Circling (a story from the top of my mountain)

 When we first got to the cabin it was a mess! Lots of work to do in the yard and the house. After all, it’d been a year since our last visit! So day one saw the Rons outside trimming and mowing and edging while I was inside cleaning the windows, taking the screens down for a good hosing . . . all that spring cleaning type stuff. At the end of the day Ron pulled me outside to a low rhododendron just off the front porch where his trimming had revealed a nest of three spotted eggs. 

During our stay we were privy to the whole process. We watched as the pair of Dark Eyed Junkos meticulously tended the nest. 

Regardless the fact that Ron’s trimming had left the nest exposed and vulnerable, regardless the handful of heavy rain showers we had, the birds were there, loyal to their task.  

We started making it easier by providing a ready supply of dried meal worms which we’d dump in a pile in the posts of the wooden handrail. One morning I went outside and found the pair hopping from post to post, clicking their tongues at me — how dare we let the pile get empty! Long about week two things changed and we were rewarded by the tiny mouths of two hatchlings, all gangly legs, bulging eyes and peach fuzz poking out of their wee tiny heads. 

The third egg hatched that same day and the parents’ work increased. They became a tag team—feeding, sitting, foraging. It was surprising how fast the babies grew! Only a few days and  their eyes had opened and they’d begun sprouting pin feathers.

One morning I peaked in and found one missing. I figured it had been that last one to hatch, the weakest of the three. I figured it had just not made it and the parents had somehow finagled its body out of the next. But on the day before we were to leave we learned what really happened. The parents were throwing a wall eyed fit, flitting from branch to branch and making their peculiar little clicking chirp. When Ron parted the branches he saw a snake sliding back down the brush and Ronnie saw the telltale bulge in its stomach.  

Now I don’t hate snakes like some do. I actually think they are pretty cool. In fact, I used to have a few of them back in my “weird attraction to strange pets” stage which included a tarantula, an iguana and several hermit crabs. And I know all about nature and how some things must die for others to live. But I had become invested in the lives of those little hatchlings and seeing them picked off like that was more than a little heart wrenching.

There was one gangly little one left when we packed up and drove away. We had renters coming in the next day and Ron urged me to give them a call, to ask if they’d peek into the nest and see if the snake had been back. 

But I didn’t call. I didn’t really want to know. I’d rather just imagine that the snake had had its fill and that that last little hatchling survived. And that’s exactly how I’m leaving this story.     

Ketchup!

Yes, please . . . with a dab of mustard and a little relish.

No, not the noun . . . the verb! As in trying to resolve a couple hundred e-mails, a few dozen loads of laundry, a fridge that echoes when it's opened. And 14.5 pounds of unopened mail that our neighbor was nice enough to collect for us. Not to mention the lawn—it looks a little like that scene from the second Jurassic Park movie where the raptors chewed up another couple explorers  . . . “Don’t go into the long grass!”

And then there’s the whole body thing. It’s somehow: a) acclimated itself to the mountain air and feels sluggish and non-responsive in Houston’s oppressive heat. And, b) thickened a bit thanks to all that vacation food and inactivity. So attention is required there too. Time to get back on that exercise program. Time to get the stomach used to three meals a day instead of one long, continuous one.

So that’s the thing about long vacations away from so called “reality.” Away from technology and all that goes along with it. Even after two days back, I’m still a little frenzied, rushing from this to that, trying to dig out. Trying hard to rediscover my “groove.” It’s slow and a tad painful but I’m getting there. I promise to post photos as soon as I get time to upload them! In the meantime, back to the laundry and the mail and oh... did I actually forget to eat@!? Yay!

Killing the Rabbit

So I took a pregnancy test yesterday. I know, I know . . . pretty ridiculous at my age. But things that have been happening for years have stopped happening lately. And things that never happened before are happening now. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that. So I thought, what the heck, may as well eliminate that vague possibility.

Of course the test turned out negative. I mean, what kind of miracle do I think I am anyway? But the idea of it being positive conjured up some pretty scary images. Can you imagine having a teenager in your seventies! Heck, it’s hard enough reigning them in when you’re in your fifties — may as well just hand over the car keys on their tenth birthday. On the other hand, it might be nice having a strapping young kid to push your wheelchair around.

   

Anyway, my husband and I had a lively little conversation around it this morning, somehow ending up on the actual test itself: little blue line = yep / no blue line = nope. A far cry from the tests we used to take that involved a doctor, some urine and a rabbit. I don’t claim to know how all that worked but I remember the old phrase about how, if the rabbit died, you were pregnant. Dead rabbit = yep / rabbit still hopping = nope. Things have sure advanced a lot since then! All we have to do now is to pee on a little stick. As opposed to peeing on a little rabbit and hoping (or not hoping) that our urine turns out deadly.

My husband got to wondering if other animals peed on rabbits to see if they’re pregnant, and whether that might be the reason why rabbits tend to be so quick when you try to catch one. Their mommas much teach ‘em young: “ya see another kind of animal approaching, don’t ask any questions — just hop your furry little self out a there ‘for you find yourself all peed on.”

So anyway, thank you technology for coming so far in the arena of pregnancy testing. Thank you little blue line for staying the hell off of my pregnancy test. And, thank you aging body for dodging that miraculous bullet. 

Who ever said that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?

My husband just completed a four day mulching marathon, taking the time to weed and prune while he was so outdoorsy focused. Pretty admirable considering it’s been in the hundreds for days here in H-town. He told me that had downed 2.5 gallons of water on the hottest of the four days.

 

Me, I stayed indoors . . . I’m not much for heat these days. So I watched from my air conditioned sanctuary as, little by little, the mountain of mulch shrunk until it was finally gone, distributed amongst the plethora of flower beds my husband likes to tend. Oh sure, I kept going out there to check on him, to ask how hydrated he was keeping himself, to offer an occasional meal.

During one of my trips outside, he told me he’d accidentally knocked a nest of finches down from the palm tree in the back and how bad he’d felt watching as the parents panicked. The babies (there were two of them) were fully feathered but not quite ready for that maiden flight. He described how they flitted from branch to branch until they ended up in a low Nandina underneath the palm. During the course of the afternoon, the parents had adapted and kept bringing them food, albeit to their new location.

And here I have to switch topics and talk about my two Boston Terriers: Sampson and Piper. My dogs are sort of OCD in their own special way. Piper’s obsession is her Frisbee. She’d chase the thing until it grew legs and chased her back. And, unlike Sampson who thinks capturing the Frisbee is just the beginning of a game of keep-away, Piper will always bring it back. Then she’ll drop it onto your foot as a reminder that your job—and your only job—is to throw it again. And again. And again. And if you’re not paying attention, she’ll push it further and further up your leg until you remember what your job is.

   

But Sampson’s compulsion is border patrol (and you might have just figured out where this story is heading). He spends his time scouting the boundaries of “his” quarter acre lot, catching lizards and turning them into delicacies. He obviously hasn’t read the warnings of the potential toxicity of certain types of lizards. But then, Sampson has always eaten anything he can fit into his mouth. I’ve lost track of the number of times he’s made himself sick. But, like the toxicity warnings, Sampson seems equally clueless to the laws of cause and effect.

 

So I’m out there this afternoon (in the shade, mind you), sitting on my cushion and trying to find some OM time when I hear the familiar sound of my dog trying to pin some unsuspecting critter against the wall of the garage. But this time, there’s a lot of squawking and screeching that goes along with it and I know right away that it isn’t his typical prey… lizards don’t sound like that.

I give Samson the “leave it” command which he knows to obey. Then, unwrapping my crossed legs, I rush over to the bushes by the garage. By this time Piper has lost interest in her Frisbee and has joined in the fray. She decides to take over where Sampson left off and, while I’m snatching up one of the babies, she’s chasing down the second. I manage to get her off the poor thing before she gets it. Then, holding the screeching baby, I herd my two carnivores into the house, shutting them inside. 

Now I’ve got a bird in the hand but still one in the bush and I’m really not sure which is better. The parents are both freaking out as the baby I’m holding is squawking like there’s no tomorrow and I’m trying to decide what to do with it. I know the second baby is okay because I can hear it talking to its parents who’ve set up a tag team, one on me and the other on the second baby.

I stand there stymied for I don’t know how long. I mean, where do you put a two inch baby bird so that your idiot dogs don’t use it as a petit four? Finally I get a brilliant idea and decide to build a nest from an empty flower pot. My plan is to secure the pot to their native palm tree, high enough so the dogs can’t get them.

So I carry the pot and the bird into the front yard where there’s a bucket of dry stuff left over from yesterday’s pruning. The parent patrol is breathing down my neck as I single handedly fashion a crude nest in the bottom of the pot. But when I gingerly set the baby into its new nest, it pops back out in less than a nanosecond. Trying a bigger pot doesn’t work either… seems this kid is quite the little jumper! I’m thinking empty garbage can with those tall, tall sides. But I get to wondering if that might only set up a perfect opportunity for one of the neighbor’s cats.

    

Finally I decide on a new tactic. I figure they’d lasted all night in the Nandina so maybe they just need to go back there. I carry the little guy over and release him back into his bush. Then I tackle the job of snagging the second one which proves much harder than the first. I have to chase him back and forth, from one side of the garage wall to the other for about ten minutes before I finally pin him into a corner. Then I release him back into the Nandina too, watching as both parents worry nearby.

So as of right now I have no birds in the hand but two in the bush—which is all good. But the best part is that I also have none in my dog.   

Time is a clever thief

Time is a clever thief, he thinks, as it marches out the door

For now that I know full well its worth, I don’t seem to have any more.

I think about time a lot, what a funny thing it is. How, when we were kids, it was actually possible to get bored. We’d whine at our parents, “I got nothing to dooooooo…..” Finally they’d threaten to give us some chores if we didn’t find something ourselves.  

But time changes everything doesn’t it? Changes our attitudes toward things, changes our relationship to it. Time (like other things) seems to shrink with age and we have less and less of it as the years go by. So we try to cram as much as we can into each moment, knowing how precious each one is. But then we wonder, is that the best use of it? To make sure that we have none left over at the end - as if that’s even possible? Or should we let our moments drag while we sit around contemplating things like, well . . . time?

My son and I talk about weird time stuff . . . concepts like beyond eternity and the implications of that. Or what the boundaries of the past’s future would be relative to today. We like movies that play around with concepts of time. Like Deja Vu with Denzel Washington or Frequency with Dennis Quaid or The Lake House with Sandra Bullock. Movies we can argue the plausibility of – as if any of it actually IS plausible.

And yet . . . I was in Singapore in the spring of ’98 for a few weeks of business. It was hectic and there was a lot to do. Plus the whole jet lag thing and, well . . . I woke up one morning and remembered that my anniversary had been the day before. And I’d forgotten all about it. So there I was sitting in my hotel room, feeling like a real bonehead when I realized that time had provided a reprieve. See, Singapore is a day ahead of Houston. So I called a Houston florist, one who did same-day deliveries and I ordered a gorgeous orchid delivered to my husband at work. Then I went to work myself – the day after my husband would get the gift I just ordered. He called me later that day (which was really the day before) and told me how thrilled he was with the orchid! So the gift was perfect and … did I have to tell him how late I'd been orchestrating the whole thing? I think not.

So, wouldn’t it be fun if we could actually do more stuff like that?

 

It was the day after tomorrow and Ronda remembered that she’d forgotten her brother’s birthday. So she set the clock back several days and went shopping, picking out a sweater she’d seen him wearing the following week. Then she snuck back into his birthday with the gift wrapped in next Sunday’s paper. She set the gift on the new coffee table, the one he’d buy with the money he’d get for his birthday. She snuck out the back door, barely closing it before he got home from work the next day. It seemed she’d been gone only a few moments but in reality, she hadn’t been gone at all. He looked up and smiled, already wearing the sweater. It fit perfectly. Of course it had to - after all, he’d been wearing it for a while now.

   

But no . . . we can’t do anything like that, can we? We’re stuck within this linear flow of time, living from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, trying to cram all we can into each one. 

It was just yesterday when I was floating around in the pool thinking about time . . . specifically, how little of it I have left to enjoy my backyard oasis. Only one more summer before my husband’s retirement will take us up into the Blue Ridge Mountains. I suddenly realized how close that really is! How the next two years will barrel down on me like a derailed freight train. So, I paddled around a little longer, trying to appreciate these last "few moments" before they're gone! 

And I guess maybe that's it, isn't it - how we choose to spend what little time we have. Perhaps we should be going for quality rather than quantity, be more selective about the activities we participate in - the thoughts we choose to think, the people we opt to spend time with. Maybe we even need to try to be bored from time to time. Just so we can feel that sense of standing still. Rather than trying to outrun the freight train.