Shake it up, baby!

I bet you were all wondering what would bring me back here. So was I, frankly. It’s been a rather busy few months of kids home for summer, a dead-for-the-third-time’s-a-charm computer, school starting, and K coming home on leave, and me trying to nail down regular work. Turns out what it really takes for me to sit down and write again is an earthquake. You heard me right. Earthquake. Nothing major, mind you, and I’m sure my friends on the left coast are laughing behind their hands at the lack of magnitude it takes for my heart to pound and my mind to race, but that’s ok. I laugh at the thought of them driving around during a snow storm…or as I like to call it, a light dusting. I have only ever lived on the east coast and I’m no stranger to hurricanes, blizzards, ice storms, nor’easters, drought (and not just the writing kind), hail, and floods. Not to mention, black flies, mosquitoes, and jellyfish. Mother Nature and I come in to contact fairly often in these parts and I have a healthy respect for the power she wields. She never mentioned the possibility of earthquakes though. Mighty tricky of you, Mother Nature, mighty tricky!

Saturday night, just before 11:30pm, I was laying in bed reading and starting to doze off. All of a sudden I heard a loud boom/crash/extended thud and then the house shook for a couple of seconds. At first I thought I was more asleep than I imagined and perhaps I was about to have a blockbuster movie dream. No such luck. My next thought was that the basement blew up again (yes, I said “again.”), but quickly pushed that aside when I realized that the smoke alarms didn’t go off. Then I thought some idiot finally took the corner in front of our house too fast and hit the gigantic pine tree outside Monkey’s room and hoped that the tree wouldn’t break and crush my house (or my Monkey!) or the animal shelter across the street. There was no other sound though after that initial boom, so it couldn’t be that. Maybe something nearby had exploded in an enormous fireball…All of these thoughts were zipping around in my head at supersonic speeds while I tried to assess my next action which all centered around “Holy crap I might have to get 2 sleeping kids and 2 dogs out of here ASAP.”

Pants went on quickly, and the ridiculously calm dogs (who were my first clue that all was more well than my pounding heart and flight ready brain were able to process) looked at me askance while I shut them in my room to go investigate on my own. Nothing smelled funny, no sirens in the distance, and the kids were both still asleep. I went downstairs and made sure the basement door wasn’t hot and that the barn was still attached and the shop in the side yard was also still in its usual dilapidated state. Everything was right were it should be—unchanged. I suspect even the pantry mouse was undisturbed. Back upstairs I go, to waiting dogs who I’m pretty sure think I’m off my rocker at this point, but are nice enough to not say so out loud. I collar them up and outside we go to investigate the property and look around the neighborhood for signs of the obvious coming apocalypse. Casey and Zoe, amazed at their luck in getting to go out after 9:30pm, immediately go running off to sniff out the wild animal nightlife and I stand at the bottom of my driveway wondering what the hell was going on because nothing seemed to be going on. Surely if there was a rift in the space time continuum (which was the only other option left as far as I could tell), I would be seeing aliens or a passel of long-forgotten farmers making their way back home in a horse and buggy parade. Nope. Nothing. All was quiet on the Great White Northern Front.

I called the dogs back in and we returned to bed. I think my heart finally began to slow to it’s normal pace and the adrenalin rush unlike anything I’ve felt since riding the Mt. Everest roller-coaster at Disney (it goes backwards!) started to dissipate as well. Of course the first thing I did after settling in was get online. I saw my neighbor across the street was also online (Phew!) and she and I instant messaged briefly about the excitement of the night (let me tell you, we do not generally live in an exciting part of town at all), and thanks to Twitter (yup, Twitter) we quickly found out that we were hit with a 3.2 earthquake less than 10 miles from our neighborhood.

For as much upheaval as that tiny earthquake caused in my internal organs, I was actually glad it was that rather than all my other options (especially the Doctor Who-esque scenario). There were far more chances for death and destruction coming out of my brain than what was happening in reality and I could not have felt more relief at that realization. Aside from the novelty of having experienced something that was neither on my bucket list or any other list of mine for that matter, it made me realize that I need to remember to keep a calm head when crazy shit happens (i.e. pay attention to the dogs who were calm the whole time). I am not 100% prepared for a disaster—natural or man-made—but I could be with little effort. I know where all the things I would need are: first aid kit, water, and food (thanks Army for your oh-so-tasty MREs!). I know, though, that our generator is lacking fuel, and I don’t have any wood yet for the fireplace if it were necessary to be stuck at home without electricity or heat. I have a camping stove and fuel for that, and we have blankets and sleeping bags. I don’t have anything that’s particularly grab-n-go, and it’s probably a good idea to consolidate. Soon. You know, just in case.

I don’t plan on this little shake up making me paranoid about the possibility of future disasters since they are not the norm (and I really prefer the whole “level head” thing to “crazed loony” thing), nor do I plan on making next summer a family Outward Bound extravaganza, but it sure has made me think twice about what I would do if something truly serious happened. As long as K is attached to the Army, and given that the National Guard is called out for any type of local (and some not-so-local as it turns out) disasters, the kids and dogs and I are pretty much on our own during tough times. It does not hurt to believe that all those years I spent hanging out with Boy Scouts (my dad was a Troop Leader and my brother a Scout) showed me preparedness. Even more important, just being a single-parent forces you to manage a degree of planning and logistics I don’t believe can be taught in college. But here I was left at loose ends even for such a short time over something that in reality was small but could have been bad, bad, bad. Thankfully this is not a cautionary tale that will wind up being checked on Snopes because of its unbelievable circumstances, nor will I end up a recipient of the Darwin Award (at least not this week!). However it is a good reminder to tend to basic needs and always have a plan…which I am working on before Winter comes with all its frozen goodness.

In other news, as I mentioned K was home on leave for a couple of weeks earlier this month and a grand time was had by all. He’s back in Afghanistan counting the days until the deployment is over. The kids did really well with the transition (ah, my little adaptable beings!) and they, too, are looking forward to Daddy being home for hours of hikes, faux camping, sparring practice, and Lego building.

I won’t make promises that I’ll be writing regularly again. Those seem to bite me in the ass. So you’ll see me when you see me and thanks for sticking around and caring what I have to say.

Read Full Post »

Signs of Spring

I feel like I’m always making excuses about why I’m not writing here more often even though I have so many things I want to write about. That’s actually part of the problem. I have so much going on in my head it’s hard to know where to start or what to say or how much to share. There’s a lot to sort out…much like cleaning up after a hoarder who’s been at it for 39 years. Piles upon piles of feelings and memories and treasures buried under old wrappers and useless trivia. Sometimes I think I need a dumpster on site constantly with daily scheduled pick ups. So, while I figure out what I want to say next, I thought I would share my favorite signs of spring around here.

When we get a good rain, the fields out back flood into wading pools (you can see pictures of the ducks who frequent the mini-ponds here). At that point two things happen. First, Monkey begins his treks out to splash around in the water, which he’ll do for over an hour easily.

The second sign happens after the April showers: the arrival of tiny flowers that, ironically, look like little patches of snow when seen from far away. When we’ve had a particularly wet Winter and early Spring, the whole back field is full of them, and if you didn’t know better would think they were, in fact super slow-melting snow.

Up close, they are bunches of delicate, little, flowers of the palest lavender with sunny yellow centers. I always have the urge to lay down amongst them and watch the clouds for hours on end. I might do just that if I weren’t such a complete stick-in-the-mud and could move beyond the idea of getting thoroughly soaked because they only bloom in the soggy marsh-like earth. I hate being wet though and my inherent lameness always seems to win out.

For now, I’m grateful for the longer, brighter, warmer days (even though it means less quiet alone time at night for me), Monkey’s joy at being outside every chance he gets, and the happy (and incredibly lazy) dogs basking in the sun on the driveway blacktop or lounging under the shade of the blossoming apple trees. This is one of my favorite times of year when nothing is extreme, (except for the amount of Zoe’s winter coat flying off her like bits of fluff coming out of a well-loved stuffed animal), but everything I can spy with my little eye grows more beautiful with each passing day.

Not too much longer and I’ll be back again on a regular basis. This kind of absence is fairly cyclical with me as you’ll figure out if you haven’t already. With the better weather comes more attention to the kids and the house and less time in front of my computer (no, really). Like the transition from Winter to Spring, my own transition is a bit tempestuous but will eventually settle into something better than what it was.

In the meantime, I leave you with my favorite naked tree in the early stages of becoming less naked (and in my opinion, somewhat less interesting).

Read Full Post »

Poor Dead Ladybug

Ladybugs have ceased being cute.

They can be cannibals, as a matter of fact. How do I know this? You could credit Google, but you’d be partially wrong. I watched it happen and then I checked Google to make sure I was seeing what I thought I saw (and no, Tweetie, it was not a puddytat). Who knew those benign little beetles were so…Hannibal Lecter?

A few weeks ago I walked into the bathroom, and there on the floor not far from the toilet was a little grouping of ladybugs. That, in and of itself, is not so unusual given the epic numbers of ladybugs we’ve had in the house the past several months. Most of the time there are groups of dead ladybugs near every window like they all died trying to scratch their way out of the house. I would have been happy to let them all out if they had asked, but then they would have frozen anyway. Sometimes there are enough ladybug carcasses to make me wonder if they all died in a cult suicide pact only the little kool-aid cups are too small to be seen. We have a lot of dead ladybugs around the house is what I’m saying. Enough that I have to make a daily habit of cleaning them up or it looks like the outdoors came indoors to die.

Back to the little trio in the bathroom… They weren’t doing lines of coke (or dust, or dog hair given the contents of my bathroom floor which much to my chagrin—in the name of science—you will see. It wasn’t cleaning day, sadly.). I did think, perhaps, I was witnessing something from a Discovery Channel show on ménage à trois in the animal kingdom. Naturally, (and being more pervy than I thought I was) I got down for a closer look. (I figure one of the other ladybugs down there was watching, so what was one more set of eyes?) It took me a little while of watching to figure out that one of the ladybugs was, in fact, dead. It was only slightly mushed and I finally saw a trail of ladybug innards that was keeping the bug stuck to the floor as the ladybug underneath it was gnawing on its exoskeleton. Of course I had to take pictures. And maybe a movie or 4…

I haven’t figured out what the third ladybug was doing beyond working security. It did take a nibble at one point, but really was just standing around while the other ladybug noshed on the all-you-can-eat friend bugfet.

Here’s the best of the videos I took to show the one ladybug moving the dead one around. It’s a little shaky because I was using my regular camera and not a video camera. Still, it’s interesting to see them going at it, so to speak. (If the video doesn’t show below, click the link and it will take you to the YouTube page where it is posted and you can watch it there.)
Ladybug lunch

Once I had my theory, I had to Google it to see if I was right. After all, everything on the internet is true, right? I did find a site to confirm that when food supplies (normally aphids) are low, ladybugs will cannibalize each other. Icky, yet true. And, now, I’ve posted proof to the world on YouTube. I feel so…hip.

I had R come in to see it since she could share with her class (along with a newly shed snakeskin I found in the barn last week) about what she saw, plus she’s not terribly squeamish. I would have invited Monkey, but then he would have squished them all and the educational value would have disappeared in an instant even if the entertainment value would have increased exponentially. Still, it was interesting to learn something new about my roommates and we are not lacking for nature here in the Great White North if you want a lesson in life. For as uncertain as life can be, it is always a fascinating education to watch the natural world adapt around and in spite of us. Aside from the cannibalism, nature often inspires me want to work harder at adapting and adjusting to my own ups and downs better—to remember to work with what I have better and just keep going. Nature may not always be pretty or neat (or even socially acceptable), but since when was real life any of those things?

Read Full Post »