He'll Eat Anything

In a comment posted earlier, 'Anonymous' asked to see a photo of my husband. Well, as they say, "Careful what you ask for!" Here is David doing one of the things he does really well: eating. He is eating a raw Hen clam, a type of Quahog. As you can see, the clam is as big as his hand and David is a really big guy! He is a retired line backer with the Jets, so his hands are enormous. That's the guts of the clam hanging down around his wrist. In this next shot, he is eating a raw shrimp. We pick shrimp out every spring and put them in the freezer. This year, we picked fifty pounds which yielded twenty five pounds of meat. Twenty four hours after we had them in the freezer, the power went out for three days. Stick your head out your window right now and you'll be able to smell it from where ever you are. In the third photo, he's doing something illegal with a cooked lobster. David is on intimate terms with many things that come from the sea and most of them, he eats. He is a marvel of human engineering, eating constantly and eating anything. This makes him a delight to cook for, as he thinks I am a gourmet chef, no matter what slop I put on the table. This is one of the reasons I love him. He makes me feel heroic as I'm just carrying out mundane tasks of daily living, like cooking supper. He makes me feel talented, even when writing this blog, which is often at his expense. It's true love at work.

POWERLESS

On February 22, Sunday night at 12:40 am, the electricity went out. For days before, the weather forecast had been dire. "Armageddon," that's what they said it would be. "Lake effect snow from the North West pushing ahead of a cold front will converge with low pressure from seaward resulting in high precipitation amounts. Post pone all travel plans and ready your storm emergency packs. Prepare for damaging high winds and power outages." We had heard it all before a hundred times. Our local TV station has a weather man named Kevin Mannix, but we call him 'Kevin Panics.' The day had been sunny and clear, so how bad could it get? "Besides, it will be spring soon. If it snows, it won't last long," we told ourselves. We did nothing.
After we had gone to bed, I watched TV. I often have difficulty getting to sleep, so that's what I do to shut my brain off late at night, while my dear husband is snoring blissfully away beside me (I envy his ability to sleep, honestly I do). I watch shows such as 'Trauma - Life In The ER,' 'Mystery Medical Diagnosis' and Discovery- 'An Asteroid Coming to the Earth Near You.' You might think this would be the last thing a person should watch while trying to fall asleep. It sounds like pretty scary, gruesome, fear mongering stuff, which I suppose it is. But, for me, it has the opposite effect; it's mind numbing and puts me to sleep. No nightmares, either (at least, not from that). When I watch that stuff it desensitizes me. Part of my mind believes that if I see enough of it, it will never happen to me, nor anyone I love. While I was absorbed in the medical aftermath of a multiple car pile-up in Nashville, Tennessee, the power flickered on and off three times. Each time the satellite transmission had to reset itself. That meant that I had to start the show over again. So, I got to see the same people intubated, chest tubed, rushed to the OR, and fully coded, three times. Talk about mind numbing! I got up and turned on the lights to see what was going on out the window. It was a total white out, blinding snow pelting horizontally right into the windows. It was an amazing spectacle since it had been forty degrees and sunny that day. Thinking, "well this can't be good," I retrieved a five gallon bucket from our cellar. Then, setting it into the bathtub, I filled it with water. We have a well, so if we lose power, we don't have water. You can endure quite a while without heat, but believe me, when there is no way to flush a toilet, well, THAT will flush you right out of the house pretty quickly. Then, I went back to bed just as the power went out for keeps (my husband continued to snore). When we awoke, the power still hadn't come back on and it was still snowing. There was a foot of wet heavy snow. Trees were creaking and groaning under the weight. The utility lines from the house sagged down into the driveway. We had been hit with a classic Nor' Easter and so, we knew we would be in for a long haul.
We have storms like this every winter and every winter, we lose electricity. Sometimes it's only for a few hours; sometimes it lasts for days. At the very least, it flickers off and on. This requires that all things digital must be reset which is an annoyance. Sometimes this happens several times a day which steps it up from an annoyance to a full blown irritation. Each time the power quivers, it makes me nervous. Of course, everything that matters here is on a surge protector, but still, I fear for my computer and the TVs (think of the gore I'd miss if the TV quit! I'd never sleep again!). But, most of all, I fear days of no electricity. Each time one of these near miss shots whistles across the bow of our little ship called Home, I imagine the pile of dirty dishes in the sink ballooning out like a cartoon, mountains of laundry pulsing near the lifeless washer, and worst of all: the toilets. But, let's not go there.

To some, I'm sure the idea of no TV noise, no ringing phones (that's right: no phone), cozy fires and inventive meals seems like a charming and inviting idea. Believe, me, after about 4 hours the fun is all out of it. I like to read, too. But there's too much of a good thing.

We have a small generator, but it isn't good for much. It takes miles of extension cords to plug anything into it and if it is cold enough outside it is reluctant to start. We only use it to charge my camera battery and run the refrigerator, unless it's cold enough to put things outside. At ten degrees, it was plenty cold enough this time. I had filled laundry baskets (since I wasn't generating any clean laundry to put into them) with the refrigerator contents and set them on either side of the front steps. UPS made a delivery to us in the midst of the outage. Richard (we are on a first name basis with our UPS guy) left his cumbersome, brown truck and walked down our road to our house. While holding the package for me as I came to the front door, he glanced around. "Geez, I'm sorry for standing in the middle of your refrigerator," he apologized. Very funny. "Thanks for bringing the package, Richard. Look out for live wires on the ground when you walk back to the truck," I replied. After all, I wouldn't want to lose such a dedicated UPS guy.
People might ask, "Why don't you leave? Go some place with power, a hotel or something?" The simple answer is that we have two dogs. To take dogs somewhere other than home is just a different kind of struggle to my mind. But, that's the simple response, not the true answer. The real truth is that we don't want to abandon our house. We want to be here to struggle along with it, feel the cold corners of the rooms closing in, hear the ice on the roof, angst about trees that may fall onto it. Our home is a living thing. When it's without electricity it becomes a not quite dead, ailing being pleading for help. So, we can't abandon it to the elements. We want to be here with it, maybe in its final hours. We understand people in other parts of the country who we see on the news (oh, the news, how I miss the news when the power is out!) who stay on through hurricanes or forest fires after they've been advised to evacuate. We have empathy for the conviction they start out with, the sense of control that dissolves into chaos then terror.
Every year we tell ourselves that we'll never go through this again. We will have a proper (synonymous with expensive) generator installed, the kind that goes on automatically and runs everything as if nothing is amiss, invisible life support for the home in crisis.
Why haven't we done this long ago? It's not about money. Money is an excuse, not a reason. It's about our own mortality. We want to believe that we are hardy, invincible souls capable of weathering anything. We want bragging rights that we toughed it out, again, as if putting words to that makes it true. "Three days without electricity is no big deal to us Mainers," we tell people, while actually trying to convince ourselves. The words create an energy that resonates through us like the electricity in our house, intangible while running everything. To have a generator is akin to admitting that we are dependent and vulnerable to the vagaries of a being greater than ourselves. It feels like giving in to something, a weakly defensive posture. Deep in our brains, to ask for help is to expose ourselves to the idea that we need it, and thus, that help might not be forthcoming. Not everyone survives in those medical shows, regardless of the heroic efforts of the trauma team. When an asteroid collides with our earth, there will be no help coming.
Yet another cold night, we go to bed in the dark. The dogs sleep with us shoving their way into the warm spaces between us. Soon, soon the power has to come back on. Lights and order will be restored. We will be liberated! I can't go another day without e mail, I'm an addict and I admit it. "I'll have to take my laptop to someplace where there is electricity," is my thought as I drift off to sleep. In my dreams my laptop is wrapped in a red bandanna suspended on a stick over my shoulder like a hobo. This can't last for long. Spring, the greatest narcotic of all, is coming.

The Year Of The Owl

For Christmas, my husband gave to me this lovely, delicate vase. It's only about 5 inches tall. It's a fragile, nearly ephemeral object. Little did he know, that a few weeks later, the Maine Audubon Association would have a talk about owls. Of course, we had to see that! There were 6 types of owls on display. They ranged from the smallest, this Saw Wet Owl that looks like a tiny monkey, and is no bigger than a soda can, to a huge, threatening looking Eurasian Eagle Owl. All of the owls were captive due to injuries and would never be returned to the wild. Nonetheless, they had the wild in their eyes, even the little guys. I've seen a few owls in my lifetime in the wild. One morning a year ago I saw a Barred Owl perched on our pier. The pier sticks 120 feet out into the ocean, so the owl looked quite out of place. It sat there for at least an hour before taking off into the sun

rise. About that same time, I saw a Barred Owl sitting atop a piece of driftwood at Popham Beach State Park. Sequin Island Lighthouse could be seen in the background of where the owl sat, another incongruous scene. An owl and surf on the beach just didn't look natural together. A couple of times at night, I have seen Snowy Owls fly low across the road over my head while I have been driving. Not just because they are white, but because they are so big, they look live living ghosts, mystical beings cruising the earth for spirits to take with them. The times I've seen them at night in the wild I felt as if I'd had some spooky visitation.
On January 4th of this year, a Northern Hawk Owl was first sighted near here in Bristol Mills. I've been there five times to see it and to take photographs. I'm thinking that maybe I should join some kind of support group for this compulsive behavior, "Northern Hawk Owlers Anonymous" or something like that. Northern Hawk Owls are very rare here. Hundreds of birders have made the pilgrimage to Bristol to see this particular owl. The draw is that it is rare and also that it sits in a dead tree right on the side of the road, so it's easy to view. One need hardly leave one's vehicle, though everyone seems to. We all get out of our cars, shielding our eyes from the sun as we peer up into the tree, enduring bitter cold and other inconveniences But I think that there's something else that draws people to birds of prey in particular. I think it's the wild in their eyes. They have an other wordly look as they stare at you and at the same time, look right through you. You could be lunch. This is at once, disturbing and unnerving, yet compelling. It's a look that makes us feel vulnerable and we are fascinated by that as much as we fear it. It's an edgy thrill to look into the face of a thing that at least thinks it could kill you. Once we've made eye contact, we can't look away from a snake, an ax murderer, nor a bird of prey. The survival of birds of prey, because of where they are on the food chain, are especially subject to the impact of man's hand on the environment. They are more vulnerable than they know. And, so are we, as a race and as individuals. We like to say that the owl has great wisdom, 'HOO, HOO,' "Who are you?" We tell our children, "The owl knows." And perhaps the owl really does know, after all. The owl may know that he and we will one day be gone from this earth. We will have stared right through every other living thing having regarded it all as fair for the taking, until it's all gone. I just wish that with one of the owl visitations that may be in my future, that the owl would pass on to me a dollop of wisdom like a coughed up pellet, the wisdom to change the course for us all.

Pets and Personalities

Perry occasionally watches television. Here, he's watching Meerkat Manor on Animal Planet. He's only really into educational programming. Easy is more of a General Hospital kind of dog. Perry also dials the telephone. If he can access a handset, he will repeatedly punch in numbers then wait for the audible call failure signal. Then, he'll dial again. For the amusement of our guests, we put the phone on the floor and say "Hey Perry! Want to call your lawyer? Go ahead, call your lawyer." And dial he does, every time. When we leave the house we make sure all the phones are in their cradles. We realized that he might call Korea or Bali or someplace really far away. We are afraid that if we received a bill for a call like that that we'd never be able to convince the phone company to remove the charges because our dog had made the call. We do realize that if the dogs need to call 911 while we are out that it could be a problem. Easy would be completely dependent upon Perry for an emergency call. She could never dial the phone. She's just not intelligent enough in that kind of way. She's not a technical person. Perry is brilliant. However, he is sort of aloof. He's not an emotionally very connected dog. In fact, he's more like a cat than a dog (he's even more like a cat than our cat!). We've often remarked that if Perry were human, he would probably be diagnosed with Autism - Asperger's Syndrome or something. He shows clear areas of very high intelligence, but emotional detachment. He does not depend upon nor need humans for any reason. Easy, on the other hand is emotionally very needy. We call her 'Easy' because she is not easy at all. Her area of expertise is being cute. She really knows how to work a room full of people, sort of like a beautiful, neurotic movie star. She's demanding, needy, dependent, and clingy. She has to be with me at all times, under my feet. She barks incessantly. Perry rarely barks at all. He is only inclined to do so for some really compelling provocation like a turkey or a moose. Easy barks if the wind blows, or a leaf falls or the phone rings. In fact, when I try to talk on the phone she looks right at me and barks, demanding my attention. How dare I be talking to someone other than her! As a dog owner, it pains me to admit that many times, I've had to lock myself in a bathroom in order to talk with a girl friend on the phone. The dog will sit outside the door, continuing to bark at me, too. My kids used to do that to me, too. But, I was able to teach them not to, or at least, I waited them out, and they left home. So, I was eventually able to have peace while on the phone. But, not anymore. I know I should have more control over the dog, but truthfully, I don't. I never taught Perry to dial the phone. He just did it on his own. When I give him the phone and ask if he wants to call his lawyer, it's not a command from me. He already knew how to do it. It just looks like I taught him something tricky. It's actually he who trained me. I admire people who have perfectly trained dogs, hunting dogs, dogs that do agility courses flawlessly, etc. And, I've always felt that it is a positive thing for people to have relationships with other species (Personally, I gravitate toward mammals; I've never really understood the Boa Constrictor/Iguana/glowering Parrot attraction). But, I have to admit: I'm a lazy pet owner. I don't have what it takes to ride herd on them all the time, to be 'THE BOSS.' I'm a pack dog, not an alpha dog. And, I need them to love me, to look at me balefully with bottomless desire. I too, am a needy, neurotic star in my own mind with odd intelligences and bursts of inconsistent brilliance. And one day, I may need them to dial 911.

Spring's a Comin'!

This is a short (under 7 minutes) video I put together. It's of my gardens in Mid Coast Maine in the months of June and July. I do all of the gardening. My husband is my slave labor. I made this video because right now, there is snow all over the ground. Where there isn't snow, there is treacherous ice. It's the time of year when the sun is feeling really warm and inviting, but dare yea who ventures out! It's still very cold. The wind is biting and takes the fun out of the sun's seeming invitation. At this time of year, I have metamorphosed totally into a house fly. I become one of those fat, lazy ones that buzzes idly around, crawling on the windows. They always seem like they should be easy to kill, but they're not. I can attest to that having tried to swat lots of them. Plus, I'm still here. Like the swollen, blue flies, I don't like to go outside. I like to move around inside the house, following the path of the sun. Only to fill the bird feeders do I scurry out, mindful of the deadly ice, always there to claim a hip, a wrist or some other vital part of me lest I skid on it. That has happened to me before, too. I've slipped and sent buckets of bird seed flying into the stratosphere to rain back down on me as I cursed. I've yet to break anything, but my life passes before my eyes anticipating that I will. Long after my heart stopped pounding and I'd caught my breath, I was still picking the seeds out of my hair and from inside my bra. It's a good thing that Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld didn't live here. I felt like he looked when he'd fly into a room, arms and legs everywhere before he came to an abrupt stop. Had he tried that maneuver on the ice in my driveway he would have broken into a million pieces. And his hair would have held onto bird seed for perpetuity. I have hair like his. I know.
Today, I ventured out across the yard to fill a feeder and throw some corn around. As I minced my way across what looks like old fashioned boiled frosting, I noticed tracks of deer mixed in with turkeys. The turkey tracks are so big they look like teradactyls were stomping around out there. The deer have come right to the side of the house to chew shrubs, in spite of the dogs (aforementioned useless bums). They have stood on their hind legs to tip a suspended bird feeder on end to get to the seed. That's how hungry they are. I suppose that there is lawn under the glistening sheen where now, only a Zamboni should dare to tread. I have to take that on some faith, faith that the grass will eventually green up, faith that my chewed magnolia will recover, faith that the deer won't starve to death. I have to have faith that I won't be killed outright, or at least suffer a million broken bones, while out doing a good thing for creatures other than myself. I have to have faith that under the snow, the crocuses are squeezing their way upward toward the sun. That's really why I made the video. Sometimes, my fears overshadow my faith and I need a reminder.

APRIL FOOLS!

April 1st, I was outside cleaning up yard debris after a storm. The night before, we had damaging winds which left branches, sticks and leaves everywhere. Using a leaf rake like a big claw, I picked up what seemed like the hundredth pile of leaves. All kinds of junk had blown into the yard like a cigarette package (neither of us smoke), those little annoying individual chewing gum wrappers, plastic bags, leaves from trees we don't even have here, and a beat up old soda can. My back was killing me. I was tired and grumpy and sick of doing it, but there was a lot more to go. As I studied yet another pile to pick up, I was trying to justify to myself that I could quit. But, instead, I bent down and took hold of one more load. And there it was in my hand - a dog turd. "Damned Dogs! Crap everywhere why don't you!" I bitched to no one in particular. As I stood up, the muscles in the small of my back screeched to me. Then, in my hand, the dog turd moved! I squinted at it. Definitely. It definitely moved. It was light weight for its size and sort of papery. I jiggled it. YES! It moved again and a scratchy, dry sound came out of it. Obviously, unless my excruciating back pain had mysteriously transported me to some other planet (a distinct possibility), this wasn't a dog turd at all! I suspected that inside the papery husk was an insect. However, in all of my years of gardening, during which I've picked up literally tons of material from lots of yards, I'd never seen a thing like this. I kept jiggling to make sure I wasn't imagining the life inside this thing. I sniffed it. No smell. Jiggle - Wiggle. If you put a golf ball inside a jar, laid it on its side and nudged it, that's what it felt like. When I turned the object over, whatever was in there kept righting itself. There was some struggling going on. I went inside and got a jar for it, punching holes in the lid. It would need air. Plus, I didn't want 'IT' to get loose in the house. I was beginning to imagine a possibly vengeful alien life form inside there, you know - the other planetary type. Sigourny Weaver would play the lead when 'IT' tore open its paper prison and came after me and my family and ate my dogs (poor dogs, the things I've blamed them for!). In spite of this frightening fantasy (possibly spawned by the back pain), I couldn't just heave the thing into the compost. After all, it was ALIVE! And life is not a relative value; alive is alive. Thank God for the internet, is all I've got to say! On a web site called whatsthatbug.com, I found out that my little blessing wasn't Rosemary's Baby, but a Luna moth pupa. My April Fools Miracle was a pupa, not a dog poopa, after all! The entomologists on the web site gave instructions for its care and in two months, I was the proud parent of a splendid Luna moth.

Government Oversight

A Bald eagle oversees a city worker delivering garbage to the Capital City dump. Er, ah, I mean Land Fill.