LifePundit

She Who Hesitates is Lost

I got invited to India before Paul checked out the travel costs. Did you know that a first-class ticket to India is $14,000? He's not going first class and I'm not going at all. I think if I had flung myself into the whole adventure, had run off to the health department to get my shots and had not asked repeatedly, "Are you sure it's going to be clean and nice like Epcot?" that I probably would not have gotten myself dis- invited.

I'm not great in crowds. I dislike football games for that reason, and also because I really hate football. And I'm a bumpkin kind of tourist, forgetting to watch where I'm going while marveling at the sights. I trust everybody. I have an open kind of face that attracts crazy people. And I try to help them, because I fail to notice that they are crazy. I don't look like I know what I'm doing or where I'm going. I look like a target. Or so Paul tells me.

And then, I'm funny about food. In fact, if I weren't so squeamish and high maintenance about eating at places in St. Martin where there were more flies than people and the "refrigerate after opening" condiments weren't sitting out in 95 degree heat in the sunshine (translation: can't eat there), I probably wouldn't have gotten the, "I think I'd be too worried about whether or not you were having fun to work," discussion. Yes, I'm afraid I'm not the sort you can drop just anywhere and I'll be fine. I'll be fine, but I probably won't eat. (This could be a good weight-loss strategy.) And I have the gift for making everyone with me just as squeamish as I am.

I love Indian food and cook it quite a bit. (One of my favorite cookbooks is Quick and Easy Indian Cooking.) But when it comes to eating it, I need to know what's in it? (My new experiment is with Moroccan cooking -- absolutely delicious. I'll post on that later, once I've gotten the turmeric stains out of my fingernails....)

When we used to go to China Town in Philadelphia, I loved absolutely everything until one day we went to Dim Sum. There were no menus in English. Nobody could tell me what things were on that little cart with all the dishes, but the things I could recognize were chicken feet and duck feet. Nope. If that's what I can recognize, who knows about the things I've never seen before.

I feel a need to apologize for all of this. But I can't help it.

When my sweet mother, child of the Depression, would cook the squirrels that my father and brother would kill, I would skip supper. I didn't eat my grandmother's famous liver mush (what a name!) and in fact couldn't be in the house while it was cooking. I don't eat frogs, though I have eaten snails just because they were a vehicle for garlic. I won't eat goat, prefer not to eat lamb, and wouldn't dream of eating a rabbit. I've eaten Bambi to be polite. I've got a narrow view of what's edible in the animal kingdom. Vegetables and spices are no problem at all.

So what makes this so silly is that I'd probably really enjoy the vegetarian dishes in India. Maybe next time.

In the meantime, we're going to try for a romantic weekend getaway. I have no idea what that would be like.

Why I Have a Toilet and Three Sinks in My Den

(Photo: Not mine but is giving me some ideas.)

I haven't been posting lately because I've been too busy going into debt. Paul's accountant said he needed to quit paying rent and get his own office building, and we closed on his new office building on Friday.

I think I signed a paper saying that they (the bank) could come after me for the money even if I'm dead. There was lots of fine print and none of it warmed my heart. I signed. Then I fainted.

I love the building, a little 1964- built box that backs up to the land where we used to pasture our horses. I have so many happy memories right over the back fence, which is now a new housing development. On the other side of the street is a fancy funeral home.

Of course, Paul, who never pays full price for anything, has been accumulating building materials. When we were in St. Martin, he spent half of the vacation holding his laptop over our balcony railing to pick up an Internet signal so he could bid on toilets and sinks on e-bay.

Right now I have a toilet in my den, along with two sinks. And lots of stained fine wood that will be used for baseboard and probably my coffin. He also bought a pile of doors and windows from a building supply place that went under. He bought all this before he bought the building. If the sale had fallen through, I guess it would be my coffin. Or his.

I put my foot down when toilets two and three arrived. They're outside. I think I may put one on each side of the front door and plant geraniums in them.

Do you have any idea what having your house turned into a warehouse for building materials can do to your brain, especially if you work from home? There is marble in the living room. Lumber in the yard. And every day, some plumbing part arrives from somebody on e-bay.

One toilet arrived broken. It had to be returned in its original box. It's replacement arrived with a broken lid. That had to go back in the original box. The UPS guy thinks I must have the hots for him. I might if he brought me something more than broken toilets.

The Vacation is Over

I'm back -- and kind of sorry about it.

The switch on our water pump had a problem so we had no water. Now it's back -- and I'm back to doing laundry. A working well and water pump is one of the world's greatest inventions.

The lightning that gave me technical problems before vacation did something to my computer and my speakers and printer quit working. The lights were on but nobody was home. Finally, late last night, I got it working again. Had to uninstall a bunch of stuff and re-install, plus had to use different USB ports. I think the lightning got some of my USB ports. Now I have wires going everywhere and am beginning to feel like Medusa.

And then nobody remembered how to hook the TV back up to all the wires and boxes (since we unplugged everything before we left). I've about had it with wires and boxes.

The vet is coming to see the horses this afternoon. One injured an ankle while we were gone and the other caught a cough. Ah me.

And my father fell, but he's okay.

I'll post pictures and write up a little about our trip to St. Maarten/St. Martin. It's a beautiful place, no hotter than here, and I didn't have any wires or livestock to concern myself with.

And to think we could have stayed two weeks!

How I Trained My Husband Not to Shower in a Lightning Storm

While I'm on the subject of lightning, there are several stories I could tell but I'll tell them one at a time. I've had lightning strike close to me twice -- once at the beach when I felt electricity run through the wet sand, and once here at home when I was outside and my hair stood on end, then a bolt hit the house.

I respect lightning.

As regular readers know, I married a Yankee. He's spent most of our marriage scoffing at me and my lightning cautions. But one day, I trained him not to shower in a lightning storm.

Actually, I had nothing to do with it. But I got to watch and it's the funniest thing I've ever seen.

It was two summers ago and Paul had been mowing. He was filthy, so when a storm blew up and he had to come inside, he jumped right into the shower.

Don't talk on the phone or take a shower during a lightning storm, okay? At least not a phone that's connected by wires to your wall.

Paul thought I was silly. So he was taking his shower. He might be a Yankee, but he's a very clean Yankee.

The lightning was striking all around our house. So I burst into the bathroom and demanded that he get Out Of The Shower NOW. He was drying off anyway so he stepped outside of the tub to humor me. And then WHAM! Lightning struck a giant pine tree not far from the house. The force blew all the photographs off of the wall and the glass in their frames shattered on the bathroom floor.

Paul instinctively ran to put on his rubber-soled tennis shoes. And was wearing nothing else. I guess he figured the shoes would keep him safe from shock.... Not really sure but it was great fun to watch.

The ground at the base of the pine tree looked like it had been hit by a bomb. The pine tree died.

Nobody showers in a lightning storm around here anymore unless they're really dirty and really really fast.

Another storm has blown up and I've been racing it, trying to finish this post. I need to unplug the computer. I guess I was finished anyway.

It's spectacular to watch and I love the smell afterwards. Which is a good thing, because I have a feeling we're skipping our showers tonight. (TMI. Sorry.)

Two Snakes in One Day

(Photo not from my yard.) Please don't tell my friend and neighbor who's a reptile keeper, but I don't like snakes. They're just too -- snaky.

So I'm never happy when I find them in the yard. We usually see a couple each summer. Yesterday, I saw two. Two in one day. And one was big!

Chris is out hoping to spot a cobra in its natural habitat in the Philippines, and I'm here in S.C. trying not to spot anything except birds, deer and squirrels in their natural habitats, otherwise known as my yard and my natural habitat.

The first snake of the day was a long skinny black-looking snake in the horse stall. I assumed he was there for the mice or something else so I gave him a pass.

Now, a pass is all I have to give him. I am armed but not motivated. My father loved snakes and this was his technique: if he had an idea that a snake might not be poisonous, he would capture it by putting a hoe handle or some other implement behind its head, then pick it up by the back of the neck. Then he would take his pocketknife and open the snake's mouth to check for fangs. If it passed the fang test, he would hand it to one of us.

I liked snakes for a while in my childhood, until Non-Saintly Brother's king snake pooped on me. Yes, I have been pooped on by a snake. Not many people can say that. The snake was wrapped around my arm so I was unable to distance myself from the pooping once it began. I did quite a snake-shaking dance in an effort to wriggle away, but the snake held on tight. And kept pooping. I never wore those pants again. And I don't think I've played with a snake since.

Getting bitten is one thing. Getting pooped on will put you off snakes forever.

I don't think I even knew they pooped before that fateful moment. Be forewarned. Getting bitten is not the only hazard facing people who play with snakes.

One day my father was leaving the pond (where the garden is) when he saw a rattlesnake in the road. On HIS property. No poisonous snakes allowed. He didn't have his gun with him, so he drove his car over the snake, holding it with a wheel. This didn't kill the snake, so my father decapitated it with the claw-side of a claw-hammer. My mother sat in the car the whole time telling him not to do it out of fear for him. How does a man who lives like this end up living to a quite old age?

If I run into a rattlesnake and I have a car and a claw-hammer, here's what I'll do: Drive away.

We live in the country and we do have snakes. Tiger, the manly outdoor cat, is afraid of ropes and water hoses. He is extra careful with snake-like shapes. That is the only thing he is afraid of. I hear that cats who've tangled with snakes before are cautious like this. Maybe I should get him a claw-hammer.

Our next-door neighbor (not the reptile keeper) had not one but two rattlesnakes near his house when he moved in. Jerry heard the rattling as he was sitting on his screened porch, and looked outside to see the rattlesnake curled up by the steps and rattling away. He had just moved there, so he wasn't completely unpacked. He ran across the street to a neighbor's house -- a neighbor he'd never met -- and shouted, "Quick! I need a gun!"

The neighbor wouldn't lend him a gun but said that he would be glad to shoot whatever needed shooting. So he came over and shot the rattlesnake. A week later another rattlesnake appeared (they come in pairs) and that one met the same fate. Both are skinned and hanging on the neighbor's walls.

So, after my early morning sighting of the skinny black snake in the stall, I figured I was done with snakes for a month or two. Not so. Last night Parker, the cowardly dog, was barking furiously. I figured it was a possum. When I couldn't stand the noise any longer, I took my flashlight out with the intention of fussing at Parker for barking at a possum. But it wasn't a possum. It was a coiled, dark-patterned snake. It could be anything. A rattlesnake set to bite me. Another kind of snake set to poop on me. The snake wasn't long and skinny, but bulky, thick and substantial. There was a lot of snake in that pile of great big snake.

I congratulated Parker on his find and came back in to tell Paul there was a BIG snake in the yard. He's a Yankee, so he falls short in the "take charge of snakes" department. He said, "Did you kill it?"

"No."

"Did you do anything about it?"

"I'm telling you about it," I said. "What do you think I am, the Crocodile Hunter?"

"Well, go take care of it," he said. So like a dummy, I went back in the yard. No plan. No hammer. No gun. Just a flashlight.

And it was gone.

It's still out there. Somewhere. Happy Summer in the South!

My next husband will be a Good-Old-Boy well versed in how to identify and dispatch (if needed) venomous wildlife.

Here's some interesting information from a snake-loving web site (underlining is mine):

The Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake is a venomous snake that is fast disappearing from our landscape. This majestic and beautiful animal has become the victim of habitat destruction, roadkills, and indiscriminate assassination by unenlightened individuals.

Many fear the dreaded Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake To many, the only good snake is a dead snake. It is true that the diamondback is a venomous snake that can give a deadly bite. It delivers enough venom in one bite to kill six adult humans, but a snake will only bite for two reasons: fear and food

He Promised Me a Rose Garden

I've been buying myself flowers but that may end because I'll be cutting flowers out of my own yard. Roses! Paul has promised me this rose garden (the roses in the photo montage). He's going to plant the roses, put in a drip or soaker system, and then I get to do the rest. (Which I hope will be growing roses and not killing roses.) I used to grow roses before Lily was born. I was covered over in roses of all kinds, from antique roses with packed, curled faces (and heavenly aromas) to experimental roses I got to report on to tree roses to about 25 hybrid teas.

All you have to do to grow roses is start with good stock, plant them correctly and in full soon, water them regularly, spray once a week and feed them. I'm a little worried about the sunshine here -- so many trees (except in the pasture, and horses eat roses so that won't do).

I can smell them already. Will be reporting back.

My Old Man's in Prison

One day when Lily was several years younger we went to Mr. Bunky's for supper. Now, Mr. Bunky's is kind of different. You can get rat poison, freshly made sausage, baby formula, deer licks, saddles, boiled peanuts, used-to-be fresh produce, farming and plumbing supplies, etc. -- or you can eat in the restaurant. Now, there are all sorts of people in this restaurant, from F-16 pilots just back from Iraq to millionaires who don't look like it to dirt-poor farmers who don't look like it either.

So, there I was sitting with my young daughter when a man in hunting gear strolls up. His pick-up line was, "Where's your Old Man?" By which I assumed he was inquiring whether or not I had a husband.

"In jail," I said. He did a double-take.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said, not sure whether to proceed or turn around.

"That's all right," I said. "He gets out Sunday night. He's there on a prison ministry."

Paul loves the Kairos prison ministry. He's there right now. As these things usually go, he does it because he gets more out of it than the prisoners do. He says. I went once for the closing ceremony. I didn't like being locked in with murderers and rapists, though I did make an effort to see them as God's children. It was odd holding hands and singing praise music with them. But I loved their shy smiles and their shining love of God. I was still happy to be let out and Paul is not allowed to bring them home, the ones that eventually get out. Obviously I am not cut out for this ministry.

But Paul is. He comes back laughing, crying, deeply touched and happy. He comes back refreshed and filled with hope. Some of the people who are now his friends will never get out of prison, yet they've found joy and purpose. Paul says they're not really very different from us.

Drugs have put many of them behind bars. Not from illegal trafficking so much as from doing terrible things while high or in order to get high.

The prison tries to accommodate the ministry because it changes people. In a good way. I could tell you stories and might one day. The prison also has services for Muslims, Rastafarians and Buddhists. Paul said that there were no services for Jews. I thought that was interesting -- must not be any Jews in S.C.'s worst prison. Or at least not any practicing ones.

There's a Muslim guy participating in this Kairos weekend. The food is good, which brings in a lot of unlikely folks. (Plus everyone in the prison, whether or not they are participating, gets a bag of cookies every day.) The Muslim guy will stand up from time to time and ululate something unintelligible about Allah.  One of the other prisoners says he does it all the time. He laughed and said, "He's saying 'Allah says kill the white boys.'" There's a lot of unlikely humor in the prisons. I guess you create it where you can find it.

One time Paul was giving out cookies in the "mentally challenged" dorm when he ran out of cookies and one of the very large scary-looking inmates got upset. The guard had to intervene. Paul made sure everybody got cookies, though I think it may have taken a year off of his life.

Some of the prisoners tell their stories. One who hadn't spoken for the 11 years he'd been there began to speak, finding his voice after being shut down for so long that everyone assumed he was mute. Miracles do happen. Sometimes all you have to do is show up.

My Old Man's in prison. He gets out tomorrow. Then he needs to mow the grass.

Our Hot Date

In spite of the weather reports that a tornado was headed this way and we were all going to die (there were five or six tornadoes in S.C. on Saturday evening), we decided to go ahead and take Lily to her friend's Bat Mitzvah. We were lucky. The tornadoes passed north and south of us, and the reports of where it did hit were shocking and sad. Many homes were destroyed. Here's a story about one where the father is on his third tour of duty as a flight surgeon in Iraq. He hopes to be home by Wednesday to help his family. At least they still have their sense of humor -- their potbellied pig's house was tossed by the winds and landed upside down with the pig still in it -- they've changed the pig's name from Ellie Mae to Dorothy. Please pray for the victims here and in Georgia.

In a complete change of tone here, off to telling you about my hot date. It stopped raining where we were so we picked up two other 13-year-olds who were going to the Bat Mitzvah (none of them Jewish, so nobody knew what they were doing, though Lily has been to a Bar Mitzvah before). It was a big fancy party at a downtown hotel where a lot of St. Patrick's Day revelers were staying and revelling even though the festival had been shut down due to the weather. Next door to the ballroom where the Bat Mitzvah was was the Islam Grand Temple gathering. I thought that was funny. I think the Islam Grand Temple was not actually Islamic, but a black Masonic order -- the Jester's Club, to be precise. Lots going on. And here were our three 13-year-olds, looking a whole lot older in their cocktail (and Easter) dresses.

One mother said she was going to put nametags on them saying, "Hello. I'm 13." Would have been a good idea.

Anyway, here Paul and I were downtown, not dead from the tornado, and with three hours to kill. So we decided to have a very rare hot date. First we went to a fabulous Chinese dinner at a place with the best spicy-peanut salad dressing and everything so fresh and good. Then we went to a movie.

Only I had it wrong. Wrong theater. Wrong show time. Wrong planet. There was no movie we could see and be back in time to pick up Lily.

So, we did the thing old married people do on their hot dates. We sat in the car on the parking garage rooftop -- and took naps.

"Flirting" in London

Paul and I went on our honeymoon in London in July, 1985. My last post about Saudi Arabia arresting young men for flirting reminded me of an odd event that happened then.

Paul and I were sitting in the hotel bar having a drink with his aunt, who is absolutely delightful even if she is his mother's sister. Paul is not the jealous type and would probably trade me for an advantageous number of goats, but there was this Arabic man there whose excess attention was bothering him. I didn't notice, but the stranger was staring. At me. (I was appropriately dressed but not wearing a burka.) Then the stranger moved his chair closer. And closer. He said nothing. He just kept sliding in my direction. And kept staring.

Paul never got an offer for goats or whatever the right trade might have been, so he harrumphed over and put his chair between the tiny space left between my chair and the strangers.

Was this a form of flirting? An insult? A bargaining posture? Or just plain rudeness?

And why do I feel the need to say again that I was dressed just fine?  Anyway. The three of us left.

I have no idea why I chose this image of Sassy Goat Milk Soap for this post. The song's worth a listen. At least it makes as much sense as this post. I meant to put in a photo of a burka.

Making Peace with My Spiders

This is a Carolina Wolf Spider, which if you didn't know, is my state's official spider. Really. They voted on it and picked a state spider. Does your state have a spider? If not, you're deprived. Now our children have to learn about the wolf spider at school. You can click on this picture to enlarge, if you dare.

Did you know that if you look at the word "spider" long enough it looks spelled wrong?

We have wolf spiders and other spiders in our house. Since Lily has studied the wolf spider at school, I know that the wolf spider is my friend, in spite of the fact that it is a huge, hairy and fearsome looking spider, however you spell it.  Really big. When I Googled "wolf spider" I found a site devoted to keeping them as pets. No thank you. I'd completely lose my ability to spell.

If a wolf spider is crossing the road at night, their eyes shine in your headlights. Really. You can see them shining on the road at night. That's a big spider.

Or you can see them in my laundry and elsewhere in my house. Sometimes I put them out. Sometimes I let them stay in to eat whatever bugs they find. I don't like spiders and I don't like bugs. Whichever one eats the other is my friend, so spiders get to stay unless I'm in a mood.

But what about the other spiders? One good thing about the wolf spider is that it doesn't make a web. While I sleep, it's stalking its prey. (How do I sleep, you ask? With medication.) What about the spiders with webs? I've long thought about it. First off, what are they eating? If they're eating bugs, they are my friends, though I don't like what they've done to my decor. It's Halloween every day around here.

What if they're venomous? Guess what. Almost all spiders are venomous. You'll find that out if you Google them. I'm not happy about this, though the Spider Myth Site says that few spiders carry the kind of venom that hurts people.

We do have black widows in the yard. Used to have one living under the well cover. She had babies. They weren't cute. Why didn't I kill them? I have no idea.

So far, I haven't found any black widows in the house. I do check my shoes before I put them on. But I haven't answered my question. What are the other spiders doing?

Apparently, they are spiders specially adapted to living indoors (they won't survive outside) and what they're doing in my house is eating bugs.

I don't see any bugs, so they must be doing a good job.

They get to stay. Except for the hairy black tarantula-looking thing that wasn't a wolf spider that was by my bed this morning. Don't know what he was, but he's been flushed. If you're a good spider, and you're pretty safe either way because the only spiders I know are the wolf spider and the black widow, you can stay in the house, so long as you stay away from the people and our beds.