The Winter Warrior Rides Again

Iowa has been getting slam dunked by snow this year.  We had the snowiest December on record.  And, to top it off, it is snowing right now.  But, snow doesn’t slow down the hardy.

I’ve been keeping my bird feeders filled.  We have deer that visit and eat from the feeders in the front yard.  Our suburb actually tried to pass an ordinance against feeding deer.  But then, I rather like to battle city counsel and I don’t think they can bust me for the deer being resourceful.  My INTENT is to feed the birds.  Squirrels, bunnies,  and deer just happen to be clever foragers. The bunnies were smart enough to move closer to the feeder.

Actually, we have an over population of deer.  They are everywhere and seem to be very adaptive toward urban living – which translates into vanishing prairie.  After all, they were here first.

My husband sees deer all the time throughout the year.  They either stand by idly and watch him or bolt, often the wrong way so he has to avoid them.  But one young fella deer, complete with shiny new antlers, has taken up a game with my husband, Pat. 

It’s not exactly a reindeer game, but close enough.  When this deer spots Pat riding his bike along the trail, this deer runs along side Pat for quite a ways.   But then, the reason Pat has to be buddies with the deer is because Pat rides in weather everyone else considers inclement.  The deer, being outside anyway, are just stuck with whatever the weather dishes out.

The deer are so plentiful here that they are hazardous to drivers.  As a result, the city actually allows bow hunting of deer at certain times.  I hope this attracts real woodsmen, who genuinely know what to do with a bow and arrow and how to hunt with them.  My brother can actually hunt with a bow and arrow – and so can I, for that matter.

I don’t hunt, but I know how to use a bow and arrow.  I’m a pretty decent shot, both with a bow and arrow and a handgun.  This is why we don’t have any of these around our house.  I would have used them on some of our neighbors, in particular one former neighbor.

My bow and arrow use is limited to target ranges.  I find it very therapeutic to pull back a tight bow and let the arrow fly into a nice bull’s eye target.  I’ve also “hunted” Styrofoam animals.  I nailed a Styrofoam deer right in the eye once.  I caught a fake turkey in the neck.  My second arrows were a little truer but then, real deer and turkeys wouldn’t stick around for the second shot like their Styrofoam cousins did.

Most of the residents in our suburb are more likely skilled in using those annoying leaf blowers than any weapon.  They are also pretty good on tennis courts and golf courses.  To my knowledge, though, no game animals have been downed by Dunlap tennis balls or Titleist golf balls.

But hunters come annually and thin the herds, filling their freezers with venison.  There’s even a program for donating deer meat to inmates and the food bank. We have no game in our freezer.  It’s used for popsicles, ice cubes, ice cream, those gel bags for sore muscles, and occasionally some frozen vegetables.

So, hopefully Pat’s buddy will grow more antlers and keep himself out of harm’s way.  All the snow in Iowa has slowed down Pat’s cycling a bit.  The bike trails are not plowed and currently sit under 20 some inches of snow.

But this will not slow down the hail and hardy.  One of Pat’s friends organizes an annual New Year’s Day bike ride.  The length of the ride depends on the weather.  If it happens to be 30 degrees, they ride 30 miles, starting from a local Starbucks coffee shop.  If the temperature peaks at 10 degrees, they ride 10 miles and so on.  The one kink in this happens if the high is zero.  Then the game plan is they ride a “century”, which is 100 miles in bike talk.  Personally, my suspicion is that more people show up when the weather is warmer than when it is in the deep freeze zone.  But, hey, whatever gets the guys out of the house is a good thing.

Unfortunately, lately it has just been snow getting our guy out of the house.  If we have just a bit, I’ll use the shovel to scoop.  Any more than that and it’s a job for the “stunt daddy” and his ridiculously big snow blower.  He bundles up, and heads out for the he-man job of clearing our three car driveway and our corner lot sidewalk.  It’s a lot to do.  But then, if he had a way to hoist the ridiculously big snow blower in and out of the truck he wants but we don’t own, he would most likely plow out the bike trails himself.

Of course, the snowfall is only one obstacle.  Here in Iowa we get plenty of wind.  We have so much wind that wind farms are springing up all over.  Enormous pillars support three giant curved blades that spin, producing electricity.  The bad news is that this same ever present wind causes those big white fluffy flakes of snow to drift into giant piles, which block streets – and bury the bike trails even deeper. 

So, his only hope is to wait for a thaw – or invent a blade to put on the front of the bike that parts snow like the blades they use for the same purpose on trains.  Until then, I guess his little deer buddy will just have to wait until the winter warrior rides again.

Not An Itsy Bitsy Spider - Another Good Reason to Stay Out of the Kitchen

We’ve been having adventures. Eight legged adventures. I was eating some grapes the other day. Not just plain regular grapes, but delicious, juicy organic grapes when I discovered a very large spider was in my bowl! I rocketed out of the chair and did some sort of terrified 10 yard dash to the sink with the spider bowl. Fortunately spidey stayed in the bowl just long enough for me to flush him down the kitchen drain.

This was a rather ugly spider. It was black and had a large round bulbous body. It was very big, too. From what I can tell from the spider pictures I forced myself to look at on the internet, it was a black house spider. They are venomous. Great. Apparently the bite is poisonous but not lethal. The bite causes muscular pains (I have those daily), vomiting (so far no to that), headaches (okay, I have those), and giddiness. Giddiness? Are you kidding? Who gets giddy from a spider bite?

The experience might not have been so bad if organic grapes weren’t more expensive than regular grapes. And none of this might have been so bad if my grandparents weren’t raising my parents during the depression. They were the original earth mothers, those people. I know for a fact my grandmother Emma saved every glass jar she ever had and recycled it for decades.

If one of her jars could talk, it would have said, four score and seven years ago I was a new jar. Okay, maybe, just maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. After all, Grammy Emma only lived for four score and nine years. Never mind, I take it back. My great grandparents were frugal (aka tight fisted) German folks and my Grammy Emma probably was saving jars starting when she was two.

Grammy Emma used and reused jars for canning. When the lids rusted off she did actually buy replacement lids to the extent she could can the entire garden produce grown in Knox county Nebraska. I remember picking tomatoes, peeling tomatoes and I remember the bugs, too. They were huge and creepy and ate big holes in the tomatoes. Grammy would curse them, stomp on them and then carefully cute around the hole eaten by the bug. I’m very sure the bugs were a large part of the reason why I wouldn’t eat tomatoes as a kid. Besides, what kid eats tomatoes anyway?

Tomatoes are the kind of thing you acquire a taste for. Especially vine ripened tomatoes grown from your own plant. My brother’s dog had a taste for their home grown tomatoes. This dog was a dumb dumb. It was supposed to be a hunting dog. Instead, it was the most pampered princess ever. First of all, it was named “Madison”. That’s a clear sign that the dog will never live to see a day in the field hunting birdies. A dog with a name like that might as well have a hand tooled collar that says “I’m a surrogate child – spoil me”.

Yes, my brother and his wife had kids. I just can’t remember which came first. Niece number two or the no brain purebred dumb dumb.

I have earned the right to make fun of my brother’s dog. We have had way dumber dogs over the years. Every one of them was a basset hound. Basset hounds are short on brains as well as legs. But they make excellent couch potatoes and are fantastic pets. Further, they don’t eat tomatoes.  Okay, they are probably too lazy to eat tomatoes.  Heck, they are too lazy to fetch a stick.  This is our first basset hound, Radar, examining a stick from a comfy place laying down in the grass.

Back to my brother’s dog. I can’t remember whether she demonstrated her affinity for eating furniture first, or the tomatoes. I think they might have happened around the same time. I distinctly remember her eating the arm of their couch. That might be when they chucked her outside. Being a purebred, she was destined to have too much energy to be a house dog. So somehow she wandered over to the garden and the rest is a big vet bill. Although, as I recall, it wasn’t the tomatoes themselves that were toxic, it was the leaves and stem of the plant.

Tomato plants contain oxalates. Oxalates are organic acids. Oxalates aren’t necessarily always bad. Many fruits contain oxalates and our bodies need them. In fact, our human bodies convert vitamin C into oxalates. The bad side of oxalates is that form sharp pointy acid crystals. They bind to calcium and iron. When they bind to calcium, they can form kidney stones. When they bind with iron they prevent iron from being absorbed in the bloodstream (remember the commercials for iron poor blood?).

The thing is, my brother and I grew up with dogs and tomato plants. Neither of my parents’ dogs ever bothered their tomato plants. This is because my mother ruined my dad’s hunting dog, too. It at least had a dog type name – Rags. Actually, Madison was the same kind of dog as Rags. This had to be a bad omen from the start.

Rags was the name the breeder gave to the dog and my dad kept the name. Rags actually did go hunting a few times. Rags was a virtually worthless hunting dog. She got car sick and ate all the donuts in the car. Apparently, hunting trips with my dad and brother meant taking thermoses of hot coffee and stopping for donuts. Actually, Rags hunting career was over before it ever started. Great hunting dogs are made by great trainers. Great trainers have a plan, routine practice, and patience.

My dad was excellent at planning. He would plan things for years. He enjoyed planning so much and was so good at planning that he often never got past the planning stage. My dad had several routines but practice wasn’t one of them. When it comes to patience, that’s another story. On a scale of one to ten with one being the absolute lowest and ten being the highest, my dad had zero patience.

Rags quickly became a house puppy and spent her younger days chasing my mother’s dust mop and her older days being mostly flatulent. But, the thing is, my dad had a huge garden. After all, he and my mother were children of the depression and my mother had all those canning jars from my grandmother.

So their entire back yard was a virtual urban produce farm. They planted enough tomato plants to feed all of Nebraska as well as a few developing nations. I also recall broccoli, cauliflower and onions.

Back to the tomatoes. Old flatulent Rags spent plenty of time out fertilizing the food producing forest my dad erected every year. But not once did she eat a tomato or a tomato plant. The ASPCA warns about tomato plants and dogs on their website at www.aspca.org. Eating a tomato plant can cause a dog to have gastric distress, confusion, weakness and a slow heart rate. I think my brother’s dog got diarrhea which was followed by a $400 vet bill.

That’s four hundred 1980 dollars. Heck, in this millennium, four hundred 1980 dollars are like at least two thousand eight hundred dog dollars today, aren’t they? So, basically, they had so much money invested in old dumb Madison that they had to keep her. And I don’t think she ever hunted a day in her life. At least not in sporting goods terms.

Madison was actually pretty good at indoor hunting. Nothing much edible was safe. Rags was the same way. Onetime Rags made off with and consumed a nicely roasted unlucky ducky in its entirety. Only some slobber remained.  Basset hounds, it is true, have plenty of slobber.  This is Radar's son, Rambo.  He was one of our favorite basset hounds.

Back to the spider and the grapes. I despise anything with more than four legs. I cannot bring myself to eat food on which some disease bearing multi-legged creature has landed. I just cannot eat food outdoors if flies are nearby. After all, they’ve most recently been on rotting decomposing organic matter procreating future disgusting wiggly nasty things that will become more flies. If you own dogs, this means flies spend their time buzzing around dog poop and have it all over their feet. So I cannot eat food they’ve walked around on because their feet are not clean. This goes for spiders.

But the grapes were organic, really good and healthier than pesticide coated regular grapes. This was a dilemma – to save or not save the grapes. Unfortunately I knew that no matter how many times I washed the grapes, I would see big hairy legs walking on them. End of appetite. The spider apparently knew this. I think it had a grudge about being washed down the sink.

I think this because it came back to haunt me. Later in the day, I walked past the sink. I might have been rethinking the possibility of saving the organic grapes. Then I saw IT. There, in the sink was the same big hairy round back black house spider. If there is a Guiness Book of World Records category for the amount of time needed to turn on a kitchen faucet, my name heads it up, especially if there is a subcategory for doing it while screaming bloody murder at unhuman decibles. The spider went down the garbage disposal drain nicely, minus one leg that was sticking to the sink.

Had I been thinking more clearly at this moment, I am positive I would made sure that I ran the garbage disposal for four or five hours while boiling water in every pot we own and pouring it down the drain for insurance. But those depression era thoughts about wasting grapes were haunting me. Not enough to wash the grapes. But enough to make sure the garbage bag containing the grapes was tied securely, taken outside, tossed in the garbage can and that the garbage can was moved a few more feet from the house. Just to make sure the spider from hell that wouldn’t die didn’t have any more friends hanging around the grapes.

Having to fight off the same spider twice in one day is bad enough to give me a serious case of the heebie jeebies. But this spider simply would not die. A few hours later I was thinking about what to make for dinner because my husband would be home soon. Pat rides his bike to work while I work at home. He has a ten mile commute. I have a few feet. Making dinner translates into “what do we have that I can heat up?” I may be the grand daughter of the jar saving Grammy Emma but I was liberated from the kitchen somewhere along the way, possibly as an embryo.

I think it’s a good thing, actually. Grammy Emma was my mother’s mother and a great cook. My mother was a great cook. But they are both gone. My father’s mother, Grandma Thelma, was reportedly not such a great cook. She lived well beyond both my mother and my Grammy Emma. Her mother, Grandma Randolph, or “Grandolph” as we called her, lived to be 103. I don’t know about her cooking skills but it would seem that cooking is a bad idea and their longevity seems to prove it.  I think it also proves that my dad was skinny for a reason.  But then, so is my husband.

So in moving the ten feet from my dining room ‘office with a view’ to the kitchen to rummage for leftovers or to decide what cans to open, I noticed movement in the sink – again. Again, it was the spider. It just would not die! It had climbed back out of the sink. I know it was the same round bodied very large black house spider – because it only had 7 legs. EW!

Three was not a charm. This meant war. After all, I had to throw a perfectly edible bunch of delicious organic grapes away. About that time, my husband came home to find me standing at the sink, although jumping up and down hysterically might be more descriptive. The garbage disposal was running. Pans of water were boiling. I told him about the spider.

He came downstairs after his shower. Since he rides a bike home from work he gets sweaty so he always showers when he gets home. The garbage disposal was still running. He told me “I think you got it”. Just to be safe, I ran the disposal for five more minutes. Thankfully, we haven’t seen the spider since.

This week, Pat fixed the sprayer from the sink. It had somehow been yanked out of the little ring that holds it in place. Also, we’ll be spending “black Friday” looking for a new garbage disposal. At the moment we have a large pot under ours to catch the drips. He discovered our garbage disposal was leaking when he had to go on a bug hunt under the sink to make sure spidey went down the drain and didn’t have a large family of relatives waiting close by.

My husband thinks our garbage disposal was just old and claims our daughter told him a while ago she thought it was leaking. Personally, I think the spider tried to eat its way out from the inside. Venomous spiders are like that, you know.  Besides this whole poisenous spider thing just brings home another good point.  Kitchens are a dangerous place.  The giant man eating spider the size of a Buick is a good reason to stay out of the kitchen and eat out.  Heck, restaurants have to be inspected so they must be safe.  And besides, my favorite thing to make for dinner is reservations.

Falling For Fall

It’s fall. One of my favorite seasons – right next to spring, summer and winter. Seriously though, I love fall and it is absolutely one of my favorites. I’m a fair weather friend when it comes to winter, especially if my joints start to ache in the cold. I like looking at white stuff, but not shoveling it and snow makes an obstacle course for me to get to fill my bird feeder. Although I bet my sweet husband would snow blow a path for me, if I asked him to. Especially if I removed the landscaping rocks that tend to booby trap the snow blower.

Back to fall. I’m a bit of a fair weather friend when it comes to fall, too. I like fall when there’s still green grass, but no bugs. I like fall when there’s still leaves on the trees, especially after they turn all the wonderful colors. I like fall before frost, although the frost is pretty on things.

I don’t like frost if we have to scrape it off of windshields, particularly on the mornings after we’ve forgotten to put our cars in the car. I also don’t like that frost kills all my flowers and the plants I’ve painstakingly put in the flower beds.

But there’s a reason for everything, isn’t there? This year, I tried to persuade the squirrels to give the birds a break and leave my bird feeders alone by bribing them with peanuts. I bought a bag of unsalted peanuts in the shell from our grocery store.

I toss a few of them on the front porch and the ground squirrels, whom I’ve named “Chip” and “Dale” come and scurry them away. The front feeder is on a shepherd’s hook and the squirrels haven’t figured out a way to get to that feeder, although they have relentlessly tried. So the squirrels have to be content with what falls on the ground in the front. There is plenty on the ground for them so they should have no worries.

Being creatures of habit and not trusting that the bird feeder will always be filled, the squirrels – and ground squirrels I am sure, have stored away plenty of the fallen bird seed, as well as quite a few peanuts.  I discovered this because they like the two pots I have on the front porch in which I’ve planted geraniums. The geraniums in the pots have quite a time. It was not unusual this summer for me to get the morning paper and discover dirt all over the front porch. The geraniums would look bedraggled and it was clear that someone had ulterior designs on the pots.

So I would patiently sweep the dirt up, put it back in the pots and water them, hoping the geraniums would pull through. They did. The ulterior motives became very clear, though, when I discovered an assortment of sprouts popping up beside the geraniums. I patient pulled the sprouts out and began my war with the varmints.

We also have a feeder on our deck. The squirrels, “Itchy” and “Twitchy” have a hey day with this feeder because they can get to it. They bound up the deck steps, climb the railing and gorge themselves.   One is a little braver and more agile than the other. One keeps his feet on the railing and reaches for the feeder, and then spends several minutes chowing down. The other leaps on the feeder and hangs upside down from the top, picking through the seeds to get the corn and sunflower seeds he wants.

I say “he” because there is another squirrel who is not so fidgety who comes just for the peanuts I toss on the deck. I don’t have a name for her yet. Maybe I’ll call her “Black Beauty” because she is an oddly marked squirrel with a lot of black in her coat, reminiscent of the black squirrels I have seen in Council Bluffs. Around here, squirrels are basically a reddish brick brown.

I am sure she is a she because she has figured out there is plenty of food to be had without risking life and limb for the bird feeder. Call it women’s intuition or faith or maybe lack of testosterone, but whatever it is, she has figured out that the birds will spill the seeds on the deck and that there will be peanuts and breadcrumbs daily.

I did have to move the birdfeeder from the deck to the back yard this summer, though, when our youngest daughter was home from college. I spent summer mornings on the deck drinking my morning coffee, reading the paper, writing and enjoying my bird visitors. She spent summer afternoons sunning and reading. The birds got used to us and, while they kept their distance, they would still flock to the deck. I found them cool and wonderous. She found them creepy and messy. And, so the feeder was moved to a shepherd’s hood in the back yard until she went back to school in the fall.

My war with the varmints has continued. They dug little holes all over our back yard. In particular, one spot under a tree is hazardous and pockmarked with a whole village full of holes. I have a bit of trouble with that spot when I mow. I never see critters by it, so I filled it up with potting soil and compost this fall. No one has dug a way out, so it must be an abandoned place.

I discovered a talent that my little friends have that I covet. I have tried for years to grow sunflowers and I have never been successful. This spring I tried again. I bought “systems” for starting plants. I bought fancy packets of seeds. I poured water on disks of peat moss and inserted sunflower seeds. I waited for sprouts. The sprouts came and croaked. I was able to get a few moss roses to grow but that was it. No sunflowers again this year. Maybe next year will be better for growing giant sunflowers. But, under the front bird feeder we have all kinds of sprouts – corn and sunflowers. The sunflowers were not the giant ones I envisioned, but tiny ones that grew, made flowers and wilted. Some were volunteers that thrived among the landscaping river rocks. Some were ones that were planted for future use by my buddies.

We are having glorious fall days with temperatures in the 70s. Who knew? Back in August I was wearing my winter coat on night shoots for the movies because it was dipping down to the low forties and I was freezing. Our night shoots were outside in a cornfield. I had on a long sleeved sweater, my cuddle duds, my winter coat, hat, gloves and waterproof thermal boots. Now I am wearing my short sleeved polo shirts and working outside in the yard. I saw a number of people in shorts today. This is okay by me. I can take 70 degree temperatures all month.

Last month my friend and I went for a train ride. We had been planning it for years and we actually got it pulled off. We had a blast. We drove to Boone, about an hour from Des Moines and rode the Scenic Valley Train. The trees were in full fall color and we snapped lots of pictures from the train. On one spot on the route, someone had carved faces in the tree. The conductor called our attention to the tree faces.

The ride goes for a few miles to a ‘turn around’. Then the engine does a little circle on the track and moves to the other end of the train. Then the engine pulls the train back to Boone. It was great fun and we loved seeing the puffs of smoke coming from our train engine. We had a fantastic day that day, complete with a lunch at a little tea place that both of us have wanted to visit forever but never had. Something always got in the way, usually my schedule.

Now that I think of it, there’s really little point in putting off those special places. Just go for the gusto, baby, and enjoy the day- all the way every day! After all, tomorrow could bring frost, no leaves on the trees and more excuses not to do the things you’ve always wanted to do.  So, pick up a leaf, make a wish and do something special for yourself – right now. There really is no time just like the moment.

Keeping the Good Parts

Now that it is October, rather the middle of it, I thought it high time to drag out my Halloween decorations. In September, once we reached the fall equinox, the cold nights had set in and the trees were changing color. I found it appropriate to set out my fall decorations. I’m sad to kiss summer goodbye but changing seasons is a reality in the Midwest.

I like fall. It’s one of my favorite seasons. I love Halloween. I’m not into scary gory creepy stuff. I am definitively not into spiders or any other large insects. But, hey, any holiday that comes with candy is okay by me.

I was in the mood for Halloween after working on horror films for the last two months. One horror film was about scarecrow zombies and one was about a haunted house. I knew about “ghost rules” before but I learned a lot about zombies. For example, zombies are after brains. Who knew?

In the theme of zombies, I found a great present for a friend in another state. I always send more of a gag present for her birthday. This year I found some books that were corporation style manuals about zombies and zombie management styles. Now, that I think of it, there are a lot of zombies in corporate America. A manual is a practical present after all.

The entire time that I was outside decorating, I was actually supposed to be operating as a self employed business woman who writes articles for magazines and companies for their internet. But, my artistic child wanted to put out Halloween items. I’m a sucker for children so it was easy for my artistic child to win out.

At the moment, we have no real children home to help decorate. This is pretty much a moot point because they stopped helping me decorate for anything several years ago. Although, I do get some occasional help if that particular child has a party planned. Ours is the house that often hosts the New Years, Valentine, St. Patrick’s Day, May Day, Fourth of July, Halloween or any other party. But, I have decorations for lots of seasons and holidays and today was the day to deck our outside for Halloween.

To be fair, I occasionally get help from my husband, Pat. Actually, I get help from him whenever I ask for it. But, he’s usually far more trouble than he’s worth so it can be risky and tricky to ask for help. Besides, right now he’s recovering from an outpatient laparoscopic hernia operation. No sense risking any complications there! So, he’s inside and has happily assumed the position in the recliner with the TV remote control. He is flicking from spaghetti westerns to nerd TV programs. Once in a while he wanders across a “He Man” program.

“He Man’ programs are reality TV programs about people who drive trucks across icy roads in Alaska, chop down trees in various parts of the country, or who catch big fish in the ocean for a living. I am sure all of these programs transmit testosterone through the airwaves to the remote where it can be absorbed through the skin by the holder of the remote. This is just in case any dude needs a top off of the guy stuff.

Decorating outside was a little more fun this year because I had my IPod to keep me company. I IPod is just loaded with tunes. I’ve discovered the CDs at the library. So, I regularly check them out and add to my music library. It doesn’t get much more fun than this.

So, when my artistic child asked me “Are You Ready”, I just Cast my Fate to the Wind, while Sloopy hung on as I staked out little lighted pumpkin warriors to protect all of us from the Eve of Destruction. I found that I didn’t really need any Help with this decorating adventure. My lilac bushes are sporting little cotton ghosts which hang from a branch on a string and Turn Turn Turn whenever it is Windy. Sometimes, the wind makes the lilac branches dance and the little ghosts go bouncing, a bit like a carnival ride. But the ghosts don’t mind as they have a Ticket To Ride. At night, in the light from the moon and the streetlamp these fun little ghosts can cast eerie Silhouettes.

Okay, if any of this sounds contrived, let me remind you that exercises in fantasy are what we do around here, baby! How awesome is that?

The IPod really is an inspirational tool. I wore it while mowing the grass and worked out a number of thoughts about upcoming books and passages in books that I am writing. It allows me to retreat to a sacred space where I can create. Some really special place where time stops and writing goes on and on, free from interruptions.

One of my projects at the moment is turning a basement bedroom into my office. I am almost drooling at the thought. At the moment, my “office” is located in the dining room, where I am prey to any number of distractions. Most of the distractions come on two feet and those feet are often in rather stinky men’s size 8 and a half bike shoes. The basement will be a haven.

Further, I can turn my artistic child loose. We can nail up a creative vision board on the wall, cut out all the inspirational pictures we want, pound nail holes anywhere we want, write on the walls and do just about anything else we want. All in the name of the story. Take that corporate America! This kind of behavior isn’t permitted in cubeville, I am sure.

Actually, I recently had the “pleasure” of reading some companies human resources manuals recently. Some companies won’t let their employees put up anything at their “workstation”. Pictures of kids, pets, friends, and anyone else are contraband. The same company allowed employees to have a calendar but only one. Hmm. Wonder if it was a conflict of interest if the calendar had pictures. Sigh. Silliness. There’s only one way to combat this kind of thinking. My artistic child wants an ice cream cone right now. And this is about to become a wish come true because the last time my artistic child and I went shopping, we bought an ice cream scoop, ice cream cones and ice cream. No sense saying good bye to summer without keeping on a few of the good parts.

Abba Blabba Do

It’s another lovely autumn day. I am multitasking – updating this blog while loading my CDs onto my laptop so they can go on my IPod. Hey, just because I’m old doesn’t make me a square.

In the meantime, two of my daughters are happily flitting about Europe because all of the world, literally, is their playground. One is in England doing a semester abroad study program through her college. The other is in Ireland doing an art internship, which resulted from a study abroad program at her college.

Back to my IPod. I’m rather proud of this. I got the IPod six months ago and took it out of the package the morning of my husband’s trip to outpatient surgery for a hernia operation. I knew without daughters to keep me company and entertain me, I needed reinforcements. Electronic reinforcements will do just fine.

So now I have over 2000 tunes on my IPod and lovely noise canceling Bose headphones to listen to them. It only took me three pairs of Bose headphones to get to this state of almost euphorbia. I had a pair of Bose headphones before. I also had music on my old laptop. I liked my old laptop but it was big, clunky and heavy. Very heavy. I used it while traveling back and forth to Chicago every other week. I had to take it out of the briefcase and put it in a bin to go through security then shove it back in my briefcase and trudge to my terminal. This isn’t too bad in the Des Moines airport, but it can be challenging at O’Hare. But there were benefits – I am sure it made my wrists strong.

I also worked in a cube. I hate cubes. I hate working in offices where anyone has to sit in a cube. Cubes are basically just awful. This is why innovative companies don’t have them. Innovative companies put people in private offices where they found their employees are far far more productive. This is understandable. The “cube” concept must be a hold over from those one room school houses they had in the 1800s. The ones where children just sat in desks in the same room regardless of their grade. This didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. It is basically distracting and an impediment to learning.

So when one works for a company that isn’t proactive enough to put everyone in a private office one simply needs noise canceling headphones. Therefore, I rescued myself from this predicament compliments of the Bose company. I loved those headphones, but I left this job and didn’t need the headphones so much. Then, my music loving artist daughter came home and discovered them. Of course, I gave them to her. She uses them regularly and loves them too.

Then our youngest daughter put a pair of headphones on her wish list. She had tried on a pair during a band trip and loved them. I think it was originally a Christmas wish list. But the problem was that she didn’t specify which kind of Bose headphones she wanted. Of course I got them for her. She tried out the ones I got and decided she wanted the other kind. Her birthday is a few weeks after Christmas, so, of course, I got those too. The end result was really a win win – a left over pair of Bose headphones. One for me! I don’t care what kind I have – just as long as they are noise canceling.

So, I put those lovely headphones to the test at the hospital. They worked just great. I was in bliss. I had transferred songs to my new very compact very portable Apple laptop. It had transferred the songs to my IPod. Pretty magical if you ask me.

There’s one slight problem. I have very distinctive kinds of music that I like. This basically means generally I don’t get to listen to my favorites in the car if anyone else is present. I like some pretty wild songs like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” and almost all of the songs from the Disney kid shows – like “The Little Mermaid”. Another bad habit of mine is that when I really really like a song, I will listen to it over and over for hours. Sadly, this got the “Shrek” CD as well as the one from “The Little Mermaid” banned from my van. I guess my family just doesn’t understand the needs of my artistic child side.

Fortunately, I also like oldies rock and Beatles and Rolling Stones and “modern” groups like Lincoln Park and Fray. So basically, I get to listen to everyone else CDs or radio stations.

So, imagine my surprise when my IPod started playing a lot of my youngest daughter’s CDs. Like the one from “Mamma Mia”. That’s one of her favorite musicals. I like Abba but once is enough for those songs.

So, there I was, multitasking in the hospital waiting room too. It was a very lovely and comfortable room. I found a very comfortable couch across from a very lovely fireplace. I plopped down and began unpacking. I always drag a lot with me. Best to be prepared is my motto. So, I look like I’m moving in, wherever I go. I was set. I had munchies. I had my laptop. I had my IPod. I had those headphones. I had a book to read. And best of all, I had time to read it.

Back to multitasking. I quickly learned how to skip through songs. Then I discovered the most wonderful feature of all – yep, how to listen to the same song over and over and over and over. I was in hog heaven.

Then, suddenly, it was time to bring the old man home. The nurse bundled him up in a wheel chair and we trudged down the hallway to the door. I drove him home – listening to his radio station, of course. Today, he’s doing great after the hernia operation. He’s in hog heaven himself – in a rather blissful state from the wonders of modern medicine – pain killers! The Iowa Hawkeyes are playing and I doubt if he’s focused on the TV. At the moment he has a bit of a dazed look on his face and what could best be described as an idiotic smile. But then, that’s the way he looks most of the time. Unless he’s complaining. I’ll take this over complaints any day of the week.

And I am multitasking again. Loading my lovely CDs on the laptop so those wonderful tunes, like “Appalachian Stomp” and “Sing Sing Sing” can find their way on to my IPod. I’ve also discovered another wonderful feature. How to delete songs from my playlist.

Bye Bye Abba Blabba Do.

New Skills and Battery Checks

Well, I’ve added a new skill to my list of things I can do. Now I “Skype”. This is actually rather slick. It’s an internet phone. If your computer has a video camera, people can see you. If your computer doesn’t have a video camera and doesn’t have audio, then you can type notes back and forth to someone anywhere in the world.

This is awesome because we have two children currently oversees. Our middle daughter is doing an art internship in Ireland and our youngest daughter is doing a semester abroad in England. I am not sure how either of them is living without their cell phones.

They are on my cell phone plan because mom goes in for texting and sending photos back and forth. Mom also has a national plan with goo gobs of minutes. So basically, I talk an average of 2 minutes a month. They use up the other 998. Too funny.

But, we don’t have satellite phones and we don’t have international calling. I could add it for emergencies. But my idea of an emergency is when someone has gotten on a wrong train in Europe and wound up in East Germany at some unknown city and doesn’t speak any German other than what was learned while watching “The Sound of Music”. I am pretty sure their idea of an emergency is much different and has something to do with hearing the sound of a boyfriend’s voice. On the other hand, both of these daughters are very resourceful and I am sure they can handle any unplanned adventures that come their way just fine. So who needs international calling?

I think I’ve kept up with the times pretty well. I can text message, albeit slowing and in proper English. I know how to use the internet and I am gong to tackle my IPod this week. I have an IPod that I got last March when I bought a new Apple laptop. My IPod is still in the box. This IPod is going to save me this weekend, but that’s a whole other story.

Text messaging came pretty easy to me. I figured it out all by myself while alone in the car one evening waiting for the youngest daughter and her friend. Basically, text messaging is simply an electronic version of something I was quite skilled at in school – note passing.

I learned note writing and note passing in junior high. I carried this skill with me into high school and then it has been forgotten all these decades. Now – it’s back - electronically! Text messaging was a way for me to keep in contact with my daughters while they were in school. I welcomed any contact from them, even messages complaining about how boring certain classes were.

Since my home desk top computer doesn’t have a video camera and doesn’t have a microphone, Skyping isn’t that easy on it. But Skype let’s you trade notes back and forth – chatting. I’m still into note passing and any chat the daughter’s want to have.

I’m excited about setting up my IPod too. I think it’s going to be a saving grace this weekend. You see, my husband is having outpatient hernia surgery. It’s a small hernia and he’ll have a laparoscopic procedure. So, I think all will go well and he’ll heal just fine. But, there will be moments of drama, I am sure.

Actually, there are more likely to be hours and days of drama. I’m hoping that the anesthesia and grogginess lasts a long time. Because, as soon as it wears off, my husband will seize the moment to make academy award pained expressions as he dramatically raises the remote control to change TV channels. He will feebly grasp his water glass and grimace as he slowly sips water and comment that his throat is sore from the anesthesia tube.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not an anesthesia tube. Maybe the docs figured out that if they stuff a pipe down someone’s throat, the patient cannot complain. Hmmm. Wonder if that tube can be left in for a few days....

But, like I said, I am prepared. Any weekend that my husband can’t go out and ride his bike is usually a miserable weekend for me. I get two stories, four walls and Mr. Annoying. But this time, I have my noise canceling headphones. This weekend I am hoping that noise canceling includes moaning groaning spouses. My computer is upstairs in the dining room on the main floor of our house – with a clear shot into the family room where the TV is. But, I have cleverly moved my chair and set up my large flat screen monitor. This will block my vision of his antics so I don’t have to roll my eyes as much.

I am sure that once the moaning and groaning doesn’t get a reaction from my, his next attempt at attention will be to turn the TV up too loud. Make that WAY TOO LOUD. He likes to watch movies with the “entertainment system” turned up full blast. He has been known to have it on so loudly that pictures fall off our walls.

I am prepared for that too. We have a remote control. It needs batteries. We have rechargeable batteries. None of them are charged. Therefore, he won’t be able to turn the volume up with the remote control. He is unlikely to get up out of the chair to turn the volume up. I, of course, will be working away on books and magazine articles at my lovely computer with my headphones on listening to my IPod. He will eventually get bored and fall asleep. Sleep is good for healing. I don’t see a down side to this plan. It’s a win win.

So, the plan is that he sleeps a lot on Friday right after the surgery. Saturday he can watch westerns in the morning and college football in the afternoon. Sunday he’ll have regular football games to watch. Eventually he’ll have to go back to the doctor for a recheck. Maybe I can get his hearing checked while we’re at it. Of course, then I’d just have to make sure that the batteries for his hearing aid are always charged.

Permanent Press-to Chango

My husband gave himself food poisoning again this past weekend. This is the second time now that he has done this. I see his adventures into digestive distress as a sign that he is finally embracing the women’s movement, albeit a millennium too late. This is because, in the past, he has relied upon me to cook inedible meals.

I owe his new found gastric consciousness and capabilities to, what else, the movie industry. I have been working on movie sets in Iowa non-stop since May. During these past five months he has learned to fend for himself, with the exception of doing the laundry. I still have no intention of letting him near the washing machine no matter how long the hours on set may be. There is absolutely no telling what he would throw in there. There also is no horror movie made to date that is any where as terrifying as the sight of what I would find in the washing machine after he’s done a few loads. Scary. Very scary.

I remember all too well what happened to my friend when her children helped her. Her children had convinced her that they needed a dog. Make that dogs. She has two children and they each needed a dog. Of course, two children cannot share one dog, so each child needed a dog. The oldest one, a calm laid back easy going soul picked out “Buddy”, a calm laid back easy going dog who was also house broken.

Her youngest picked out a devil dog with the misleading name of “Sweetie”. The dog’s temperament was fitting. This child played for the “devils” on a youth sports team. Therefore, a devil dog for a devil child was appropriate. Sweetie, the devil dog was housebroken but used selective memory and random occurrences of this talent. Therefore, Sweetie’s accidents were not accidents at all but deliberate and, I am sure, premeditate acts of mutiny and mischief.

So, therefore it was no surprise when my friend noticed a strange odor coming from her laundry one day. She checked the clothes in the dryer and discovered skid marks. Really gross skid marks caused by a “dog present” that had gone through the laundry in tact and made it into the dryer as one difficult to dissolve sausage shaped unwanted item. It was attached to a piece of clothing and left marks all around the dryer. Common response: Ew gross.

While my husband is house broken (thank his mother for that one), there is no telling what he leaves in his pockets. Our laundry has to go through a number of tests before it is safe to toss into the washer. One test is the clank test. The clank test is performed by taking any piece of laundry and slapping it against the outside of the washing machine. If it clanks, and it has not belts, buckles, or large shiny metal buttons, it is not safe in the machine. It has ‘objects’ of unknown origin in the pockets. Items failing the clank test get recycled back into the laundry test pile on the floor of the spare bedroom. My husband watches TV in there. He has plenty of time to check pockets before chucking dirty clothes back into the hamper.

This actually is one of those logic statements. The full statement goes something like this. My husband watches TV. My husband watches a lot of TV. My husband watches a lot of TV in the spare bedroom. There is dirty laundry which didn’t pass the clank test on the floor in the spare bedroom. Therefore, my husband has ample time to inspect the pockets of his dirty laundry before landing it in the hamper.

There’s also the moisture test. If it looks wet, it is probably sweaty and crawling with bacteria. Therefore, it is not safe to touch. Laundry which is not safe to touch is not going to be picked up by me and chucked in the laundry machine – at least not with my bare hands. Common response to wet or damp laundry. Ew Gross. Solution to gross wet or damp laundry – barbeque tongs and forks. These work very well for picking up yukky bike clothes that need to be detoxified in the wash.

Since scientists have invented fibers and materials in clothes that they claim can “breathe”, I’m thinking the next step is to create ones that move on their own. Think of the possiblities. Dirty clothes can be trained to jump into the washing machine on their own. This could save families and marriages. Just imagine how much quality time families could have if the need to nag about picking up clothes was eliminated? I’m thinking highly trained technically advanced voice activated fibers in clothes? Socks and gloves would find each other – no more orphan socks or missing gloves. I have a number of right hand gloves just pining away into nothing after their missing left hand mates. Gloves mate for life, you know. Socks have a tendency to be a little more philandering but what would you expect from something that can be turned into a monkey puppet? But then socks also lead double lives as thumbless mittens and dust rags. What else could you expect but mischief from something like that?

Yes, our future with smart fibers would be great. Bedclothes could straighten themselves out. Clean clothes could point to dirty clothes hiding under the bed, or couch, or wherever else children and husband’s stuff them. A clever canvass back pack could sound an alarm when homework hasn’t been taken out to complete. Rugs could report on missing library books. Curtains might send a message about windows left open in approaching rain. Just as long as the fibers are taught a sense of decency. I don’t want any pants telling me that they make me look fat. I get enough of that back talk from the mirror.

I Married the Missing Link

Men have hard heads. In fact, modern medical technology is finding that the average male skull has a good six inches of calcified lining (aka bone) all the way around. This leaves very little room in any guy’s head for any neurological function in the form of a working brain.

Also, the male brain remains in its very ancient form. Fortunately, primeval instincts are rooted in the nucleolus of every cell. This medical fact explains why men can function on some levels and not others. For example, concepts like “I am hungry, I need to sleep, and I have to pee” can get through even the thickest headed guy. Concepts like “don’t grease your bike in the house on the new carpet”, “please shut the door you just left open so the flies don’t get in”, and “the light is burned out and needs to be changed” never have a chance of sinking in.

If there is anyone out there who doubts this, just come to my house and spend a week with my husband. He is living proof of all these facts. You might think I am comparing him to the missing link in evolution. No comparison needed. His entire bike team is called “Team Missing Link”. Need I say more?

All of my friends know I married the missing link. Most of my relatives know I married the missing link, although Pat’s side of the family may be in denial. Who could blame them? But the kids know I married the missing link. That’s why we have a phrase that goes like “well, that’s dad for you”.

Right now I am working on another movie. I’ve moved from scarecrow zombies to houses with spirits. I’ve also moved from the east side of Interstate 35 to the west side of Interstate 35. Since we had some unseasonably cold weather for the last shoot, I am hoping the west side brings us more California weather and less northern New England.

What my working on another movie means to my family is that the house elf is gone. Gone, gone, gone. House elves are those little unseen folk who not only run the dirty dishes, but unload the dishwasher and put the clean dishes away so there’s always enough bowls, glasses and spoons. House elves always keep enough soap, toothpaste and deodorant for everyone. House elves also make sure there’s food in the fridge, extra rolls of toilet paper in every bathroom, that the milk hasn’t expired and that the bread isn’t moldy. House elves also keep everyone’s favorite soup in the cupboard, have an extra box of saltines on hand in the pantry, and keep the laundry washed and put away. House elves also always know where everything is. Therefore, when someone can’t find a back pack, or a pair of bike gloves, the house elf knows the back pack is at the bottom of the stairs and the bike gloves are out in the garage on top of the table saw.

But let’s face it. House elves are in big demand by movie companies making movies in Iowa! In our house, the house elf also mows the lawn. This is because I enjoy yard work and I do a good job with mowing the lawn. Therefore, when I mow the lawn it’s green and lush and looks nice. Little bunnies hop through our lawn, deer mosey through on occasion. Owls take up residence in our trees and little birdies twitter in the evergreen and lilac bushes. All is well with the universe.

When my husband mows the lawn, we never know what is going to happen. Okay, that’s not true. We do know what is going to happen and it scares us. Suddenly there will be large dead circles in the middle of the lawn. These might be miniature crop circles formed when people from his home planet try to contact him. But they are more likely toxic chemical burns in the center of the yard caused by his pouring out turpentine on the grass. We can tell it’s turpentine from a mile away due to the unique odor of turpentine. The turpentine disposal stems from Pat’s decision that things needed to be soaked in turpentine. Things like bike chains and lawn mower parts.

Suddenly rose bushes disappear right out of the ground. This could also be explained by an alien landing in the rose bushes under the window in our house. The alien might think the thorny rose bush was attacking and therefore had to be zapped into nonexistence by powerful alien zappo rays. Another vote for the zappo rays are the crop circles around where the rose bushes were.

But the disappearing rose bush and crop circles in the rose garden can also be explained by a running lawn mower being lifted into the rose garden and all the ground cover and rose bushes being mowed into smitherines. Also, the foot prints in the rose garden look mysteriously like husband foot prints and not like alien foot prints.

Another vote for the missing link explanation versus the alien attack explanation is that this has happened before. It happens every time my husband has to mow the grass. He seems to get carried away and not notice that the grass has stopped and that he has reached an area marked off by rocks, landscaping timbers, solar light and a very pronounced change in vegetation. One would also think that since he dug the holes for the rose bushes while I planted them that he might remember.

But, six inches of bone is six inches of bone. A memory like digging several holes on a hot day and getting stabbed by thorns on the rose bush as we lifted them into the holes doesn’t have a chance of remaining.

There’s another fact that goes with the six inch lining of bone. The space in the center is a finite space. Therefore, according to all the laws of physics, it can only hold so much. Once full, something must be taken out before more can be taken in.

The male mind is very selective in the thoughts that will be retained. Therefore, when the news of Brett Favre playing for the Vikings came along – well something just had to do. Therefore it was a simple choice – memory of location of prickly rose bushes out. New knowledge of Brett Favre being a Viking – in.

This new movie shoot lasts 3 weeks. That’s 3 more times our lawn will be mowed. I went around the yard last night and showed my husband all the areas that are grass and can be mowed. I showed him the spots of missing rosebushes. He, of course, denied mowing the rose garden. He probably doesn’t remember it. I’ll be putting up a little fence today to help his ailing memory. I would ask the Vikings to come down and replace the slaughtered rose bushes – but that’s even scarier. I’d have an entire yard full of bone heads. Who knows how many crop circles that could be?

Who Knew Making Mud Pies Was A Job Skill?

Both of my grandmothers knew that threading a needle and filling a bobbin were job skills. I have learned that they are right. I think my job description is "whatever". Who would have known that knowing the location of all the thrift stores and laundromats was a job skill. I’ve been fortunate to have worked for several movies filmed the last two years in the Midwest. The movie companies film here because of the film tax credit incentives. I wanted to work in actual movie production because I thought it would help my screenwriting – and it has.

Here's the inside skinny on the wardrobe department in movie land. The wardrobe for each movie is set by the tone of the script, the personality of the character, and the time period, whether it’s the Civil War or the 1980’s. Then each character has quirks, such as wearing delicate turquoise jewelry, polo shirts, or a lot of pink. You know how you can look at a sweater and know that it's the kind of sweater a certain friend of yours would wear? The character's wardrobe changes throughout the movie based on the scene in the script. The head of wardrobe reads the script noting the tone, time period and personality of the characters, decides what clothing is needed for each character for each scene and shops for the movie. Sometimes I have been sent shopping. The wardrobe department also needs supplies, like supplies of tee shirts, socks, printers, photo paper, ink cartridges, laundry soap, bleach, fabric softener, printer paper, etc. Wardrobe may buy 5 sets of each outfit for the character - one for the stand in, two for the actor and two for the stunt doubles. Alternate outfits are purchased as well. The actor comes in for fittings and is photographed in the movie wardrobe. The director weighs in on the clothing choices. Everything has to look right under the lighting and blend with the background for the scene. Think of an outside summer scene. Everything will be green so the actor wouldn't be in a green outfit. If the actor is dark skinned, yellow might be a good choice. But if the scene calls for that character to hold a yellow cat, blue might be a better choice. Other characters would wear a color other than blue.

Once the clothing is approved, the unused clothes are returned. I often make the returns. I also make any alterations needed for the actor – taking seams in, letting seams out, adding ribbons, and sewing on fur cuffs, changing the buttons, etc. Who knew sewing all those Halloween costumes all those years was preparing me for a career?
The character and the stunt double may have two sets of the same outfit for each scene in case a button pops off, the zipper breaks, or something else happens to the clothes. Sometimes 7 of each outfit is purchased because at the beginning of the movie the clothes are clean, but during the movie, the clothes get messed up or dirty based on what happens in the scene. The clothes are "prepped" or "distressed" or "teched" for these scenes. My job involves washing clothing repeatedly so they look faded instead of brand new. I have also sanded down cuffs, seams and hems so they looked worn. I have clipped and snipped hems so they unraveled. I have washed clothing with fabric dye so the white threads in the seams would darken up. I have deliberately ripped holes in clothes. I have made up a bucket of mud pies that were rubbed into the fabric. And to think I used to get in trouble for doing all of this. Who knew making messes was a job skill?
Each scene is shot several times from different points of view. Wardrobe has to make sure the actor's clothing is identical each time they shoot this. For example, the hero’s top two buttons are unbuttoned each time this scene is filmed. I have noted movies in which an actor falls in a swimming pool and is magically dry a few minutes later. The on set costumer takes pictures of the characters in the scene for continuity. My job involves flashing pictures of people and printing them for all posterity in the wardrobe book. Who knew taking pictures of kids on the first day of school, at every birthday party, during every Christmas, at every event, on all vacations and so on was a job skill? Movie scenes are filmed one location at a time instead of being shot in the order they are written in the script. So, if the script has the story starting out in the house, then the characters go to school or shopping, there are locations in the house, at the school, at a mall, etc. Based on the script, the characters may have breakfast in the kitchen, go to school, be outside the school talking, go back inside the classroom, head for the the mall, stop at a park on the way home from the mall, be back in the kitchen for dinner, then maybe to a friend's house after dinner. There's a lot of work in setting up each scene. The cameras have to be in place, and the lighting has to be set. The camera is set on tracks that move so it can go back and forth or roll around in a circle. It can also be on giant tripods. The lights are huge and set on tripods. There are also rolls of gel film that clip over the light to add a yellow or blue or red tint to the lighting. Then they have big screens that diffuse or deflect the light and those are clipped on tripods as well. During one movie we were in the upstairs of an old abandoned farm house. There were so many people and so much equipment that the floor started to cave in. My job involved making a run for it. Who knew running errands was a job skill?
Every location move involves moving the movie company’s trailers, which are the size of the back of an 18 wheeler truck. The wardrobe trailer has rows of clothing racks along side the walls, a washer and dryer, storage cupboards and a desk surface or workspace for sewing. Hair and make up has their own trailer and it will look like a mobile beauty salon with chairs and sinks. Props has its own trailer. Movies always have a catering truck, called craft services and they have a trailer. Movies serve a breakfast at the start of the day (regardless of the time the day starts). The meals are catering. Throughout the day, in between meals, snacks are served and this is called craft services. They bring around bottles of water, little sandwiches, cheese and crackers, fruit, etc. There are changing rooms for actors and those are in another trailer. All of these trailers are called the "circus" and the area where they are set is called "base camp". Most jobs are like a circus. Working in the movies is a fun circus. Because moving all of this is a huge effort, the movie will normally shoot all of the scenes in one location and the characters will do wardrobe changes. My job involves labeling all of the clothing by the character and by the scene. The clothing is put in clear plastic zip up wardrobe bags with each bag containing everything the character needs for that scene - bras, belts, shirts, pants, jewelry, shoes, socks. At the beginning of each day's shooting, my job can be putting the actor's outfits in their changing rooms on their trailer (called the honey wagon - because each room also contains a potty). Who knew getting kids ready for school each day by setting out their clothes, back packs, etc was a job skill?
When we start filming for the day, my job can involve being on set (called set costumer) to make sure the actor's clothing is right for the scene and to have on hand anything that gets added during the scene (like a bandage after an actor is attacked by zombies). Also, we may be filming a summery scene on a colder day (like we had in August) and my job involves having "warmies" there - like a robe or coat the actor can wear on set while not in the scene. Who knew being prepared for life’s little events – like taking kids’ jackets along in the car incase it got cold –was a job skill?

I might do quick clothing repairs on set. I have a "wardrobe kit" that includes a little pouch where I keep spools of thread, needles, scissors, a seam ripper, pins, and other little things for emergencies. Who knew keeping a well packed purse was a job skill? When the scene is done, I collect all the clothing from set and from the actors' trailers, take it back to the wardrobe trailer and make sure it gets put back on the racks with all the labels, etc. If the clothing needs to be washed, I wash it, and then put it back with all the labels in the bags. Who knew picking up after kids and husbands and getting everything ready for the next day was a job skill? When the movie is over, the each piece of the clothing is inventoried by character by scene, stored in wardrobe packing boxes (like you can get when you move) and shipped back to the film company in Los Angeles. My job involves doing the entire inventory, finishing the wardrobe book and shipping off the wardrobe boxes. Once the film is shot, there's the editing. As the movie is edited, they may find that scenes or parts of scenes have to be refilmed. So they'll use the inventory list to find which wardrobe box the clothes for that character for that scene are in, pull the wardrobe for that scene out of storage and reshoot the scene. This is a lot like spring cleaning and knowing that the winter coats are in storage at the dry cleaners, and knowing which kids sweater is in what box in the attic, that the sleeping bags are in the cupboard in the laundry room and that the stocking hats and mittens are in the attic. Who knowing the locations of objects was a job skill? I am not sure if my name will ever be listed in the credits. So far none of the movies that I’ve worked on are finished being edited. I've also heard that a lot of movies are filmed every year, but only a few ever make it into theaters. So, who knows? I’ve started paying careful attention to the credits at the end of movies. I’m looking for someone whose job is listed as picker up, washer, fixer, shopper, etc. I haven’t seen one yet. There is best boy. Maybe I’ll be listed as best mud pie maker.

No Fair! No Fair! Why You Cannot Argue With A Child’s Logic

When our Little Miss was about two and a half, she was crawling out of her crib on a regular basis. As parents, my husband and I thought avoiding head and neck injuries from falling while crawling out of a crib was a good thing. Therefore, we bought her a day bed.

Little Miss was our third daughter and by this time we had learned to ease in change. Therefore, we left her crib set up, but with the side down and put her thousands of stuffed animals in it. We told Little Miss that she could sleep in her big girl day bed while her stuffed animals slept in the crib.

This worked well. At least until we thought enough time had passed that it was safe to take her crib down. Generally by morning most of the animals had been retrieved and were in the day bed with Little Miss. Therefore, we concluded that the crib was no longer needed.

So one fine Saturday morning, my husband got out his rechargeable drill and began disassembling the crib. Little Miss was occupied with eating cereal in the living room and watching cartoons. But she wandered upstairs to see what dad was doing.

Apparently taking the crib down was not on her playlist. She began running around the house with her hands in the air shouting “No fair! No fair! Daddy’s taking my lid off.”

Being adults, my husband and I had lost the essentials of childhood logic and it took us a little while to grasp this concept. In the meantime, Little Miss stood in her Tinkerbell jammies holding her Mickey Mouse flannel blanket staring at my husband with a terrified look on her face.

Ultimately he asked Little Miss if she wanted him to stop taking her crib apart. With a quivering lip she solemnly shook her head no. “Then I won’t, he assured her.” That solved the dilemma and life went on.

Growing up, our three daughters had many pets. This included our share of hamsters and gerbils, dogs and cats and at one time ducks and rabbits. The rabbits and ducks were gifts from the Easter bunny one year. We had a large fenced in back yard and the rabbits and ducks got along well enough with our two basset hounds. Or rather, they got along pretty well with our male basset hound, Buddy boy, but not his mother.

By summer we had two of the three original ducks left and one rabbit. The rabbit was a large lop eared fluffy rabbit we called Abby Rabbit. We let Abby Rabbit roam the back yard during the day time and she would take refuge under our deck. Under the deck was Mamma Hound’s territory and the two squared off. All of our basset hounds got plenty of exercise and none were the lumpy Pillsbury dough boy type of fat bassets. Mamma Hound was particularly small and lean.
After some initial growling followed by a warning ground thump, mamma hound was excised from under the deck by a series of powerful kicks delivered by one Abby Rabbit to a howling Mamma Hound. From that point on Mamma Hound grudgingly agreed to share the space under the deck with Abby Rabbit.

Ducky didn’t fare so well. Ducky had a bird brain and was dumber than the basset hounds, which themselves were dumber than a box of rocks. Let’s face it, hush puppies are loveable but if you’ve ever owned one you know they aren’t known for being the smartest canines.

Ducky wandered the back yard, swam in the kids’ wading pool and ate bugs from the garden. Ducky ate things by pecking at them. Ducky also ate dog food from the bowl. This was fine with Buddy Boy but Mamma Hound was still a bit teed off with the burgeoning pet population, was most likely still holding a grudge against Abby Rabbit, and was not about to share food as well as napping places.

Mamma Hound warned Ducky with a growl that her food bowl was not to be touched. Ducky continued pecking at Mamma’s food bowl so Mamma nipped Ducky. Ducky pecked at Mamma’s nose and Mamma charged. Ducky was used to playing chase this way with Buddy Boy so Ducky turned and waddled away as fast as ducks can go. Mamma, however delivered one powerful chomp to Ducky’s behind leaving a bare spot, leaving Mamma with a mouthful of white duck feathers.

After consulting our neighbor who raised birds, we spent the next few weeks using diaper rash ointment on Ducky’s behind until his feathers grew back. We also moved Mamma’s food dish out of harm’s way.

Ducky’s companion was Lucky Duck who also played chase with Buddy Boy. Buddy Boy was a growing pup who could be a little rowdy. It turned out he was a little too rowdy for Lucky Duck the day he picked Lucky Duck up in his mouth and broke Lucky’s neck.

Then our children who were five and under came up with their own plan. We needed to have Ducky lay eggs so we could have more ducks. My husband and I explained, delicately, that we didn’t think that would work because we only had one duck. So if Ducky was going to be the mamma duck and lay eggs, we needed a daddy duck.

Children make their own sense out of the world and have their own reasoning and logic. The lack of a daddy duck didn’t slow down their plan. They simply used creative thinking and decided that the rabbit could be the daddy. It is impossible for adults to argue with logic like this and so my husband and I gave each other “that look” and agreed that the rabbit could be the daddy. Why not? After all we believed in diversity!

However, we were not prepared for the next series of events. As fall approached, Ducky laid an egg. All along we had thought Ducky was a dude. Being city kids, my husband and I forgot that fowl can lay unfertilized eggs. Therefore I looked at the migrating ducks in the sky and wondered if some fly by night rascal duck had violated our pet. Our bird savvy neighbor straightened that concept out.

Our oldest daughter started kindergarten that week and proudly took Ducky’s accomplishment for show and tell. Ducky’s accomplishment was accidentally dropped in the backyard, to the delight of Mamma Hound who loved eggs with anything. Ducky tried to lay another egg but became egg bound (according to our neighbor’s diagnosis) and succumbed to the inevitable.

But as for me, these days when life seems unfair and someone is trying to take my lid off, I try to remember to think out of the box and apply the concept that all things are possible and all problems are solvable. After all, why can’t the rabbit be the daddy and, if ducks can lay eggs, why can’t they be golden eggs?

The Nice Thing About Sisters

The nice thing about sisters is … I wouldn’t know. I don’t have one. I never had one and my parents stopped making family members after my brother came along. But I have observations about people who do have sisters about what could be the nice thing about having a sister.

Item one: Someone to blame. My husband grew up in a large Irish Catholic family. He has lots of sisters. They have lots of children, mostly girls. So he has lots of nieces and they have sisters. My husband is the oldest of the clan but we were the last to have children. As a result, we heard lots of stories about the T girls, MJ and L.

MJ and L were two peas in a pod who grew up on a farm, playing in the dirt and having a generally good time. MJ and L had a lot of energy which was normally put to mischievous use. As the older one, MJ was most likely to be confronted about the situation. Her standard response was “L done it”. One day Grandma O’Bryan reminded MJ that L wasn’t there. MJ’s response “Oh man, Grandma, you figured it out.” So, a sister can be someone to blame – at least for a while.

Item two: Someone to antagonize. We have three daughters. Growing up they were pretty much the fighting Irish. This is just what happens when you mix Scottish and Irish. You get vim and vinegar. Our oldest daughter was the Ready Freddy of the group. The middle one is a whisp of a girl and our stealth child. The youngest is devil or angle, with her halo sitting firmly on two bumps that could very well be demon horns, particularly where the middle daughter was concerned.

The older two generally got along. The oldest and the youngest generally got along and the middle and little one were oil and water. The youngest took full advantage of this and deliberately antagonized the middle one. Miss S would go in Miss KA’s room and touch things on purpose, simply to stir the pot to the boiling point. It worked every time. Miss KA wound string through her room with pins tapped to it as S traps. Then Miss KA posted a note on Miss S’s room telling Miss S the evil fate that awaited Miss S should she step foot in the forbidden room.

The plan backfired because Miss S could not read. But, she was creative, scribbled an illegible note and taped it to Miss KA’s door. Then she sat in her closet and knocked on the wall, which backed up to Miss KA’s room, making it sound like someone was at Miss KA’s door. Her motto might have been “Anything To Annoy”.

Item Three: Someone to borrow from: When you have children, hand me downs are essential. When you have three girls, the youngest rarely gets anything new, but knows all clothes will eventually be hers. Sometimes this outgrowing process can be speeded up by borrowing. Take the case of the Care Bear pajamas. Our middle daughter had a Care Bear nightie. Being a string bean, she grew up and the nightie went from being ankle length to mid calf length to knee length, but still fit her. It was also her favorite PJs.

The little one helped me with laundry one day. This was a bit odd because folding and putting away clothes was generally considered a supreme punishment in our house, as were any other household chores. I watched as Miss S dashed away with the folded Care Bare nightie and stuck it in her dresser drawer.

“But that belongs to KA” I reminded Miss S. With the ultimate in child logic her response was “Well, it’s mine now.”

I was reminded of these events when I went upstairs today. Our middle daughter is a grown up young lady who lives in San Francisco but will be visiting us next weekend. I thought this weekend was a good time to make sure her old bedroom is clean and dusted, with fresh sheets and so on. I discovered that our youngest daughter, who is home from college for the summer, is using Miss KA’s bed frame as a drying rack. Over time Miss KA’s room has become an extension of Miss S’s closet. What can I say? I am sure that by next week these clothes will be dry.

The last time Miss KA was home she and Miss S spent a great deal of time in Miss S’s room watching videos. Miss KA donated her desktop Apple computer to Miss S. I guess that just proves that hand me downs are forever. I guess sisters are too.

Flashing Neon Sign

Flashing Neon Sign

This is it. I’m throwing in the towel and putting up a flashing neon sign. It will be 20 feet tall, be orange and yellow and say “O’Bryan”. This isn’t because I’m becoming eccentric. This is a necessity. People apparently need a sign that big and that bright to find our house.

You see, our address is number 18 and we have that clearly labeled on our house and on our mail box. But for some reason, delivery people and vendors cannot find our house. Instead, our stuff goes across the street to number 19.

We don’t know why this is. We very rarely receive things for number 19. But our neighbors constantly receive our things. Take the case of my daughter’s pizza. My daughter received a gift certificate for a pizza place as a graduation present. One day, she was hungry for a pizza. She called a couple of hours before she had to work to order a pepperoni pizza and asked to have it delivered.

We are very clear in giving our address. We say number eighteen and for emphasis we say number one eight. Very simple. Very clear. The pizza was promised in half an hour. After nearly an hour, she called and was told it was on its way. She repeated our address. Number eighteen. Number one eight.

After an hour and a half and no sign of the pizza, she made herself a sandwich and called the pizza place back saying the pizza had never arrived and that she had to leave for work. A few days later I learned from my neighbor that the pizza delivery boy brought tried to deliver a pepperoni pizza to them.

On another occasion my neighbor mentioned that a lawn service company had come and sprayed their yard. They didn’t use a lawn service. They hadn’t ordered any lawn care. I asked her what company. Sure enough, it was my company. I called my lawn service company to ask when they were going to treat my lawn. I was told they had just been to my address. “No you haven’t” I advised them. “You went to my neighbor’s house across the street”. The sad part is that I had been using this service for a few years by then.

The same thing happened with my pest control company. When the guy didn’t show up for the appointment, I called to check. He had gone to number 19 instead of number 18. Sad again because I also had been using this pest control company for a number of years.

My neighbors across the street frequently bring our mail to us because it winds up in their mail box. Recently a check intended for us went to their mail box – our address, their box. I have a magnet on my front door. They came over and left the check on my front door in the magnet. Thank heavens we have great neighbors across the street! It was a nice healthy check. When you are self employed as a freelancer, the check is always in the mail. It’s just nice when it’s your mail and you actually receive it!

Curiously, this misdelivery phenomenon is a one way kind of deal. We do not get their mail or pizzas or services. We’d like to. They had new Pella windows installed a few years ago. I am sure those lovely windows would look just as nice over here.

This year they both retired from 20 year plus careers at the same company. They celebrated by purchasing some new televisions and getting satellite TV service. I know we’d enjoy that! Last year they put in granite countertops in their kitchen. They are absolutely gorgeous and would look stunning in my kitchen as well. Right now they are having their deck remodeled with that man made decking material that never wears out. I was noticing our deck has a few warps and splits in it. New decking material would be excellent. But nothing of theirs shows up here. Just vise versa.

What is particularly annoying about this is that I work at home. So I am here when this stuff happens. Our door bell works just fine. There is no reason not to knock on our door. But it’s like the Maytag repair place over here!

It happened again today. My daughter is doing a semester abroad in London this fall through her college. She wants to do an internship and has applied for a British VISA. She received an automated call early this morning from an overnight mail delivery service that she had an overnight letter requiring her signature. We waited all day – eight hours to be exact.

We could have driven to Chicago in that length of time. Of course, we put the time to good use. I cleaned out the garage. We watched a movie I rented yesterday. We caught up on all our email. At 4 PM we discovered that the overnight mail delivery service went to our neighbor’s house with my daughter’s mail.

These absolutely wonderful neighbors aren’t home. They are in Columbus Ohio at a church event. We are taking care of their mail. We called the overnight mail delivery service and made arrangements to go pick up this letter. The pick up site is across town and the pick up window is only open from 7 PM to 7:30 PM. That’s two hours from now. I guess in that amount of time we could always order a pizza and have it delivered.

What I Like About Blogging

One of the best things that I like about blogging is that my husband’s life is now an open book. I somehow find that fulfilling and rewarding. My husband is completing a weeklong bike ride across Iowa, called RAGBRAI. Before he left, he told our youngest daughter that in his ideal RAGBRAI, I would drive an RV from town to town so he could sleep in it at night. I of course, would have my laptop and all my “leisure time” for writing.

I thought about this for about a minute and a half, or maybe like 3 seconds. First of all, my idea of an RV and his idea of an RV are at opposite ends of the spectrum. I’m thinking plush, leather seats, bump out sides, luxurious and roomy – very very roomy. He’s thinking room for a bike and a mattress with minimum rust.

I have a low tolerance for noise. Loudly ticking clocks keep me awake at night and I remove them. I don’t open windows, not only because the pollen etc from the outside makes me sick, but because the frogs and insect noise outside keeps me awake. In short, I don’t have a hearing problem.

My husband, on the other hand, has increasingly decreased hearing in addition to his selective hearing. To say that he sleeps like a rock would be an understatement. One evening, our fireplace was going but the flu wasn’t properly open. So, the fire alarm system in our house was activated. There’s an extremely loud alarm on every one of our three floors – including one right outside of the bedroom. Joy boy slept through the entire 15 minute ordeal while our youngest daughter and I worked on ventilation and got the alarm to shut off.

That screeching ear blasting alarm pales in comparison to the noise my husband makes while snoring. His snoring gets worse with activity – like riding a bike 100 miles a day. Therefore, the thought of spending several nights in a tin can with a sweaty snoring Sasquatch with sinus problems gave me night mares for a few days. I enjoy sleep deprivation even less than I enjoy anything that makes me get sweaty – like bike riding.

I’m off the hook for this year, of course. I recently had knee replacement surgery. Recently enough that driving anything across Iowa is completely out of the question at the moment. This might be why they say “timing is everything”.

But each day with the new tin lizzie knee is a little better. I am able to get up and down stairs relatively well and yesterday I ventured out in our back yard. This is quite a big deal for me. We have a walk out basement and our back yard slopes down. It’s just enough of a slope that it has always been tricky for me to walk down it. The alternate route is the basement steps, but those are wooden, go straight down, and are narrow and a bit scary.

But I managed an expedition into the back yard yesterday. We have a bird feeder back there which was sadly in need of filling. I packed some bird seed in a plastic container, slung it into a light weight back pack and blazed a trail to the back yard.

We used to have dogs that blazed the trail. They had certain set paths. They beat a path from the garage door to their favorite sleeping spots, then around the perimeter of the fence. We couldn’t get grass to grow on their doggy path, so I put in stepping stones.

We had basset hounds and basset hounds are funny creatures of habit. Normally, once they develop a habit, they will not change their habit for anything. Therefore, I thought putting in the stepping stones was a clever idea and would reduce muddy dog feet.

For some reason, our dogs did not like the stepping stones and actually moved their dog path. There must be something permanent about certain dog trails. Although we are currently ‘petless’ and have been so for a year and a half, we are still trying to get grass to grow on the doggy trail that now runs right along side of the stepping stones. Go figure.

In addition to filling my bird feeder, my expedition led me to the discovery of two nearly ripe tomatoes in my garden. Nature’s wonders never cease. Pat will return shortly and I am sure that I will have plenty of “Pat stories” to add to future blogs, including this week’s adventures on RAGBRAI – spent in a tent and not in an RV.