LifePundit

Now I'm Afraid to Go Outside

I used to be afraid that there were alligators under my bed. Turns out I was not such a foolish child after all.

The alligators have gotten too big for their breeches. I guess that's what happens when you over-protect a species that doesn't appear to need much protecting.

I'm happy to say that it's legal to hunt them in S.C. now, though I don't know when, how or where to do it.

Unfortunately, for the "where" part, it seems you don't have to look very far. A couple of weeks ago, at Betty's Diner on this end of town, or rather, since I'm not in town and Betty's not either, I guess you'd say sort of in this neck of the woods, had a10-12 foot alligator relishing the aroma of cooking hamburgers, fried chicken and tasty customers from just off Betty's property line. Since the marauder wasn't technically on her property and was a good tipper, the authorities wouldn't do anything about it.

Betty said:

“I check under my car when I go out,” said Betty Mack, 59, the diner’s chief cook and restaurant’s namesake who says her specialty is her fast-selling, secret-recipe, nonalcoholic green fruit drink she calls “Jesus.”

The gator hung out all day Friday.

And then, about 35 minutes from here in another town where alligators do not belong, a family heard a noise on the porch at 3:00 a.m. and thought it was a burglar. I think I would have preferred a burglar.

It was a nine-foot alligator. On their porch! And what's with the rug (picture above)? Remind anybody other than me of Little Red Riding Hood? This is serious, folks?

What the heck was a nine-foot alligator -- impersonating an alligator wearing a rung -- doing making a ruckus on their porch? Alligators do not belong next to restaurant parking lots. They don't belong on people's porches.

I'm beginning to believe that they belong in the purse-and-shoe shops. A few alligators is a natural wonder. Alligators leaving their natural habitats (and I'm not talking about how we encroached on them -- they do not belong this far away from their snaky rivers and golf courses near the coast) is how you lose an arm.

I had a friend who used to be in public relations for Jekyll Island. Every now and then she'd have to handle a situation where a tourist would have Poopsie the beribboned poodle on a leash, and an alligator would snatch Poopsie and gobble her down in one bite, just leaving the leash and the horror-stricken tourist. And my friend with a PR problem. (Poodles are apparently alligator chocolate.)

Anyway. I don't know where I'm going with this, but one thing's for sure: I'm not going outside.

I'll Bet You Would Talk to the Dog

A Toyota pulled up beside me, and in the back seat, which was aligned exactly with my seat, a large brown dog ran to the window and looked at me like he had something to say. (Yes, I am sleep deprived.) This dog had a very expressive face, with eyes that locked onto mine and I felt like... well, like I was supposed to respond. 

So I said, "Hey, Dog." My teenage daughter in the seat beside me ignored this. This was Mom as Usual. I talk to animals. The ones at home talk back.

Then the dog's window rolled down. And he was looking at me like he had something to say, so I did the polite thing and rolled my window down, too. Really. 

Somehow, I was expecting a conversation. The dog looked like he was, too. So I said, "Hey, Dog. Having a good trip?" 

The dog didn't say anything, in fact he scooted up between the driver and passenger in the front seat, as if to tell on me. 

"That lady is talking to the dog," the driver said. The passenger glanced back at me, and I couldn't hear what she said. I'm glad about that.

The dog didn't hold up his end of the conversation. I was feeling let down. Hot air poured in the window.

Lily, my daughter, said, "Mom, did you just roll down the window to talk to that dog?"

"Well, he rolled his window down first. I thought it was the polite thing to do."

Lily slid down in the seat. "Mom!"

I rolled my window back up and pretended to look straight ahead until the light finally changed. The dog came back to the window and stuck his head out of the window, but I didn't say a thing this time.

Be a Fountain, Not a Drain

Lily's been on spring break all week. We've spent her vacation in the car, either driving to go look at a horse to buy, or hauling our horse in hopes that someone will buy him, or hauling the horse we've selected home for a two-week trial (Markus, pictured at left). I drove. She listened to her iPod while texting her friends. For hundreds of miles.

Still, we had a lot of quality time in the car. We had a lot of confessions. So far, I'm the only one to confess anything. She said she's not old enough to have anything to confess, and let's hope she keeps it that way. We've talked about:

• What really happened to Princess, the hamster (Tiger ate her, leaving only her hands and feet and head on the laundry rug.)
• Why I would be in a long-term relationship with a guy who thought the overhead passenger handles on the London Tube were germy so he got ME to hold them and then he held onto me.
• Why I would still date a guy (same as above) when he couldn't remember why he was standing outside a men's room so he left with me in it, unguarded. He wasn't there very long -- I promise. I had gone in there to use the facilities and he was supposed to stand guard at the door so I would have the men's room to myself. He was reading a book, forgot why he was standing there, and wandered off. His roommate came in the men's room, saw my sandaled feet under the stall door, said, "Hi, Anne. How are you?" and proceeded to use the urinal. I used my Invisible Walk to exit as quickly and as invisibly as I could. (And no, I was too mortified to cast even a backward glance.)
• And other things that don't make sense from my past.

She laughed until she cried. She even turned off her iPod and stopped texting for a few minutes.

When I ran out of things to confess, I took in the scenery. And I saw a country church sermon sign that I think I will take as my new motto: Be a Fountain, Not a Drain.

Happy Easter, all!

How Long Can a Cat Live in a Tree?

Last Thursday morning while out picking dandelions for the rabbit that I swore I wouldn't end up taking care of, I heard a mewing. I thought it was coming from the woodpile. Nope. It was coming from 40-feet up a not very accessible pine tree.

A stray cat with a loud opinion. "I want down!" it's been screaming. I'm about to start screaming, too.

This looks like a nice, friendly, sweet, cautious, stupid cat. She (I have no idea what gender this cat is but it appears to have possibly nursed at some point, hopefully not last week) talks to you and writhes around the tree limbs and trunk. She rubs her head on the branches while she talks to you and looks like somebody I would love to pet. If I had 40-foot arms. I've called a few neighbors and nobody knows whose cat she is.

Every day we try to coax her down. Every day she winds around the tree trunk way up high, sometimes going higher but never going lower. She sleeps in a squirrel's nest.

On Saturday Paul stood a 20-foot-ladder at the bottom of the tree, climbed it, and put up another long ladder. Surprisingly, he had enough sense not to climb beyond the top of the ladder on the ground. The cat will put her paws on the top rung, cry pitifully, and wind back around the tree.

We've rattled food. We've called sweetly. We have considered throwing things but haven't done so. The cat's been up there for over five days. It's been cold, rainy and windy. I'm glad to report that the cat's voice remains strong.

Yesterday I climbed partway up the lower ladder and put out an opened can of tuna. I thought that the smell would travel up the tree and lure the cat down. It didn't work.

I told Paul that I'd put the can there. So, it wasn't my fault, was it, when he climbed the ladder this morning for his daily conversation with this cat and the can of tuna cat food fell off the ladder, tuna-side down, and whomped him in the head. He had just had his shower, freshly washed hair and was dressed for work.

I told him that maybe he would be more successful with the cat since he was fragrant with tuna. He didn't find this funny but perhaps he will one day.

The cat was eager to come down. We must have coaxed and cooed for 30 minutes in the cold. Paul lifted the top ladder right to where the cat sat on a limb. The cat would touch the ladder with her paw, then make another trip around the tree trunk, crying.

I think we were all about to cry.

Then Paul got stuck, and realized that the tree limbs he had used to climb up higher than the bottom ladder were dead..... I thought I was going to have to call the fire department to rescue him, but he got down.

Paul had to take another shower to wash off the tuna. The laundry smells of tuna and I have a load of clothes going. The cat's still in the tree.

The tuna-splattered ladders are still in place. Maybe I'll have good news tomorrow.

Our New Heat Pump

UPDATE: 5:00 p.m.

The heat pump is so loud it sounds like somebody is in the shower. What's more, the air coming out of the vents is cold and the thermostat says that the emergency heat strip is on. The indoor temp continues to drop. I have turned the whole mess off. It's probably using the emergency heat strip to warm the great outdoors.

ORIGINAL POST:

I am trying to right a book and I guess I should move. We're having a new heat pump installed and the closet where it lives is in the room next to where I'm attempting to work. There are three service people here and I'm not sure they've ever done this before.

These folks are not inspiring confidence. They just set off our smoke alarm using a torch to.... burn up our new heat pump. I don't know. The alarm is loud and I'm ignoring it.

Here's what I've overheard in the last few minutes:

"It's the inside of the cabinet that's caught on fire."

"I've never seen one of these things before. Where does it go?"

"Don't use the torch too close there. You're melting the Teflon."

"It's got three of these and one of those. That don't match what I need to connect."

Now they just told me that I must have a very sensitive smoke alarm because they didn't really burn up very much. Just some insulation. I mentioned that perhaps the insulation was a good thing for the heat pump to have, and they assured me that it was just "glazed over."

That makes two of us.

I want heat. Not fire.

Forgot to Tell You -- I Need Three Mice for My Science Project

The science fair project proposal was due. The night before, Lily said, "I forgot to tell you. I need to get three mice for my science project. The teacher said that they can be class pets when I'm finished with them."

When she's finished with them I'll be the class pet.

"We're not getting any more rodents, don't you remember?" I said. We had six hamsters in succession. We got the rabbit in an agreement with her that  we wouldn't have any more rodents.

"But these are for school."

I'm a soft touch, so I did try to think of a way to make it work, but all I could do was smell rodent urine in my mind. "How long will your experiment last?" Rodent urine makes a special imprint, even if you think rodents are cute.

"I don't know. A few months?"

Her experiment was about learned helplessness, which is how I was beginning to feel.

I was the one who told her about learned helplessness. I heard a podcast about it and wish I could find it to link to it. The basic story was this: Somebody did an experiment where one group of mice got to go play in the equivalent of a mouse Disney World and the other group had to sit in sad, unstimulating confinement. I don't know what the control group did -- probably housework -- not enough to make you off yourself, but enough so that you felt like your world wasn't toppling in. Over time, the mice that went to the mouse Disney World were confident and ready for anything. The mice that sat in sad confinement day after day grew to believe they were in sad confinement even when taken to mouse Disney World. They were stuck because they thought they were stuck. They had learned helplessness.  I think there's a good life lesson here for teenaged girls. If you don't believe you can do something, you can't.  That's why I'd told Lily the story to begin with.

I could see her attraction to this experiment. More pets. Mice are cute. Get to build a mouse Disney World (would she be able to make the other mouse sit in sad, non-stimulating confinement? I'm sure she couldn't. All her mice would end up in Disney World, I promise.)

But dern it all, I'm done with rodents. The smell! The smell! I told her that she might be able to do it, but she had to buy all the cages. Three different ones. And they had to be where I couldn't smell them.

When her father got home, she gushed to him about it. He isn't a soft touch. "Heck no you can't have three mice. You've got a rabbit -- and no more rodents."

Very clever to try to slip three mice by us in the last minute. "But my proposal is due tomorrow!"

She came up with something else, which was a lesson in non-helplessness on its own.

Three Strikes

Did you miss me? I've been gone.

I've been out in the back yard doing primal scream therapy. I've had it. We were struck by lightning for the THIRD time this summer on Monday. This time was the worst. Not only did we lose our phone service, Internet and cable TV, but the lightning fried our well and two televisions.

This afternoon the well and all else (except for the dead TVs) were fixed. This is beginning to make me really cranky.

I was washing a tomato when it struck one of our TVs. Yes, I know better than to have my hands in running water in a lightning storm, but when you have a lightning storm every single afternoon during the cooking-dinner hour, you start to get slack. Fortunately, my hand was not in the water at that moment, but when the lightning blew out the TV in the kitchen and I heard the breakers go I did what all sane people would do. I screamed and tossed my tomato, which splatted on the floor.

When I realized that I was still here and the tomato needing cleaning up, I was grateful that I wasn't dead but was rattled. (I don't really think I was close to being hit but I was standing without three feet of the fried, turned-off TV and it made quite an impressive BANG-YOU'RE-DEAD sound.)

I'm glad none of us were hurt, the house didn't catch fire and that the horses weren't struck. I'm trying to hold onto that thought instead of....

Why do we have insurance if we can't file a claim?
(If we file a claim we lose our "no claims" discount.)

Anyway. When it gets right down to it, I've discovered that running water is even more important to me than the Internet and the telephone.

Even if said water is so full of Clorox (they shocked the well after putting the new pump in) that the whole house smells like a laundromat and we're buying bottled water even for the cat and I'm only washing whites.... And of course the hose is running in the yard, trying to run all that Clorox out.

So what this all means is that I'm back. At least until struck again.

What Kind of Pants Would You Stab Someone For?

There's a strange local news story about a 36-year-old man who stabbed a teenager at a convenience store "over a pair of pants." The teenager is in the hospital and the grown man is in jail.

I think it should be illegal for a reporter to leave us hanging with a story like that. Read it yourself and see if you don't come away with the same question:

What kind of pants were they?

Where did the pants come from? Do they sell pants in convenience stores? What kind of pants are so desirable that you'd stab someone over them?

Is there a pants shortage? Are these pants that would make my butt look small? Can I stab somebody and get a pair?

I wrote the reporter asking for more info. on the pants. I explained to him that I need this information to try to make sense of the world.

I'll let you know if I find out.

Bathing Suits, Weight Watchers and Hunger

This is me in a few weeks. I've ordered this suit from Lands End. It's on backorder. That will give me time to get down to this size AND grow my hair long.

Well, maybe not quite this size. This may be a few months away. And I'm actually going to get my hair cut, not grow it out. But you get the idea.

I like swimsuits that look like tennis dresses. Yes, I am that old. The last time I wore a bikini was three years and many pounds ago. Lapse of judgment in a foreign country, egged on by my husband. I felt silly wearing the bikini, and right now, nobody would want to see me in one. They'd be scarred for life. So, it's tennis dress-looking swimsuits for me. And if this one doesn't come in on time (or look okay), I've already received this one below, also from Lands End. Mine is just the same but has a blue skirt bottom.

Somehow, I can't muster the smiles these models have when wearing these suits. And honestly, if I looked like these models, these would not be the suits I'd be wearing.

For the first time in forever, I am motivated to change. I joined Weight Watchers last Monday night at a local church. Sadly, I just got a phone call that they didn't have enough people sign up so they're canceling for now.

Paul said the funniest thing he has ever said. "Why don't you go stand in front of Wal-Mart and recruit? You'd find a lot of eligible people."

I'd probably lose a lot of weight in the hospital, too, recovering from the assaults. "What you mean 'Would I like to join Weight Watchers?' Do I look fat to you?" And then she'd beat me to death. Or just sit on me till I was squashed into nothingness.

But motivation is motivation. I'm going to diet off some of the moving parts I have acquired in the last few years. Those places that keep walking after I've stopped. Those pointy little things on my hips that made Lily think I had tennis balls stuffed under my new tennis-looking swim skirt (since that's what I do with real tennis balls in my real tennis skirt). Mean child. Tells the truth.

I've downloaded The Beck Diet Solution to my iPod and am going to brainwash myself into "thinking like a thin person." I got the workbook on Amazon. It looks just right for me.

I've got sticky notes all over the house with my motivations on them. And cards where I've written the reasons I'm going to do this. (None of them say, "so I can wear a bikini.")

My cleverest one is "Baggy clothes only hide who you really are."

My saddest one is "People treat you differently (better) when you are smaller."

My scariest one is "You're going to live a long time. You'd better be sure you're healthy."

My truest one is "So what if you're hungry? You're going to eat again in a couple of hours. Hunger is good."

My best one is "I like me so much I'm going to choose me over food."

Do I dare say I'll be reporting my progress here? Will I be posting a photo of me in these suits?

Not unless I can figure out how to Photoshop my head onto these pictures.

Wish me luck! And send carrots.

Things We Don't Need: Kitty Tanning Bed

Does your cat like to sit in the sun? Then maybe you ought to buy a Kitty Tanning Bed. Because, you know, your cat needs a tan. Ever looked under the fur? Your cat may be fish-belly white. Heavens! Can't have that. Then again, just how would your cat get a tan unless you shaved it?

For a really funny story about this worse-than-useless product, go to Gizmodo here.