Three Surprises

Every once in a while a year really stinks, like 2009 (and 2008), and 2017 was one of those, but nonetheless as the year ends, dusted off, back at the gym, weight normal, ambitious, I am actually joyous all morning as caffeine carols through my veins, and then I started looking at my Facebook friends' postings and at the Washington Post headlines and came to a dead stop.

I said, I'll cheer up after lunch with a close friend and then to the feed store, which I've always liked because it smells like hay, and stop by the town optometrist who online found parts for my damaged favorite specs, and I'd have them next week. Overjoyed. . .and then poof. . . I looked at my phone. . . so depressing. . .and I kept scrolling through the phone at the coffeehouse. Oh very low indeed although I sat next to the artificial fire and gulped two and a half cups of nice and hot, plus a scone.

At home, because I have to go there, an Amazon box is on the stoop. It's a gift from my sister, brother-in-law and niece: a brand-new, bright red wild-bird feeder. This replaces the green one rusted and peeling, bent from falls and obese raccoons, and it did not once occur to me to buy a new one and I am delighted. Surprise!

Two of the three surprises.

Then the phone rings. It's my niece. "I have kind of exciting news," she said: She is engaged! And I was excited, and she texted me a photo of her ring, and that was thrilling. Engaged at Christmas! What's more romantic?! That's surprise #2.

So I sit up and write two articles -- good ones. (I write four per week for my employer.) Takes until 10:30 p.m. I finish proudly. Because of coffee I'm still awake and thinking of all I must do. I make a list and start joyously checking off items.

Get off Facebook
Unsubscribe from Washington Post
Write four  articles by Sunday
Finish book and sell
Finish novel and sell
Update website
Update blog
Update website blog
Write a new research paper (this past year I wrote two)
Write a new book

What a relief to start on my to-do list (ain't nobody gonna do it for me).  Then there's the more important "to be" list:

happy
joyous
creative
contented
healthy
thriving
appreciative

This morning I lay in bed drinking coffee and couldn't see outside because of window insulation. But eventually I get up and the light in the kitchen looks awfully bright. And from the window I see: Surprise! An inch of snow! It's beautiful!

And I feel like a new person, happy all day! I'm rockin' those rose-colored glasses! All I need to thrive is good surprises!

Trying to Give Money Away

I've always hated tipping, thinking I always do it wrong, just as I hate splitting restaurant checks 50-50 and seeing in my lunch-mate's eyes that they feel screwed and think less of me because I had wine or dessert and they didn't, and I also hate the math of figuring how much to the dime I owe, or pulling out the calculator. You know what I really really hate? A first date who takes me for coffee, and I always order only a coffee (rarely, if I'm hungry, a roll too) and he pays for mine and his, like, $5.50 total, and then he takes the receipt and CAREFULLY FOLDS IT, like, with two hands, actually taking his time creasing it, and carefully tucks it in his wallet, and elaborately restores his wallet to his back pocket with the air of having just sacrificed his firstborn for the good of the tribe, and next time that happens I will run away screaming.

Ahem. 'Tis the season to tip the mail carrier and the trash-pickup man. The trash truck arrives about 12:30 on Thursdays, and when it does I plan to trot down the hill with a holiday card and envelope with money and wish him "Much Joy," he whose fate it is to smell my trash all year, and once it had maggots and I hope he will forgive me. Outside starting at 12:15, so I won't miss him, I do some raking and yard work, glancing downhill toward the road, hearing cars approach and pass, but not the trash truck's snorting and apnea.

I am in fact deeply ashamed because the last few years I have not tipped him. Things were too tight to give a proper tip; it might be insulting if I gave less. The trash-truck driver had for a couple of Christmases left a blue envelope wishing me season's greetings, signed Dale, and I filled it only once, and I wanted today to make up for that and be appreciative. Somebody loves him. (I always used to say when construction workers blocked the roadway and Demetrius, who was driving, would swear and mutter mean things about their bellies: "Somebody loves him as much as I love you.")

Twelve-thirty passes and the truck does not come and still does not come. Finished raking, I commence sweeping. It's been a half hour. Has he already made his rounds and the trash bin at the foot of the hill is empty? I go and check. No, he's not been here yet. He's late. I don't know him. It doesn't matter. I'm tipping today.

Everyone knows, right, that if you want your name to be called or your bus to arrive, you go to the lavatory or get a drink of water or light a cigarette, and the minute you do that here it comes. So, at about 1:30 I slip indoors for a drink of water, watching out the window all the while. Outside I keep the weather eye -- dark clouds blanketing the west and southwest -- holding the card in hand, and finally I hear a truck and walk down the hill. The mail carrier's vehicle pulls up to the mailbox.

I have no choice but to hand the envelope to the mail carrier with good wishes; she's truly the greatest, and I bet she makes four figures in tips at Christmas, and walking uphill with mail I realize with chagrin that I wrote on that card "Waste Management," but a tip is a tip, and my heart's in the right place, and I guess it's okay.

Maybe, I think, I got the pickup calendar wrong and the trash truck won't come at all today. In the house I prepare another card and envelope with money in it, and just as I rip open the day's mail, the trash truck roars up and halts with a great squeal of brakes. I grab the envelope and lope down the hill waving it, calling "Wait, wait!" And the truck pulls away without emptying the trash and goes on its way!

Did I look crazy or threatening? Is a 60-year-old lady wearing sweats and rhinestone specs running toward your vehicle and flailing a terrifying vision? (I can see how it might be to a guy in his 20s.) Did he interpret my signaling as "Don't take my trash"? Had he perhaps not showered today and felt he wasn't fit for human contact? Did he know it was a tip and he is one of those too proud to take anything? Did he think I might have an emergency and he didn't want to get involved?

Now I must phone the trash company and tell them he didn't take my trash. Or rather, so he won't get in trouble, phrase it in the passive voice: "My trash was not picked up."

Winter Solstice

Happy Solstice!

For a few days each year, at the winter solstice, setting sunbeams the color of flour come through the corner of the house, the screened porch, which points exactly southwest, and through the glass in the door, it hits the shelves of cookbooks.

Cookbooks are my favorite reading and there's one for every mood: frugal, hippie, microwave, Indian, microwave Indian, church-supper casseroles, Cook's Illustrated, Gasparilla (Florida), New York Times, Russia & Poland, vegetarian and vegan, bread machine, and three cookbooks that are all soups, for example. Since 1997, every time I make a recipe I date it on its page and write a note as to how it was received, or the substitutions made, or suggestions for next time. I also have my own cut-out-of-magazines or printed-off-the-Net recipes in a ring binder, and a tin recipe box with handwritten recipes on index cards. I feast on all these. This is wealth.

My top 11 cookbook recipes: Hot & Sour Soup (The Garden of Vegan), Flaxseed Wraps (Wheat Belly), Sausage and Peppers (Microwave Gourmet), Polenta (Microwave Gourmet), Slow Cooker Pot Roast (Cook's Illustrated), Maple Walnut Biscotti (Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites), Chocolate Ice Cream (How It All Vegan),  Coffee Gelatin (internet), Spicy Black Bean Burgers (Betty Crocker Vegetarian Cooking), Beefy Seitan (Nonna's Italian Kitchen), and Bucatini Briganteschi (Cooking from an Italian Garden). Bucatini is thick spaghetti with a hole down the center. It is so hard to find, and the recipe so delicious, I ordered a 20-pound case from a manufacturer. Yesterday I ate my first Olive Stuffed with Bleu Cheese and got all swoony. Want some, with some wine? Come over!

Happy Solstice and Yule, December 21 at 10:29 a.m. Have a feast.

How to Help Birds

This is not a good picture but it illustrates what birds want during this droughty autumn-styled-winter: water. There are three birds, robins, crowded on the clay water dish and another, on the left, flying in. Right next to this water stand/bird bath is the hanging cake of suet that used to be the star attraction at my bird buffet. No longer. The very second I put some water out, birds surrounded the water, perching, drinking, flapping, flying in. Birds are thirsty. No wonder they'd rather eat berries than suet or seed.

Set out a dish or bowl of water if you love your wild creatures. For them it's in short supply.

Meanwhile I don't dare start up a nice cozy outdoor fire. The other day I panicked seeing thick woodsmoke crossing Highway FF but it was a homeowner -- I could see him -- burning leaves and wisely attending to the fire. Lack of water is not only causing thirst but the woods are a tinderbox.

Cheer Up, Get a Gadget

This is the coolest lamp ever, cordless (after you charge it up). It is about the size of a hand. It arrives folded, and unfolds like a cherry-picker to any extent you like. The head with all the LED lights twirls left and right, up or down. Touch the pad at the bottom and it bursts into light or turns off. Stroke the pad at the bottom and the LED lights turn yellow or dim.

I am fascinated. The bedroom ceiling light is so wuss that it can't take higher-voltage bulbs nor the coiled energy-saving bulbs because they're too long for the fixture's base and cover. Even with a table lamp there was never enough light for taking stuff from the closets or reading--a bedroom not fit for reading, how did I let that happen?--and I wanted a reading lamp but not one affixed to the headboard (which is padded fabric) or a gooseneck that'd be in the way or might poke me in the eye. I looked at some floor lamps that would arch themselves over the bed. The problem is when you want to go to sleep, or more precisely, when you want to sit up, you have to slap them aside. This one is easily picked up and moved anywhere. What a great design. I am buying one for my stepfather.

folded

What am I reading now that there's light? Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here. That guy knew small towns and he is hilariously mean about their leading citizens and persons of quality unencumbered by the thought process, and the virtuous, and cynics, and outliers, the whole cast of characters.

The lamp is not itself pink. That's only the daylight that comes through the pink wintertime insulation fitted over the windows.

Salad Days

I felt seasonally bad, holiday bad -- I really did -- and thought it might be a relief to quit this plane of existence (hey, in winter I have those thoughts while bundling up indoors as if to go skiing, while the dry air deepens lines beneath my eyes) -- until I went to the salad bar --

and loaded up a carton with all I wanted, as much as I wanted, including corn salad, pasta salad, kale salad, beets, imitation crabmeat, greens of every footprint, garbanzos, croutons, tomato; three meals' worth) and went home and ate a plateful --

and realized that in death I could no longer have hot chicken noodle soup with a grilled cheddar on swirl rye -- with kosher pickle --or a broiled trout --

and although there are no bills or heartaches or body aches in the next life, there is also no hard stuff, although there might be wine, and no grilled cheese sandwiches or pasta pesto (world's greatest anti-depressant), so I decided to hang in there and focus on what's good. Ninety percent of the time things turn out okay. The trick is having something or someone to look forward to, and taking a walk even when you'd rather not. The solstice is imminent: December 21 at 10:29 a.m. In its honor I'm throwing an Irish high tea. Already have the Kerrygold butter, the clotted cream, the jam, the tea, the scone mix . . .

Look Through My Window

The cabin's original windows with original silica glass (single-pane, and it's wavy) look like this, a little scarred, but it's been 80 years and only two are left and there's no greater fun than yanking them open in good weather, yanking hard and maybe even prying with a butter knife, and letting the breeze in to sweeten the room, and thought I'd show you the view in summer:

And just so you don't get too romantic about living in a 1930s log cabin in autumn during a rainstorm:

The leaking problem is largely solved by a piece of thick translucent plastic Demetrius stretched into a wooden frame he custom-built to fit this window from the outside, a homemade storm window, but in the summer I remove it. In autumn when the window leaks--as the weather and precip is increasingly driven in from the north--I set the shield back over the window. Then I must seal every crack in the inside with those rubbery strips of foam or else cold wind whistles through the warpings. Yet it's all worth it. These have to be the coolest, strangest windows on earth.

Yes, these windows should all be repaired and maintained, but the owners don't think the house is worth maintaining. That used to annoy me until I realized what I treasure isn't the INSIDE of the house but the hundred acres it sits on and all comes with it. In the Manhattan penthouse I will someday inhabit, I will never look back on my life and be sorry.

Piety

Autumn brings church-sponsored come-one-come-all suppers of chicken, ham, roast pork, pork sausage (at Catawissa Union Protestant Church, $3 a pound to take home), and beef, advertised in the Events section of the local paper. I never like to take photos of food at these plentiful church suppers because it gives me away as an intellectual, but absolutely had to photograph this dessert table to show you, no matter what anyone thought. (The secret of life is: Nobody's thinking about you. Nobody's looking at you. They're all too busy worrying about themselves.)

Yet how to choose? Pumpkin, seasonal, one of the pleasures of late fall? Lemon, 'cause I get it so rarely? Berry pie, because the summer drought meant no berries in the meadow this season? Cherry, because it's always great? Peach, because you never know what you might be missing? Apple, because that's American? Exotic entry, Amish Pineapple pie? Coconut, or chocolate silk, or pecan pie? Custard? How about a slice of each? How about Union Pacific lays some railroad track out to my house and delivers me pie every day by the boxcar full? The only thing they didn't have was Concord grape pie, a New England regional specialty I liked to make from the purple grapes I and my friends liberated from abandoned grape arbors in upstate New York. I make a good one when I want to do the work.

On my deathbed I just know the pies of my life will pass before me.

If this photo does not make you want to go to church suppers than nothing will.

Natural Amber

Tree branches seeking sunlight strong-arm their way into the lane where they scratch or interfere with vehicles, and while pruning them one morning this caught my eye. It couldn't be. It was. Amber. Gooey as caramel. Sticky as maple syrup. Natural amber 50 feet from my door.

People wore amber as far back as recorded history goes: there's an amber pendant about 13,000 years old. Amber doesn’t require mines or miners or advanced technology or expensive equipment. It grows on trees. Like finding pearls in oysters, finding amber in nature is a matter of luck, and very lucky for the finder. Those who wear amber align themselves with the Sun’s power.

Amber is not tree sap. Sap runs in the tree's veins. Amber is a resin, more like tree lymph, originating in cells, not veins, and seeping only when the tree is in crisis, filling a non-lethal wound and maybe protecting it against an insect invasion or a fungal infection. For this reason amber has always as been associated with healing. Well, this was my lucky day.  I plucked off the hanging pieces that were not still encasing the wounds, which were positioned as to make me think they had been made by bagworms. The amber drops could have been rolled all together into one, like clay, but I wanted to study the shapes and also the inclusions: bits of bark, and how some pieces were smooth and some ridged, possibly meaning different rates of extrusion, but all concentrated in one area of the tree. I looked for more. None. Once in a lifetime? I spent half an hour trying to identify the tree (which has no leaves, currently, and most books identify trees by leaf shapes), but I do know that amber is most commonly found on evergreens, and this wasn't one.

Fast Living

In Belfast, Ireland, for an international academic conference I gave a paper, but so did a lot of other people, and my paper was a success as were many others, and in this galaxy of new people and ideas I fell in love with the little pots of tea as well as 21-year-old Bushmill's whiskey, only 10 British pounds a glass, then upon returning home my head spun as I fought to finish two long long highly detailed articles and eight short ones, and draft new poems. It's spinning now.

I loved Northern Ireland and would settle there if only because the money has a picture of the Queen on it. The rest of Ireland uses euros. Dublin is a big city, a major city, the New York City of Ireland, with suburbs and all that. Belfast is a former shipbuilding town, walkable and quite trim, and one needn't go far to find castles and fishing villages. The Titanic was built in Belfast, and I thought the Titanic Museum would be corny. Oh no. This was serious economics, business, and labor, and the portion about the sinking was terrifying. Who was it who told me--I think it was the cathedral sexton--"Even little kids, three and four years old, come here and they have heard of the Titanic." It seems basal, like a collective memory; I felt changed, as if a shovelful of spirit, or complacency, or conviction about what life is, was moved from here to there. A museum hasn't done that to me since Auschwitz in 2012.

As usual I returned home and looked around in wonder: I live here? This is my house? My home? In all the world this is my home? My first venture out was to the grocery store where I saw this car in the parking lot and knew I was back home in Missouri.

Today I took a walk, a major achievement, and admired the December sky and its sun's long shadows, like no other month's, more like moonlight because the trees are leafless: museum of shadows.

What Is It About Old Stuff?

I rearranged my bedroom to look as much as possible like a hotel room for no reason except that I adore hotel rooms, private, clean and comfy, pillows and towels plumped and straightened beautifully and magically every day while I'm out doing something fun, and I'm ecstatic and smitten out of my gourd if it's a firm mattress with--oh, rapture!!--white or cream-colored shadow-striped bedsheets.

So I bought the sheets, and a hotel-looking bedspread and pillow covers, and then rearranged the room, dragging to the garage a battered old metal foot locker given me when I started college, which nice ladies filled with "hope chest" doilies and linens -- boy, did they get a wrong number! -- I was 17 years old and the Vietnam War had ended the previous year so maybe foot lockers were on sale. It had not been moved in 16 years and was locked. Total genius me, I knew exactly where its key was: in the junk drawer, on a key ring that's a souvenir of San Francisco where I've never been: the carefully preserved "key ring holding keys I never use."

Inside the trunk lay Christmas things like stockings and "crafty" tree ornaments that had lost all their crocheted and decoupaged charm, and two green-and-maize rough woolen woven placemats, except they were too small for placemats, as ugly as they sound: a souvenir from Ireland from a certain mother-in-law, God rest her soul; all this I threw out. At the very bottom in a plastic casing was my old Girl Scout sash I thought I'd lost years ago.

You had to "graduate" from Brownie to Junior Girl Scout to get a sash to sew badges on, if we earned them. Nerdy girls earned badges enough to fill the front of the sash and start up the back--Girl Scout cool. The next step up, Cadette Girl Scouts, earned badges with yellow borders instead of green. Earning each badge required genuine mastery: 10 or 12 steps increasing in difficulty, and each step had to be shown to or performed in front of an adult, the Scout leader, who'd sign off on it. I remember most the intensity of earning the Needlework badge. Several wars later, I can still cross-stitch, huck-a-back-stitch, satin-stitch, applique, whipstitch, hem by hand, tie French knots, darn small holes, and what-all. It's the leftmost badge in the third row, above the first-aid box.

(I don't remember any first aid, though. When I'm accidentally cut or stung the first thing I do is swear.)

I left Girl Scouting halfway through Cadettes because the badges had increasingly discouraging requirements: The "Aviation" badge asked us to correctly fold and pack a parachute. I earned the "easy" ones like dressmaking and storytelling and dropped out.

Today with one click I ordered airline tickets like it's nothing and from Amazon.com a programmable coffeepot for my mock hotel room, so I will wake up to coffee or hot water for tea without moving from the bed, and the coffeepot arrives the next day.

Hawthorn Berry

Hawthorn berries, currently ripening to a lovely carnelian red, are called "haws" and are both medicinal and full of cyanide. The seeds, if you ingest them, turn to a terrifically poisonous gas, hydrogen cyanide, in your intestines, and that is a stomachache you do not want to have. The flesh, though, is said to be good for blood pressure and heart issues. I think I'll leave all that to the experts and to the birds who eat these berries, and simply admire them.

Tio Santi Preferida

When money is short, a grocery five miles from here sells canned beans not for 89 cents or even 79 cents but 59 cents, and for $1.29 per pound, dried navy beans I cook up into "U.S. Senate Bean Soup" (in Washington in 2015 I ordered and ate the real thing, served by law in the Senate cafeteria daily) that'll feed me five meals' worth. If I'm lazy I'll spend 99 cents for a can of Preferida brand refried beans already mashed with lard and spread it on warmed Tio Sante tortillas with cheddar cheese and salsa, or, even cheaper, on yellow or white corn tortillas that came packed in a huge stack of 36, costing almost no money (scissor corn tortillas into quarters and bake them into tortilla chips).

All this good cheap stuff was in the store's Mexican section, with goods such as these plus canned chilies and so on, taking up about one-third of a row of shelving. Last time there I saw these cheerfully red-, white- and green-labeled cans and bottles, and Tio Sante wheat tortillas, up in front of the store on a markdown table, and felt chilled to my bones.

No one was buying them anymore. The Mexicans or Central Americans living and working around here, scared of being jailed or deported or losing a family member to the immigration police, are gone. Whole families used to shop the grocery store and Walmart chatting in Spanish, cool to listen to. Gone.

Thinking of this my eyes fill with tears even if I don't want them to. They were working here. Some of them spray-washed the siding on the Divine Cabin and my neighbor's house, and a couple of years later, put new roofs on them, a crew of four starting on mine at 6 a.m. and not leaving until past dusk when the job was finished. The foreman spoke enough English to say hello. They would not look at me straight on or accept offers of coffee or bottled water. I used to see Spanish-speaking men wearing blue or tan uniform shirts lunching at the picnic table set up next to the Walmart parking lot.

I miss them. Where'd they go? Were they arrested? Are they safe back where they came from? My father was an immigrant who worked in a foundry and when somebody disses immigrants, legal or not, I let them know that. If they're doing a job you wouldn't want to do, shut up.

Things To Do in Less Daylight

As daylight shortens and nights grow long:

• watch and laugh at YouTube videos of parrots taught to swear
• buy something on eBay or Amazon every day before getting out of bed in the morning
• stave off morning coffee to extend the small pleasure of looking forward to it
• tap "Like" on every Facebook post
• stay up until 3:00 a.m. mending all the torn clothes and altering all the too-long sleeves piled up during the last five months 
• buy and eat Hershey bars
• buy and eat Hostess Snowballs
• procrastinate if there's any work to do
• scroll through hundreds of the latest memes 
• scroll through hundreds of before-and-after photos of plastic surgery
• attend fall festivals for 20 minutes and then go home
• drink

Paying Attention

While lying on the dismal oatmeal-grey carpet, I glimpsed a bit of orange and saw it was a moth. A tiny, tiny orange moth! With lacy wings! Unique! I scooped up the body with a sheet of white paper and marveled. Then I attached my macro lens to my phone and photographed close-ups. What a magnificent work of art: red, orange, and bridal white. For scale, the wooden item you see in the photo below isn't the tip of a chopstick; it's the tip of a round toothpick.

The Art of the Drought

I like to walk on cooler mornings at Glassberg Conservation Area on the beaten and sometimes challengingly muddy path around the pretty three-acre (man-made) lake I sometimes fished in, that I privately called my own Walden Pond, and last week was stunned to see the lake dried out to practically nothing, surrounded by a Missouri moonscape of cracked mud and dead water lily plants.

In this picture you can see from the orange gauge where the water level used to be.

The lake is a tenth or less than what it was! The former sky mirror that had a whole bunch of us (or at least one person every day) hiking in half a mile carrying gear to fish there! The dead trees stuck up from it like wooden knitting needles. Fish remain in the increasingly scarce, warm water--jumping, as if to say, "Save us!" The Department took down the sign warning anglers about the daily catch limits.

Barely recognizing it and not quite believing it I crunched my boots across the desert landscape close to what water is left.

Snaked Out

The transparent tape fell off the fireplace and I replaced it with duct tape so stickily strong it takes two arms to pull it off the roll, and felt satisfied. Then at night I hear crisp-crackling in the living room and I know it's a young snake loosening the tape and shouldering its way out of its fireplace nest into my living room. Can't blame it. I turn over and go to sleep.

The next morning I meet the baby prairie ringneck, about five inches long, on the living room carpet. I try to pick it up off to take it outside. It flees. Grabbing a bowl with a lid I charge after it like it's Snakes on a Plane. I have to get these m----- snakes out of my m------  house. It's terrified, slips away and vanishes into the space between the carpet and wall.

Oh, well. If I lived in Puerto Rico or Mexico or Houston I'd be thrilled if my only problem was a snake hatchery in the fireplace. And snakes are ancient symbols of wisdom. . . it's just that I'm snaked out for the season. Then I go to the garage and am surprised to find there a shed snakeskin. I enjoy examining it and photographing the neat, translucent, geometrical webbing. Next, I return to the house and shower and see in front of me the hose connected to the hand sprayer and it looks the same. For a moment I think I'm hallucinating.

My Team

Couldn't recover myself all alone; it was too much to ask. So now I have a support team. They are:

Taylor, a young Doctor of Physical Therapy. She asks and answers questions, has me practice standing and sitting and flexing and arranging pillows for best sleeping alignment, gives me printed and illustrated instructions for exercises. Probably my problem was a muscle spasm; I am glad to hear this because it means maybe my disk is not squashed. Taylor says that someday I will be able to return to Tae Kwon Do.

Debby, a psychologist. Thanks to talking with her, I began having an appetite again, just last week. I'm starting slowly with food other people cooked, or readymade food such as eggs already boiled and packaged, or Rice Chex or fruit, and bit by bit am cooking, like, kale chips or potato-leek soup in the microwave. For a while there all I could eat was hot wings from the deli at Walmart. Thank you to Terri for the referral to this personable lady who does not ROTFL when I say that.

Emily, a physician's assistant. She prescribed medicine for what I think is a stomach ulcer I've had on and off since about 2004. I also received from her my flu shot and shingles shot. P.S.: Blood pressure 112 over 76.

Normally I would not request the services of any of the above fearing the fees for medical treatment, but I reasoned that it's worth it to try to rebuild myself.

Anthony: Longtime friend 1000 miles away guides me in things academic, even contributed to a fund for a research trip, and I can tell him almost anything.

Patrick: Mows lawns, builds tables and firebowls like it's easy, cleans and clears garages and other spaces, removes stuck-on snakes, fearlessly climbs a ladder to the roof and clears off a ton of storm debris, and does it without complaint and brings beautiful pastel-colored organic eggs from his hens when they lay too many.

Hope, Daria, Derek, Lucy, Holly, Cecelia, Drew and others in Spiritual Group: We meet every two weeks, perfect timing in a perfect space and have perfect discussions about our topic or video or reading. Thanks to this group's wisdom I can now instantly enter meditation mode: something I'd been failing at for years.

Becky, Maria, Gaye, Andie, Mary Ruth, Gail, Karen, Grace, Wanita, Marlene, Nan and more in Women's Poetry Workshop: If it weren't for them I'd probably have given up on poetry. As it is, I'm receiving a poetry prize this week, and so is Maria and a male poet friend, Matt.

Terri: Winner of the Best Neighbor of the Century Award, so cheerful having returned from an amazing three-week road trip to the west, a lifelong dream, including Mt. Rushmore, Yosemite, Crater Lake, sequoias and giant redwoods, San Francisco, Grand Canyon, Sedona, Las Vegas and much more: brought me southwestern hot peppers and a sizeable rock from Sedona as souvenirs.

Wendy the housekeeper, Linda the accountant, Dave the Ex Who Vows He Has Changed and I Say I'll Believe It When You Bring Me a Five-Carat Diamond, and you and you and you who are all so important to me. Did I say I felt alone in life? That now that Mom was gone and I've finished  teaching, nobody on earth would give a sharp stick in the eye whether I lived or died?

Making Kale Chips in the Microwave

Crisp and ready to salt and eat.

This is an easy way to eat your kale. Wash the kale, tear it into bite-sized pieces and let it dry thoroughly, as thoroughly as you'd dry lettuce. Then toss the leaves with a small spoonful of olive oil until each leaf is oiled and shines. Now arrange them on a plate, with some space between each leaf. Then microwave on High for three minutes. Only 3 minutes, that's right! They will shrink but are now finished and crisp. Salt them to your taste.

Oiled and plated for cooking.

After microwaving.

Pluot, Spelled "Pluot"

They were the cheapest fruit and piled the highest, and I got the sense that nobody much was buying them, and being on a budget this month I loaded a bagful although I didn't know what to expect from a"pluot," a plum-sized red sphere with yellow speckles, and I supposed a cross between a plum and an apricot, and I've seen weirder things, so I took a chance.

They are delicious--juicier and sweeter than plums, are nothing like apricots (which I enjoy). I fell in love with my first pluot, nice and cold from the fridge, and with all the rest of them, and the feeling was mutual. I appreciate food. I'm delighted when it expresses appreciation for me. Also known as a "plumcot." Try one and let me know how you like it.

Dawgs for Sale

I tried to call the number but each time I was laughing too hard to finish dialing. You have to give them an A for effort, though. I wanted all three chiwawas. I really need three little ugly vicious yipping pop-eyed demon dogs to leap up and bite my fingers and my guests' off. They are manic and insane. One time I was sitting watching TV with my hand over the armrest and a yipping chiwawa jumped up and bit halfway through my hand, and the only good thing was, I could seize it with my other hand and toss it into the next room and shut the door on it, and it stayed quiet for a while. Don't "oh poor doggie" me. . . a chiwawa is not a dog. Dogs are love. With Italian matiffs I have no experience.

Don't Look at These Dead Snakes, Part 2

The futon is to the left of the non-working stone fireplace and last night lolling around reading about celebrated idea-people and profound thinkers I happened to peripherally see that the brass fireplace frame had been re-molded with swirls and stuff, like Baroque or Louis XIV, and for a nanosecond wondered who installed that and when, and then I see they are dead snakes.

I already told you I taped the fireplace edges so snakes bred in the hearth would stay there, but tore the tape off in April yet some adhesive invisibly remained, and it trapped these four small Prairie Ringneck snakes, who died of dehydration. The top one has its head lifted. Death be not proud.

You'd think after one had been trapped there the others would avoid the area, but they think differently.

After I got over the shock I wondered what to do and am still wondering. In the Divine Cabin 16 years I have never seen the like. I don't mind live snakes, but the idea of peeling off dead ones (how stuck are they?) and tossing them (where?) makes me feel unwell. And then the adhesive must be scrubbed off.

But I can't just leave them there!

(The first thing I'd thought was that they were art!)

Bone China

Mom collected shelves of fancy china teacups I don't want. They're nice enough, but I lead more of a "student" lifestyle and don't want useless things nor do I give a fig for decor. (When I say that I even roll my OWN eyes.) I couldn't understand why Mom filled her house with china and fragile figurines, realizing as I sat alone, after her death, in her junque-filled living room, that through these items she was showing us her soul: full of delicate, finely wrought and pretty things, much at odds with a personality (while we were growing up) comparable to a professional wrestler's, although she mellowed, as did I, after all we kids left home.

I eyed the one shelf holding smaller, demitasse cups. Those I do use. Correctly or not I drink espresso from them. I own four. "This is pretty," I said to my sister, holding up the most baroque, ridiculously designed, four-footed gilded cup, with a saucer to match; the items are stamped "JKW Bavaria." The designs in and on the cup and saucer are not hand-painted but screened, including the vignettes of an 18th-century male-female romance, when girls wore more clothes than guys. In one scene he plays a guitar while she holds out to him a rose. Far out.

My sister, the estate executor, said "You'd better take it then."

"Can I?"

My sister lifted the pieces from the shelf and firmly handed them to me, then rearranged the other cups so no telltale gap remained between them.

The  cup's thin china walls and feet mean that hot liquids in them cannot possibly stay warm for long. I decided to look it up. This is a "chocolate cup" from JKW Bavaria's "Love Story" series, available in yellow, white, red and pink as well as green. In tiny letters the pieces are stamped "Western Germany" which indicates manufacture after 1949.

Imagine the mind of the person who designed this, then imagine the minds that desired this item without ever wanting to use it, and there is something mindful of war and survival in that.

A Person of Size

I'm throwing out lots of stuff in preparation for throwing out lots more stuff when I'm older, and this washed up on the tide of junque from yesteryear: a Simplicity pattern -- wait! What's a "pattern"?

A pattern is a guide, printed on tissue paper, for cutting appropriately sized pieces of fabric for sewing, and the envelope includes a printed step-by-step illustrated guide, in three languages and with idiot graphics, as to how to sew the pieces together and do the other tasks required for completion, such as pressing open the seams and inserting elastic into the tunnel one creates for the waistline. Apparently at one time (the presence of a bar code indicates 1975 or later) I got the jones to sew for myself an elastic-waist skirt or capris, and I did, because I used the pattern and kept the tissue-paper pattern pieces nicely folded in this envelope in case I wanted to re-use them to sew me some more of that with the Kenmore sewing machine that was my college graduation gift.

You gotta understand America was different then. Piles of cheap gaudy-bawdy synthetic clothes sewn in Asia that you wore for one season and chucked: Oh, no. You cared for clothes. If certain clothing items were not available, or you never found an affordable/desirable item on repeated trips to several stores, logic led you finally to buy a pattern and fabric and some notions and custom-sew the item yourself as all girls learned to do at age 12 in Home Economics class. We  didn't yet hate Spanish-speaking people either.

But OMG, the size chart is the most stunning thing. As a populace we are a lot broader and dumpier than we used to be, and ready-to-wear manufacturers have adjusted clothing sizes accordingly (called "vanity sizing") and although today I wear clothes labeled "small" or "extra small," size 4 or 6, and folks call me "model thin," by the standards of 30 years ago I'd be size 14-16.

The Cringe Files: Words and Phrases

"No offense, but..."
"To be honest..."
"Not that there's anything wrong with that"
"You shouldn't feel that way"
"Bae"
"Well there ya go"
"No pressure"
"How do you want to pay?"
"shooter"
"hump day"
"people skills"
"criss-cross applesauce"
"nom nom"
"the new normal"
"hubby"
"preggers"
"tiny house"
"vajayjay"
"so aggravating"
"with all due respect"
"selfie"
"God help them"
"staff reduction"
"bumptious"
"I'm sorry I'm not the person you thought I was"
"sending thoughts and prayers"
"I didn't want to hurt you"
"smackeroonies"
"team player" 
"business plan"
"he really s--- the bed on that one"
"horny"
"with that being said..."

Feel free to add your own. . . fees are on a sliding scale. . . How do you want to pay?

A Good Mum

Much smarter now than when I moved here, especially in the ways of plants, when I watered the sunny yellow potted Belgian mums I frittered away $5.99 on and chose from dozens, and the water ran right out through the bottom and the blooms drooped as if aphids had got at 'em, I said to myself, "They're root-bound, that's why."

So animated with color and life that they are great company, they attracted another friend, the green one whom you see here. The mums come indoors at night because squirrels will wantonly destroy anything they see that I treasure. I was, however, thrilled to correctly identify the problem, tickle and rip their tough strangled roots apart, and transplant to a slightly larger pot where the mums now thrive. I've always been a talented transplanter; even Demetrius, the genius gardener, agreed I had the knack. Maybe I should try heart and liver transplants. The blooms perked up, and from day one have brightened the whole scene. So glad I paid the $5.99. When September comes, one must do everything possible to stay an optimist.

Let's You and Me Do the Local Paper's Crossword

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1 TNM

2 lecturer

3 Belfrance

4 phlegm

5 inacting

6 fairy

7 bitch

8 LatviaCity

9 Ace

10 pit

11 dick

12 writer

14 jagger

17 gaming

18 rich

20 austriahungary

23 lipoed

24 shutup

25 tacky

26 dude

29 forsale

30 narc

31 criticized

32 leaves

35 nothing

36 Syria

38 Jew

40 salt

41 bidet

42 holler

43 busy

44 thataway

45 finally

46 wait

47 fox

Life's Worst Meals (So Far)

Spoiled Coho Salmon: The July fishing derby drew up tons of salmon the anglers all give away at day’s end, a problem if your frugal family doesn’t like fish so doesn’t cook it much and fully expects it to smell and taste bad.

Hamburgers in Hot Dog Buns: With a bunch of teenagers to feed, Mom had ground beef but no hamburger buns, so she shaped the beef to fit the hot dog buns she did have, and the grilled and bunned burgers looked like quarter-pound turds.

Sauteed Chicken Livers: A horror show of not one but twenty or so veiny little livers I sincerely could not even look at and the only meal I ever told a friend (the host) I could not eat.

Clams Full of Mud: “Who wants clams for dinner?” caroled the enthusiastic Vermont hostess. I lied that I did. She went out and bought clams just for me and steamed them. I had to eat them.

Stuffed Green Peppers: Bitter body-temperature bell-pepper shells and acidic tomato sauce are a hellish combination always, but ten times worse if served as the gala welcome meal at an expensive retreat.  

Corned Beef and Cabbage: Like eating a human adult sent through a hot shredder.

I eat with no problem tripe, anchovies, lard, creamed herring from a jar, octopus, headcheese, zucchini blossoms, venison, sushi. . .

Those Who Ironed Before Me

In 2008 I emailed Mom about the old wooden family ironing board I still use and printed out her answer, taping it to the underside: “bought for $2.00 in 1955 in a State Street junk store.” She and Dad were newlyweds, and it was the golden age of ironing. I first saw her cry, over a neighbor's rude remark, while she was ironing out on the porch (it was summer). I was between ages 3 and 5 and horrified. That’s my first memory of this ironing board.

In the '70s the heavy awkward thing became mine and I hauled it to the 10 or so places I lived until settling here in 2001, by then ironing at most four times a year. A week ago I saw the board’s butt end had been soaked and its cover shredded, and thought: Buy a new ironing board? Naw. I’ll simply buy a new cover. So I did. Stripped the old cover off--it had been stapled on--and saw the full-length crack in the board’s “table,” rendering it worthless but not useless.

Googling, I learned this three-legged style was first manufactured around 1914 and that metal legs replaced wooden ones in the 1940s, giving me the board's approximate age. I turned the board over looking for a manufacturer’s label or stamp. Nothing. But besides the note I’d taped to the underside was writing I’d never noticed before. Handwriting. Only some of greenish lettering was readable.

This much was clear:

 ________ d A. Dixon

______________________ Wis.

Probably the previous owner who’d junked the thing! With light and magnification I finally confirmed the name as “Fred A. Dixon.” No, not “Freda.” That “A.” is clearly an initial. Plus I cannot imagine any female so attached to her ironing board she’d write her name and hometown on it. What, is she taking the ironing board to camp, or worried it'll be confused with someone else's?

Where the ink had worn away, faint impressions in the wood allowed me to confirm the first letter of the town as “W,” resembling the fancy “W” in “Wis.” (My hometown with the junk shop begins with “R.”) Fragments of other letters were just visible. Might it be two words?

The town name’s final letter, I thought, looked like “h.” “Beach”? There is no Wisconsin town called anything “Beach.” Or did it say “Fish”? That was more likely. The top of a capital “t” was followed by the top of a capital “e.” The answer was probably “Whitefish”. . .

But there’s no Whitefish, Wisconsin. Whitefish Bay is in the next county to the north, but believe me, no native calls it Whitefish because then we can’t make the standard joke about that wealthy suburb, calling it “Whitefolks Bay.” There’s a Whitewater, Wis. But the final letter before the “Wis.” was not an “r.” The storm outside had knocked out my Internet, so I pursued this puzzle, thinking that “h” might be a “d.”

Then I saw it: Waterford!

Waterford is a village in the same county as my hometown.

Census records from 1940 list the household of Fred A. Dixon, 57, of Waterford, Wisconsin as himself and his wife Lulu, 56; their son and daughter-in-law, ages 31 and 29; and three children under age 4. They used the ironing board a lot. So did Mom, who sprinkled water on clothes and rolled them in towels before pressing them, and also darned socks over a light bulb.

Nothing Bit Me All Summer

"Lavender is an insect repellent," the Lavender Farm nearby had advised. That place, of happy memory, lost its lovely scenic lavender crop from alternating years of flooding and drought. But when their brand of lavender oil ran out I bought a 16-ounce bottle from Amazon and have used it ever since as insect repellent, pre-treating myself against bites and bugs before stepping out and meanwhile smelling pretty good.

Somebody told me that lavender oil at the Amazon price I paid is probably not real lavender oil but swill from big tanks of chemicals in China, but I just couldn't see letting that ruin my day. The darned stuff, no matter what it is, works just as well, whether cloudy (it turned cloudy) or clear.

Caution that lavender oil as a bug repellent doesn't serve everyone. I drenched a friend in it before we went bushwhacking. Chiggers still bit him and so covered him with those volcanic bites that he was bedridden with nausea. Usually he deserved bad things to happen to him, but not that time.

Two Cheers for Conservation

I trekked down Highway FF to see what those earth-movers and heavy-equipment operators spent three weeks doing down by LaBarque Creek during the hotter weather. The conservation department or somebody demanded our landlord provide erosion control at this creek bend. Wait any longer and the LaBarque here, give or take a few flash floods, could undermine the road.

I could tell you why. More paving, especially a parking lot built in 2014 right next to the creek, makes runoff. This encourages the gentle LaBarque to rise and flood. During 2015's heavy rain this was no flash flood: the creek was torrential for a full day, eroding its own sandstone channel, filling its fishing and swimming holes with sand, changing  the creek's floor--it's now all shallow--and its shape, and dumping sand up and over the creek banks for 50 feet on either side, instantly altering the ecology of its entire riparian corridor. Back then I climbed a cliff to take a photo and show you the aftermath. Happened again in 2017. Flash floods now grow ever faster and taller, and when meeting this bend here they hammered a new channel through our other soil: clay.

Was I surprised to see rope for erosion control; 100 yards of woven rope to hold the creek bank all around its bend. Conservation people forced the landlord to uproot invasive cedars nearby and rope them into the creek bank's walls to try to mitigate the pounding this clay side of the creek will still take during flash flooding. Why? Because the other side is sand.

Rope doesn't solve the problem. The only real solution is to dredge or straighten the channel. The LaBarque did have its own very pretty and reasonable channel, but now it's clogged with sand.

Reflective Post

Somebody really, really wants drivers to see this wooden post at night, accommodating even the colorblind. I liked it. . .it embodies command, force, desire, communication, concern, compassion in the night.

Two ceremonies 40 days apart at the cemetery--traditional, and my stepfather wanted us there. It's the least I can do for a man who loved my mother for 31 years. For 40 days after death the soul may freely wander the earth and visit places important to it, and on the 40th day (just like Jesus) it ascends to heaven and is really, really not coming back, so the survivors hold a sendoff service at the gravesite with brandy, wine, food and bread, pouring wine into the earth, and then, all ready to faint or vomit because it's 114 degrees, go to an air-conditioned lunch. Then you're supposed to move on with life, except for the six-month observance and the one-year observance. I am eager to move on. Rest in peace, Mom.

Doing my best to move on, I had a new professional portrait taken July 25 and when I saw the photo, which is awesome, I thought, "Mom would love this, I'll send one.  . ." but she's seen it already.

The Produce Stand

I don't know who owns this modest and remote little farm stand in a wagon; never asked. A few times I've seen a gardener working the dense, thick victory-garden plot just behind this wagon; don't know if that's the farmer. Tomatoes of several types, eggplants, pickle-type cucumbers, berries, onions, red and white potatoes, squashes (especially pumpkins, in season) are all sold here, but supply depends on what's ripe and whoever got there before I did. Also sells salsa and jam when appropriate. For cheap. I love this little vegetable stand. It's so midsummer in Missouri.

Despicable Me

My solution to craving junk food is to order a Happy Meal for only $3, containing much less food than a standard order of burger and fries. Select chocolate milk with it and you can't lose...and inside every Happy Meal is some kind of a toy or game. Today I scored a set of Despicable Me playing cards. What is this "Despicable Me" I keep hearing about? Some kind of children's movie? Animated? Why would I want to watch a movie titled Despicable Me when I'd much rather see Despicable You starring certain real-life characters who shall remain nameless unless you take me to lunch at a much nicer place than McDonald's?

In any case--helpless people being the most superstitious--I decided that fate had handed me an oracle and I would unwrap and open the box and choose a card at random from the deck, and this card would predict my future. I said, "I will believe this card no matter what it says. I commit to believing this card will tell me the truth. I won't second-guess it. I will accept it." And I grab a random card and it is the Queen of Diamonds. Surprisingly she does not look despicable at all, but rather nice. And since when is the somewhat advanced vocabulary word "despicable" used for children's anything? This totally confusing me no end except that I do believe I will soon be the Queen of Diamonds.

Yes, the Eclipse

This property is in the August 21st Great American Total Solar Eclipse path of totality, only 70 miles wide and the target destination for millions who intend to stop their cars right on the freeway where they are stuck in a jam, get out, and watch the mighty eclipse, the first one the U.S. has had since 1979 and the first one since 1918 that sashed the country, northwest to southeast, in the same way. It's a sensation! Genuine fun for everyone and children of all ages! I'm inviting people over and serving Oreos and Moon Pies. What other foods look like eclipses?

Naturally there are products tailored for the eclipse-crazed market. Naturally I bought an Eclipse scratch-off ticket for $5. Didn't win a cent. Saw "Eclipse" bronzer in the makeup section at Walgreens.

Breakfast Alfresco

"What would be fun?" I asked myself and could not come up with an answer. This is very abnormal because I think everything is fun, from hikes to mud to old trucks to blizzards. How else could it be, living in the world's most wonderful place?

When nothing came to mind, I tried another tactic: If I was in love, what would I be doing right now at 8 a.m.?

-I'd be serving breakfast to the loved one.
-I'd make this breakfast from the very best I had, to be the best and most memorable breakfast in the world, all for love.
-I'd skimp on nothing nor would I care about calories, because my loved one is perfect as is and thinks I am perfect too. So I'd use real butter and the works and serve enough to fuel the loved one all morning long.
-I wouldn't care about the number of bowls, pans, dishes, paper towels, or anything.
-I'd go to great lengths, even trotting everything outside to the red picnic table a total of four round trips, to have breakfast in the ideal quintessential vividly green July morning, the grass perfectly mown so any chiggers would have to leap really high to bite me behind the knees.

With day-old French bread, plus eggs, milk, sugar and cinnamon, syrup and some (uncured, excellent, local) bacon I'd frozen and forgotten about, I fixed the imaginary loved one the best possible breakfast and served it in the shade beneath the twin oaks. Then I ate it, in the company of one bumblebee attracted by the fragrance of syrup. Oh yes, memorable. I ought to do this every day for a year.

Gift Wrapped

A full inch of rain had barely woken or greened anything because it's been so dry. Dry means no mushrooms, not since late April, and no chanterelles for sure -- normally the woods is paved with big ruffly yellow ones, and my lawn, when soaked in summer, is host to as many as 17 different fascinating Missouri fungi. Today I saw for the first time that the juniper bush under which grew, annually in autumn, 20 pounds of rare Hen of the Woods 'shroom has been pulled out: sigh.

The walk led me to the former mushroom capital of my woods where there wasn't even an LBM ("little brown mushroom," as in "Never eat little brown mushrooms") to be seen; it simply hasn't been wet enough. As for any hunter, some years are plentiful and some not. I turned to retrace my steps and saw these Dreamsicle heads of Chicken of the Woods, beautifully fresh, ribboned with orange, yellow and white. I took the smaller head, about the size of a cabbage (see the glove, at the very bottom, I put in the photo, for scale) and within half an hour the fronds were roasting to a crisp in my toaster oven preparing for my Sunday guest.

Why didn't I take the big Chicken, or both? Didn't need it, and conservation means don't rip everything up out of the earth. Why not take the big Chicken and freeze it for later? Freezing fungi dehydrates the best out of it.