And For Their Final Act

I'm sure you're tired of the exclamations that I start these posts with, but... I'm not.

Holy Toledo.

Last Thursday, C and I (with some very valuable help) loaded our every belonging into a 26-foot U-Haul truck, went out for sushi with the best mopper/sister, and returned home to fall asleep on an air mattress in our house.

For the very     last     time.

And what's remarkable is that it felt ok.  It wasn't like I was leaping for joy or popping some bubbly or having any kind of warm, fuzzy feelings, but all the same, I wasn't weeping and clawing at my hair, which really must be some kind of small victory, don't you think?  Maybe more than small...

What's also remarkable is that the very mattress that we slept on has been continuously inflated for... wait for it... FOUR YEARS.  And it hasn't leaked, period.  If that doesn't totally shock you, I don't know what to say, other than to say  lay off the meds, for both our sakes.  This is my shameless and enthusiastic plug for the Simmons Beautyrest air mattress.  Go.  Buy one.  Mine's flawless, but if yours pops, don't come crying to me.  I'm sure it will be your fault.

So Friday morning, we deflated the mattress (for the first time), threw it in it's bag and closed the garage door behind us on our way out.  C hopped into our pickup truck and I clamored into the U-Haul.  There must be a height requirement for truckers, because I had a seriously hard time getting into and out of the cab of this thing.  It was a strange turn of fate when we first laid eyes on our 26-footer.  You know how U-Haul's have those fairly tacky cartoonish pictures of random world destinations?  Like a sumo wrestler and a giant Macy's float in the shape of a Spicy Tuna Roll painted on the side of a trailer with the words, "Visit Japan!" written above the picture in Indiana Jones font?  Well, I'm pretty sure that this particular U-Haul was manufactured especially for us.

Along with a picture of our favorite neighborly woodland creature, our U-Haul was showcasing the up and coming Canadian hotspot - Saskatchewan!  It was like someone just knew where we were headed. I cackled up a storm driving that thing north toward the border - driving increasingly slow, mind you, because if a moose ran in from of that gas hog, there was going to be a very small chance that I'd manage to avoid it.

We arrived at camp around 11:00 PM and unloaded one important passenger - a gigantic jade plant that has been in my family since I was a little girl.  A certain jade plant that was now (sorry mom) frozen solid.  The leaves snapped like sheets of ice, and were scattered on the floor of the truck.  Jades are members of the succulent family, intended to inhabit an arid climate, which is distressingly far from the  -10 degree temperature that night.  I still haven't given up on her, though.  We brought her drooping body in from the chill and I gave her some water and whispered some nice, I'msosorry kind of words.  The next day I pruned off the limbs that felt like water balloons, because there is just no way that a texture like that could be healthy.  So now she's a little ragged, and probably still dying, but we're not letting her go without a fight.

On a related note, this summer I kept a Bonsai on my desk at the rafting office.  This plant, too, got sick and dried up, but I had recently read about the ever-important "cut off the gangrenous limbs or you'll lose the patient" policy and quickly got to work.  A month later, the plant was sailing into the woods where it became part of the earth again, and not simply a prickly naked single stalk of what used to be a thriving maze of branches.  I have a tendency to get carried away with scissors.

So Mama Jade, Kiwi the cat, our air mattress and cookware I haven't seen in a year are finally in one place.  And even though the process was tedious, maddening and sometimes ugly, it's made for a good life story.  And as one of my dear friends, Amy, put it:


Soon it will be all over (for now, for a while) and you'll be settled in to a cozy log-ish home with far fewer moose than you're accustomed to, that is not a small kitchen-less apartment above a restaurant, and that does not come with its own wheels. 


Thanks, Amy.  You always know how to make a girl feel good.

Fat Friday (french for "the day after Thanksgiving")

What better way to celebrate Black Friday than to lounge in yoga pants (better known as "pajamas"), laugh with family, and eat the food of the gods (peanut M&M's) out of a holiday dish for the good part of an entire day?  If there is a more perfect method of cultural rebellion, I don't know what it is.  Retail warfare can kiss my ever-widening ham hocks - there is no doorbuster in America that can beat a quiet morning in the woods and hiding snug under a warm quilt past eight.

C and I are visiting with my in-laws at their lake house in the Adirondacks of New York, a place which practically hums with hospitality and radiates with cozy goodness.  The solitude of this small town along with the perfectly quiet atmosphere (no TV buzzing, no stereo cranking, no logging trucks releasing their air brakes) pairs seamlessly with the clarity of the cool blue lake, transparent window panes and as of Wednesday, the delicate layer of snow garnishing the not-quite frozen ground.  Think Call of the Wild meets the North Pole workshop meets HGTV's Dream Cabin.  It's brilliant.

I took a little walk with my mother-in-law this afternoon up the road a bit to a snow-covered beach.  The sun was so warm that we could've comfortably worn short-sleeves, while the snow crunched under our shoes as we stomped down the shoreline, picking up pieces of beaver wood and enjoying the sound of water lapping on the sand.  There is something astonishing about the collection of sounds, smells and sights that define this brief marriage of fall and winter.  It's especially stunning because I know that by the time that C and I get home, the bears will have already built their ice huts and the neighbors will be crawling into their dens to hibernate until June.  It's just another reason to savor these moments before we fall off of that proverbial cliff known as winter.

I hope that your day was as beautiful and inviting as ours was, but honestly, I doubt it was.  Better luck next year.  

I guess if you really think your day was better than ours, you can just go ahead and tell me off in the comments section.  I'll read it. 

Someday.

Finger Lickin' Good

Monday I celebrated my 100th post with a little dance and an astonishing ginger pumpkin mousse made by the excellent chef at Lake Parlin Lodge.  Last night, Kiwi, our cat celebrated my milestone by catching a mouse in our living room and gnawing on it for 15 minutes until its faint shrieks prompted me to snatch it away from my then-fanatical feline and chuck it out the front door with a pitcher.  This morning, Kiwi attempted to rouse me by burrowing her face near my neck and filling my air supply with her nasty rodent breath before attempting to clean me with a mouth that I had last seen with a tiny foot and tail poking out the front.  I know that licking the area around my nose is her love language, but considering the circumstances, you can imagine how it went this morning.  She flew.

It's important to know a few things about our cat.  This is only the second mouse that she has apprehended in our 5 year history together.  In all truth, you could probably consider it the first, because Kiwi is what C and I like to call "lazy and totally infantile".  The only other time she's had the opportunity (that I'm aware of) to catch a field mouse was in a small cabin we lived in for the first year and a half of her adopted life.  It was a nice grey box nestled into a wooded hill, which probably made it an easy case for a pack of Italian Job forest creatures small enough to dig into the floorboards and walls.  It took place, as last night, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, and in similar fashion,  I awoke to Kiwi scrambling about, tearing her claws into the carpet, only on that occasion the crime scene was our bedroom.  It was as pleasant as it sounds.

So the scenario played out in roughly the same fashion as last night's event, barring the fact that our vicious cat with razor blades for fingernails was totally unable to catch her prey.  She looked like a blind gorilla playing whack-a-mole, throwing her hairy arms wildly in every direction, smashing the blue carpet with more spit and vigor than I'd ever seen her demonstrate anywhere.  This is the cat, that when the vet needs to use the rectal thermometer to read her temperature, responds by purring loudly and rubbing her chin along the latex gloves of the lab tech holding her in place, which is a totally needless assistant in this particular instance, might I add.

Crackers are another strong love language for our fish-breath angel.

5 years ago, when C finally relented to my pleading and reluctantly accompanied me to the nearest Humane Society, it didn't take long for us to find our special friend.  This was a remarkably well designed and beautifully maintained facility, and there were a number of glass-walled cat rooms for us to visit, including the unusual chamber we found Little Miss Einstein in.  Going into the process, I was already leaning toward adopting a black cat or kitten.  I'm not entirely sure what went into my decision, but considering my overwhelming reputation for donning predominantly obsidian apparel, it's probably due to something that happened to me as a child.   So not surprisingly, I entered into a small room that was filled exclusively with black cats.  I'm not certain of what message this particular establishment was trying to send, or if there was actually some kind of evidence-based motivation for this state of segregated affairs, but there they were, with every pair of lime green eyes flashing in our direction.  The only exception to the color palate was a single mostly-white calico cat that was hiding under a chair, hissing wildly.  It was hard not to read anything into the scene.

I knelt down onto the pale linoleum tile and waited.  I was there for maybe a full minute before I was greeted, no - accosted by this one small, ratty-looking animal that was suddenly mounting my chest and summiting my shoulder.  Within seconds, the tiny beast was smearing drool onto the side of my face and working it into the crevices of my left ear.  I don't even think I was holding her up as she clung to my chest like a magnet on a refrigerator.  Instantly, I knew that the search was over.  This was my kind of animal.

As I should have suspected, there was more to this package than tattered fur and dual fountains of saliva and love.  As we filled out paperwork at the front desk, the employee helping us explained that, "all of the volunteers adore her", and that they take turns bringing her home on the weekends.  This is a good sign, I thought. "There is one thing you should probably be aware of, though", said the young fellow as he proceeded to inform me of her condition.  You see, something went wrong when our hairy ray of sunshine was a kitten.  She wasn't weaned long enough, or perhaps it was that she was weaned too long, but either way, she developed a certain coping mechanism to deal with stress.  She suckled.

She what?

Suckled.  As in, finds the nearest finger and latches on like a newborn.  Well, I thought as we signed the papers, how bad could it be?

BAD.  REAL BAD.  

5 years later she still does it, sniffing through the bed sheets like a pig searching for truffles and nosing around in your sweatshirt for the hands you've crammed into your kangaroo pocket.  She will find them, and she will not relent until she has done it. We've been worn into giving up pretty easily, but I think we're going to start keeping a pair of deer-hide mittens on the coffee table, just so we don't have to scramble around like we've entered a game of capitol-punishment Twister where you're playing against ten rottweilers and your hands are made of bacon.

All I know is that after last night, I will do whatever is necessary to keep that dirty mouth from finding one of my fingers.  And please, whatever you do, don't come over today.

I won't be able to open the door after I tape these Cheerio boxes to my arms.

November, You're O.K

 Here's why:

It may be gorgeous, but I'm not ready.

• From where I am sitting right now, I cannot see a puff of snow anywhere on the ground.  And I can see a lot of ground from here, so this is a proof-positive miracle from heaven.  Thank you.
• Tomorrow morning in our county, there will be dozens of hunters’ breakfasts hosted by supermarkets, camps, outdoor outfitters, and snowmobile clubs.  Do you think that they would let me attend?  I’d be the girl wearing a kitten t-shirt under her camo fleece and masking a [not-so] slight aversion to guns by smiling awkwardly and making pistol gestures with my hands.  Can’t you hear my high-pitched shots?  Peuw… peuw… peuw-peuw!  Blow those guns out, hot shot!!  I’d fit right in.
• November is the month of my sister’s second-favorite candy holiday, The Day After Halloween, as well as Thanksgiving (I am waiting for stuffing like a turkey for a pardon), my niece’s fifth birthday, and an upcoming trip-to-die-for to the equator with my sister and mom.  I’m on the verge of making a paper chain to help me count down the days before the madness begins. 

On top of being adorable, my niece has killer moves.

• Black Friday.  My joy in Black Friday has nothing at all to do with joining the masses as they assault salespeople and destroy retail fixtures across the land.  This is the first year in a little while that I won’t be the smiling elf on the other side of that register counter, and unless you have ever been that elf, you have no idea how excited I am for this day.  I might stay home.  I might go out.  I might shop online.  I might hole up at a cabin in the woods and not cross the threshold for anything except some glazed doughnuts and a walk in the woods.   And I will not wear a sparkly headband with antlers.
• My first fall has come and winter is almost upon us, and I still do not own a camouflaged fleece.   In fact, I don’t own anything in camo, except some incredibly thick Smartwool socks I bought a couple years back.  You were right to doubt me in the second paragraph – I totally lied when I wrote that description.  Well, not totally.  I do have a kitten t-shirt (two, actually), and I love pistol hands. 

Peuw… peuw.  

Cabin Feva'

Before you get any further, I want to tell you the source of my latest joy:

a

  real-life,

  functioning

  gas

  stove.

  Yes.

Ironically, the oven door is so hard to open that it might as well be nailed shut.  I am going to have to start lifting weights in preparation for my inaugural roast.  But that won't stop me.

Yes, C and I have moved!  We arrived at our new residence in the middle of last night’s snow-pocalypse, which only made this morning that much sweeter.  When there’s a foot and a half of snow outside, and you’re warm by the fire and have the freedom to cook scrambled eggs and apple pancakes, it constitutes a major victory.  We didn’t actually eat any eggs or pancakes this morning, because all we have is milk and cheerios, but today the taste of victory is creamy, excellent, and heart-healthy.

Another benefit to this move is the arrival of our cat, Kiwi.  If her name doesn't seem to fit, just remember that she’s black with green eyes.  Ahhhh yes, that made it completely clear.  Now, while I'm totally psyched that she’s here with us, Kiwi is not always the best road-warrior, which makes getting her to and from places of residence a complete Friday-the-13^th, zombies-in-your-bathroom nightmare.  Seriously.  Think of riding in your car with an unleashed howler monkey, and you’ll get the idea.  Sometimes I make the 6-hour drive alone, but luckily C drove the whole trip up so that I could handle the pig wrestling.  She wasn’t the worst she’s ever been, but, like a dog, she always wants to see what’s going on.  Being 6 inches tall really impairs one’s ability to view the scenery well, and Kiwi’s way of achieving her dream is to try to scramble her way on to the dashboard and cram her keister into the defrost air stream.  This only leads to gasping and tears for those of us riding with her. 

In the end, we made it north and none of us died, which is sadly a real victory for this kind of trip.  I have a gas range and C has a woodstove again.  And Kiwi has been busy balancing her muffin-top on the four inch support beams, so we're all happy.

It's a day of sweet, sweet victory.