First Green

My couch is old old old, maybe from the 30's, 20's, or earlier; this is told by the recipe someone invoked to make a couch. The upholstery is a polished cotton, not the original covering, but a subdued facsimile; the material therefore came from a plant, grown from seed and harvested possibly by hand if gathered before 1940. Machinery was invented in the 1850's, but was not economically feasible because slavery was cheaper than running an engine or keeping up with repairs. Anything made before that time likely passed cotton fiber through human hands. 

Inside the couch is more cotton batting, supplanted by horse hair clipped from tails and manes when the horse was put down. The frame is a heavy oak wood grown as a tree for 20 to 30 years (oaks are long-lived and usually produce acorns only when they reach the age of 50), the springs are tempered steel composed of iron, carbon, manganese, silicon, phosphorus, sulphur, and oxygen; the webbing is jute, a fibrous reed grown in Asian climates also used for twine and burlap. I am sitting on a once living thing, a composite of life forms and minerals fashioned by human economy. Did I mention that this once alive being has clawed feet? Think of the possibilities.

Considering the age of the couch, it has supported convenience for decades; the minerals, plant, and animal life was stopped or interrupted almost a century ago, then processed from their original form into usable materials. We stopped time for them, the only place to go is into further deterioration and eventual discard. However, I will fight for this couch and care for it as best as I can. How long it will last has already been several someone's lifetimes, but what happens once I relinquish ownership is undetermined. For now, it is still a luxury of history that has timely conversations bouncing inside its frame of coils and fiber. 

It will only be reborn and refurbished at the desire of the owner, a subordinate fancy to what is now occurring in the natural world. Growing things are coming alive again, as it is springtime here in the Northeast of the United States. This area is lucky to have four seasons, with the quickening of spring providing wonder at the newness of, well, everything.

More foals are being born, more reeds are being planted, trees are exhaling oxygen through their leaves once again, brightening the brain. This is the first green, the greenest time before the growing things show stress and breakage by disease or aging.  Everything is fresh, luxuriously lush, with a show of flowering trees and flowers that lean their now exposed necks to the sun.

Oh tulips, oh daffodils, oh crocus, oh green mantles of ferns in the woods. The mushrooms are emerging in the sequence devised by species; morels are early, then arrive agarics, and slime molds (which are adorably beautiful), all rousing from mycelium just under our feet. Fungi form symbiotic relationships with trees, and behave as a wonderful network enabling the trees to communicate with each other through the system of roots and mycelium, it's rather magnificent to imagine.

The yellow green flowering buds are falling off the maples, covering the ground with a carpet of minuscule cups; petals in pinks and rosy reds rain down from the plums and crabapple trees; look carefully for the blue shells of robin's eggs cleaned out from nests. It is a more colorful, abundant, and soothing promise of life beginning again, life that cannot be stopped. 

Snowdrops have passed their time, as has maple sugaring and the first robins; now there are the warblers migrating back, thousands of them passing through at night, headed for summer homes. Go look for them, they are tiny but spilling over with song; chickadees, which stay winter long, are yelling their heads off, nipping at bugs and buds. Lilacs are opening, their rare perfume here for only a short moment. It is busy, this spring. The hardships of winter are folded away like mittens and woolen scarves, not thought of until October frosts return. For now, it is green shoots and mouse-eared leaves.

Crack a window open, to let the cool night air spill over the sill as you sleep, to breathe in the exhalations of the new grass as dreams run over fresh ground, happily digging in with long-legged strides through soft meadows. The constellation of Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, is above with Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper its fainter companion. Follow the line formed by the Big Dipper's ladle and you will come to the tail end of the Little Dipper's handle; this is Polaris, the North Star.

Sleep well, paddle your night coracle through the flowing Milky Way, sweep stars from your path, and catch the little fish that elude time and memory.

Alphonse the Tree

We lived in a house made of stone, the secret being the walls were double thick; a layer of rectangular-cut blocks layered over what only could be called boulders. The house came at a cheap price, as some of the iron rods holding the two layers together had let go, allowing the south side of the house to develop a bulge, the stone blocks heaving away from the inner wall. It was scary, who knows how long it had taken to develop, but architectural consensus gave the outcome of an exploding stone bomb waiting for a heavy truck to go by to jostle things along. 

Years passed, it was repaired by a stonemason who knew his business well; this is how I was able to see the amount and size of the immense rocks taken out of the opened wall and numbered. The house was stabilized, and became a loved place to live. Not that it wasn't prior to repair, it was one of those circumstances of walking in to view the place and feeling a tide, a current pulling you to home. 

I scraped windows that had been painted shut and learned how to tie the cast iron weights with rope around pulleys, allowing them to open and stay up without being propped. The original part of the building had been constructed in 1860, and the story goes that it was a central location for farmers to bring produce, hence the double stone to keep things cooler. In 1904, it was purchased and made into a residential house, with a kitchen, dining area, and pantry added onto the back. Echoes of past life permeated its bones; I still have a slug that I dug out of a door, and some of the square-headed nails used for the first roof.

Brian, our boy, loved the house, and one day brought home a tree seedling, growing in a cut-off milk carton from school.  He was ten, in fifth grade, and took care of his little tree which took hold and was transplanted into a regular pot at first, and then to an honored place in the front yard. He named it Alphonse.  

Life changed and the house was sold, but the tree, a honey locust, grew tall; it was a part of my son still attached to a home he had loved. He visited the tree whenever he came back into town with a slow drive down the street, introducing his wife and daughter to the memory. This year, this time, it was different.

"They cut the tree down, must have just happened; there are still wood chips in the front yard". It wasn't our property or our tree any more, things are transient and learning to accept them is a part of growing up. But here I am, even at my grown age, feeling a small pang of loss.  What my son feels is considerably more, a further good bye to a small mark that he put on the earth. 

Who knows what happened; there was a whipping wind storm a couple of weeks ago, the tree may have snapped or been too damaged.  I can't imagine any other reason for a tree that the newer people lived with for years to be taken down mid-winter. Did the roots damage underground pipes, were the tiny leaves clogging gutters? All conjecture, none of that matters, truly. All in all, Alphonse the tree lived for almost 32 seasons of leafing out in spring, sleeping in winter.  

Letting go is one of the best things that one can do; not to forget, but to release tethers that keep you in one spot. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, be kind, don't hurt others. Guess that's my best unasked for advice. Other things to care for will come and go, to exist in memory as a blanket against the tirade of stress and pressure. Yes, they will. I promise, and I never make promises.

Sleep; the dark nights of frost create a yearning to huddle and hibernate. Finnegan the Orange One is meowing for the bedtime snack to be revealed, city lights from my window travel in rows, outlining streets and spires. Make good things happen, fling open windows and breathe the clear, cold January air. Sleep well and deeply, the boat of dreams calls, sail among the stars. Good night.

Something Simple

Here it is, right off the bat; put the words "The Amazing" in front of your name and see how it feels. It throws waves of embarrassment over me badly enough that I want to cry and hide, that there is a falsehood, a bold lie that no one in their proper mind would connect with me.  So, where did this fountain of unease come from?

Since attending college in my later years, I was expected to and thereby taught myself to read introductions in books; the early 18th century authors would write one as an apology, an explanation to their audience that the ideas and stories presented were worthy, however, the writer expressed his, (at the time women were considered hysterical ninnies; but in truth I have found that hysterical ninnies still and will always exist in any gender), concern that the intention of the book was for safe amusement, and hopefully not a path to jackanapery and gin by hoodwinking gentle folk away from embroidery or shoeing the horse.

When I was younger (pre-40), introductions seemed to be paragraphs strung together as so much farfel that wasted reading time before getting to the solid part of the book, and that by reading, I could divine what anyone would pre-say about it, especially if the intro was written by a supposedly notable being who I imagined was a paid shill. Reading an introduction was like going for the thinner shell of a hollow chocolate rabbit before the solid ears; why bother? Just snap the head off before your brother found your bunny and claimed it for himself. We were the House of Headless Rabbits, sort of a French Revolution variant of Easter warfare. 

My skepticism of verity or that a writer could be friends with anyone tamped down the idea that these beginning pages were anything more than a snare--"introduction by Truman Capote", "by Hippocrates", "by the sentient culture growing in the refrigerator that used to be a casserole"--which also padded the book with a number of pages. Writer friendships are difficult, as there is a disposition of the job which needs the concocter to sit alone for weeks, living off of the occasional pet that has the misfortune to wander by. Erudition may not be enlightenment, but more related to indigestion combined with a misdirected pledge to set things right. Opinions. What makes you think that yours is the right one and that you are no more than a member of a gaggle? Well, that's another story to fume over.

More recent, in the past few years, we have been dragged across the cheese grater of introduction blended with saccharine, sappy blathering by authors touting how the family barks for Mom's Special Corn Pie, just like from the olde days when grandpa brought in wood for the fire and Aunt Melda wore her favorite slippers. "I had to fight my husband for the last piece." (See bunny ears, par.2, above). Thank the heavens that there usually is a small button at the top of the article saying "Jump to Recipe", which helps you avoid being hit directly with a cannonball of smarmy, unctuous discharge. No getting completely away, you may yet be sprayed with emotional oozings but you can armor yourself with any newspaper headline ahead of time. 

My goodness, I just wrote an introduction. Yikes.

This morning I picked up a book, and in a flurry of thoroughness taught by my British Lit of the 1700s professor, read the intro. The minor epistle was no more than a rah-rah section of How My Life Turned Around Because of This Book by an invited entity, who is now an instructor for the method. This developed into a hoity-toity suspicious attitude on my part, but I continued on to more meowings and thank yous to this or that, one or the other. Then a phrase caught my eye.

"And thank you to the amazing Carol Waggowitz, who blah blah blah and blah." Amazing? Carol is amazing? Amazing is when you trip while carrying a cup of tea without disaster, or maybe a green lightshow in the sky called the Borealis. Can Carol catch a ball on the back of her neck? I can.  Maybe I am amazing also. Let's try it. "The Amazing..."

Holy molasses. What have I done that would be in that category? Yes, I have caught numerous bowls and cups that were then restored to stability. Maybe amazing, but fleeting and without note in the local paper. Yes, I had a baby, once bench-pressed 90 pounds, have had paranormal experiences, and came out of a horror of childhood, but to me, "Amazing" is a once every three hundred years flash in time. Not Carol, who may be a whiz at delegating jobs, meeting deadlines, or scamming hundreds of followers out of their simoleons, but she is just burning the candle at both ends either with caffeine or a Type A drive to plow her way to success. 

You want to see amazing humans, go watch silent film, especially comedian Buster Keaton. No CGI, few safety nets, mostly genius. 

But can you? Put those words in front of your name and face the feelings that erupt? Loss, failure, gender denial (yes, Dad, I'm a girl; sorry now stop buying me footballs and let me do science) (this is another can of worms), missed opportunity, depression, oppression, fear, mistakes and more mistakes. What makes us fabulous, besides a fairy godmother? Certainly not our own brains, which seem to be hellbent on killing whatever ember still glows under the ash.

Well, you try it and let me know. Am I making too much of a trite turn of phrase? I just know that I am not even close to being so, unless you go into the "we are stardust" area of life, when perhaps we were once charged particles blown by the solar wind through the magnetosphere.  Now that would be amazing.

We are headed towards the winter solstice, when the tilt again will accommodate returning sunlight ever so slowly; we gain a half hour of illumination by the end of January. But now, right now, sleep is one of the most lovely of domains, a pile of blankets a blessing.  Prepare yourself for sleep, starting soon after 7 o'clock, and the fractious cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla will cooperate with the hypothalamus and pineal gland to waft you softly, softly off to slumberland where the little silver minnows of dreams slide through currents and tides. Sleep well, I will watch for you.

Missing Peace

The epic stolen wallet story has been meowed to the tree tops, the store windows as I walk by, and the little worms in last year's apples.  In other words, it's over, with the gracious St. Anthony providing closure.  I was so happy.  Other people came forward with stories of this man coming up with lost rings and lost loves; I shall light a candle for him, which I did.

But how can this get better?  A STATUE!  You know Catholics, even a few of the lapsed ones, are big on representations of dead people who supposedly died in exceptional grace, and it's sort of like collecting Star Wars figures in my mind, no smirking intended because, boy, St. Anthony has come through enough to grant him some respect at this address.  A statue.  Someone to talk to besides cats.

From eBay, selection was easy, nothing too frou-frou, just a simple fella with the painted eyes looking in the same direction.  Representations have St. Tony holding a stem of lilies for his purity, and often a baby Jesus who was found in his arms while having a vision.  Don't forget that the man was ill most of his life, and was treated by medieval medicine based on the Greek idea of your humors out of whack.  Blood letting, rubbing a lump of lard on the patient then feeding it to a dog.  Well, you see.  The deck was stacked against living very long, for those remedies are as effective as butter on a burn.  Like Mom did when the iron left a red streak on my hand. Big fat double spoonful of nope.  But maybe they give you visions.

I waited for the box.  I waited for the cat food and cat toys which were to be delivered by the carrier that isn't the postal service.  The seller's feedback button fussed and harrumphed, let's get on with it, already.  Then came the notice!  Delivered!  Yay!  But to whom and where are a mystery.  Tweren't me.

A case of cat food, a cat playhouse, and two cat toys were missing from my door in the apartment building besides the 3 pounds of St. Anthony statue.  In my mind, and it has happened, the delivery was put at the right number door in one of the six other buildings.  I truly don't believe it was stolen by my neighbors, most everybody knows everyone else, yet, yes, there is the chance.

I let the pet company know, and their response was to send another duplicate order out to me, free of charge.  That's $70 worth of cat stuff.  This is the company known as Chewy, and brother, they are a part of what is right with the world.  I'm still embarrassed that they did that, but maybe their losses create a substantial tax write-off.  The gesture gave me warm fuzzies, and the cats, well, they are busy playing cat boss with their new fort.

But the other seller, who mailed St. Anthony out on his pilgrimage to my home; they are investigating through the carrier whose name begins with F, and hopefully the GPS or satellite eyeball in the sky will figure out where the package was left.  Not every neighbor in every building has golden wings of honor, and maybe this was a delightful gift of manna from heaven for someone and their own cat.

Maybe it was their poor little scruff of purr who's fed leftover noodles, and the owner saw this as an opportunity to better the feline menu, also with a catnip stuffed raccoon, and a cat fort.  Maybe they recently turned a corner and could use a saintly resin reminder that this ain't all about their own miseries.  Maybe they lost the last written note from a love who went to Greece to teach belly dance and would like to find it to put under a pillow.  I don't know, but maybe that load of stuff was needed elsewhere.

Yet to me, this speaks of irony.  My St. Anthony statue, who is accorded as the finder of lost things, is itself gone with the wind.  Lost.  It's a shame that the small business on eBay is going through a search and rescue, as am I, EXCEPT from this end, Fedex does not want to know anything about me.  Because a signature was not required, they claim no responsibility for where the package was left, which to me is a bunch of hooey.  I know the seller mailed Tony out, I know it wasn't received at my end of the transaction, and can only hope he shows up somewhere.

The conundrum is, who to ask for help finding St. Anthony when he took a left turn at Albuquerque? It's the essence of self-help, asking Anthony to find Anthony, similar to myself at the end of high school, when no clue of who, where, what, or why appeared to magically take my hand.  Now that would be an interesting course of study for teens; what the hell are you supposed to do after taking that last step off the terrazzo floor outside the guidance counselor's office and into the real world if you weren't going to college?  How do you get to your goals?  St. Joseph, patron saint of jobs; St. Matthew, a tax collector for the Romans, the patron saint of finances.  The Archangel Chamuel is a patron of love.  That's enough to get you started; at least, started thinking about things and how to really get there.

I was up at 5 a.m. today to be ready for a doctor's appointment at a preposterous time with a bit of testing tossed in.  Makes for a long day, and the night now pulls at my coattails, whispering of jammies and a bit of a read before.  It's an odd winter, full of fog with smallish puddles of snow every so often, which means more mosquitoes next year if the weather doesn't get cold enough to freeze them off.  But, now it's time to gather the cats.

Sleep well and long, it is still winter, when the outside world bundles up while we watch through glass windows.  Cozy and dark, woolen afghans old as grandmothers and grandfathers, pillows and clocks, cars heading home, far-off channel markers sounding plaintively in the harbor, sleepy children, tired animals, both grateful for a place inside.  Let go the day, have saints and wishes paint your dreams. Good night.

Food Stories

I rarely clip coupons, as the expiration dates, remembering that I have one, or having to buy 2 or 3 items to get a dollar off are reasons uninspiring.  Not that much of anything is used in the household, and certainly not brand name products; thrift stores, Aldi's, and Amazon are the triumvirate powers, the Bermuda Triangle which suck in my debit number and spit products back out.  Cash?  Hardly, and that is why the fast fingered thief who recently took my wallet for a holiday just got away with six dollars.

The counter clerk at the post office was handed the slip, asked me for identification, then trundled over to a small table where about 8 plastic envelopes, golden with a jolly Santa illustration, sat lined up.  It was still a minor miracle sponsored by St. Anthony as I sat in the car and opened the packet, spying that first corner of familiar red, indeed, my wallet.  Everything, every little nuance, cat stickers, friend's house key, wadded tissue, debit card, license, tool kit, Triple A, Blue Cross Blue Shield; all  still there.

Plus more; a Groupon coupon for fast food delivery from a local Thai restaurant that I never would have clipped or used.  Food delivery is not in my history; growing up in the fifties, only the milkman brought food to the door where we lived out in the sticks of Clarence, New York.  Cottage cheese in plastic cups called raffiaware, Squeezies of lemon or orange sherbet, margarine that had a colored tablet to be mooshed into the grayish slab, butter, ice cream in cardboard cartons; that was about it.  When we moved to Tonawanda, a bread man would roll his truck down the street, throwing candy at the kids and ringing a handbell.  But regular food?  There wasn't even a pizzeria to order from, much less have it brought to the house.

There was a Hobart's slaughterhouse, however, where you could get really fresh ground beef; my Mom would go with my Auntie Ann, who knew how to drive and had a car.  It put both me and her off from eating hamburger for months.  Aunt Ann and my Uncle Bob would also rent a chicken plucker, then get 100 chickens to process and keep in one of their giganto chest freezers; I would be invited to help, which I did, gladly.  Innards fascinated me, and learning the colors of what each organ was matched the transparent overlays of the human body in my science book.  By the time the chickens got to me and my cousin Michelle, they looked like the supermarket sort, except the guts needed scooping out with rubber gloved hands.  They smelled burnt, for my aunt would singe the pinfeathers over her gas stove after my uncle had defeathered them, after killing.

Sometimes an egg would be there, the shell not quite formed; these went into a plastic sandpail.  You saved out the dark red chicken livers, hearts, and gizzards, were very careful with the green gallbladder, the crop was just above the stomach fascinatingly filled with grit, the lungs were pink, and there was something yellowish, a pear shaped thing.  The guts would go into a metal bucket, which my uncle sold to a farmer down the road, Mr. Wuhlers, for his pigs.  Wuhlers was an old German fellow who had seven springs on his property and stories of bobcats and fishers disturbing his animals, and my father would haul buckets of the spring water for my mother to drink when she was pregnant with my brother.

Even if we went to a drive-in movie, Mom would pop our own corn and take it in the large yellow bowl.  When little, I only remember two places that we ever went to; one was Ted's Hot Dogs under the Peace Bridge when we would visit my Grandma and Grandpa in the city, the other was the Turkey Roost, which was just down the way on Main Street near Gunville Road.  They raised their own white turkeys in a coop around the back.  Noisy things.  A Henry's Hamburgers later opened up on Sheridan Drive with fifteen cent hamburgers that made my father's eyes pop open and his pupils spin like cherries from a one-armed bandit in the cartoons.  Fifteen cents!  A working man's dream.

In the city, there were more offerings such as a popcorn cart, the rag and bottle man, a wagon pulled by a horse with produce, and a fish market that had the live fish swimming against the front window. I don't remember a restaurant down on Grant Street, at least one that we went to except for the counter at Woolworth's, which would sometimes be a stop during a shopping trip, but just for tea.

So when the Groupon coupon appeared in the returned wallet, I knew that it wasn't there prior.  Was it meant as a consolation prize?  Was the man saving it for later and just slid it into one of the card pockets?  Did whoever put the wallet into the mailbox add it?  I don't know, nor  is there any temptation to use it.  $12 dollars off a delivery means that the sum of the product is close to an amount I wouldn't pay for real food from a real grocery.  Plus tip.

Maybe I need to get with the times, friends (younger ones, to be sure) order online and have it brought to the door.  Food trucks ride the streets in battalions, gathering in Larkinville during summer months.  There is an Ice Creamcycle Dude who pedals his wagon all over the city, offering deals if you can answer a geography question.  Food is a way of exploring, of being in sync with your fellow creatures, including the dog and cat.  Funny how it's turning into delivery of pre-measured ingredients for a dinner or as a menu choice from a virtual ghost restaurant.

The wind is coming from the east, with a drop in temperature causing the rain and fog to crystallize into snow.  It's cold in here, since the windows are all on the east, and the hot weather air-conditioner is in one of those windows with drafts abounding.  It is New Year's Eve, a night to watch the old year dwindle and creak quietly away into squalling new resolutions at midnight.  Perhaps later in the week, an unfamiliar venture into online food is in order; after all, paper towels and cat food arrive at my door these days, why not Thai?  My Grandma's recipe for Cabbage and Boiled Wieners in white sauce is shaking its ancient head in dismay, while murmurs of Pho suggest gastronomic ethernet escapades.

Good night, good night all and Happy New Year.  At midnight, my Mom would wake me to hear the factory whistles and church bells sounding at the strike of twelve.  In the lonely darkness, peering out the back screen door at low stars hanging in the pitch black sky, the far off sounds would carry through the cold air, alive, connected, haunted.  I knew that somewhere, a person had toggled a switch, pulled a lever or rope that created a call of celebration acknowledging another revolution around the sun.  It was all that we did, she would hustle me back to bed as if it were a secret, and I would lie under the wool blankets with my cat Smokey, talking to God about wishes.

Sleep well.

St. Anthony

I was brought up strict Roman Catholic, the kind that sat through the Tridentine Mass, lived through meatless Fridays, and pinned Kleenex to the top of my head if I forgot my chapel veil.  As far as those Fridays, my Protestant mother cooked me a hot dog for lunch one time, and made me swear not to tell my father.  Her imagination for Fridays included fishsticks, and whatever else could not be meat but was a cooked meal.  She had the law as laid down by my father that dinner was to be hot, not breakfast food, and included me not eating with them at the table.

Her go-to Friday night supper was usually mashed potatoes (hot), Birds-eye bright orange squash (hot), and fried eggs (hot).  We weren't a fish eating family unless it came from the frozen food section in rectangular sticks and was breaded.  Even those were consider fancy, exotic, and desperate.  Picky food for blue collar families.  But then, the Church said no meat, and if you were over the Age of Reason and ate it even if your own mother put it on your plate, it was a venial sin; if you actively planned to go to your Protestant friend's birthday barbecue and ate a hamburger on purpose, now that was a mortal sin, an offense against your relationship with God.  Two hamburgers and here come the pitchforks.  However, if Mom threatened to clop you one in the head if you didn't eat what was put in front of you, that was understood and accepted as an act of self-preservation

Sort of like you can kill a dude if you are in danger of losing your life from his actions.  The rules and regulations of the Church, well, I'm not familiar with the latest interpretations and revisions for I stopped going once I found out that after annulment, dotting all the i's necessary, and paying $350 for the process, that attending Mass was allowed, but not communion.  I was supposed to go to "Divorce Class" for another fee.  These days, 25 years later, it seems to have let up a bit, and an annulment gives you a pass to belong fully to whatever the Church is dishing out. Still, if you remarry without an annulment, you are not considered as being married by the Church. You are to live together as brother and sister, and unable to participate in sacraments.

But, there are perks to being Catholic, and the biggest one besides the elaborate pageantry with candles, incense, mysterious rituals, visions, miracles, resurrections, and intercessions are the saints.  I can't begin to tell you the exact number of saints there are, and many were declared so simply by the Church upon their death until the year 1234, when it was decided that the process needed tightening up.  Criteria were established, so that just anyone killed in a brawl could not be found as deserving of reverence as a genuine, living on bread-and-meat-brought-by-a-raven holy person.

Each saint has the ability to intercede with God, to speak to God on human behalf; each one of them, and there are over ten thousand, have a connection to their life on earth.  This means that you can pray to the saint who has the most expertise in the area addressed.  For instance, St. Columbanus is the patron saint of motorcyclists because he traveled, wandering through Europe.  St. Ambrose is the patron saint of beekeepers and candlemakers, St Theresa of Avila favors lacemakers and chess players.  You got a problem, the Church has a pavilion full of saints.  This also underscores the life after death thing, if you have a whole, working, categorized community in another dimension.

So, this is the story: On December 9, twenty days ago, my wallet was stolen out of my purse which was in a drawer in my classroom.  There was only $6 in it, and I will only say that it was not a student.  Today, twenty days later, I found a notice in yesterday's mail that the post office is holding a lost wallet for me, $3.60 postage, please.  My wallet?

A friend had suggested that a prayer to St. Anthony might get it back, and I think I snorted; now, I have begged St. Tony for car keys a hundred times, but a wallet stolen by a perp?  Naw. No. Har de har har.  But I talk to the unknown regularly, so why not?  Presumptuous of me, why should anyone listen about a wallet when so many serious problems trouble the world?  Yet I did; I apologized for bothering him, but if he had connections, and if it wouldn't hurt anything or anyone, it would be nice to have it back, thank you, and here in the mail is a notice saying come and get it, after you pay the postage.

Don't forget, that if you ever do find a wallet, a driver's license, or government I.D. card, you can drop it into a mailbox and the USPS will put it in an envelope and get it to the owner.  I want to find out the particulars, such as which mailbox, when was it dropped in, and then ask if I should call the police as I had filed a report regarding the incident.  Probably.

But then, there is still this business with St. Anthony, or was it merely the wheels of time?

The corner to 2020 is sliding into place, a leap year, a Chinese year associated with the rat, indicating prosperity.  Light is gaining a toehold, and cats and saints are keeping score in the matter of lost things.  Roscoe stole the bath tub plug and plopped it into the cat food, still has my twenty dollar bill, and returned the lost Apple Watch.  St. Anthony has revealed places hiding car keys, cell phones, Finnegan the kitten, my mother's engagement ring, and simple calmness.  Calm.  Calm down, girl, it will reappear; and if not, you just live without it.

Within the curved hulls of sailboats, there are bunks with high wooden rails to keep you from rolling out if the weather is rough.  Mattresses are thin, made to be shaken and aired above decks; a decent blanket is cotton in summer, wool for colder nights.  When you are on a boat, this is what you see before retiring: the black evening sky full of stars and planets, the luminous Milky Way spilling across the vault of heaven and you wonder, what am I supposed to be doing here?  When you fold under the blankets, and lay on the flattest of pillows, you will feel the heartbeat of the earth contained in water's waves, pulsing and rocking your bed in rhythm with current and tide.

Sleep then, and pass through the door of forgetfulness.  Night will cover you.

Halloween At Last

It's my favorite holiday during my favorite time of year; leaves smelling of tannin shush shush around your feet, it isn't so dad-blamed hot, and my favorite color of orange is exploding in heavy pumpkins and the insides of squashes.

But, and it took me years to realize, it was the only holiday that my father didn't tear to pieces while  others he chewed up with his petulant bullying.  Any holiday, religious or not, was game for a loud and long demonstration of why he had to put up with you people.  The 4th of July, potato salad flew while my Mom cried; Christmas, for heaven's sake--you'd think that the apex of holidays for his religion would have soldered his mouth shut, but no.  I was a whore, my mother was a whore, goddammit this is Jesus' birthday, Jesus cleaned out the temple of moneychangers you lousy bitches  this is righteous anger from God while my Mom and brother cried, the volume alone terrifying.  Thanksgiving, my three year old brother helped stir the orange Jello and blammo, you're making him a woman, I remember the sound of the spoon clattering against the white glass bowl as my brother's face changed.  Thunder and hellfire, brimstone and death threats.  I learned what the word decapitation meant way too early, no wonder I slept with a night light until I was 21 and out of the house.

Halloween was the odd man, in that my father would buy the costumes at Western Auto on his way home from work.  The first one he got me was of Hot Stuff, a cartoon-based red devil, he seemed happy with his choice.

"What on earth ?" asked my mother.  Not one that a girl would usually choose, but to complain was to ignite a running fire.  Next year was Donald Duck.  Then Zorro.

Nonetheless, he would hide and leave answering the door to my mother, and the crowds of kids with their parents were probably the saving grace which put the brakes on his performance.  No arguments, not one broken dish or torn up sweater or smashed glasses.  It was freeing, to be out with your friends, going from house to house for treats, coming home with loot to examine and classify, and all of it was like advancing through a nighttime paradise.

I liked being something different than what I was, for the undercurrent of hatred for women unless they were mummified nuns permeated our childhoods more than I could appreciate.  I just thought that he hated me and adored my brother and it was my fault that he didn't like me.  Putting on a plastic mask and playing at being something else, devil or duck, was a small magic.

There was a year when we lived out where weasels ran and foxes stole eggs, way out in undeveloped Clarence, New York.  It was punctuated with dairy farms for the most part, wheat and corn fields, and cricks of clear water.  An old farmhouse owned by the Wohlers on Gunville Road stood unpainted and unelectrified, heated by a pot belly stove. To make a bit of Halloween for me, my father took me there, where Mrs. Wohlers had made orange frosted cupcakes from the wood cooking stove.  I remember sitting on his lap, and Mr. Wohlers bringing out his concertina which scared me, for it was loud, noisy, and frighteningly happy, the sort of thing to be avoided at all costs.  I began crying, embarrassing my father and scooting us home, with a couple of cupcakes wrapped in paper that had an odd, smoky flavor.   I wished I had been able to learn more about them, but they were a separate world and it was hard enough to negotiate the one I existed in.

We eventually moved to Tonawanda, New York, away from all the angry neighbors who had enough of us, where there were sidewalks, corner stores, custard stands, a Kresge's five and dime, street lights, and close houses.  The neighborhood had a few kids and we would strategize what streets we would approach and when.  Beggar's Night would take in our own street and Ferndale Avenue, on Halloween we expanded the radius to include Delaware Road, and decided to stay off of Knoche Road, for it was haunted.  

It was before plastic shopping bags, so we used the brown paper grocery bags as we ran across lawns and hoped the bottom would hold.  People handed out full size candy bars, which were a nickel each at the time, bubble gum, apples, small bags of popcorn, homemade cookies that would get mashed up by the apples, and coins.  Strangest thing ever handed out was orange juice popsicles, which were gratefully accepted after deciding that they weren't poisoned.  

Arranging groups of bounty according to similarities would take up the remaining night.  How many Oh Henrys?  Baby Ruths?  Clark Bars?  Chinese Bubblegum?  I would be gladly left alone, to regale the evening that happened without a what about me inferno as he continued to be sober, quiet, and reading passages from the missal.  I didn't have to talk to anybody till the next morning for school, for it was a time before parents checked candy for tampering.

I still enjoy Halloween as the most fun of holidays, for there are no feelings of loss or of memories best left in the cellar.  Children still are sticky happy with fun-size (how much fun can you have with something that small?) candies or the lord knows Now and Laters or Sour anythings.  I don't care for the horror now added, the bloodied plastic corpses or mangled limbs, but that comes from the real pronouncements my father would make of what he would do if we pushed him too far.  Some of the things he said would get him arrested these days.  Take it easy on your neighbors, you have no idea what some are going through within the alleged framework of family.

The sun is on the downward side of grey sky, headed for an hour earlier sunset as the earth still spins at the same speed, but with the axis tilting the Northern Hemisphere away as far as it can go come December, shortening our daylight. It's the reason this country flips hours in the summer. The use of electricity is decreased when the hour of light is placed at the end of day, and people are said to enjoy the longer summer evenings. About 40 countries use this switching of clocks to make the most of daylight when the lengthening occurs, which makes economical sense but frankly, I never get used to it.

Sleep well then, with innocence, for you are.  The dark is a blessing that stops the troubles of day as we sleep, suspending them on a string between dreams and morning bells.  Slide through the layers of nocturnal dormancy, while the subconscious bubbles to the surface like an amphibian taking breath.  Sleep on the waves of transitional slumber, your coracle taking you to answers, questions, night, day, echo, and contradiction.  Good night, my dear heart.









  

Roscoe Grounding

The grass is 8 inches tall in the city lot, and there is wind coming off the lake which creates waves of blades rising, roiling, shushing. The trees with their summer leaves are blustering as wind fingers through the clusters, branches nodding, yup and yup and yup; I sit at the red light in my car, watching, wondering how happy the trees are to feel the wind, how awake the grass is after being thrumbled by the quick breeze.

This evidence of life will fill you, like paw prints in snow, telling that you are not alone nor lost but are part of a cycle, the immensity of which is mostly incomprehensible not only in size, but in metaphysics.  Mystery, this; full of mystery.  For this reason, not only am I glad for trees and grass and flowers, but for the other living things trying to hang onto this whirling ball of rock and water.  The absurdity grounds me, providing a starting line for figuring out, except that I never will.

Roscoe, the cat I write often about, his black immensity, Sir Loin of Fuzzham, ye black hole of Raguel, the commander of earth and wind, concerns himself with many day to day duties, first of which is getting in the way.  He also enjoys stealing my stuff, but further, has found items that had been lost for years.

For example: an Apple iPod watch/music thing that was a gift from my son; well, it disappeared long before Roscoe arrived but days hence was left sitting mid floor in the living area, brightly red and dusty. WHERE, where did you find this??? Thank you dear cat!  I don't know if he recognized gratitude, but I know it was expected by the superior, leonine prance and pounce at my foot.  No compunction regarding claws, this one.

Truly I hadn't understood, in my humaness, his career as a retriever of objects; really, to me he was just moving items from one place to the random next, but then the supply of things to find became boring to him.  For that, his nostrum was to create an assortment of convenience, a cavalcade of objects fancied because of what they were made of, of how much noise would come out of me when something was missing, and most of all, what could be accomplished.  He concocted an armory of weapons, which represented the larger part of his cache, including an entertainment section as well.

You think this cat had no rhyme nor reason? Well, you decide. Lazing about on an early spring Saturday in blankets because it was too cold to get up, digital clock numbers edged toward brunch rather than breakfast and no plate of cat pah-tay had yet appeared.  I was getting to it, but Roscoe had a plan.  First, he charitably washed Kai who bit his ear, causing him to retaliate, causing me to flip blankets and dispense of Roscoe, who I felt bad for since he was doing a rare good deed.  I dozed again, until suddenly, a Dr. Scholl's blue shoe insert came at me, and hit me in the face.  Not dropped off, but flung like DiMaggio hitting one out of the park.  I heard a woo-hoo! as I saw a black hind end fly off the bed.

Emptying pockets of contents and storing them safely, especially car keys, is of notable consideration; during our beginning relationship, there on the counter I left two singles and a twenty dollar bill. Morning comes and there is only one single; fortunately, the cat was trotting tail high down the hall with a bill in his mouth, but it was only the other dollar. Yet three weeks later, by the water dish, the twenty reappeared, lord knows where he puts this stuff.  He still has another twenty from another time when I wasn't thinking.

Now, I get things from eBay; the breakables are padded these days with plastic bubbles, but more wonderfully often, long serpents of brown paper.  The cats love to tear through them, play cat fort, and make impressive skids at admirable speeds.  So here are some glass bottles for me, and here is fifteen feet of paper wadding for you to play in, have at it, kids!

I was not paying close attention while examining the bottles--"Black Cat Stove Polish"--but felt a delicate drop of something light on my foot. Thinking it was Roscoe bringing a piece of the play paper as a gift, I bent down to ooh and ahh for him, but noticed that it was a bill of some sort, a green back, a simoleon. Wow! Maybe it's the other twenty from months ago, but NO!  It was not.  It was a two dollar bill and where the hell this animal found a two dollar bill with Thomas Jefferson looking at me I have no idea. Where would he get a two dollar bill? Was it caught in the paper stuffing from the seller of bottles? Should I ask the person? "Uh, did you by accident lose a two dollar bill because my cat brought me one and I don't know what day it is anymore?" Perhaps it was stuck up in the couch.  Perhaps if I clap loud enough, fairies will appear.

His preoccupation momentarily is with the bathtub plug, it goes for walks around the apartment; additionally, plastic lids, my flip flops that now have vampire fang marks, three-inch iron nails from the Civil War, the new kitten Finnegan, earrings, wrapped cough drops, a string of Tibetan flags, shoes, shoe inserts, and my contact lens case have all been attended to.  He is intelligent, one of the smartest animals I have lived with.  It is an honor.

As I sit in early August, the daylight is going away earlier; it is only eight p.m., and the tone of the sky is changing to twilight leading to dusk; it will be dark by nine when only weeks ago the sun barely touched the horizon.  Bird migration has begun for those species who need to be in place by September; cicadas vibrate, and the orange daylilies are finishing.  Peaches and corn are coming to market, tomatoes soon; the earth spins to the east in prograde motion, counterclockwise with daylight shortening as the planet tilts.

Our moon is slowing us down by gravitational pull; the days are now longer than they were during dinosaur times, when they lasted closer to 23 hours.  Would we notice?  Probably, for it isn't that the day loses an hour at the end, but each hour would be over two minutes less; by the end of the day when the sun goes down, we would possible feel a little bit rushed, that there wasn't enough time to complete business.  Just enough to make us anxious, and head earlier to bed.  Imagine, you would be only 58 and a half when you turned 60.

Sleep well, it feels as if the thickness of the heavy summer heat has dissipated and the air has slipped into a clearer realm, one of my favorite parts of night.  Day phantoms are suspended, and lovely, clear air washes over all as we drift amid the waves and troughs of dreams.  Good night.

You Did What?

I looked at a kid today.  There were two candidates; the first one was wanging a plastic light saber around in a thrift store, not watching what was happening and completely unconcerned with body space of other shoppers.  ROWRRR ROWRRR ERRRROWWW!  Wap. Bam. Bash.

The mother walked as if she were a grand parade about seven feet ahead, and seemed to be as out to lunch as a BLT without tomatoes.  Now, in my head, my first grade teachering gave several solutions to the oncoming tornado of plastic, which was beating on racks of clothes, metal shelving, and buggies that were in the way.  None that could be implemented.  There was not one word from a parent, yet several yelps from other adults;  I took off towards another department,

I had to, I had to go in an opposite direction so as not to burst my teacher aorta; it runs up the side of the head and throbs at miscreant hobgoblinery.  Many, many adults have one under other designations, such as the You Did What artery, the Have You Lost Your Mind vagus branch, and the What On Earth Were You Thinking cerebrospinal canal reflex which creates superpowers in vision, hearing, and levitation as you can lift a kid up and suspend them midair with your brain voltage.  You've been there.

This child kept up the joy he felt, the ferocity of dunning his imaginary enemies until Mom Herself got hit.  Woof.  Electrochemistry erupted into a solid, then liquid, then gaseous state of matter as the grand regalia came to a halt, and the immense box store shook with a What Are You Doing Have You Lost Your Mind double header.  With swears I hadn't heard before, but apparently the kid had.  He wasn't too upset, and truthfully, neither was Mom because she tossed the toy into the cart instead of javelining the ceiling.  The child let out a half-hearted wail, but then began hopping around the cart for if he couldn't swing the sword around, he would dance on behalf of its glory.  The parade regrouped and sallied forth like a Buick covered in tissue paper flowers.

The next stop was grocery shopping, which needed attention the past two weeks; it went smoothly to the end in the frozen food section which is sort of encased in the middle of the aisle.  I just finished finagling with the sliding window and gripped the handlebar of the cart, ready to roll, but who is this? Coming towards me at a fair clip was a child who made a game of sliding along the freezer window while carrying a half gallon of milk.  Maybe six, seven years old, just my type, a first grader.  I didn't wish to hit her with my cart, and waited to see what direction Miss Fairydust would tinkle off to; however, she wanted my direction, not slowing until she caught my eye.  She paused, expecting me to move out of her way.

It's not a glare or frown, it is a calm, expressionless look which indicates that you put children between two pieces of bread with ketchup and eat them, and is this one volunteering?  This is not a stare of indignation or harrumphinity, but a cool, transmitting-information-through-eye-contact exchange.  You are actually happy that here is a new food source, and your spaceship is hovering just above the cloud cover, complete with a gingerbread oven.  She was all ready to continue hoppity-skippity, expecting me to react to her cuteness and make way for the Year of the Child, but no.  I have been done with cute for years.

We exchanged a fair bit of silent knowledge about what was happening, she got orientated, and an awareness clicked in her eyes like a signal from NASA had warned her that the aliens were not piecake friendly, and did not put up with Fairy Princess nonsense.  They were not here to give her a golden flag. Good to know that she will not be eaten if she just goes along her way.  She did, she walked around the cart while watching me, and continued her slide down the aisle, supported by the freezer case in which I opined to myself that it would store a lot of children for later.  I thought, my god, what did I just do?  I LOOKED AT A CHILD that wasn't mine, that I had no responsibility for, who wasn't hurting anything except expecting me to get out of the way of her tippy-toeing.

But really, every year with the new crop of students, I get a few who are indulged by parents until they can't figure things out for themselves.  I still have parents who do their kid's homework, allow them to interrupt conversation, or give them things they don't need.   These particular images almost guarantee that the child will become an entitled teenager, and then guess what kind of adult?  Not one looking for ways to help the community, lemme tell ya.  In spite of wondering if I did the right thing, I hope that the little girl maybe learned a bit of give and take.  She certainly figured things out.  I have a few at school who would have climbed into the cart and asked for ice cream.

Look, there are invisible rules that everyone could learn to follow, and it all goes to the main theme of being kind, loving your neighbor, treating people as you would like to be.  A bit of debate happened earlier, when a colleague mentioned that she separates her kids into boy and girl lines when traveling in the school halls.  A comment was made that whoa, what do you think you are doing, that's odd, please stop separating by gender.  Well guess what, so do I with my kids.

At six years old, the boys like to hit the girls, often in the butt; they push and shove to get ahead.  They want girlfriends, the girls want boyfriends, they have kissed each other, gossiped about who did what with who, and well, general yuck.  It is easier and more relaxed with some separation.  They aren't separated in the classroom, so there is appropriate interaction; but they desperately want to be grown up and so imitate what they see.  Teaching them to be kind and to respect each other's differences whether boy/girl, short/tall, or brown/sort of brown is critical to them becoming successful adults.  I guess I'm okay with standing my ground when faced with a six year old child who thinks that I am in her way rather than the opposite.  Besides, I hadn't paid for the ketchup yet.

It was a clear, cold day for errands, and most were accomplished.  Crows were calling this morning while foraging, Lulu is shedding her immense undercoat, and tulips were for sale at the grocery.  We have gained about an hour of light since the winter solstice, and for heaven's sake, Easter candy is on the store shelves.  But now it is dark, groceries are put away, Kai is on my lap, and the day is winding down.  Covers are calling, one of the wool blankets has been chewed by Snowbelle and needs repair, which can be done with a felting needle and roving.  It's a pink blanket, and the repairs will be made in varied colors for effect; just think, little six year old girl, would you like to learn how?  Grow.  Read. Try.  Err.  Try again.  It's fun, and opens the world.

Each of you has a talent, a hobby, a wish in your heart that casts itself over the waters which ripple in recognition.  The earth knows you, the oceans call, the points of light in the night sky shine down as you contemplate and dream.  You are part of it.  Sleep, my searching friend.

Smellicious

Bit of a touchy subject, but if it allows me to extoll the benefits of pine tar soap, so be it; no sensibilities will be offended.  Maybe a little banged up.

In this country, keeping your aroma invisible is a national pastime and thank goodness for that.  My son has traveled here and there, and has reported back that some areas of the globe are at the other end of the spectrum.  The other end, over the cliff, and out back of the shed.  Face it, folks; we're mammals, and if you can point in the direction of another mammal that smells pleasant naturally, you are most likely looking at a healthy cat.

Dogs smell doggy, apes smell ape-y, and if you've ever smelled a live chicken, we aren't talking about  Colonel Sanders's recipe.  The thing is, there are many species that have protective, odorous emissions, from birds such as hoopoes, to insects, to the homegrown skunk, and these aromas are usually connected with body fluid that comes from near the part which is almost always located at the back end of business.  There are birds who will projectile vomit to frighten off predators, and beetles who have separate compartments for the chemicals hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide.  When alarmed, the insect sprays both fluids at the same time; they combine and react, causing the new solution to reach almost 100 degrees Celsius.  Science, this bug has a doctorate in.

My millipedes, currently in hibernation, leave a small, malodorous puddle of dilute cyanide if I pick them up; it doesn't seem to bother me, and I do wash up before sandwiches, but enough of it could kill a small mouse.  I've read that lemurs get drunk on it.

But, ah!  Humans!  We are a singular species who create odors from almost every part of us; on top of that, we are covered in microorganisms who digest these volatile confits, and produce smells of their own.  A skunk produces less on it's skin than we do, and lord have mercy if you are a human teenager going through a time of life when one is abounding with an extra dose of bacteria.  Here is a short list of excretions: water, proteins, amino acids, urea, ammonia, lactic acids and salts, which means sweat, urine, breath, saliva, breast milk, skin oils, and sexual secretions all contain scent-communicating chemical compounds.  Now, so do other animals, but humans have more scent glands than almost any other mammal in their skin.  Therefore, greater the potential to produce.

Here is not so wonderful news; there is an old people smell.  It's not offensive, but it scientifically exists, just as baby, teenage, young adult, and middle age do.  You want amusement, type "old people smell" in the search bar, and stand back; there are causes both natural and dietetic, and the serious truth that if you are old, you have old things and these items smell after 30-40 years of existence and so you carry that with you, and smell like the couch that either a number of pets have sat on over the years, or candy-sticky, pizza-faced youngsters.  Or you, on a sweaty summer day.  Or again, you, relegated to the couch in pajamas slathered in Vick's.  It's a good argument for new furniture.  And anti-smell pills.

I have taken chlorophyll for years, and notice when I don't.  Recently, a purchase of pine tar soap was slapped into an order so I would make the free shipping mark, it was the cheapest item to add.  When it arrived, the smell reminded me of a fresh asphalt parking lot, and woof, why do people use this?
But I tried it out, and within a day, I remained fresh and approachable till the next ablution; within a week, most of my stubborn athlete's foot has disappeared; and best of all, no further is the fragrance of yesterday's chili dogs apparent after a long day.

Also, celery helps your smell from the inside outwards, persimmon soap neutralizes a chemical produced by aging skin, and as your older pituitary gland is not firing out as many signals to do so, remember to drink water like it's your job.

Now tell me, and you are lucky if this was; after a bath and clean jammies, Mom would make the bed with you in it once the bottom sheet was on.  We didn't use top sheets in our house, so the wool blankets were parachuted right on top, covered by a cotton comforter just out of the dryer.  Were the sheets and pillowcases hung out on a wash line in the sun?  Glory.  It was like having a nest in bed smelling like outdoors, like Mother Nature came inside for a visit.  Like things were okay.  Like that "if I should die before I wake" part didn't mean a sweet child like you even if you did cut your own hair earlier that day, because the smell of everything said comfort and safety.

Good night, good night, this chill day ends overcast and darkening a bit early with the cloud cover; time for soup, the cats' dinner, and a few chores before sleep.  The first week of February has ended, with hopes looking toward spring; dreams of housecleaning and sweeping out corners have begun. Floral displays of potted tulips and daffodils whisper come hither messages to the winter-weary traveler, and starting seeds indoors for gardens is beginning.  Sleep then, hibernation lasts a few more weeks of wind and cold; the new moon rises in direct east, and travels to west until the first quarter.

I think of the ones outside; the birds wait for the new buds as much as you or I, the trees ache for sun and sap rising.  Sleep well, tuck under.  Let go, I will watch over for you.

Candles and Cats

What other profession, tell me, anticipates being closed by weather and has created a whole mythology surrounding it?  Like a Rain Dance, a wish on a star, or as my Mom taught me, lick your thumb and twist it into your opposite palm, making a wish when the first robin is seen.  School teachers have rituals to bring on the snow or subzero cold here in Buffalo, New York; this allows a day off, there are 4 built into the school calendar for such emergencies.

But what do you do?  Travel bans are usually placed, advisories listed, sections of thruways closed, shops closed, banks, courts, and metro bus service limited.  You stay out of the way so the emergency crews can dig out, get folks to hospital, put out fires. This situation does not generally allow errands to be performed, or haircuts, or going to lunch with friends.  You are in the house, and are expected to amuse not only yourself, but any family members home with you while making lunch and dinner with whatever you brought into the house before the storm hit.

If you aren't lucky to have stopped at the grocery previously, you get to dig the back caverns of the cupboards, looking for cans of what?  Grey green beans?  Lychees?  Molasses--where the heck did that come from?  Check expiration dates so as not to poison anyone.  Break down and bake bread, follow a salt-rising recipe if no yeast is growing in regions relegated to the refrigerator.  Cookies.   Hope to heavens that you have enough pet food, toilet paper, and Get Candles.  More on that later, back to the teacher thing.

Yes, we dance when there is a snow day, yes we wear pajamas inside out, put spoons in the freezer, and a toothbrush under our pillows.  No, I don't know how that got figured, and there are many I have missed, but these are the mainstays.  This all comes down to spending precious time with our families, reading a book not connected to curriculum, maybe getting ahead with lesson plans, building, painting, communicating; things that we don't get to do normally.

A teacher's weekend whips by faster than an express train.  Saturday is mostly errands, figure out dinner, get things around the house vacuumed, cleaned, laundered.  Maybe you work a second job. Sunday is school work day, the ubiquitous lesson plans, divining homework papers, mayyybe a visit or a movie but probably not, for you are exhausted by the demands of the career, and are pulled like a wishbone with family desires and responsibilities.

I guarantee you, we are not lounging on the chaise eating bonbons while watching the dog show, we are worried about everything.  Teachers are worriers.  Did this kid get it?  How do we know the kid got it?  Did I differentiate enough, list objectives, state the instructional shifts, work with the bubble kids, do restorative circles, follow the CHAMPS protocol, is that kid all right, who needs mittens, who needs support, who needs structure, and observations are taking place where administration comes into your room with a checklist to see if you touch all bases and get rated highly efficient, efficient, developing, or, you poor mess with a master's degree, who let you into the building?

No wonder the mythology surrounding blowing snow exists.  Truth be told, I don't know a teacher who doesn't wonder if their students are warm, having a meal, or are being taken care of.  It's what we do, it's why this country gets away with the unusually low rate of pay; we don't complain.  We just do the job, heavens forbid if we react to the fact that we have an average of 8 years of education in order to be certified, we incur incredible loans, and sometimes have desks thrown at us by angry kids.  Oh, and now we practice "Shelter in Place" and "Code Lockdown" in case of a shooter.  Somewhat different than crouching under your desk to save you from an atomic blast.  Just as scary, though.

Snow days relieve a lot of job stress, shoveling off the house roof is actually soothing in comparison. So we dance.  Who else does?  For 8 years of college, I could be a Physician's Assistant.  I could be a dentist, making two to three times what I do.  Any number of money making careers take less time, but here we are, short staffed, short on supplies (we buy most of ours), short on salary.  Because we love what we do in spite of the rate of burn-out.  No lie, when you see a retired teacher, they look five years younger and have a healthy flush to their face.  So bring on the blustering winds, the snows that grind the city to a halt.  Help out the people that work through a blizzard by shoveling, offering a hot drink, staying off the road.

This is the second subzero freeze in January; the first one, this apartment complex had little heat until two days into it.  This second one began well, but since the population is mostly hunkered down and in residence, again the heat and hot water are dwindling in temperature.  Sure, put on a sweater, but other remedies include tea lights and cats.  Or a big dog.

The cats call a truce, mostly, when the cold slithers into the cracks, and sleep in closer proximity or try to pile onto my lap.  The lap business is nice, but getting up for tea, a pencil, or bathroom foments disruption which includes swats and name-calling.  Candles are quieter, but you still have to keep an eye on them...an up-ended terra cotta pot over a tea light will hold the heat and radiate it outwards, heating a smallish room.  Still, watch the thing, place on a non-flammable surface.

Back in the fifties, no one thought of lighting a candle for decor, except for formal dinner or Catholic bothering some saint; that burning candle business began in the later sixties, perhaps to cover the amount of marijuana being ignited?  These days, the candles have come a long way from the 25¢ paraffin emergency pack from the hardware, now they are scented, in jars, and are given foofy-foo names that would have us 50's kids rolling like squirrels in acorns. Harvest Whimsy.  Rain Fairy.  Sentient Forest.  Calm Down.  How about Burning Pumpkin, Help My Hair's On Fire From Leaning Over The Cake, or Spill Your Vodka Drink On The Decorative Candle While Wrapping Christmas Presents And Setting the Paper On Fire From The Alcohol Merry Christmas The Building Is Now On Fire, Too.  That last one actually happened.  Second floor, smoke damage traveled up the stairwells, water damage from the fire hoses demolished the apartment below.

I have a pile of blankets and comforters on the bed layered like a 4-foot tall lasagna.  Got rid of the polyester sheets which were horrid to sleep on, and purchased cotton, which is a dream.  I am ready for whatever heating emergency occurs, within reason, and am armed with a stock of pillar candles from IKEA and Walmart.  And cats.  Four.  The blizzard blotted out the sun--even though there are now 30 minutes longer of daylight this end of January, you couldn't tell when day became night; the city sounds were quieted by the snow, and one could be lulled to sleep by the rocking of spinning tires down on the street.

Sleep tonight, I will be turning in early, no news if the streets will be clear enough for buses, or if the temp will be considered safe for students to be in.  Last night, I dreamt of white envelopes; they were discards, and I retrieved them from recycling.  Dreamland is strange, mostly disjointed for me; no predictions or solutions, just moving pictures seemingly not connected.  Some are repetitive; the Chinese restaurant while a tornado is flying outside, the Easter candy shop on a path in the woods,  taking a 1950 Hudson to the mechanics, replacing wooden floors in my old house.  Not one twitchet of sense in that, but never mind.  You dream, dream of warmer days and warm hearts.  Of summer grass that releases that grassy smell as your feet run, as the sun goes down and twilight begins, when you try to squeeze that last moment to extend into another universe where you know you are wanted. Sleep, dear hearts.

Captain Banana Peel

Fresh sheets and the sandman had first led to quiet dreams, then at morning Kai cat was still on my pillow; oh, precious weekend! But phantom dozing fingers of forgotten thoughts ended when the black planet Roscoe crashed in, nailing poor Kai, followed by his proceeding to chomp her head.  I had shook the blankets, which trampolined him towards the end of the annoyed bed, if a bed had opinions. Blankets that had once been layered wool on wool, scratchy grandmother blankets that were meant for cold nights, were now willy-nilly. 

He reconnoitered with intent on harrying her tail, but enough was enough in Blanketland, which was fast becoming the Pile of Random Ideas. Sorta covers. A garage sale pile of linens. I grabbed him with two hands to redirect his plan, and Roscoe let loose with the worst cat fart ever.  The aroma--a miasma that hung in the air like a viscid Borealis made of Ice Age pony meat--stayed, toadish and doughy, and I thrashed, thrashed blankets, black cat, pillows and remnants of wishes into a mass of agitation. WHAT was that?  What on earth did that cat eat?  It was time to get up and tend to cat food, which was someone's idea all along.

They all lucked out as there were no more cans of mouse loaf, so chunky tuna was decanned onto the plate, yippee yippee. Happy tails, truces, and promotions for all.

The next day while sitting at the table, I noticed Mr. Business fiddling with something on the floor; let me see what it is.  He kept his head down but raised his eyebrows, as if cats have eyebrows, grabbed the thing and ran down the hallway, defiant.  He made it to the water dish, dropped the treasure in and sat; I  fished the item out in spite of his trying to paw my hand away while watching the water turn blue.  It was a roll of small Tibetan flags that I had bought from the incense store; they now hang from the bathroom mirror drip drying, where only if he grows wings will he retrieve it.

He mouths and steals, part crow, part terrier, part trebuchet.  I found one of the gongs' hard rubber mallets chewed in half; there was a missing phone cord snickered under a pillow, and lastly, the grocery list left on the counter had been delicately shredded into diminutive bits.  He hides my socks, nicks earrings, steals paper money, only sometimes returns it.  Twenny bucks, gone but restored 4 days later near the water dish with a stolen fabric rosebud.  He has his touches. A cherry cough drop was added to the water dish, turning it vivid pink.  

I moved the couch in anticipation of the incoming television; Roscoe was helping, curious, everything he does is a first time for him as he is still a baby at 7 months, 2 weeks old and a solid 12 pounds. The couch is now against a wall, forming a cat conduit behind it. 

My friend took off his shoes, putting them in the hall while we visited. When it was time to go, he went to retrieve his footwear; I heard him say, "There's only one shoe." What? "There's only one shoe, it must have been the cat..."  Oh good lord. A bit of a scurry happened before he found it behind the couch amid a pile of cat toys, no denying that it was Crazy Guggenheim at work. Roscoe would drag home a two-door car if I let him outside.

It's been awhile since relating this story, for Roscoe is now 15 pounds and living up to his namesake in size, Mr. Roscoe Arbuckle.  The feathered thing on the end of a fishing pole contraption stirred sabertooth instincts, causing great leaps and once caught, growls of possession.  I couldn't figure what the hissing was about, but finally sensed that he held the line responsible for taking his prey away, and thus hated that string with the intensity of a drunk swinging at the air.  He had hissed before, but the snarls set me back a little. Ooo, nize keddy. Mama gunna tell you a story if you it up the tuna fitch and brink her the dollah off the table you stole. Nu?

Outside the snow had started.

I don't think downtown got as much of the storm that inland areas did, the winds from the Lake usually blow falling snow towards the east.  Yet it is bitter cold today, with predictions of a low pressure system set up by the Canadian Rockies, an Alberta Clipper, which will create severely frigid air to hang over the city tomorrow morning. 

Last night, there was to be a spectacle around midnight, the Super Blood Wolf Moon plus a total lunar eclipse, which is enough to set off a month of New Age hooha.  'Blood' because sunlight still hits the moon a bit, but is bent towards the red spectrum by Earth's atmosphere; each month's full moon usually has a Native name, and January's is Wolf.  Super because the perigee is about 16,000 miles closer than usual.  Moon is simply moon.  Wolf, Snow,Worm, Pink, Flower, Strawberry, Buck, Sturgeon, Harvest, Hunter's, Beaver, and Cold.  There you have it, some science, some myth; a balanced almanac.

I am searching for slippers, perhaps Roscoe's cache should be investigated; right now he is speaking in tongues at the string attached to the feather toy, for tiring him out is a good thing.  The day stretches on, we have gained about 25 minutes since winter solstice, and it is well appreciated.  The blankets are orderly once again, layers of wool and cotton and pillows are smoothed; this bleak, hibernal night will arrive clear with the vault of heaven cloudless and open, hence providing the day's gathered heat an escape into the sky.  Morning could present us with 10 to 20 below zero.

Get ready for sleeping well and warm, count your kids, cats, and dogs; find gloves, find scarves, ready the pot for morning tea, get out the thermos; all before the evening origami of folding yourself under the covers, and thank whomever you like for this blessing of night.   Dream, remember; I will not forget you.

 

Rant

Dear United States and Beyond, to whomever has reason to call me:  I am phone illiterate with no concern for achieving proficiency.  The phone is usually the last place I put it down; not in a purse, not in a pocket, not on a leash, or attached to a socket.  It calls for me to reinstate my landline, with each most visited room provided a base, but then that service gets clogged with people wanting to sell me window replacements or asphalt and they don't get that I live nine floors up in an apartment but fill up the messages nonetheless.

There is a symbol with something that to me looks like a tape recorder on the phone keypad; aha, this must be the messages?  After unlocking the phone, scribing the secret code pattern, opening the phone app, bringing up the keypad, there is the symbol under the number one.  I press it.  Nothing.  I press it and hit the "Call" symbol.  A flat voice tells me this ain't happening, but takes 8 seconds of my phone time.  I look at the phone for some mysterious hieroglyphic releasing the ethereal voices of friends and pharmacy, doctor's offices, and Come To Our Churches.

I go to the laptop and type in "Retrieve Android Messages".  Wrong-o again, O ancient fossil.  What pops up are directions on getting text messages, because lord knows but apparently I don't, people text more than call.  Yes?  Adding the word "phone" to the formula gives results which say to hold a finger on the number one key until Voice Mail ka-poofs into reality.  'Kay.  I do and it does.

But NOW, you have to listen for the flat voice to tell you of your misinformed life because your mailbox is FULL you eedjit, and things better get straightened out or you won't get more messages.  Yes, yes, yes.  C'mon, this is taking longer than necessary and the pauses between electronic sentences you could kill and slaughter an ox between pronouncements.  But first, type in your secret number password because nothing that has happened prior indicates that you are the one to receive notice that your Prozac is ready.  Do I remember my code?  Let's try, nope, let's try this one--it's why my personal limit is two passcodes for everything and let the hackers take my identity because then they would have this puddingeffer student loan to deal with. 

It's been twelve minutes since the phone call from my doctor's office prompted me to check messages.  Twelve minutes of futzing around and if you think I will remember the process next month when the light bulb goes on, har-de-har-har, Alice.

Finally, the mechanical voice coughs out four new messages; one pharmacy, three friends. two of whom are from awhile ago I believe, but cannot confirm as this mobile martinet does not record time or date.  More floaty deductions as I place the events they mention into a time frame.  "Hope you're feeling better..."  When was I sick?  A month ago.  "Come over for tea, I want to hear about your trip..."  That was in mid-May.  "I just wanted to thank you..." Um, maybe two weeks?  I am bad at mobile phone business.  Electronics in general, really.

I thought I heard the phone ringing out dulcet tones or was the apartment below playing music?  At the time, I was up to my elbows in giving the cat box a master cleaning and couldn't have answered immediately anyway.  The alert tone had just been changed to something not alarming but noticeable, but was this it?  Checking the phone screen showed No New Calls until I swiped my finger, did the mystical anagram, then yes, there was a call.  More scrolling, taps, and scrolling, and there it was.  Jaysus.  My doctor.

The receptionist said I was overdue for a bone scan, thyroid scan, mammogram, and blood testing.  Well, yeah, but for me to get to the doctor these days, I have to take off from work, and the consequences tend towards crisis intervention level.  I haven't been able to find the scripts for the testing if I ever had them, for the receptionist said that I can get them from the web portal and print them off.  But I don't have a printer at home.  I should go to the library, renew my card and use one of theirs for which there is a minimal charge, not to count the metered parking?

"You don't have a printer??"  The incredulousity was tidal.  Technically, I do have a printer, a new one since the old, just as good one could no longer communicate with the laptop once the purveyors upgraded their programs which the old laptop could not keep up with so I bought a new printer which ticked me to no end.   But, this new printer came with an installment disk which is simple enough but since the new laptop does not have a cd/dvd port, the process has elevated to online communication.  So far, nothing I've done has worked to get the new printer talking to the new laptop.  Hours, days; I finally said the Friday word and have gone without a printer for months.

 "Well, Just This One Time, we will print it out and mail it to you".  Can't you just put it into the system for the providers?  "We don't do that."  Huh.  I felt it important not to mention that I don't have a television.  Gongs.  I have cats and gongs.  Plus, phone conversation goes funny and I find myself explaining things that aren't in regular people's lives; it occasionally scares them.  Changing the strata in the millepedes.  The lightning rod tipped over.  I was talking to my unborn granddaughter.  Gluing trilobites back together.  See?

So, the point is, if you don't hear back from me, try email or the ubiquitous Facebook, email is best.  It's not that I don't like you, it's that you can hear the sound of frustrated finger-tapping/swiping/resetting/brain freeze in the far distance.  Say the date, time, and WHO YOU ARE, if you think important.  I can't tell voices on the phone, it sounds like you are in the trunk of a car driving in a circle.  Louder, softer, louder, softer, garbled, static, martians from space.

Listening closely to context reveals who you might be, and I have found myself talking to a different person other than perceived more than once.  Diane?  "No, it's Hollie; we've been talking for twenty minutes, and you thought I was Diane?" Verbal mannerisms are great clues and it was unusual that Canadian Diane had not said "Eh?" during the whole conversation. 

It's said that living downtown mixes and fuzzes signals amid the tall buildings, spires, antennae, and emergency scanners.  A new phone came with hopes of clearer reception.  But really, provide the date and time, don't just say 3 o'clock because there are generally 56 three o'clocks in a month.  And I'm phone phobic.  Don't wanna know who's on the other end, although I am able to pay my bills these days.  I am just exasperated at having to buy the latest electronics so that they work with the the downpour of changeling programs designed by people who drink too much coffee.

On the way to lunch today, the brakes started grabbing, it was the weirdest sensation at 50 mph on the expressway.  I stepped on the gas to see what would happen; some lights came on the dashboard and the herky-jerky business stopped.  Paul followed me to the mechanic's, they declared not to worry, coulda been dust, bring it in Monday, no the car will not freeze up in traffic, it's probably the computer, and we then went to the Thai restaurant in a diverse, lovely neighborhood. 

We have passed the solstice, the brilliant greens of plants are punctuated by roses, cherries, dogs, and people who will find things to do up till the last ray of light.  Ah, but then.  Evening comes; the air fills with nightbirds calling, fluttering moths clustering around street lamps, with social rituals untangling themselves from daylight.  Sleep is one such ritual, lending us protection from the strangeness of the dark. 

Shake out the blankets, hang them outside if you can for saturation with the fresh air.  Put away the bowls and dishes, latch the door, love the cats, love the dogs, all of it disappears at night when we are under the science of Morpheus.  Good night.

Spring Doings

Yesterday came the first spider, renewing the yearly battle between Homo sapiensis Susan versus the Leggedy Spiders of the Lake.  These people are huge, prickly, bitey-looking things so busy making webs inside the bathroom where it is not likely they will catch much more than cat hair.   I will fix the screen, which is the reason the hapless find their way in.

A reason it has not been fixed is that I live on the ninth floor, and popping out a screen means a tightrope act of not dropping it onto someone's head.  The screens are jumpy, snappy, and slippery and god knows that a cat could somehow maneuver it's way into the equation makes it equally inspiring to take up something safe, like knitting.  The cats love when I knit, but then, they like catching spiders and delivering them to me on my pillow at night which has happened.  Live from Buffalo. 

I have vowed to equip the apartment with a bug catch and release, helped by Lulu, who has uncanny sensibilities when it comes to insects.  She is sad when I take over the operation, for I feel the way to end in this world is not as a source of protein that will be yacked up an hour later, and thus will take them down in the elevator to be freed.   She is praised for diligence and given a cat treat that isn't trying to wiggle away.

The spider method of retrieval is to threaten the animal with a shower brush so that it drops for escape, while holding a large butcher's tray underneath for catching.  The confused immigrant is then slid into a container with a lid, and saved till morning for scooting into a nearby bush.  The same with house centipedes, which eat young cockroaches; stink bugs, June bugs, and ants.  Out, all of youse. 

But that is only a part of the warmer weather; the area has been through snowdrops and squill, crocuses and daffodils, and is now mid-tulip.  Lilac buds are swelling, flowering trees are yelling their heads off, and the grass is that first, rare green of return.  Here in Buffalo, the denizens wear shorts and tank tops when it's in the low fifties, we are that tough.  The final pile of dirty snow-ice has been melted, what a world, what a world, and snow shovels are gladly exchanged for brooms to sweep clear sidewalks and streets.

The thrushes and finches have returned, a phoebe sings in the mornings, the robins chirrup way past dark and lay blue eggs.  A friend recounted an incident where her husband dismantled a nest on his outside speakers, but the mama bird insisted and rebuilt, giving the man a direct look that would shame a barrister.  The second nest is staying, so I have heard. 

Dandelions are exploding through scrap lots and yards, giving the bumble and other bees sweet yellow pollen to gather.  The hemisphere has awakened, humming along as it has done so for centuries; one wonders if millions.  When did the seasons develop?  Was there a dinosaur spring after a cooler period of months?  There certainly wasn't snow in the lower elevations; oxygen levels were higher, plants and animals grew to riotous proportion.  Did they have to migrate, as do our birds?  That's another speculative story on my part.

I lost cat Rodger back in mid-April; what was supposed to be stuffed up plumbing from spring shed turned out to be a grapefruit-sized tumor about half his body weight.  He wasn't a big fella, but certainly had the personality of a judicious samurai.  Gosh, I miss him; putting him down was unexpected and wrenching, but he had stopped eating, drinking, everything but washing my hand.  At the same time, an unknown had left a box of newborn kittens at the vet's doorstep, in the snow at Easter.

One of the vet techs had come in to care for the animals over the weekend, left, then returned when he wondered if he had latched a door securely.  There was a box at the door, filled with five black little bits; one wonders what circumstances led someone to abandon them on a freezing day when the veterinary was not open.  Nonetheless, a shelter may not have been equipped to provide the care which newborns require; kittens that young are usually put down, yet the guardian angel of Central Park Animal was certainly with them that day.  Dr. Persico, no doubt.

Turn the page a few weeks, and the last of the kittens needed a home, a boy who had an infection that prevented him from urinating comfortably.   Apparently, motherless kittens are designed to nurse, and will latch onto anything resembling a nipple, including boy bits.   They were all separated and the one given antibiotics, but when I saw him, there was pus and raw tissue; he's still swollen a little, but healing.  Everything works once again, and he came to his new home yesterday.

In fact, he went from a reticent, timid being to Godzilla-mode within the hour in spite of being told off by two of the others, Kai and Snowbelle.  The kitten pen is a blessing, as I can zip him in for overnight with plenty of room for food, litter pan, and IKEA sheepskin.  You do want to be reincarnated as a Coburn cat, lemme tell you. 

Roscoe has eaten like a champ, worried me some when no bathroom emissions emitted, smartly has made up for it today with both in plenty, and happy days for baby wipes.  He prowls around the living area, chased Snowbelle with pride for she ran from him (Roger would be thrilled to learn), and has hit the litter box target more often than not; he has skills in spite of being the tiniest cat I have ever acquired.  At six weeks old, his plumbing is growing into adjustment as well as his muscles, vision, hearing, and all the things which babies do.   He may outlive my lifespan, but already my son has been given notice. 

Have I mentioned a human grandbaby is on the way and will arrive this summer?   Today I am baking cookies for the shower at the shul with Dorian, Dana's mother; they will be transported to D.C. this Friday as we fly over the Southern Tier, Pennsylvania, and Maryland into Washington.  Watching the fields change seasons while above in the clouds is fascinating, and seeing the soil in farmlands blend from dark brown into an iron red gives you an idea how varied the planet is. 

Tonight is to be spring chilly, the momma birds will huddle closer over  fledglings, leaves will fold, blankets will cover little and big.  In the heavens, Jupiter and Saturn will be visible for most of the night, with Venus rising after sunset, Mars appearing in the early morning just past midnight.  Sleep while the planets wheel through the dark sky, charming our lives with the measure of time.  Perhaps I do understand.  Good night, dear hearts.

Nature and Buttons

Sitting in the chair, I turned to talk to the cat and thus shifted the car keys in my front jeans pocket, nine stories up from the parking lot.  This upset the car, which began honking alarms that no one pays attention to unless it continues for ten minutes past irritation.  How?  I had to stretch to see if it was indeed the car, parked several spaces past the window, and yes; the box was blinking and yelling about suspect intrusions, about the owner not keeping the keys on a hook by the door.

Fortunately, I did not have to rally into shoes or jacket, but aimed the control tab in the general direction, and it stopped.  Learning not to push it frantically by jabjabjabbing the button taught me that it only takes one click or I am only setting it off and on, reigniting the troops.  The thing has been turned on from the school cafeteria, which does not have windows to the back lot, but scads of kitchen machines, cement, and brick walls.  I don't know how these fobs work, and can only imagine invisible rays arrowing through humans, cafeteria posters on nutrition, and pictures of food only seen in professional shoots.  Magic.

Actions needing attention now get by with the push of a button, similar to the revolutionary-but-not-true idea back in the 1940s and 50s, that household conveniences would provide the housewife with the Life of Riley.  TV dinners allowed more tv time, TV trays allowed your education to continue; washers, mangles, dryers, electrical steam irons powered by the turn of a dial would hum along with little backbreaking output from said Frau.  Laundry became not an all day back-breaker, just sort and haul the pile into the maw of the spinning tub, sudsing onwards with Oxydol, Dreft, Ivory Snow if it were baby clothing.  I still have my Polish grandmother's washing board, her name at the top of the new-improved, hygienic, soap-saving corrugated glass.  Thirteen kids before permanent press, no wonder she went around the bend.

But did we find ourselves with free time?  No more than today's computerized households, just hold your breath that the electricity stays on.  I thought that by this time in my life, that I would be having lunch with the girls, hiking the trails, penning thoughtful missives.  Nope.  I have a difficult time keeping up, and am slowly simplifying sort of no faster than the Grand Canyon was eroded into beauty by rivers.  It is a tumble of repair, reply, making appointments, with reading how to declutter, create hygge, and breaking sentiment with your mother's cherished teacups that must find a good home.  I think my cousin will take them, they are precious to me.

The majority of our lives exists without the ability to control, as it is based on instinct, emotions, environment, psychological hoo-ha, and fantasy.  Bet you can think of other reasons, such as Mother Nature, nature, predators, disease, heartbreak, devotion, natural disasters, or anything that enters from the outside.  Maybe an asteroid.

Now that you're substantially on edge with the rare but possible asteroid smash, and that the electrical  plant would be all gone, think of your phobias.  What are you frightened of that most other people don't even think about?  Spiders alternately scare and fascinate me, I have no fear of zebra spiders, and let them live in the sun of my screened windows; the larger brown house spiders that I only see in the morning after the cats have dispatched them give me the willies.  If a spider drops from the ceiling (yes it has happened) to land on me, strangled screams and flapping ensue.

I hate heights, and have frozen to the point that a brave, patient soul has had to drag me back to my safe zone.  How those models who pose atop canyon pillars via helicopter do it is beyond me, they earn every penny they get.  I would be flattened, trying to melt into the ground.

Balloons.  Do not bring a balloon near me unless your swear vocabulary needs new words which I will supply, not gladly.  Balloons are unjolly time bombs and if the supermarket is giving them away to the children, I will leave the store.  I don't see this happening anymore, someone developed sense or a lawsuit was filed.  Kids bite on them, wap them about, let them fly up to the ceiling where there are pointy things and hot lightbulbs.  Balloon animal formation during assemblies, with the rubber squeaking with every twist causes me to grit my teeth into a frozen smile whilst the classroom students clap with glee.  I have to be a good example of maturity, and being scared of balloons is not.

But you, how about you?  Are you a part of the population that is frightened of an area of your home, say, the basement or the attic?  Why is that so commonplace, is it created by the unfamiliarity?  The poor lighting?  Steven King?  Or is something really there?  Why is the basement/attic combo preferred by your very own haunt?  Well, it isn't, but for me even as an adult when going down to the basement in my old house, I would take a cat in my arms.  C'mon kitty kitty, the laundry needs to go into the dryer.

Most of the time, the cat, bored with dank atmosphere, (or maybe she knew there WAS something there and wanted to get the hell away), would run back up the wooden stairs, the kind of stairs that were open in the back so that your ankles could be grabbed.  Thanks, cat.  But why a cat served as protection from the unseen makes no sense; my beloved dog said fare-thee-well also, her toenails scrabbling up the wood planks.  I would be stuck alone, slam the dry clothing into the basket and run like a rabbit.

Same thing with the attic in that house, come on , dog, cat.  My son thought there was a dead man hanging up there; also, alligators under his bed would keep him awake regardless if I checked with a broom to see if any lurking antediluvians were in residence.  No. Alligators. Didn't matter, just as when I was younger, there were monsters under my bed, like from The House on Haunted Hill.
or The First Man into Space, both 1959.  I still don't like my foot hanging over the bed.

No technology will supersede human instinct, or give control over the bugaboos hiding in the cabinet; who knows where it all comes from?  I myself have had a few paranormal experiences, and let me tell you, the more you talk to people, the more will say that they had never told anyone, but there are unexplainable occurrences that happened in their lives.  My master's was on the paranormal as a part of creativity, complete with a survey that got many surprising responses.  Three had no events, yet many more had seen, heard, or interacted with someone that wasn't their Aunt Mildred.  Sane, down to earth people who were quite glad if not relieved to have someone inquire.  It's okay, you can talk about it.

I for one am going to stretch this Sunday evening out like a rubber band, since tomorrow is the first day back to school, spring break has ended.  All will be sleepy, maybe a bit out of sync with the routine, I am not expecting too much, just get the spelling words down and lets review time and maybe begin the math DBA.  Get used to being in a classroom again, and no you cannot go to the bathroom four times in an hour.  

Sleep then, and let the drowsy planets spin away the tired, grey days of lingering winter; I hear that the trees are budding in Ohio, I am a bit north and it has been cold and snowy still.  A spring thunderstorm would be nice, a cleaning of remaining ebbs of blackened snow, a coaxing of new shoots and wakening insects for the birds to get fat on, happy enough to make their nests.  Sail among clouds heavy with rain, sweep through warming nights under lighter covers; the animals know it, mine have been shedding clods; the birds know it, they are coming back trilling songs; the earth knows it, the tilting sphere brings back sunlight to the north, as winter in Australia abides from June to August.  You know it, too.  I can tell.