Tales from the Shark Tank

Mostly, I’ve noticed, our resident deer show little to no interest in my more aromatic herbs. The thyme is safe; so are the chives and mints and basil and calendula.

The rosemary, as it turns out, is not. Or at least it isn’t safe from the babies.

I put my rosemary, yarrow, and assorted mints (peppermint and lemon mint) into the ground yesterday. The yarrow is still there, as are the mints. The rosemary? Not so much. My garden had an encounter with the deer at dawn this morning; I saw them when I got up to answer nature’s call and looked out the window. I watched as the adults sniffed at the various plants, took tiny tastes of the yarrow and spit them out (there were leaf bits on the ground when I went out later to water), and then wandered on. The fawn followed their example, with one exception: mom sniffed a small plant and passed it by, but baby sniffed and then took one bite. It being a new plant, that’s pretty much all there was. I wasn’t sure what had been eaten, only that something had.

I found out when I looked after J. was on the bus. My rosemary is an ex-plant. Barely a stub remains to show where it was planted. There is a marking stake, put up by anything I plant now because otherwise the landlord is entirely too enthusiastic with his mower, but nothing there for it to mark. I know human babies put anything in their mouths, including things adults wouldn’t dream of. I guess that extends to little deer as well.

We have been enormously pleased with our boychick’s sudden leap in maturity over the last couple of weeks. He is remembering his responsibilities without reminders, gathering his things for school in the morning before he is told, doing his homework before asking for a treat like a run to the beach on a hot afternoon, turning his homework in at school without reminder and bringing home the books he’ll need without forgetting one. Sure he’s still distractible; that comes with the territory, but overall he’s made one of his quantum leaps. And the nature of his playing, too, has shown the shift.

But then he does something to remind us that he’s still our little guy. We ran him a bath with bubbles, and he had washed and was playing. I was doing dishes when I heard “Mom, look at me!” And there he was, festooned in bubbles, doing his best imitation of a cartoon monster, roaring at me with his arms out. “Eek! It’s a naked-boy-monster!” elicited a grin, another roar, and “I am the naked-boy-monster-zombie, and I’m going to get you. RRAAAR!” Whereupon I shrieked appropriately and then sent the naked-boy-monster-zombie back to rinse the bubbles off and dry himself, because it was bedtime.

Bubble-covered boy-monsters are a lot of fun. I’m glad he hasn’t quite outgrown that yet.

Dear world,

I’ve managed to put my foot firmly in my mouth on a daily basis, consistently with one or another of the people I most care about, for the past several weeks (at least). I don’t mean to be thoughtless, or clueless, or tactless; I just don’t seem to be capable of holding two thoughts at once right now, and the thing I’m saying and its effect are two thoughts. Usually I figure out what I said that I shouldn’t have about a day after I’ve said it.

I’m sorry. I wish I could promise not to swallow my feet any further, but until I get my brain back that isn’t something I’ll be able to keep.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S. Anyone seeing my brain wandering around is kindly requested to tell it to come home.

As of this morning, the chosen family now boasts another attorney. Including spouses and S.O.s, I believe this brings the count up to six.

We have our very own school of sharks!

My favorite brand new attorney has an interview for a job in the field he wants on Tuesday. They’d have had him in on Monday, but he has a previous commitment. He’s being sworn into the Indiana Bar.

Pleased for him and proud of him? Oh, just so you’d notice.

I’ll be darned. Both my doc and my reading led me to think it would be several months before things were better. That made sense to me; hormone balancing as always tricky, and made trickier by some of the other things I take medication for.

It may take awhile to fine tune, but it isn’t going to take that long for matters to improve. It isn’t taking a week. Three days in, the difference is night and day. Not only have I stopped crying at the drop of a pin, but I am, as I type this, focused enough to multitask a bit, writing this and listening to a CLE video simultaneously. I don’t think I could have done that yesterday, even. I certainly couldn’t on Wednesday, or any time before.

I suppose I should have expected it. I’ve always been vulnerable to my own hormones; it follows that I would be very responsive to hormone treatment. But I didn’t, and I’m so pleased I could dance.

I went into surgery thinking that since I was already past menopause, losing the entire system wouldn’t make a noticeable difference. I was so wrong I can’t begin to quantify the wrongness. Surgical menopause in nothing like normal menopause. Normal menopause is a bumpy downhill ride, but the hormones are still there, just in reduced amount. Surgical menopause is like jumping off a cliff, with large rocks at the bottom. Not only is it not fun for me, it isn’t fun for the people who have to deal with me either. I have a temper that would do credit to a Tasmanian devil and less self control or attention span than a toddler. I really would rather not share the same planet with myself, much less be in the same room.

I’ve been in to the doctor about varying forms of parachute, and while it will take some adjustment and tuning, I have cause to be optimistic. But if the blogging is a little thin for awhile, now you know why.

And now I think I’ll go cuddle my cat, assuming she’s willing to hold still. A purring cat is good for the soul.

Yesterday evening, with my husband’s active encouragement, I betook myself into Chicago for a house-concert by a folk group out of Minneapolis. Several friends were supposed to meet me there, not one of whom actually made it, but life’s like that sometimes. The concert itself was very nice, but the adventure lay in the drive to get there.

The event was in Waukegan, which is way the heck and gone north in the Chicago suburbs, actually into the next county. I made it through the chaos of Dan Ryan construction traffic, only to find I-94 suddenly clogging up somewhat further north. At about the same time, I noticed billows of very black smoke arising from not too far off, and within a few seconds began to hear sirens from various directions. As I happened to be right by an exit, I decided that the better part of valor was finding an elsewhere to be, and got off.

So here I am, loose in the Chicago suburbs with no concept of where I am, and only the haziest of ideas of where I’m going. I knew it was north, and that once I’d gone far enough I’d be headed east from the highway, so I went east and basically took the first really big street I found headed North. And then I drove. And drove. And drove. I figured I had to be long past the disaster, whatever it was, but I could not find my way back to that highway. Finally, already 45 minutes late (when I’d given myself an extra half-hour for the drive), I decided to obtain expert assistance.

So I stopped at the next establishment I passed that I thought would sell maps, which turned out to be a Walgreens. Three things happened.

The first was that the clerk told me where to find maps, then when I came back with one and said “show me where on this I am” said “this isn’t a good map. Get that other one. It’s got all the streets.” The other one was also about half the price of the one I’d grabbed.

Second was the woman behind me in line, whom I’d guess was about 60. She turned to a man whom I presume was her husband and said, in horribly aggrieved tones “See? SHE asked for directions!” I couldn’t help it; I cracked up. I do wish I knew the story behind that!

And third was the woman who had been ahead of me in line, who looked as though she had the resources to spend much of both time and money in looking no more than 35. She asked me where I was trying to get to, and where I’d started, looking somewhat startled when I said Indiana. “Oh, no wonder you’re confused!” she said. And then “I’m going that way. Why don’t you just follow me to the highway, and I’ll wave when you need to get on?” And so she did, not only leading me once, but when I took the wrong on-ramp (I figured it out immediately, but there’s no way to back up on those things) following and overtaking me, then leading me to the ramp back north before waving me on. That was so far above and beyond the call of anything, including kindness to a total stranger, I haven’t words for it.

So I got where I was going, a mere hour and a quarter late, stayed to the end and through socializing time, and then headed home. It was fun. I may do it again sometime. Who knows? Maybe next time it will be the event itself that is worth blogging, and not the adventures of getting there in the first place.

Last fall, when Tornado was a half-grown kitten, my friend Rana commented on a post about sewing with cats. She said “Wait until said kitten learns to to use fore paws to turn door handles the way the late Mr. Riffraff did.”

There must be something to the belief that saying a thing brings it into being, because Tornado has learned exactly that. She turns door knobs with forepaws to open latched doors. She hooks forepaws under unlatched doors to pull them open. She hooks claws around the tiny opening at the corner of the frame to move the screen door a fraction of an inch, then uses paw for leverage and nose for guidance to open that. Due to allergies, we have tried to keep her out of our bedroom, but that is becoming increasingly difficult. At this point, I think the only thing that would keep her out is to lock the door. That has two problems. One is that we don’t want to lock out our son, and the other is that I have minimal faith that she will not learn to use a screwdriver as a key – or which screwdriver to use.

Now I know why they’re called “cat burglars”.

It seems I slandered my son inadvertently when I said he’d left the screen door open enough for the cats to escape. He didn’t; the cat did it for herself.

I just caught my small black girl in the process of opening the screen door, having left the glass door open to the lovely evening frog-and-cricket chorus. I hadn’t thought it possible; that door is tricky for human hands, having to be balanced just right to slide at all. But there she was, claws hooked against the metal frame, carefully pulling it back a fraction at a time.

Too clever by half, my Tornado!