In A Flash

A lot has happened since last time we met.  Sorry about the lag time.

At this moment, C and I are sitting on the couch, watching the Broncos play the Steelers.  I’m usually one to hop on the underdog bandwagon, but in this case, I have some surprisingly strong feelings - mostly in the vein of having a case of the hots for Troy Polamalu (The blocking!  The speed!  The Head & Shoulders commercials!), but also… it seems that I just don’t like Tim Tebow very much.  Every time I hear something nice about him, I dislike him even more… is that bad?

I apologize - I didn’t get on here to write about the game, but the Tim Tebow Superstar stuff gets me a little riled up.  I wanted instead to give you a brief, slap-across-the-face summary of the past few weeks, which have been exciting, depressing, hilarious, and almost below zero already.  Here goes:

Pack it up!

We will be closing on the sale of our house in just 12 short days, so we headed down about a week before Christmas to try and box up our effects.  Good: I didn’t have a meltdown on the kitchen floor, an event I was positive would occur.  Bad:  There’s no food in the kitchen anymore.  Ugly:  Take-out pizza for 4 out of 6 dinners.  We needed to eat some apples, like whoa. 

Out at breakfast one morning, C “accidentally” left the pepper shaker top mostly unscrewed.  I'm sure he did it because he knows how much I like heaping mounds of black pepper on my eggs.

Christmas

It’s hard to describe how much my dad likes Christmas.  He has a real reverence for the significance of the holiday, but I’ve also never met a kid more excited for the morning than my father.  Or for Christmas Eve.  Or for whenever he can persuade us to start opening presents, which on this particular year included nose flutes.  The Good: No present was larger than a beach ball.  The bad: No beach balls.  The Ugly: No beach.

Get [chilly] Together

Each year over the New Year’s Eve weekend, we host a camp reunion for staff and students.   The weather is usually a significant factor for the success or failure of said weekend.  One year it was terrifyingly cold with lunatic winds and snow that felt like tiny hypodermic needles.  Last year it reached a balmy 40 degrees, and felt like we ought to pull out the canoes.  This year it was somewhere in the middle - a nice balance.  The Good:  No one fell through the ice.  The Bad:  I am too much of a sally to stay up until midnight anymore.  The Ugly:  I couldn’t find the right cookie cutters, so for the “Christmas Cookie Decorating” activity, the kids had to slap frosting on women in dresses, circles made from drinking glasses, and get this… pigs. 

Low & Slow

When I was ten, I was given a Christmas gift that was beyond my dreams.  Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs that morning, sitting next to the tree was a glass cage with a small Chinese box turtle in it.  Lois has been a trusty companion since then, and at 21 or so years of age, she has waddled her way into the corners of our house and the nooks of our hearts.  She has become fairly free range at this point, mostly wandering around the first floor of our cabin or my parents living room until she finds a place to take a nap.  Well, friends, she’s moved on to new pastures.  The Good: Lois is alive and kicking, and was a Christmas present herself this year.  The Bad:  She’s keeping another family up at night as she bangs into the sides of her cage like a jailed army tank.  The Ugly:  Here’s to hoping she doesn’t give them salmonella. 

s-a-l-m-o-n-e-l-l-a. . .

Other things have happened in the last few weeks as well, but I don’t want to keep you here forever.  I will work hard to post consistently, but another recent development is that I’ve started a new job, so I’ll have to get organized with my time.

I'm a pretty on-time person, so that should be easy.

The First Step Is Admitting You Have A Problem

I’m going to write a book on how to shorten the moving process.  It will be titled Burn it Down, and will have exactly zero pages. 

I will be rich.

Of course, a literary bomb like this would require me to actually burn our beautiful house to the ground, a thing I haven’t done and honestly may not get around to, since 1) I'm not quite sure how C would react, and 2) I haven’t nailed down the extent of the physical incarceration consequences. 

Does this look like the face of a girl who would commit arson?  Don't answer that.

I don’t want to jinx it yet, so I’ll whisper the big news:

I think we’ve sold our house.

We’re under contract with a nice young family (I say “nice” because I can’t bear to think of them as anything but a set of perfect human beings - adequately clean, dreadfully hospitable and exceedingly hip), so C and I have begun the process of moving, also recognized in our marriage as dancing through the house with cardboard boxes in our arms, wearing bubble wrap tutus and waving curly streamers made of reinforced tape.  We’ve gotten so good at packing that we can spend our time doing jazz ensembles instead of any real work.  This isn’t true of course, but what is true is the fact that we are becoming proficient at squashing any emotional turmoil surrounding our decision to sell.  When people ask how “it” is going - you know, “tossing through the memories bound within the walls of your first home” - I have a reliable if not canned reply:

It’s like war. 

You can’t think about casualties. You can’t second-guess decisions.  And above all else, you can’t give in and start crying on the bedroom floor.  If you do, you’ll wind up huddled in a dark linen closet with Blue Christmas playing on repeat, or something worse - and what could be worse than that??

We’re working hard to avoid the other great challenge of moving, one I think we can all relate to on some level.  Over time, we humans have this unfortunate tendency to form emotional bonds with things.  When I was a kid, I would go ballistic if I had to throw away old socks.  Socks.  Or, I’d be so upset that mom wanted me to take on a new toothbrush that I would wrap the old one in tissues and slide it into a clear ziploc bag before placing it gently in the least repulsive corner of the bathroom trash, whispering some parting words as it settled in to it's Kleenex coffin.  In the same way, we adults like to hang on to things that serve little or no purpose to us, such as the knick-knacks we keep on our bookshelves or sometimes even the books themselves.  We find ways to justify hoarding old yogurt containers, half-used chapstick tubes, and empty cleaning product bottles.  We hold on to unnecessary ceramics and superfluous furniture pieces. 

Well friends, no longer are we are in bondage to our hoarding ways – we are sorting through our knick-knacks with an iron fist and selling our wares to the highest bidder.  Need a side table?  We can help.  Always wanted to own a non-reclining recliner? Call 1-800-WE-GOT-IT.  Framed pictures of our vacations and family holidays?  Creepy, but we’re open to it.  You see, it’s not worth placing all of our desperate hope and separation anxiety on the shoulders of inanimate objects that aren’t capable of offering any love or hope in return.  Why else would we have pets?

I apologize in advance if I’m untimely with my posting in the next few weeks, but just remember that a transition like this has plenty of potential for spousal blowups, misplaced financial records, damaged stemware, and the occasional box-flew-off-the-back-of-the-truck highway accidents.  The laughter that I hope you experience over my mishaps is the shining light that keeps me from veering off the tunnel tracks. 

Or striking a match.

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.

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.