Gotcha!

I was outside at dusk, uncoiling the hose and fiddling with the water, trying to give my potted plants and flowers a good soaking, since it hadn’t rained for over two weeks. It came on suddenly, and completely unexpectedly--the pain was amazing.

I felt it in my hand first, at the base of my thumb. It was like a small knife was being slowly and cruelly pushed into my hand; instinctively, I used the water hose to dampen the pain that was growing so fiercely. That seemed not to help at all-—time slowed down and every second became like an hour. The pain in my hand grew, I cried out-—dropped the hose-—shook my left hand thinking I had some sort of strange nerve spasm, and maybe the movement would make it stop—but it did not—it seemed to go on and on and on. Then another pain, this time in my lower back, identical to the pain in my hand, but harder to get at--and then, a slight buzzing sound at my ear, and something brushing against the side of my face, and I knew I’d been attacked.

But by what? I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing flying, nothing felt like it was crawling—even though my hand had already begun to swell and was starting to tingle also. What had bitten me? Why did it hurt so much?  Was it a spider? Had I disturbed a black-widow nest when I uncoiled the hose from its hanger?  I ran to turn off the water, and then ran into the house, into the light, to see what it was that had gotten me. The knife-like pain was increasing by the second. Every movement made it worse. There were two large hot lumps on me now, one at the base of my back near my left hip, and one on my left hand at the bottom of my thumb-joint. My arm hurt—my whole back hurt. I still had no idea what had bitten me, and I was getting worried. What if it was a poisonous spider? There were lots of those outside on that side of the house. I’d seen spiders out there that you could hear walking on the porch boards. Some of them were those muscular “jumping” types—they spun webs but in the ground, and they could leap into the air. Had to be one of those, I thought. But this pain! I’d never felt anything like it!

I examined the lumps-—no stingers visible. So not bees, thank the gods-—I’m allergic. Last time I had a bee sting, it sent me to the hospital and I couldn’t walk for a week.  I replayed the whole scene-—hose, water, spray, pain. Hose water spray pain. Hosewaterspraypain. No spiders. No webs. Nothing crawled on me, not that I could feel. Nothing flew at me that I felt. There had been that odd buzzing, but it was short-lived, not humming-—not a bee. Not a mosquito. Lightning bug maybe? Cicada? Not important-—the pain was in my hip and back and my arm now-—all the way to the elbow. It was spreading rapidly. I was swelling rapidly. The lumps had small holes in the middle—one hole. Not spiders, then. They leave “fang” marks usually. Two holes, side-by-side. Usually not very visible, either. These holes were large, and even had a little blood-spot in the center. What the hell had gotten me?

I was worried. This really, really hurt-—unbelievably so. Amazingly so. Hugely. I was swelling more and starting to panic, so I called my friend C__ to come over and check it out for me. She came. We looked, I told her what happened. She suggested we head to the ER before it got worse. “Can you drive?” I asked sheepishly—-I really could not lean my back against anything—-it felt like it was on fire. And my left arm didn’t seem to be working at all!  All the way there, I debated whether or not I wanted to even go to the hospital—it was obviously an insect bite of some kind, and who goes to the ER for a bug-bite? I wasn’t allergic to whatever it was, but I also had no antihistamines in the house—I couldn’t even treat this at home. Of course, I could go to the pharmacy, but maybe it was a brown recluse spider? Maybe it had been a snake? Maybe---the possibilities began to panic me and I started to breathe hard, my heart pounded.  I’d already been to the ER once this summer—for leg cramps that would not stop. I was dehydrated. I drank more water, and they stopped. While there, however, they told me my glucose readings were too high. All else was normal, the glucose was high. That  was worrisome. But forget that for now; what would they do for this poison that was swelling up my arm, making it impossible for me to sit in a chair, still feeling like there were small toxic missiles traveling along my nerves?

Three hours later, I found out. They gave me—antihistamines. And a 3-day supply of steroids, to enhance their  effectiveness. And an ice pack. And by the time they did all this helpful stuff, the pain and swelling had subsided to almost nothing.

But they didn’t give me something I was hoping for: the identity of what had stung me. Ah well.  I went home, went to bed.  

Next day, I examined the area where I had been stung. And there it was: the nest. Ground wasps—yellowjackets. A large hole at the end of the porch, under the squash vine. And the little buggers darting in and out as if nothing had ever happened.

Obviously they hadn’t appreciated being doused with water, even after bedtime when they’re quiet. And it was a lucky thing I had gone out after dark—if I had squirted that nest during the daylight hours, they might have swarmed and stung me to death. I know if I’d gotten many more than two stings I’d have been unable to stand the pain.

I cursed them, and I knew I’d be getting rid of them, but I also thanked the Powers that Be for my luck and good timing. It probably saved me from a longer hospital stay. And now the yellowjackets are gone.  It took two cans of the stuff that shoots up to 25 feet away. It also killed my forget-me-nots, and part of the columbine.
But my garden is once again safe, and so am I.  

And oh, yeah—the high glucose reading? I also found out I’m diabetic.

Gotcha.

An Overdose of Time Off?

July is my month.

I always take a week of vacation around the first week in the month. Three things concur at this time: Independence Day, my birthday, and an activity slump at work. Even the name of the month is like cream rising to the top of the pail, like an endless blue sky and a quick thunderstorm rolling in; the first fireflies, the blooming of the day lilies; an endless white sand beach.

I wait out the month of June to take my first time off in July—my month. June has always been too early for me and vacations; it’s not my favorite time to take leave.  I suppose that’s a holdover from my “two vacation weeks per year” days, many years ago when I worked all year to enjoy that paltry two weeks. Well, it didn’t seem paltry then. It was that deliciously anticipated time; you had to pick exactly the right time to go, or you’d be stuck indoors while it rained, or unable to get to all the places you wanted because of the schedules, or it wouldn’t be warm enough to swim.  So June, as tempting as it is to jump right off the springboard edge of her into the Summer, wasn’t my month to vacation. There was another reason, too—once that two weeks was over, that was it. You got nothing more. No matter how long and hard you worked at your job, you only ever got those two little weeks--why blow it all at once at the beginning of summer, then have to wait out the rest of the season in your stuffy, indoor office watching everyone else take their vacations?  No, I liked having the last word—the final say-so on time spent off work. I liked being the one that went after everyone else had scheduled and gone and returned with their sunburns and pictures. So, I usually took one week at the beginning of the month for me, (usually getting a couple of extra days because of the Independence Day holiday, ) and one week at the end of the month, to lord over everyone else. It  bracketed  my July in glorious, lazy vacation days and made my month feel extraordinarily decadent.

There is something really wicked about only working half a month; allowing your co-workers to pick up the ball for you not once, but twice; coming in to work with your sunburn just beginning, and blurry pictures of fireworks, or fat from birthday cake and picnic food; then quietly sitting there doing your job for two weeks, knowing full well that the last week of the month you’d be off again, while they sat there bored and hot and envious. It’s a powerful summer-phrodisiac.

But as I discovered, this system has its drawbacks. Sure, it’s nice to have the extra vacation time around the holiday—but that’s also usually when we get one whopper of a storm. I truly cannot remember a Fourth of July when it did not rain or storm like the gates of hell had come loose and let all the weather demons out. And if by some miracle we don’t get it then, we do get it at the end of the month.  So one or more of my vacation weeks was always spent wondering if my tree would be standing at the end of the week, or watching TV for tornado news.

I still don’t mind. July is my birth month, and therefore, I have always had a bit of a romantic attachment to it—and almost nothing can dampen that.  Not even an Ohio tornado.  

But over the years, things changed. Now, the longer I work, the more vacation time I build up—and now I actually end up with six weeks of vacation per year! Talk about decadence! I can take a trip around the world! Go to Asia and back! Plan a leisurely train ride through the Rockies or a slow cruise through the Northwest Passage! Go to Europe! Plan a real home-improvement project and actually have the time to finish it and still go somewhere! It’s unbelievable.  I still get goose bumps when I hear my personnel secretary call and tell me I have to “use or lose” a week of leave that I didn’t even realize I’d accrued. Of course I use it.

But I still don’t go in June. I wait out June’s quixotic temperament, and her undecided attitude, and I still take off my two bracketing weeks in July. Then, I have another two weeks to take—so I go somewhere in August.  August—the fat, laughing belly of the summer, sunburned and sand-covered and stuffed full of potato salad, hot dogs and Kool-Aid ®. It’s the best time to go anywhere—the last hurrah of the season before school begins again, before work picks up again, before the endless blue sky and the white soft sands and the scudding clouds retreat into memory, and the nodding heavy-petalled heads of dahlias stop blooming.  It’s hot enough, stable enough weather-wise, and everything in this hemisphere is still summer.

Then, once the summer has spent itself, I have two more weeks to spend. On whatever I wish. Whenever I wish.  Sometimes that means I’ll spend it at the Yuletide holidays. Sometimes I spend it piecemeal, adding an extra day to a Monday holiday or a weekend. By the time Spring rolls around, and everyone begins gearing up for summer again, I’ve usually got only a day or two left—which I sometimes add to that first week in July.

This year our office moved in the first week of July—so going back to work after my first vacation week was like still being on vacation. We didn’t have telephone service, or computer DSL lines, and even the coffeepot couldn’t be used, because I couldn’t find the coffee! I came in, spent an hour or two organizing what I could, then went back home again, because nothing else could be done anyway. Gradually, over the next two weeks, we got things on track again—and now, except for a largish pile of unwanted furniture in the middle of the room (which will need to be taken down via elevator to the dumpsters,) there’s now an office where once was only drywalled space. Phones are back up. Files put away. Even the coffee has been found. A routine has been established, and I’ve discovered the joys of walking up two flights of stairs every day. And, of course, as soon as it is all organized and put together, I’m off again for my last-week-in-July week. Then, when I go back after this one, we have a conference for a week—at a posh hotel in Cleveland—then, I have jury duty for a week!!  By this time it will be the second week in August, and I only have to wait out the month until it’s over and the four-day Labor Day holiday ends—and I will go on my “big” trip of the year--to France for 11 days!

It’s been a busy,  strange, and oddly arranged year. I figure I’ve only actually worked  for one month since the end of Spring, and that was June.  I’ll only work for two weeks in August.  And I haven’t even touched my last two weeks of the year yet!  

Can a person OD on decadence?

Fu Manchu Raiders

The other day at work, I was standing outside and noticed a strange sound. It was a high-pitched but soft whistle, repeated at regular intervals. It was not a bird call I’d heard before, so I looked around a bit and noticed two robins on the strip of grass that borders our parking lot. One was a male, and it was he who was doing the whistling, I could see—he was standing sentinel over a female, who was gathering grasses for her nest.

The female had a mouthful of grass that stuck out on either side of her beak like a Fu-Manchu mustache. It was rather comical to see her bend and pick up strands and add them to the sheaf of grass that she carried—she never dropped any of them, but kept adding to the bundle each time she dipped her head and eventually as I watched her, her bundle grew quite large for such a small bird. The male was obviously either encouraging her in her endeavor, or pointing out pieces she missed—hard to tell which. He stood a couple feet away, and would hop here or there, whistling that strange one-note call and wait until she found the spot he pointed out, then she would grab a few more pieces of grass. It was like watching a foreman oversee a work-site.

I thought at first it might be courting behavior, not really understanding (until I looked it up) what robins did during mating.  But no, these robins had mated already, and were into the home-decorating stage of marriage; it was a bit like a newlywed couple buying curtains or rugs. “What do you think, honey? Is the green one better than the brown one? Will this go with our living room furniture? Do you like the one with the roses, or the one with the stripes?”  The grass that the female wore like Fu Manchu was going to line her nest for her babies.

Throughout this Spring, I have been stalked by robins. Just the other day while mowing the lawn, I saw a very large male standing on my picnic table watching me as I mowed around the ash tree and up against the railroad tie wall that borders my driveway. He stood there and stared—it was rather disconcerting, really—and didn’t seem at all put off by the sound of the mower. I waved to him, said hello. He eyeballed me the entire time. I thought perhaps he was trying to tell me something, but couldn’t imagine what; after all, birds have their own agendas—nothing to do with us. Nevertheless, he watched me for the entire time I stayed out there mowing, following me from one part of the yard to another, always staying a respectful distance away, but always there—it was almost unnerving.

I didn’t know much about robins. So I did some research. Turns out, the female robin lays two or three clutches of eggs per season, not just one as I had thought.  Some of them mate with the same individuals season after season. They line their nests with soft grass, as I had seen the two at my office doing, and the male participates in the nest-building and lining, and will even sit on the eggs for the female while she feeds. But what did they eat? Robins are not feeder birds—I never see them at the seed trays or suet baskets. I assumed they ate bugs and earthworms, like most thrushes, but it turns out I was wrong about that too. Oh, they do eat seeds sometimes,  and worms as well—but that’s not their favorite food. No—their favorite food is fruit. In particular, strawberries. And the other shoe suddenly dropped. Now I knew why the large male had been watching me mow, and what he was trying to get across—the wall next to my drive is where I grow strawberries. He wasn’t stalking me, he was waiting—for me to get the hell away from his buffet.

I had never noticed robins eating my berries. I’ve raised a bumper crop of strawberries—everbearing type, very sweet and prolific—in a thin strip of plants next to my driveway, on top of the railroad-tie wall. I’ve had the patch for years. It’s a great little strawberry patch, and from this one 20-foot strip of plants, I actually get enough berries every year to freeze for the winter months. I don’t have much trouble with insects there, and haven’t even had a lot of slugs, since the wall prevents them from crawling to the fruit, and the good drainage keeps the soil from compacting. However, there are always a few berries I find with little “nicks” taken out of them, as if whatever ate them had a tiny paring knife and just wanted a slice or two of the ripe fruit. And once in a while, I would find one that had been completely bitten down to the stem it hung from. That had always puzzled me. I didn’t notice any insects other than slugs, and I wasn’t convinced that squirrels were doing the damage, since I have virtually no squirrels in my yard—the cats see to that for me. I chalked it up to night-time berry-eating animals, and let it go. I don’t use pesticides or soil treatments in the patch, and I don’t mind losing a few berries to Nature’s ways—I have plenty to share. But a berry with one bite taken out of it? That’s not slug behavior. They bore little round holes. Squirrels pick and run. And cats, as far as I know, don’t eat fruit.

And of course, robins are ubiquitous—you see them all over, everywhere, hopping through the yard after a rain, flying here and there—they become part of the Springtime and Summer landscape, doing their thing without interference. But not now. And especially not this year. The cool Spring we’ve had, and the large amount of rain, has managed to fill my berry plants to the maximum with buds, blossoms and sweet, red, ripe strawberries. I’m raising a spectacular number of strawberries in my little patch. And the robins know it.

My berries are a veritable gourmet feast for robins. The only thing they want to tell me when they sit and watch as I pick, or mow, or cultivate is to get out of the way—they’re hungry.

The evening after I saw the Fu Manchu robin picking grass, when I returned home from work, I saw them at work on my patch. Two of them—large males. Hopping along that very convenient railroad-tie wall, moving from one plant to another. They didn’t even flinch when I walked up to them as they ate. That evening when I went to harvest, sure enough there were little nicks and cuts in some of the berries. Not all, not most—but some. They aren’t that greedy, and besides—there is a wonderfully full blackberry bush not too far away. I’m sure they’ll find that almost as appealing.

It might be time for some floating row-cover, or bird netting. But not just yet. I’ve already enjoyed four quarts of berries from my strawberry patch, with more to come in another week. And the blackberries haven’t ripened yet—but they will soon. There are a lot of earthworms around now, and the grass has gone to seed, and the eggs have been laid and the nests lined; by the time they get ready to feed those babies, there will be plenty to share. I’m not greedy either.

It's just like...what?

It’s just like riding a bicycle— something you never forget.

How many times have you heard that phrase? Usually it’s spoken when you’re doing something you haven’t done in a very long time: playing the guitar, for instance, or having sex—but there’s one place you’ll never hear it, and ironically, it’s the one place it doesn’t apply.

That place is…..riding a bicycle.

Recently, my doctor told me to stop going to my regular workout. “If you keep this up,” he told me with that dire expression only doctors get, (a little wistful half-smile that says plainly if you keep it up, he will be buying a new boat soon,) “you will be facing knee replacement in another year. And you’re too young for that. I don’t want to replace your knees yet—I want you thinner, and I want you older.”

Hmmph. Thinner and older. I’d love to be the first, but I’m not crazy about the second. Still, he was right. My workout, which included some mild step-aerobics, was killing my knees. No pain relievers were working anymore—the cartilage is almost gone and the arthritis is bad. Trouble is, I was benefiting in a lot of other ways from that workout—one of which was keeping my weight manageable and my heart strong.

So here I was, facing a Hobson’s Choice—-either keep up with the workout and suffer constant pain, sometimes to the point of being unable to climb stairs, or stop the workout and find something that didn’t create any impact on my ruined knees. “What,” I asked the doctor, already knowing the answer but I’m something of a masochist, “can I do, then? What sort of exercise do you recommend?”

Only two things. Swimming and cycling.

Both, he told me, would provide the needed aerobic benefit, while keeping my knees from disintegrating. Well, that was pretty much what I had expected. And it wasn’t unwelcome news. I love swimming. I used to love riding a bicycle too. Either was a good solution—-but I love swimming more than cycling, so I decided to go that route first. I called my local YMCA to check their rates.

“They’re how much?” I said to the nice lady on the phone when I finally got through. “And they’re when?”

Well, I couldn’t swim during working hours, that much is certain. And I could not afford the dues, either.

Another local health club had a pool—-and these rates were better. I could pay each time I visited, rather than paying for a month or a year at a time. Trouble was, however, if I went as often as I needed to, it would cost just as much, if not more, than the Y. Not to mention the cost for gasoline to get there.

That left cycling.

It’s been many decades since I rode a bike. The last one was my son’s and he was ten when we got it—-and it was too small, too light and not very sturdy—-and it wasn’t mine. It was bad enough that my knees kept hitting my chin when I tried to ride it; it was also a tug-of-war to try to get to ride it. And besides—we lived out in the country. Where would I go? Over the river and through the woods? Only hyperactive ten-year-olds like riding on gravel roads; to them, road rash is a badge of honor. To a grown woman it’s just another way to snag your pantyhose.

So, not reluctantly, I let him ride his own bike and didn’t investigate the possibility of getting one I could ride, or one that was properly fitted to me, or one that would even go on dirt and gravel without skidding. Instead, I swam. I walked. I did aerobics and dance. And I ruined my knees.

And the decades passed, while I got older, weaker, and heavier.

But now, here I am, all of the above and the owner of a bicycle of my own.

My son is grown and gone. I no longer live in the boondocks. I have places I can ride, and places I can go--to work, for instance. And the initial expense of the bicycle was far less than the expense of swimming three times a week—-and, I thought in my under-exercised haze, it would help the environment if I rode to work rather than driving my car.

I bought a bike for comfort, not speed. I bought it with enough gears to get me up the slight rises I have to traverse to get back and forth to work. And I got on it for the first time the other day--after two days of trying to put the damned thing together with a manual that was obviously written in some language other than English and translated by drunken giraffes-—and realized something very important that hadn’t occurred to me before I laid out the money for this contraption: I have forgotten how to ride a bicycle.

Don’t let anyone tell you you never forget. You do. You forget also that you will fall. You forget that it hurts when you fall, and your bad knees are what are going to have to stop you if you have to get off the thing or jump to avoid being hurt. And you forget that you can’t ride it in Birkenstock sandals, because you didn’t have those kinds of shoes when you were little, and the edges hit the chain guard and make your feet unstable on the pedals. More importantly, you forget that you used to be fearless—-and it’s just a real revelation to realize how fearful you are now. The traffic is mean-—the roads are not smooth, your butt is much, much larger and that seat was obviously made by the Marquis de Sade. And because you’ve sat on that big butt for the last six months without working out (waiting of course for the weather to get better so you could ride your new acquisition,) your thigh muscles are screaming by the second stroke of the pedals.

That tiny little rise on the way to work may as well be Mount Everest for all the power you can muster to get up it.

I’ve owned my new bike for a week now, and so far, all I’ve managed to do is ride to the corner, up a little ways on the cross street, and back again, before I’m huffing and puffing and shaking with lack of muscle power. At least that’s how far I got today. Yesterday, I was only able to ride around the yard a little. So I guess that’s progress of a sort.

Oh, I’ll get there. I have to. I am woefully out of shape right now, but I’ll get back into shape eventually. If I don’t fall off the damned bike before that and break my leg or scrape my self, or—-godforbid—-get hit by a semi. And maybe by mid-summer I’ll actually be able to ride it to work and back.

After all, it's just like riding a bicycle, isn't it?

For my departed friends

I lost a friend yesterday.

He was the sweetest little guy--affectionate, friendly, undemanding. Truly one of those friends you remember fondly and never the opposite way--there weren't any bad days with this friend, ever. Of course, he wasn't human.

His name was Mickey. He was half Maine Coon cat, half something else, maybe a lot of somethings else. It didn't matter. He bore the characteristics of the Maine Coon--the gentle temperament, the gurgling meow, the softest, thickest fur you've ever touched, and a tail that was almost as big as his body. He had huge paws that gently tapped your face or leg when he wanted affection, and that was a lot. He had intelligent green eyes that looked right at your face. And when he was sitting on your lap, he would stare at your face. If you said "give me a kiss," he'd bend his big soft head toward your lips and give the tiniest little lick--every single time.

Unfortunately, he also shared another characteristic of the Maine Coon: a tendency toward heart problems. When I found him, it looked like he was sleeping. There wasn't a mark on him, not a hair out of place. His ears were still perked--his whiskers still alert and pointed. His mouth was closed, and his eyes slightly open, but the pupils were fixed and dilated, and he was cold and stiff already.

Death had come in the night and taken my friend, suddenly, and without warning.

I buried him wrapped in a crocheted afghan made by a friend for my wedding. Mickey had outlasted that marriage, three houses, the loss of other friends, and much of my sorrow; until his death, he'd never even been sick a day in his life. He was my rock, and my soft, sweet buddy--when he laid on my bed with me, he took up half the room.

He's not the first cat I've lost. My first, an all-black, declawed male, by the name of Iago, died in 1990. I had Iago for seventeen years. He became ill, was in great pain, and I had to have him put down to end his horrible suffering. I won't ever forget that day--my grief over his loss is still fresh. But I could not let him go on dying by degrees; he could not eat, or drink, and he moaned constantly. The kindest thing to do was to help him go, yet I still feel guilty and ashamed that I had to be the instrument of his demise. Mickey had none of that suffering, and his death is a mystery to me. Why him? Why now? I will never know. Both Iago and Mickey were with me a long time. They became my friends, they became my family. They outlasted both. And they gave far more than they ever took. I have nothing but good memories from them, but that's all I have.

Then there was Burgess. Burgess came to me as a kitten someone had thrown from a car. His nose was broken, his tooth was loose, he had ear mites so bad his ears were hard and solid from the debris. It took me days of gentle bathing, with this tiny ginger kitten asleep on my shoulder, and many Q-tips soaked in baby oil and medicine to get rid of his mites. After that, because it was such a soothing treatment I gave him, he loved the bathroom, and warm water, and would often play in the sink, perhaps remembering his rescue and the quiet times we had as I treated him. He would purr gently when I stroked his ears, as if to thank me. But that's probably just my own vanity talking.

Burgess was an adventurous, intelligent, and quirky cat. He didn't see the use of screens for doors or windows, because they kept him inside and disallowed his re-entry. So he would systematically reduce any screen I put in to shreds, so he could come and go as he pleased. I finally had to put hardware cloth, strong steel, over my screens to keep them from letting in all of Nature. Burgess, of course, saw nothing wrong with that--and so we clashed constantly. But I loved him anyway. He and Mickey used to raid the catnip container. I found both of them, once, dead drunk on the floor in the middle of the living room. Burgess had discovered a way to get the top off the plastic container, and had enlisted Mickey's help, and the two of them had gone through an entire carton of catnip themselves. The empty container and the two insensible addicts were asleep on the floor when I found them. All I could do was laugh. They barely blinked.

Mickey never lost his taste for catnip, either. Every night at ten o'clock PM, he would find the jar of catnip, knock it to the ground from wherever I had put it (thinking in my folly he wouldn't notice it high on that shelf!) and then meow in his little gurgling way until I opened it for him. Without Burgess's strong claws and skill at breaking and entering, he could not do it for himself.

Burgess is gone now, too. Disappeared in the care of another human, not wise enough to his roaming ways, or maybe he was and just couldn't prevent Burgess's defection. I couldn't blame anyone for losing him--I knew him well enough to know he was too curious and too adventurous to keep indoors. He had walked the Wild Road too many times to be caged. I hope he's having just as much fun as he always did when he stayed with me.

Then there was Koschka. He was only two when a heart attack claimed him too, one July morning in the front garden. Unlike Mickey, he'd had a strange "attack" the day before--became very still and wouldn't respond to my calling him, or touching him. It was odd--I had to pick him up before he would move, and I didn't understand what had happened; after I put him down in the house, he began acting normally again, but he didn't want to eat--very unusual for him. Next morning when I called him to breakfast, he crawled out from under the front porch, laid down among the marigolds, and died. That fast. That suddenly. The thread of his life cut with sharp scissors, and blown away on the summer breeze. I'd barely gotten to know him--he was with me such a short while--but I miss him anyway.

Iago, intellent and loyal. Burgess, free-spirited and quirky. Koschka, talky little baby, not yet finished. Mickey, soft, sweet and affectionate.



Their soft paws and their sleek fur and their intelligent eyes and their sweet, plaintive meows are still in my mind. They are all still alive in my heart. Somewhere, along the Wild Road, they roam, hunting small mammals or birds, sniffing at the breeze that brings news from afar. Their ears are forward, listening. Their green and gold eyes narrow and widen, and their whiskers twitch in anticipation of some new adventure or some fresh idea. The wind carries their cries to me at night, when I lay down to sleep, and I imagine I am stroking their fur, spooning out their food, rubbing my finger under the lines of their jaws as they mark me as their property; they have claimed sovereignity over my heart.

I will leave the door open, the screen can stay shredded, and there is catnip growing in my garden next to the tulips. I will plant forget-me-nots over the mounds of earth in my yard, marked with stones upon which names are scratched, beneath the weeping willow tree and the lilac. I will tend to the survivors, my other cats Sammy and Ash, and my elderly, blind dog Echo. And I will never get over wondering why such joy and such unconditional happiness is only given to us for such a short span of time.


Goodbye my friends. Hunt well. Be happy. Be alive somewhere, even if only in my memories.

I will not forget.

Photos from top to bottom: Burgess and Mickey, Koschka and Ash, Echo and Sammy. Photos of Iago do not exist digitally, since he left us before the technology arrived.

Coming soon to a bookstore near you?

I’ve just finished writing a novel. The story has been kicking around for a long time—since 1985 when I actually lived the events depicted. It is true, but I wrote it as a novel because the plot is pretty bizarre and I thought it might go over better as fiction than trying to explain myself.

Writing a novel is a strange exercise. I’ve always dreamed of doing it, and you know, it wasn’t as hard as it seemed; once you have a plot and know what all of your characters are going to do and when they’re going to do it, you only need to flesh out the details and the characterizations. The hardest part was finding an opening—a place for the story to begin.

That was really difficult. But once I found my opening line, the rest of almost wrote itself.

It’s not enough to simply list a bunch of events in chronological order. A while back I worked with an acquaintance on his novel—and that’s pretty much just what he did, which I found to be tedious and amateurish. Of course, I didn’t tell him that then, but if I were doing the same thing today, I would. I don’t think people want to read a long list of events without any accompanying detail. I could be wrong about that, but no good novel I’ve ever read starts at the front and moves an increment at a time toward the conclusion. It jumps around—here, there, everywhere—and keeps the reader a little off-balance throughout most of the story. That was actually inherent to the plot of my story, since it spans two time periods with parallel stories—the 1900s and the 1980s—so it wasn’t hard to keep the plot moving.

I learned a lot about writing—how it sounds in my head is not always how it comes out on paper. It’s easier to write like you talk, but that’s not always a good thing to read, unless your characters are speaking in accents. Stream of consciousness writing is harder still—and it bores me to tears to read sometimes. Somewhere between conversation and raw brain spew is a mddle ground with structure—that’s the place I had to find, and I’m glad to say I think I did.

I learned that you don’t have to sprinkle commas all over the place. I learned that even when you take pains to prevent it, there are errors of continuity, time, movement, thought you didn’t intend to make. Holding all the threads of plot and character together without dropping them occasionally is just not possible. You have to be willing to let the book get written before you fix those, or you’ll find you’ve locked yourself into a plot element you can’t get out of.

I also thought that if I ever wrote a book I would not be able to let anyone else read my writing until it was finished, or read other people’s writing; but those were myths. Not only was it helpful to have another set of eyes on the continuity and the spelling errors, it provided me with a couple of insights into something that had been completely unconscious. A friend of mine read through the first half of the novel and her only complaint was that it had a “bitter” undertone which I hadn’t intended. I went through the early chapters and discovered she was correct, and fixed that. Funny how your mind will throw your own hidden agendas into your writing—up until that time, I had never thought of myself as bitter, but I know now I am (though less so now that I’ve written away a lot of the demons!) and I’m glad I had it pointed out.

I was also able to read and enjoy other novelists while I wrote. Sometimes it was helpful to know that other writers may have similar sentence structure as you—seeing these in print aided me in knowing how to resolve some of the problems I had with my sentences.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience writing my book. I want to write more of them—turn this into a profession for me, even if this one does not sell. I simply like being in charge of the words that other people will read.

Oh, and there is one more thing I learned. Back up your files. When I lost the power supply in my home PC half-way through the book, I thought I was doomed, but my files were fine and my machine is now running again. I didn’t take that warning for granted, though—and went right out and bought myself a little flash drive.

Next purchase: a laptop so I can write anywhere anytime.

I think I’m on my way to a new era in my life…I hope it pays off!

Uncoiling

It happens every year in the late Winter: I begin to uncoil. It's a palpable feeling of opening up, each time I get up in the morning and the sun has already risen and there is a breeze blowing in off the river. I can smell Spring coming, from a long distance, and it triggers a desire in me to get out all my shorter trousers, all my short-sleeved tops, dig up those stalks I left in the garden which are now all brown and crisp and will crumble into dust if I touch them; it's like a hibernating bear, dreaming those last few winter dreams, begins to stir in restless slumber, waiting for the time when she will wake to the new grass sprouting and fish coming back up the water to spawn.

I start to become tired of the cold. I feel quite put out
when the sky is the color of a bruise, and begins to spit out that last, wet, sleety snow. Of course Nature has every right to snow--it's still Winter. Spring is about twenty days away, and that's only the official date for the season to turn--here in Ohio, where the Spring is largely mythological instead of real, it's probably more like two months away until I can actuall begin digging and planting and get those windows open at last to blow out all the dust that's accumulated since October.

I also feel like traveling. I don't have anywhere to go, really, but I want to pack some stuff in the car, drive in a Southerly direction, and just get on the road. There are a lot of reasons not to travel at this time of the year. The weather is unpredictable. I could be driving through 50-degree weather one minute, and in a freak blizzard the next. There's not much to see right now, either. No leaves yet--just the rosy tips of the maples and dogwoods as the sap rises. This is one sign I watch for every year: when the woods take on a pinkish hue over the usual brown-gray, I know that Spring and leafing out is imminent. I once read somewhere that the maples bloom early--most people don't know they do, because the flowers are simply small, insignificant green clusters with red arils, which get shed and fall to the forest floor like red-pepper flakes--sometimes on the snow itself. There are other signs just as reliable though.

The Canada geese begin to make big Vs across the sky, taking off to their nesting grounds. Certain birds become scarcer--chickadees and cardinals to name two--and others come to take their places: robins, kingfishers, bluejays and hawks. Hawks are plentiful now--you can see them standing sentry along the freeways, one about every five-hundred feet or so, feathers fluffed and shoulders hunched against the cold breezes that make the tall trees sway.
When the weather warms and even now, on sunny days, you will see them circling, looking for early-waking mice or squirrels, or simply enjoying the sun on their backs as they glide the thermals. The daffodils and early tulips begin to poke up fat green fingers through frozen soil. Cress appears on the stream-edges. Skunk cabbage emerges, looking like small heads of lettuce dropped accidentally. And every tree you see will soon bend its delicate small branches, heavy with fat buds. It's coming. There's no doubt. But it takes its sweet time about it.

They say Spring moves Northward at about fifteen miles a day from the South. I want to rip down the road at about eighty--taking note of every sign and sigil as I fly. That's
the uncoiling that begins in me at this time of year. Once begun, it goes much faster than Springtime. I can already see the riot of color in my front garden, even though I haven't planted a single seed yet and won't for a while yet.

Maybe it's time for some inner changes too. This year, I'll buy a bicycle and begin pedalling to work, instead of driving. It's not far--less than a mile. I can do that. And maybe this year when the ground thaws and the nights are warmer, I'll put in that patio I want so badly--and build my firepit up with some blocks or stones. I have a wall in front of my house, I could use those rocks. I'll need a wheelbarrow to haul them--the work will be hard and sweaty, but I'll love it when it's done, I just know it. And music--I want to have parties

where people bring their guitars and banjos and drums--around that new firepit. I'll put the canopy up and we'll eat hotdogs and roast marshmallows.

Damn--I'm impatient, that I am. Spring isn't even here and I'm already planning Summer. Moving right along, at a speed much faster than Nature intended.

The Perils of Ice-Fishing

I live next to a small, shallow river that is managed by the city; next to my side yard there is a spillway with flood gates that can be raised or lowered to keep the river from flooding the properties that border it. Though there is only a small chance of flooding from this little waterway, every winter the water is drained and the basin is allowed to refill by snowmelt or springtime rains. We’ve complained however, that the yearly draining causes loss of wildlife, notably the large carp that like the shallow weedy stream, and as a result, the city has stopped completely draining the river for us. Also, this year, there hasn’t been very much precipitation—but it has been very cold, especially this past week.

Since the temperature dropped so low so fast, the water left in the river froze completely across the surface—something it rarely does—leaving a smooth coating of ice, completely clear and glassy. Then the sun came out and lit it all up at an angle, like a magnifying lens; even if you stood on the banks you could see all the way to the bottom of the riverbed right through the ice, as if there had been a giant piece of polarized glass placed flat on the water’s surface. It was amazing. The sunshine melted just enough of the ice surface to make it really slippery; if it had been thick enough to skate on, I don’t think I’d have been able to look anywhere but down. It was a rare occurrence to see ice form that quickly on the river; usually it stays warmer all winter and we only get ice formation along the banks. This was different, though—tempting to walk out on, or try to navigate across. It must have looked fairly tempting to the great blue heron that was trying to fish on it, too.This poor bird picked his ungainly way out to the middle of the river, skidding like Bambi all over the slick, wet surface. He kept his long wings slightly unfurled, for balance, baring the bluer feathers along their outer edges. I watched him stalked along the ice, picking up one articulated stilt of a leg up after the other slowly and gingerly, as if he walked through something thick and gooey; every so often his foot would skid from under him and he would lurch forward or backward and thrust a wing out at a weird angle in order to remain upright. It was a comical thing to see, though I was more entranced than amused at first—I’ve seen plenty of herons, but they’re usually so skittish they don’t stick around to allow themselves to be watched while they fish.

This poor heron, however, was probably too frustrated to care. Especially just after I walked to the edge of the river. As I emerged from behind the trees, the heron became alerted to my presence, and stretched his neck up and his wings out in order to fly off—but when he did, he lost his balance and his gangly legs did a cartoon-like dance under him and he nearly fell on his blue-feathered butt. There should have been music for that—or at least sound effects. His legs pedaled so fast they looked like the Road Runner escaping Wile E. Coyote. After ruffling all his feathers in indignation, he finally settled back down and began to fish.

This was even worse. He could see all the way to the bottom of the river too. But he couldn’t get to the bottom, not even when he could clearly see swimming food. His long beak could be heard clacking against the ice when he stabbed forth with it in order to pick up whatever it was he wanted—and he got knocked senseless each time. The poor bird didn’t give up, though—he methodically stepped those long lanky legs over several dozen square feet of ice, stabbing here or there when he saw something swimming—keeping his neck and beak stretched out in front of him for the instant when food came into view—and each time coming up empty-beaked.

It was getting funnier by the minute. Each time he would stab out for a fish, he would slip on the ice and flail about, and each time he would hit the ice with that long hard beak. Though I laughed, I felt very sorry for him. He was trying so hard, and it wasn’t clear to him why he couldn’t get the food tht was moving around right under his feet. I wonder if he understood that the water he was looking into was hard enough to stand on and that it wasn’t normal to stand on top of the water—or if that conclusion didn’t bother him. He tried for the better part of an hour and a half to find some hole somewhere where he could spear a fish. Every once in a while, he would find a small pothole in the ice and sink up to a knee—but it was never big enough to find a fish in as well.

The cold was intense and I couldn’t stand outside any longer. And the sun was setting. I reluctantly turned away from this scene, glad I had been there to see it, even though I knew the heron probably didn’t get any dinner that day. I wish I’d had some fish to throw out there for him. I even considered shattering the ice with a large rock, just so he could get underneath the frustrating barrier. But Nature doesn’t really need my interference. If I had thrown the rock, it would have scared the bird, and probably just stirred up a bunch of mud on the bottom of the stream; so I let it go, knowing full well that herons are pretty resilient birds; what he didn’t find below the ice on my creek he would find elsewhere. And the next day, he was back—the ice had melted enough to let him stand up to those bony knees near the shore again, waiting for the fish he knew would eventually swim his way. We should all be so persistent.

Solitude

Been feeling a bit, um, isolated lately.

Not that I’m antisocial—I’m certainly not. And I’m busy enough—I am. But that deeper connection—that bit where you come home and dump all over someone about the bad day you just had, or crow in the ear of whomever because of the really cool things that have happened lately…that’s the part that’s missing.

I’m not much of a joiner. I like intimate circles of friends. I don’t like a bunch of superficial acquaintances you can’t discuss the “hot topics” (sex, religion, politics) with—but by the same token, I don’t dismiss such acquaintances, because one relationship usually leads to another eventually. You can’t afford to lock yourself in a box no matter how hard it is to form deeper relationships, or no matter how many failures in that area you’ve had—I know because I’ve had a few. Yet that real intimacy seems to elude me.

This isn’t a confessional piece. I’m not going to pick apart my good and bad points. I have had some rock-solid excuses in the past couple of years for not wanting to form any more relationships, and for cutting out some of the ones I did have. But now that I’ve gotten over all those glitches, I’m finding it’s harder than ever to start up again—and I wonder why.

I volunteer at a local concert venue (www.kentstage.org). It’s a great place for local and national acts—I run the concession stand and hobnob with the staff and get to meet and greet all the performers. It’s a fun thing to do on weekends. I also volunteer at an even smaller concert venue, a hometown coffeehouse that features local performers on a monthly basis. The music community, especially the folk music community, is a small, intimate circle of people, who know each other—it’s like a family in a way. If you play anything vaguely acoustic (and I do), or if you know how to work sound or lighting, or if you just love to print out posters and mail out flyers, this is the sort of volunteer work that seems more like play—and it pretty much fills the weekends. Also, you get to meet a lot of the nationally known performers; they aren’t prima donnas, they love knowing who their fans are, and will gladly sign your CD inserts, and they were just like you, yesterday—so they’re a lot more grateful to know you. Yet, even with all this accessibility, all this familial bonhomie, you can still feel like you’re just on the edge of it all, rather than in the middle. I’m not even sure what it would take to get into the middle.

One of my friends in this crowd, an itinerant musician I’ll call Joe, greeted me Saturday night at the concert and said “I don’t have a band.”

“Were you supposed to bring one?” I asked him.

“No. I mean for St. Patrick’s Day. I need a band.”

Joe plays all over, usually solo; but sometimes he grabs the nearest musician and says let’s do a couple—no rehearsals, no formalities. He’s one of those performers who can pick up his guitar and play hundreds of songs in any key, anywhere, with any vocalist—even if they don’t know what key they sing in themselves. (This impresses me no end. I once sang with Joe on a festival stage—I began an old-time gospel number a capella—and pretty soon he was playing along. After the number he said to me “E-flat minor?” Hey—I just sang. I didn’t use a pitch-pipe. How was I to know that I sang in E-flat minor? Who’da thunk it?)
Anyway, Joe lamented that he didn’t have a band. He knows I sing. He knows I play Irish music. He knows I’m a whiz on the tinwhistle. We’ve done the St. Pat’s gig together before. But did he ask? Nope. I wasn’t insulted—I just felt a bit ignored. Isolated. Un-thought-about.
Trust me when I tell you I’ll get over it. However, it got me thinking. Not merely about the music people in my life, but also about other aspects. I used to be a member of several organizations that I no longer affiliate with; I used to belong to clubs I no longer belong to. I used to do some short-range travel to see people I no longer see. All these things are what kept me socially involved at a much higher rate than I am now.

This is both good and bad. On the one hand, it’s easier to plan my week. I don’t get burnt out as much as I used to. I don’t feel all pulled in ninety-six different directions. But on the other hand, I’m, well,isolated. And it’s just a bit chilly out here on the edges sometimes.

I also ran into another person at this same concert; a woman whom I’ve known for a long time, but haven’t seen around for years. In the course of our greeting, I asked her if she was seeing anyone—I knew she had ended a long-term relationship since last I’d seen her. She said, no, she was happily single. And that also got me thinking.

I, too, am happily single. I come home from my day’s work and everything is right where I left it the night before—housework takes no time at all. I know exactly how many days I can go before having to do laundry. I can buy the small sizes in the grocery store. A carton of juice lasts forever.
Sheets stay cleaner a lot longer. I can wear the most comfortable clothing in the world: a pair of old sweat pants and a huge, baggy top. And on summer mornings, when I’m not working, I can take my newspaper and my cup of espresso out onto my porch swing and spend a quality hour or two doing the crossword, sipping coffee in the stripes of warm sunlight pouring through the slat blinds, playing airs on my whistle, or staring at the birds at the feeder. It is impossible to feel bad, lonely, or even a little depressed on those mornings.

In my house, now that I’m not in there with someone else, convenience, tidiness and comfort have evolved to high art.

I guess there’s an upside to isolation after all. Sometimes the best songs are those you play by yourself.

Street of Blue Houses

There is a street nearby
Where the houses are blue,
Painted in a monochrome rainbow
Of shades of sorrow.

Never have I seen so many
Houses of one color
In a row. There are no children
In their yards.
No dogs bark,
No cats cry for milk at the back doors,
And the windows are shuttered in the twilight
When it is often such a delight
To see rooms inside while strolling.
The yellow light streams out
To the sidewalk
From the brown ones, the white ones, the green and red ones,
And the brick ones. These issue invitations;
Their dusk rooms come to get me
And draw me inside, as they gather memory
Or happiness or comfort to themselves.
I am swept inside.

But not the Blue Houses.
They have closed doors. They have cooler chimneys,
From which the smoke does not curl.
They have cleaner porches,
Free of tricycles, ball bats, winter boots;
They have closed garages,
Detritus not visible from the sidewalk or the road.

One Springtime, alert with forsythia, I will pass
And there will be scraping, priming;
One Summertime, bees humming in the choir, I will pass
And there will be tan, orange, gold or yellow
Rising by slow stria over the regret,
Blotting it out sill by batten, shingle by clapboard.

I will hear the Blue Houses take a collective breath
And gulp in great gouts of light,
As cool turns to warm, and January becomes August
For one of their kind. Inside, a slow sound will begin--
A ticking over of gears, a humming of wires,
A gurgle of water in crusted ancient pipes
Which will burst forth from the tap any moment
In a crystalline surge, and wet the dust below.

And the Blue Houses, sleeping, will wake
To morning being painted on their hearts.

Dream a little dream...

From time to time I have prophetic dreams. I’m not gifted with the ability to see huge events, or major warnings; instead, I see, well, trends.

First example: I was about 12 when I dreamed about being in a store where they were selling the most gorgeous beautiful and amazing flowers, made of—feathers. Yes, the petals were made of feathers of fantastic colors, deep and rich,  the flowers were huge and their leaves were also feathers, deep, intense green feathers. The dream was highly detailed. I saw how the quills of the feathers were pushed into slender green plastic tubes, then the tubes were tied together with floral tape around an artificial center. One could gather as many tubes together as one wished, with whatever center, and make any flower or combination one desired. The flowers were beautiful, and they were “towering over our heads” as in the song Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. (And before you think it, that record hadn’t even been released in this country when I dreamed this—maybe that was a second prophecy?)  

Anyway, when I woke up I told my mother about the dream and she laughed and said that sounded crazy—flowers from feathers!  Hah! Two weeks later, my aunt J. took both of us to a turkey farm where they sold—are you ready?—feathers.  Dyed feathers in intense, bright colors, for making—still ready?—flowers.  No, I’m not joking! The flowers weren’t made exactly like my dream suggested, although there isn’t any reason they couldn’t have been; instead, these were stuck into small pieces of Styrofoam, or gathered around a flower center, and taped round with the green floral tape.  Also, these feathers were small, only about 3 inches long, with square ends, unlike in my dream, where they were more like peacock feathers—long, wide and whippy. Of course, they also sold those kinds at this farm—but they were a lot more expensive. My dream could have been entirely realized from the stock we saw there.

They were also used in other ways: sticking them into Styrofoam shapes such as wreath forms, or reindeer heads, layered like scales, to make Christmas décor. This is what my aunt and my mother wanted to do, so we bought scads of plastic bagsful and made feather-lapped things for all over the house that holiday season. I begged a few bucks from my mom and bought some floral tape and fake centers, to make a few flowers. My clumsy fingers didn’t have the touch needed to do them as well as I envisioned; they weren’t exactly as drop-dead stunning as the ones in my dream, but  I got a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I looked at them. They were my dream realized.

Another prophecy I dreamed was about a dress. I dreamed I was looking into a shop window and there was the most beautiful dress there…it was a silky sort of fabric, that draped and flowed, and it was silver, very simple, with princess seaming down the front, and a scoop neckline, and long, bell sleeves. It looked like a fairy’s dress. I woke up, drew it from memory, and had my grandmother, who was a professional seamstress, look at it. She hadn’t seen any patterns that would be suitable for altering into this dress, so I gave up, reluctantly.  A month later, the exact dress was hanging up in a shop window across from where I had a part-time job. Not just a similar dress, the exact dress. Same color, same flowy fabric. It cost $39.95. I couldn’t afford it. (This was 1967.)  But my mind boggled when I saw it, and I got that same funny pit-of-the-stomach feeling again.

A codicil to this story: about seven months later, My girlfriend Jan found the drawing during a sleepover, and fell in love with the style. We found a similar pattern with no trouble this time, and she had my grandmother make it up in pink for her prom dress. She looked like a princess.

My third prophecy was very strange indeed. I dreamed of those reflectors that are implanted in the road—the kind that reflect your cars headlights around curves or divided highways. I dreamed that I had invented them and they were being installed all over the state. Not one week later, I watched in utter amazement as the road crews began installing the exact same reflectors in the roads around my home town.   Until they actually installed them, I had never seen one.  I didn’t even know they existed.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking—these aren’t “prophecies.” These are things I saw, then forgot I saw, then saw again and thought I had invented them. I have to admit, I’ve thought the same thing in moments of self-doubt. But it’s not true. I did dream these things before I ever saw them, and you’re just going to have to take my word for it.

I’ve dreamed other mad inventions. Here’s one: an articulated stapler. Yes, a long stapler that bends and swings in the middle, so you can staple in any direction. Why would anyone need one of these? Well, uh, I don’t know exactly. But I invented it when I used one in a dream about stapling hundreds of booklets together. It came in very handy.

And here’s another one: sunglasses that stick to your eyeglass lenses, made of magnetic film, like window clings. They could be trimmed to fit any glasses, polarized for safety, and cost next to nothing. Also, they could slip into a pocket or purse without taking up hardly any room. I don’t know why this wouldn’t work. And they’d sure beat those ugly slip-over-your-own-glasses types, or the geeky clip-on kinds.

And another: an apron with a built in tray for people who eat at buffets. The tray would be in the front and have places to hold one’s dishes and utensils so one could select food from the buffet with both hands free. It could be fitted like a cobbler apron, the tray would fold down in front, and have a two-inch edge around it for safety, and there could even be a “well” for beverage glasses. There would be a lot less spilling and juggling with such a garment.  When you get to your table with your food-laden plates and glass, you could set them down, push the tray up, fasten it with Velcro ™ and eat your meal, without worry about spilling, staining, or the like, then remove the garment and go on your way clean as a whistle! I think it would make life a lot easier for the elderly, or for people who are very dressed up and don’t want to look like they just went through a buffet line.

And my latest dream was just last night.

I dreamed about a barbecue in the winter. The dream featured the cast of the defunct TV show Home Improvement, for some strange reason. They were outside on the deck, and it was snowing like mad, and the barbecue was fired up, cooking steaks. The barbecue grill was hissing and spitting from the meat juices and the snowflakes; beer was cooling in a nearby snowbank, instead of an insulated cooler, and there was hot bread spread with pizza sauce and herbs in a pan on the table. Vegetable kebobs were roasting away on the grill, a large thermos of holiday rum punch was available.  Everyone was happy, rosy-cheeked and having a great time, eating, drinking, throwing snowballs. It looked and felt like a trend that is about ready to be popular. Like it ought to be featured in a Superbowl commercial. I’m going to watch this January, just to see if I’m right.

It seems to me that we don’t try hard enough to invent the new thing to do, or a new way to have fun, as we invent devices to make our lives easier. What about just making things more interesting?  The people in my dream, odd as it was that they were television stars, were having a lot of fun at their winter barbecue bash. I could, in my dream’s eye, see the invitations they had sent out for this party, and the incredulous looks when people read them, and how they weren’t sure about it, but once they got there, they realized sure, why not?, and entered into the spirit of the thing with gusto.

I don’t know why I dream such things, only to see them realized days, weeks, or months later. I don’t know why my mind forecasts such trivial things, unimportant, irrelevant things. None of them are truly going to shake up the universe. Winter barbecues, pretty dresses, feather flowers—not a single thing that will affect the balance of the cosmos. Yet, along with those things, are the other things—the road reflectors, buffet garments, the stick-on sunglass film—that might save lives or make things safer for people. My sleeping, dreaming brain doesn’t see a difference, and maybe I shouldn’t either.  Maybe it’s just as important to invent a new way to have fun as it is to invent a new way to make life easier.  Maybe they’re equally important to the universe itself.

I’d really like to think so.