Springy-Dipping

Photo by; Darkone [CC BY-SA 2.0
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via Wikimedia Commons

No! It's way too damn cold out here.

It's Spring now, remember?

It may be the first day of spring, but it's maybe 40 degrees out here at best, and I'm wearing my huge winter coat.

I know, you're ridiculous, the mild North Carolina winters have made you soft. Totally too warm to warrant that coat.

The water's bound to be even colder. We'll freeze to death. Plus the sound is dirty. Storm water, sewer overflow, the signs that recommend not putting your head under? We could get a skin-eating infection and die.

A Week at the Y

I joined the YMCA in January because they have yoga classes and, more importantly, their promotional offer to waive the one-time join fee was just days from expiring. How could I not join and let such a great deal go to waste? Now two months later, the Christmas money I'm using to cover the monthly dues is almost gone, and I might be fatter than when I started. This is likely because when I exercise, I eat. (Case in point: I went to two yoga classes back to back this morning, and just followed them up with tea and red velvet cake at the coffee shop before starting this post.) And if I added up the number of times I've actually gone to the Y, I'd discover that I've only done a week's worth of exercise in two months. My willpower and motivation are awesome. And by awesome, I mean completely awful. But because I'm uber-judgmental, these handful of classes have been humorous, humbling, and healing.

Dad's Attic Potpourri - Big Finish

By Alex Valavanis (Flickr) [CC-BY-SA-2.0
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via Wikimedia Commons

Catch up before we conclude. Click the text for Part I, Part II, and Part III.

Outside, we replaced our bouquets of moldy attic flowers with handfuls of puffy dandelions, violets, and wild strawberries. We stuffed red dogwood berries into the gaps of pinecones to be sold at our make-believe market alongside home-made mudpies. We threw the dollies and ourselves into the hammock and thrashed about wildly, buffeted by imaginary storms on invisible seas. We gave her mom mini-heart attacks, shrieking as the hoards of tent caterpillars hidden in the grass squished their guts between our bare toes. We were high on life, but we still craved danger...and height. Being genetically-doomed to shortness does that to a person.

Dad's Attic Potpourri - Part III

Need to catch up? Click to read Part I and Part II.

Leah's mom thought it was a dumb secret too. The plants might be hidden in the attic now, but he had been leaving his paraphernalia in plain sight for the past 23 years. Cleaning up – clues, or wet towels, or crumpled receipts, or dirty laundry - was not Al's strong suit; hence, neither was secrecy. Nor did he become more stealthy at harvest time. First, Al meticulously gathered his long-abandoned lab equipment: tongs for tiny bud clips, electronic balances for weighing crop yield, paper filters for rolling incense, test tubes for inhaling smoke to test aroma. Next, he commandeered the family kitchen for the drying operation – cookie sheets, oven, and all – with a wink and promise of brownies. Last, he left his gardening tools, scorched dishes, and trails of spilled potting soil strewn across every surface in the kitchen and dining room and trotted down to the basement to savor the smell of success. Very discreet.

Dad's Attic Potpourri - Part II

Missed the beginning? Read Part I here.

Leah's mom didn't seem to think her husband was such a brainiac either. This surprised us at first since she poured over boring wildflower books during camping trips instead of racing leaf boats with us. But she suffered from chronic vicarious-hypochondria, and she was losing the myriad of threats the attic posed to her children's health. She seemed to really enjoy warning us that we'd get frostbite, or cook our brains out, or suffer a brown recluse bite and subsequent expert medical-drowning in peroxide, or get sucked into the giant blades of the house fan. Now she was going to have to dream up all new child-health hazards to enhance her own immune system.

Dad's Attic Potpourri - Part I

Photo by NosniboR80, CC License From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Incenselonghua.jpg

In fourth grade, I had a “friend” whose dad grew “potpourri” in the attic. He never sold it; it was strictly for personal use. (I hear the lavender variety has calming, medicinal properties.) An excruciatingly frugal man – some might even say tightwad - he realized that growing, drying, and “smelling” his own in bulk was more cost effective than buying it pre-packaged. Plus his homegrown herbs were much higher quality than those sold in the dark corners of our small-town Wal-Mart parking lot. Not laced with anything unnatural, a good sniff guaranteed every time.

The Joys of Being Self-Employed

By Dvortygirl (Own work)
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or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)],
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Last winter my friend, an artiste extraordinaire, vowed: "The monsters said, 'You will make a bad picture.' And so every day I will make a picture until I prove them wrong." (Or something like that. Facebook's satanic timeline profile won't let me find her exact quote.) My monsters say that I cannot write, and so regardless of the outcome, write I shall. In that spirit, here is today's post.

This morning, I reveled in my self-employed status by:

• sleeping until 9 a.m.,
• grabbing the peanut butter and banana toast that my stepdaughter insisted upon having yesterday and then dismissed as gross after one bite and that I refused to throw away out of the fridge,

Verbal Assault by a Bear

Why start with the present, when I can go off on a tangent from October 2008, when my ex-boyfriend and I were verbally assaulted by a bear?

October 13, 2008 - Sunday night of Columbus Day weekend. Secluded in the woods. Last campsite at the end of long rutted gravel road. Our only neighbors: a pasture of fenced-in steers. And Schmeau and I were the only fools still tent camping inside bear country, outside the protective boundaries of the national park's strict food storage regulations.