A Speckled Trout

I took a creative writing class in high school and I have no memory of the “why” part of it.  My guess is that I heard it was an easy class, but it clicked and I loved going into that room.  I would have stayed in there all day if they’d have let me.   I took a long break for many years until I asked to join an established writing group.  They had to vote on me (I passed) and every month we would meet and share our work.  That eventually led to this blog.

I have been asked by my friend Mary to participate in a blog hop.  The subject?  It’s all writing, peeps.

What am I working on/writing?

I am always working on blog stuff.  My day job is very numbers orientated and daydreaming and writing in my head could lead to lots of mistakes.  That is the frustrating part of my day.   The paying attention.  I need to make money and I wish it could be by writing but that hasn’t happened yet, so I have to work.  Fortunately, it is part-time so I do have time to write – not as much as I’d like but what are you gonna do???  Baby’s got to finish college.  I have another goal of writing a children’s book and I have no idea what it would be about, but I LOVE children’s books.  I have loved every stage of my kids lives, but I miss reading to them.  If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.  Goodnight Moon.  Angelina Ballerina.  Madeline.  I felt like every character lived in this house for years.  There is a children’s bookstore nearby and I always stop and look in the window.  Charmed………every single time.

How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre?

It doesn’t.  I am just one of many, many bloggers out there trying to get some attention.  All of those bloggers have a writing voice and when you follow them you begin to recognize it.  My voice is unique to me and hopefully, strikes a chord with readers.

Why do I write what I do?

My style fluctuates from funny to sad to wow.  It’s how I think.  I like to have fun with my writing but profound wonder of life and loss is integrated into everything I do.  I am often too feely for my own piece of mind many days.  I think everyone wants to go through life thinking they made a difference.  I have to write myself there.  I have to tell the story (sometimes of total strangers) to say “I cannot stop thinking about you and here’s why.”

How does my writing process work?

I am by nature an observer.  Things will appear on my radar and I will note its significance.  I hardly ever know why it’s significant.  I just remember it.  It is when I’m writing that The Significant Thing will pop up and get woven into my story.  I’ve learned to trust it and its place in my writing.  In fact, I love it.  When I plan out a story it hardly ever goes the way I’ve imagined until The Significant Thing appears and ties everything together.

I will have much more to write about Listen To Your Mother sometime this week.  It’s a whole lot to process but The Significant Thing came to mind today.

And she was beautiful.

We moved into this house in December.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, plans were already in motion for the Annual Neighborhood Cookie Exchange, and the newest neighbor in the hood would be getting an invite (and maybe an assessment).

Walking into a party and knowing NOBODY is usually not my thing, but I was new to this state and I needed friends, and/or friendly neighbors with teenagers that babysat.  The hostess was welcoming and lovely, and in one fell swoop I met just about every woman who lives on this street. 

That following summer, the hostess of that party would bury her six year old son from meningitis.  It is impossible to wrap your head around a healthy kid riding his bike up and down the street one day to being gravely ill to dying, and life on this street was wrapped in sadness and disbelief.

Four blocks away, on the corner of 75th and Roe, is a Baptist church that many of us enrolled our kids in for Mother’s Day Out and preschool.   The parents of this little boy were church members there and strong supporters of the preschool, and they raised funds to build an outdoor play area for the kids in honor of their son.

That neighbor moved a long time ago, but our son and her younger son are the same age and so I would see her and her husband frequently at the high school and cross-country events.  We always catch up on what our kids are doing these days, and despite the tremendous loss in her life she is a joy to talk to and I am always happy to see her.

It is not unusual for me to drive by the corner of 75th and Roe many times a week, and each time I do I glance at that cheerful playground.  My own kids and many others have been the beneficiaries of my neighbors’ generosity during the darkest hours of their life.

On a Friday afternoon in October of last year, on a clear, beautiful fall day, a 29 year old woman was killed at that corner by an alleged drunk driver estimated to be traveling in the neighborhood of 100 miles an hour.  If you saw this intersection you couldn’t believe that something so tragic and senseless could happen there.  It isn’t even that busy or the kind of street you’d avoid because of frequent accidents.  Not to mention somebody driving drunk at 1:00 in the afternoon.  Amongst my friends and neighbors we have talked about it again and again as if there’s some missing piece to this that was overlooked that would make sense.  The woman who was killed owned a dance studio and left behind a devastated family, including a husband and his son.

A few weeks ago I was at that intersection waiting for the light to change when I saw a man in a shirt and tie, crouched down and staring into the intersection.  It seemed out of place and sad and it wasn’t until the light turned green and I had driven a few blocks that I realized that the guy I’d seen was her husband.  I recognized him from the story in the paper.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.  It’s her husband.  Somebody should tell him that those of us who live in this neighborhood have thought about his beautiful, dancer wife a thousand times.  That whenever the subject comes up we can’t believe somebody died on that corner.  That the recent story in the paper about him and his son and her family trying to keep her dance studio going broke my heart and made me proud of them all at the same time.  Somebody should tell him that.

Somebody like me.

I turned the car around with no idea of what I would actually say to him and drove back to that corner.  Five minutes had passed by and he was nowhere to be seen.  I circled the drive and parking lot twice to see if he’d gotten in his car.  By now I was so sure he should know how truly sorry this neighborhood is about his wife that I had become brave enough to knock on his car window if need be.

The following day a funeral was held at that Baptist church for the woman who owned the dance studio my own girls went to for years.  A dancer, a business owner, a woman who choked up at the recital every year thanking everyone, died of Lou Gehrig’s disease.  In tragic irony, the woman who made a career from moving was stopped by a disease that systemically took all movement away from her.

On the corner of 75th and Roe, where brightly colored slides and climbing equipment sit like a rainbow of happiness, there is more heartbreak than the casual passerby could even begin to imagine.  Only those who have tried to patch a life back together know it all too well.

 

 I was recently having a conversation with a mom whose daughter is in high school.  She is navigating teen years with her and I offered a couple of observations about what that was like with my own kids.

“Oh, you’re so right,” she said at one point.  “You seem like one of those cool moms.”

And it was like nails on a chalkboard to me.

I know it was meant as a compliment, but I no more have had my shit together than any other mom.  I happen to be a few years beyond high school with my kids and so I have perspective.  I can look back on those years and say we made it, we didn’t strangle each other, they are neither drinkers or partyers, they have plans and goals for their life, they all work incredibly hard.  We still like each other most of the time these days.  

That doesn’t make me a cool mom it just makes me fortunate.

In the Facebook world there is often comments about posted pictures that are some version of this…..

“SMOKING HOT MAMA!”

That, too, makes me cringe.  Hot mama?

A cool mom seems like the kind of woman who would let her kids and their friends drink in the basement when they’re thirteen because “they may as well do it here where I can keep an eye on them.”  A hot mom seems like the kind of woman who drinks with them while wearing her daughter’s American Eagle skinny jeans and halter tops.

It’s all so Kardashian.

It has always been my habit to observe women who are about ten years older than me.  What makes them stand out?  In a youth-obsessed culture what is their attraction?

Working in retail for so many years made it easy and there are two women that I’ll always remember.  One was dressed in head to toe black and wearing red ballet flats.  My guess was that she was seventy.  The other was a woman who bought a funky skirt and was so thrilled, so excited to wear it that she couldn’t contain herself.  She was bohemian by nature, the other was more conservative, but what both had was serenity.

The kind that comes with being happy in your own imperfect skin.

As I age a bit more each day and sixty isn’t all that far away, I strive for content status.  Loving little things like red flats and patterned skirts but noticing big things like the fall leaves, a glass of wine under a fingernail moon and an old photo of my grandma and aunt that makes me smile every time I pass by it.

Just two of the long line of women in my life who showed me over and over that the best thing somebody can say about you is that you have some up in your giddy.

On Saturday I decided to go to a store I’ve been to once before to get a carpet runner.  It is where we locals call “out south.”  To us who have been spoiled by life in a little, quiet town it is the doomed errand.  When you say to someone “I have to go out south” or “They’ve decided to move out south” people will groan with you.  It is a congested, SUV filled place where suburbia has puked strip malls as far as the eye can see.

Even though it is a mere twenty minutes away, one must mentally prepare for the dreaded ride “out south.”

The intersection in which I thought the store was at is really busy, and since I didn’t know on what corner it was situated, I decided to overshoot my destination by a few blocks and then back track.  Even that I wasn’t entirely sure of but as soon as I saw the sign for Village Shalom I knew I was on the right street.

One day later a woman was shot to death at that very place going to see her mother in the assisted living center.

Prior to that, the gunman killed a grandfather and his fourteen year old grandson a few blocks away at the Jewish Community Center.

I am not one to ruminate on whether or not that could have been me if it had happened a day earlier.  It wasn’t.  Some other family got devastating news on that awful day in a manner that makes absolutely no sense, and the lives of those left to make funeral arrangements will be forever altered. 

This has shocked this community, and though hate groups have always been on the periphery, a fourteen year old boy trying out for a music competition hasn’t even lived long enough to understand that kind of hate let alone be the target of its violence.

Like high schools, grade schools, army bases, movie theaters, restaurants and every city in America, gun violence has made a home in our area and there will be analysis for years on how this could have been prevented.

But here in the land of the free, the one nation that has claimed from its inception to be under God, handguns, rifles and assault weapons legally sit at the right hand of The Father……….

………and the right to come home on a stormy Sunday afternoon has been sold to the NRA.

I’m not going to brag, (okay maybe I am) but I was one of the earliest users of Pinterest.  I heard about it from a decorating blog and was hooked immediately.  I have stay hooked and if there were a twelve step program for weaning yourself off The Pinnning I would join.

It has sucked vast chunks of my time every single day.  It has made me late for work, forgotten that dinner is cooking on the stove and been my drug of choice in the wee hours of the night when I can’t sleep.

Woe is me.  Like whoa.

Once in awhile I’ll remember an outfit from Pinterest and head to the accessories section of Target for a multi-layered pearl necklace.  Or was it the statement necklace?  A chevron infinity scarf?  Knock-off Michael Kors watch, anyone?   A maxi skirt.  That’s what I should get for my short stature because it’s the bomb diggety on Pinterest.

I have pinned recipes I never make, inspiring quotes I never read again, a dream cottage in the woods and a beach house,  Yes, both.  Is that too greedy?  Paint colors (muted and bright for each house), flowers that could never grow in my current zone 5, pallet desks, pallet wine racks, pallet tables.

Enough with the pallets already.

In my nearly empty nest it fills the quiet and is my excuse for not doing legit things that are more self-improving than making a pretend life, and though I know I need to get off this fantasy cycle I just can’t seem to step away from the pin.

There are, however, cracks in the foundation that are beginning to show.

Gender reveal parties.  Boy baby?  Stick your hands in blue paint and make a hand print on your shirt.  TAADAA!!!!  Doesn’t that ruin your shirt?  Doesn’t that prevent you from diving headfirst into the blue appetizers because your hands are full of paint?  Wouldn’t your friends and family be just as excited if you, I don’t know, told them you were having a boy?

Bad crafts.  A Mason jar hot glued to a thrift store candlestick is a Mason jar glued to a thrift store candlestick.  It is not an apothecary jar.  Ever.

Cupcakes.  Unless you had a PhD. in baking you cannot make the frosting on a cupcake look like a flower.  Nor should you because the first one that falls off the tray and face plants its pretty little flower petal face will cause you to have a nervous breakdown.  A nervous breakdown is the uninvited guest at the gender reveal party.

Squats, planks, ab challenges, the thigh gap.  This needs no explanation.

Casserole recipes.  Casseroles do not photograph well.  They always look like a hot mess, and even though they may be quite tasty, they tend to look like you cooked a fine dinner, put it through the blender and then threw it on the floor.  There is no fan club for this, and if somebody asks for your casserole recipe it is because they are being polite which is different from sincere.

Marking the kids age through photos.  I am not opposed to this.  I actually wish I’d done it myself, but the one that jumped the shark was the idea that you buy a really big tshirt and write the year that Junior will graduate from college.  Every year you take a photo of Junior wearing that shirt (because who would misplace a tshirt) and TAADAA, he starts to fill the thing out until there he is twenty two years later.  Grinning, glazed and higher than a kite because his overbearing mother is forcing him to wear the same outfit he wore when he was three. 

Since Easter is less than a week away I give you this teachable moment from Pinterest.  Bake some cookies with the kids, examine each ingredient and think of a way to compare it to Jesus’ crucifixion.  This might be kind of challenging, Mom, but taking a couple of swigs of that pure vanilla extract might get something moving upstairs.  Put them in the oven and tape the oven door shut.  This is The Maytag Tomb.   In the morning open the oven door and TAADAA…..you have The Risen Jesus who has come back as a cookie.

Alleluia.

You’re welcome.

Now go tell it on the Pinterest Mountain.
                                    

On Friday my friend, Janet, came over for coffee, pastries and some catching up.  We used to work at a lighting shop years ago and she recently asked me to write a reference letter for her.  I’ve never done that before and so I asked The Big Daddy what I was supposed to say. 

“Do you like her?” he asked.

“Yes,” I responded.

“Here’s the rule about that.  If you like the person you write a lot.  Everything you can think of that will be useful in a job.  If you don’t like them you make it short and sweet.  Their possible, future employer will get the message.”

I can’t say it was a stellar recommendation because the line of work she’s looking for is completely different than what we had done together.  I did my best, but what I like most about Janet wouldn’t quite work in a reference letter.

Her and I have probably worked a hundred different jobs in our lifetime.  We’ve done everything.  “I get bored,” she said.  “I need to move on after awhile.”

Me too, friend.  I’m a mover onner which isn’t exactly what most employers are looking for.

I have often felt like Lucille Ball working the conveyer belt at the chocolate factory.  I have no idea how I’ve gotten myself into some of the employment opportunities presented to me except for an ever present attitude of “what-the-hell-why-not.”  Qualifications be damned.  I’ve got charm and when it’s firing on all cylinders I can get my foot in the door.

When I got hired at the lighting shop I thought it was about picking out pretty lamps and shades.  That was some of it but it was also recessed lights, ceiling fans, puck lights, rope lighting. sconces, chandeliers.  There were thousands of bulbs in the back room.  We did lamp repairs constantly and to this day I can wire my own lamp and hardwired the chandelier in the dining room.  I was usually so overwhelmed that when I saw some old lady coming in with a hideous brass lamp I ran to help her because I knew she’d take an hour deciding between a white or ivory shade and I’d be off the hook when the electricians came in.

******

The guy who hired Mark was married to the loveliest woman who owned a catering business and she asked if I might be interested in working some parties.  The pay was $25.00 an hour.

$25.00!!!!  Sign me up.

It was without a doubt the most grueling exhausting work I’ve ever done.  Hours running around with trays.  Loading, unloading, cleaning.  You earned every cent of that hourly wage.

At one party I was serving coffee and a woman asked me if it was decaf.  I had no idea and went in the kitchen to ask Dorothy and her daughter.  “What’s she like?” they asked.

“Oh, kind of an older woman,” I replied.

“Older like in her sixties or older like more than seventy five?”

“I’d say she’s more like seventy five.”

“Then it’s decaf,” they said.  “Old ladies always want decaf at night.”

******

Somebody got their buzz on and couldn’t sleep that night and somebody else got booked for another party.  There’s winners and losers when you’re faking your way to the next paycheck.

When we got Henry he was a puppy and we shopped for him at a pet adoption event at Petsmart.  We brought the kids and they were smitten with that little furball and begged to bring him home.

He was like Marmaduke and he grew and grew and grew.  The 40# sheltie we thought we got turned into an 80# retriever/chow mix.  He once bit a neighborhood kid in the stomach when he came through the front door unannounced.   Had we known he was part Chow we would have never gotten him but by then it was too late, so I watched him like a hawk around that door. 

He thought his call to duty was to guard the castle entrance and that damn dog stressed me out.

I walked him every morning and when he saw a squirrel he’d yank my arm trying to go after it.  Every single morning.  A friend of mine had a poodle and they had an altercation one day.  Henry never forgot and he’d bark and pull at his leash whenever he saw that dog because he had to settle the score.  One time the poodle got away from my friend and came bounding towards us.  Seeing as how there was a 75# difference between those dogs, I thought the poodle was going to be a goner.  Instead he ran under Henry and try as he could to get that varmint, he just kept running in circles with that little toy dog stuck between his legs the whole time.

It would have been comical if I weren’t so sure that Henry wasn’t going to kill my friend’s dog.

And then he mellowed out.  Slept more and didn’t get so bothered by the mailman or the UPS man.  An 80# dog was always too big for this house but we all squeezed in and made it work even if we weren’t so sure of each other in the beginning.  Or for years.

Today we put our old boy to sleep.  He has never liked going in the car and was a shaking, panting mess all the way to the vet and in the waiting room.  We took him back and this vet that we’ve been going to for twenty years explained the process and gave him some sedation.

Our old boy went fast asleep with his head over the exam table and started snoring.  We petted him the whole time and even though he was a big hunk of fur, you could feel all his ribs and vertebrae.

He made me nuts.  For the first ten years of his life he probably thought Calm The Fuck Down was his name.  This last year he’s peed in the house a hundred times.  At least.  He ate chicken off the dining room table and kitchen counter.  He’d stick his whole head in the garbage can to eat the chicken bones.  He would get right next to you if he liked what was cooking on the stove and never move out of the way.  He always smeared the glass on the front door five minutes after I cleaned it.  He once ate a rib that fell off the grill and got the bone wedged sideways in his mouth.  He drank out of the toilet bowl and licked the carpet for no reason.

He had no class. 

He was perfect for us.

If you were a kid in the sixties that went to a Catholic school, then at least once a year you saw a movie about missionaries.  Those selfless, giving people that went deep into the most remote areas of the world to spread the message of God.

The films were usually shown at the end of the day, and back then they were a grainy reenactment in black and white.  Every film ended with some poor soul up to their armpits in quicksand because they didn’t heed the Bible or scoffed at some foreigner trying to change their ways.  When we got a little older, the movies upped their game and would end with quicksand and a serpent because scaring the crap out of kids is the best way to get them to love Jesus.

The only way to save a person from that kind of fate was to donate to the missionaries, and I’d come tearing home from school yelling “MOM WE HAVE TO GIVE THE PAGANS MONEY!!!”

Like every other big family back then sending their kids to private school, there wasn’t any extra money so Mom would say, “Look under the beds and couch cushions.  You’re bound to come up with something.”  I’d crawl around the floor with a flashlight and under the beds then rifle through all the pockets of the coats crammed in the closet.  The next day I would go to school and hand over my fistful of coins to my nun teacher to SAVE THE PAGANS.

I was absolutely sure that I would die in quicksand one day.  In the dramatic telling of the missionaries and their very important work, nobody ever told me that the likelihood of that happening is about 0%.

But, Lordy, I have made my own quicksand and it consists of fear and doubt.

Whether it be employment or writing I push down my passion and talent because I eventually hear that voice that says, “Yeah, ummm…..you’re not that good.”  I’ve gotten a little better in the last few years because a post-50 life comes with a loudly ticking clock, but why, oh why do I repeat the same mistakes over and over?   In looking for a job if there is one qualification that I don’t have the skill set for I don’t even try.  Never mind that I could rock the rest of it without a problem, I am the one who always holds me back.  If I write something that has a lukewarm response (because maybe people have busy lives and can’t respond even though it may have resonated with them) then I think I should just give this game up.

*********

I have worked with this woman over the years and in several different stores who is about twenty years my junior.  In my retail days her and I loved to tear the store apart and redo it, and in the process have the most spirit-filled, deep conversations.  To say I adore her would be an understatement

Last year we worked together again and she was managing two stores with about ten employees.  If you needed time off for anything and requested it in the “princess book” she would accommodate you.  One day when we were working together and she was trying to put this massive schedule puzzle in place (over Christmas, no less) I said, “You know I really appreciate that you do that for us, but why don’t you just make the schedule and let everybody else figure it out if it doesn’t work for them?”

“Because,” she said, “I understand that everyone has a passion outside of this job that makes their heart skip a beat, and if I give you the time you need to pursue that you’ll be a happier person when you’re here.”

She should be running the world, don’t you think?

***********

Recently, I actually heard a story about quicksand.  Instead of fighting against it, you should lean your back into it.  Your legs will eventually surface because contrary to what you might think there is a lot of water in quicksand.  Your fate is not sealed if you find yourself in that predicament.

The missionaries in the movies I saw never elaborated on that one useful piece of information.  Perhaps they didn’t know, but the lesson I wish they taught to all those watchful eyes in the darkened school gymnasium was to stop fighting and lean back into your passion.

Not only will it save you……..it will take you to the promised land.

                                      

Many years ago, we took a trip from Kansas City to Washington State to see Mark’s mom.  It was a three day trek with three kids and long before portable DVDs were the recommended travel necessity to entertain restless, little passengers.  The kids were troopers and we would do the trip two more times over the years before summer schedules and work commitments no longer allowed for three weeks off.

Mark was all about making “good” time and so stopping to see anything for longer than necessary interfered with his self-imposed schedule.  This came to a head at a motel bathroom in Wyoming when I pulled him in and yelled, “We are missing everything because of this stupid time thing you keep harping about.  We are going through the most scenic parts of this country and all we’ve seen is the interstate.”

He saw the tourist light and the next day we veered off of I-90 West and went to Yellowstone.  Beautiful, spectacular Yellowstone.

Mark went to graduate school with several guys who have ended up at the University of Washington, and so we left the youngest two with my mother-in-law for a few days and took Maggie with us to Seattle.  On the way back to Spokane, Mark said it would be an easy jaunt to Mt. St. Helens and wouldn’t that be something to see.

The jaunt turned out to be about 100 miles from Seattle to Prescott, and then the most harrowing drive up a mountain that I have ever experienced.  Or maybe my one and only mountain experience seeing as how I’ve lived most of my life in Illinois and Kansas and mountains are as foreign to us as oceans.

There was not a guardrail to be seen as we hugged the mountain through curves and switchbacks.  My fear of heights went into overdrive and while Mark was commenting on the scenery I was screaming, “TWO HANDS!!!!  TWO HAND ON THE WHEEL!!!”  It didn’t help.  Nothing helped my anxiety and at one point I put my head down and started doing Lamaze which was just as worthless at several thousand feet as it was in three different delivery rooms.

Maggie, who was sitting in the back and has her father’s sense of adventure, became the mom and tried to soothe my frazzled nerves with everything she had in her ten-year-old arsenal.  When we finally made it to the safety of the visitors center and looked out it was the most breathtaking sight.  The devastation seventeen years after that volcano was mind boggling.  Tens of thousands of trees were flattened like twigs in every direction.  The trees that weren’t flattened were stripped bare of life.  There has never been a single picture I’ve seen of that mountainside that comes close to what it actually looks like in person.

By that time amongst the locals, things were definitely looking up.  The new growth was a source of amazement and pride and a sign that Mother Nature, in all of her fury, eventually comes back full circle with new life.

I had trouble sharing their enthusiasm because in my eyes I saw more of what was gone than what was coming up, but I didn’t live there.  Mt. St. Helens wasn’t my view out the window.

These many years later at home in Kansas, my view out the window remains flat and usually uninteresting, but this week I squealed at the familiar green leaves of the daffodils poking through the mud and dead leaves……..

……..and nature’s nod of what lies ahead reveals itself to those who are looking for hope.

As I laid in bed the other night listening to my snoring husband, I heard a thud.  A loud, repeated thud.  I tried to ignore it and go to sleep but something sounded like it was trying to get in.  When The Big Daddy woke up to go to the bathroom, I asked him if he thought that maybe one of the cats had gotten locked inside the garage.

Knight in shining armor that he is he got up, went outside, lifted the garage door and called the cat.  “It wasn’t that,” he said as he climbed back into bed, and for a few minutes all was calm and quiet.

And then it started back up.  Louder and bangier than ever, and as much as The Big Daddy tried to ignore it even he knew something was going on.  “It’s probably a critter hiding in the garage,” he said and took a flashlight as his only weapon.

I thought it was Bigfoot and I was so scared I got on Facebook.

The Big Daddy was gone for what seemed to be a long while.

When he came in he said that the culprit had been flushed out.  A big raccoon on the roof that laid flat and still when under the glare of his probing flashlight.  Somebody’s been taking life-saving seminars from the possums.

Still as could be it flattened itself against the roof, not budging.  A black and gray hump against a black and gray roof.  Move along, Mr. Homeowner.  Go back to your Mrs.  Nothing to see here.

Mark threw a dirt clod at the varmint which didn’t faze it in the least.  He kept at it until he said, “I got one that broke apart like shrapnel when it hit the roof and that did the trick.  He got up and climbed up over the chimney to the other side of the roof.”

My Rambo.  Swoon.

“A raccoon on the roof?  What the heck was he doing up there?” I asked when he finished telling the story.

“It looks like he was trying to eat the siding, but it ran off.  Don’t worry, I doubt we’ll be seeing that guy again.”

And then my Rambo went right back to sleep but worrying is what I do, especially in the middle of the night.  I laid there rolling the facts around in my head.  A raccoon on the roof.  How did it get up there?  I had no idea they could climb that high.  Eating the siding?  I thought they tipped over garbage cans to get their dinner.  What if it busted through the walls and got into bed with us?  Would I have a heart attack and die?  In his loneliness would Mark turn to his new roommate for companionship?

The following afternoon I noticed the Critter Control truck at my next door neighbor’s house and went over to get the deets.   “Five nights,” my neighbor said.  “Five nights we’ve been up because of something banging around in the garage.”

“Us, too,” I said.  “I was up until three in the morning.  It was so loud.”  While we were talking Mr. Critter Tech came out to his truck and gave her the news.

“You’ve got a raccoon getting in through your vent trying to make a new home.  I’ve set a trap so your problem should be over soon.”

She introduced me to him and I told my raccoon story.  “You want me to take a look while I’m here,” he asked.  Of course I did, but I was already certain my problem was far less severe than my neighbors since I had a raccoon looking for a one-night stand.  She had a stalker.

Turns out I had the exact same problem.  Mr. Critter Tech showed me where the raccoon had been busy tearing a shingle off the house and bending the grate of the vent to get into our attic space.

“Trap him,” I calmly and coldly said without even asking what it cost.

It costs plenty and after I wrote the check I called my mom to tell her the story of the Homesteading Raccoon and how my husband was going to have a fit over trapping an animal even though it had specs and claws to expand our living space.

“Oh, you had to do it,” she said.  ‘You can’t have wild animals with rabies trying to get in your attic for crying out loud.”

“I know, Mom, but Mark is going to be really mad about it when he gets home and I tell him.”

“Tell him I said you should do it for all that’s worth.  Blame me.”

“I’ll use that as my last resort, Mom, because I don’t think he cares what either of us think about trapping a raccoon.”

“You’re probably right,” she said.  “You know what Lou Manfredini says about keeping raccoons out of your house?”

“Who?”

“Lou Manfredini.  The fix-it guy on WGN.  He says if you want to keep raccoons out of your attic to play Spanish music.  He says raccoons hate Spanish music.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“That’s what he says and he’s got his own show.  Had one for years so he would know.  He says that when they hear that Spanish music they keep moving along.  I don’t know what it is that they hate about it.  Anyhow, you get in your attic and put a radio up there.  Tune it to some Spanish station and your raccoon problem will be over.”

“Well, we don’t have an attic we can access.  It’s the space between the garage and the roof that is problem and you can only get in through the outside.”

“If the raccoon can get in so can you so find a way and start playing some Spanish music before you’ve got the whole family moving in.”

We hung up.  I weighed my options.  Maybe Mom and Lou Manfredini were right.  I had a Frito Bandito to chase away, but was it mariachi, salsa or merengue that would do the trick?