Why wait?

My sister called this morning and surprised me with the news that her newest grandchild, a boy, arrived last night -- five weeks early. This baby is my niece's first child, and I can so identify with her right now.

My own firstborn arrived six weeks early, before we'd bought diapers, a crib or anything else. I'd thought there was plenty of time. For weeks I'd been embroidering tiny, gender-neutral diaper shirts, none of which was completed -- by the time of her birth or ever. Babies change plans, and when they arrive this early, the only thing that seems important is that they're healthy. My niece and I both got lucky in that regard.

This little boy will grow up in a family where love and laughter are plentiful. He'll be welcomed by parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles who'll be charmed by every hair on his head and every breath he takes. Maybe he knew that somehow. Maybe that's why he couldn't wait.


Why wait
When now is the right time?
Today could just pass you by,
Why wait?
It's your turn, it's your life,
The future is what we make
So why wait?*


*Why Wait
By the Cheetah Girls

To You-Know-Who-You-Are Surveys, LLC

Get a clue, okay?

If you call someone's home phone number a half-dozen times over the course of a week, sometimes during the day, sometimes at night, and you never, never get an answer, which of the following possibilities do you think is the most likely scenario:

a. Nobody's ever home at this number, but the people who pay for this phone would really, really like to participate in your survey and would feel terrible if you didn't keep calling back until you finally reached them; or

b. The people who pay for this phone have Caller ID and have no intention of talking to you, no matter how many times you call back; or

c. There's a remote chance that one of the people in the household you're calling might be sitting right next to the only phone in the house that doesn't have Caller ID and might be expecting a call and might reach out and answer the phone without screening it first.

Crap. The correct answer was "b," but you picked "c," didn't you?

Lest ye think I exaggerate...

About a year and a half ago I posted a photographic example of my ongoing dog-hair problem. There's hair on the floor, hair in the air, and hair constantly falling off the dogs as they walk through the house. It mostly collects itself into tumbleweed-like puff balls and hides under furniture, so it isn't as if I have to kick a path through it. And I don't consider it dirty, exactly, because if the hair were still on the dogs, I'd have no objection to hugging them. It just gets a little overwhelming, that's all.

It would be easier to manage if I could just vacuum up the hair, but there's too much of it. It fills up more than one vacuum cleaner bag, and at five dollars a bag, I can't afford to use more than one per session. So I sweep before I vacuum. I pile all the hair into a corner, sweep the pile onto an open sheet of newspaper, then fold up the paper and put it in the trash.

You can imagine the volume of hair that accumulates if I get behind in the sweeping and vacuuming. Say I'm busy with a barbecue one weekend, a birthday dinner the next, then I get involved in a really, really good book, and then, just when I'm finally getting around to tackling chores, I get invited to trek through a nature preserve instead. Time flies by sometimes; what're you gonna do?

Today, I made up my mind, was no-nonsense day. I got Kadi and Butch both down and brushed them vigorously, determined to get every loose hair off of them before I began sweeping. Then I made a deal with myself.

Sweeping hurts my back, so I decided I'd sweep for 15 minutes, then do something I enjoy for the next 15, alternating until the job was done. I watched TV and drank a Diet Coke after the first 15 minutes, then picked up the broom again. As I swept, my mind began focusing on the possibility of a new creative project, something I've never seen anybody else do.

The timer rang and I got started. First, I needed a spray bottle of water to make my sculpture medium pliable enough to hold shape. After five minutes, I had just what I wanted, so the next step was to photograph it. It took about a minute to get the right shot, then another three or four minutes to get the photo loaded onto my computer. With five minutes left, I opened the photo file into the Paint program and went to work "painting" little facial features. Done, just in the nick of time.

This is supposed to be a vacuuming period, but I'm so pleased with the results of my art project that I couldn't wait to show it to you. Do you know how many times I've joked with people that there's enough dog hair in my house to make a whole 'nother dog? Maybe now they'll believe me.


I think I'll name this one Fluffy (may she rest in peace).

Under the white-hot sun?

Some of you have already written about cool nights and the need for warm blankets, but we're not there yet. Right now we just feel lucky that the temperature has dropped in the last week to a daily high of no more than 89-90 degrees.

I do know the season will change soon, though, and there's one more photo I want to show you before cool weather makes it untimely:


It's such a simple shot, really. The colors and the bleakness make me feel the kind of loneliness I experience when I look at Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World, but much warmer thoughts come to mind when I remember the day the photo was taken.

If you have the time and the inclination, tell me if the picture reminds you of anything or anywhere in particular. Then I'll come back in a day or two and give you the backstory.

That's me, right there on the red carpet

Interviewer: Umm, you're on the red carpet, so I know I'm supposed to know you, but could you say your name for the viewers, please?

VS (leaning over to speak directly into the mic): Velvet. Sacks. My name is Velvet Sacks.

Interviewer: Uh, yeah, right, where are my notes? Ummm, Miz Sacks, can you tell us a little bit about your latest show...um, film...er, album?

VS: Well, I don't have a show or film or album; I have a blog.

Interviewer: A blog? Like on the Internet? Like thousands and thousands of other people have?

VS: Precisely.

Interviewer: And is your blog famous?

VS: Well, there are at least half a dozen people who read it regularly. Plus family. Well, not all my family, of course, some of them are busy with actual lives.

Interviewer: Oh, I see, well, ummm...tell us who you're wearing tonight.

VS: Dress Barn. Plus.

Interviewer: Hmmm, we don't see that here too often. Can you tell us what kind of fabric that is?

VS (rolling eyes): It's velvet, okay? Between the heavy, fuzzy fabric and the TV-adds-10-pounds thing, people are gonna think I'm fatter than I really am.

Interviewer: Heh-heh. Well, tell us why you're here tonight. Have you been nominated for something?

VS: Nominated, my ass! I've already won two awards, you doofus, and the most recent one was for being nice! Can you freakin' believe it? Now get outta my way; I need to get inside and see if they have any of those little finger sandwiches.

_______________________


Jackie gave me this award, and I'm delighted, if somewhat embarrassed, to accept it. While I don't think I'm a mean person, "nice" isn't the first adjective I'd apply to myself. Are there any graphic artists out there who could digitally transform this into a "Not Usually a Jerk Award"? That might come just a little closer to the real me.

Jackie also posted these words that go along with the award: “This award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends, and those that inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world. Once you have been awarded, please pass it on to seven others whom you feel are deserving of this award.”

Now, that last part I can do. I can think of way more than seven nice people I've met through blogging. Many of them have already received this award, and since every recipient is supposed to send it to seven others, I'm scrambling to get this list up fast.

I'm honored to present the "Nice Matters Award" to:

Austin of The People Behind My Eyes;

Maxngabbie of Maypoles of Life;

The four sisters who are quite nice but try their best not to show it:

Patsy of My Life and Times;

Betty of Galla Creek Ephemeris;

Helen of A Little of This-n-That; and

Fleta of Dirt Road Lives.

The seventh blogger whom I've chosen to recognize with the "Nice Matters Award" is, ta-dahhhhh:

Robbin with 2 B's of Cedar Chest of Dreams.

Robbin is, coincidentally, the person who gave me my very first award, the "Rockin' Girl Blogger Award," back in July. As much as I appreciated it, I missed my window of opportunity and then felt awkward writing about it: "I got this really nice award a lonnnnnnng time ago." I thanked Robbin on her blog, but if I'd had my ducks in a row back then, if I hadn't been so lethargic, and, well, if I'd been a nicer person, I would have been much quicker to post the award and thank her here. Sorry for the delay, Robbin. It does mean a lot that you thought of me when passing out these awards.

Speaking of passing out, I know this post is getting extremely long, but if you can take a deep breath and hang with me a bit longer, I'm supposed to give out five of the "Rockin' Girl Blogger" awards. These, I'm proud to send out to a special Fab Five:

Carmon of Life at Star's Rest;

Janet of Janet's Ordinary Life;

Alison of Inspired Work of Self-Indulgence;

Holly of Creekhiker; and, bringing us full circle:

Jackie of Jackie's Garden.

Not only do these ladies rock; they're nice, too. In fact, all of them have already received an award for that.

__________________________


P.S. Just for the record, I didn't forget about Annie of Little Rock Daily Photo fame. Other people beat me to her.

Ti-i-i-ime is on my side, yes it is

I'm really enjoying my new job, and one of the best things about it is getting off work thirty minutes earlier in the afternoon. That extra half hour is improving the quality of my life in a number of ways. For example, I can:

1. Be on my way home before the worst of the rush-hour traffic begins.

2. Make it to the post office before the afternoon pickup.

3. Get to the supermarket before the deli is out of all the good stuff.

4. Cook something for dinner instead of settling for whatever's fastest (because I'm not as hungry when I get home as I used to be).

5. Do a week's worth of laundry on a weeknight, freeing up a chunk of my weekend.

6. Sit outside with the dogs or cuddle them on the sofa.

7. Spend an extra half hour on the computer, reading your blogs or writing mine.

8. Blog before my favorite TV shows rather than after, which means I can get to bed at a decent hour.

9. Answer e-mails (oh, gawd, I'm sooo far behind).

10. Clean one room each evening to keep my house nice and tidy.

All of these strike me as really good ideas except the last one, which just misses being a good idea by virtue of being a blatant lie, not to mention a surefire way to ruin a perfectly good half hour.

If you suddenly gained an extra half hour each day, how would you use it?

If you don't mind spiders and snakes...

...you should have been with us today.

There was an actual pleasant breeze this morning, prompting Kim to call and talk me out of sweeping up dog hair (no arm twisting involved) and into an adventure. After reviewing our options, we ended up having a light lunch at one of the trendy chain restaurants near the mall, then visiting Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center, just a couple of miles down the road from there.

The Bluebonnet Swamp is a much more controlled, people-friendly environment than McElroy Swamp, the one I showed you back in March. That means it doesn't have the abundance of both beautiful and frightening wildlife that McElroy Swamp has, but it's still a wonderful, peaceful place to be.


This is a display of snakeskins on a table inside the Visitors' Center. All of these were found on site.


There are three designated trails through the nature center, varying in length to accommodate different levels of physical stamina, and wooden bridges and boardwalks lead through the wetland areas.


I took dozens of photos of trees and plants and cypress knees, but the lighting wasn't great, and most of the pictures were unspectacular. I did like these big, loopy branches, though.


Early on we encountered this bright spider, who appeared to be waiting patiently for her lunch.


A couple of curves later, this blue-tailed skink scurried beside the trail.


We saw clusters of these beautiful berries throughout the swamp. If you know what they are, please tell me.


Spiders like this one were all over the place, too, always suspended just above eye-level.


Our most exciting encounter was with this snake. Fortunately, we were on a wooden walkway when we saw him, and he was on the ground below us. This is the only shot I got of him that wasn't blurry, but I wish I could have captured one that showed his pink, forked tongue. He was waggling it rapidly, no doubt disturbed by the scent of us.


Judging by the broad shape and triangular nose of this insect, I believe he was some kind of stink bug. Whatever he was, he was big, almost two inches long.

As the day grew hotter, the trail seemed to grow longer. This photo was my last shot of the day and was taken at a moment when I was anticipating cold, refreshing relief. These beauties grew next to the menu beside the McDonald's drive-thru lane.

It makes me feel good to know Baton Rouge's park system supports a place like Bluebonnet Swamp. We'll go there again.

"To everything (turn, turn, turn)...

...there is a season (turn, turn, turn)..."

...and it was way past time to update the look of this blog.

It's been about 20 months since I settled on the "Velvet Sacks" blog title, then chose a template with a dark background and neon-colored dots. The colors made me think of velvet -- or at least of velvet Elvis paintings.

Recently I was motivated to change to a different look, but it took awhile to figure out what to do. You wouldn't believe how many photos I tried with the new template. In the end I bit the bullet and accepted the fact that if I wanted to continue with the "velvet" theme, I'd have to bust out the props and take a new header photo. If there are any Pente players among you, you may recognize the velvet bags and colored glass stones of a 1980s version of the game. As I write this, the parts of the game are scattered across the bed in my spare bedroom, along with a pretty scarf (also from the '80s) that I came that close to giving to Goodwill.

You want to know what started me thinking about redecorating this little corner of Blogdom? I stumbled across Time Goes By, a delightful blog written by Ronni Bennett, and found her list of "elderbloggers." Right there on her sidebar were a lot of people I'd been trying to find, older people like me, folks whose blogs I could read to gauge whether or not I'm where I should be at my age, developmentally speaking. What a find!

And then I read Ronni's rules for inclusion on her blog list. I thought I could possibly make the list except for one tiny glitch (there was one instance in the not too distant past when I felt bad and went longer than a week without posting) and one big violation of the "no-light-colored-text-on-a-dark-background" rule. Hmm. That one was a doozy. I personally love a dark background because it makes the pictures pop, but I have read that some people find the light-on-dark blogs hard to read. Maybe that's the reason for the rule.

Anyway, after mulling it over for a few months, I've finally cleaned my blog house, and it feels good to see my words in fresh surroundings. Whether Ronni adds me to her list or not, I'm happy with the changes. I hope you'll like them, too. If you'd care to sit and visit for awhile, there's cake.

Night moves

I was tired Monday night, almost asleep in front of the TV until Kim called. We talked for a few minutes, and I remember telling her just before we hung up that I thought I’d go on to bed early and read for awhile. It wasn’t quite nine o’clock then.

The trash can goes out to the curb on Monday night for pickup at the crack of dawn Tuesday, so before I could go to bed, I set about emptying wastebaskets and gathering things to take outside. Then something on TV caught my eye. I don’t even know what channel I was watching, but the program was one of those prime-time news programs featuring all the details of a true-life crime.

For the next hour I watched in sadness and horror the story of a family whose home was selected at random and invaded in the middle of the night by two parolees who had met in a halfway house. During the long hours they were in the family’s home, they beat the father with a baseball bat, drove the mother to a bank and made her withdraw $15,000, then returned to the house, raped the mother and an 11-year-old daughter and, eventually, set fire to the house. The father escaped, barely, but the mother and her two daughters died.

Even though the perpetrators were captured by the end of the hour, the time I spent watching the family’s ordeal and imagining the fear they must have endured left me feeling more than a little unsettled.

By then it was ten o’clock, and the garbage still had to go out. It’s normally quiet in our neighborhood at that time of night, but Monday night was different. The next-door neighbor’s dogs were barking persistently at something I couldn’t see. In fact I couldn’t even see the dogs in her yard until I let Butch and Kadi out into our backyard. My dogs immediately began barking, too, and the neighbor's dogs materialized at the fenceline to fill them in on the latest news.

I went to my front doorway and stood there for a few moments, studying the darkness and looking for any sign of movement. Finally, I summoned up my courage, flipped the carport light on, grabbed two bags of garbage and hurried to the trash can.

With the carport light behind me and the streetlight at the road, there was plenty of light in the driveway. My path to the road was clear, but the complete darkness around that lighted pathway made me feel exposed and vulnerable.

I parked the trash can next to the mailboxes, directly under the streetlight, and turned briskly to walk back up the hill to the house. The woods across the road were at my back now, and I was keenly aware of them. When I reached a point where I could see the light in my living room through the glass storm door, I imagined how easy it would have been for someone to have hidden in the shadows, then slipped inside my house when I turned away to push the trash can to the curb.

"Cut that out!" I scolded myself, all the while moving my eyes from one dark place to another, scanning the shadows. I'd made it about halfway up the driveway when a loud, shrill scream -- OOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH -- came from in or near our big oak tree and split the night wide open. If I’ve ever had any doubts about my ability to move my ample backside fast when the occasion calls for it, they were vanquished in that instant. There could have been six strange men standing in plain sight in my living room -- six big strange men wearing ski masks and carrying an assortment of lethal weapons -- and the sight of them wouldn’t have deterred me from running into their midst and locking the door behind me.

I had to read for a long time before I could go to sleep that night.

The next day I told my boss about what had happened and he guessed that the screamer might have been a screech owl. I’ve heard owls around here lots of times but never one that sounded like that. Fortunately, due to the wonders of the Internet, I was able to google “screech owl sounds” and eventually listen to one that proved him right.

From now on, the garbage goes out before the sun goes down.

In a perfect world, we'd all speak perfectly

I like to believe that there's some kind of spirit life after we die, whether it exists in a place called heaven or in some other realm we don't know about. If I imagine the faces I might see there, I picture representatives of both sexes, all races, all nationalities, all religions. In my mind, all of our faces are smiling, and we're talking pleasantly in a common, universal language.

Then I think about one particular group of real-life people and realize I wouldn't be smiling if I were forced to listen to them speak for an extended period of time. The more I think about them, the more I'd kind of like to believe they'll be segregated from the rest of us, tucked away into their own little corner of the Pearly Gates Retirement Community. The truth is that if I knew I'd have to spend eternity chatting with people who say "excape," "ex cetera," and "expecially," I might not climb aboard that heaven-bound bus.

I've heard a local weatherman say "expecially" three times in the past week. Each time I heard it, I found myself wishing one of his lightning-bolt graphics would zoom across the screen to zap him in the head and put us all out of our misery.

Is that particular mispronunciation just a southern thing? I don't recall hearing it when I lived in other parts of the country. Maybe I did hear it and it didn't register back then. Maybe I've just grown older and crankier.

Another thing that sets my teeth on edge -- and I hear people make this mistake over and over on television -- is "between you and I" or "he gave it to Jessica and I." The word "me" seems to have fallen out of favor among the young lovelies and hunky heroes who inhabit our TV screens. It's obvious by looking at them that "me" is very much on their minds, but they rarely say the word.

I suspect that the people who are afraid to use "me" as an objective pronoun are the same ones who were instructed repeatedly in childhood not to use it at the beginning of a sentence, as in "Me and Johnny are going to ride our bikes now." They seem to have absorbed part of the lesson but none of the logic.

Anyway, when these people's souls ascend to wherever it is that we all hope to wind up, I hope I don't have to talk to them, either. Perhaps they could be situated between the "ex"-talkers and the rest of us. That way we can at least admire their good looks.

Most of the time when I'm engaged in conversation with someone, it's the content of what they say that interests me, not the structure of it. I'm sure I could fill a fresh notebook every week with the poor grammar I hear around here, but most of the time I don't even notice it. I'd love to know why it is that I can ignore the overwhelming majority of mangled language I hear, yet the two types of errors I've described in this post always, always set off alarms and irritate the heck out of me.

In other words, the level of annoyance I feel doesn't expecially make sense, but I can't seem to excape it.

Perfect timing

Recent conversation between my daughter Kim and the girl who was shampooing her hair:

Shampoo girl (working up a lather): "You have the tiniest ears!"

Kim: "Whaaat?"

A full week and a full belly

Last week was a long, busy one, but every day of it was good -- even the trip to the dentist, where my teeth were cleaned by the hygienist I've nicknamed "Nancy the Nazi." She's a super-nice person despite her torturously thorough technique.

I'm really happy in the new office. In addition to newer surroundings and a nice group of co-workers, there are just enough new responsibilities to keep the job interesting. We've been there for three weeks now, and I finally finished unpacking and organizing my files Friday afternoon, just in time for the long weekend.

The holiday weekend was especially enjoyable. My granddaughter and her new hubby hosted their second annual barbecued rib cookoff. There was sooooo much good food.

My daughter Kelli won first place in the rib competition for the second year in a row. She also won first place in the only other category -- "anything but ribs" -- with a bacon-wrapped shrimp and pineapple concoction that I'd willingly eat three meals a day for a long time.

My grandson and grandson-in-law were also among the prizewinners. Just in case you were wondering, there are much worse things in life than being surrounded by so many good cooks.

Their recipes are top secret, of course, but my own (non-competitive) contribution to the event was my former mother-in-law's pound cake, and I'll share that recipe with you. I first tasted her pound cake forty years ago, and in all the years since then, I've never had a better one.

Ginny's Buttermilk Pound Cake

2 sticks margarine
2 2/3 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 tsp. soda
2 tsp. vanilla
3 cups all-purpose flour

Grease and flour pan (bundt pan or two loaf pans). Mix ingredients and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

If you try it, be sure to let me know what you think.

Not so pretty in pink

In this part of the country, small, green garden lizards like the little guy pictured below are common. In fact, it would be unusual to go outside in warm weather and not see at least a couple of them on the fence or the patio furniture.


Sometimes they get in my house, which kind of spooks me, but not nearly as much as a mouse or a cockroach would.

Lately the house seems to have been invaded by a different species of lizard, one I'd never seen until about a year ago. They're pink, they're translucent (look how you can see his eyeballs through the top of his head), and these, I'll admit, give me the creeps. This guy's fleshy pinkness, not to mention a missing toe on his left front foot, made me think of him as some kind of mutant. I searched for him on Google, turning up several pages of Pink Lizard bars and jewelry stores, but I never found another lizard like him.

The pink lizard pictured here was about six inches long, a big sturdy guy, but the ones I've seen in my house lately are much smaller, only about two inches long. It's possible they're babies, I suppose, but if they are, they're not growing. I saw the first one about two months ago, and the one I saw last night (the third) was still no longer than two inches.

Of the three of them, one was in the bathroom and two were right outside the bathroom, in the hall near the dogs' nighttime water dish. Their color blends in with the lighter areas of my flooring, so I don't see them until I'm right on top of them and they move. They move fast! I managed to catch each of the first two in a towel and release them outside. The third one, unfortunately, wasn't so lucky.

When I got up this morning, on my first trip to the bathroom, I noticed that the water dish was practically empty. I picked it up to fill it and saw something hanging off the bottom of it. I was reaching out to flick it off when I realized that the little "something" was frantically waving its front feet. Its back feet and its tail just hung there, not moving at all. Apparently, when I set the full water dish down last night, I set one edge of it right across the middle of the lizard's back. Ewwwwwwww!

I thought about carrying him outside as I had the others, but in his condition I was afraid he'd be dinner for fire ants before noon. That seemed too cruel, so I did the (cowardly) next best thing: I pulled him off the water dish with a wad of toilet tissue and flushed him. His poor little front legs were paddling away as he swirled down the toilet.

Now I have mixed emotions. I feel sad about my role in his untimely end, and yet I'd feel more comfortable if I knew for sure that he died. I've found myself wondering today whether there are more two-inch mutant lizards in my house. I can picture them marching all in a row from the bathroom to the hall and then into my bedroom, a nude, wriggling, mutant army seeking to avenge the death of a brother. And if he didn't die? Then I imagine him growing to be six inches long and dragging his paraplegic self up from the septic tank and back into my toilet.

The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. I need to go read for a while so I won't take those images to bed with me. Good night.

Kadi, you're it!

Butch tagged Creekhiker’s Mabel with the “Eight Things” meme, and Mabel, in turn, tagged Kadi. I’m glad she did, even if it means more typing for me, because Kadi keeps score of things like that.

I have to say that in all my life I’ve never personally known a nicer dog than Kadi -- “nice” in the sense of always behaving in a way designed to get in the good graces of the people around her. What’s charming about it is that the “niceness” doesn’t seem to come naturally: The girl has a couple of, shall we say, flaws. And insecurities. Still, she deserves extra points for working around the clock to be the best dog she can possibly be.

This is how I imagine Kadi would respond to the “Eight Things” meme:

EIGHT THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT ME
By Kadi

1. Everybody says what a good girl I am, and, not to be immodest, it’s true. That’s because I really like to please people. If it weren’t for the shedding thing, I’d be perfect.

2. I can’t decide if the prettiest thing about me is my freckled nose or my amber eyes. I get compliments on both of them all the time, so I don't think it's just my imagination that people like to look at me.


3. Despite my good looks, I’m older than my human “mom,” at least in terms of dog years. But it isn’t because of my age that I'm in charge of the house. On the contrary, I gained that position by virtue of my life-long, natural ability to spot anything that’s out of order and call my people's attention to it. Like yesterday, for instance. The power was out when my mom left for work, and while she was gone, the lights came back on. When she came home for lunch, I didn’t greet her the way I usually do. Instead, I hunkered down in my bed with my head scrunched down and my ears laid back, you know, just to show her I realized things weren’t as she’d left them and I was sorry. It was beyond my control, but I still wanted to be sure she knew it wasn't my fault that the lights came on.

4. I’m smarter than my brother, Butch, whom I helped raise from a pup. He knows it, too, even though he acts like he couldn’t care less. Sometimes, when Butch and I are both lying on the floor, I see him get up and move toward the sofa. He’s a little slow (because he’s blind), so I get up fast, take a shortcut, and jump up on the seat next to our mom. It‘s so funny when he finally gets there and smells me in the place where he intended to be. I sit there and look down at him and smile. Usually he just moves over to the far end of the sofa and climbs up there, but sometimes my mom makes me move instead. (She doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.)


5. I pretty much do everything I’m told to do, except sometimes, when my mom holds the door open and asks if I want to go outside, I plop down into a sitting position so she’ll know I don’t really want to go. If she insists, I do it to please her, but then I might give her a dirty look so she’ll know I’m only doing it for her. I've totally mastered the art of cross-species communication, using nothing more than body language and the expression on my face.

6. I consider Kim, Lucy and Winston as part of my immediate family, and I’m happiest when they’re all here with Mom and Butch and me. I indulge the pups by playing with them (which Butch certainly never wants to do). Plus, I get to boss them around. I’d never hurt them, of course, but I do have to head-butt them once in a while to keep them out of trouble.


7. Oh, let me tell you about this: One time when Lucy and Winston were annoying me, I made a really mean face at them, wrinkling my nose and baring my teeth. It scared them the way I wanted it to, but then, ohmigosh, I realized my mom and Kim were watching me. I hurried and smiled at Mom and Kim, like the joke was between us and I was just teasing the pups with the mean face. Whew! I don't think they caught on, but that was a close call.

8. In the past six months, I’ve finally found my voice. I used to ask nicely for treats, you know, tap-dancing around and letting out cute little “rrrowr-rrrowr” sounds, but now I go stand facing my mom and bark demandingly. Every single time I do it, she tells me, "Kadi, stop that barking!" As much as I’d like to accommodate her, the truth is, she’s quicker about getting up and getting the treats when I bark, so what's my incentive to stop it? Besides, I’m getting old. I have neither the time nor the energy to stand around and wait for some old woman to decide she’s in the mood to do something nice and give me a treat.

I really am a good dog -- almost perfect (did I mention that?) –- but this being in charge of absolutely everything is a lot of hard work. I only hope everyone understands and appreciates what I go through. Sigh.

A meme and a special guest blogger

Earlier this month Alison tagged me with a meme: "Eight things you don't know about me." Because I've been so busy with the office move (which is going extremely well, by the way) I haven't done it yet. And because it takes more brainpower than I can presently muster up to think of eight things about me that I haven't already told you, I have gratefully accepted the help of a very good friend: Butch, take it away!

EIGHT THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME
By Butch

1. I hate getting my nails cut, so I bite them to keep them from growing too long. My favorite time to do it is in the middle of the night.

2. When I’m sleeping comfortably, I don’t like to get up. Sometimes when my people call me, I pretend I don’t hear them, even if they're calling in their loud, outside voices. Then they trick me by whispering something about “ice cream” or “treat,” and I wag my tail and give myself away.


3. Sometimes I scratch inside my ear –- very carefully –- with the nails of my hind foot...and then I hold that foot up to my nose and sniff it. Mmm-mmm!

4. My fur is short, so people are always surprised to find out how soft it is. They like to rub it, and I love it when they do that.


5. I don’t watch much television, but when I hear a puppy whine or cry on TV, I sit up and pay attention until that part of the show is over.

6. I’ve been called “strange” and "weird," but I prefer to think of it as “unconventional.” Who says there’s only one right way to do something?


7. When I go to the vet’s office, I’m the star of the lobby. People always come over to ask about my eyes, then they end up petting me and talking to me. Especially the kids. I like it in the lobby, just not in that back room.

8. I like people better than I like other dogs, and I especially enjoy the company of men. Not many men come to our house, so I’m really, really happy when I get to spend some quality time with one of 'em.



I tag Spot, Mabel, Cheyenne and Ellie (or the tag team of Ellie, Duffy and Vannie), but only if their humans agree to help them type.

And the streak continues

When I reread my last entry, I realized that I forgot to tell you about a couple of other things that happened last week, both of which fit nicely into the category of "things gone wrong."

First, there was the pizza that I didn't intend to share. My plan as I cut off the first hot, cheesy slices was to have pizza for at least three meals over the next day or two. Unfortunately, while I was enjoying pizza in front of the TV, a solitary fly found its way into my home and enjoyed the other two-thirds of the pizza in the kitchen. When I spotted the fly, I didn't get the impression that it had done a quick buzz in, touch down and resume flying thing. No, it behaved as if it owned that pizza, as if it had frolicked over the melted mozzarella and hopscotched from one pepperoni slice to the next until its little fly body had contaminated every morsel.

I hated to waste the food, so I asked myself how much I'd be willing to spend not to have to eat pizza that a fly had crawled on. It turns out I was willing to pay more than the value of the remaining pizza, so I threw it out. Fly 1, Velvet 0.

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Another kitchen incident occurred when I carried bags of groceries into the house, setting them on the countertop and, when I ran out of room, on the glass stovetop itself. When I brought in the next bunch of bags, I smelled something funny and noticed that the stove was turned on! I must have accidentally bumped the stove handle on the front when I leaned in to set the groceries down.

The packaging on a few food items had partially melted, so it took five minutes or so to repack the items in plastic wrap, and it took another 40 minutes to scrape all the burnt plastic off my stovetop. The most embarrassing part of this tale is that it's the second time that's happened. Wouldn't you think once would have been enough?

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Okay, that brings us up to last weekend. I needed to be at the office at seven o'clock Saturday morning for the move, and I made it there on time despite the fact that my left rear tire blew out on the way. I heard the explosion, but the car continued to handle so well that I thought the noise must have been caused by something else. I was about four miles from the office when the tire blew, and I was only about a block away when the steering wheel began vibrating and the road noise got really loud.

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We were finished moving by ten a.m., and it was a good thing we finished when we did. All of us were completely drenched in sweat, literally dripping from toiling in the direct sun while the temperature reached a record-setting 104 actual degrees. Between the extreme perspiration and the toting of multiple boxes from one place to the other, I was exhausted by mid-morning.

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When I got home from the move, Kim was here. At one point in the early afternoon, she was in the bathroom, and I heard her say, "Oh, my gosh, you have a problem in here." My immediate thought was plumbing problems again, but no, there was a new, different kind of surprise in store for me: an ant parade, all along one wall at floor level, then up and over the shower enclosure. I picked up my camera as I went to get the bug spray.


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Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, I went to the office and worked for about four hours to get semi-organized. Sunday was a pretty good day, all in all. At least if anything bad happened, I haven't found out about it yet.

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When I got to work today, I discovered the cover of a four-foot-long fluorescent light fixture hanging suspended by one tiny clip directly over the chair where I'd spent the previous afternoon. I was tempted to think of it as one more in a long chain of recent annoyances, but I prefer to put a positive spin on it and call it a narrow escape. That way, I can believe my luck may have finally changed.

Whew! I'll sleep better now.

I miss the leisurely pace of my life...

...and I'm ready to have it back, please.

Have you noticed a correlation between having plenty to write about and not having enough time to write it, or is that just me? That's been my situation for the past two weeks, and I don't see it abating in the immediate future.

Rather than abandoning my blog entirely until things calm down, I'll post bite-sized editions of what's going on around here:

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The heat index reached 111 degrees today, and tomorrow and Saturday are supposed to be even hotter.

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Tomorrow and Saturday, coincidentally, are the days we've scheduled movers to come in and move the office furniture to a new office. We've also scheduled me to make sure the furniture gets put in the right places, everything gets moved that's supposed to be, and nothing gets thrown away that isn't supposed to be. Maybe we'll get lucky and it will rain.

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Other than the actual, physical moving process and the hours and hours of preparation for it, I'm excited about the changes. Instead of a general law practice, my boss will be concentrating his efforts in one specific area of the law. This opportunity came at a good time for him, and I'm delighted that he's taking me with him. I'm not sure yet how the workload will compare, but I'm confident that the chaos factor will be drastically diminished.

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Last week, while it was almost as hot as it is now, my air conditioner went out. I called at 7:30 a.m., and the repairman showed up at 7:30 p.m. For that 12-hour period in between, we were on standby. When he finally arrived, he didn't have the part he needed, so he scheduled someone to come out the next day.

The person who came out late on the second day replaced the bad part, and the A/C still didn't work. He said the problem was electrical, and he arranged for an electrician to come out -- but "possibly not" until the next day. In the meantime, he got the A/C working again by running a heavy-duty electrical cord from the unit in the attic down through the hall, where it hung in front of my bedroom door, then hovered over the dogs' water dish, then trailed through the bathroom door and plugged in next to my curling iron.


On the third day, the electrician arrived and replaced the bad breaker that burned up the outlet that caused the A/C transformer to blow (in the house that Jack built). Thank goodness!

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The moon must be in a mechanical-malfunction phase. In addition to the A/C problem, the toilet broke (the little bar-thingy that attaches to the chain inside the tank), a hard-to-reach bathroom lightbulb burned out (the last bulb of the required wattage in the house), and the batteries in my electric toothbrush died. None of these problems was hard to fix, but each required an extra trip to the store.

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This happened again:


There's a warning label on the can now, so I suspect I'm not the only one who's experienced this unpleasant surprise.

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In the past few days I've had two automated voice mail messages from a company claiming to have an urgent need to hear from a woman whose name I recognize, although I don't know her personally. To my knowledge, she's never even lived in this state, let alone at this address or telephone number. Our only connection? She married my second husband -- 25 years after I divorced him. WTF??? I wonder if the two wives he married in between us are getting messages, too.

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I've been trying to keep up with reading my favorite blogs, and I apologize for not leaving comments. Most of my reading is done while I'm eating breakfast or lunch, and I can't handle the fork and the keyboard at the same time. I always plan to go back later to let you know how much I appreciate and enjoy what you write, but instead, I keep falling farther (further?) behind.

I'll be thrilled when the office move is over and the household malfunctions no longer hold me hostage. Once things settle down, I think life will be even better than normal.

It's your big day, Wanda June!

Last year on this date I wrote about how important my mother’s birthday was to her. Perhaps it was the knowledge of the day’s significance that put an almost crippling pressure on me when it came time to shop for a gift for her.

I might as well admit up front that I’m not now and never have been an inspired gift giver. The intention is always there, but my desire to find The Perfect Gift festers into delays and anxiety that often lead to a down-to-the-wire, last-minute–-or even late--purchase. That, of course, undermines my confidence even further and continues the cycle.

My mother was 76 when she died. Doing the math tells me I was around for 57 of her birthdays. If you add in the Christmases and Mothers’ Days, that’s a lot of gifts. When I was a little girl, I’d spend a whole dollar to buy her nylon stockings, paperback “murder mysteries” (the dollar would buy four of them), or Evening in Paris “eau de toilette.” She always pretended to be thrilled.

As we all got older, things changed. Either my gift choices grew worse or Mother's skills at pretending deteriorated. At any rate, my gift-shopping nightmares began. I had more money and could buy nicer gifts, but almost always, when she opened them, I could tell by her face that I’d missed the mark. She’d be polite, offering thanks with a smile but without enthusiasm. “Dang!” I’d think to myself. “I’ll have to try harder next year.”

You may think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. In all the years that followed, I can only remember giving Mother one gift she really liked: the well-preserved remains of an actual blowfish, mounted on an acrylic stand. I’d never have selected that in a million years if I hadn't seen her admire it in a shop.

The blowfish was purchased in the mid-1980s. Then, in 1999, I thought I had another winner. Mother had commented a few weeks earlier that she’d like to have a nice shirt that could also be worn as a jacket. Luck was with me, and I found one I thought would be perfect. It was made of a soft, buttery yellow faux suede. The color would be beautiful on her, and the lightweight fabric felt wonderfully soft and smooth. I knew she would like it.

I traveled to Texas for the occasion and sat in my sister’s living room while Mother opened her gifts. When she unwrapped the shirt, she hesitated for a moment as she looked at it, then gave the tiniest of smiles, said, “Thank you; that’s pretty,” and laid the shirt on the coffee table.

“Well,” I thought, “I was wrong again.” I was disappointed, but I’d kind of gotten used to it through the years.

That turned out to be Mother’s last birthday. She died a few months later, and only afterward did I find out that she did like that shirt after all.

On the sad day when the family gathered in Mother's home to go through her things and pack them away so her house could be sold, one of the most difficult tasks was sorting through her clothes. Tears filled my eyes as I stood in her closet amid clothing that still smelled like her. Then I spotted that buttery yellow shirt, and in the next minute I was laughing.

On a hanger right next to the shirt I’d given her was another buttery yellow shirt, slightly older, judging by the wear, but otherwise identical. The “perfect” shirt I’d given her was so perfect she’d bought herself one before I did.

I have that shirt now. It's exactly right to wear on the first cool nights after summer ends, and I always feel connected to my mom when I wear it.

Happy Birthday, Mother! As stressful as it always was, I’d still shop for you if I could.

Over troubled waters

Thoughts and prayers go out to those affected directly and indirectly by yesterday’s tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis. I first heard the news from my uncle, a long-time St. Paul resident who called early in the evening. When I recognized his voice, I asked, casually, “How’s everything with you?”

“I’m feeling very lucky,” he replied. “I was on that bridge three hours earlier.” There but for the grace of God...

(Sis, he wanted me to pass along best regards to you. I’m doing it here, okay?)

Through the looking glass

Kim had an appointment for an eye exam last Saturday, and I tagged along. Afterwards, we stopped at the local Bennigan's for a late lunch.

As we waited for our food, we leaned against the padded backrests, sipped our cold drinks, and watched the people outside the window. There were three of them, a man and two women, all middle-aged and all well-fed. I'd describe their apparel as "bikers-go-to-the-mall-wear" -- not full-out Harley gear, but enough accessories to maintain their well-crafted image.

One woman in particular interested me. Her long hair was shoe-polish black, but as she leaned over to put something in the car, the black tresses fell apart and revealed shorter day-glo-red hair underneath. The black hair was one length, the red hair was another. I could understand black hair with red roots or streaks, but this almost looked like the black hair was a wig -- something I couldn't imagine a self-respecting biker chick wearing.

Now, let me clarify that I wasn't staring at these people, merely watching idly through the restaurant's tinted window when I tired of looking at hanging antique bicycles and washboards. If I'd been staring, I wouldn't have been so shocked when the lady with the black and red hair stepped right up to the window and positioned herself exactly between Kim's side of the booth and mine.

She leaned in really close. I thought she must have heard me call Kim's attention to her hair, and I thought maybe she was about to tell me she was going to come in and kick my butt, but then, just as my fight-or-flight juices started to churn, she reached up her arms and began patting her hair into place. We watched with relief as she tidied up her reflected self, then walked away and joined her friends.

If you've read this far, you know that this was kind of a non-event. Still, I thought it was a cautionary tale worth posting. If you're ever tempted to primp in front of a window, just remember, you might not be alone.