with two brothers. What's mine was mine, what's theirs was theirs, and if there was any fuzzy middle ground, you can bet there was bickering, biting, punching, pulling of hair, gnashing of teeth...you get the picture. I didn't like to share even with my friends, and the thought of letting a friend BORROW one of my possessions was enough to strike fear and dread into my very soul. I still don't like to share food. I'm like a lone wolf gnawing the marrow out of the last elk femur, growling at any other beast that dare approach. In the high school cafeteria I had a friend or two that would ask for a bite of whatever I was eating, on a daily basis. "No! Geez...here's a dollar - get your OWN slice of pizza." "But I just want a bite..." Urrrrrgh! To this day, don't come near my plate for I will stab your hand with my fork, for real. I HAVE mellowed considerably as I've aged, and having children has helped too, I'm sure. It still takes every cell in my being to split a dessert with a friend at a restaurant, but the fact that they are getting half the fat and calories helps me sustain the ruse of charitability.

My husband and his parents spent their years living together sharing what they had in a peaceful manner. It was the three of them against the world, not against each other. Does my husband have SOME stereotypical only-child attributes at times? Sure, but he's a loving, extremely confident, generally easygoing guy; and I've found the pros outweigh the cons. We are the focus of his parents' lives. We got the supersized TV as a wedding gift. We got the supersized fridge as our housewarming gift. On a somber WAY-down-the-road-I-hope note, there will be no sibling disputes over their estate. And most importantly, our daughters get every ounce of their love and attention.

So, this afternoon after buying my mother-in-law her annual Mother's Day gift of a big, beautiful basket of flowers to hang on her porch all summer, I came home to that other half of the whoopie pie. I took pictures of it, I lapped it with longing and affection, and I nibbled the chocolatey morsels. The family started to gather...the girls (and even the diabetic husband) teased with their outstretched tongues...I told them it was MINE, that they had bought it for ME...that they should've gotten their Own.

There was pouting...there were even tears...and then the bristly hair on the wolf's back relaxed, and it stretched out its paws and gave them the last two bites.

1-800-MOMMY

"Mom! Dial this number in the next 3 minutes!" My youngest slams a notebook on my desk with a big red 1-800 number written on it. "We need Proactiv!"..."Honey, Proactiv is for zits, and you don't have any." She's jumping in and out of my lap giving me long, draggy, yet energy-filled hugs (musta been the quart of strawberries). "But you have wrinkles, and it'll make our skin smooooooooth." And she's off again. My kids love to write down infomercial numbers. Vacation weeks are the busiest seasons for this, as they see them all on rainy or extra-snowy days, while I sit at my desk and transcribe pathology reports (yeah, if you've had it surgically removed, passed it out of (or got it stuck in) one orifice or another, or traumatically chopped it off, I'm probably the gal that typed the down and dirty of it). The infomercial numbers the girls have scrawled down for me are for (to name a few) the gadget that cooks mini burgers, the giant cupcake cake pan, and the running favorite - the automatic toothpaste squirter. All must-haves, I couldn't agree more. I just keep forgetting to call within the allotted time.

My kids make me laugh on a daily basis, and it's probably not the stuff I'm supposed to laugh about; but whether they are happy, crying because of some ridiculous thing they did to themselves ("I bit my finger!"), or arguing with me...they are just so brimming with life that I just can't help feel joy about it. I love being a mom. Ask me again in the next 5 minutes ("I said GET INTO BED!")

But seriously, even the most sincere of us enjoy a moment of solitude now and again. We work full time, we take care of EVERYTHING in the house - the kids, the cooking, the cleaning...I'm talking 100%. We are the housewives of the 1950s rolled in with the career women of the new millennium. I'm not alone, right?....Hello? (are those peepers I hear?)...Tell me I'm not alone! OK, I've heard tell my family is spoiled, or at least the husband...my fault, from back in the day when I actually had TIME to do everything, when it was just him and me...but I'm trying desperately to reverse the spoilage, with little to no avail. I get a lot of flack from my femi-rights-loving friends. To his credit, hubby does do a lot with the girls. And if he wants to get them out of my hair instead of doing dishes, I guess I can live with that. For instance, tomorrow night the three of them are going to our family camp up north for the night. They go fishing, play cards, play in the fire, and eat garbage that I won't let them eat at home. They take these weekend excursions pretty frequently during the summers, as I have to work Saturday mornings and also take care of the occasional extra-needy flock at home. But this is the first time this season, and I'm thinking it's a pretty good start to Mother's Day weekend!

I just got back from a hurried bout of grocery shopping, and I'm all geared up for my night alone:
* My first indulgence to be slowly savoured...A Ghirardelli Midnight Reverie 86% cacao bar. I'm really not a chocolate girl, but on occasion the mood does strike.
* Indulgence #2...The latest issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. Seriously I haven't bought a Cosmo since like 199...4-ish? But I couldn't resist because there on the cover in all her sultry badass glory - my girl, Pink! Of course there were also the usual article titles in big boxy print: "75 Sex Tips from Guys"..."Girl Traits No Man Can Resist"...and most interesting, "Orgasm Guaranteed." But I bought it for the Pink interview...(really, Mom, I did...no, now, don't cry...save that for dog and grampa stories).
* And lastly...An unopened Netflix movie that's been hanging around for at least 2 weeks, probably 3.

Back at the present-time ranch, my daughters are finally tucked in for the night...but not before Mae tells me in a little sad voice her latest "why I'm scared." Tonight, it's windy, and a tree might fall on the house. When rational reasoning runs low, I give the "it's all good, now go to sleep" statement in my best mommy baritone. Keeg was tucked in but comes out to ask me where her appendix is because she has "a pain right here" (nowhere even neighboring the appendix) and reminds me to put dinner away...you just KNOW what she's going to grow up to be...

So...so what if tomorrow night I limit myself to only a square or two of the dark chocolate because I can't fit into any of my summer clothes...and so what if one or both cats end up curled in my lap on top of the Cosmo so that I can't browse more than the first 5 pages (who needs all that climaxing anyway, am I right? After all, isn't that the sort of thing that brought on all this mommy business in the first place? *sigh*)...and so what if I fall asleep 26 minutes into the movie because the plot is poor and my weekday schedule just doesn't allow me the energy to stay up beyond 9 PM when Friday night rolls around? It's really just the notion of peace and quiet, isn't it? And quite honestly when I watch their taillights as they head down the driveway tomorrow, I'm sure to feel the inevitable emptiness that moms and wives feel when what we live for every moment of every day is not within our nurturing grasp, and I'll wish I had a 1-800 number to call them back home.

Yeah, OK...check with me again in 5 minutes.

Bumpkins in Beantown

I had heartburn, an ink stamp of Curious George looking at me from the back of my left hand, and hair so tangled that I squealed like my 7-year-old when I tried to brush it out. Oh wait...that's the end. Let's start at the beginning...

In 1993 I graduated high school alongside my lifelong best friend, Jessica, and several other close friends, including Barbara. Jess is still my best friend - we live an hour away from eachother, get ourselves and our girls together as often as we can. Barb I've seen twice since high school...that's twice in seventeen years. Ouch. Back in the day it was all about good tunes, riding in cars with boys, and lots of shinanigans I'm not sure if I should feel fortunate or unfortunate to have forgotten most of. What I definitely can't remember is Barb without a smile on her face. Thanks to Facebook (dontcha love Facebook?), we reconnected over the last couple years. Barb's now happily married with three kids (and a 4th in the hopper - bless her) living on the outskirts of Boston. Jess and I agreed we were due for a road trip.

The road trip started out at 6:30 yesterday morning. I hadn't been to Boston since high school, it was humid and hot already, and it was supposed to rain too...I had changed my clothes a half dozen times...we were running barely on time to meet Jess at 7. I put my hair in a barrette, but it promptly got stuck in poultry netting when I hurriedly watered my chickens before we left. The hair stayed down.

On the way to meet Jess and her daughter, Emily, I made the threats and statements any good (?) mother makes before a public outing when her children are already antagonizing eachother in the backseat..."I am NOT dealing with this ALL day...at least TRY to PRETEND to behave!" But the show hit the road in lighthearted manner when we picked up Jess and Em. The backseat was very loud that first hour with the three banchees teasing, laughing, poking, and I daresay, licking? Jess and I just leaned in and yelled toward eachother when we wanted to chat...at a certain point in motherhood you start to unwittingly tune out the happy noise, as long as it stays happy.

We then boarded a bus in Concord. The girls were antsy...Jess and I needed a second wind already...it was a long ride. They played with some of Em's little figurines(little animals with abnormally large heads), they ate crackers and peanut butter, and they resorted to more teasing, laughing, and poking. I finished tying off a baby blanket I had last-minutely thrown together for Barb and had just gotten a Tetris game started on my cell for Keegan, my 9-yr-old, when we entered into the city. The girls were awed by the tall glass buildings. At South Station, the escalators were the big thrill (a reminder to other bumpkins - tie your children's shoelaces). On our walk from the terminal to the Boston Children's Museum, I kept track of my ducklings while doing some people watching. I found it all rather amusing. Aside from lots of men in suits going hither and tither, the vast majority of locals seemed to be suffering from clothing style confusion. I felt oddly put together in my simple top, skort and sandals. The storyteller/historian in me couldn't help but note a few "bums," one very happy man with a yellowed gray beard who reached out and gave us the peace sign and a surprisingly trustworthy smile as we walked past. I wanted to sit down with these people...I wanted to ask them about their birthplace, their childhood, the places they'd been, what they've done, what long litany of small and big adventures, successes and struggles had brought them to be sitting here on this city bench, with us walking past...and I wonder if they are there again today. If the girls took in any of these things, they didn't mention them...instead they seemed mostly enthralled, sadly enough, by...taxi cabs. "There's a TAXI!!! Mom, what IS a taxi exactly?"...."Well, it's kind of like a bus, only it carries just a few people to wherever they need to go."..."Like how many people?"..."It's a CAR, Keegan, however many people can fit in a car..."

Mae remarked a couple times during the day "I want to live here!" I told her there were probably no chickens in Boston, but she could live anywhere when she grew up. She seemed alright with having to make that poultry sacrifice. After all, while waiting for Barb and family at the museum, the girls got to share their snack crumbs with geese, seagulls, ducks, and random little birds along the rail of the river...oh, and pigeons...which, apparently in Boston are vile, red-eyed, toxic, trash-eating devils. I secretly still love them tho, as they must be related to doves, and doves are my favorite wild bird.

It was windy...did I mention it was windy? I was pulling hair out of my face all day.

Barb arrived with two of her children. In a word...adorable. In more than a word...sweet, well mannered, take-home-able. Barb said, "just wait"; but I never did see their mommy-draining sides. I don't believe they exist. As far as the adults, we came together with surprising familiarity...seventeen years apparently is like two minutes between true friends, and frankly I was both proud of and perplexed by the serene, mature woman and mother Barb has become. I'm sure she won't take offense when I say that back in the day, I wasn't so sure what the future would bring to my happy-go-lucky, good-timing friend. But it's done her very well indeed. Love you guys.

The kids had a blast on all three floors of the museum. Even from adult perspective, it had it's cool parts, all five hours of them. At one point, we three moms were all resting on a...culvert...in the construction zone play area. We had our eldest children take a picture of us with all our cameras. When we checked for "Facebook worthiness" there was a momentary pause. We looked...less than vivacious. So, maybe time and motherhood hasn't been ALL that kind...I'm pretty sure we're leaps and bounds better on the inside for it though. We said our fond farewells with hopes to meet again soon, maybe in the "homeland" of New Hampshire.

On the bus back to Concord, Mae noted the emergency hatches on the roof. I pondered what situation would make you require such an exit. I tentatively suggested to her that maybe they'd be handy if the bus was to tip over..or something. And I had scenes of the convict bus crash scene in "The Fugitive" playing over in my head...excellent movie, by the way. Jess and I sat together on the way home. It had been a day or two since we'd giggled in the back seat of a bus. There was a man seated in front of her, who was rude enough to tilt his seat way back in her lap. Although this allowed me to see into HIS lap from my seat. He spent awhile doing some mundane work on his laptop, and then when he was finished he simply held his MP3 player (probably something far more advanced than that, but that's what I'll call it). I soon realized he was cracking his knuckles, and in a methodical manner...and all his knuckles on each finger. And I could hear the popping. All this made me want to cover my eyes and ears and curl up in a fetal position. Jess and I laughed at my new middle-aged sensitivities. The girls were remarkably quiet behind us, only asking for snacks and taking turns going to the novelty which was the bus bathroom. They ate astronaut ice cream and read Diary of a Wimpy Kid (both purchased at the museum gift shop, and surprisingly both well worth their exorbitant pricetags).

Back in my car, we stopped at Arnie's Place in Concord for dinner...your typical order-at-the-window sort of joint. We ordered all things greezy, complete with ice cream (real - not with the life sucked out of it for space travel) for dessert. I got frozen pudding and rum raisin, some old favorites of my mom's. The heartburn hit when we finally got home from our Beantown adventure...

The city is a cool place. I've certainly been to bigger, more interesting ones; but I'd like to go back to Boston sometime to re-travel some of the historic sites that I walked in my youth and have completely forgotten. Otherwise, it's kinda dirty and a little too busy. Jess and I chuckled in a sad sort of way at the "nature walk" in front of the museum, with it's random shrubs and plants in the middle of all that pavement and structure...no contest to our country homes. In Diary of a Wimpy Kid (which Keegan and Em narrated to us most of the way home) the wimpy kid is involved in a terrible rendition of The Wizard of Oz. So, I'll simply leave you with this...There's no place like home.

Can't You See I'm Trying to Fish?

We were down a child this evening, so my husband, Skip, decided it'd be a good night for us (that would be me, him, and our 6-hours-from-being-7-years-old daughter, Mae) to slide the boat into the truck, grab some chicken tenders and tator logs at the local store, and head to the pond for some fishing. On the way, he reminded me that I *could* get a fishing license this year. But I merely replied, "I'm good...I have my camera."

We arrived at the pond, stuffed our hungry faces with partially hydrogenized horrors untold in the cab of the truck, then unloaded the boat and all our gear. Mae we placed on the wooden bow seat, which is cracked and threatened a good hiney pinch for anyone weighing more than 60 pounds. I threw off my flip flips and waded in, pushing the boat off the little sandy landing. Hubby was in the middle rowing seat, and me at the stern (because I'm stern, according to the rower). Immediately we saw a bald eagle fly over the pond. My zoom would have never captured the image, but it got my juices flowing nevertheless. I was soon photographing every aspect of our aluminum vessel - its passengers, its contents, and the oars propelling it along. "Could you hold the oar still for a minute?...no, paddle once more so it drips...yeah, ok...stop"...."tilt your head down just a smidge...yup, right there...nope, it was too low - do it again"...."could you move over a bit so I can get Mae?...duck down farther...could you hold her hook up for me?..."

I began getting 'the look'...and finally the good-natured "can't you see I'm trying to fish here, woman?" Yes, I could see he was trying to fish. And Mae too. Since we were on Kennedy's Pond in Windsor, VT, I couldn't help chuckle every time she'd insist on precariously casting her own pole over our tight quarters, since on that very body of water, Chevy Chase was filmed hooking a fellow boater in the neck in the movie "Funny Farm," then trying to beat him unconscious with an oar so he could get the hook out. That's just good stuff, right there. But I digress...

Since we were out in the middle of the pond, I soon ran out of subjects to photograph. There were ducks and geese a'plenty flying and floating just far enough away so we really couldn't take them in, but their noises were all too detailed. The scent of a BBQ from somebody's home nearby wafted over to us, and the musty smell of the water (algae?) reminded me of the cottage on a lake my grandparents owned until I was in my early 20s. This cottage was where I spent all my summer weekends as a child, where I learned to swim, fish, water ski, and quite possibly play poker or the like. To this day, it is the place that occupies my nighttime dreams, more than any other house I have resided in. I remember every detail of every room, its sounds, even its woodsy smell. I remember late-night chats with my aunts, uncles, and cousins while we listened to bullfrogs in the cove and innocent moths being fried in the bug-light. I remember mornings that showed a lake so calm you wouldn't dare touch it or else make a ripple. I remember dinosaurian rocks out back that we kids would climb on, make forts out of, and apparently never fell from. I remember Jiffy muffins made by my grandmother, with blueberries from the bushes just feet away from the front steps. I remember my grampa cutting up fishworms for us out on the picnic table, helping us hook them on and take fish off. Back then the lake was chock full of hornpout, sunfish, and perch. When I wasn't fishing, I was in the water. My grampa called me a mermaid, and I'd have to practically be dragged out when it "was time." This camp is the place that in later years, my future husband and I would go to, alone, for simple Sunday dinners. We cooked in its kitchen, we sat on its deck, we fished and swam, we boated out to watch fireworks, we watched movies and slow danced in its living room. And at this beloved camp, perenially tied to the dock, had been this very same rowboat we now floated in with our youngest daughter, our own little mermaid. Mae never got to run through the camp, count the knots in the wooden walls, drink raspberry gingerale on its deck with her great-grandmother, or jump off its dock (wow, she and her sister would've had glorious times there like their mom!), but she did have 4-1/2 years with her great-grandfather, "Grampa Bud," the quiet, gentle, but very funny, whiskered man who used to cut my fishworms, the man I hope was looking down on her tonight with her little red life vest, pole, and big grin, sitting proudly at the bow of his rowboat...

Our evening was full of laughter, chiding, and lessons only to be learned while, I believe, fishing alongisde your dad:
Lesson #1 - Geese don't land in trees.
Lesson #2 - Fish don't swim in flocks (she was raised a chicken farmer, what can I say?)
Lesson #3 - The reason Dad is facing Mom is not because he wants to see her beautiful face (although it was thoughtful of him to give that as his first answer), but because it's simply the most effective rowing position.
Lesson #4 - No, we don't have to check you for ticks when we get back to shore.

My best friend passed on a quote awhile back, a quote which really says it all about me and my camera-loving philosophy..."When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black & white, you photograph their souls!" ~Ted Grant

So, the question is...does an old, tattered, dented aluminum Montgomery Ward row boat have a soul? You tell me...