tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33553781078169086432024-03-14T02:00:26.954-07:00Where in the World are the Kittels?!Musings on our family life from the playas of Costa Rica to the woods of Maine to the coast of Oregon to infinity (and beyond!) using adverbs and exclamations freely for anyone missing us and wondering, "Where in the world...? or "What the heck is a yurt anyway?"
* All contents copyright Kelly KittelK3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-90174831361394446062014-02-03T05:00:00.001-08:002014-02-03T05:00:14.473-08:00We've Moved!It's a New Year, 2014, and true to it's very title and nature, <i>Where In The World are the Kittels?!</i> is moving! After five years, my blog has grown up into a full-fledged website! Please come and visit us at our new address: <a href="http://www.kellykittel.com/">www.kellykittel.com</a>. There you'll find us swimming around with new posts, new books and all kinds of fun, new critters. Thank you for following us and please, click on the link and join us on this brave, new adventure! Hasta!K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-51002343415788380462014-01-23T08:13:00.003-08:002014-01-24T14:14:59.824-08:00"It's Not That I Can't Help...<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I just don't want to..." </div>
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This morning I'm reminded of this, my favorite quotation
from the movie, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Volunteers,</i> about the
Peace Corps. The film came out when I was an idealistic young
volunteer-in-training a few decades ago and we all went as a group to see it in
Miami before heading off to the jungles of, well, Jamaica. I was a tiny bit
offended by it (as was the Peace Corps itself, according to Wikipedia) and I
may have even left the theater early but I did laugh when Tom Hanks delivered
that line. (Daily Trivia: this is the film where Tom met Rita, still his wife;
also when I met Andy, still my husband!) Gene Siskel stated that the film had
"two lame performances by its leading actors, the vastly overrated Tom
Hanks...and the consistently disappointing John Candy.” Just saw that
"overrated" guy at the Golden Globes and I wonder if Gene ever
regretted saying that.</div>
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And so this was brought to mind when my fellow She Writes
Spring author and Goodreads pal, Rossandra White, wrote on her blog, “So here I
am now trying to negotiate the rocky shoals of publicizing the book, like
interviews, public readings, etc. My brain keels over every time I think about
it, and I break out into a cold sweat.” Yes Rossandra, I, too, am feeling
nervous about my impending public speaking engagements (which are literally
months away) for my debut book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breathe</i>,
and find it all a tiny bit ironic. </div>
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For some time now I’ve been trying to wrap my own brain
around my impending public speaking as well, wishing I’d joined Toastmasters so
many years ago as I’d planned. (Be brave; do hard things!) Instead, I switched
colleges to avoid taking public speaking, which was probably misguided. And
I’ve been trying to think of a good analogy, like, hey, you're a WRITER and
you're publishing your book. That's great! NOW, even though you've worked for
seven years in total seclusion, could you get your chair-shaped ass out of that
chair, yes, stand right up, and TALK to people about it? Is that like so, you
host a great TALK show or you’re a fabulous STAND-UP COMEDIAN, now could you go
home and sit by yourself for a few years (or more) and WRITE about it? Or, you
PAINTED a masterpiece, now get right on out there and DANCE about it? Anyone
have another?</div>
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Where’s Dale Carnegie when I need him? I don’t even like to
talk on the telephone. If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting by myself in my Grinch
pajamas typing away, I’d be living in Mumbai as a "Customer Service"
Rep for Spirit Airlines (don’t even get me started on that topic) or I’d be a
Saleswoman, or maybe even Speaker of the House! </div>
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It’s not that I can’t speak in public, I just don’t want to.</div>
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K3</div>
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<br />K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-79587782463919492992013-11-27T12:53:00.002-08:002013-11-27T13:05:03.967-08:00The History of Breathe, Part Two!<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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When last we left off, our unsung heroine, um, that would be me, was in
Guatemala kneeling at the feet of famous authors while they filled her head
with their infinite wisdom (“avoid taking the reader to the bathroom!”) on the
banks of Lake Atitlan—the bellybutton of the planet—but she was also a tiny bit
lighter, as she’d just lost one of her diamond earrings in the lake . . .
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Okay, back up, back to first person, still in Guatemala
where mornings found Eve and I donning our caps and goggles at the end of our dock, then swimming along the
shore, around a punta and into the cove to Joyce’s dock where we hauled out and
joined her in the sauna. One morning, I climbed onto her dock, yanked off my tight
red cap, and one of my earrings plopped right in the lake. I just stood there,
watching helplessly, as it sank into the clear, green abyss. The news spread
via grapevine, like it does in the tropics, and by afternoon a bevy of
brown-skinned boys were diving off said dock in search of gold, like some kind
of historical role reversal of the conquistadors. I offered a reward, I think
$100 (it still stands and I can’t wait to go and deliver it) as the slippery
boys came up time and time again, naked and smiling, but empty handed. Since
that time, the lake has risen some 15 feet and Joyce’s dock and her lovely recycled
glass bottle-dotted sauna walls have been reclaimed by the caldera-filling
waters. Since that time, I’ve been carrying the many lessons learned, never
forgetting the feeling I had when Joyce’s eyeballs drilled me to my chair,
never quite losing the echo of her voice in my brain, “I want to know, how have
you changed?”</div>
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I returned home to RI from Guatemala to finish packing up
our house, sell a bunch of things I still miss at our garage sale, load up the
black panther, and wave adios to Andy, Micah, and Dunkin on their isthmus driving
adventure, following soon thereafter by plane. We settled
into our new lives in Costa Rica for the school year, 2008-9, where we walked
the beach and swam daily. I started this blog as my New Years resolution and began
working on my publishing platform, with one of my essays called “Noah’s Name” soon
thereafter published in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We Need Not Walk
Alone</i>, a bereavement magazine. Without friends, my YMCA/Starbucks routine,
or TJMaxx to distract me, I sat my ass in a leather-strapped chair and I wrote.
And I wrote. Some days I’d look up from my keyboard and half expect to see Noah
come toddling across the tile floor to me, arms outstretched. Some days I’d see
my kids off to school, sit down with a hot cup of coffee at our dining room
table, and greet them seven hours later when they walked back in and said,
“Mom, have you been sitting there in your pajamas all day?” And, mostly, I had.<br />
<br />
I’d stretch and change into a bathing suit, then walk the beach with
Christiana, puzzling out the story structure and plot while throwing coconuts
into the warm, salty sea of Conchal for Dunkin, gone and missed now these past
two years, to retrieve. We’d hike back home through the orange sunset-infused
air and jump in our pool while flocks of parrots screamed their way to bed and
bats emerged for the night, swooping the pool’s surface but always just missing
us. After dinner, we’d take our quads to a nearby deserted beach where we’d
stroll along the water’s edge, kicking bioluminescent sprays of warm sea water
and watching sea turtles laying their eggs. I finished the manuscript again,
this time calling it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Light of the Son</i>,
but it was still very, very long. Start over. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMVNC320NWOZvHyBRs4t3Iq7TqkQkjdTTrAiwDAgU32WPY_VIVFMhBLL08_gfP2DSFgD3Euj-Xhr95LYba3aTbOn6P0OOk5gNXPhakHnUfpH6fF7AeoupgQNaXsdnu4_y3IcXYQWKPaHct/s1600/IMG_3962.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMVNC320NWOZvHyBRs4t3Iq7TqkQkjdTTrAiwDAgU32WPY_VIVFMhBLL08_gfP2DSFgD3Euj-Xhr95LYba3aTbOn6P0OOk5gNXPhakHnUfpH6fF7AeoupgQNaXsdnu4_y3IcXYQWKPaHct/s200/IMG_3962.JPG" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXF8VRzpWADXurLAq6mZlgXOnOZ_jNHTyTzwi5vss0Krmf4hErQMXZHjKuSuvFFAJn0syV-_LYvFeFZ4NMVBjnKL6cghmXXIYS5I-Uwq6kzvhiGJ18D55sw6ON6t5z_ppWbmLJ1BYTWKuT/s1600/DSCN6670.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXF8VRzpWADXurLAq6mZlgXOnOZ_jNHTyTzwi5vss0Krmf4hErQMXZHjKuSuvFFAJn0syV-_LYvFeFZ4NMVBjnKL6cghmXXIYS5I-Uwq6kzvhiGJ18D55sw6ON6t5z_ppWbmLJ1BYTWKuT/s200/DSCN6670.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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We moved to the coast of Oregon where we built two yurts on
a lovely piece of ground hugged by a creek and surrounded by national forest, just
two miles from where Noah was run over. This was the last place on earth I wanted
to live, but it’s also the place that holds my husband’s heart, his home, and
it was time to make peace with it. We moved in without heat or running water
for Christmas of 2009. I attended my second writing conference near Seattle and
Wordstock in Portland and became the Willamette Writers Coastal Chapter
Co-Chair, learning something about the craft of writing every month. By then I
realized that my unspoken motto seemed to be, “Why write less when you can
write more?” so I bit the economic bullet and hired an editor to help me “trim”
my manuscript to a manageable size. I wore my colorful alpaca glittens and
drank cups of coffee that winter in my yurt, writing all morning while Bella
was at Kindergarten with the elk bugling outside and the salmon spawning in our
creek. Then I’d pick her up and head for the pool, swimming lap after lap while
puzzling out some story problem or amusing myself with potential names for my
characters. And when school was over for the other kids in the afternoon,
Christiana and I took long walks along the creek, brainstorming book titles. </div>
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In the Fall of 2010, I moved back to Costa Rica after attending
my first Willamette Writers conference where I pitched to five agents face-to-face
for the first time. I unpacked in our treehouse (recently featured on
Househunters International), got the kids off to school, set my laptop up on
yet another table, finished my revisions from my editor, then sent my ms off to
the agents with a prayer. A few months later, we moved from the treehouse into
the beach house in front of it, Casa Azul, where the surf sang us to sleep each
night and I began homeschooling Bella. Life on the playa means walking twice a
day, sunrise and sunset, and I left a lot of footprints in that sand. I met a
greeting card writer at school and another writer during one sunset walk and we
started a writing group called Tuesdays with Amy. We lounged, poolside, at the Langosta Beach Club, eating salmon paninis and drinking real sugar Cokes,
trading literary agent contacts and trying to figure out how to get our
manuscripts published. They also became two of my first five readers. I queried
over 150 agents from my casa on the playa in between beach walks, swims, and
teaching Bella much more about bide-riding and marine biology than math and also submitted my
chapters to WeBook with good reviews. I also continued working on my platform, writing
the Costa Rica section of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Getting
Out:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your Guide to Leaving America</i>,
which was published the following year.</div>
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In the summer of 2011, I moved back to the yurts, went back to the WW
conference and pitched 8 more agents, went to Wordstock again, and my co-chair
gave me a full ms critique. I revised again. My WeBook advanced to Round 2, I
queried another 20 agents, and I paid for another partial ms critique, revising
with ratchets and levers and other scene and sequel techniques and changing the
name to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">East Meets West</i>. I also
joined SheWrites and an essay I wrote in Guatemala called “Yoga Matt” was accepted
for a travel humor anthology—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Moose on the
Loose</i>. I continued swimming laps and walking the beach watching seals while
thinking of character development and agonizing over theme. <br />
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In the summer of 2012, I went back to the WW conference for the third time,
pitched to 7 agents, then moved back to RI, where I read about the new
SheWrites Press, sent in my $25 and chapters, and was accepted as a Track 2
Writer in September. But with two more kids now in college (not selected for
the free SW Passion Project) and still hoping to hear something positive from the
agents I pitched, I hemmed and hawed. </div>
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I joined the Providence Writers Group (now
Guild!) and spent another nine months submitting and revising my book in its
entirety with their excellent advice and fiction-writing feedback. Then I
submitted to the WW agents again, still hoping. I guest blogged a piece called “Sea
Turtles and Moon Baths” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Polliwog on
Safari</i>, published an essay called “Summer Fun Made by Mr. Richardson” on the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wayne in Focus</i> website, wrote the new
website content and several success stories for the Coastal Resources Center, and
authored articles on scallops and quahogs and a book review on narwhals for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">41N</i> magazine. And remember those six
pages about salmon? Well, they became an essay called “Dam It” which was just
published in a literary journal called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold
Man Review</i>.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDHTcAchxnDVilz4bhWaZswNCSOTp4Ks2lX7CfZZ_QlZLwWOOrmUOm1TxIlMQFL6_7NObYUUs5U2f2vVLAEfT3EcMQV1degjpvBegbpC2yCZyqA86CebKOquzDfgq6NgW8Ovr0IbKi4eJz/s1600/IMG_6923.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDHTcAchxnDVilz4bhWaZswNCSOTp4Ks2lX7CfZZ_QlZLwWOOrmUOm1TxIlMQFL6_7NObYUUs5U2f2vVLAEfT3EcMQV1degjpvBegbpC2yCZyqA86CebKOquzDfgq6NgW8Ovr0IbKi4eJz/s200/IMG_6923.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>
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All in all, I’ve sent over 200 queries and pitched 20
agents, fielded over 120 rejections, attended 2 workshops, 3 conferences, and
have worked with 5 editors (3 partial, 2 full). I’ve been in three writing
groups and have had 15 readers of my full ms including 3 agents. I’ve spent a
lot of time and even more money getting to this point. I spent the past winter
and spring working and trying to save some money for publishing, which didn’t
go so well, but in July we received an unexpected payment on an outstanding
debt owed to us. The opportunity to publish with SWP was at hand. I received my
edited ms at the end of tail end of July but was still working and enjoying
summer so I tabled it until the kids were back in school. The day after Labor
Day I was laid off, which wasn’t exactly in the spirit of the holiday, and I
spent the rest of September revising my ms full-time. Again. In the middle of
August, Andy’s cousin was preparing to head out on the highway for the Sturgis Rally
Harley trip of a lifetime with her husband, sister and brother-in-law when she
felt ill. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and instead of seeing
Mt. Rushmore, she was confined to her death bed where she exhaled her final
breath only two months later. She wasn’t much older than me. And if that’s not
incentive enough for any one of us to get up off our chair-shaped asses and
start moving in our intended directions, I don’t know what is.</div>
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I signed with SheWrites press on September 28 to publish my
memoir, Breathe, and a week or so later I received my draft tip sheet from my
publisher, Brooke Warner, with my publication date—May 14, 2014. May 14 is the
day that Jonah died and was born. In addition to that, an excerpt from Breathe recounting
that same day was one of 80 pieces recently selected out of 600 submissions for
an anthology called “Three Minus One” which is also forthcoming in the spring
to accompany a movie, “Return To Zero.” I am sincerely hopeful that at last I
will be given another chance to successfully birth something on that date. And that
many people will love it.</div>
K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-82864856758720101062013-11-26T11:22:00.000-08:002013-11-27T10:58:01.425-08:00The History of Breathe, Part OneWell, I've done it again. I've been recalcitrant in my blogging duties and have finally written a new blog post but I'm afraid it will greatly exceed your patience to read. So, I'll post it in two parts. Here, at long last, is The History of Breathe, Part One.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzqiv-Gld8lGIUS_VbI6RmQOtaWHHt6lbPWSHNE49cMepQAdr5aEP9nXJz_p1rmb4jsy1dbJRStO9tAiBxBNfwQOIgcwBkGGJQEJPB6HdwM12-Z-Bh33EZdo5T9-dINOHn7_k3zz5mnuji/s1600/Breathe!.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzqiv-Gld8lGIUS_VbI6RmQOtaWHHt6lbPWSHNE49cMepQAdr5aEP9nXJz_p1rmb4jsy1dbJRStO9tAiBxBNfwQOIgcwBkGGJQEJPB6HdwM12-Z-Bh33EZdo5T9-dINOHn7_k3zz5mnuji/s200/Breathe!.bmp" width="129" /></a></div>
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</xml><![endif]-->Next Spring will mark seven years since I began writing my
memoir, now called Breathe. For two or three decades now, even before this
story began, people have asked me when I was going to write a book. This was
often in response to them receiving, of all things, my annual holiday letter
which arrived anytime between Christmas and Easter. And interspersed among
these votes of confidence was the voice of my mother, sighing and saying,
“You’re such a gifted writer, it’s a shame you never did anything with it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Hey,” I’d counter, scribbling yet another note to one of my
kids teachers, I write every day!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After the events in this story had transpired in real time,
I started answering, “well, first I have to figure out how many of my family
members I want to alienate.” And then I lost them all anyway. By then I’d given
birth to Bella, at age 42, and this book, which I referred to as Naptime,
began. </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUGo9zHe-UMzmx_hfl3Rxpo9eHTsJuXNfFHC2iB_LXjQNImyLybBlbA5hXjv1zS441RAdd1T-70m8tNFkklkNiIFL75uKVb9cGxt4oFd_uJYx0FVivAzRbOTVGb1jreq2nwDspleaxUI63/s1600/IMG_1946.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUGo9zHe-UMzmx_hfl3Rxpo9eHTsJuXNfFHC2iB_LXjQNImyLybBlbA5hXjv1zS441RAdd1T-70m8tNFkklkNiIFL75uKVb9cGxt4oFd_uJYx0FVivAzRbOTVGb1jreq2nwDspleaxUI63/s200/IMG_1946.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bella Grace is born!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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While the other four kids were at school and Bella slept in the
afternoons, on most days I resisted the temptation to crawl in beside her,
forcing my ass into my office chair instead to finally start writing this book.
I figured I needed the old college deadline so I set myself the goal of having
it done to mark the tenth anniversary of Noah’s, death on August 10, 1997. Yes,
one year plus a few months to wrap things up sounded completely attainable as I
sat down to begin. (If you haven’t written a book, this may seem perfectly
attainable; if you have, you’re probably smirking about now.) By then it had
been about ten years since the story timeline started—the opening scene being
Noah’s birth on May 18, 1996—and it was Easter 2006, which seemed like a good
time for resurrections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhFfUpDSIaiVP5gmMTeII99A-LzqVHLWyQrFq7Tq_fZxnQmCeiZ__TfziQ3Sk1cQZDBAscvz3cr7B10imbA3H0O6LHYV7M9k28FkIIy037gnAz6_QzoCBmVB4Wg6Av9GSb9AUBFFV5YFje/s1600/Noah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhFfUpDSIaiVP5gmMTeII99A-LzqVHLWyQrFq7Tq_fZxnQmCeiZ__TfziQ3Sk1cQZDBAscvz3cr7B10imbA3H0O6LHYV7M9k28FkIIy037gnAz6_QzoCBmVB4Wg6Av9GSb9AUBFFV5YFje/s200/Noah.jpg" width="152" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Noah Patrick </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
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The first thing I realized was that I had to start at the
end. The final scenes of the story recount our medical malpractice trial so my
first task was to transcribe the trial because, lucky me, our courtroom had the
technological innovation of videotape vs. stenographer. For many months, during
naptime, I sat in front of our VCR with my notebooks and pens and wrote, word
for word, every testimony from seven full days in court. My kids would come
home from school to find me seated in front of the TV, stopping, rewinding, and
starting the seven VCR tapes over and over again, until I was finished. By
then, it had been four years since the trial, so this exercise served as a good
refresher. And when I’d pressed the stop button for the last, blessed time, I
still had to transfer them from my notebooks to my computer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That done, I searched through cupboards, closets, and
storage bins in the basement until I’d found all the baby books, photo albums,
calendars, journals, sympathy cards, newspaper clippings, church bulletins,
bills, receipts, and birth, death and medical records from the five-year span
of story time, researching and reliving those events over and over until they,
too, were fresh in my head and in my heart. And I learned the absolute truth of
the saying:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the heart remembers what the
mind forgets. One of the many things I unearthed in the process were notes I’d
taken from a Compassionate Friends conference for bereaved parents that Andy
and I had attended in 1999 where I’d asked a well-known grief writer, “how long
should you wait to write your story?” And because I can’t remember even my own
phone number, for five years by then I’d felt like I was running behind because
I remembered her answering, “five.” But when I found my notes, I discovered
she’d really answered me by saying, “You should wait five years to tell it, but
ten years to write it!” So, I was right on track.</div>
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In November of 2006, the same year I began writing, Andy and
I went on a sailing trip with friends to Martinique. On November 13, I sat on
the deck after my 45<sup>th</sup> birthday dinner under a starlit night with
the Caribbean caressing our catamaran. My friend told me I could make a
birthday wish. I was still nervous about saying I was writing a memoir, hadn’t
told anyone yet, what if I didn’t finish it?, but the night cradled me its
warm, magical spell so I said, “My wish for my birthday is to publish the book
I’m writing.” They were silent at first, so I figured I’d better have a back-up
plan, adding, “and to see a sea turtle.” Then we all toasted my birthday wishes
those seven years ago and the next day while we were snorkeling, I swam ahead
of the group and there, just in front of me, I saw a beautiful hawksbill turtle
breaststroking along. As I screamed through my snorkel, the turtle turned its
head and looked at me with a round, soulful eye and I felt my birthday blessing,
happy that I’d added a wish that could be so quickly granted. My other wish, as
you know, took much longer. But I was happy to have the encouragement of this
ancient reptile whose ancestors had been swimming in the sea for over 250
million years and whenever I grew frustrated, I’d imagine my birthday turtle
patting my hand with its flipper and saying “all in good time, my dear, all in
good time.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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One year later, I had still only just begun to fathom the
mountain I’d set out to climb as we celebrated the tenth anniversary of Noah’s
death in August of 2007 by hiking in the White Mountains, climbing Mt. Carter
and staying overnight in a hut with Hannah, Christiana, and Micah instead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We brought a sprinkling of his ashes and
buried them at the peak, making it just a teeny bit higher. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMVVb-qh1wtvKsxbp7wdYmxIdhwbbaKM9O-FMhZEMgWY2IuIywVk9r_rx2lC6pkmcnpELo6ckXdACmPijZDPXzfNzKJ3q1evqnfpjUBMnyBGAUcJ5WGOIWIqeE9PMYBr8kOR8_U8EhtcTU/s1600/IMG_6502.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMVVb-qh1wtvKsxbp7wdYmxIdhwbbaKM9O-FMhZEMgWY2IuIywVk9r_rx2lC6pkmcnpELo6ckXdACmPijZDPXzfNzKJ3q1evqnfpjUBMnyBGAUcJ5WGOIWIqeE9PMYBr8kOR8_U8EhtcTU/s200/IMG_6502.JPG" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhndLwM5c8sgUmAySIpijcwuaezJW_-g77yZFuKk-rtBFhPGD21FrC-VFikxp8sd-rNyCXlr2eKt_Y9DalFCUBcqupkNGPaz_dp3np08AwZE5LwlVIXZgjcNrVgnxYQTe_58fStPEO0Zgwr/s1600/IMG_6525.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhndLwM5c8sgUmAySIpijcwuaezJW_-g77yZFuKk-rtBFhPGD21FrC-VFikxp8sd-rNyCXlr2eKt_Y9DalFCUBcqupkNGPaz_dp3np08AwZE5LwlVIXZgjcNrVgnxYQTe_58fStPEO0Zgwr/s200/IMG_6525.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
In the past seven years, I’ve solidified our familial
reputation for being late for everything, telling my kids, “Just a minute, I
need to finish this sentence,” my fingers flying across the keyboard before
hitting “save” and speeding them off to one soccer game or another wondering
what on earth we were having for dinner. In the time that I’ve been writing
this memoir, we’ve moved from Rhode Island to Costa Rica and from Costa Rica to
the Oregon coast, then back to Costa Rica for another year, back to Oregon for
yet another, and last year we returned to Rhode Island.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I started writing, my oldest daughter,
Hannah, was a junior in high school looking at colleges and I was still nursing
Bella, who was two. Hannah graduated from Georgetown two years ago with degrees
in Physics and Portuguese and Bella, now nine, has never known a time in her
life when I haven’t been working on this book. In this time, she’s been weaned
and potty trained, lost her first baby tooth and grown X number of her
permanent ones, learned to walk, skip, swing, swim, dance and ride a bike, and
she’s learned to speak in both English and Spanish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.</div>
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After completing my crash course in stenography and
historical research, when I finally sat down to begin writing the story off the
top of my head, what came swimming out of my fingertips were six pages about
salmon. And when I got to “the end” for the first time, the manuscript was over
500 pages long, raw and uncut, was entitled Shoveling Sand, and contained not
one scene or sentence of dialogue, except what I’d transcribed from the trial.
I was beginning to understand that I needed help learning to craft a story. I
wrote to Ann Hood and in July 2008 I went to my first writing conference in
Guatemala, at her recommendation, where she told me, “This story needs to be
told and you need to tell it,” and Joyce Maynard said, “You sound angry; start
over.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRSoLbXSKHdZ5Yjin3Gil7PKkYw_IQVfKBSZEV6B-xG0TF9nnzJy6SP8Jr-Q9w5nk8rw1An8-2R-_2gj1ZcSnbQfBgGw5K3UJIpT6ng5P3cf2nTu1-TDeqEf7HBqZqdxnPvrnbX658t_1P/s1600/IMG_3351.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRSoLbXSKHdZ5Yjin3Gil7PKkYw_IQVfKBSZEV6B-xG0TF9nnzJy6SP8Jr-Q9w5nk8rw1An8-2R-_2gj1ZcSnbQfBgGw5K3UJIpT6ng5P3cf2nTu1-TDeqEf7HBqZqdxnPvrnbX658t_1P/s200/IMG_3351.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joyce and Ann</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
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***<br />
K3K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-37858818340077838052013-07-26T11:28:00.002-07:002013-07-26T11:48:06.171-07:00Summer Fun: Made by Mr. Richardson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTemDXDzvYjHYdWGZKkMBMImAF_3V2cP8xoEFJVyTRcaxqHMjt1wkREeGHSkPoDBDRATjTL7PnOpqfDr9iEYj7MLWrzhFqX_fTz4eWibOT1OOYTclZZS1yzzeQZ_5UwTqk_YLfcOBYALUJ/s1600/RichardsonCottageSignIMG_0493.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTemDXDzvYjHYdWGZKkMBMImAF_3V2cP8xoEFJVyTRcaxqHMjt1wkREeGHSkPoDBDRATjTL7PnOpqfDr9iEYj7MLWrzhFqX_fTz4eWibOT1OOYTclZZS1yzzeQZ_5UwTqk_YLfcOBYALUJ/s320/RichardsonCottageSignIMG_0493.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Mr.
Richardson, proprietor of Richardson’s Cottages in Wayne, Maine where we
vacationed every summer, lives in my childhood lake memories as a fixture more
constant than sunscreen (which I don’t remember.) I never knew George as a
fall, winter, or spring guy. For all I knew, he returned each summer to
Pocasset when the ice went out. Like the loons. Like we did.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">As
soon as we arrived at Pocasset Lake, we burst out of our packed station wagon
and raced down the ramp to the dock. Waiting there was the wooden boat that
came with the cottage, both of which George had built along with the wooden
oars painted a matching gray and tucked beneath the seats. And usually, as we
scanned the lake for our summer friends, we’d spot the signature white,
flat-top crew-cut that was George (Mr. Richardson to us) motoring towards us in
his own boat which was also wooden in my younger days but transformed to
aluminum and fiberglass as the years went by. We waited impatiently for him to
get to us, always excited to see which boat motor he’d chosen for us to rent
and how many horsepower would propel us around the lake in the weeks ahead,
always hoping for a 12. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Once
that was checked off the list, we ran inside to change into bathing suits and sped
to the beach. The beach was dotted with colorful Adirondack chairs and presided
over by a red boathouse with white trim, all made by George. And by the time
the man who’d built our summer vacations with his own two hands arrived from
his lunch break each day, at least 20 kids of all ages were lined up and ready
to ski. George had one of the few ski boats on the lake for many years and few,
if any, of us renters owned one. So he spent his afternoons sticking to the red
vinyl seat of his shiny silver boat, circling the lake for hours and teaching
us all to ski by proffering his characteristic favorite advice—silence. And it
worked. We all eventually learned to sit like we were in a chair, skis
parallel, rope in between, and to let the boat pull us under George’s quiet,
patient tutelage.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">But
the most fun we had with Mr. Richardson came towards the end of dinnertime
every few nights when we heard the sound of his truck coming through the woods
towards our cottage. We guzzled our milk, washing down the final bites of our
dinner, and jumped up from the table with a quick, “Can I be excused?” The
screen door slammed behind us as George lifted our garbage can off the nail in
the tree where it hung out of the reach of raccoons. We greeted our friends
already in the back of the red pick-up and clambered in beside them, ready for
the dump run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">While
we picked the last bits of corn from our teeth and fooled around, George
worked, cruising the shoreline and unhooking trash cans from their respective
nails outside each cottage, cottages his wife, Janet, had christened with
Indian names—Sitting Bull, Hiawatha, Pocahontas. I recited these ancient words
to myself, committing them to memory in a sacred soliloquy for these people
who’d walked the woods before us.</span><span style="color: #4a86e8; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">One by one, kids from these other tribal homes let
their own screen doors slam behind them and jumped in the truck to join us,
leaving their own families still seated around their meatloaf dinners. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">George
tucked paper bags of trash in the bed around us, gradually filling in the
rectangular space until we reached Willowash, the end of the line. The setting
sun perched on the tree tops across the lake, coloring our adventure in shades
of orange and pink, as George turned the truck away from the lake and into the
cool, darkening woods. By then we lined the side rails like T-shirted
decorations or sat across the open tailgate, bare feet hanging down. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">We
all knew the road by heart, anticipating the bumpy places where we’d exaggerate
the bounce with a “Whoa!” while the tailgate sitters stretched their legs and
brushed bare toes along the hard-packed dirt tracks or dragged them through the
softer pine needles nestled in between. The braver souls, usually boys,
“accidentally” fell off the tailgate, running and laughing to catch up and jump
back on. We grabbed at the leaves which overhung the road and, like kids do,
turned a simple trip to the dump into a thrilling game of daring adventure. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Not
to worry. Like everything else he did, George drove slowly and purposefully while
we, of course, pretended otherwise. The forest shadows cooled our eternally
sunburned faces and the evening air ruffled through our still-damp hair from
the day’s waterskiing. We layered our childhood memories with the spicy scent
of pine trees, selectively forgetting the too-sweet smell of rotting fruit. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Always
too soon, we arrived at the dump—something else George had made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was nothing fancy, no recycling station,
no attendant, simply a quiet clearing in the woods where George eliminated the
unwanted parts of our summer vacations. Yet somehow this place held an aura of
mystery that engendered a thrill in our tight bellies and we always hoped to
see something exciting, like a rat. We stood and helped, handing the bags of
refuse down to George. I secretly dreamed of being Jacques Cousteau but at the
dump I switched channels, surveying the landscape like Marlon Perkins on Wild
Kingdom from the safety of my pickup perch while George, unaware of his role as
my Jim, heroically braved the dangers of the dump from the dirt level. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">His
task complete, no wild animals in sight, George climbed back into his truck and
we rode back towards the darkening lake, laughing with the happiness and relief
of having lived out our adventure. George slowed down near our respective
cottages and we jumped off at Kinoka where the lamps had just begun to glow,
backlighting my mother washing dishes in the kitchen window. We had no
televisions in our summer cottages. At night we came together as a family or
with friends. We ate dessert and played cards or board games. We went to bed
early with the songs of loons in our heads. And we dreamed of water and earth
and the promise of more summer adventures to come.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">KK</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">*Note: This piece is a revision of an earlier post I wrote when George Richardson died and appears on the website Wayne in Focus at http://www.wayneinfocus.org/summer-fun-made-by-mr-richardson/</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-61881317329654013222012-11-20T13:45:00.001-08:002012-11-20T13:45:26.278-08:00Moon Baths and Sea TurtlesToday I am the guest blogger on the blog: Polliwog on Safari! It's a piece about watching sea turtles lay their eggs in Costa Rica in the moonlight and you can read it at: http://michellecusolito.blogspot.com/ Enjoy!<cite></cite>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-57133732081932525572012-11-06T09:09:00.000-08:002012-11-06T09:11:16.705-08:00Dear Kelly<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So it has been
a couple of months since I last posted a blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Grab a cup of coffee and a comfy chair because this will be long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Been busy moving back onto Mohawk Drive
where, after four years of renters, everything I touched needed either cleaning
or repairing or both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fortunately for
me, the military moved all of our tenants stuff except their cleaning
products.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, I have a random sample of
the cleaning products preferred by three American military families, which is
almost interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even though it
seems questionable whether or not they ever actually used any of them while
they lived here, I now have a nice selection of scents with which to clean the
toilet. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the dust has settled anew, the other thing I’ve been
preoccupied with is my writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have,
as you may or may not know, been trying to realize my dream of being a writer,
a published, paid author that is for I have, indeed, always written something,
whether it be emails or blogs or notes to teachers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Or to myself.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have had some considerable ass-in-chair
time over the past five years and, yes, my ass is distinctively more
chair-shaped than it used to be as proof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve written and revised my manuscript countless times, queried 200
agents, pitched 20 agents in person, attended writing workshops and
conferences, worked with five editors, started one writing group, joined
another, and have had a couple handfuls of people read various iterations of my
manuscript.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because that is what it is
called—a manuscript.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A manuscript dreams
of being a book when it grows up.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And in my spare time? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have been working on “The Platform.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No writer these days can simply write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or drink and write. Or eat opium and write.
Or move to Paris and be bisexual and smoke Gauloises and commiserate with
starving painters who will be famous once they’re dead and live a bohemian
rhapsody lifestyle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And write. Not, that
is, if you want to reach the hallowed halls of publishing before you, too, are
dead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This busy little platform is so
important that many writers are actually out there, right now, studying
engineering and constructing little toothpick projects even before they have
written one single word of their book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
modern day writer can not simply sit in front of a keyboard and create.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must also be both businessman and architect,
ever mindful of building our venerable platforms or risk writing ourselves straight
into obscurity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We cannot simply stand, or sit, on the hallowed ground which
we inhabit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must constantly grow our
social networks, tweeting and blogging ourselves above the crowd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must become experts in our field or our
genre or otherwise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must build our
mailing lists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must win the Miss
Congeniality award of the writing pageant to which we all aspire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our names must be known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must be, as Glinda so aptly sang to
Elpheba in Wicked, “Popular.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Or Poppa-LEE-ur,
as Bella used to say.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we must
be verbal yoginis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must not only
write our book as a book, we must flex our fingers and twist our prose into pretzel-like
positions, telling our story in one perfect word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or one sentence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or three.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Or in a paragraph.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or in a one
page synopsis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or a three-page
synopsis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or a five-page synopsis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or in a chapter outline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A scene summary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A proposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An essay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>An excerpt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Modern Love
column.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not kidding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Except for maybe the song and poem part, but
I’m sure some agent out there right now is thinking, “A song? Hmmm…”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so, in addition to “just” writing a book, I have also
been bending my book into all these shapes in my quest to be not only popular,
but published.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because, just as everyone—including
my soon-to-be-98-years-old-mother-in-law—who has ever said, “Someday I’m going
to write a book,” will learn, writing the damned thing is actually the “easy”
part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what you probably don’t know
until you’ve fulfilled your threats and finally written that book is that behind
every manuscript lurks a literal Mt. Everest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When you’ve scribbled “The End” and looked up from your laptop screen
for the first time in years, you’ll suddenly notice that a) your kids are gone
and b) you are sitting on a literal false peak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For there, looming before you, lies the real challenge—the snow-capped mountain
of publishing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strapping on your
sunglasses and tightening your boot laces, you must rise from your chair and
set out anew, clutching your precious manuscript with hope in one hand and
determination in the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You will find the path ahead littered with the corpses of writers
who’ve come before you, those who succumbed to the obstacles of rejection and
the elements of dejection, those who had thin skin or got cold feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some will have left their footprints as they slogged
back to their day jobs, burning the pages of their dreams alongside the trail for
warmth and choking on the ashes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if
you can persevere on this path, paving the way for those who follow with the
scattered breadcrumbs of your own essays and rejection letters, you might actually,
eventually arrive at the tippy top of that snowy peak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And there, just beyond Hillary’s Step, you will find a tiny,
little, teeny-weeny sign post.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if
you can manage to crawl through the final 3,000 feet of elevation
affectionately known as “the death zone” and up, up, up to the 29,029<sup>th</sup>
foot peak, heaving yourself up with your last bit of energy as your brain
begins to eat itself, you will see that the sign says, “Unless!” No, that’s a
different story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, what you will
find nailed to that piece of weather-beaten wood is a clipboard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And attached to that clipboard will be a flimsy
piece of paper flapping in the jet stream whose infernal triple-digit winds
will threaten to blow it, and you, clear off the mountain any minute now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>IF you can
manage to cling to that rickety sign and clutch that piece of paper, squinting
through your snow blindness to decipher the words inscribed in some ancient
Himalayan language known only to the Dalai Lama and a few others that looks
something like this, <span lang="NE" style="font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: NE;">सगरमाथा, </span>every other word of which sounds suspiciously like the
F-bomb, THEN you will see that it is a contract!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From a major publishing house!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it has YOUR name on it followed by a
bunch of legal stuff you wouldn’t understand even without the fog of altitude
sickness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there, at the bottom, is a
blank line that says, “Sign here.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, you are way above
the tree-line and there is no stick or pencil to be found.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will that stop you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I certainly hope not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because after all you’ve been through, this,
you see, is the final test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you are a real writer, one worthy of the quest, you will
leap this hurdle by gnawing off the end of your fingertip, just as you
have done every single day for all these many, many years as you struggled to
recall Mrs. Petersen’s seventh grade grammar rules, eating your nails for lunch
and wearing your fingertips thin as you erased all traces of letters on your
keyboard, your fingers flying across its smooth plastic surface until they melted
together like the grilled cheese sandwich you wish you had time to make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yes you, and only you, are equipped to pass this final test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bite your brittle skin, sign that contract with
your own blood, and receive the holy grail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For then, and only then, will your manuscript realize its dream,
magically transforming before your very eyes into a book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, then, and only then, will you, yourself,
undergo the final metamorphosis from writer of “Dear Diary” entries to
Author!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, folks, the path from chair to peak is paved with
disappointment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which you may want to
remember the next time you bite the head off your book group selection. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And part of preparing the venerable platform is
submitting essays to various magazines and contests so you can say that you
have been published somewhere, even if it’s only in an anthology called “Moose
on the Loose.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so it was that I
awoke this morning to read the first email on my Crackberry before the sun had
even thought about shining:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dear Kelly,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Thanks for sending "Dam It" (yes, the real name) to Osprey Magazine (no, not the real name) -- and forgive me for the amount
of time that has passed since your submission. (four
months) All of us at Osprey Magazine were happy to have the chance to consider the piece,
but I must take credit for the delayed reply. (um, okay, and ?!)<br />
<br />
Though we admired many things about the piece, (that’s nice) we unfortunately
must pass. (that’s not)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you know,
Osprey Magazine only publishes six issues a year, (even though you get an email from us
weekly) which means decision-making is always quite difficult. <br />
<br />
Thanks again, Kelly (at least he didn’t call me Kitty), for considering Osprey Magazine
as a home for your writing. (but sorry, you’re still homeless)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Best wishes for a peaceful and productive
fall. <br />
<br />
James Audubon (not his real name) <br />
On behalf of Osprey Magazine's editorial staff</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, folks, this is the kind of love letter we “writers”
receive all too often. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or at least I do.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we’re never supposed to complain,
especially not in a blog we are using to build our platform and can be read on the World Wide Web.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which I’m not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m simply sharing, as in show and tell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the kind of thing that we are
supposed to celebrate as one more “no” on our way to “yes!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In lieu of gnashing my teeth or
kicking the proverbial dog, I graciously poured myself a cup of coffee and beat
someone at Words With Friends instead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
then, drowning in caffeine-laced disappointment, I decided to give you all a
little taste of what it takes to be an aspiring author. Now I think I'll go clean a toilet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The End</div>
K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-84597455146779784522012-07-22T09:08:00.001-07:002012-07-22T09:22:58.044-07:00It it's Sunday, we are Smiling!<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK9TYRTS3L17aGktIvF-tg1tFtcB1KUYQgOXtQwvUhFHr0GDcR1iEd1YbjSz4Qc_P23HDfPzQD0K6TdOUZyOv8B8sw8p3hCEBcTQ-y6kGcjuiPxKBNQuk6NgzI7qEDikoVB04EAcaUtTLc/s1600/IMG_2436.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK9TYRTS3L17aGktIvF-tg1tFtcB1KUYQgOXtQwvUhFHr0GDcR1iEd1YbjSz4Qc_P23HDfPzQD0K6TdOUZyOv8B8sw8p3hCEBcTQ-y6kGcjuiPxKBNQuk6NgzI7qEDikoVB04EAcaUtTLc/s320/IMG_2436.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sunday</b>. The day of rest. We could smell Maine in the sunrise and it
was time to get moving. Again, we snuck
out in the wee hours without waking our hosts.
We hit our first Dunkin Donuts and headed for the ferry. I wish we could have put our car on a ferry
back in Waldport and traveled the whole way on the water. We were the first ones in line and it wasn’t
long before we were wheeling on the water to Vermont. We took photos and laughed and ate donuts on
the too-short ride to the other shore. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You know you’re in Vermont when folk music is playing on the
radio. “What would Woody do?” was a new
song for me, but since the trip began with me humming Woody’s “Roll on
Columbia,” somehow it made sense and soon I was singing along. I recently submitted an essay about Woody and
salmon and dams. “He had songs written
on the soles of his shoes,” they said.
Indeed, he did.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Recently in Oregon after months of passionate debate about tolerance and
tradition, the Board of Education voted to crack down on racism by banning the
use of Native American lingo in high schools, leading the nation by flexing the
biggest muscles against school mascots, nicknames and logos. Critics say Indian mascots are racist, reinforcing
stereotypes and promoting the bullying of Native students. Supporters say the
mascots are intended as tributes and a way to honor Native American history by
evoking values of strength and bravery. <span class="ppy-extcaption">Eight high
schools and an unknown number of elementary and middle schools have five years
to use their dwindling funds change their names and logos, some of which have
been used for almost 100 years now. If
they don’t comply, they risk losing their state funding. But at the rate that is declining, some might
want to do a little cost:benefit analysis on that one. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="ppy-extcaption">So, just who are these bully promoters and what
are their politically incorrect names? Banks
and Reedsport, “we are the Braves, the mighty, mighty, Braves.” Mohawk, Molalla, Roseburg, and Scappoose, “we
are the Indians.” The Rogue River Chieftains
and the Dalles-Wahtonka High Eagle Indians.
That’s it. The Braves, the Indians, the Chieftains, and the Eagle Indians. These eight will just
have to find a more peaceful, PC name. Like
the squirrels. Or the turtles. Or the Warriors?</span><br />
<br />
<span class="ppy-extcaption">Because, believe it or not, the board in its
infinite wisdom saw fit to determine that the name “Warriors,” which is used by
seven other high schools in the Beaver State, is NOT racist and does NOT
reinforce stereotypes or promote bullying.
Amity, Lebanon, North Douglas, Oakridge, Philomath, Siletz, and
Warrenton all dodged the bullet and will be allowed to remain “the mighty, mighty
Warriors,” except they must change their logos </span>and mascots if they
depict Native Americans. I was
personally relieved to see Siletz on this list, since they are our neighbors
back home in Waldport. Waldport,
incidentally, is the home of the Fighting Irish until someone named Paddy gets a
wild hair about that one. Siletz High
School is actually located on a Native American reservation and my kids and I have
attended powwows in their gym where everyone simply danced together. As a soverign nation, I think they should be
allowed to judge for themselves whether or not their mascot incited any bullying
of, well, themselves. <br />
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So, we can all rest a bit easier thanks to the Oregon Board
of Education. No longer will Banks High
School be singing its own local twist of the national anthem at its school
sporting events, signing off with “Land of the free, and home of the <i>Braves</i>!”
Somehow Lake Monsters just doesn’t have the same ring. And this would be a likely spot for me to sing
you the high school cheer that Andy’s Mom, aged 97, used to sing which began,
“Niggah, niggah, hoe potato,” and ended, “Golva High School, rah, rah,
rah.” But I won’t.</div>
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<div class="firstparagraph">
We continued along back country roads all the way
across the Green Mountains into the White Mountains, passing places like the
InjunJoe Inn and the Mooselook Restaurant.
Lucky for them, these places are tucked way away in the mountains,
beyond the reach of the Oregon Board of Education, which I like to visualize like the Eye of Sauron. Speaking of which, I’ve been looking for a moose for 50 years
now and even though we passed countless signs promising, “Moose Crossing,” they
failed to do so. In East Concord, NH we
passed Oregon Road. Which reminded me of
the Cape Cod Cottages back home in Oregon.
It seems we Americans take our places along with us for the ride.</div>
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As we neared Gorham, NH, I recognized many of the trailheads
and peaks I’d climbed over the years and it began to look like home. We passed through the Shelburne White Birch
forest and from there I was on autopilot.
I knew these roads. We sped along
until the white spire of the Wayne church pointed into the blue sky, the church
where we were married and our sons were buried.
Turning down Lord Road, the tree branches bent their welcome. After 3,000 miles, the familiar faces of
family and friends waited to greet us.
We’d arrived. We were home. </div>
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Here I’ll swim across the lake waters I was born in. I’ll cook fresh peas and corn. We’ll take the boat to the General Store for
candy or to Tubby’s for ice cream. And
then I’ll fly back to Oregon, load up a moving van with Andy, and in another month I’ll
do it all over again. Because we’re
moving back to Rhode Island, to our house on Mohawk Drive. Or at least that’s what it was when we left
it. Perhaps they’ve changed it to
Warrior Way.</div>
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KK </div>
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<br /></div>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-65900191380099680772012-07-21T06:09:00.003-07:002012-07-22T09:19:37.376-07:00If it's Saturday, we're swimming with Champ!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg7BRaN5761D8nL3EXJYLq0vkvTsqkIbWZ2pPPcPRatf8EMLxTWdU_bOXZsaKIbI_UeWuWmt1NCrECTHM8cVM5RZzYkikad-mnGho3D2ExLkUTnwRJvbB4UzmTrrXGydY5oF-rQazg1UxW/s1600/IMG_2428.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg7BRaN5761D8nL3EXJYLq0vkvTsqkIbWZ2pPPcPRatf8EMLxTWdU_bOXZsaKIbI_UeWuWmt1NCrECTHM8cVM5RZzYkikad-mnGho3D2ExLkUTnwRJvbB4UzmTrrXGydY5oF-rQazg1UxW/s320/IMG_2428.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
When we awoke on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Saturday</b>,
we discovered we were right on a river with an indoor/outdoor pool and Jacuzzi
out our window and wished we had more time to linger. The routine of getting up and at ‘em for the
sixth day in a row was growing old. It
was actually raining! Tim Horton’s was
right across the street and we began our day by causing yet another debacle by
procuring our inferior American dollars.
“Sorry, sorry,” I apologized to the hungry Canadians lining up behind us
while the cashier learned how to calculate for our crappy currency. We issued our profuse thanks for our
doughnuts and breakfast sandwiches like they’d been donated, beating a hasty
retreat. <br />
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Then we headed down the street to the gas station where we nearly
caused an international incident. This
time I actually attempted to use my credit card without first informing my
Oregon Coast bank that I was leaving the country. Denied.
American Express? Denied. Sigh.
Okay, in with the US dollars once again.
The cashier had to call the store owner who was possibly still
in bed and who, in turn, instructed his employee two or three times how to
convince the computer to accept the bills once commonly known as “double
sawbucks,” but probably not in Detroit. I
had $80 dollars so I pumped $70, figuring I’d need a margin of error. When all was said and done in that half hour
of my life I’ll never get back, it was determined that I owed $78.12. I accepted my change and left.</div>
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Crossing back into America at Ogdensburg proved to be no problem
either. We were the only ones there and
both me and my wallet exhaled with relief, feeling a tiny bit fatter. The toll was something like $20. “Should I pay in US or Canadian dollars?” I
asked the lonely border guy. “Doesn’t
matter,” he said, “they’re both about the same.” I wanted to say, “not where I came from,” and
maybe even have a teeny, tiny argument based on my recent experiences but
handed him the $20 US with a smile and drove off into New York instead. The first thing we passed as we entered
America was a prison, the St. Lawrence Correctional Facility, which “uses
innovation and technology in many ways, such as offering a credit
card bail system to inmates.” Nice. I wondered how they dealt with the whole
currency thing.</div>
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Next point of interest, Louisville, home of the
turtles. I kid you not. “I wonder how their track team is,” said
Bella. Then came Ellenburg, NY, home of
the World’s Best Pizza, in case you’re on a quest. Somewhere back in Mountain time zone Isaiah
had started texting family and interested third parties whenever we crossed
into a new state. When we’d entered
Ontario, however, Hannah had texted back that each text cost .50 so we’d
refrained for a day. Now back on the
free texting plan, Isaiah struck up a text volley with his cousin, Ava. Periodically I’d ask him to read what folks
were writing and somewhere in NY he said, “Ava just called me a snazzy piece of
butterscotch.” “Really?” I said, thinking
we may have another writer on our hands.</div>
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The last things I expected to see in the Empire State were
horse and buggies and straw hats and bonnets.
But it seems the Amish have been busy in the past few years hitching
their wagons and heading north for the “productive and underpriced land,
weather, growing season and congenial neighbors and local officials.” Maybe it’s just me, but when I hear the words
New and York, the last thing that comes to mind are cheap land, great weather,
and friendly folks. Which, I guess, is a
result of the general extrapolation of Manhattan to the rest of the state. “If you want to get away from the suburbs and
the high-tech world, there are more places to hide in New York,” I read
online. And sure enough, around several
bends in the road we found the Amish, hiding right there in New York in plain
sight with their plain clothes. </div>
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GPS pulled her usual stunt as we neared our destination in
Plattsburgh and we got just a little lost but soon the smiling faces of Brian
and Amy were within reach. And within
the hour we were onboard their comfy red and white boat cruising around the craggy
islands of Lake Champlain, which is huge, as in 125 miles long and over 400
feet deep. Amy was raised on the lake
and is one of the hundreds of people who have actually seen Champ, the American
cousin to the Loch Ness critter. “But that
was in the southern end of the lake,” she assured. Still, one couldn’t help scanning the surface
for the mascot of Vermont's lone Minor League Baseball team (we are the
monsters, the mighty, mighty lake monsters…)
In keeping with our theme of domination, it should be noted that both
the Iroquois and the Abenaki tribes called this creature who may or may not be
a Plesiosaur but is definitely not a Brontosaurus by the perfectly fine name of
"Tatoskok." Which doesn’t exactly
roll right off your tongue but you could get used to it. And also which may or may not mean “log,”
“fish,” or “eel,” which is what some folks think the monster actually is.</div>
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We pulled the boat up to the town beach and nestled in amongst
the other Saturday boaters outside the roped-off swimming area. The water was shallow and cool and we all got
out to play. I decided I’d take a swim
and wrestled my cap and goggles on.
“Just swim along the buoys,” Amy suggested. So I marked a course just beyond the swimming
area and began stroking down the line from white buoy to white buoy. I was doing my best not to think about Champ
and, like Steinbeck’s “most Americans,” was really enjoying moving after
sitting for so long. When I swim I can’t
hear well because of my cap and the water which inevitably fills my ears. And try as I might, my goggles usually fog up
too. So there I was, stroking along in
my own little watery world, blind and deaf, when I spotted something red a few
feet in front of me. No Champ sighting had
ever mentioned red so I knew it wasn’t him.
I stopped and lifted my goggles to find a very young lifeguard in a red kayak,
instead. </div>
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“Wah, wahh, wah, wah,” he said. </div>
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“What?” I said, lifting my cap to clear my ears. </div>
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“I said you can’t swim here.” </div>
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“Oh,” I said, although swimming was exactly what I’d thought
I’d been doing. </div>
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“Well, where can I swim?” I asked, looking around. </div>
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“In there,” he said, indicating the swimming area with his
paddle. We both looked over at the
throngs of people packed within the ropes, all “swimming” in water not much
past their knees.</div>
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“That doesn’t look very possible,” I said, “how ‘bout I just
swim back to the boat?” </div>
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“No, you can’t do that,” he said with his best 14-year-old
imitation of authority. I refrained from
asking him how he could possibly work while missing the Disney Channel and
resigned myself to swimming a few strokes toward shore, then stood up and hiked
out. </div>
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“I got kicked out of Lake Champlain,” I told Amy who was at
the snack stand with Bella. </div>
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We had a great time anyway.
Later, we took a glass of wine down to the lakeside beach in front of
their townhouse and chatted. Vermont
glowed in the setting sun way across the water on the eastern shore. The wind died down, the water calmed, and Brian
paddled Bella around on his board. That
night we could see fireworks, again, on the lakeshores of both Vermont and New
York. </div>
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Christiana called to say she’d had a run-in with a
rattlesnake in Caliente! Seems she’d
gone behind a bush and looked back to see if her team could see her and when
she turned around, a 4-foot rattler was stretched out in front of her giving
her the hairy eyeball. It rattled, she
screamed and ran, and her team heard both.
I asked if they carried antivenin and she said no, they relied on air
evacuation. The next week I picked up a
Field and Stream magazine which happened to have an article on snake bite
treatment. It said in Montana, treatment
costs $75,000 to $100,000. Apparently
antivenin is expensive, avoidance is free.<br />
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KK </div>
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<br /></div>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-43396265851400813122012-07-20T06:22:00.002-07:002012-07-21T05:21:44.437-07:00If it's Friday, we're heading for Canada!<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Friday</b> we awoke
early and tip-toed out of the beach house while the ladies slumbered, Mike
having left much earlier to get in a day’s work in the city so he could return
before sunset. We had an international
travel day ahead of us and another hot one to boot. I stopped at Bella tires to get my air
pressure checked, thinking I might need more air in them, but was surprised
when the guy actually let air out. I
dutifully had a check-up at Les Schwab before leaving, but that was back in the
60’s and it was already approaching 100, that whole hot air expands thing. I’d never seen Detroit outside of the airport
and, as it turns out, that might be the best part of the city known for
poverty, crime, and fallen businesses, according to Lonely Planet, or maybe I made
that up. </div>
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I’d heard that gas prices were higher in Canada so turned down
a street just before the international bridge and found a corner station within
a few blocks to fill up. Suddenly, we
were immersed in another culture and I was definitely the only white woman in
the hood as I stepped out of my minivan with Oregon salmon license plates and a bumper sticker that reads, "Certified American Tree Farmer." I pumped my gas as coolly as possible,
silently cursing my lack of preparation in not dressing like my favorite rap
star (possibly because I don’t have one), while trying to avoid the obvious
stares I was eliciting. Drawing on my
automatic Peace Corps cross-cultural survival response in a further effort to
appear casual, I hummed the only tune that surfaced from my rock library—Detroit
Rock City. Really? Kiss? Ghostface
Killa might have been more appropriate but I didn’t even know he existed until
I just googled Top Rap Artists. Which is
when I also “remembered” that Eminem got his start in the Motor City. But it’s questionable whether or not a
blonde, white lady wearing sunglasses and flip flops humming “Lose Yourself” would
have made the right impression. And even
though my bladder was as full as my gas tank, I opted not to step inside to
inquire about public facilities. </div>
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The Ambassador Bridge lived up to its name: the Americans
took our money ($25 US/$22.50 CA) and the Canadians read our passports and we
were international, eh? First stop,
McDonalds, where we began our lesson in shame, producing our crap American
dollars as payment with an apologetic shoulder shrug. And used the facilities. As I drove towards Toronto, I admired the
Canadian road signs. Somehow they seemed
so much more genteel than our own, like they’d issued from the proper lips of a
Canadian Grandma with a slight British accent.
“Seatbelts compulsory,” she reminded us with a slight wag of her
finger. Can you even read the word
compulsory without a lilt? “Fatigue
kills, take a break,” she reminded, sipping on her afternoon tea and somehow
you simply wanted to pull over at the next exit and join her. “Tailgating kills, leave some space,” she
suggested. They really could use her in
Chicago. </div>
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At last, we pulled into our friend’s driveway in
Peterborough where we took a picnic to a park on Chamong Lake and the kids swam
while Cath and I visited. If you only
have one evening together, you make the most of it. And we did.
We’d met on the Christmas sands of Costa Rica in 2010 where Bella and Annika became amigas and we all picked right
up where we left off on the summer sands of Canada, eh? When darkness threatened and we realized we
were the only ones at the park, we called the kids off the swing set and headed
into town, arriving at the downtown Holiday Inn for the night. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
KK </div>
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<br /></div>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-34547644713183016322012-07-19T06:44:00.000-07:002012-07-22T09:09:49.021-07:00If it's Thursday, this must be Michigan...<br />
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The next morning, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thursday</b>,
I awoke at 5 and checked my cell phone, no messages, no texts. Unable to sleep for worrying about Christiana
and with high heat warnings ahead of us, we made some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
in the lobby and hit the road early. It
was, as predicted, hot already. I found
an NPR station from Madison and learned that two fireworks shows had been
halted the night before after they’d set the grass on fire. And the highway pavement had buckled in three
places from the heat, but fortunately that was all behind us. All was well traffic-wise as we travelled
past Madison on this day-after-the-confusing-holiday-being-on-a-Wednesday-and-all. As Pacific Time awoke, Andy called to say
he’d finally talked to Christiana and that she was okay. Seems she’d had a stomach flu, perhaps from
the MRE’s they were eating. I called her
a little later and she said she was on fire watch recovering. They’d contained the “small, 4,000-acre” fire
and were moving on to Caliente. Which
sounded hot. </div>
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Lake Michigan was calling, but Chicago loomed large in our
shimmering future. GPS, in her infinite
wisdom, decided to take me on a tour of back roads between Wisconsin and
Chicago, for which I cursed her soundly.
Then she decided I should drive right through the city ahead. I called my friend, Mike, and asked for
better directions. Then I proceeded to
ignore her for the rest of the morning, making her search endlessly for
alternate routes to the city then disregarding her every command to exit like a
distracted parent. “Hmm? Did you say
something?” So there. You know you’ve been traveling a bit too
long when you start talking to your GPS.</div>
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Even though Fargo is the halfway point on the map, Chicago
marks the place where the nation divides between relaxed road trip and road
rage. Suddenly, the east coast
population density was upon us and my shoulders begin to rise with the tension
of drivers cutting in and out and the way too many exits. After three days of cruising the freeway
virtually alone at 80 mph with hundreds of miles to think about exiting, the
theme from Survivor suddenly popped up on my personal playlist. We cruised past Chicago at a safe distance,
paid our first tolls of the trip, and happily rounded the bottom of Lake
Michigan, passing through a tiny bit of Indiana and up into Michigan. Suddenly, we were on Eastern time! One more exit and we were dropped by GPS once
again, suspending route guidance, so there, but soon we were pulling into
Beachwood, our friend’s beach house on the shores of the lake, and shifting to
park for the day. Lovely. </div>
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Suddenly, for us, it was summer. Oregon hadn’t seen over 64 degrees and we’d
just soaked up the second rainiest June on record. We dug out bathing suits still smelling of
last year’s sunscreen, packed a lunch, loaded up Mike’s bike cart, and strolled
along a lovely wooded path to the lake.
Did I mention it was hot? My
flip-flopped feet were still soft from a year encased in rain boots and once we
descended the stairs to the beach, each flip of mid-day sand burned the bottoms
as we ran across the boiling gauntlet to the water’s edge for relief crying “ouch,
ouch, ouch, ahhh.” The beach stretched
endlessly in each direction and the blue-green lake as well. <br />
<br />
We set up chairs and an umbrella, slathered
sunscreen on our glowing rainforest skin, and hit the water. It was calm, clear and warm. We were in Lake Michigan! I swam down the shore while Mike played with
the kids. Happy when wet, I was in Heaven. We spent the entire afternoon enjoying every
minute. The kids played for hours in the
water while Mike and I relived our Peace Corps days, reminding me of the
saying, “Old people like the olden days best because they were younger then.” We immersed ourselves in Jamaica so
thoroughly we were surprised whenever the kids interrupted. “What?
Where did you come from?” we asked, feeling like we were 24 and sipping
a Red Stripe on Doctors Cave Beach.</div>
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Towards dinner time, we dragged ourselves away but left our
chairs as a promise of later. Catherine
and Ella were on their way back from play practice in the city. This lovely beach retreat is only an hour or
so from their home in Chicago and an essential part of living in a city—the
escape. Oddly enough, Beachwood is on
Eastern time while their city house is on Central so I guess that must somehow
impact their viewing of Americas Got Talent but I can’t figure out what. We showered and dressed and met them for
burgers and fries and onion rings at Redamaks, a local institution since
1946. I wondered if Steinbeck had eaten
there and, if so, if the sign back then had also said, "Bite into a Legend." Then we packed up some Red Stripe
Lite (who knew, posse?) and headed back to the beach for sunset and
fireworks. The kids swam and the night
was warm and summer had begun.</div>
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KK </div>
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<br /></div>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-37046452294599878332012-07-18T07:36:00.001-07:002012-07-22T09:10:05.379-07:00If it's Wednesday, we're heading for Wisconsin...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx-y5zGOOiqGOKJKGIVZxg_OmfZPbuc16ais3PzwIGxAi10HvUaH1_Hz9HgNg_BRRoNFlbHcujVyKZorMfhAJ2oWrDA0P1Az56sygwjIYQ7tH0Um4trQBoR_JoTfrGohJAbmYXuJBtyvJ3/s1600/IMG_2437.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx-y5zGOOiqGOKJKGIVZxg_OmfZPbuc16ais3PzwIGxAi10HvUaH1_Hz9HgNg_BRRoNFlbHcujVyKZorMfhAJ2oWrDA0P1Az56sygwjIYQ7tH0Um4trQBoR_JoTfrGohJAbmYXuJBtyvJ3/s320/IMG_2437.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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On <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Wednesday</b>
morning after coffee and Finneman rolls with Ant Weenie, we hit the holiday
roads along with, well, ourselves. Happy
Birthday America! Everyone else must
have been chilling in a lake. Driving
North Dakota is endless but easy, one straight highway, speed limit 75, just
you and your fracking dinosaur fuel.
Another day, another time zone.
The radio searched and searched, yielding only news from Saskatoon,
which immediately reminded me of one of Micah’s favorite movie lines: “Hey, you American ladies ever been up to
Saskatchatoon, eh?”<br />
<br />
The kids were lost
in the land of Mordor so I began listening to Steinbeck’s “Travels with
Charley” in which he set off in 1960 from Maine to rediscover America. It was interesting to hear his observations from
the year just before my birth (yes, Bella, they actually had cars when I was
born) while observing this fair land for myself some 50 years later. And on its birthday. “Nearly every American hungers to move,” he
informed. No kidding, I said to myself,
shifting in my seat. We met in Fargo
which, as I learned from John, is the halfway point of our land, east to
west. Sure enough, we folded Bella’s map
and there on the edge sat Far-go.
Steinbeck’s Fargo had a population of 40K but three times as many folks
had flocked to the state’s largest city in the interim, along with the four
white pelicans I spotted circling in the ND sky. “The only good writer is a dead writer.
Then he couldn’t surprise anyone any more, couldn’t hurt anyone any more,”
Steinbeck reminded me. Hmmm.</div>
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But before I leave the state whose official language is English and official
drink is milk, I should mention that while Andy’s Mom, who is 97 years old,
hails from the western border, his Dad was from Casselton on the eastern line. Besides Andy’s Dad and its population of red
squirrels (yep, “We are the squirrels, the mighty, mighty squirrels!”),
Casselton is known for its can pile. As
we neared the exit, I therefore began scanning the roadside for this landmark
which I have seen before in my travels at one speed or another. I secretly admit I was rather looking forward
to seeing the silver cone-shaped structure as I’d driven the
unremarkable-save-for-the-badlands-300-or-so miles from Beach. Made entirely from thousands of oil cans and named
by somebody most decidedly not Captain Clark (and not engraved by him neither),
it is known simply as “The Casselton Can Pile.”<br />
<br />
At 45-feet, the Casselton Can Pile is actually the world's largest pile of,
yes, cans. It was created in 1933 by Max
Taubert at what was then a Sinclair gas station. Max, who I like to think of as a frustrated artist
stuck pumping gas in the squirrel capital of North Dakota, began tossing oil
cans in a pile around an old windmill tower, perhaps as an act of rebellion,
perhaps simply because recycling wasn’t an option. Until one day when he finished yet one more
oil change and had an epiphany. A glint
of sunlight shone straight down from the heavens and Max began to visualize his
life’s purpose. Most of the cans,
naturally, were Sinclair oil cans whose logo is the dinosaur-formerly-known-as-Brontosaurus,
which is now called Apatosaurus or by the more technical name of “long-necks,”
thanks to the Land Before Time series.<br />
<br />
Fun fact. Maybe you already know
this, but the Brontosaurus “mix-up” goes back to 1879, when a paleontologist who
shall remain nameless (hint: a male who was also clearly terrible at jigsaw
puzzles) stuck the wrong head on an Apatosaurus body and called it a Brontosaurus.
Sticking with the less-controversial Land
Before Time nomenclature, this “plant eater” was displayed at Yale for almost a
century until scientists discovered the mismatch. Woopsy!
But instead of politely playing along like the Native Americans at
Pompey’s Pillar, they struck Brontosaurus from their books. And when the US Postal Service tried to issue
a stamp in 1989 with the Brontosaurus on it?
Well, it’s been all downhill ever since for them. Even though the incorrect name still lingers
in people’s minds, like my own. But I still
struggle to say sea star too.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo, in 1932, a lengthy campaign was begun by Sinclair to choose their
mascot, the squirrel already being taken.
They discarded the more frightening T-Rex and Dino was born out of a
desire to express the fact that Sinclair oil came from Pennsylvania crude oil,
which was millions of years old, and had been around since the age of the
dinosaurs. The company believed that the oldest crude oils make the best
refined oils, and they felt that a dinosaur would get this point across to the
public. The peaceful plant eater,
whatever his name was, appealed to the public and garnered the most
interest. According to the internet, like most of this, people thought that the Brontosaurus
represented power, endurance, and stamina, which are the qualities that
Sinclair Oil Corporation wanted people to associate with their products. But in spite of how much brain energy
Sinclair credited us with dedicating to oil, be it crude or refined, the truth
is I rarely, if ever, think about it.
Although unlike what I dare to say are “most” Americans these days, I
did actually know that oil and gas are fossil fuels which means they may or may
not include the remains of dinosaurs, a subject of much healthy debate, it seems.<br />
<br />
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Meanwhile, back at Exit 331, search as I did, I couldn’t
spot the leaning tower of cans. And the
kids were still trying to get to Mt. Doom with Frodo. So I carried on. I wondered if perhaps a tree had grown up in
the way or a tornado had ravaged the silver pile as I headed for Fargo, only to
learn today that the Casselton Can Pile faced demolition in 2008 but was
rescued and relocated, of all things. I
also learned that a Sinclair Dino Oil Can sells for anywhere from $10 to $250
on E-Bay, which just goes to prove to the happy company who bought the world’s
largest can pile that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Which may bring unintended encouragement to
all the can tossers and other “collectors” on the Oregon coast.</div>
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We sped through Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes although we
didn’t even see one, scurrying around Minneapolis with the ones still smelling
of sunscreen who had. Minnesota means
“sky-tinted water” in Dakota Sioux, which makes you want to say it again,
right? Perhaps even with a feather in
your hair or in a sentence including the stereotypical word, “how.” Dakota, incidentally, is the Sioux word for
either “friend” or “pasty white guys,” depending on which website you
believe. And North, well, you already
get that one, right? But I’d be remiss
if I didn’t inform that Minnesota’s state motto is “L’Etoile du Nord” which, if
you say it in the official state language of North Dakota means “The Star of
the North.” I don’t think this
necessarily means that the official state language of Minnesota is French or
the official drink wine, however. I
think they might simply be a bit confused.
I blame Canada. </div>
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I-94 cuts across the twelfth largest state at its waist like
a slightly crooked belt, reminding me of the joke Hannah tells: “Q: What did the
0 say to the 8? A: Nice belt!” Breathing a sigh of relief to be done with
the twin cities and fresh out of Minnesota jokes, we crossed over the border
river of St. Croix, a tributary of the Mississippi, and promptly entered
Wisconsin where we got as far as Eau Claire before stopping for the night at
the AmericInn. </div>
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Too tired to drive down to the park for fireworks, Bella and
I headed for the hot tub and pool, then watched them from our window under a
rising moon instead. Andy called to say
that Christiana was in the hospital.
Seriously? Two weeks prior she
had started her summer job working for the US Forest Service as a Timber Tech,
which is supposed to entail relatively safe tasks such as surveying timber
sales with the caveat that they are called into firefighting duty as needed. She was only out of training for one short
day when duty called. As we embarked for
the east, she headed south with her crew to fight wildfires in Ely,
Nevada. Andy had received a call from
the Forest Service saying she was sick and they’d taken her in for
bloodwork. I tried calling and texting
her. Nothing. So while we watched the bombs bursting in air
and fell asleep, I worried about my second-born, the fainter, under my cool,
white AmericInn sheets. </div>
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KK </div>
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<br /></div>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-23574979710004597022012-07-17T09:24:00.001-07:002012-07-17T17:09:18.162-07:00If it's Tuesday, this must still be Montana!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtzP8UQPdz_Che8d7NSiJwNz-kvgc0rPi8aowxeE7ItWz2BQyatVNBza0QwSAAvRl0z5ZeV_T45sJr25LncHmLZyTkmP0t_VWKc9JLl5UcBl11L4dDXD3MHuVJLE4nKybwVmr_ZzmvfHk7/s1600/IMG_2391.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></div>
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<b> </b></div>
<b>Tuesday</b> we tackled Montana. Did I
mention it was hot? Windy and 110 in
Billings when I got out to get more Coke and gas, felt like a heater was
blowing full blast on my legs. Montana
is, well, large. Which makes sense
because it is the fourth largest state!
Who knew? “They always focus on
the top three,” sighed Montana. It took
us all day to cross but the terrain is never boring with Superfund Butte, Rocky
Mt. highs, gateway to Yellowstone, and all.
Wishing to see a grizzly bounding up a hillside or a moose dining in a
river, all I saw were three white pelicans.
Pelicans? Apparently they like to
change things up, salt water Costa Rica in winter, fresh water Montana in
summer where they seek out protected islands in the vast western prairies to
give birth to their helpless babes.<br />
<br />
Our book on tape for the day was “Witches,” a good Roald Dahl selection
which kept us entertained from Butte to Bozeman to Billings. After 450 miles on I-90, we’d traversed 13
counties, all bigger than the state of Rhode Island with or without the water (<a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/how-big-is-rhode-island-anyway-214">http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/how-big-is-rhode-island-anyway-214</a>)
and switched to I-94 at Billings for the last little 250-mile stretch to North
Dakota. (Fun fact: you can fit 95 Rhode
Islands in Montana.) As you probably
already know but I only just now discovered on Wikipedia, I-94 is the only
purely east–west interstate to form a direct connection into a foreign country,
namely Canada. Facinating. Here, the Rocky Mountain high receded in my
rear-view mirror like a John Denver song as the landscape changed from the
majestic peaks the state was named for (Montana is Spanish for, you guessed it, mountains!) to simpler sandstone buttes which appear to be
the inspiration for those layered candles we used to make as Girl Scouts at the
beach. As depicted by these photos which are not from Wikipedia. Although they could be.<br />
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Totally engrossed in the dramatic development of “Witches,” we sped right
past Exit 23 for Pompey’s Pillar National Monument which, as you also probably
already know but I just learned, is a 150-ft high, 2-acre sandstone butte. Because it’s the only sandstone outcrop on
the south side of the Yellowstone River for several miles in either direction,
PP has been a landmark for centuries and is one of the most famous sandstone
buttes in America. Can you name another
one? I didn't think so. The butte (long u) was named by Clark of
“Lewis and…” in honor of Sacagawea’s son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Get it?
Of course not. Clark, apparently
the Official Nicknamer of the dynamic duo, fulfilled his duties by
calling little Jean “Pomp.”
“I hereby declare this to be called Pompey’s Tower,” Clark declared. And so it was. At least, that is, until the official editor
of the expedition decided to exercise his artistic license by renaming it
Pompey’s Pillar. All of which is way
more information than any of us needed to know about this place we passed right
on by.<br />
<br />
But before we move on, the reeeallly interesting thing about PP is that the
monument bears the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> remaining
physical evidence of the entire Corps of Discovery Expedition, appearing today
on the sands of time exactly as it did 200 years ago, as far as we can
tell. For it was right here on July 25,
1806 that Captain Clark, perhaps not realizing that some day this would be
illegal, saw fit to carve his name on the face of the butte. By then, he was on the second half of his
two-year stroll across the country so perhaps was feeling a bit nostalgic and
wanted to leave his mark as a momento, fearing he’d never return. It was, indeed, the trip of a lifetime before
I-94 and cars and all. <br />
<br />
Now, mind you, the Native Americans had already given this big butte the
perfectly fine name of "the place where the mountain lion lies,"
which I actually prefer. I like to
imagine the possibilities of how the story might have ended if, say, a mountain
lion had jumped on Clark as he was busy defacing our national monument, perhaps
even breaking his carving tool. I know
kids who’ve been kicked out of school for doing the same thing, after all. (Yet another reminder not to try this at
home.) But, as usual, the Native
Americans were too cool to correct Clark’s ambition. Or perhaps they were all
preoccupied with party planning for Custer’s welcome hoopla which was coming
right up just south on I-90 in another 70 years or so, a mere blip on their
calendar.<br />
<br />
Had we been driving at the end of July on or around the 25th, we might have
enjoyed “Clark Days” with the PP Historical Association. Then we could have “reenacted” Clark’s canoe
voyage by floating down the Yellowstone, arriving in the afternoon at the
Pillar-formerly-known-as-the-place-where-the-mountain-lion-lies to stroll along
the boardwalk where we could view the defacing signature and then enjoy a
traditional buffalo barbeque complete with entertainment. Most of which didn’t actually happen after
Clark sharpened his stick in 1806. But
it was only July 3. We were too early
and all this was lost on us anyway as we sped on. <br />
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Seven more large counties later, we arrived at last in the
final Montana outpost of Glendive, home of the Dinosaurs. (We are the dinosaurs, the mighty, mighty
dinosaurs?) In addition to waxing
nostalgic about past craft projects as one drives along this striped landscape,
one also half expects to see a T-Rex come bounding across the freeway any
minute like a Montana-sized deer. </div>
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<br /></div>
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We
kissed the shivering pavement of The Big Sky State goodbye and arrived in the unlikely
town of Beach, North Dakota, home of Andy’s maternal Finneman family line and
severe thunderstorm warnings. It was
still hot, dry, and windy, which meant that there would be no celebratory pyrotechnics
allowed in that entire nineteenth largest state. Long ago I realized my kids automatically
called their east coast aunts “aunts” and their west coast aunts “ants.” And if you haven’t read “Truman’s Ant Farm”
you should. We found Andy’s Ant Weenie
on First Street watching America’s Got Talent at 7 p.m. Ready for a fun time zone fact? Apparently it is cheaper for Central Zone
time folks to broadcast shows live from Eastern time so they are on an hour
earlier and even though these Mountain time folks have to tape them, they chose
to follow Central timing. When Jay Leno
came on at 10:30, I assumed it was because these workers of the land are early
to bed and early to rise. (Which, as you
know, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.)
But it was this zany time zone thing.
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I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the world is
flocking to the fracking just north of Beach in Williston in a modern-day oil
rush where vehicles sporting every license plate from North America are being
slept in. Which is what we would have
been doing if it weren’t for our Ant Weenie because there are, indeed, no rooms
at the inns.<br />
<br />
KK </div>
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<br /></div>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-26002728822651717332012-07-16T17:53:00.002-07:002012-07-17T06:35:45.423-07:00If it's Monday, this must be Montana . . .<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week we drove across America. Which means I am currently in the throes of
Coke withdrawals as I kick the caffeine habit which kept me running while my
van consumed $500 worth of fossil fuels. (cheapest gas = Montana) Instead of giving you the whole week at once, I figured I'd post each day separately to give you a break. (My Unintended Motto: Why say less when you can say more?) Originally this trip would have been taken last week but we had to move it up a week when my Mom stood up from reading in her chair and broke her femur. (Yet another example of how reading can be hazardous to your health.) I come from a long line of weak Mayflower chicas with skinny white ladies disease, aka osteoporosis. And being the oldest female in this generation, I'm next. Some day I, too, will set aside my reading glasses, stand up from my Lazy Girl to do something innocuous like answer the phone, and my leg will fall off. Like Barbie. Like the whole pile of Barbies with missing extremities which Bella recently declared unwanted. So if you're feeling antsy and need an armchair adventure across America, read on.</div>
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Waking with the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Monday</b> loggers, we kissed a sleeping Waldport farewell in the wee
half hour of 4:30 and headed east over Mary’s Peak to Corvallis to drop off
Christiana’s rent, then north up the Willamette valley to Portland to drop Micah off
at work, then pointed the GPS east again towards the Atlantic and squeezed through
the Columbia Gorge into the rising sun. Hood River was just waking up when we passed and I spotted the stern wheeler rolling out in the middle of the river, the same boat I’ve ridden
on two Labor Days across to the WA shore singing "Roll On Columbia, Roll On," before jumping off and swimming back to Oregon, eyeballing Mt. Hood for guidance. Carved by water, the gorge is splendid and I
regaled the kids with tales of Lake Missoula which burst through its ice dam in
events as difficult in magnitude to comprehend as Noah’s flood. Next up, Celilo, where we can now only
imagine the falls which once raged next to the oldest gathering place in
America when Lewis and Clark stumbled in, calling it the Wall Street of the
West. You know you’re out of the National Scenic Area when the wind turbines
are spinning on every hilltop, their white blades bringing form to invisible wind
currents in sharp relief against a blue sky.
Driving along the Columbia brings to mind the poem I will write some day
about the towns in Oregon, places with names like Dufur, Ione, Deadwood, and
Irrigon. </div>
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Washington in June means one thing. Cherries.
Rainiers, Bings, Royal Annes, and Chinooks, to name a few. Cherries also worthy of poetry. Cherries brought to you courtesy of the WPA
and the likes of Grand Coulee Dam which transformed a high desert into one of
our nation’s bread baskets thanks to irrigation water from the mighty Columbia. So when we stopped for gas somewhere in the
Evergreen State, we sidled on over to the typical fruit stand set up under a
tent in a corner of the parking lot where I popped a pea pod and enjoyed the
sweet green balls while perusing the cherry selection.
A rather bored senorita sat in front of the Bings and Rainiers while I
sampled them both, deciding which was sweeter.
Her Papa, looking freshly pressed in spite of the heat, slid our way and
spoke to her in Spanish. So we chatted a
little in his native tongue, a little being as far as I can usually get. He asked Bella her name and she responded in
between bites of her strawberry shortcake ice cream bar with proper
pronunciation, which always amazes me when it spills from her lips.
I decided on the Bings and the chica listlessly bagged them for me while
her Papa smiled and asked me if Bella was my granddaughter. My fond Latino feelings evaporated with my
smile like a drop of water on the sizzling pavement just beyond the shade of
the tent. “No hable Espanol,” I
said. We took our cherries and left.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Crossing Idaho at the panhandle, I gazed longingly at the sparkling waters of Lake Couer D’Alene, vowing to return some day and swim in them. We traversed two mountain passes in the Bitterroots of the Rockies. There was snow on the Fourth of July pass but
the kids were sound asleep so I didn’t stop for a quick snowball fight,
although now that sounds like fun. My
goal was to be in Missoula at the Jamaican Posse rum bar by around 6 and I was making good time when Andy
called and reminded me I’d be crossing into Mountain Time. Sure enough, the sign appeared around the
next bend as we crossed the border at Lookout Pass and I lost an hour just like that. The hills in Montana, known as mountains elsewhere, were blanketed in
purple wildflowers which would have made a lovely photo if I’d stopped to take
one. But I didn’t. I sped along the Clark Fork River, renewing
my admiration for its Caribbean-colored waters.
The kids woke up and we finished listening to the adventures of “Ribsy,”
our daily book on tape. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At long last, our destination dropped from 14 hours on the GPS to less than one. I could almost hear the Red Stripe caps popping and Gregory Isaacs singing "Night Nurse." As were exiting the freeway, the phone
rang. It was Hannah. Calling from the hospital. Biking home from Target in DC she'd had a
bike accident and broke her hand. I
tried to pay attention to the rather alarming conversation while navigating my
way to Steve and Heidi’s house where I hadn’t been in four years or so. Naturally, GPS chose that moment to announce
that she was suspending her route guidance, unable to find the local landmarks
or too tired or sick of leading us or whatever.
Which happened again and again just as we neared our destinations each
evening. We’d follow GPS all day and
then she’d drop us at the end like a hot potato with a “no hable Espanol.” Sigh.
So Hannah, who is scheduled to swim across the bay with me in two weeks,
is now wearing a pink cast.<br />
<br />
Cheers!<br />
<br />
KK </div>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-1718795133711189462012-06-09T15:58:00.001-07:002012-06-09T16:30:34.905-07:00Meth is Death<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
A few weeks ago I was in the checkout line at Rays, one of
the two grocery stores in our tiny town where really one would suffice. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a bank
in our town but if you spotted the average Waldportian, you’d probably elect them
“least likely to be found making a deposit.”
Unless it’s in the can and bottle recycling machines outside of Rays, that
is. Which do, indeed, boast the longest
lines in town. If you want to eat out here
we have Vicki’s Burger Bar, The Flounder Inn (which is really a watering hole),
The Salty Dog (also a watering hole but with decent grub to soak it up), or the
proverbial Pizza, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants. And that’s all folks. Except for fried chicken and Jojos at Rays. If you want to window shop along main street,
windows are mostly what you’ll find.
There are a few occupied stores with names like Knives and More but
mostly there are just windows. Windows
with signs that say “for rent” or “for sale” or “Meth is Death.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I stood in line, ice cream in hand, waiting for the two
scruffy guys ahead of me to buy their groceries. Being a compulsive reader, I scanned the
tabloid headlines for the latest weight loss accomplishments of airbrushed
women and the news of all things Hollywood while I waited my turn. I was distracted by all that life-altering information
until I realized the normally hyper checkout guy at Rays was huffing and
puffing and talking to himself a bit more vociferously than usual. Looking up from People, I switched to the real
life drama unfolding in front of me and caught the gist of the plot, which was
that the scruffy guys ahead of me didn’t have enough money for their already
bagged items. Mr. Huff and Puff was
getting ready to unbag their few items and they were turning to go make a
deposit outside or something by the time I tuned in. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was a young lass grocery shopping with my mother at
Starr Market in Middletown, Rhode Island, I dreaded the checkout line. I never
saw a credit card or check book emerge from the depths of my mother’s purse in
monetary emergencies so I have to assume they were nonexistent for the average
housewife of the 1970’s. Cash was king. And my mom was not a gal for numbers. Or calculators, also not standard 70’s
pocketbook stuffers. Until we hit adolescence,
it was our lot to remain parked in the station wagon with our grandma, Mimi,
playing the color game or Quaker meeting while Mom ran into the store for “I’ll
be right back, I just need a couple of things.”
Mom would emerge an hour later with a full cart while we whined and poor
Mimi searched her mental closet for another game from her career as a PE
teacher. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But once we hit double digits, we weren’t falling for that
trick anymore. We hit the aisles with Mom,
pushing the cart while she planned her weekly meals, starting with the meat and
ending at the ice cream with a trail of “no’s” scattered in our wake like
breadcrumbs from our every request for whatever new cereal we’d been
brainwashed to want in between Speed Racer and H.R.Pufnstuf. When not uttering monosyllabic responses, Mom
was occupied with keeping a running total in her head, muttering with each new
addition to the cart like Mr. Pufnstuf at Rays.
By the time it was our turn at the checkout line, Mom was trapped in a
whirling dervish of numbers. She bravely
stepped ahead to monitor the cash register, facing her demons while we emptied
the cart onto the black belt.
Inevitably, by the time we got to the meat section of our cart, Mom was in
a panic. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Time slowed down. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These were the days before my brother’s college friend invented
some UPC scanner something or other at his work-study job and retired as a
bazillionaire before his cap and gown had gathered a layer of dust but I forget
exactly how the prices were entered. I
do remember the nifty conveyor belt which transported our groceries through a
doggy door for curbside pick-up, however, and as our already approved groceries
filled the bins which were destined for the belt, Mom began her ritual of selecting
from the stragglers. She asked the
cashier to add one packet of meat at a time, checking the total with each new
addition and comparing it against the bundle of bills clutched tightly in her
fist, sometimes searching the depths of her purse for more volunteers. And this was right about the time I started
wishing I was out in the car with Mimi playing, “I’m thinking of something . .
. green.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While Mom struggled to reconcile the cashier’s total with
the bills in hand and the cashier struggled to maintain her calm, I struggled
to maintain my persona of adolescent cool.
“Okay, subtract the steak and add the chicken,” was something Mom might
say while the line of impatient shoppers huffed and puffed behind us and I
enlisted my peripheral vision to see if I knew any of them. We lived on an island. So usually I did. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mom’s checkout game continued until she’d completely revised
our weekly menu including a yellow and green vegetable for every night right
there at the register and I was left with the rejected pile of meat in front of
me which we suddenly weren’t having. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Kelly, go put those back,” Mom would say, completely
oblivious to the fact that Doris Nally, the gum-snapping-most-intimidating-“colored”
girl in middle school was in line right behind us and now also knew what I’d be
eating all week. And what I
wouldn’t. I didn’t yet know about Harry
Potter and his invisibility cloak, but I sure wished I had one anyway right
about then.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Excuse me,” I mumbled, clutching packets of meat the color
of my shame and squeezing past the impatient islanders behind us, avoiding eye
contact with Doris, only too aware that I was the sole fish swimming upstream. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a result of all this drama, to this day I have what I
call “checkout line anxiety.” I stuff my
purse with checkbooks and credit cards and some amount of cash and still I have
a small moment of panic when faced with a cashier. And so it was with great empathy for my
fellow scruffy shoppers that I stepped up to Mr. Huff and Puff at Rays and
started to say, “Oh, I would have paid for . . .,” indicating the items he was reaching
in to remove from the bag in front of him.
Like Santa, H&P spoke not a word but went straight to his work,
removing the groceries and placing them next to him to be reshelved. I was feeling bad that I’d been distracted by
the magazine rack and was about to finish my sentence when I had my first gander
at the items he was removing. Little
Debbie Strawberry Shortcake bars, generic Strawberry soda, Swiss something or
other that was definitely not from Switzerland, and a few other food-ish things
whose first and last ingredients were sugar.
“. . . those,” died right there on my Good Samaritan lips while I
secretly murmured my thanks to Jessica Simpson for her baby fat. There was no way I’d buy any of those things
for those guys or myself or anyone else.
Meth heads, I realized. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meth is Death, like the sign in our empty store windows say. Ours is a community that has been poisoned by
meth. One in four kids at Bella’s school
are homeless. Many are being raised by
their grandparents, who are questionably good candidates since they also reared
the previous failed generation. Too many
folks on the coast here are like barnacles, clinging to the edge of the
continent in serious danger of being washed out with the next turn of the
economic tide. Kids come and go with
such alarming regularity in Bella’s school that they really should install a
revolving door. Two kids in Bella’s
class moved last week, which was two weeks before school gets out. Just today Isaiah’s friend mentioned a boy
whose name I didn’t recognize. “Is he
new?” I asked. “No,” he said, “he’s been
here since April.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On Friday, Bella brought home her weekly packet with a
notice that free camp will be held all summer for all kids with free breakfast
and lunch included. The notice read, “Over
half of Lincoln County students qualify for free or reduced lunch and over 80%
of Waldport’s grade school students are considered economically
disadvantaged. About 400 students in the
district are considered homeless.”
Lincoln County is 1000 square miles, which is the same size as Rhode
Island. Lincoln County has 5200 students
and Rhode Island has 14,000. Yet they
both have roughly the same number of homeless students: 400, 420. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The school notice also read, “Oregon has higher than
national average rates for hunger and food insecurity.” Food insecurity? I thought.
A new term for me. But then I
remembered my Starr market days. And I
got it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-80129493006512563062012-04-26T15:27:00.000-07:002012-04-26T16:10:44.749-07:00A Field Trip with Grandma<br />
On Monday I chaperoned Bella’s class field trip to Yaquina
Head, a point of land jutting into the Pacific featuring a lighthouse and tide
pools. It used to be an easy diversion
for whale watching or tide pooling and we stopped there many times but now it’s
an outstanding natural area run by the BLM which translates to $25 per car if
you want to find some sea stars in your spare time. Sigh.
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Normally I drive my own car on these school trips given
my aversion to that timeless classic—99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall—but with the
price of gas, I relented. Bella was
thrilled and we settled into a seat near the front of the bus like good girls with
Logan, the three of us enjoying the freedom from seat belts and car seats that
school buses afford, since they are so automatically safe or whatever. Not to mention the unlimited texting. As our bus plus another filled up with the
three classes of first and second graders, I turned around and noticed another
chaperone sitting by himself right behind us.
He had long scraggly gray hair and looked like Uncle Sam fallen on hard
times. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Morning,” he said with a snaggle-toothed smile. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Hi,” I managed, trying not to betray my shock at
his appearance and quickly turning back around in my seat as the teacher began her lecture
about bus etiquette—back to back, seat to seat.
Welcome to Waldport, I thought, repeating the mantra which often comes
to mind around here and settling into my seat to seat with Uncle Sam a few feet
behind me. Even with my cold, I could
smell the stale cigarette smoke drifting across the aisle from the clothing of the little boy sitting there. Ah, the
smell of the coast, I mused, stale booze and cigarettes. I’d actually contemplated canceling my
commitment to attend this trip, coughing as I was into week two and thinking perhaps I should be going to the doctor
instead. But Bella’s teacher had asked
me more than once if I was sure I could chaperone because they are always
desperately in need of parent volunteers for these trips and were cancelling it
if they didn’t find enough. So, there I sat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back in Portsmouth, RI, the Stepford Moms all jockey for
position like thoroughbreds at the starting line when the field trip permission
slips hit the backpack express and there were always many more eager volunteers
than were needed. Out here on the left
coast, the problem is the exact opposite due in large part to the pesky
criminal background check and Safe Schools training course required for volunteers
which a) you need to complete and b) you need to pass. I suspect it’s this latter part which is
largely responsible for dearth of volunteers.
So, even though Uncle Sam was not exactly a perfectly turned out Stepford
Mom, at least he had passed the test. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The half hour trip north was uneventful and soon we filed
off the bus, bundling up for yet another typical cold, windy, foggy spring day
at the Oregon Coast. I could feel my
chest tightening up and patted my Kleenex stash like an addict. This was our second field trip to Yaquina
Head this year as part of a marine education program and these kids know their
sea stars. The mighty Pacific was having
a minus low tide and we were the first lucky group who got to climb down the
hundred plus stairs to explore the extremely exposed tide pool critters. My group consisted of Bella and her friend
Jersey, both easy, Josiah, who is very smart but never stops talking in a very
high, whiny voice, Sam who is disadvantaged but adorable with a speech
impediment which caused me to ask him to repeat everything he said at least
three times, which he did without complaint, and Gabby, the smallest girl in
the class and the only first grader in our group. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Clutching our laminated color charts, we
slipped and slided over the sea weed and rocks, trying not to step on muscles,
barnacles, and anemones, seeking out the purple urchins and sculpins pictured for
our scavenger hunt. The instructions for
the trip stated that we’d be doing a LOT of walking and to wear comfortable
walking shoes. This made no sense to me
as I knew we were going to the tide pools which equals water which equals
hundreds of little wet feet. Why on
earth they didn’t say to wear boots is still beyond me. And as a result, I held Gabby’s hand while her sneakers
slipped and slid on all that exposed slick seaweed, rescuing her from falling for
a wet conclusion over and over again.
Sam had informed me three times while we descended the stairs until I
finally understood that his shoes were a size one and too big for him and so he
fell in a pool and was wet up to almost his knees, his too-big shoes squeaking
with water for the rest of the day. We
found everything on our charts except a lemon nudibranch, including a huge
purple sunflower sea star with white polka-dots at least two feet across and a
gigantic gumboot chiton the size of, well, a boot before they called us to
change stations. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then we sloshed back up the hundred plus stairs to a
platform overlooking the tide pools and had a snack before walking to the
lighthouse where we realized that there were thousands of sea birds, mostly
common murres, dotting the water and colonies of them crowding the tops of the
rocks while mating and nesting.
We watched them in the cold wind while the sun tried to burn through the
eternal sea fog and then we had our turn in the lighthouse, climbing another
hundred plus stairs up and down again to learn about the life of a lighthouse
keeper and the lens and light pattern unique to this lighthouse. The view was spectacular and we could see the
tide creeping back in to cover the places where we’d been standing earlier.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We spent another half hour or more at the restroom while
over a hundred kids went potty, leading me to conclude that field trips are all
about leaving school, going potty and washing your hands in a variety of restrooms,
doing some other things in between potty trips, and then heading back to
school where the first thing you will probably do is go potty again. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Climbing back onto the bus,
Gabby begged me to sit with her so I moved a few seats back and across the
aisle to sit with her and Morgan. Gabby
was definitely my number one fan by then and I attributed this to my excellent
navigational skills which prevented her from bringing home the tide pool in her
shoes. Before we could depart, the
teacher had to mediate a critical bus seat dispute behind us, which inspired
Gabby to say, “You’re a teacher,” insinuating that I could have handled the
situation myself. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“No,” I said, “I’m not a teacher.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You’re a mom.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes,” I agreed, “I’m just a Mom.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mediating bus seat disputes was clearly best left to the
trained professionals, I was thinking, when she piped up again, “An old mom,”
she said. “Or a Grandma.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m not a Grandma,” I said, feeling suddenly feeble
and also quite defensive, even though most women my age around here are,
indeed, Grandmas already and I am the exception, not the rule. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“But you probably will be one,” Gabby said sweetly then added with great certainty, “Soon.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She began happily singing Jingle Bells, showing me the
lyrics which she had written down on a piece of paper. Fingering my wrinkles and cursing that worthless
Retin A creme, I willed Bella to need me for something, anything, that would
rescue me from the innocent torment of Gabby, who had now moved on to chirping the
ABC song. So it wasn’t my excellent
navigational skills she’d admired after all, it was my grandmotherly
image. Probably her own Grandma was 50
too. Welcome to Waldport, I started to
chant again when Morgan intruded.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“That’s my uncle,” she said with a second-grade sneer, pointing
diagonally across the aisle ahead of us at Uncle Sam, who definitely looked
like he could be her Grandpa. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, why don’t you sit with him?” I asked, still looking
for a graceful grandmotherly exit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Because I don’t like him,” she said matter-of-factly. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“But it’s so nice that he came today on your field trip,” I
said in my best milk and cookies imitation.
She looked back at me like a teenager. I shut up. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bus doors closed and we were finally on our way to the
lunch stop. Above the general clamor, I
detected music. Without turning around,
I realized it was coming from the seat right behind us where another chaperone
was listening to Christian rock music on her I-phone. As the bus accelerated so, too, did her
excitement and she became increasingly moved, singing and thumping the back of my
seat for emphasis. I willed that bus to
move faster with a sudden impatience I’d never before known for the Cheetos and
Uncrustable that Bella had packed for my lunch.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally we came to Rock Creek Park and disgorged again to
eat lunch near the porta-potty. One of
the other classes had reared steelhead from eggs to smolts and they were ready
to be released so after lunch the hundred plus kids got in line by the creek,
ready to do their part for the fish. The
teacher began scooping them out of a water-filled bucket and I watched while the
first student accepted the clear plastic cup containing a 2 inch smolt, stepped up to
the edge of the bank, and unceremoniously dumped it into the creek from a
height of about 6 feet. This did not
seem right. And I am a fish biologist. So I propped myself up in the creek with one
foot in the water and one foot out, helping each student navigate the short but
increasingly slippery muddy embankment to the water’s edge, telling each and
every one of them the same thing, “Now, put the cup INTO the water and let the
fish swim out.” I said that same
sentence with minor experimental modifications for clarity over a hundred times
and still some smolts were dumped in from a grand height, some were poured in from
a few inches, and one or two were spilled into the mud. It was a fascinating exercise in following
directions, which maybe 10% managed to do.
The last girl, Opal, slid right down the embankment, flinging her entire cup
of water up into my face. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Can I please sit with you?” I begged Bella as we loaded
back onto the bus for our journey back to the school restrooms.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sure, Mom,” she said.
I snuggled up to my eight-year-old and searched through my purse for
Opal’s smolt. Some day I’ll be a
Grandma, I thought, but hopefully not soon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
K3</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
PS Happy Birthday Hannah Amelia! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-91644093609315926772012-03-08T14:21:00.012-08:002012-03-09T10:15:59.626-08:00Some days chicken . . .<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal"> . . . some days feathers, as my Mom is fond of saying.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And that is how I found myself cursing both the electric company and my husband this morning.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">The hardest thing I have to do each day is get up.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I am not a morning person. I abhor alarm clocks. And I am not fit for conversation until at least one sip of coffee has burned my tired lips.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But each morning as a single parent with a husband, I make myself get out of bed, hit the cold floor, struggle to pull my UGGS on, shuffle to the stove, turn on the flame beneath the kettle by giving it a little blow to connect the gas with the pilot light (a tiny idiosyncrasy which takes morning breath to a new level), wake up the kids, skip to the loo, and crumple up school papers and AARP bulletins to start the fire in the wood stove.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>By then, the kettle is screaming at me and I commence the ritual of making Tico coffee--pouring hot water in the opening of a sock stretched around a wire frame into which I have already scooped what remains of my Costa Rican coffee stash, then witnessing with delight the miracle of clear water going in the top and coffee pouring out the bottom into the waiting pot below which used to belong to my Gringo coffeemaker until it broke.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">In the meantime, I heat the milk and slice bread for toast or throw a couple waffles in the toaster for the kiddies.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>By the time they emerge from their yurt, their breakfast is ready and I am savoring the first sip from my bowl of coffee in lieu of an IV and greet them, pretending to function, while the caffeine infuses my bloodstream.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I gulp down as much as I can before we rush off to catch Isaiah’s car pool, drop Bella at school and I drive back home, slowing to admire one or two elk herds along the way, where the mudroom is now warm and the yurts are all mine.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I heat up another cup of kindercoffee, stuff more wood in the stove, fire up my computer, and savor the caffeine and silence while the world wide web warms up at my fingertips.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The morning is mine, usually.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The afternoons are not.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Nor are the evenings.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> And so it was this morning.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As usual, I perused my email for things that needed doing, searched the web for issues from my morning NPR fix, opened Facebook and checked my Words with Friends, scanning posts for need-to-know items like what my FB friends are making for dinner (which is always better than anything I’ve planned, like Top Ramen) opened my latest book project, and began to multi-task for the morning between all these things and more.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">By 9:30 I had already looked up the author of a book like mine (except that his is published) as well as opening an email message box to him while pondering whether or not I should actually write to him and, if so, what I should say as well as checking the submission requirements of his publisher.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was in the middle of six games of Words with Friends and was actively playing with two of them on and off.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’d read the morning email trail which included a potential afternoon field trip I might want to go on today.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was in the middle of writing a press release and had my book project open and had jotted down some ideas for that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’d noted that there was an earthquake in Alaska but no tsunami was expected.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Good. And noted that there was an office depot order tracking email in my inbox for a Kelly Kittel-Roby on an order I definitely did not place under an alias I've never used for something called Premium Protection and Optimization, $77 and, of all things, Internet Security Service at an additional $12.50.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I had a row or two of documents open on the bottom of my screen, effectively in the middle of at least eight different things and just getting started on all of them, really, when the power went off.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The computer screen went black.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The yurt became silent except for the crackling of the wood in the stove.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Just like that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> “What the *&%^?,” I said out loud.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> Now, the last time I checked, the Oregon coast was not considered a part of the third world.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But this was our third power outage in two months and the last one was just last Tuesday.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I looked out the window even tho I already knew it was an unusually stellar day because they’d been talking about it all week like they were expecting the second coming—sunny, no wind, warming to the ‘60’s no less.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After snow and temps in the 30’s the past few mornings, it was rather like a miracle.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Clearly, the weather was not to be blamed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> But perhaps that solar storm I'd heard about on NPR? I double-checked, but no, I had not somehow forgotten that I'd moved to Costa Rica either.</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">So I ran around the yurt unplugging all major power cords with fun solar storm NPR facts running thru my head like "a solar Katrina traveling at 2.7 million mph" and "interplanetary magnetic field" and, my personal favorite, "coronal mass ejection." And besides all these fun phrases, when the power came back on after the first outage in January, it came on with a vengeance that blew out two different power outlets and we don’t have many to begin with here in the "simple" life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Then I plugged in the old-fashioned dial phone we got after the January outage when we went with no phone or power for three days.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Then I found my colorful cheater glasses and looked up the power company number in one of our 50 phone books which are all slightly different but with equally tiny text and arrive weekly in our mailbox like some kind of collusion between the phone company(-ies) and postal service to justify their outdated existence in a changing world. "See? You still need both of us to deliver these weekly updated phone books!"<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Then I proceeded to call the wrong company (because here in the third world we have three electric power providers for this great service, don't ask me why), calling and pressing one three times as well as entering my phone number and whatever else the recorded voices asked with no success, possibly because I was calling Central Lincoln PUD and later I found out our provider is Consumers Power. Who knew? (More on that later.) So, I called the local number and left a scathing message asking the likes of why on earth on a sunny day I had no service and had I forgotten to pay my bill or was it the solar storm and this was the third time this year and on and on until I ran out of breath and hung up.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Then I did what I should have done in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I called Andy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Except that I didn’t call him first because I knew if I did he’d ask if I’d called the power company to report the outage and I knew this because that was what he'd said last Tuesday when I called him first and had to admit that, “no,” I had not, conditioned as I was to living in the tropics with regular outages and simply waiting it out. This time I could reply, “why, yes." In fact, of course I had. (Later I would receive a nice message from Terri at Central Lincoln PUD saying that I must have dialed the wrong number. Andy, of course, as usual, being the guy "who knew.")<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> “Good morning, honey,” he said unsuspectingly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> “<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"></span>Do you know why we don’t have any power?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Again?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I asked. (I might have said "hi," first, I forget.)<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> “Oh, ah, yeah, they scheduled an outage for this morning from 9 to 11, they called last night and left a message on my cell phone and I got it this morning,” he said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> Do I really need to describe to you my reaction upon hearing this “news” from my husband of 23 years who asked me 8 years ago why I couldn’t read his mind yet and who was happily going about his power-filled day three hours away in Portland? What did he think I did all morning anyway? What if I wanted a piece of toast?<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, well,” I began, “why on earth didn’t you call and tell me?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This is the third time the computer has had a hard shut-down,” I began, the lecture I’d received from our computer guy about the perils of a “hard shut-down” beginning to scroll through my head.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Oh, the computer . . .,” he said, after which I began to unleash the torrent of my fury on him and he said, “I have to go,” and hung up.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">That was helpful.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I hoped he could read my mind right about then.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And so that is also how I came to be sitting in my car at the Waldport Laundromat wasting my sunny day waiting for our clothes to wash while listening to NPR who was finished with solar storms apparently and had moved on, informing me that today is International Women’s Day which is celebrated in a variety of lovely ways around the world and that, for example, in Italy, right then, men were giving the women they love bouquets of flowers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I was sitting there eating a maple bar.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Which I could barely taste because I have the second of what will hopefully be only two colds in succession but I was eating it anyway because I could recall how it tasted and because I am just plain sick of soup.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Plus I wanted to chew on something sweet to pair with my salty frustration.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">The only thing that might have made me feel even less celebrated (besides having selected the bavarian creme-filled maple bar) would have been if I’d glanced down at my lap and realized, not for the first time, that I was still wearing my Grinch pajama bottoms.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As it was, I sat there licking maple frosting from my fingers in what was rapidly becoming way-too-warm black fleece pants and an equally unflattering thermal shirt while picturing the signoras of Italy flouncing about in lovely floral print designer dresses and equally colorful shoes, happily receiving matching spring bouquets, Grazie!, while lunching at outdoor cafes overlooking ancient fountains, sipping chilled wine and sharing forkfuls of fresh pasta and arugula with their adoring lovers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Who may or may not have been their husbands.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Probably not, I thought, crumpling up my donut bag.</p><p class="MsoNormal">K3<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-80772707029016140972012-02-14T11:15:00.000-08:002012-02-15T09:50:44.472-08:00Happy Birthday Monkeys!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPVJhyapSv8bGZUjirgCEOeIvyXyeP0MfMw9o0tTsLTwhaIbQwQ4yT8OBGT4KZ_6uCjjhMI95J2a7qXmvuM4zmThSrHnIyIkj5CIWm5hT3oa94oyg3huZKOwVUzrwLdR23eAp2SwgGY6RA/s1600/IMG_1742.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPVJhyapSv8bGZUjirgCEOeIvyXyeP0MfMw9o0tTsLTwhaIbQwQ4yT8OBGT4KZ_6uCjjhMI95J2a7qXmvuM4zmThSrHnIyIkj5CIWm5hT3oa94oyg3huZKOwVUzrwLdR23eAp2SwgGY6RA/s320/IMG_1742.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5709073507230300466" border="0" /></a><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>The ides of February are upon us, meaning we are poised in between the birthdays of Christiana and Bella.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Christiana turned 20 last Thursday and Bella is counting the days until she turns 8 on Friday.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>From American Forestry books to American Girl dolls, as their birthday presents indicate and as I’ve come to think of them lately.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(Except really what I think is from birth control to Polly Pockets but I’m not going to write that here.)<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was only when Bella brought home the obligatory second grade Chinese Zodiac wheel that we realized she and Christiana, being 12 years apart, share the same symbol – the monkey. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Now, probably much like any old zodiac regardless of what language it speaks, you could find traits of yourself in every one of the twelve Chinese zodiac characters.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I can say with some certainty that the following monkey traits do, indeed, fit my second and last girls:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>motivator, improviser, quick-witted, inquisitive, flexible, innovative, problem solver, self-assured, sociable, artistic, polite, dignified, objective, and factual. <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have long described Christiana as one who knows her mind and sets out with a purpose to achieve her goals.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I learned a long time ago that when she stepped her self-assured self up to the ice cream counter and decisively ordered pink bubblegum ice cream, no amount of me trying to talk her out of that hideously artificially-colored flavor would work and that, indeed, she would eat every last blaring bit of bubblegum before concluding with a fuchsia-tongued smile.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In short, she taught me at a very young age to heed her word.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Because she was true to it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so it was that on her big day last week we headed to the valley to take her to dinner and she chose the restaurant, announcing that she wanted a piece of fresh fish and that is exactly what she ate down to the last little flake.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Meanwhile, back here in yurtville, Bella has planned her own party.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And she has already drawn and colored the pictures of she and her guests cavorting happily at the event, even though they haven’t even RSVP’d yet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She is organized and artistic and doesn’t forget a thing, which is why she is the keeper of the grocery list.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Last year she went to Automercado with our friend, Wendy, after a sleepover and informed her on every aisle what she needed to buy until finally Wendy said, “Bella, you don’t even live with us.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“I know,” Bella said happily, not skipping a beat, “but you do need apples.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And they did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I have long said if anything happened to me, Bella would take right over and never miss a beat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I try not to compare my kids and had never really drawn a Venn diagram around these two, but that monkey thing got me thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They do, indeed, have a large circle of commonality.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Both are very creative and can/could be sent to their rooms to “clean” them and stay for an entire afternoon playing, happily emerging hours later having never picked up one single thing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Bella is the only one wearing my high heels and dresses around here or fully taking advantage of my handbag collection.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Recently she emerged from her yurt dressed for work at her new Home Depot job wearing an orange apron that used to belong to Christiana and sporting a giraffe nametag from her summer Bible school - Wild about the Bible or something equally exotic.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She was toting Hannah’s new pink tool kit left out of the post-holiday carry-on luggage, a screwdriver being a threat to our national security and all, and sporting plastic high heels to match.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When I asked for some remodeling advice, she informed me that, sorry, but she was on her lunch break.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so, as with her sister before her, I just follow along and try not to get in the way, letting my two monkeys plan their own parties, pick their own ice creams, and find their way.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>From the second year in elementary school to the second year in college, they both stride through life with confidence and a big smile and so far that is working just fine.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">K3</p><p class="MsoNormal">PS Yesterday Bella received her birthday card from Grandma Moore and read it to me while we were driving to ballet. 'For a Granddaughter who's amazing, talented, fun-loving, a great sport, a shining star, and most of all . . . a super sweet girl who's loved very much!' "That Grandma sure knows how to pick the perfect card," she said, clearly agreeing with every American Greetings word.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-27830752408524406812012-01-11T19:07:00.000-08:002012-01-13T13:01:44.891-08:00Never Buy a Cat on Sale<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgypOhYS2Ohl2VELLh4ugLww5Icy1Q88f7AJ-F8ZtCER76mGfCPruRzgpNRHbq8PaPGjsgt1HuASq402JKZjGH_fePv_Vrkh07TQpH6hoUe5fltf-EqAZd5PElkCpRGqtPOD9A8oZBLV0Ps/s1600/IMG_1247.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgypOhYS2Ohl2VELLh4ugLww5Icy1Q88f7AJ-F8ZtCER76mGfCPruRzgpNRHbq8PaPGjsgt1HuASq402JKZjGH_fePv_Vrkh07TQpH6hoUe5fltf-EqAZd5PElkCpRGqtPOD9A8oZBLV0Ps/s320/IMG_1247.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696581230546250866" border="0" /></a><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--><p class="MsoNormal">I’ve been shopping for over four decades now like every good Born-in-the-USA consumer and I should have learned by now that there are some things that are not a bargain at any price.<span style=""> </span>Apparently, I have not.<span style=""> </span>Since losing Duncan in July we have been half-heartedly scouring Craigslist and the like in search of a new faithful companion.<span style=""> </span>Not a replacement.<span style=""> </span>There aren’t any of those.<span style=""> </span>And so it was that I found myself at the Safe Haven Humane Society one rainy night in November with Bella and Christiana, both of whom are overly sentimental shoppers who say things like “Awww” at every cute thing they see, living or not. Cute, or not.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The first “Awww” creature we encountered at Safe Haven was a fluffy white Malamute puppy with sad brown eyes and a heart condition.<span style=""> </span>It was impossible not to love him, handicap and all.<span style=""> </span>We were drawn into his enclosure like it was our destiny, digging our fingers into his irresistible down and dreaming of wrapping him around us and taking him home.<span style=""> </span>Until one of the many shelter workers roused us from our reverie with a good dousing of cold water words like grooming and mud and every-time-we-take-a-walk.<span style=""> </span>We considered all the dirt as well as the creek that surround our yurt, picturing all that snowy fur turned brown and tangled like March in New England, then gave him one final pat and backed away from all that adorable temptation.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Entering the long kennel room we passed easily by the chihuahuas and every kind of pit bull mix known to man, including the ones named Bella, until we came to rest in front of a cage full of black and white exuberance, three or four puppies tangled up and tumbling over each other, all SO happy to see us.<span style=""> </span>We swayed.<span style=""> </span>Vicki Vale (of Batman fame) quickly became our favorite and when we picked her up she snuggled into our embrace like she was home already while her siblings, Bruce Wayne and the like, chewed on our shoe laces and peed on the floor.<span style=""> </span>We took turns holding Vicki, admiring her serenity and markings, took photos on our phones, and sent them to Andy.<span style=""> </span>He said no.<span style=""> </span>The comic book puppies were an unknown blend of husky and lab and whomever else Trixie, their Mom, had entertained.<span style=""> </span>Trixie, yet another shelter worker informed, was also living at Safe Haven but was currently at the vet being fixed.<span style=""> </span>So we couldn’t get any more information from her on the puppy paternity.<span style=""> </span>We called Andy and his unsentimental voice of reason prevailed.<span style=""> </span>Being any part husky meant they still had a strong hunting instinct and we live with resident herds of elk and deer who regularly sleep and eat in our pastures.<span style=""> </span>Andy was right.<span style=""> </span>We conceded that Vicki was not to be ours and we all parted ways with a whimper.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Next we braved the elements, venturing outside in the rain to check out the older dogs.<span style=""> </span>Nothing we wanted to live with.<span style=""> </span>That left the cat room.<span style=""> </span>Now we are not cat lovers and people who call me Kitty are the bane of my existence, so why we ever even opened that door is questionable.<span style=""> </span>But in we went, dutifully examining the lines of cages along the wall with no real intent and a few errant lower-case “awws.”<span style=""> </span>And that’s when we spotted an attractive sign proclaiming in colorful double letters, “Great Barn Cat.”<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Now, back in June when we’d returned from Costa Rica to the yurts, we discovered that we had what you would definitely call a “Great Barn Cat” living somewhere in the stacks of wood piled up in our lower barn.<span style=""> </span>This cat was vaguely Siamese looking but we never got close enough while it lived to know it well.<span style=""> </span>It demanded nothing of us except to be left alone.<span style=""> </span>Our kind of kitty. <span style=""> </span>And clearly “our” cat was, indeed, what this colorful shelter sign also boasted, “A Great Mouser,” as we never fed or watered it even once.<span style=""> </span>We had no particular fondness for each other, that cat and us, our only encounters being a blur of cream-colored fur whizzing by whenever we ventured into our barn to retrieve a gardening tool or a bike.<span style=""> </span>Still, we felt some degree of sadness when Andy discovered it lying near his saw mill one morning in August, dead.<span style=""> </span>Having just lost Duncan, we felt a little bereft.<span style=""> </span>And even though we never invited what we now knew was a he into our lives, his absence left a kind of blurry void.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">So seeing that carefully lettered shelter sign posted on the cage of the last cat on the left got us to thinking.<span style=""> A</span>nd it was on sale.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“We have a barn,” we said to each other.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> “We have mice,” we reasoned.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> “We’ll take it,” we announced.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> Perhaps we were a bit hasty.<span style=""> </span>Perhaps we should have asked more questions.<span style=""> </span>Like when the shelter workers’ eyebrows raised uniformly upon learning that we’d chosen Molly, the Queen of the Cat Room, as they now informed us she was known while processing an inordinate amount of paperwork for one discounted cat.<span style=""> </span>Or when they told us we had one week to return her if things didn’t work out and then let it slip that she’d been returned once already.<span style=""> </span>Or when they hesitated over who would put her in a box and bring her out to us.<span style=""> </span>Or when they warned us not to open the box until we arrived home.<span style=""> </span>But we were committed.<span style=""> </span>And anyway, why should we care?<span style=""> </span>She was going to live in the barn and require nothing from us like her independent predecessor.<span style=""> </span>We paid our $15 and left.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We drove the remaining hour home that dark and rainy night with our new barn cat in her box on Christiana’s lap, complaining loudly. And when we arrived home, Molly sprang from the box and immediately began making herself right at home.<span style=""> </span>“She’s fat,” we said, finally getting our first good look at her.<span style=""> </span>“Is that normal?” we wondered as her belly hung low in front of her hind legs, swaying to and fro as she walked.<span style=""> </span>We knew very little about cats and wondered if it was a tumor.<span style=""> </span>“Ah well, she’ll be getting plenty of exercise soon,” we said while visions of Molly mouse hunting danced in our heads.<span style=""> </span>She was pretty, a tortoise-shell they informed us, with white feet and light green eyes.<span style=""> </span>They’d told us to buy the purple bagged cat food at Costco and sent us home with a starter kit, warning us to feed her only ½ cup a day or she would eat and eat.<span style=""> </span>“No wonder,” we now said, seeing her feline equivalent of a muffin top.<span style=""> </span>And later when I dutifully purchased said Costco-sized bag of food it never even dawned on me just how long that was going to last at ½ cup per day without, say, a whole cat room or a bull mastiff eating it.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">They also told us not to let her outside for a couple weeks until she knew her boundaries.<span style=""> </span>But what we quickly discovered was that Molly, the Queen of the Cat Room, had quickly reinvented herself as Molly, Queen of the Yurts. She had no interest in the great outdoors.<span style=""> </span>Or our very nice, mice-filled barn.<span style=""> </span>Neither would she soon forget where she lived.<span style=""> </span>First of all, she was too fat to catch anything except maybe her own tail.<span style=""> </span>And second of all, we had to move quickly ourselves to catch her and toss her out the door if she was ever going to get some fresh air.<span style=""> </span>Molly was perfectly content to stay inside the yurt.<span style=""> </span>Forever.<span style=""> </span>And when we did manage to capture and evict her with encouraging words about our barn, she sat underneath the yurt and meowed.<span style=""> </span>All day.<span style=""> </span>Loudly.<span style=""> </span>Until we let her in again.<span style=""> </span>Or until someone opened the door. Then she was suddenly motivated to move at lightning speed, flashing past us like her predecessor.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Now you might think that upon meowing herself hoarse, Molly would simply accept her fate and head for the barn. She does not. Instead she tries to find a way back into the yurt. Like jumping up on the front door and attempting to turn the door knob. Or leaping up at one of the two mudroom windows and hanging by her claws from the screen. I kid you not. None of her persistence is appreciated by people who live in a canvas house. In fact, people who live in fabric houses should probably not own pets with claws.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The questions we probably should have asked those nice Safe Haven folks are these.<span style=""> </span>How would they know if Molly was a “Great Barn Cat” or a “Great Mouser” if they’d only known her as the Queen of the Cat Room where she’d spent her lazy days indoors eating the Purple-bagged Costco Cat Food?<span style=""> </span>Did they ever hear her sighing and wishing aloud, "If only I had a barn and some nice fat mice to catch?”<span style=""> </span>How did they determine that 1/2 cup of food was enough? Because the purple cat food bag has been shredded by Molly's attempts to increase her portion. And why exactly was Molly brought in the first time? Too noisy, perhaps? How about the second? Customer dissatisfaction? Did she scratch her owners? Refuse to go outside?<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Hannah hates cats and threatened to boycott Christmas but relented, keeping a watchful distance. Micah became very good at catching and evicting Molly while he was home for the holidays. We tried to pass her off as Isaiah's birthday present but he was having none of that. And Andy keeps threatening to teach Molly to swim.<span style=""><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">"Maybe she’ll go outside when it gets warmer," I reason. "And besides, Bella likes to play with her," I say, even though Molly often switches moods and scratches her.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">"Bella can play with her Littlest Pet Shop cats," Andy counters.<span style=""><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>"Well, at least wait until all that cat food is gone," I say.<span style=""> </span>That ought to take us to 2013.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">One thing is for certain.<span style=""> </span>Molly was no bargain.</p><p class="MsoNormal">K3<br /></p>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-77891642326632347922011-12-19T10:37:00.000-08:002011-12-19T11:24:54.738-08:00For The Love of Money<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnrTUAGYV5SFURwH_s4B3PMjIKfvsRKcLS_EfZL0Dw9UhHKf5WQaxUyLlwuoqKndNSDs4Rh3kfVDIORnr_luj26Lifc77GLk1lreX6FGQspvvLgK7fm5IrqKwsPGCJ6JI9Y_3jeu-UdmTi/s1600/john+sr.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 193px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnrTUAGYV5SFURwH_s4B3PMjIKfvsRKcLS_EfZL0Dw9UhHKf5WQaxUyLlwuoqKndNSDs4Rh3kfVDIORnr_luj26Lifc77GLk1lreX6FGQspvvLgK7fm5IrqKwsPGCJ6JI9Y_3jeu-UdmTi/s320/john+sr.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687922454639641522" border="0" /></a><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]-->I never loved money.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span> <p class="MsoNormal">But I grew up surrounded by it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My impressionable adolescent years were spent on my island home in an environment created largely by the rich and even richer—blue bloods who made their living off the imported sweat dripping off the backs of folks like my Irish ancestors who crossed the Atlantic and then criss-crossed our nation with steel rails, guided by the black smoke marking their manifest destiny and filling the New York city coffers of my neighbors.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They carved their summer cottages in the graven images of Europe, palatial knock-offs in gold and marble which lined the Bellevue Avenue of my youth where I pedaled my bike beneath the graceful dreadlocks of giant weeping beech branches.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Imports, all of us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So it wasn’t easy for me to be impressed by ordinary wealth—new money, as they call it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Still, for a time, I was.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I grew up, parked my bike, and headed north to a small, liberal arts college where there were a lot of rich kids.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I fell in love.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I first encountered John Senior when I was sitting on a covered bridge watching orange and red leaves swirl below me in the currents of the Contoocook River which threw its watery arm around our campus like a protective lover.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My reverie was interrupted by a rhythmic wooden sound and I turned to see a boy striding towards me with a chunky, carved walking stick I would soon come to know as Half-Step marking his progress.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He wore a funky knit hat and a broad, confident grin.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Hey,” he said, passing by me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Hi,” I said, turning back to the blinding sun in my eyes and then around to watch his retreat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In and out of my life, just like that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And that might have been the end.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But it wasn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Not yet.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I saw him loping around campus but not up close again until one day when I was out running along a wooded path that followed our river and there he was again, his long brown hair unmistakably swinging my way with Half-Step setting his pace.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Hey,” he said again, his grin closing the gap between us, “What’s your name?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Kelly,” I said, slowing to a jog to answer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">He might have asked me what dorm I lived in, I don’t recall, but I do remember the knock on my door soon afterwards and a voice, “Phone’s for you.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In those days we had one hall phone for everyone that hung on the wall—no booth, no privacy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Hey, it’s John,” a voice said, “from the river?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Hi,” I said, my heart flipping around like the coiled phone cord in my hands which delivered his voice again to my ear.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Do you wanna go to the movies Friday night?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yes, I sure did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don’t remember what movie we saw, but I do remember there were some scary parts that had me diving for the safety of his shoulder and we exited the theater with his arm wrapped around me like the river.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">From there, our romance marched forward in full steps and soon I was spending much more time in his dorm room than in my own.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When his room-mate failed to return to school after Spring Break, we put the twin beds together and I took his place more or less permanently.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">John was the life of the party—the kind of guy they warn you not to marry.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His crooked grin charmed everyone he met and his confident charisma made him the center of attention, always.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When he turned his wide smile and deep brown eyes on me, there was no escape; his dark eyebrows blocked all exits.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>John was outgoing and generous, attracting a large circle of friends.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was no capturing him, even though I became his number one girl.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was all kinetic energy, always on the move, always ready for fun.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Even when he sat down, his foot shook incessantly, ready for its next move.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I fell hard for him and there would be no easy way back up.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He wrote me poetry and played songs with lyrics intended for me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We were young, strong, and smooth-skinned and I loved the feeling of his long fingers entwined in mine.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"></span>Half-Step was our constant companion while we ambled through the forest, kicking our Bean boots along woodsy trails which soon filled with snow. When winter released its icy grip we threw open the sunroof and drove the countryside in his blue Honda like we'd just been born.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>John introduced me to Tanqueray and tonic and was rarely without a beer or drink in hand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Our freshman year ended and we parted ways, he back to his home and me to a summer waitressing job in my neighboring state.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was too far and soon I moved over to his state and into the sprawling suburban home of his mother.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>John came from a trust-funded life of privilege, a boarding school brat from a world I had encountered on my own island but did not know intimately. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"></span>I studied it like a refugee from my firmly middle class background. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was purportedly an heir to a Poppin-fresh fortune that would make any dough boy giggle.<span style=""> </span>New money. His friends liked to party.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Hard.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was the late 70’s and recreational drugs were not uncommon. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"></span>We spent the last carefree days of summer swimming in his pool, hanging out with his friends on their estates or at Lake Quassapaug, and hosting a wild birthday bash for him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His last.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">School bells threatened and we choked out tense and tearful goodbyes as I flew off for a semester abroad in England where I was summoned out of my very first class—a Dickens seminar.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A phone call.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Kelly,” his mother said, “Johnny’s dead.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On Labor Day three hired thugs had kidnapped him, shot him three times, rolled him in a rug, and dumped him in the East River as part of a convoluted criminal-plot-gone-bad drama.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For a few hundred bucks, rum-drinking strangers had casually killed him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Wrapping up loose ends,” they explained.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Indeed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Any love of money I ever had evaporated.</p>I was 18 years old and cried the proverbial river until the innocence of my youth swirled away from me in the currents of distant memories.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mourned for John, for myself, for the We that we’d tried to be.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mourned for the smooth body I'd loved so completely, violated so cruelly, so violently; it broke my heart.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I managed to keep up my studies but quietly switched my major to mourning John Senior.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Walking for miles and miles thru the English countryside, I became a shadow of my former self, sitting for hours in damp stone churches which were always blessedly open and empty.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My fingers clutched at empty-handedness while I wandered through the ancient graveyards marking their exits, wondering at all the stories, all the broken hearts which lay buried beneath my feet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I spent a lot of time gazing at the sky and pondering the meaning of life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I could almost believe that John’s unbounded energy and zest for life were a sign we’d missed that he was not to be here for very long—live fast; die young.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But it still hurt.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span> <p class="MsoNormal">I finished the semester with John’s Cheshire grin filling my thoughts and his death enshrouding me and when I returned home, I transferred schools and began a new field of study.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One day, John’s mother came to visit.<span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">“I brought you a present,” she said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I followed her out to the parking lot where she led me, smiling, to a brand new silver car shining there in the winter sun, orange letters printed across its front doors proclaiming it to be “Le Car.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“This is for you,” she said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A car? I translated silently.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Um, thank you,” I said, understanding the French but not fully comprehending this unlikely gift.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">She hugged me and said, “I didn’t get you the stereo package; maybe your parents would like to buy that for you.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It was so surreal.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My parents had two kids in college and two more at home and no interest in buying me a car stereo.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I nodded, yes, maybe they would, because my parents would definitely want me to be polite. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I could not even fathom telling them that I’d just been given a new car, much less asking if they wanted to provide the soundtrack.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was saddened that somehow she thought this all made sense, this for that, but I guess in her world it did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Le Car was definitely a step up from the red ’64 Dodge Dart with black and white checked bucket seats I manually steered around my island home when not riding my bike.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was thankful to have a sparkling new car instead.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But still.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Weeping, John's mom handed me the keys and said, “Thank you for loving my son.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I did not love cars.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I did, however, love that John Knowlton Senior.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But nobody needed to thank me for that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">~ K3</p>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-73411947158289127242011-11-15T13:59:00.000-08:002011-11-16T11:13:02.379-08:00Fifty is the new Forty<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpPKW47K_J6JhIaYO_VTfbJ0UBtjcYI4tO7lyCPUyw6J9cstDraWQ-LnGkhL-3prrGmra9BXsR75HrmZkOqHLqFACPCASPtp1qu-n31gdxRNe0IH0BUJGUV0kqHcCkNErK0ceJud38agmS/s1600/IMG_1012.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpPKW47K_J6JhIaYO_VTfbJ0UBtjcYI4tO7lyCPUyw6J9cstDraWQ-LnGkhL-3prrGmra9BXsR75HrmZkOqHLqFACPCASPtp1qu-n31gdxRNe0IH0BUJGUV0kqHcCkNErK0ceJud38agmS/s320/IMG_1012.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5675347402821256642" border="0" /></a><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">I’ve been 50 for an entire day or so now and therefore, like many Americans, am ready to start dispensing the wisdom of my decade even though I am basically unqualified and inexperienced.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Fifty is the new forty, I’ve decided.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I never felt 40 when my calendar flipped from 39 but now I am ready to embrace it fully, hindsight being what it is and all.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So here is what I know thus far.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">You know you’re fifty when:<br /></p> <ol style="margin-top:0in" start="1" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">The Fred Meyer check-out gal asks if you qualify for the Senior citizen discount.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And the only thing worse than that is that you don’t.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And when you tell your mother about it she informs you that it’s because you have “The Moore” wrinkles.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Getting a couch for a birthday present excites you.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A couch.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For sitting on.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">A man at the Laundromat informs you while you are loading the dryer that he is “legally blind” and looking for a live-in “helper” and that he lives in a very nice <span style="font-style: italic;">one</span>-bedroom house and is hoping to find someone who is 50.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Or 60.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And you don’t even realize he is hitting on you until you tell your husband about the encounter later.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And you actually compliment him on his vehicle.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Which is a wheel barrow parked outside.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">You start universally hitting “I accept” to all terms and conditions on all electronic devices because you simply can’t read what it says and life’s too short anyway and you don’t feel like getting up to find your cheaters (which are yet another thing.)</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">You quit reading “50 things to do when you turn 50” after one essay on aging gracefully and accepting your new wrinkles followed by another encouraging a little nipping and tucking entitled, “Put your best face forward!”</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">Your AARP card comes in the mail and you start eyeballing motor homes and reading up on the national parks. </li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">You should be outside taking a walk but it looks cold and you are in the middle of an exciting Words with Friends game and you are attempting to take advantage of your free app download for your Blackberry (I accept, I accept…)</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">You spend more time watching salmon spawn than, well...</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in">You stop buying in bulk.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You have the flattest tummy in the OB/GYN waiting room and you’re not necessarily thrilled by that.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">You apply on a vacancy for the job you once had and are told you are no longer qualified.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">You actually think Words with Friends is exciting and justify your addiction by thinking it will help boost your brain power, which is another thing you suddenly think about.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">Your wedding ring band has been worn so thin it can't be repaired one more time.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">You have friends who are 60 and 70 and even 80 and your 20-year-old friends are your daughters.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">You post a blog (or email or make a phone call), get in the shower, and think of at least three things you forgot to say, including that you know you're fifty when you have washed your hair with body wash and washed your body with conditioner...<br /></li></ol><p>K3<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-34656154340380569852011-10-29T09:55:00.000-07:002011-10-29T10:03:55.528-07:00RIP Mr. George Richardson<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">Mr. Richardson was a summer fixture for me as a child, more constant than sunscreen (which we didn’t have).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I never knew him as a fall, winter, or spring guy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For all I knew, he returned each summer to Pocasset like a loon.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Like we did.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">With his classic flat-top crew-cut (his hair was always white) and his buck teeth, Mr. Richardson (we never called him “George” in those days) delivered our boat motor each summer and drove the silver ski boat for hours and hours every afternoon, teaching us all to ski with his characteristic favorite advice.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know what he always said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it worked.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We all learned to ski under his silent, patient tutelage.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">But the most fun to be had with Mr. Richardson was in the evenings. Rushing through dinner, we let the screen door slam behind us when the red truck appeared outside our cabin. Before Mr. Richardson could lift our garbage can off the nail in the tree, we were in the back of his truck, ready to do the garbage run with him, collecting from every cabin and riding all the way to the dump down the road where we hoped to see something exciting, like a rat. Summer just didn’t get any better than that..</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Karen and I grew to be best summer friends and I spent a lot more time around Mr. Richardson.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So I was lucky enough to discover that behind his thick glasses were twinkling blue eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I got to go horned pout fishing with him in the evenings, sitting in Jennings Stream at dusk with Janet, Karen, and our green drop lines, then pulling the barbed fish up, left and right, while Mr. Richardson patiently took each and every one off our hooks with a gloved and practiced hand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I felt privileged to be in that boat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Mr. Richardson, as usual, rarely said a word.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">To see Mr. Richardson was to see a man whose work was never done, but who was never in a hurry.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He slowly and purposefully went about doing, well, everything there was to do.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When I try to hear his voice, mostly all I hear is a meaningful silence.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Followed, sometimes, by a slow, “ayuh.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It seems that my summer innocence ended around the same time Mr. Richardson became George.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It just hasn’t been the same around the beach for many years now without George quietly going about his ways.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And even though I know that time marches on and change is inevitable, still, I miss those days.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I miss those colorful beach chairs that George built and maintained.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I miss that silver ski boat and the long line of skiers waiting to be towed—on skis, not tubes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I miss the red truck and those horned pout and grabbing leaves on the narrow road, which I also miss, and I even miss the dump.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I have missed Mr. Richardson for many years now.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And now I will miss George too.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Today is George's funeral in Wayne, Maine in the church where we were married 23 years ago. It is the same church where our son, Noah, was baptized 15 years ago and then memorialized a year later. It is an altar we know well. So even though we are 3000 miles away from George's service today, still, we are there in spirit. Rest in Peace, Mr. George Richardson, Lord knows you’ve earned it.</p><p class="MsoNormal">K3<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-19747338249225259612011-09-11T15:37:00.000-07:002011-09-11T15:48:38.627-07:00Still Nine-Eleven<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%">Isaiah’s chubby fingers fondled my neck as I strolled along the beach, my almost two-year-old riding behind in his blue backpack.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The air suffused our skin with September warmth and the sky blanketed us in blue, the ocean reflecting its beauty with a peacefulness that would soon be shattered.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Later, I would recall this tranquility and remember another day twelve years earlier when, like today, an unusual stillness had permeated the air as I took my lunchtime walk along the San Francisco waterfront.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The bay had glistened calmly and the gulls were silent.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The earth was holding its breath but we didn’t discern its foreboding.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In a few short hours it would exhale a 7.1 Richter scale “OHM,” blowing buildings off their foundations and dangling cars and passengers beneath buckled bridges.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This day would likewise bring a bustling city to its knees, forcing folks to shed their coats of isolationism and embrace one another like small-town neighbors seeking comfort and reassurance.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But this day would not be defined by Mother Nature.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This day would be remembered for Human Nature.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I was preoccupied by my own struggle with life and death.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%">I kissed my son’s fingers as the gentle Atlantic caressed her baby sands, the comforting weight of my chattering bundle an antidote for the loss of his brother, our ninth baby, due to arrive that very day but who had died mysteriously in March.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’d headed to the beach that morning to think about the short life held four months within the depths of my body and which remained in my soul, like a tiny shard of glass not yet tumbled smooth by time.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I smiled at the glimmer of hope now known to me by flutter kicks in my womb and prayed all would go well this time.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The gulls screamed overhead, sensing no earthly need for silence.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%">We concluded our walk and drove towards a doctor’s appointment with my radio tuned to its typical NPR, my meditation interrupted by breaking news unfolding a mere hundred miles away in Manhattan.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I listened, stunned, as the familiar voice told how a plane was engulfing thousands in a jet-fueled hell while the beautiful blue day shone all around us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I called my husband who turned on the tv as another plane struck the second World Trade Tower.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“People are jumping out of windows,” he said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%">I continued driving to my appointment, life marching on for the rest of us. “Did you hear about New York?” I asked the ultrasound technician as she scanned my belly, casually chatting, not expecting any more disasters.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I should have known better.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My three-month-old swimmer had stopped kicking inside of me and now lay crumpled on the bottom of my womb.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Like the day, we all finally became very still.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Screaming gulls filled the void where a heart used to beat as people stepped out of windows, flying off to meet my baby.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"> </p>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-69011599282734578592011-08-01T20:58:00.000-07:002011-08-01T21:01:59.128-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieBApk4tovt9-0YkrVO9q55elSoTZyeA4wj8DNg6moRu-9xwCtjCCD1tWIjRhQiLW49iHz2RRLxyJ2B6zMIa_6rl-wwYGyDvP54-bTJYunmLSLwBacc_yPtuGNM_q_rNB0Ktd9xCw3i2JX/s1600/IMG_0319.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieBApk4tovt9-0YkrVO9q55elSoTZyeA4wj8DNg6moRu-9xwCtjCCD1tWIjRhQiLW49iHz2RRLxyJ2B6zMIa_6rl-wwYGyDvP54-bTJYunmLSLwBacc_yPtuGNM_q_rNB0Ktd9xCw3i2JX/s320/IMG_0319.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636103833015500930" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">Duncan Munchkin Kittel</p><p class="MsoNormal">11/17/01 – 7/27/11</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Who loved: hot dogs, peanut butter, coconuts, snow, bones, tennis balls, other dog’s toys</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And hated:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>fireworks, loud noises, delivery trucks, mailmen, people touching his ears, that old woman who walked on Second Beach with a white hat</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Duncan was born the runt of his litter to Tatum Smallwood on the coast of Oregon and became ours as a promise fulfilled to Christiana with the vision of a mid-sized dog.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(He never knew his father.)<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When we moved to Rhode Island from Salem in 1999 we left our dog, Dude, behind with Andy’s parents and Christiana begged us to let her have one of the first-grade classroom quails.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Andy said no but promised her she could get a new dog after we settled in.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He flew across country the following December and brought her promise home in time for Christmas and snow.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>From then on, Duncan always loved snow and would bury his nose in it and sneeze.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As we traveled home from the airport we tried on names and asked, “What would be a good east-coast name?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Dunkin Donuts being the quintessential representation of New England, we answered, “Dunkin Munchkin!”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so he was.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Duncan chewed on our stairs and scratched our floors, growing in our hearts and family and vastly exceeding everyone’s expectations until he reached 110 pounds.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was one year younger than Isaiah and they grew up together with Isaiah riding him like a horse.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He went to puppy training at the Potter Shelter and passed K-9 training and when we moved to Portugal he stayed with Matt, his trainer, spending a lot of time in Vermont that winter playing in the snow and sneezing with Matt’s other dogs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When we returned, Duncan was five and graced the cover of the Newport Daily News in full color walking Second Beach on a winter day with Andy and I during the controversial leash law debate.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He had no leash.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Duncan spent many, many happy hours walking with us on the beaches of Rhode Island, Oregon, and Costa Rica chasing tennis balls (each ball lasted only one walk), sticks and coconuts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Duncan ruled Mohawk Drive, often laying in the middle of the road and blocking traffic.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our yard was littered with his collection of stolen pet toys from the neighborhood animals.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His morning routine consisted of walking the kids to the bus and waiting for the bus driver, Gene, to give him a dog treat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After waving goodbye he trotted over to the horse barn and played with the dogs that lived there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Once when he wore the cone of shame for some minor surgery these folks signed it as if it were a cast and it was then that we began to realize that Duncan knew everyone in the ‘hood,’ including folks whom we did not.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He spent his days between our house and Jack and Kathy’s across the street where he tortured their cats, Grace and Buddy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When the hour approached each day for Don and Rosemary to come home, Duncan headed across the street to await his daily treat from them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He knew everyone and their schedules and was doubtlessly more popular than were we.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">When we moved to Costa Rica, Duncan drove with Andy and Micah in the Black Panther from Rhode Island to Playa Conchal, riding in the back seat as their security guard.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was in the tropics that he developed his obsession with coconuts, ripping them open with his teeth, no easy feat, until he came to the nut inside.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He waited all day for someone to throw them to him and never tired of retrieving it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sometimes he dropped them in the pool and sat and stared at them for hours.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was relentless and could carry them, whole and heavy, to the beach where we would do our best to shot-put all 20 pounds of them into the ocean for him to swim after.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He loved to swim in the warm, salty Pacific and we always laugh about the time he was chasing a ball around the pool and he slipped and fell into the deep end.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When it came time for us to leave, Duncan flew solo internationally on Continental to Oregon where the Smallwoods picked him up and he hung with his ornery mom until we arrived to build the yurts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A few months later we went up the river to a bonfire and brought Duncan along to see his mom, thinking she would be happy to see her son.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She was not, barking at him like he was an intruder.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Duncan was a great friend to G’ma Kittel while we lived with her and she spoiled him with treats and let him sleep in the house.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When we finished building the yurts and moved up the creek he made himself at home and usually slept underneath the yurt right beneath where our bed was.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Any time we arrived home he came out from under the shade of the yurt to greet us, running alongside the car as we came around the yurts and parked.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was always a very happy fellow and befriended everyone he met.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He took to sunning himself in the middle of the forest service road just above our yurts which is where that the Lincoln County dog officer picked him up.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was then that he earned his <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>title, “a dog at large” while serving his time behind bars, even though Andy attempted to inform them that he was simply “a large dog.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Duncan was diagnosed with bone cancer as we packed up to come home from our second year in Costa Rica in June.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When the kids and I arrived on Father’s Day he was so happy to see us and still managed to walk the road with us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the cancer spread rapidly and he must have been in a lot of pain as the tumors grew daily before our eyes and his hind leg became useless.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Still, he rarely complained.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He visited Christiana in RI in a dream and told her he could wait for her arrival at the end of July.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And he did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He waited for her in the shade under the yurt, gradually coming out only to eat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His friend, Mocha, visited him daily and kept him company.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Christiana arrived and Duncan rallied enough to take one last evening stroll with us down along the creek.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The next day we loaded him into the van for his final trip to the beach.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He made it down the ramp to where we all collapsed in the warm, soft sand and pet him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He watched the other dogs playing and even socialized with a few of them as we made our way back to the car for the sad trip to the vet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The vet came out to the car and relieved Duncan of all of his pain while reciting the poem, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“<em>All things bright and beautiful</em></i><span class="st">, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.” </i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="st"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="st">Duncan</span><span class="st">’s pain was erased and ours began.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He left us with sand in our ears and tears streaming down our faces for our great and terrible loss.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We brought his body home and laid him to rest in a large hole under a gnarled apple tree, scattering wildflowers in the freshly turned earth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A moss-covered crook in the branch juts out over the foot of his grave and it is lovely to sit in and swing your feet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is Bella’s favorite place to climb to and practice her jumping off.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Countless times in the ten lovely years that </span><span class="st">Duncan</span><span class="st"> was ours I would find myself on his tail end as he greeted one friend or another, bearing the brunt of his enthusiasm unhappily as he smacked me with the strength of his strong appendage.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span><span class="st">Duncan</span><span class="st"> lived the motto, “Wag More, Bark Less.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Now we will sit on a mossy cushion watching the flowers bloom and blanket our beloved </span><span class="st">Duncan</span><span class="st">, wishing forever to complain so again.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p>K3http://www.blogger.com/profile/18219516580056290569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3355378107816908643.post-34125702335871619862011-08-01T20:53:00.001-07:002011-08-01T20:53:13.291-07:00Photo Book<object width="425" height="425" 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