Living nightmares every day

ANYONE who knows me at all, also knows that I do not like to be surprised.  It doesn't take much to scare me and I pity the person who would do it intentionally.  And yet, somehow, Mother Nature has NOT gotten the message.


Tonight, after grabbing the dog's leash and announcing it was time to hit the yard, I walk into the living room to find a toad investigating what plush carpeting feels like on its grody little underbelly.   Some watch dogs I have; they let a poisonous perp hop right by their keen senses and infiltrate my safe and (what I thought to be) secure environs.


I grab a broom and dustpan, uncertain how the extrication will play out.  Up from her comfortable spot on the sofa, my dog is curious and edges closer to see what all the fuss is about.  I shoo the dog with the bristly end of the broom, scaring her so badly, she bumps into the vacuum cleaner on her mad dash to get away, which then turns noisily on as it falls to the floor.  So much for stealthily catching my prey unawares. 


One swipe at the toad and it bee-lines for the open door and the safety of darkness.  How it made it all the way up the steps to the porch and into the house is still a bit of a mystery.  Its not as if I have a lot of toad-food lying about in a Hansel and Gretel-like path of enticement.  Oh, wait.  Yes I do...


Because last week Mother Nature had another surprise for me.  Hundreds of tiny fly maggots all over my kitchen floor which I discovered when I walked in there with bare feet.  "Did you vomit?" my daughter asked when I relayed the adventure to her.


I didn't, but I'll be wearing shoes in the house for awhile, just in case.


It isn't as though I'm a bad housekeeper.  Maggots happen here in Hawai`i.  Especially since most people don't have disposals, keep their kitchen garbage under their sinks, and temperatures hover around the low 80's.  I have to have no shame about my indoor bug experiences.  My mother shared my heroics with her bridge club ladies that afternoon and as they are all laughing and being grossed out, they are probably also thinking, "what kind of a sty does your daughter live in??".


Okay, my heart rate has returned to normal and it is time for bed.  We'll see what tomorrow's living nightmare has in store for me.

"Run! Run! The adults are cheating!"

Comic drawn by Rachel (age 12)

Isn't it a parent's purpose to teach their children what is right and what is wrong? At least that is the illusion that I have been under for the past 28 years, and counting...


13 years ago I found out that not all parents share this philosophy.  That was the time that I volunteered to chaperone my daughter's 6th-grade weeklong adventure to Outdoor School at the Oregon Coast. 


I think my decision to chaperone Rachel's class was cemented two years before when I was greeting the school bus that my second son was on returning from his week at camp.  The teacher came off the bus first, scanned the gathering crowd of proud and excited parents and walked straight up to me. I had a sinking feeling that things had not gone well.  The exact circumstances are bit fuzzy but I think that it involved my son punching another boy in the face on the first day. Two years before that, when my oldest went to camp, one of the other boys ran into a branch at night and poked his eye. 


So, feeling a bit of pressure regarding our family legacy and to ensure that safety prevailed and trouble was avoided, I volunteered.  It was a time of learning, a time of forming a life-long friendship, and a time of awakening.


And a time of great fun.  We dissected squid (finding their beaks, eyeballs, and ink sacs), took walks along the coastal strand (learning about shifting sand dunes, invasive beach grass, and the wreck of the Peter Iredale), and examined squirming creatures in water samples from a brackish pond.  


We took night-hikes and learned about rods and cones (photoreceptors in the human retina that help you see color), and we sat around campfires listening to stories, singing songs, and filling our clothes and hair with wood-smoke.  I even brought Earnest Hemmingway's, The Old Man and the Sea and lulled the girls with sleepy bedtime stories every night to calm their excited spirits.


Close to the final evening the entire camp (boys, girls, chaperones, teachers, camp workers) played a chasing game - I think it was called Predator / Prey. I distinctly remember that during the instructions it was stated where the "Out Of Bounds" areas were and that anyone who went there would be immediately disqualified.  What was unique and somewhat odd about the rules was that it was the adults against the kids.


Being that my legs are short and therefore not built for speed, I was quickly tagged out of the game.  I got to watch from the sidelines and cheer my comrades on. Until I realized what they were up to.  The adults were winning because they were cheating. They were taking short-cuts through and hiding in the Out-of-Bounds Areas giving them a distinct advantage.


A sense of fairness overtook my allegiance and I leapt from my comfortable log by the fire and ran screaming throughout the panicked children, "Run! Run! The adults are cheating! Use the Out-of-bounds Areas!"  In the end, the tide turned, and the kids ended up winning the game. As it should be.


I was shunned by the other adults for the rest of the week (except Judi, the other cabin-mom, who was my conspirator that night and new life-long-friend). 


Moral of the story? The sense of Right depends on what side of it you are on.  And, grownups can be such sore losers.

The End of Time, er, Summer

Labor Day. Synonymous with The End Of Summer.  Even though, technically, the solstice is a half a month away and the weather is still very sunny and nice, the end has arrived.


This fact is punctuated by the fact that my daughter left  today to fly to Oregon after a summer of visiting her dear ol' mum and friends from high school. It was so much fun to have her and we blended right in with the thousands of visitors on Kauai, seeing the sights and getting too much sun on the beach. She was able to do a bit of filming (see her YouTube Channel), and the dogs got much more attention than they've been used to getting (or will be getting now that two more hands have left the premises).


But now she is gone. Just me and the dogs. Sitting in the living room on a beautiful sunny day. Why is it so much harder getting motivated to do something when you are doing it alone?


Okay. All that changes tomorrow. You are all my witness to this statement. It may not be New Year's Day and the appropriate time for resolutions, but, dammit, I'm going to add purpose and resolution to my daily activities. All I WANT to get done will BE done. Yes, I can!


Right after this episode of Doctor Who.

God does not have the monopoly on creation

I love waking up in the morning to blue skies and sunshine. THAT is why I live in paradise. 


Today will be a day dedicated to creativity.  My youngest offspring has been visiting and today (Statehood Day and hence a holiday) we will embark on a video voyage. She is on a quest to post videos every week and she needs my help with today's theme: things that make her happy. I, of course, will be featured predominantly in the video; probably third billing to all of her friends still here on the island, and my canine housemates...


I have also been having a creative "challenge" with my two daughters as we work through the year with our "create-a-month" goal.  Every month a theme is set and we must all come up with something that we then share with photos.  This month's theme is "of or relating to anything having to do with tea". Sometimes it has been a bit more vague, like January's theme of "no larger than 7 cubic inches and it has to have yellow in it." One daughter sewed a little pin cushion that looked like an old fashioned hat, the other made a pencil drawing of bananas. Even thought the drawing was NOT done in colored pencils, she creatively explained that, "the yellow is implied."  I did a mini hanging sculpture out of telephone wires.


I'm not exactly sure what will be created today, but my month is rapidly running out.  Last month (themed "must be made out of sticks or twigs") I waited until the last day to make my creation of a necklace made out of bark. No, really. There is a tree here that was used in making rope so I quickly twisted up a string to hang a pendant on. It was pretty nifty until it came apart in the shower yesterday. Not to worry, it had been captured in a photo and luckily we didn't put a lifespan requirement on any of these.


So...I'm off to create!

Expectations

Yesterday, my neighbor was outside again in his underwear. Standing on his roof, he had a 20' bamboo pole with a saw on the end and was cutting coconuts out of the tree overhanging his house.  "THWUMP" was what brought me to the window.  That was the sound of the coconut missing my neighbor's head and hitting the roof next to him. 

The day before yesterday I saw a woman who I am guessing was in her late 60's walking down the sidewalk. That in itself was not the strange part. The fact that she was dressed as a 20 year old gave me pause. Right from her bleached-blonde long locks down to her mid-baring shirt and short-shorts, she trundled on her high wedged sandals.  It wasn't until I had gotten almost even with her in my truck that I could make out her age. It was such a shock to my senses that I am still having flash-backs.

That same day, I saw a woman jogging down the street but thought she was a man from behind. A week before that a goat stopped by my office and nibbled on my taro that I have planted out front.  On Saturday, FedEx had the US Postal Service deliver a package to my mailbox. I checked every possible nook and cranny for the package that was tracked and reported as having been delivered. I finally found it in the mailbox. Go figure.

I am beginning to expect the unexpected. Where has my safe little world gone with comfortable assumptions?  I guess the answer is that the world has changed and I haven't. Who says that underwear isn't as modest as a pair of shorts? Who makes the rules as to how people should dress or look? Why should goats be fenced? This is a free world, after all.  

But where I have to draw the line is Package Delivery. If I order it to be delivered to my doorstep in a van with great big lettering on the side, I damn well expect it to be delivered that way.  Not way out at the street in a box that anyone willing to risk incarceration in a Federal Penitentiary could abscond with it. Yes, I might just be talking about a new planner ordered from FranklinCovey, but certain standards must be upheld!!

Now that I have that off my chest, I must scurry home to see what new and exciting outdoor activities my neighbor has in mind.

Cooking under pressure

Tonight I cooked another artichoke (yes, they were on sale at Costco). But instead of waiting the excruciating 45 minutes or so, I decided to pop it in the ol' pressure cooker, just like my mom used to do.


I borrowed the behemoth from work for this special task; and being unfamiliar with how this contraption worked, I needed to first do a little sleuthing online for instructions. Trim it up, add water, pop it in, lock the lid, turn up the heat.  Check and check. Easy peasy.


Soon it was rattling away and the haunting memories of my youth came hissing back. My mom only used this contraption occasionally and I learned to respect and fear it at the same time.  Anything that can turn bone into soft tissue in under an hour should be respected.  Hissing and rattling, we watched in awe expecting the giant silver time-bomb to explode at any second sending shards of molten metal and beef ribs into our tender little bodies.  


My mother's "STAY BACK!!" never went unheeded and served to bolster the terrifying effect of the steam engine pumping away on the stove. In fact, I stayed so far back that I continued to stay out of the kitchen for the next 20 years of my life.  I didn't really need to go in there to learn anything anyway. I had three older sisters who were perfectly happy to learn all of the diabolical and life-threatening secrets of preparing a home-cooked meal.


So, tonight everything was coming along just fine.  My son called me up to chat just when the timer went off.  I approached the pot with caution to turn the burner off, but I was perplexed about whether I should somehow lift it off of the hot stove to stop the rattling.  Instead, balancing the phone in the crook of my shoulder and a pot-holder in each hand, I managed to knock the pressure gauge thingy part way off of the steam nozzle. Steam started shooting sideways from the lid top (luckily not in my direction), and the noise was unbelievable.


"What in the world are you doing?" he shouts into the phone. "What is that awful racket?!"


"Oh, I'm just cooking in a pressure cooker," I respond more calmly than I felt.


"I didn't know you could cook tin foil and pennies in a pressure cooker," he yells over the hissing, clanging and sputtering. Frying turkey patties added to the harsh and chaotic symphony.


All ended well and the 'choke turned out perfectly. No one was injured in the preparation of this meal. The pressure cooker is going back to work tomorrow.

Choking on memories

Last night, as I was carefully dissecting my dinner, I had a time-warp moment when I was hurled back to the past nearly 40 years: I was at the dining table with my family gathered all around.  I don't know if it happened because I am nearing the anniversary of losing my dad and sister, or because of the action that I was performing with my vegetable.


I was eating an artichoke.  Very carefully, I slowly and methodically peeled back each layer, scraped the underside of the leaf with my bottom teeth (same technique employed with an Oreo, by the way) claiming every soft morsel. I was "in the now" at this point, totally in sync with digesting my potassium, magnesium, vitamin C, and dietary fiber.


Then I got to the hairy center and busted out my special moves on the choke.  I picked up my spoon, turned the back of the bowl up and with the tip of the spoon, very carefully and with precision, applied pressure near the edge of the fluffy core. 


This was the special moment that reminded me of meals with my family.  Using a skill taught to me by my patient father, at the lofty age of 10 I felt that I had perfected this method of hair-removal; steady pressure to separate the messy center from the heart, but with a light enough touch that I could see every impression left by each hair. I was so confident with my skill that I would leap from my chair, spoon in hand, asking to de-flock any vegetable that was handy.


Now, I sit in solitude contemplating my fuzzy navel, um heart. I miss those family times and am so grateful that I even had them. Holding my heart in my hand, I let the memories fill the empty chairs in my dining room.