Finding Joy in Snarkville

Have you ever watched that BBC show, Cash in the Attic?  Basically these couples would like to have some cash to do something (so often it is a vacation) and they call and appraisers look for stuff in their homes to sell for at auction.  I’ve seen beautiful homes that they find these amazing things in and then others that they find squat.  I am also a fan of Antiques Roadshow because of the great reactions about the real value of people’s stuff.

This past week, we had our own version of Cash in the Attic — or more honestly — BOXES in the attic.

When we bought this house (a year ago), we were told that one of the attic spaces was not suitable for storage (truthfully they both are — as the other attic space if filled to brimming with insulation).  I’ve never really been one to want to store things in an attic and frankly if it doesn’t have pull down stairs, I’m not going up there anyway.  So, we pretty much forgot about the access hole and moved right along with our life.  Until we decided that it would improve Prince’s life if he had a network cable in his office.  In thinking about how to run this cable, in which various solutions were offered like “use the laundry chute”; “you will not run a cable up my stairs”; “what if we just traded offices”; and the ever popular, “why is it you want a cable again?”, we decided to check out the possibility of using the attic as a way to run the cable between floors.

I need to digress and explain one thing about when we moved into this house — the people who lived here before us left a TON of stuff.  They had lived here for 25+ years and were downsizing to a condo.  Despite having every kid, spouse, grandchild, and perhaps great-grandchild helping, they were still rushing to be out on time.  Beyond the stuff they left per the contract (which all quickly became Craigslist fodder), they left everything from half-used cleaning supplies; towels; pictures on the walls; food in the fridge….you get the picture.  We spent the first few days cleaning out after them and selling stuff online.  To say I was annoyed is an understatement.

Back to accessing the attic.  Prince dutifully pulls out the ladder and opens the access point and I hear a string of cussing.  I look up to see boxes just inside the attic.  There was this wave of “What the…I thought I’d finally gotten rid of those people….”  And I hear… “There’s about 10 boxes up here.”  Ok, in my mind, 10 boxes to the street isn’t huge, then we know we are done.  Prince comes down the ladder to reposition it to start hauling the crap (and we knew it couldn’t be more than old Christmas decorations or such) out.  Off-hand he says, “There better be money up there. I’m so sick of this.”

Well, there was no actual cash, nor was there any sort of antique coin collection, but what we found was 10 boxes of late-70’s comic books.  Most of them were Marvel (I’ve done a full inventory and they number about 1075, give or take a few).  Most of them in decent condition (certainly given that they were in an attic for a bunch of years).  There were a few other odd things in there too, the front page of the newspaper from when Reagan was shot (headline: Gunman Wounds Reagan); a 1975 PSAT Student handbook; a note from a teacher that their daughter had not been bringing her homework folder back and forth to school; a year’s subscription to Pro (some sort of football magazine that appears to be team specific as these are the “Brown” editions); a few beat-up copies of Hawthorn and other required high school reading; and a few copies of National Lampoon’s Magazine.

I’ve done the inventory, I’ve checked price guides, I’ve read and re-read the various grading guides and I’m still hoping I’m getting it right.  I have two or three that are in the “wow, that’s shocking” price range; I have a few more that are in the “not too bad” range; and I have a bunch in the “well, they’ve held their list price — at least we have a LOT of them” range.  From what I read, that’s totally normal.  I’ve contacted a couple of dealers to attempt to sell the lot — frankly, I want them gone and don’t want to sell them of in little bits.  I hope to know more in the upcoming week as to how much money we just found in our attic — right now I consider it a gift from the old homeowners for forcing us to clean up so much in the beginning.

…is paved with a plan.

Lately, I’ve been all about the plan making.  (The plan doing has been a harder thing to grasp and hold on to.) But I’m so into the plan making.  Now to be fair, I’ve been pretty much making plans since um, birth, and haven’t slowed down much.  So, I wouldn’t say the the sheer making of the plan is the mature part here.  But there is a shift.

You see, it isn’t the PLAN itself, it is the GOAL of the plan that shifts my focus.  I was pretty frank the other day when I lamented over the fact that I couldn’t just grant myself all my wishes in the world.  I was an economics minor in college — and the very definition of economics is “balancing unlimited wants with limited resources.”  Wow, sound like anything we’ve talked about recently? Which leads me in a very roundabout way to my point.

A few days ago I was talking to a neighbor and she was stunned to learn that not only had I gone to college, I had a degree and in fact I’d spent a number of years working for VERY large companies making VERY good money.  That conversation has rocked me to my very core.  It isn’t my neighbor’s fault that she didn’t know of my resume — since I’m not one who speaks of it, my diploma hangs in my office that no one sees, and since her connection with me is Cub Scouts and our kids, how would she even know that I work?  And while I have no desire to announce to every person I meet “I used to BE somebody.” I’d really like to know that someone isn’t shocked that yes, I did in fact get a degree.

This has lead me down a spiraling road about where exactly is Point Z.  When I was 6, I wanted to be a policewoman and lock up all the bad people in this world.  By the time I was 10, I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my hero (and favorite President), Thomas Jefferson, and become an architect (bet you thought I was going to say President, right?) By the time I was 15, I wanted to own my own catalog company. By the time I was 30, I stopped having a clue what I wanted to do when I grow up.

Alas, there is the need to figure out what is Point Z and build a plan to get from here to there.  At church yesterday, my minister was talking about this very idea of what is the goal of man.  Oh, sure there is the Sunday School answer that the goal of man is to glorify and worship God, but he was talking about what do we DO with that.  You know, when Sunday School answers become application?  Well, he offered up a few questions to really ask ourselves:

1. What do you LOVE doing? What is it that brings you great joy, that you drop everything else to do, that your whole world lights up when you even talk about it?
2. Is that thing legal and moral?  (His point is that if you are very good at being a cat burglar, perhaps that’s not God’s calling in your life.)
3. Then seek it and do it.  Because it is most likely your calling.

Now, I’m pretty sure that I’m not called to sit and watch TV, avoid all housework, eat bon bons, or go shopping — though all of those things make me incredibly happy.  But this question has lead me to wonder about what exactly is this thing(s) that I could love so much. I want to tell you that I’ve figured it out, but I haven’t.  What I’ve figured out is that I might not really need to know where Point Z is yet; maybe step 2 in the plan is just prepping to find out.  So, I built my new plan — in parts

PROFESSIONALLY

1. I’m going to go back to school.  Wow, that looked as odd in type as it felt when I called Prince up and told him this is what I wanted to do.
2. I’m going to focus on two things that interest me most; they work together a bit and I think I’ll figure out what works best once I’m in it.  Both areas of study are good skills to have both for some future job/career; my current job; and for things I want to do personally.
3. My goal is to be taking classes again by the fall.  At first, I’m not seeking a degree — though I’m leaving myself open to this.

PERSONALLY

1. By the end of 2010, I intend to have the pile of stuff I’ve wanted sold and out of my life gone.  I’ve sold quite a bit off on eBay, and I’ll continue to.
2. By the end of 2010, I intend to make at least $1 on something crafty I’ve made.  I love to craft, I doubt I’ll make a fortune at it — but I can not use all that I make; I want to share them with the world.  To this end, you see that tab at the top that says “Products” — well, watch that space — it will be filling soon enough.
3. By the end of 2010, I shall finish my photo project.  I have a ticker to the right that is charting progress.  It is based on the guess that there are 25K photos to deal with — as I get further and get a better idea, I’ll update that number.  Once per week, I’ll update the photo count of completed.
4. By the end of 2010, I will dedicate a week (though I want to do it for a month), to cooking everything from scratch.  I want to try to eat nothing pre-packaged for an entire week.  I will have more on this as I get the plan together — as you will probably walk through that week with me.

What I’m not planning on having by the end of 2010?  A known Point Z.  I’ve gotten to the point that I think Point Z will become apparent if I just start taking the some steps. I’m pretty sure that not all of my ideas will pan out and be home runs, and some may simply be the learning experience that I don’t need to keep that pipe dream any longer.  I want to turn my focus away from figuring out the exact way all this turns out, to the process of getting there.  I want to focus on sorting through my pipe dreams to find my own personal reality.

Sometimes doing the grown-up thing isn’t fun or exciting and nearly always isn’t the thing we want to do most in our lives.  If we define childhood by instant gratification, then we ought to define growing up as the tendency to delay gratification longer and longer in light of more rational choices.  So, my theory is that the more we delay the instant, feel good, I want it right now feelings, the more grown up we are.

By this theory, I’ve just aged 10+ years!

So, here’s the deal.  In January, my laptop died.  I mean DEAD.  It does not boot, it doesn’t make noise, there is nothing that comes out of that laptop at all.  Thankfully, I had Time Machine up and running and was able to restore my whole personal life onto my iMac that now does double duty.  This is not an ideal solution, mostly because I spend more hours in my office now than in my family room — but it is working, with only minor complaints.

Now the first question is “why didn’t you run to the nearest Apple store and replace your beloved MacBook Pro?”  Well, have you watched the news lately, there is this recession thing and money is um, tight.  We have been slowly working towards a place where we will not feel the pinch and have been doing ever so good with it.  We’ve lived on a budget, a tight one, for a long time and while I could have just run out and bought the new machine, I felt that the more responsible, the more grown-up thing was to use the perfectly acceptable machine in my office for awhile.

The next question, “So, you have to have a plan, right?”  Well, yes, yes I do.  You see, I did a cash flow analysis (shut up) and saw that we’d be in a better spot for the big purchase in July and that would make a bunch more sense than in January.  See also, July isn’t too far away and I will be able to do this and maybe my feeling and requirements will change.  I’m also looking at a smaller machine, in an effort to be more frugal.

Then it happened.  First, there was a massive hard drive enclosure failure.  The drives themselves did not fail (thankfully), but nearly every photo that we have taken since 2000 was on those drives and when the enclosure failed, I cried.  I feared the worst.  We backed up all we could and began to frantically research solutions with redundancy and back-ups and ways that we’d never have to worry about this again.  In the process, I got this wild hair (well, truly it had bugged me for a very long time and I’d been putting it off for sheer laziness — which truly only make the problem worse) that we needed better organization to said photos.  I dream of having books printed of our photos, of the years of Duke’s life, of us to force our friends to sit through — you know the fun.  So, while Prince researched photo storage, I researched photo organization.  We downloaded and tried out several bits of software — please note, this is a Mac household and since Macs come with iPhoto, it appears very few people are willing to write great photo organization software for the Mac — iPhoto was NOT our solution.  I fretted when my top contender seemed to be too unstable to handle all our photos (numbering at least 10,000, but perhaps as many as twice that — the final tally is still waiting to be counted).  We finally settled on iPhoto’s big brother, Aperture.  While not free (or cheap), it solved most of our problems and worked within the needed framework.

So, last night (as our free trial was ending), we made the pilgramage to the Apple Store to buy copies of Aperture (yes more than one, because we have two people and ultimately 4 computers that will use this program).  While we waited, I took to moment to make sure that my earlier decision to downsize the screen on my future (JULY) laptop was the right one.  And then I did the stupidest thing I could do — I picked up one of those dang iPads.  I was instantly in love. I was instantly thinking of all the things I could with it that I can’t do today. I was thinking how it would make my life perfect and complete and I was ready to run away into the sunset with my new iPad.  But then that rational, adult voice came into my head.

It said:

• The iPad is new, you want to wait until the next generation is out.
• Remember the price drop on the iPhone? You don’t want there to be an upgrade or price drop shortly after you purchase.
• You REALLY need the new laptop, the iPad is a nice to have, but won’t solve your problem.
• Don’t forget, you and Prince don’t share well, so this isn’t a single iPad purchase, but two.
• There’s this recession going on, you really have been working to a noble goal and you are on your way, don’t stop now….

My adult, rational brain SUCKS.

So, we left the shiny Apple store (and I ought to note, in the interest of full disclosure, that they were out of stock and thus I could not have bought one if I wanted to).  We talked it through.  We both tried to marry our adult, rational sides with the “I want it” sides — to this is there is no middle ground.  I have put them into and out of my cart on the Apple site so many times you’d think I was doing the iPad Hokey Pokey.  I decided to sleep on it and see how I felt in the light of the morning.

I dreamed about my new iPad last night.

This morning, I put two iPads in my cart. I put a refurbished laptop in my cart. I fainted at the thought of the price.  I walked away. I told Prince I was going to buy the laptop and *MY* iPad.  I walked away again.  I cleaned up a bit; I did a load of laundry; I checked back on my cart and it was all still there waiting for me — waving at me, saying how much it wanted to come live here with me.

Then I did the hardest thing. I closed the Apple window and I walked away.  I had a plan. It is a good plan.  It is a plan that will meet all my needs when they need to be met and I do not need to be swayed by something shiny.

I want to be proud of myself for doing the adult thing, for delaying the gratification until the time is right, for being responsible; but I’m sad.  I’m sad because I can’t have everything I want when I want it (which is NOW). I’m sad because my plan takes time and waiting is really, really hard. I’m sad because sticking to the plan is not much fun.

So, now I think I’m going to work on organizing some photos.  I’ve made myself a new deal – I can buy the iPad ONLY after every photo is tagged and organized based on our new system.  This will probably take me the better part of the summer — as I’m only at 2600 photos thus far and can only do a few folders a day.  I have a major project and don’t need the iPad to distract me.  (I’m still getting my laptop in July.)

I’ve been giggling to myself all morning as I’ve been pulling this post together.  You see, I grew up in the South — the part of this country where we capitalize the name and we know the joys of mild winters, humid summers, and the most Perfect Spring(tm).

In the city I was a child in, when spring sprung, literally the whole city was afire with color.  I can vividly remember feeling like overnight we’d go from dead and lifeless to SPRING!!!  The azealas would bloom, all the bulbs would bloom at the same time affording you the joy of watching the daffodils and tulips compete for glory.  You would see the Magnolia’s in full color along side the Bradford Pears and Apple and Cherry blossoms.

I grew up convinced there could be nothing more beautiful.

I moved to the tropic south (note the lack of capital letter) for about 14 years and learned more about heat, humidity, and tropical thunder storms.  There was little color outside other than green.  And because outside was generally always available (and the number of bugs), there was never any joy in actually going outside.  I joke with my friends here that I never understood why anyone would want to actually eat outside — eating outside was like the children’s table to me — the place you were forced to eat when eating would be a mess.

Then Winter happened here.  Months of gray. Months of snow. Months of stark.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jaded yet.  I thrilled over the simple and small changes that winter holds, how water melts even in sub-zero weather; how the white snow makes the cardinal families pop red; and how quiet everything is.

More slowly than when I was a child and the world warmed seemingly over night, the ground warmed.  The sun shone again, all bright and yellow.  I’d peek outside and see greens and living things popping up like “Look at me, I survived the winter.”  We didn’t live in this house last spring, so I’ve been marveling at what is coming up and perhaps what the squirrels have relocated.

Slowly here, color is unfurling.  The bulbs bloom in stages, and right now the color is all yellow.  The daffodils are in full bloom, but the tulips are slowly coming up behind them.  And just like those bulbs who are uncurling their leaves, I’ve been shedding my winter skin and heading outside to warm up in the sun too.  I may be longing to lay on a blanket in the grass (something, I assured I’ve never wanted to do in my life); I’m spending more hours outside than in these days — just soaking up spring.  I’ve marveled at the noise of it all.  My birds are nesting and talking in their ways.  Some of my favorite birds are returning.  Today alone, I’ve watched the bunny population frolic (for there is no other word for it) in our yards.  I’ve heard the call of kids long silent in the snow calling to play to run and jump and get dirty as kids ought to do.  I’ve felt the soil in my fingers as I’ve planted new plants — little glimmers of hope that winter really is behind us and the warmth of summer is ahead.

I’ve fallen in love with this spring process, the slowness of its beginning, the glory of its splendor, the delight in how there is literally hope in every corner of nature.

I may be a transplanted Southern girl — who will always be Southern no matter how far above the Mason/Dixon I live.  But I could seriously embrace this kind of spring.  This spring isn’t Southern Belles with flashy bonnets and hoop skirts — this spring is liking watching a baby wake up in the sun light; at first she’s scrunchy and a little fussy at being woken, but the sun warms the face and the smile begins and you can hear the giggles at the sheer joy of not missing the fun— that is truly Yankee Spring.

Oh, did you want photos?

Last night I did something I’ve never done before — I taught a class.  Not just any class mind you, I taught a class that the idea I came up with on my own, I wrote the plan, and I built the amazing PowerPoint that ran said class.

And in a word it was the best thing I’ve done in a long time.  Now, if you know me at all you know that I’ve never been scared to stand up in front of any group and speak.  Small groups scare me to no end — I’m have limited skills at small talk, I have an insane habit of saying stupid, random things that I then try to explain (digging hole deeper) and then spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what brought me to the point where I said something so stupid.

A long time ago, in some flash of introspection, I realized that speaking to larger groups or even acting on stage was far less scary than meeting people in a small group where you were expected to have spontaneous conversation with them.  I’m a scripted girl.  I realized that I exposed far less of myself in when I’m in front of many people than in a small group setting.  It helps that I adore being the center of attention, that I feed off the eyes on me and literally am energized by commanding the attention of the room.

So, when I got the call that my class would be three people, I panicked. This was TOO small.  I need a lecture hall when my voice can be loud and there would be no questions to interupt me.  Then it slowly dawned on me that not only would I be expected to speak publicly, but I’d be expected to TEACH them something.  Something I knew and they didn’t and I had no idea their skill set nor the their abilities.  I began to hyperventilate.  Deep Breaths.

I built the slides I needed, I prepped the outline, I practiced in my car when I was alone.  I walked Prince through the slides and asked for advice.  And then the next fear hit me, I had to TEACH for TWO whole hours — and I had 30 minutes of material max.  More DEEP breathes.  More talking to myself.  More prayers that I would not bore, forget everything, and would live through this.

The appointed hour came.  I walked in and set-up.  My three students arrived and I began.  For 45 minutes, I presented my lecture.  We stopped to answer questions and I never lost my stride, I was bonding and doing it and enjoying it.  Then my lecture ended and it was time to start up the computers and walk people through the how to do what I just did.  This is the part that scared me most — I am GOOD at what I was teaching, but I take short cuts (learned over time), I move quickly and I do things that can’t be seen when I’m projected my screen on the wall.  I reminded myself to slow down and be willing to repeat and repeat.  And I began.

And I learned one thing — it was ok that I instantly didn’t know an answer because we could find it together and somehow that was better.  It was ok to slow down and show people how to something a few times until it clicked.  It was ok to spend a little time playing around and making something awful to prove a point.

But then at the end, my hardest student, the one who wanted to know the most; to move from unsure to confident, looked up and said something magical.  “This makes me want to go home and just play with this more and more.”  I did it.  I somehow, without trying, swept away the fear of the unknown, fear of ‘doing it wrong’, fear of not making it perfect and gave her the chance to play.  We learn these programs only by playing with them, we learn because we think “there has to be a way to do ____” and we look to find it, we learn when we can get to the point just beyond being afraid of it.  And that was a more than my lesson could have ever hoped to impart and yet somehow that was the take-away.

I taught a class on how to use the power in PowerPoint for good presentations and not bad ones, and I ended up encouraging productive learning through playing with the tools/toys within the program.  I taught three people to change the outlook on the program and they taught me that I can teach something period.

I am still high on the experience last night, I wrote a note to the director thanking her and telling her I want to do more.  I thanked Prince for pushing me to even give it a try. It was more than I expected it to be.

Eons ago, when I was a little girl I had (long before it was trendy) a necklace with my name on it.  Now, it wasn’t a diamond encrusted script, but block letters with something that at the time could not be found anywhere — something with *MY* name on it.  In the time of rainbow shirts (you remember the ones with the bow that went from arm to arm) and personalized EVERYTHING, there was never anything with my name, spelled correctly on it.  Well, I had one thing — this little necklace.  It was a set of three, one for my mom, one for my aunt, and one for me — made by my grandfather for my grandfather’s three girls.

When I was a little older, I broke this necklace — right in half — in the middle of my name.  I cried, as I should, and my grandfather took it and repaired it — so my whole memory of this little necklace is mostly with a flaw in the middle of my name (only visible from the back — much like all my own flaws).  Not long after the repair, I completely lost the necklace.  I don’t even think it dawned on me where or when I lost it, but it was gone and I had no idea how long it was gone when I realized it.  Pretty sure it was gone for good, I resigned myself to its loss and moved on like any normal 10 year old.

One day, long after I realized the necklace was gone, my grandmother got a call from the secretary at church asking if I had a personalized necklace.  When the answer was yes, they thought they had found it and as I was the only “Queen” they knew, it just had to be mine.  I could not believe it until I had it in my hand and flipped it over to confirm the flaw — that little repaired spot that was so uniquely mine.

I tell you that story because its memory flooded back to me today.

Today, a (appropiately) o’dark-thirty, I took my son out of school in order to march in the local St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  Oh, yes, I completely am ok with him missing a day of school in order to march in a parade because he was celebrating the 100th year of boy scouting in the US.  He may never get this kind of chance again and on the cool scale it rated way high — so did I.  We gathered in our packs, dens, and troops, we were instructed how to march in ‘formation’ by a former marine with a bullhorn — seriously our group ranged in age from 6 to 18 — we were not doing so well with rows and columns…..and turning kicked our butts.  We carried signs — as we were in the scout law section — we carried the various traits held high above our heads.  We stood around A LOT — I have to say that the boys young and older were amazing with all the hurry up and wait we did — possibly better than the parents.  Having one of the youngest scouts there, I looked to the new Eagle Scouts with hope that that is the goal we are growing to, and enjoying that for now, Duke is a little more wild animal than tame man-child.

When I got dressed, in my leader’s uniform with my green thermal under it, I had on a special necklace.  No, not my name, but my grandmother’s monogram.  This piece was made by my grandfather for her and was something I got when she passed almost two years ago.  I wear it often now.  At first, I thought it too special to wear and maybe a little odd since we shared one initial in common (and it wasn’t even in the same place).  Then, something happened and I was given the advice that I needed to be more like my grandmother in how I handled it — and so when I went to the meeting, I wore it to remind me of her.  After that the piece became a special part of my wardrobe.  I wear it when I need to remember to be strong; I wear it when I’m having a bad day; I wear it when I wish she was still her; I wear it to remember her.   So, I wore it today.

We practiced marching; we listened to the rally speech (which was less rally and more delaying lunch); we ate cold dogs and chips and guzzled water; we stood in mud; we stood in the middle of the street.  We waited for step-off which was sadly LATE.  We walked 9 billion miles (ok, about 7 or 10 blocks) and waved to millions (yes, the millions was true).  I joked that this was either the best parade or the WORST pub crawl I’d ever been on.  We made it to the end and collected our patches.  We walked over to Prince’s office, where we chatted with the people he works with and offered him a ride home.  Then we walked the parade route in reverse (without the cheering crowds) with much tiredness.  It was here, for no reason at all, I reached up to touch my necklace and it was NOT there.

I wiped my hand around my neck and found no chain, nada, nothing.  I stopped and looked for something, what I’m not sure because the rational part of my mind could not consider that it was not gone for good.  Prince asked what was wrong, as I was searching my mind — did I really put it on, did I go through with not wearing it at all? — and all I could say, I think I’ve lost my necklace.  The gravity hit us both like a ton of bricks.  To think positively, Prince says, “I bet we will find it in the car.”  I asked why he thought so and he said “It is better than thinking it is gone forever.”  I thought some more and got real quiet.

I thought maybe the chain had broken as I took my neckerchief off at his office; Prince assured me if it was found there, he’d come into an e-mail in the morning asking about it.  I wasn’t so sure.  I was sure it was on the parade route somewhere, lost for good.  I thought about stopping to tell one of the police officers in case someone turned it in, but I truthfully, couldn’t say the words out loud.

We walked some more.  We did not speak.  I think we walked a total of about 6 to 7 blocks from the moment I realized it was gone to the parking lot.  We descended the steps to the lot, as I thought — if it is lost, there is nothing I can do about it and may the person who finds it use it for good; but if I was meant to have it, then let it be found.  Confident that it would either find its way back to me or not and I’d be ok either way, I continued to walk.  Another step closer to the car.

I froze. I felt something.  I nearly fainted.  I pulled out of my sock, the monogram pendant.  Not attached to the chain, but the pendant — the important piece.  I cried a little. I sighed a huge sigh of relief.  I held it tight in my hand and kept saying over and over — what was lost is now found.  I thought about my name necklace and remembered its return.  And I thought about the incredible journey from my neck to my sock and how long it was there and how easily it could have been gone for good. And I cried.

I found the chain, unbroken and unharmed inside my shirt.  I have no idea how the pieces came apart, when or where.  But I do know that though just a thing, they were kept safe for a reason — perhaps I’m not done needing a little extra reminder of where I came from.

I wish this was truly the beginning of a series of stupid dog jokes, but sadly, I really do live with the dumbest dog alive.

Have you read Marley & Me or seen the movie?  You know how Marley was ‘Clearance Puppy’ — well, my cocker spaniel was on sale, and it shows.  Truly he was bred to be a Christmas puppy, but by February he was a full on teenaged puppy and not as cute anymore and thus went on super bargain saver sale.  He is not right in the head.

First, he is clumsy.  He is only graceful when running at full speed in the yard — the problem is that he has the energy to do that about once per year and then must sleep it off for the rest of the year.  When walking, he falls up steps (mostly forgets that they are there and takes his front paws out from underneath him — resulting in sliding on his belly).  He has been known to bounce off the side of the bed/chair/couch when hopping up and then he is too afraid to try it again until you beg him to hop up or pick him up.

Second, he has weird rules about weather.  He hates things falling on his back like rain or snow, but adores plowing through the snow to run around.  He will have the shortest periods outside if there is so much as a mist falling, but let there be feet of snow over his head and he could poke around for hours.  With this he expects that you will be at the back door awaiting his return and will get upset and pout if you make him wait to return to his nap inside.

Third, he is clueless.  He is neither blind nor deaf, but clueless about the world around him.  When he was a puppy and would chase light beams on the carpet, he never noticed the brown bunny that would hop along outside or the squirrels that would tease him from our front steps.  He would however hunt with passion things like falling leaves.  Now that he is older, he didn’t notice the opossum that visited or the squirrels or the bunnies or the GIANT deer outside ever.  Nope, not once; until today.

Today, during our dog’s morning walk, I saw movement in the backyard a few houses down.  They have collies and so I thought there was a going to be a collie/cocker conference — but then this THING moved.  Now the deer I have that wander around aren’t small — they are more like the size of mac trucks instead of the slight Bambi like things I used to think of as deer.  This deer walked toward our back yard — he/she was 4 feet tall at the shoulder (roughly measured from a fence it walked by).  There was full stop.  The deer looked at the dog (probably wondering if it was going to give up it’s leaf diet in lieu of this tasty snack dog) and my dog was clueless.  In his defense, the deer was behind the dog, but the dog turned around to sniff something (does snow — white snow — have an odor?) and looked up.  My dog might not be bright, but his facial expressions are unmistakeable.  He clearly thought, “Um…..um…..help.” and FROZE.  There was a stare down.  The deer watched; the dog froze. Then, new movement behind the big deer, a small, slight, baby deer walked up behind.  The deer broke the stare down long enough for my dog to seize the chance to stop watching the deer and returned to sniffing.  The deer wandered off in another direction.  My dog, noticing the deer were gone, didn’t come on back in — oh, no…that would have made sense….

He started his whole sniffing, peeing, sniffing, pooping, morning routine over from the beginning with feeling this time.  URGH.  That dog is just not right in the head. (FWIW, he is now sleeping off his excitement — as I expect he will do for the rest of the day.)

Long ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I was in middle school, I crushed on a boy.  Oh, seriously, I crushed on a boy.  I drew hearts on my notebook, I swooned when he walked by drenched in some horrible cologne, I had it bad.  I’d rush home after school every single day fully convinced that it would that afternoon that he’d call.  It would that day he’d realize that I was the most awesome girl and call.

The phone would not ring.  I told myself at the time that I’d just missed his call or that the phone had been busy when he called.  My parents, being at the time the most horrible parents in the world (solely because they took breath and I was in middle school) did not have call waiting nor an answering machine.

By the time I was in high school, I had my own phone line with an answering machine.  The boy (surely a different boy by now) still didn’t call; but I told myself that he merely had not left a message on my machine.  The thought that he had no idea who I was or was not remotely interested in me never would have crossed my mind — well, until it did cross my mind and I melted into puddles of tears and teen angst drama.

By the time I was out of college, the invention of caller id was new and on the market.  I had to have it — even then a budding tech addict.  Surely now, I’d see that all the men who I was sure were interested in me were calling and not leaving messages.

Somewhere in my early 20’s, I had the life altering realization — the boys were NOT calling.  It wasn’t that they did call and I missed them, it was that they just weren’t calling.  It was then (and for a few years after that) that I wanted to shun all technology.  You see, it was the invention of the answering machine that allowed us to know someone wanted us to call them back.  It was the invention of Caller-ID that let us know that they had called in the first place.  It was those same inventions that allowed you to know that someone didn’t want you to call them back or that they hadn’t called at all.  It stopped allowing you to create ego soothing excuses for the lack of a date on a Saturday Night.

In those same years, cell phones were growing from bricks in bags (I totally dated a boy who had a phone in a bag off his shoulder — I wish I was kidding — but I’m not) to things so small I now regularly put it in my back pocket.  Then we discovered that we could forward our home phones to our cell phones or get rid of home phones entirely.

In short, technology has allowed us to be overly accessible.  And I’m not just talking about cell phones here.  How many of us Tweet, Facebook, blog, or otherwise share publicly facets of our lives?  We create our own spotlights these days and yet there has been no greater desire for privacy.

I’ve got to tell you that I think the Queen Mum thinks I’m nuts when I wonder aloud why do I have to get so much e-mail or why do I feel like Grand Central Station’s switchboard some days.  In her smile (and frankly, she’s probably laughing at me), she is thinking, “Girl, if you weren’t so out there, people would leave you alone.”  And I’m thinking, “Did you see my Myers-Briggs score lately?”  I digress.

I think about this often really.  Duke will grow up in a world where people seem to talk less and communicate every little detail of their life. (I have a friend whose son is nearly driving age and since he is my friend of Facebook, I know when this kid eats, sleeps, has insomnia, and when his dad takes him shopping for shorts.  I’ve never known so much about a teenaged boy — even when I was a teenaged girl.) Duke will also grow up in a world where everyone is instantly accessible.  When once it was totally ok to wait 3 days to get a call back, an hour seems too long.

As a self-confessed tech-geek, I love the things we can do now that years ago was myth.  When I sat by my princess phone — it had no Disney Princesses on it.  My phone had a rotary dial and could break toes if dropped, I could not have ever imagined the ability to know so much about a person — and yet so little.

But you know the truth — the truth is, I think we know less than we ever knew before.  Because e-mail and texting is easy, we don’t share the things we used to share.  Because our world expanded to more people, we know less about each one.  Our connections don’t seem as deep or as lasting, because they are easy.  When we had to work at it, did we invest more of ourselves in each moment.  We shared more, we gave more, we truly bonded. We may not have talked about what we had for lunch, but we bonded.  I think about my great-grandmother — she knew the art of visiting.  You could go to her house and sit in the front room and just visit.  You could be there for 30 minutes or hours and she’d chat and you’d chat.  You’d leave thinking you’d really shared something and I can tell you that she was more connected with the world around her than any interwebs would allow.  It was because she understood (and practiced) two things: She knew people and how to bond.

So, I’m challenging you (and myself) to step away from the keyboard, to write an old fashioned letter to someone (with a real stamp — it might help the Post Office too), to sit with a cup of coffee and friend and turn off your cell phone.  I challenge you to an hour, single hour, of off time.  Turn off the phone, turn off the computer, don’t text, e-mail, call.  Sit face to face with someone, and learn how to bond again.

I used to think that I lived in the middle of Wild Kingdom in Frankenhouse.  In addition to our personal zoo, there were regular sightings of deer and turkey and few animals I’m not sure I want to remember.  Anyway, Frankenhouse has nothing on our new digs.

Like Frankenhouse, we basically back-up to woods — which is awesome for private park-like setting in our back yard; but it also makes for easy get aways for all of the forest creatures who like to say hi.  We have a lot of deer — BIG deer.  Deer the size of Mac trucks.  I often can sit at my desk and look out to see deer raiding my neighbor’s birdfeeder — which is fun and funny at the same time.  We have a family of bunnies who in the fall visited our yard every afternoon to munch.  (In case you were wondering, my very dumb dog has yet to see deer or bunny — he is really only interested in those things that don’t move — like leaves.)  I’ve seen raccoons, other peoples’ cats, and a metric ton of birds.  One afternoon, I even had a hawk land on my deck rail and stare into my house at me.

So, last night, as we settled into watch the closing ceremonies, one of the cats was curiously looking out our patio doors.  We look up to see a little pointy white face looking back in at us.  I should pause that I am not sure that I’ve ever seen an opossum alive.  I may have seen one scurry across a yard, but NEVER one a few feet away.  I got up, I turned on the lights outside, I stood on the other side of the glass  and we watched each other.  He/She was not bothered by the movement inside or the lights coming on outside.  The opossum walked back and forth on my deck looking in curious about the cat on the other side.

Once the little creature left, I began to think about this incident. First, they are not nature’s most beautiful creatures – one might call them a wee bit ugly, with the white faces and their beady eyes.  Second, I know next to nothing about them (except they (and armadillos) make fine roadkill) so I couldn’t help but wonder if it was trying to get inside to rip my face off in the middle of the night.  Finally, why the heck was it not afraid of me inches away from it (safely behind glass)??

So, of course I consulted Google and answered most of my questions — it will not dig; it can’t jump (though can climb) so it is unlikely to get on my roof and try to get in; it will eat things I don’t like more (snakes, rats/mice, and random backyard garbage.  But the one thing Google was unable to answer for me — was it visiting a human zoo and thus not afraid of the giant behind the glass? Was it trying to get into my house to rip my face off? Should I be worried that one of the things it hunts was also up on my deck or close to?

First off, there is more snow heading my way.  I woke this morning to more snow falling (though at the time of this writing it has slacked off) and predictions of a 12″ to 18″ of snow heading my way.  When I was a kid, snow days meant sitting by the fire with hot chocolate with brief moments of bundling up with ziploc bags on my feet (what — it didn’t snow much and I never owned snow boots until I was over 30) to go play or build the world’s most pathetic snowman.  As a grown up, snow days mean only one thing to me — WORK.

I work to clear the driveway (and the sidewalk). I work to entertain my child. I work to keep the fire going (I never knew how much work that was). I’m so tired at the end of a snowday that I want to crawl up into a ball and beg for summer.  Only, I don’t really.  Summer is a fine season, just isn’t my season.  I really do enjoy the starkness of leafless trees and white covered lawns.  I like it when the world turns to black and white and even the palest of colors seem bright and vibrant.