August is the start of the dying season. Garden things begin their slow shrink into the earth, the days grow shorter and cooler, lazy ocean- or chlorine- or mint-scented summer fun snaps into rigid schedules of work and school. August is also the month that I lost Diego, my first dog. You can get acquainted with Diego here, a post I wrote a few days before he died, but I would like to share a little more now, on the second anniversary of his departure.
Diego was a poser, in a very literal sense of the word. He loved having his picture taken; in fact, he insisted on it whenever he saw me holding the camera. This picture, for example: it was taken the day I brought my daughter home from the hospital, the day after 21 hours of hard labor produced an eight-and-a-half-pound baby who actually stopped halfway out of my body, looked around and scowled before resuming her reluctant journey onto the planet. (She was 12, twelve days overdue, FYI all you mothers out there who can surely feel my pain.)
There is something screaming in the bed. Please make it stop before it explodes.
I laid baby Isabella down, stepped back with the camera, looked up, and there he was: Diego, staring. Fifty-eight pounds of solid Unmoving. Insisting that I photograph him, too, with this creature that he wasn’t sure if he should guard or lick. This child who personified the singular emotion of furious for the first nine weeks of her life. (If she was not sleeping or eating, she was screaming.) In fact, this image of her could be cropped and dropped into a variety of backgrounds and it would be an accurate documentary of the first few months.
Oh, hi Aunt Rosie. I know you have passed on, but I’ll bet you can still hear that screaming baby wherever you go.
When my doula told me that the colic or distemper or petite innards or whatever it was making her so unhappy would resolve itself in about nine weeks, I said oh, that’s nice. But I won’t be alive for nine weeks of this. I’ll be in an asylum acquainting myself with a selection of opiates, or at the bottom of the mighty Rio Grande, so behold, an orphan.
But somehow, I survived. And Diego was part of it.
You see, from the very beginning, it was just us — the two of us, the three of us. I was abandoned by my husband before Isabella was born, a painful time that I don’t often write about. Within a matter of weeks, the married-and-expecting life I’d known was gone, and I was left to fumble around with the pieces, a wreckage sitting on a pile of broken glass in the dark. The small hours of it were the worst, waking up alone and panicked in the middle of the night wondering how (or if) I would live through the next weeks and years. And Diego was always there, a silent and comforting presence curled at the foot of the bed or coming up to lick my tears if I was crying, which was basically all the time. He was always there.
I have a teenager now and those days seem ancient. While I rebuilt my life (with a lot of help from family and friends), Isabella grew up and Diego grew old. And finally, in his sixteenth year, he began to deteriorate to the point of pain. I knew he wouldn’t be with me much longer and I had already called the vet to ask her how it worked — when do you know it’s time? Do I take him to the office, or do you come to the house? Will he feel anything? I planned to schedule an appointment soon; I hadn’t had to make this decision before and it was a very painful.
On the morning of August 9 before I left for work, I told Diego that we would have to say good-bye soon because his body wasn’t working right anymore. I told him that I loved him and it was okay for him to go. Over and over I told him I loved him.
Less than two hours later, he drowned in the pond.
I think it was his way of avoiding the vet (he hated going to the vet), and maybe sparing me that particular pain. I’m not going to say that I wasn’t devastated. But rather than remembering the urgent phone call at work or the vision of him when I got home, or my step-father struggling to carry the terrible weight of him away, I like to imagine Diego simply being received by the fish and toads. Delivered from his pain by warm water, wrapped in a blanket of lilies.
Anyone who has cared for pets perhaps knows that there is one, a special one, who will always occupy the largest piece of real estate in your heart, though others may follow. That was Diego for me. But now we’re lucky enough to share our lives with another dog, the rascally, loyal-to-a-fault, road trip-loving Velma. I’ll end this post with a short video of her that reminds me of exactly what I love about dogs: their absolute and abundant connection with life, free of judgement, agenda, or desire to be anything other than what they are. That’s what I think of every time I see Velma in her Writhe of Exquisite Happiness. Perfect contentment of being.
I was curious to see if a hair a dye suspiciously free of ammonia, peroxide, formaldehyde, parabens, sulfates, animal products, lead, chlorine, gluten, and dwarf entrails would actually work. Well, let me tell you… It was such an interesting experience that I decided I just had to share with my readers. I know some of you are becoming vegan (Cristy), are in a gangsta phase (Stacie), are out of shape (Mike), or are interested in chemical-free tinting of your own delicates (Len, Guapola, and you-know-who-you-are), and this information is bound to be helpful in your respective pursuits. Who doesn’t need a new, botanically based hair color? Or even if they have no grey, like me,* a natural freshening of existing color? Exactly.
*lie
Also, companies love unsolicited product reviews, so you’re welcome, Light Mountain Natural 100% Pure Botanical Hair Color ($5.99 at Sunflower Market), I decided to try your Dark Brown, and here is my step-by-step:
1. Skip the strand test because you are lazy.
2. Per instructions, boil 12 oz distilled water and add it to the mountain of green powder until it is the consistency of horse shit. (Note: it will also smell like horse shit. Seriously.) Keep in mind that, per the instructions, it is normal for the texture to be “slightly grainy”.
3. Carry steaming pile into the bathroom and begin to apply, burning the crap out of your fingers because that shit was boiling just moments ago. Wonder if it’s normal for clumps of product to fall off your hair, into the sink, on the floor, and down your back. Be thankful you have chosen to do this activity in your underpants. Consult instructions.
4. Add a little more boiled water until mixture is the consistency of cow shit, a determination only those of us raised in 4-H and Western boots will be able to make. The rest of you: think baby diaper after too much fruit. And maybe a little giardia.
5. Return to bathroom and begin application process again. Daydream of the State Fair, horse barns, sidewalks in Paris. Don’t try to wipe up the green splatters, it only makes it worse.
6. Sculpt an actual pile of cow shit on top of your head using every last bit of your 100% botanical hair colorant. You did pay $5.99.
7. Remove gloves, which were somehow filled with colorant.
Seems to work!
8. Begin the delicate task of removing product from the interior of your home, pondering the realization that if the manufacturer’s claims are true, all the plops of green trailing through the house will soon turn dark brown.
9. Hurry up and clean floors (whatever the dog has left behind — having responded to the irresistible call of animal dung).
10. Leave on your hair as long as you want. The instructions say that “timing will vary” and the strand test will determine what your hair needs. But you’ve skipped that, so just leave it on a good long while or until you finish a blog post. two hours later... The once-malleable pile of cow shit on my head has formed a crispy outer shell which is very difficult to penetrate with water, even with the tub faucet fully engaged. A garden sprayer would have worked better. After approximately 20 minutes of scouring my thick hair down to the undergrowth, I get the cocoon off my head and come up for air. Good thing I have a full bottle of Drain-O.
I had to lock Velma out of the bathroom because she kept trying to climb into the tub, presumably to roll in the sediment.
Results: Hair looks darker and possibly greener.Hands, legs, feet and back of neck stained; bathroom needs repainted.If I did have grey hair, I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t have covered it.
Recommendations: This product should be applied outside, preferably in the nude or wearing a rubber suit. Be prepared to hose yourself off several times during the process, and delight in the knowledge that the used product is being repurposed into a rich fertilizer. Those averse to the smell of cow barn should not use.
Hello readers! Today is my birthday and I want to celebrate by making you laugh, or hopefully making you laugh, with three of the funniest things I read in my 4fthhietlsth year. Enjoy!
First, for those of you who may have missed it when it made the social networking rounds last month – a Seattle Craigslist ad for a 17-yr-old Pontiac Grand Am. Click to enlarge (2x) & read all the small print, it is hi-larious. I hope the guy got some kind of a book deal or offer for a design job out of it, even though he was just trying to sell his car.
Next, click on the image to read my favorite post from Hyperbole and a Half. Unfortunately, she does not post very often, and her last one was about Adventures In Depression, so I’m not sure when she’ll be back. But you’ll find a lot of good content on her site.
And finally, Roping A Deer. I don’t know who wrote this, but someone emailed it to me and I immediately loved the rancher in his interminable battle with a deer. I posted this last year when most of you were not following my blog. It still makes me laugh, so I thought it worth re-posting.
I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.
I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up– 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold.
The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope .., and then received an education. The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.
That deer EXPLODED. The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer– no chance.
That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.
A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.
I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.
Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I didn’t want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder — a little trap I had set before hand… kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.
Did you know that deer bite?
They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when … I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head — almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.
The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective.
It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.
That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that, when an animal –like a horse — strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.
This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.
Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.
I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope to sort of even the odds. All these events are true so help me God…”
[continued from Part I] So, as you’ll recall, we had just deposited Kennery and Rose Petal on the shores of the Nature Center pond to begin their lives of freedom. But strangely, they didn’t seem to want to stay there. Hmm, I thought, maybe they just need a little encouragement? They have feathers and should be able to fly by now, so let’s give them a hand with the transition off the ground and into the air.
Ancient Egyptian Birds take flight (via zazzle.com)
Imagined As we gently lift Kennery and Rose Petal into the air and let go, they float for a few transcendent moments, suspended between earth and sky, captivity and freedom, the human and animal worlds, recognizing their mythological significance since the dawn of history: the ultimate symbols of freedom. They are quickly overcome by their own powerful instincts (not unlike a Charismatic fit of the Holy Spirit), take flight across the pond, and settle in among their wild compatriots to a life of purpose and opportunity. Sun beams burst forth, Born Free can be heard in the distance.
Real We gently lift Kennery and Rose Petal into the air and let go. They fall into the water like dead weight, swim to shore, and stand quacking next to us. Believing that they perhaps hadn’t received enough momentum to encourage flight the first time, we try again, tossing them with added vigor. Again, they fall like torpedoes into the water, swim back to shore, and rejoin us with more devotion than ever.
Our ducks flew like these ancient Egyptian birds might. (Image courtesy National Geographic.)
In a panic and unable to contemplate why the ducks’ wings and instincts aren’t working, we try to run away. They follow. Then, someone who appears to work at the Nature Center approaches us and asks what we’re doing in the restricted area. I say I didn’t realize we were in restricted territory and we were actually trying to leave but some ducks were following us, I didn’t know why. I point and look confused. I believe I hear the cock crow three times. I can tell the woman is suspicious but never actually accuses me of lying. Oh, what the heck, I say, I guess we’ll let the ducks follow us… and off we walk back to the truck, the four of us.
Feeling sad, guilty, and out of options, we sit for a while in the truck before the next idea hits me like a skeet shot out of the air: Wildlife Rescue! I knew about of Wildlife Rescue. They cared for injured and abandoned birds and other animals until they could be released back into the wild. And their drop-off place just happened to be at the Rio Grande Nature Center! Perfect.
Of course, our ducks were not exactly wild, so this plan would entail a creative interpretation of events. I counsel Isabella on how to be an effective liar; yes, an important lesson for a nine-year-old, especially if you’ve just taught her how to trespass and smuggle contraband.
We enter Wildlife Rescue with our “wild” ducks and explain to the intake person that a friend had found them as ducklings (Mallards?) at the river and gave them to us because we have a pond. Even though we knew nothing about ducks, we had agreed to let them live in our pond but now they had outgrown it. No, they are not pets (as Isabella squeals, “Their names are Rose Petal and Kennery!!!”). The intake woman is very sympathetic and takes the ducks as I place several large bills in the Donations jar. She says the ducks will be safe in the outdoor habitat until they are full-grown, and then they’ll be released. Whew!! We left the Nature Center bathed in an indescribable peace, feeling 56 pounds lighter.
Home at last!
Fast Forward 5 years Isabella decided that for her service project this semester, she would volunteer at Wildlife Rescue because she thought it would be fun to work with birds. There were two trainings before her service began. The trainer told the class how important it is not to talk to, or pet the birds, or encourage them in any way to bond with you.
To illustrate her point, the trainer told a story about how four or five years ago, someone brought in two male Mallards that seemed to have bonded with humans. In fact, they refused to leave even after they were fully grown and released. She said the ducks socialized with wild ducks, but would come back and stand outside the building, looking in the windows. This went on for four months until finally, with a little encouragement in the form of tapered-off feedings, the two ducks settled permanently among their compatriots and embraced their wild lives of purpose and opportunity.
One Spring day when Isabella was around nine, we went to my favorite nursery, Alameda Greenhouse to buy our garden plants. The first thing we saw when we walked in were ducklings for sale in a cage on the floor. I’m not sure why they were there, but I think the owner, Steve, loves animals and bought them from the feed store up the road. Just to have them. Anyway, as you know, we have a pond, so inquiring about the ducklings seemed natural enough. Steve told us that ducks make wonderful pets — low-maintenance, friendly, perfect in a pond. We left that day with $100 worth of plants and two baby ducks.
We arrived home, built a little pen, and Isabella named the ducks Kennery and Rose Petal. I have to admit, ducklings are really cute. Fuzzy, peepy, devoted. When they were old enough, we let them swim in the pond and that was really cute. But then they started to grow up. Fuzz turned to feathers. Squeaks became quacks. We learned a few things about ducks:
#1 thing you might not know about ducks: they will trash your pond. Tear up every plant, eat all the tadpoles, dive to the bottom and stir up the muck.
#2 after ingesting your pond, they will poop it out all over your lovely yard.
#3 ducks can run. If you have a dog with a strong prey instinct, running will inspire your dog to go duck hunting. Certain dogs and ducks must be kept separate.
#4 One word: “imprint”. Yes, your duck will be your biggest fan, following you around like one of those cartoon characters with hearts popping out of its eyes and an aaah-OOOOO-gah! sound-effect. Quacking and pooping, running to keep up with you. They learn the sound of your voice, they bond. It doesn’t matter that the duck has a companion, he will want you more.
It soon became clear that despite our great affection for the idea of having a pastoral, duck-inhabited scene in our backyard, the reality was just not workable. Among other issues, we were going on vacation in a few weeks and could not leave the dog and ducks together with a house-sitter. It was a hard decision, but we knew it was the right one: adolescent ducks must go. We considered our options and decided the best thing for Rose Petal and Kennery would be a life of freedom at the University Duck Pond.
What’s not to love?! Oh, yeah, when half of your friends disappear.
But then I had a conversation with my friend, a source who shall remain nameless, who worked at UNM for more than 20 years. She told me that every so often, the pond needs to be cleaned and the population of giant gold-fish, turtles, and ducks… reduced. This is accomplished by draining the pond and inviting local Asian-restaurant owners to, er, harvest whatever they wish — hey, I’m just reporting here — for their own purposes. It’s possible that my friend just made that up, but it seems unlikely, and she did have a point: in a man-made ecosystem with no natural predators, how else was the animal population kept tidy and manageable? We could take no chances.
I called a few fishing ponds on the outskirts of town and asked if they would take our ducks, but they were not enthusiastic. They told me that people often “dumped” pet ducks without asking, the ducks were ill-equipped to live in the wild, and were usually eaten by coyotes. Crossed that option off the list.
Then it came to me, like a message delivered by Hermes himself:
The Rio Grande Nature Center! The perfect place to relocate our ducks because they could learn how to be wild from the dozens of wild ducks that lived there already. There were islands in the waterway where coyotes couldn’t go. Hallelujah! A plan was made.
A few days later, we arrived to the Rio Grande Nature Center, each of us with a backpack containing a noisy duck (you can imagine here all the quackpack jokes). We walked toward the pond area, crossed the Do Not Enter ropes, and stopped at the water’s edge. It seemed a wonderful place for release, with plenty of food, water, and other ducks. We took Kennery and Rose Petal out of the backpacks, placed them near the water, and bid them farewell…
Working in my garden today, I just had to photograph the lilacs. Again. I do it every year, I can’t help it. I love looking at the flowers up close (click to enlarge). In addition to cutting my own lilacs and putting them in vases all around the house for Easter week, my ritual also includes late-night raids of my neighbors’ plants. I know. This is perhaps an obsession. But they are my very favorite Spring flower. Plus, I only cut from shrubs that have tons of flowers so I know they won’t be missed. Lilacs don’t last long once cut, but here’s my harvesting secret for maximum longevity: cut them early in the a.m. (or late at night, depending) and put them in ice water. Also, cut them when the stalk is half-bloomed, like those in the pictures. If the buds are all closed or the flowers all open, they die right away.
Velma kept me company while I worked. At least she had the courtesy to lay between the cabbages. Bad dog.
And I finally got around to harvesting my potatoes from last year, too. Here’s the bounty.
Yes, this was the total yield from eight seed potatoes planted in an extra-fancy, 2′ dia. x 18″ potato-growing bag. There were green plants that grew big and flowered and I’m not sure what happened after that. Maybe my neighbors snuck in for a few late-night harvests.
We arrived yesterday to the stunning Palo Duro Canyon State Park in the West Texas panhandle, after a five-hour drive from Albuquerque propelled by Texas Tunes CD’s (thanks Mike!), the Best Travel Writers 2003 audiobook, and a borrowed GPS (thanks Robert!). If you are one of my four subscribers, you’ll recall that we came here to see the former homeland of the Comanche on our way to Nebraska, where our grandmother/great-grandmother, Jessie, has already begun looking out her window for us (she told me this a few days ago). As mentioned previously, I knew nothing about the Comanche before reading Empire of the Summer Moon last year. Because SC Gwynne has done such an incredible job at telling their tale, I will mostly quote from his book to share some of what I have learned about the former Lords of the Plains, and accompany with pictures taken yesterday and a few of my own words. Welcome to the second largest canyon in the US.
The Comanche were the descendants of the primitive hunters who had crossed the land bridge from Asia to America in successive migrations between 11,000 and 5,000 BC, and in the millennia that followed they had scarcely advanced at all. They were in most ways typical hunter-gatherers. But even among such peoples, the Comanches had a remarkably simple culture. They had no agriculture and had never felled trees or woven baskets or made pottery or built houses. They had little or no social organization beyond the hunting band.
Their culture contained no warrior societies, no permanent priest class. In social development they were culturally aeons behind the dazzlingly urban Aztecs, or the stratified, highly organized, clan-based Iroquois; they were in all ways utterly unlike the tribes from the American southeast, who in the period from AD 700 to 100 built sophisticated cultures around maize agriculture that featured large towns, priest-chiefs, clans, and matrilineal descent.
From the scant evidence we have, they were considered a tribe of little or no significance. They had been driven to this harsh, difficult land on the eastern slope of the Rockies by other tribes–meaning that, in addition to everything else they were not good at, the Comanches were not very good at war, either.
What happened to the tribe between roughly 1625 and 1750 was one of the great social and military transformations in history. Few nations have ever progressed with such breathtaking speed from the status of skulking pariah to dominant power. The change was total and irrevocable, and it was accompanied by a complete reordering of the balance of power on the American plains. The agent of this astonishing change was the horse.
In the next post, I’ll continue the story of the Comanche and their transformation into the most powerful Indian tribe in American history, along with the history of the horse in the West and their incredible relationship to the Comanche. As for the park visit yesterday, I must say that it was amazing. I have always loved the contradictory subtle + stark, colorful palette of the West; the reddish-brown, yellow and gypsum-laced sandstone of Palo Duro, carved out by wind and water over thousands of years, was a spectacular vision. Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived and worked in Amarillo and Canyon in the early 1900′s, described, “It is a burning, seething cauldron, filled with dramatic light and color.” She must have been there in the summer. It was perfect yesterday.
We found the “river” (more like a ditch/stream), meadows of beautiful 4′-5′ grass that looked like flames on stems, and hiked halfway to a formation called the Lighthouse.
Oh, and looking at everything through my fancy new overpriced sunglasses (thanks, mom!) bumped the contrast even more.
But I only used them half the time (the sunny half).
Palo Duro reminded me a little of Canyonlands in Utah, but without as many grandiose formations. The entire park is drivable (like Canyonlands) and you can get out and hike or bike the many trails. Unfortunately, the site of the Palo Duro Battle, the number one spot I wanted to see, is not accessible by road and not on any of the maps. Maybe one day I can come back and hike there to see for myself this site of such significance in ending traditional Comanche way of life once and for all.
After exploring the three hours, we left the park at sunset
and drove 1.5 hours north to Dumas, Texas, which was surprisingly civilized*. We stayed at the pet-friendly (no extra charge!) La Quinta, where we encountered a newly remodeled pool/hot tub populated by Texans on their way to… yes, the ski slopes of New Mexico and southern Colorado! (What did I tell you!?) We had a late dinner at the 287 Roadhouse whose exotic offerings included breaded and deep-fried pickles, fried alligator bits, and “Juicy Juevos,” which is I suppose more elegant than “Fried Calf Balls.”
*Perks Espresso is right up the street from the hotel
Now I’m tired, so I’ll say good night from Limon, Colorado. More after we get to Nebraska—
It’s time to extend a long overdue gracias + *curtsey* to my new friend and fellow blogger, Cristy Carrington Lewis, who recently honored me with not one but two Blogger Awards.
Cristy and I met online, as they say, in the Comments section of her blog, Paltry Meanderings of a Taller Than Average Woman. I came across her opus on the WordPress front page (woo wee!) not long ago, and, as a fellow tall-woman blogger, how could I not stop to read a while?! Cristy is a self-described recovering attorney who writes long, luxuriant, often rant-style and very funny essays about, for example, why God loves short people most,her redneck uncle’s funeral, or how Polly Flanders ruined her life. The words and images both make me laugh. Oh, and she’s for hire, so if you need someone to write funny, you know where to find her.
In response to this startling turn of events, I’ve made a momentous change to my two-year-old blog: I have *goose bumps* added a new page. The tab up there on the left, see? ”Prizes.” For now, it’s just the repository for my crown, but it will eventually be filled with lots of information as dictated by the strict terms & conditions of the awards. Interesting bits like what I would do if I weren’t an artist and seven things you don’t know about me (and you’re happy that way), and seven people whose blogs I really like and seven childhood memories that even the meds can’t repress. Things like that.
Thanks, Cristy, for being so supportive and encouraging of my blogging efforts, for the great feedback and comments, and for listing me on your blog roll. I’m pretty sure that subscribers #34-40 found me because of you. And I promise to never enter the state of Florida if I’m aged and/or decrepit; wearing malodorous dentures; have (more) hair on my chin; or have shrunken to shorter-than-the-average-steering-wheel size, because I may very well be hunted down by you or a redneck relative like the Alligator mississippiensis, my harvested skin fashioned into stilettos with which you in your own old (but year-rounder) age will still be patrolling the grocery store aisles, looking to stomp unwanted snowbirds. I promise.
While I’m on the subject of thanks, I would also like to thank each and every subscriber for taking the time to read and comment on what I’ve written, because I know there are 10,000 other things you could be doing with your time. Hours you will never get back. You are a devoted bunch and I consider you my personal friends and companions*.
And in the gracious and overindulgent spirit of Fat Tuesday, I will also admit the following: sometimes, sometimes, I make choices about things I do, or places I go, or staying just a bit longer in the forest to see if a wild animal shows up… BECAUSE IT WILL MAKE A BETTER BLOG POST. I admit it. I am ashamed. The boundaries of life and art forever blurred: which came first, the event or the idea for a post? I am William Shatner on that old Twilight Zone episode, so addicted to the fortune-teller machine that he can no longer make choices without it.
*I also feel this way about the authors of every audiobook I listen to in the studio which is perhaps a noteworthy caution against too much introverted solitude.
Ok, that’s an exaggeration… just know that having an audience, a real, virtual audience, affects what and how I write because it’s not just for me anymore. It’s for us. You inspire me and I appreciate it. So thank you.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may be aware that I have, over the years, had some very interesting *interactions* with mice (not the wild, prophet-in-the-desert style hantavirus kind, but clever little fondue-eating metro mice). Or, you may have skipped/repressed those particular posts because they grossed you out or otherwise offended your sensibilities concerning the place of rodents in the natural order of things. In any case, if you are new to Live Clay, you can catch up on the back story and my general policy on killing things here and here.
It’s time to finish this story once and for all. I don’t know why it’s taken me two years — almost a year since I posted the trailer.
Perhaps it’s because it has taken this long for me to acknowledge that what I once referred to as “seasonal inconvenience,” was actually more of an “infestation.” The movie comparison here would be Ghost vs. Poltergeist, except without the Ghost love story bit, or Patrick Swayze having sex with Demi Moore as she worked on the wheel, because every potter knows that’s soooooo unrealistic. Her clothes were too clean and hands at entirely the wrong angle to actually be making something.
Anyway, mice: the year was 2009 and the events were preceded by countless exchanges of this variety:
“Isabella, clean your room or you’ll get vermin!!!! ”[empty threat.] “Ok, mom.” [nothing happens, or the floor is cleared by tossing everything into the closet.]
It went on like this for some time, until one day, Isabella did actually see a mouse run across her bedroom floor. And thus it began. She was 11, I was 43. The game was on.
After the mouse sighting, we began a dedicated effort to clean and organize Isabella’s room to find out why the mouse was there, i.e., it must be eating something. But there was no food in her room, so what? The last thing we cleaned was the closet, and I’ll describe it this way: an accumulation of stacked & compressed items from different phases of Isabella’s life, formed in a way not dissimilar to sedimentary rock, each layer a unique record of the raw materials, pressures, and environmental conditions of that era. We excavated down through the sequins and tulle of The Dress-Up Years, the plastic-y limbs and tiny clothes of The Doll Years, the anxiety and training bras of the Pre-Teen Years.
Finally, we hit bottom, and there in a corner we located what was later appreciated to be the epicenter of mouse activity: a forgotten bag of Halloween Candy, cir. 2007. There was very little left, just some hard candy and chewed wrappers, but it was enough to tell the story.
The first thing I know about mice:
They love Halloween candy more than kids do.
Next to the almost-empty bag of candy was a suede necklace that someone had given Isabella, once decorated with corn that had been dyed blue to look like turquoise. I held up both ends of the suede and saw that the “turquoise” had been mostly chewed away, nothing left but a few blue “teeth” in an empty smile.
After throwing out all the trash, hosing down the floors with disinfectant, and organizing Isabella’s room for maximum visibility, the next step was catching “the mouse.” I bought a couple of live traps at Lowe’s for $10, loaded them with peanut butter, and placed them along the walls where the mouse was likely to run.
Boom! Within 24 hours, I’d caught “the mouse”. Then another. And another. Which brings me to the second thing I know about mice:
There is never “a mouse”. If you see one, know there are at least three more keeping it company. They are pack animals.
I was soon hearing weird noises in the middle of the night, had they always been there? No, it seems that since I’d disrupted the food source, the mice were scrambling to find other things to eat, raiding the dog food, lifting furniture, opening cabinets as they saw fit. I kept the traps set. I stopped feeding the dogs. I caught more mice.
I set up a holding bin on the back utility porch where I housed the captured until I could give them a second chance at left elsewhere. Catch and release. The fact that it was winter presented a slight problem because obviously, dumping them outside (at least one mile away or they would come back, if the research is true) would mean certain death. But I had an idea.
My loose plan was to relocate the captives, in a highly illicit and clandestine effort, to one of the zoo buildings, like that weird, steamy tropical room with the tarantulas. Then nature could just take its course and their fate would no longer be in my hands. Granted, they would’ve been at a slight disadvantage, as toucans and monkeys are not likely among their natural predators in New Mexico, but whatever. I could only do so much.
I ultimately decided against that plan because I didn’t want to risk exposing the exotic zoo animals to the rebellious and subversive attitudes of urban mice who might incite an Occupy Zoo movement, demanding freedom and equal distribution of treats, protesting by turning their backs to visitors and giving them the finger until their demands were met. No, I couldn’t be responsible for that. I chose instead a local greenhouse where the mice would stay warm through the winter, then move outside when spring came and the food ran out. (Yes, I left food at the greenhouse. And bedding material.)
Isn’t it beautiful? I would like to live here.
The third thing I know about mice:
They are smarter than me. Case in point:
I hit the anxiety apex one morning when Isabella screamed from her bedroom, “Mom, a mouse in my chair!” I went to investigate, removed the large cushion of her [seldom used] reading chair, and what did I find… but a nest… with two… babies in it?! YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. Holy crap, this was more serious than I’d thought. The obvious dilemma of what to do with these tiny, helpless, blind creatures was more than I could contemplate at 6 a.m. So I just put the cushion back and lapsed into a convenient fugue state, behaving as if there were not two fetal-esque beings in my house that might be flushed down the toilet by a different, stronger person, one not so steeped in denial and Buddhist flavorings, and left for the day.
After regaining my senses at work, I analyzed the situation and came up with a brilliant idea for a homemade trap: I would put the babies in a long, cardboard wrapping-paper tube sealed at one end. The mother would surely come into the tube to care for the babies and I would simply lift the tube to catch all three. Perfect! So, I went home and did just that, gently lifting the two babies with a plastic teaspoon and placing them with some chair fluff in the cardboard tube. I left the room. Two hours later I came back, quickly lifted the tube and looked to the bottom, but it was empty — no babies, no mother. In a panic, I searched the area and soon found them… in the nest. The mother had simply gone into the trap, taken her babies, and put them back.
I tried to catch the mother once more using the same strategy (checking the trap after only 20 minutes), but she was smart, and again, I found the tube empty. And this time, the babies were not in the chair. They were nowhere. I searched the entire room, the furniture, the clothes, the clean closet floor. Nothing. They had simply disappeared.
Three weeks later I was standing on a high stool searching the top shelf in Isabella’s closet for one of her dolls. As I lifted the wig pictured here, two sleepy, adolescent mice dropped out. Surprise! Our eyes locked in mutual alarm. By then, my reflexes were finely tuned and I immediately grabbed a plastic trash bag and scooped one of the mice into it with a piece of cloth. But the other one, upon whom natural selection was clearly smiling, jumped off the shelf and flew directly at me.
The fourth thing I know about mice:
They can fly. They are brave and they can fly.
That’s right, given the opportunity and a high enough launch, mice will leap directly at you, soaring through the air toward an unsure landing, secure only in the knowledge that you will shriek and/or flail like a headless chicken, jump in the opposite direction and/or pass out, clearing their path to freedom. That’s exactly what happened here; the flying mouse got away while I shrieked, flapped, and hit the wall. I’m lucky I didn’t break a leg.
Eventually, all the mice were captured and removed from our house, old-house nooks and crannies were filled with spray foam, outdoor tunnels that they had literally dug into the basement were found & filled, and the bird feeder (attracts mice) permanently removed. So we win.
But I can’t help but harbor and a sense of awe, respect, even, for that mouse, the devoted mother who twice recovered her babies from the trap, the second time managing within 20 minutes to carry both to a high, wiggy nest where I did not think to look. Had she pre-chosen that place, or was it found it in a moment of desperation, when experience had taught her that the babies were no longer safe? She must have been watching me the whole time as I set up the trap, laughing a shrill and affected laugh. Waiting for me to leave so she could execute her own plan. The fifth thing I know about mice:
They learn.
This fact was demonstrated by not only the mother mouse in this story, but the whole bunch of them. Over time, the live traps became less effective because, I’m convinced, word got out in Mouse Town that those who went in to the dark, peanut buttery caves of pleasure never came out. I had to resort to other methods for the last catches; I won’t go into details, but you can contact me directly if you need advice.
UPDATE:Mice sing! Check out this National Geo article about their vocal similarities to dolphins, whales, and people.
It’s a sunny January 25 in Albuquerque and I’m off to meet my friends Kei & Molly of Kei & Molly Textiles for some tea and art-talk. Kei and Molly have put together a show this month featuring the work of Live Clay, Paper Turtle, and 9 more artists. The “Local Love Bazaar” will take place on Sunday, February 12 from 1-4, 5321 Acoma Rd SE. I’ll be selling ceramics as well as papier-mache, so if you’re in town, stop by and say hello! Here’s a studio shot of Kei & Molly’s beautiful, hand-printed tea towels and scarves (they do the designing and sewing, too).
I’ve never participated in a Valentine’s-themed show before, and usually avoid heart-y things because they tend to be… heart-y and sentimental and cliché. But I thought I should come up with something unique for this because, well, just because it’s 2012 and I’m daring to dream. So, here’s what I have in the works so far:
The Original Distorted Heart™ by Live Clay: The Tread-Upon(vehicle/athletic shoe/stiletto); The Torn; Torn and Mending; Warts and All; Regeneration; Curling In On Itself; and Absence Makes the Heart Grow Warp-y. As you might imagine, the possibilities are endless. These hearts were fun to make, and the titles are indicative how they were constructed, i.e., The Tread-Upon (vehicle) was run over with my truck, the Torn and Mending was torn and put back together, etc. Still thinking about how I will finish them (raku or electric fired? Colors? Wood-fired would be nice…), and I imagine some will be pendants while others will be magnets (gender-inclusive). If I’ve really got my act together, maybe I’ll come up with little descriptive cards for each.
Meanwhile, other studio things in progress are small (1″ x 1″) pendants.
I sold these in my Etsy store last year (or was it 2010?), but they’ve been out of stock for a while and a few people have requested. Last year, I also collaborated with the talented Barbara Jacobs of BMJNYC on oval pendants. As a sample, I made a cloud pendant, she created an amazing silver branch frame.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to pursue this exciting idea, but I hope to do so this year.
On the home front (which happens to be right next to my studio), new plans for this year include inviting my young and nimble-fingered nieces over more often to play “The Cleaning Games.” You’d be amazed at how three small girls with toothbrushes and a few sponges can whip a kitchen into shape. Anyone who knows me, knows that I can’t stand cleaning because a) It’s boring and I’m not very good at it b) I have no time and c) even if I did have time, I would choose traveling or gardening or putting a nail through my forehead over house cleaning.
The most appealing thing to me about cleaning is the book I’ve been compiling in my head for years entitled, That Comes Off?. It’s mostly a memoir-style collection of startling revelations that occurred when, during rare and fanatical house cleansings, some bit of color or texture that I had long-accepted as an intrinsic component of a thing… was revealed to actually be dirt/food/whatever.
Anyway, Cleaning Game challenges include The Vacuum Race, Ice Skating with Rags, and Baseboards Need Love Too. The girls (ages 7, 6, 4) can’t get enough of it. They compete for things like control of the spray bottle or the privilege of crawling all the way into a cabinet to clean the corners. I offer prizes, they beg to play. It’s a win-win for everyone.
And finally, the foodie in me is excited to share a new breakfast that both Isabella and I have been loving.
It’s composed of a couple spoons of Fage brand Total 0% Greek-style yogurt (the only fat-free yogurt that I think tastes good); a handful of blueberries; a scoop of Chia seeds; a little raw, unsweetened coconut; honey; and a side of walnuts (reportedly an excellent ‘brain food’, I need all the help I can get). It’s a great alternative to nutritionally void bagels or high-carb cereals, packing more than 20 grams of protein and a huge range of vitamins, minerals, healthy fats, and antioxidants into one little dish. I’m trying the Chia seeds for the first time, after reading about them in Born To Run (excellent read, even if you’re not a runner) and a little research into the health benefits. You can find out more about this complex, ancient food here or googling for yourself.
