Oh yeah, well I have to inject the frog everyday!
That’s my new excuse for not doing anything else unpleasant, for the next two weeks. “Why do I have to clean the catbox?” Bill will say, and my response will be, “Because I have to inject the frog!” He can expect this reply to any number of inquiries, including but in no way limited to garbage removal, toilet cleaning, heavy yardwork, and possibly a neck massage. We’ll see how it goes.
The point here, though, is the frog; its leg is essentially dissolving off of its little green body, see. And I think there’s a special level of hell reserved for people who buy/find/foster/otherwise acquire pets and then fail to offer them needed medical care, regardless of whether their new job/new baby/new shoes make doing so inconvenient, so when the vet said that Fred needed a mega-course of antibiotics, and that I would have to inject them, I said, “Oh. Uh, okay. I’m qualified for that?” Apparently the answer is yes, although I don’t really have any proof to offer along those lines, other than the fact that three needles in, the frog is still alive and bears no exit wounds. There are still fourteen needles left, though, so I’m not doing the small animal victory shuffle just yet.
Other run-ins with nature’s children this weekend:
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I watched two male goldfinches barking at each other over who got to sit in my Bradford pear tree. (On an unrelated note, I have heard more than one person in my life observe that these trees, when in bloom, smell like semen. I myself do not make this comparison, probably because I have never recoiled during an act of sexual congress and yelled, “WOW that stinks!” Bradford pears smell like shit, yo.) The birds seemed unaware or unconcerned by the offending odor, though, and chased each other through its branches, yelling. They flew to a tree across the street, back to this side to a tree in the neighbor’s yard, and finally one returned, alone, to the Crapford pear. Questionable victory, that.
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For about a week, there has been a small band of Cedar waxwings skulking around my yard. Ten of them were clustered in one of the dogwood trees on Saturday, speaking quietly among themselves. These are some of the most pleasant birds that visit my yard.
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Last week, I drove in the cold and rain to pick up a box that smelled a lot like motor oil, and which contained Isolde and her small-but-growing family. Saturday, in the warm and sun, I hived them in a lemon yellow box. Isolde is big and fat and lovely, and her daughters are just as peaceful as Iris’s. Pictures will be up soonest.
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There are two ridiculously large bumblebees (or very small blimps) that seem to do nothing but hover over/behind my shed, and chase any honeybee that approaches them. I do not see these two eat, or rest, or enter any cavity, or really do much of anything except hang in the air and fend off the occasional Iris- or Isolde Junior.
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I watched a brown wasp of some kind hold a tug-of-war contest with a spider of some kind, over a dead bee that one of them had caught. One would pull, and gain some ground, then the other would dig in and pull back. This continued for some time, until the wasp came away with the bee’s body, and spider with its head.
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I found a squirrel tail, minus the squirrel, and another squirrel tail, attached to a very young dead squirrel, along the fence in my backyard. Except for the blood that had dripped from its mouth, it looked for all the world like it was sleeping, curled up in a little pile of pine needles. I put both semi-grisly discoveries in a box - because that’s what our species seems to consider the natural response to death - and disposed of them, before Evie could find them.
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We saw an abandoned Canada goose nest, just a scrape of down feathers and four unhatched eggs. I would’ve liked to keep the eggs, but they were so pretty just sitting in their feathernest that I didn’t consider taking them.
Long week behind, long week ahead. Photoblog forthcoming.
I’ve noticed that the older I get, the more my expectations for things change. Vacations used to be about relaxation and getting away from it all; these days, they’re like little tournaments between me and Bill to see who can say “Will you two knock it off?” the most times in an hour, or who can deliver the most devastating stinkeye across the greatest distance. I consider this vacation a success just on the fact that we didn’t come home to some mystery odor in the house.
D.C. has always been one of my least-favorite cities. Granted, that’s not necessarily saying much, since every city besides New York and Tokyo is one of my least-favorite cities - and I’ve never been to Japan. But Washington strikes me as being very much like Atlantic City, only with Really Important Papers instead of chips. It’s like a huge movie set, where great attention is paid to the stuff they want you to look at, and the rest just falls to crap around the edges. Plus it has the most infuriatingly dunderheaded subway system ever conceived.
Nevertheless, we had a good time. We missed the cherry blossoms by at least a week, and the weather went from variably meh to decidedly horrific, but it held long enough to see all the major monumentary sights, plus the parade and the street fair. It didn’t start raining biblically until today, so, having already seen everything we’d come for, we spent the day in Baltimore - another of my least-favorite cities - at the aquarium. I’m proud to say that Evie only threw up three times (once on the curb and twice in aquarium trashcans) and didn’t get any of it on her shirt or shoes. Some may call these lowered expectations; I call them realistic.
And also, I totally win at stinkeye.
Evie: Is Easter someone’s birthday?
Me: No, that’s Christmas. When Jesus was born.
Bill: Well, this is a resurrection day… it’s kind of a birthday… like his rebirth.
Evie: Who?
Me: Baby Jesus.
Bill: Not baby Jesus. Adult Jesus.
Me: The big JC.
Evie: I didn’t know there was an adult Jesus.
Bill: What, you didn’t think he grew up?
Me: He grew up, and he was killed. And this is the day when he went to heaven.
Evie: (confused)
Me: The story is, when you die, your soul goes to heaven. But Jesus was supposed to have gone to heaven with his whole body. Which is, you know, unusual.
Evie: What’s a soul?
Bill: It’s what black people have…
Me: (madly clutching head) Oh my god we are SO unprepared to educate the children in the ways of the force!
Evie: Now your hair’s all messed up.
Billy: And you spit on my face.
And that is the story of Easter in the looney bin.
Steve Decresie would be proud…
As a master student of the Always Put Off Until Tomorrow What You Should’ve Done Three Weeks Ago school of thought, I consider it a major step forward in my evolution (I hope to actually become human before I die…) when I take full advantage of unexpected opportunities to get stuff done. Wednesday I was handed a sunny, 80-degree afternoon with no prior obligations, so I put on some old jeans, dug up a crowbar, and turned a fence into a very lovely hive stand. Observe:
Before… one of a bunch of unconnected fence sections that the previous owners erected as part of a privacy screen (why not install an entire fence? I do not know.)
And after!
boring bee talk> I’m a big fan of the open (screened) bottom, but I ran into multiple problems with it last season - most notably the issue of getting the debris board back in for mite counts. With the solid bottom board off, the bees would congregate under the hive on the screen; when it was time to replace the solid board, the entire hive had to be lifted to get it underneath, and it was impossible to get all the bees off the screen, resulting in many being trapped between it and the solid bottom. I also ran into problems getting the debris tray in and out, since it never quite fit properly in the slot, and would either leave too much space, allowing bees to enter, or too little space, causing the pollen/mites/etc. to be scraped off upon removal of the tray. Adding and removing the solid bottom board also altered the location of the hive entrance, which invariably resulted in some confusion among the returning foragers.
This year, I hope to have solved these problems. First, I’ve replaced my old bottom board/screen board combo with Kelley’s screened hive stand; the slot for the debris tray is in the back of the hive, not the front, so there is no interruption of the bees when the tray is inserted/removed. There is a second slot above it, for the removable screen. I plan to keep the tray out, except for mite counts. To keep the bees from hanging under the screen, then, I have built a second screen (plastic window screen from Home Depot) into the big stand; this will keep the bees off the bottom of the hive entirely, so that the debris tray (which will also act as the solid bottom in winter) can be removed/replaced without worrying about trapping anybody, while still allowing all the benefits of an open bottom when the tray is out. </boring bee talk>
Saturday was sunny again, and I finished everything up. I moved Iris’s house onto the new stand; she’ll be alone out there for another few weeks, but by May she will have company: Lucy and Lucy Juniors, and Isolde and Isolde Juniors will be joining her, with room on the stand for the eventual arrival of Rekefet and Rebekah and their myriad daughters. One significant thing or tens of thousands of significant things - it’s all the same in the beeyard.
You’re not going out like that, are you?
To say that I am not exactly on the cutting edge of fashion would be fairly generous, I think. For the most part, fashion strikes me as scary, 
confusing, and stupid - politics, too, and for that reason I do my best to avoid both. The only item of clothing that I’ve ever bought ahead of the popularity curve was this pair of shoes, because I needed closed-toed footwear for a lab course I was taking, and I thought they were cute. (They were cute, and only a half-size too small - a fact that was woefully unapparent in the store, but made itself known to the tune of four separate blisters the first time I actually wore them. We suffer to be beautiful.)
The vast majority of other items in my wardrobe were purchased a year or more after their particular style first hit the stores; it’s usual that I need to get used to seeing a look before I’ll consider wearing it, and some things (think shrugs) I refuse to buy even if I like them, because it’s obvious how stupid they’ll look once the fad ends - and I will wear something I like until it falls off my body in shreds, I don’t care how last year it is.
Don’t get me wrong; I like clothes very much, and I love to shop. But my body is kind of a caricature of itself; I have the upper half of a six-foot-two runway model and the lower half of a 5-foot-nothing garbage man, and finding clothes that fit can be challenging. Summer shopping is easier and more gratifying than winter shopping, because below-the-knee skirts hide all my municipal waste-collector attributes, while tank tops and fitted tees allow for long thin arms and neck. Add a good push-up bra and we’re set.
The big problem is the timing: you have to shop for summer while it’s still technically winter, and vice versa. It’s a pretty simple matter to walk into a store in, say, September, and step out of your flip-flops and shorts to try on a pair of corduroy pants; it’s another thing altogether to go shopping in March, and have to take off your coat, scarf, knee-boots, over-the-knee socks, and that pair of cords you bought last September, to try on a pair of shorts (or try to, since the ultra-low waist barely makes it over your ample ass…)
And in the end you can’t really gauge how you look anyway, between the cruel and unusual glare of the overhead lights, the funhouse (now with 75% less fun!) dressing room mirrors, and the fact that it turns out you couldn’t
be bothered to take off those socks after all, so you’re standing there with your garbageman butt barely covered by the biggest joke the Paris catwalk ever played on the female asscrack, while the item that was meant to be shorts is ending somewhere below your knees and damn those short femurs anyway, and the rest of your legs are covered in green-and-orange striped socks, because who really thought you’d be taking off those boots after you left the house - and the overall effect is kind of like if you stuck legs on a gourd and sent it off to clown college.
I think I’m just going to start showing up for work wearing a sandwich board and those cute little shoes.
call it a lesson in how not to leave yourself open…
Eva: Billy, what does my face look like?
Me: A cat’s ass!
April, come she will…
In particularly self-centered moments (23 hours of the day, give or take) I like to imagine that March was created just for me - the universe’s annual lesson in patience and flexibility. March, and its orbital counterpart, September, have always been my least-favorite months, challenging my anticipation of the new season, the new weather. March does it to me particularly, and year after year I have found myself feeling out of place, trying to hurry through it.
Last Wednesday it was beautiful winter: it was in the twenties and snowed all day - fluffy, ridiculously fake department store-looking snowflakes that flashed like diamonds as they fell, even as the sun set in the distance. Two days ago, I sweated as I hunched over the beehive, the sun bright and the temperature pushing toward eighty, the yard smelling of spring mud. Today, the hive sits under an inch of snow, with more predicted to fall overnight. Sunday will be in the fifties.
I’ve always felt some strange mental disconnect when faced with such changeability; it goes against my nature, which in many ways is a stubborn, plodding thing - goal in mind, path decided. One step forward, two steps back (maybe a little spin off to the side and a backflip for good measure) feels like a waste of energy, and all too often I end up stomping my feet, screaming and pointing, insisting that we go this way, at this speed… and frustration builds on frustration, while March saunters along according to its own whim anyway.
This year, I find myself trying to stand less rigidly, and be led. This is a month of abundant beauty, which I suddenly feel inclined to seek. Maybe it’s a sign of growing older, or quieter; whatever the cause, today I met the crocuses poking through the snow with less of my usual exasperation, and something more like wonder.
The kids’ school is having its annual Book Fair this week. I remember the excitement associated with that (we had the bookmobile) and I remember the absolute, uncomplicated joy that accompanied being handed a few dollars and permission to Buy A Book. Hell, I’m 32 and it still makes me happy. I don’t actually remember any of the books I bought, but I suspect that my daughter will always look back on the one she brought home earlier this week – and which she brought back to exchange today.
She climbed into the car after school on Monday carrying a large, thin paperback in a yellow plastic ShopRite bag. She held it up proudly and bade me to wonder at its glory, which I did. Her brother, whose class had not yet had their turn at the fair, was duly impressed.
“What book did you get?” he asked.
“It’s called Scuttle’s Big Wish,” she told him, in that tone of six-year-old voice that indicates great and powerful information has been revealed.
“What’s it about?”
“I haven’t read it yet,” she said, “but I know it’s about a mouse.”
And with that, the subject was closed; in our house, Evie’s adoration of mice and rats is as much a given as air, or gravity, and a brand-new book about mice – from the exalted Book Fair, no less – was all we needed to know. This book was special.
Afternoon passed into evening, through homework and dinner and orchestra rehearsal and bedtime. Sitting on the couch later, Bill turned to me and asked if I knew about Evie’s book.
“I know it’s about a mouse,” I said.
He produced it from somewhere in the pile of papers and assorted trash that finds its home on our couch, and held it up. “It made her very sad,” he said, leafing through the wide, boldly-illustrated pages.
“Why, what happened?”
He explained that it was the rodentine version of King Midas – everything the mouse touched turned to cheese. “And see,” he said, pointing to one of the pictures, “Scuttle lives in the wall here, and the bird in the cage over there is his friend…” He flipped further into the book, and then opened to a page showing the bird, turned to cheese with his wings spread as if preparing to embrace his mouse-friend, and the mouse, tears streaming down his horrified face. Scuttle was MISERABLE! shouted the text. “She cried and cried,” Bill said, “even after we read to the end, when everything turns back to normal and the bird is okay.”
I remember Bill becoming greatly distressed a month or two ago over a news story he’d read, about a father who had accidentally run over his child, who had – unbeknownst to the father – been hiding in a curbside pile of leaves. In trying to articulate what so upset him about this story (beyond the obvious,) Bill talked about how the father must have felt, right at that moment when he realized what he’d done. And while a children’s fiction book may not be tragic on the same level as that news item, to a six-year-old, it surely cuts as deeply.
I suppose I tend toward hardassery in my parenting, but some things are just too sad – this book included. I understand the point of the King Midas story, and someday Evie will, too. She might even have learned the lesson from Scuttle, had it not been presented in such a gut-wrenching way; King Midas is something her head would’ve explained to her, but the look of sheer, unrelenting despair on the mouse’s face was something her stomach and throat told her, before her brain ever knew what happened. That she should have felt that sucker-punch sickness, should have faced that moment of oh my god what have I done! horror (something so heavy that even her father broke down under the weight of it) makes my own stomach hurt. It’s a lesson of its own kind, I suppose, but not one that any first-grader really needs to learn, and not through the betrayal of her prized Book Fair purchase.
I sat down with her the next morning. “Daddy said you were upset when you read your new book,” I began. She nodded and looked at her hands. “Even though at the end, he gets to wish everything back the way it was?” Nod. “I thought maybe, if you wanted, we could ask your teacher if you could trade it for another book.” She shook her head no, but her face didn’t look convinced. “Okay, well, you don’t have to. But I’ll write a note for you, just in case you change your mind.”
That evening, I noticed the note still sitting where I’d left it. “Did you decide to keep the book?” I asked her.
“No, I took it back,” she replied.
“But you didn’t bring the note I wrote for you.”
“I didn’t need it. I told Ms. Egan myself, and she said I could go to the Book Fair tomorrow and get a new one.” I was about to tell her I was proud of her for not needing my help, for taking charge of her own well-being, but before I could speak she smiled brightly and continued, “I’m going to choose one that makes me happy. Still about rodents, though.”
I’ll hand it to the kid, she still may not understand the lesson of King Midas, but she’s becoming an expert in self-reliance and resilience – and given what she’ll likely face over the course of her life, that may be far more valuable.
