A Speckled Trout

When I turned 50, I intentionally decided to shake things up a bit.  There was a group of women I knew that were writers, and met every month for several years.  I pleaded my case to join them and have been with them for four years.  Throughout the first year when it was my turn to read something I wrote, I wanted to throw up.  Every. Single.  Time.  It is still something I hate to do, even when I’m satisfied with the finished product, in fear that they’ll find out that I’m such a hack at writing that I have no business being there.      

A few weeks ago, I told The Big Daddy that I had a good writing week.  I was happy with what I was posting, the stories were still swirling in my brain, and the daily numbers of hits on this blog were decent.  Then there was this week.  In one way or another, I heard from every person in my writers group, either through email, Facebook or in the comment section, for no reason other than to touch base and cheer me on.

I was walking my dog past the house of one of my writing friends and she came out to chat.  She walked me home and we talked about kids, work and writing.  I told her about something I wrote a year ago, and she insisted that I get to work on finding someone to publish it and She Would Not Let It Go.   Right now, she said, get in the house and send it off.  I decided to send it to our paper for a column called “As I See It.”  The next day I heard back from them and I am about to be a published author for the very first time.    

Oh my, this was a piece of the dream, and Cinderella feels like she got asked to the ball.  All of those fairy godmothers of hers worked night and day to make sure she looked pretty, and she is very, very grateful.

This summer has been a disappointment for The Big Daddy as far as crops.  The heat was brutal and killed off much of what was growing.  A raccoon pulled down every stalk of corn for a late night snack, and as soon as the tomatoes start to ripen, the squirrels eat half of them and leave the rest to rot. 

He has, however, reaped a bumper crop of potatoes – so far more than 50#.  I love potatoes.  I would eat potatoes every day.  Whenever I have made dinner, The Big Daddy says what’s with all the damn potatoes, have you ever heard of rice.  Yes, I’ve heard of rice, but my people worship at the Altar of the Potato.  Do your people know that the Potato Famine is over, he asks.  For my people, the Potato Famine will never be over.

Now we have Big Daddy Reds coming in by the buckets and all of a sudden, he’s discovered the potato.  I’ll make extra to heat up the next day and they’ll be gone because he ate them all.  Man, these taters are good, he says.  They’ve always been good.  Ya can’t beat fresh taters right out the ground, can ya?  No, Big Daddy Farmer, you’re the best Tater Man in the state.

It’s like all these years of me telling him how good they are, and and he never heard a word I’ve said until now.  I bet he had taters in his ears.  Or ears in his tater.

This is Beemer the Cat.  He’s a wild child.  He likes to roam the hood, killing chipmunks and scaring squirrels.

When he’s not doing that, he’s hanging out with his woman next door, Dora.  He and Dora used to hate each other, and I don’t know when that changed, but now he goes to see her every day and they nap together on the screened in porch.   Yeah, a “nap” is what the young people call it these days.   Dora can push the back door open, so when they wake up, she lets her man into the house.  They like to play in the bathtub.  So did me and The Big Daddy until we got stuck one day.  When Beemer gets bored, he comes home for awhile, eats some of his own food, takes a nap, kills a rodent, and then heads back over to Dora’s house.

I’ve never had a cat that wanted to be friends with another cat.  First thing in the morning, he’s crying to get out the door and over to Dora’s house in a big, fat hurry.  I look over in that yard and wonder what in the hell  those two are up to, and they look back like mind your own business Gladys Kravitz.

Either there’s some crazy, wild cat sex going on every day or they’re talking about me.  I’ll never know, but the one thing I’m sure of is that the day you spend two hours writing a story about cats is the day you realize you really need to get a life.

The Big Daddy and I watched the Republican debate tonite.  The whole day was a shitstorm for me, so I thought I’d end it the same way it began.   Since the paid pundits analyze the daylights out of these kinds of things and bore me to death, I decided I’d make notes of my own……….

Ron Paul.  Believes the private sector is capable of regulating itself, and dogs and cats should be living together.

Rick Santorum.  I seriously had no idea he was still in it.  

Newt Gingrich.  Dumped Wife #1 and Wife #2 and loves his country even more than the soulmate he found in wife #3.  

Jon Huntsman.  Overdid the tanning bed and looked like he rolled in a bag of Doritos.

Michelle Bachmann.  Got knocked from the #1 spot this week, but hair is holding up well.

Mitt Romney.  If you put a cap and a neckerchief on him, he’d look just like Thurston Howell III.

Rick Perry.   Smiles more than a preacher with his hand in your pocket.

Herman Cain.  The Pizza Man knows a little something about job creation of the minimum wage kind.

It was some kind of show, and midway through I had to open a window to get some air into that room.  We’ve got a long way to go until next November, but I bet I’ll sleep like a baby knowing that the best and the brightest wealthiest of our patriotic idiotic citizens longs to be my next president.

At the beginning of the year when I left my job at Crazy Town, the plan was to devote a few months to writing and the vintage business that Nancy and I have been working on.  Once we got back from our summer vacation, I would seriously look for employment.  Easier said than done.  I have sent out resumes, filled out applications and inquired at businesses I frequent.   It’s a humbling experience looking for a job, but finally on a tip from a friend, I got an interview at a local flower shop.   Thank ya Jeezus.

And it went like this………….

Tell us why you want to work at a flower shop?   I love flowers, always have.  

Do you know the different varieties of flowers?  I do.  I’m a gardener.

Do you know how to cut flowers?  Yes.  

So you have cut flowers and brought them in your home?  Yes.

And put them in a vase?  Yes.

Do you know that maintaining a flower shop is a lot of work?  I know that maintaining a beautiful space requires plenty of grunt work.

We don’t call it grunt work, we call it Mom work.  Like as the mom you clean the counters, restock, sweep, take the garbage out.  Can you do mom work?   Yes. 

You aren’t a Lake Girl are you?  I don’t know what that means.  Do you like to go to the Lake on the weekends?   I don’t have a lake to go to.  Well, that’s good for us.  Wink.  Haha.  Wink….return serve.

Some of our stock is not bar-coded, so you have to learn the abbreviations to put in the register.  For instance, a short vase of roses would be SVR.  Do you think you could learn that?  Yes.  It can be kind of confusing.  For who?

You’ve had a few jobs over the last ten years.  That’s a red flag for us.  Well, two of those stores closed.  (And if either of them were still open, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.)

The interrogation lasted thirty minutes, with the owner and manager taking notes on everything I said.  At one point, I told them I was from Chicago, which they wrote down on their notepads, as if that had anything to do with selling flowers.  Maybe it did.  Maybe they wanted their next salesperson to be from Cleveland.   Finally, the interview ended and they told me that they had to review their notes over the next few days and would get back to me.  Review away.

The day I interviewed was in the low 100’s – a real scorcher.  When I went into the shop, the metal doorknob was so hot, it burnt my hand.  Sometimes, messages from God are sort of vague, which makes them easy to ignore.  Not this time.

I told The Big Daddy that I thought we should refinance the homestead to lessen the interest rate and term, and crunched the numbers to make the case.  He hates matters like this, but I used to be a loan officer back in the day, and I’m not as skerd as he is.  I stalked the rate page on the bank’s website waiting to pull the trigger, and they almost had me at 4%, but I got the willy nillys when I was doing the application and never finished it. 

A couple of weeks ago, the rate dropped to 3.875%, and I added that to my shopping cart and proceeded to checkout.  The avalanche of paperwork came in the mail and we signed and signed and signed.  Then we copied and copied and copied.  First, we signed that we agreed to have the transcripts of the last two years of taxes sent to them by the IRS, and then we had to copy the last two years of taxes.  That there is what you call redundant.  Copies of the last two pay stubs, drivers license and social security cards?  Check, check, and check.  Just a matter of getting an appraisal and badda-bing, badda-boom, we were good to go.

Mr. Appraiser made his appearance and snooped around the place taking pictures and notes.  A week later, my enthusiasm for this idea was waning after using up four hours and an ink cartridge getting Mr. Potter all he needed to give the A-OK for this.  All looks good, the banker said, and BTW, here’s a copy of your appraisal.

How do I put this………..oh I know, we got a smackdown on the value of the homestead.   I low-balled it on the app, but my low-ball got low-balled.  Son-of-a-bitch, The Big Daddy said.  Times two, BD, times two.  Now we have to wait to see what Mr. Potter has to say about all this, and I figured what’s the point in cleaning the place if it’s not worth much.

Most of the time I have to admit that I’ve got a wonderful life, but I’ll advise that if you’re thinking about doing a refi it’s best to take a deep breath and call on your angels.  It’s one steep drop when you take a ride on the Housing Bubble.

For five years, Mark and I lived in Maryland.  He got a job in Bethesda and we lived about 15 miles away.  The first weekend we were there and not even close to getting settled, we loaded up the stroller with Baby #1, and took the train to the National Mall to see the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.   From there, we walked over to the White House and sat in the summer heat for more than an hour, just staring.

The metro stop for the Mall is Smithsonian Station.    As you make your way up to street level, the first thing you see is the Capitol Building.  I couldn’t even count the number of times we used that stop to sight see or take friends and family for a tour when they were in town.  Dozens and dozens of times.  The first time I saw that building, it took my breath away, and continued to each and every time.

In a few days, Congress will be back in session and we will all bear the burden of their endless arguing.  After a much needed summer break, this weary and worried country will once again be subjected to predictable sound bites and talking points from our politicians.  I don’t know how it is possible for anyone to stand in that building and not feel the spirit of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Bobbie Kennedy or Martin Luther King, and then think it’s acceptable to dishonor it with bad behavior.

Do the nearly 60,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial, the mountain of shoes in the Holocaust Museum, or the watchful gaze of Abraham Lincoln, not echo continuously in the thoughts of those who represent us?  Do the souls of those who fought the good fight ever whisper in their ear, pleading with them to not repeat the mistakes of the past?  The history of our country has required great things from ordinary citizens, and there are countless examples of those who have risen to the task.  While they go about their quiet work, this Congress will put a pin on their lapel and look straight into the camera, while patriotism searches elsewhere for a hero.