SW&OF Seeking Companion

Last week I stood in Sherry’s kitchen watching her Boston terrier, Tessie, play dog pile with her chocolate lab, Chloe.  Despite the David and Goliath match-up,  Tessie was dominating Chloe out of sheer spirit.  Or so it appeared at first.  Then Chloe tiring of the wriggly black and white parasite dangling from her collar, swatted Tessie off, and held her in check with a massive paw.  It was like some Warner Brothers cartoon come to life.  Involuntarily, I began making all kinds of aaawwww and ooohhhh and ain’t-that-cute kinds of noises.  Golly, gosh, gee, I want that kind of fun and friendship for my pooch, I thought.

Ruby’s a lonely hound these days.  Sno’s deterioration has left the old girl unable to do much but sleep all day, leaving Ruby to rely on Tom and me for her companionship.  While we’re good for walks, games of stuffed duck keep-away, and the occasional treat-fest for doggie tricks like skate-boarding (yes, really!) we draw the line at mouth wrestling (at least with Ruby).  So we find ourselves asking the questions many parents of only children do.  Will another be much more work?  Will Ruby be warped if she’s an only?  Will she be a happier, healthier girl if she has a play mate?  Who gets to name it?  Important questions.

After a couple weeks of running on the treadmill only, I got out Thursday in the surprising conditions of sun and mild temperatures.  I jogged my usual route but seemed to see things differently.  Everywhere I looked doggie pals played.  A Jack Russell terrier and some black mutt were rolling on a lawn; a pair of rottie mixes trotted together along their fence line as I passed by; and a couple labs–one black, one yellow–stood shoulder to shoulder behind a gate across the street taking turns barking at me to flee.  It was as if the god of dogs (or God’s dog) decreed that pups need partners.

Being the planners we are, Tom and I pulled out a calendar and began to strategize the best time to add another variable to our lives.  If we get a puppy, one of us will need to be home much of the time for at least a few weeks while the little guy adjusts.  If we get a shelter dog, one of us will need to be home much of the time…well, yes, again there’s that adjustment.  No matter its breed, age, or origins, a new dog will need supervision for a while.  This family planning is serious business.  Somehow I suspect our summer will go to the dogs.

So, timing decided, there is that whole debate to be had about what kind of dog.  My friend Christine prescribed a border terrier.  After a discussion with her, I was intrigued and did some research.  I liked everything I read about the breed–outdoorsy, playful, a good size for Ruby–but one critical attribute:  border terriers are best kept on leashes because they are slaves to their noses.  Where the scent trails, the dog follows.  That’s our biggest battle with Ruby now.  What we really need is a homebody dog.  In fact, we need a rule-oriented, do-good, please-her-parents kind of dog.  We need a dog who’s like me.

The beauty of a blog is that all of you can participate in the conversation.  Help Tom and Susan choose a companion for Ruby.  Think 25-40 lbs.  No shedding (or minimal), neat and tidy, good at scrabble (oh!, sorry, losing sight of whose companion it should be), needing moderate exercise, and well-mannered in social situations (unlike the  ”mean girl”  companion dog of someone I know who reads this blog and shall remain nameless).  We’re definitely open to a dog that’s a couple years old, especially if something is known about its family of origin.  Maybe you know some pepple who have to give up their dog.  Whatever constructive thoughts you have to offer would be helpful.

In the meantime, I’ll keep working on Ruby’s match.com personal ad:  SW&OF Seeks companion.  Must like chasing birds and digging up cat poop.  Relationship will be strictly platonic.  Papers a plus; paper trained a necessity.

A Winter Diet

There was a time in my life when a snowfall inspired delight.  What happened?  This morning’s dusting of the cold white stuff left me cussing under my breath as I slid down the driveway nearly sideways and then found myself parked on highway 512 for a half hour while assorted upside-down SUVs were cleared from the commute’s collective path.  What stirs the heart in December leaves me cold late January.  I plan to hold an umbrella over that fur-bag ground hog next week lest he go looking for a shadow.

Family and friends who know me are used to my transformation every winter from a reasonably cheery woman to Eeyore.  The low light, the constant gray, and the confinement of indoor living, like three haints, hover cheerlessly, whispering their disappointments over and over again, until my face goes all droopy in reply.  The term Seasonal Affective Disorder sounds too pompous for the Drizzle Blues common among Northwesters.  SAD implies something’s wrong, when really, being miserable this time of year signals sanity!  A “disorder” suggests a need for some kind of pharmaceutical.  Whereas the blues is permission to wallow. 

The risk of living with one’s demons is that on bad days they take you to  lunch at the wrong places.  We went to McDonalds today, the blues and I.  Just as I noticed my waist bands had loosened up following the Christmas expansion, I sabotaged myself by seeking comfort in the Childhood trinity of mcburger, mcfries and mcshake–chocolate.  (Some of my readers are now shaking their heads in disbelief that Organics Girl would sink so low.  I’m so ashamed.)  I even ate slowly, knowing that in doing so I couldn’t later convince myself that I was in a hurry and not thinking.  No it was conscious behavior, or as conscious as I get this time of year.

As I spent the afternoon in my shadowy great room, ignoring emails and writing about morose topics, reflecting upon the hopelessness of the economy and the hairball of public education, watching the gray light slowly draw back its fingers from the slats of the wood blinds, I wondered if a glass of red wine at three o’clock would make it hard to run on the treadmill at four.  I decided not to experiment, and promised myself a glass and a half if I even stepped on the treadmill.  Like they say, The Only Way Through the Tunnel is Forward.  (Really, that sounds like some quotable bit you’d put in a fortune cookie or hang on an office wall accompanying a suitable and inspiring image of a tunnel with a bright light at the end.  But the truth is, going back out the way you came in is probably a better bet.)  Maybe if I put the wine in my squeeze bottle, I can drink it while I treadmill.

I suppose I’d better wrap up this distinctly self-pitying blog entry, get on the treadmill and plan dinner.  Given the food pyramid and our locovore values, we’ll be having fifteen kinds of root vegetables for dinner to round out my diet for the day.  Perhaps there’s some sunshine packed into the golden flesh of a sweet potato.  Or maybe a good dousing of butter and brown sugar will help.

Fog is the Slowest Rain

Not long ago, our local weather reporters–long on good looks and short on good information–forecast a week of cold, sunny weather.  Fifty percent accurate: they got the cold right, but a pesky inversion resulted in only vague evidence of a sun existing at all, given the 1000 denier fog blanketing the whole Puget Sound area.  For the fifth or sixth day in row now, I have wanted to go for a walk or a run and have feared that unless I tied one end of rope to my porch, I’d never find my way back again.  Today I’m going anyway, and I’ll drop a trail of doggie treats behind me so Ruby can lead us back by her nose…er, stomach.

As we head up the hill, Ruby seems as hesitant as I feel in the fog.  Usually, taking Ruby for a walk is akin to taking a hurricane for a walk.  It’s not that she’s untrained; in fact, Ruby has a half dozen or so certificates that attest to her exposure to training.  Rather, I think Ruby believes she is a sled dog who is supposed to pull her burden–me–to her destination.  No amount of “intermittent positive reinforcement” has convinced Ruby that walking beside me, looking up adoringly, even for a zuke (expensive morsel of doggie comestibles), is more rewarding that hauling her arse toward the horizon with me flapping about like a flag behind her.  Today, though, she moseys along the margin of the road, leaving slack in the leash as she snuffles holes in the ditch bank for voles and mice.  Instead of hell-bent, our walk is contemplative.

By the time we reach the top of the hill, a suggestion of sun brightens the fog a bit.  But water vapor has beaded up on my gor-tex jacket and fleece toque, and I am cold.  I turn Ruby around, and whatever quelled her enthusiasm earlier, fog or just her mood, she is revived, and like a water-skier on a smooth, icy lake, I am pulled to and fro across her wake holding on to hold steady. 

We arrive back home twenty minutes after we began, damp, breathless, and begrudgingly invigorated.  I pop a last treat into Ruby’s mouth before putting her into the kennel.  Sno lifts her tired old head and blinks to acknowledge our return, but has nothing to say beyond that.  Before going in the house, I take stock of my sodden gardens wearing their January sack cloth.  Only the coral bark maple glows with color, drops of moisture hanging from every branch like crystal beads.  Fog is the slowest rain, but rain it is.  Weather report from here:  wetness followed by moisture with intermittent periods of damp.

And a Good Time Was Had by All

Despite the threat of contagion, the family assembled at our house Saturday night to clink lemon drops in honor of Mom’s birthday.  Nearly fifty years ago, Mom couldn’t have imagined the crew she’d eventually lay claim to: daughters and their husbands and grandsons and granddaughter.  While my brother stays far from the fray in the nether lands of Florida, Shelley, Susie, Sherry, and now Shea, too, comprise, according to my husband, an estrogen onslaught that only he and his fellow brothers-in-law can appreciate. 

Over forty years of we three sisters fellowshipping and feuding, battling and bonding, a complex, highly refined relationship has evolved.  At the table Saturday night, in the pause between words in a conversation, we morph from allies to adversaries.  In a breath, two unite to scold the one.  I lament the underdone pork roast, and two sisters, in chorus, “It’s just fine.  It looks good.  Just chop it up, and it’ll work.”  Moments later, Sherry and I join forces to assure Shelley that some remark made about her value for always looking one’s best is a compliment rather than a criticism.  Reassured by our volubility, I’m sure, Shelley uses the shelter of that reassurance to take a poke at me for the condition of the tortillas, which had begun to disintegrate from too much time in the oven.  A rejoinder from Sherry:  “Doesn’t matter what they look like, they taste great!”

We three haven’t always been friends.  Like most siblings, we alternately competed and colluded to get what we wanted from the limited resources we believed our parents safe-guarded.  In our early years of adulthood, we pursued periods of detente.  Babies often brought us together, moving into our houses, pursuing a college degree–those big demands on life that also demanded help when life was hardest.  And I’m not talking about the scrub-your-kitchen kind of help–though my moving boxes have been unloaded, house after house, by my sisters and Mom.  But as we have aged, we have come to count on each other to help with the emotional rigging, to remind us that we are internally strong and  externally supported.  Recently, when I was waiting to hear the results of a biopsy screening for cancer, It was my mom and sisters who, though they may have been worrying, behaved as if there was no way on earth anything would be wrong.  We’re a healthy lot and everyone’s fine!  To outsiders this might sound like stoicism or denial or even heartlessness, but for me it’s the comfort of how we were raised and appears to be a self-fulling prophecy.

 As my mother left Saturday night, she told me how much she enjoyed her birthday party, especially because we three daughters make her laugh.  I imagine she sees through our entertaining trio schtick, though, to the agreement we three made, tacitly, sometime in the past few years, that we are each other’s anchors.  While differences in style, personalities, and preferences may trip us into a kerfuffle from time to time, we are–and have been–the most steady presences in each other’s lives…and will be.

Moral Dilemmas and Birthday Parties

Mom had her birthday yesterday, and we, her West Coast kids, plan to celebrate on Saturday here at my house.  For some time now I have been advertising to anyone interested that I want a good excuse to make a fabulous coconut cake with lemon curd filling.  Mom’s birthday answers the call.  When I offered to my mum and sisters to host a party, complete with cake and a bit of dinner (although, as is our practice, no one shows her mug around here without full hands, so Shelley and Sherry are adding to the table, too), I had no one turning me down.  All sounds easy and uneventful, eh?  How could this be blog material?  Well, as with all good stories, there’s a problem.  I caught a cold.

If you are not a member of my family, you are probably still wondering what the problem is.  Clearly, a cook with a cold goes to bed and everyone else goes to Red Robin.  But not this family.  Of the many attributes my sisters and I share, goal-driven and sugar-fueled are two of them.  Once I committed to making that cake–and hosting the party–I as good as signed a pact in blood.  No mere cold was going to excuse me or dissuade my sugar junkie sibs.  (Oh, did I mention I plan to make lemon drops, too?  What frailty does this reveal in us?)  A promise is a promise, or really in our case, a mention is a promise when it comes to dessert.

To be forthcoming, and to protect myself from future vituperation should anyone’s nose begin to run as they back out of my driveway following the party, I told Mom and sisters that I now have a cold.  Will they come on Saturday and eat food I have prepared while under the influence of virus?  Will they swallow repeated forkfuls of fluffy, white and yellow confection knowing it may harbor about two weeks of future misery for them, and I’m not even talking about calories.  A stoic fatalism prevailed in their replies, and all will be here on Saturday.  In the face of economic catastrophe, the depths of winter, and the post-holiday blues, what’s a little cold, I guess?  Let them eat cake, I say.

Reply to the Parent

When I began this blog several weeks ago, I imagined it to be a great excuse to exercise my writing muscle and to stay connected in conversation with our far flung family and friends.  To my surprise, I received a request to post a comment today from a parent of one of the boys who was involved in the apparent ski theft I wrote about earlier in the week.  To my greater surprise, that particular post, if one were googling for information about Crystal, skis, and theft, ranks very high among Google hits.  Thus the parent made contact with this blog.

When someone makes a comment on this blog, that comment comes to me first, and I moderate it, meaning I choose to post it or not.  After I approve a person’s comments once or twice, then their comments post automatically.  In the case of the parent, I have chosen not to post but to respond here.

In his comments, the parent recounts the story of how the collection of skis got to Buck Creek.  The parent explains that, according to his son, he wasn’t stealing them, but that he had apparently seen them lying around after hours, so he gathered them up and put them, and a Crystal sign, in his Jeep, intending to turn them in the next day when he reported for work.  Unfortunately, he was late for work  the next day from his Buck Creek campsite and forgot the skis.  The parent goes on to say that his son is a great kid who has never been in trouble and that this incident, now an arrest,  has cost the boy his job, is “tearing the family apart,” and no one will let his son tell his story.

To the parent:  as parents who raised two boys to adulthood, our hearts go out to you.  You say in your comment that you want the truth.  We empathize with that.  All good parents want to believe the words of the children they have raised to be ethical–we get that, too.  As two observers, we can only say what we saw and heard, and we both reached the conclusion the situation was suspicious before we even broached the subject with one another.  As citizens, we reported what we saw and left it to the authorities to sort out.   You also ask if there has been theft before.  We know of other thefts in the past.  I think it’s a chronic challenge at all ski resorts to keep people’s equipment safe.  Most resorts offer various protections, but people being what they are often just stick their stuff in the snow while they go get lunch.  Theft is common in busy, peopled environments.

We are sad that your family is hurting.  We’ve been there too.  We hope you find the answers you need in this difficult time, but are unable to help you beyond what I shared in retelling our story in this blog.

January Showers Bring May Spinach

The man who’d come to repair our heat pump (again) stood on the porch dripping like Michael Phelps.  Necessary to the functioning of the heat pump (which isn’t functioning) is its location outside.  Terribly inconvenient for someone trying to put it back in the game at 4:00 PM on a Tuesday in January.  I must say the repairman, as he shook first one limb and then another to reduce his saturation load, was pretty pleasant.  But then he stands to gain $100.00 per hour fixing our heat pump in the rain, and his message to me tonight is after this second visit in as many weeks he now knows what part is needed, and he’ll be back once it’s been shipped. 

The dark, damp days of January are bad enough even without heat.  But somehow a simple remark Mom made the other day has me focusing on the future, in spite of the fact that today my ears are dripping because I’m wicking water up through my toes.  Mom said, “I got a Territorial Seed Company catalog in the mail,”  and suddenly the two of us were thrust into our  futures of trellises of green beans, patches of pumpkins and buckets of freshly dug potatoes.  Gardening always begins as a vision, and the capacity of the Northwest to sprout just about anything–check under your bed–is what allows me to forgive it these dismal winter days.

Under the spell of the Territorial Seed Company catalog, Mom and I ping ponged ideas for our gardens.  Tom and I will grow assorted pots and barrels at our place but we’ll also collaborate with Mom over at hers to grow vegetables that require room to stretch and grow.  Feathery spinach and little gem lettuces line up nicely in planter boxes just a skip or two from our back door, but those peregrinating squashes would be squashed in our tiny garden space.  They’ll enjoy rambling at Mom’s.  If we’re feeling charitable, we’ll plant corn.  Given Mom’s previous experience, we may have to share it with the raccoons.  We’ll also set up several tee pees of climbing green beans at Mom’s, even though Tom and I had great success with green beans at our house last summer.  To our fascination, two varieties planted separately weren’t content to keep their pollen to themselves and produced a third, hybrid variety.  Gardens are sexy places. 

For Mom and me, talking gardens-to-be is theraputic when the weather outdoors seems to defy any hope of sun and bloom.  The thought of sprouts and buds and eventually fruit animates us, draws us out of the semi-hybernation state we seem to slip into with lack of light and day after day of gray.  Now that Christmas lists are crumpled and tossed, we have pulled out a fresh sheet of paper.  Our new list reads:  butter lettuce, dwarf romaine, red oak leaf, two kinds of spinach, green onions, snap peas…

Tom Schmidt, Citizen Detective!

Snow, snow and more snow!  Well, if you can’t beat it, ski it, we decided, and off to the mountains Tom and I schooshed last Saturday.  Our plan was to have a little high fat breakfast at the Kettle in Enumclaw and then buzz up the highway to our favorite–and convenient–Nordic ski area, Huckleberry Creek.  As is our practice, Tom and I got up later than we planned, then bumped and thumped our way around the house and garage trying to find gloves, boots, liners, mufflers, and other assorted ski accessories we failed to round up–as we had planned–the night before.  Predictably, but annoying nonetheless, we managed to get out of the house by about 9:30 AM, and out of the Kettle more than an hour after that.  Our day of skiing was melting away, but not the snow.  By nearly noon, when we finally arrived at Forest Service Road 72, the turn-off to Huckleberry Creek, the true early risers had filled up what little parking was available.  Usually, the parking is ample at the trail head, but because of the copious snow, the parking lot had not been cleared, leaving only a dozen spots at the entrance, now crowded with subarus and four-wheel drive pickups.  We took our toyota down the road, wondering what our alternatives might be.

Another ten miles or so toward Mount Rainier, we saw the turn-off to Buck Creek.  Since this area is popular with snowmobilers and other motor-toy gearheads, we would usually avoid it.  Determined to have fun in spite of our setbacks (to be honest, Tom was determined.  Susan would have been content to continue pouting for the rest of the day), we pulled into the turn-off.  The area was pretty much car free, except for a chained-up Volkswagon van trying to back out of the turn-off.  Across the bridge leading from the turn-off was a Mac truck-sized Potelco service truck blocking the entrance to the recreation area.  Tom talked to the second generation hippie kid driving the van and learned that the parking area was closed off because of downed trees and wires.  Not to be deterred, Tom decided that parking along the road worked just fine, and we could ski across the bridge and skirt the coned off “danger” area.  Being the cheery kind of person I am under those circumstances, I grumbled unintelligibly while I put on my gear and imagined all the horrors that could befall us when flouting danger.

Suited up and skis attached, we took off over the bridge, a structure barely recognizable encased in weeks of accumulated ice and snow.  Just crossing it lightened my mood since the bridge had that kind of winter wonderland cum Dr. Zhivago theme going on.  We’d have a nice ski after all, I believed.  At the end of the bridge we turned left toward the trees and the airstrip to avoid the coned area and were surprised by a cleared parking lot entirely occupied by one truck, two young men, a campfire, and a  strafing of trash.  Stuck in three feet of snow near the truck were about ten sets of downhill skis in a variety of sizes.  It was as if a family of alpine skiers had chucked their stuff and disappeared.  Weird.  The young men, likely in their twenties, greeted us dully for a moment, then turned their attention back to their campfire.  Slumped in camp chairs and snacking on baked potato chips (baked chips?  Boys?), their lassitude appeared incongruent with the brisk outdoor conditions…and the skis.  Maybe they had already spent the morning on the slopes and poky Tom and I were looking at folks already done with their daily exercise.  We kicked our skis on by the boys and headed into the woods, sighting the white snake of a trail slithering among a stand of dark firs. 

Tom and I skied through the woods to the airstrip and then along its length for about an hour.  Coming to the far end, and seeing no other trail, we decided that we’d at least met our goal of skiing, though a brief run, and should get back to our exposed truck at the side of the road.   We found our trail through the woods, and came upon the young men’s camp once again.  Tom stopped and struck up a conversation.

“So, you guys been skiing?”

“Yeah, kinda…we wait until Crystal’s closed and then hike up and ski down,” said the more corpulent of the two boys. 

“Oh!  So you like to ‘earn your turns’,” said Tom, using an expression familiar to telemark skiers who hike the back country and then ski down.  The young men looked at him quizzically.

“Uh…I dunno.  I”m new at this,” sullenly said a dirty blond head sunk into a black parka.

The boys really weren’t interested in talking; when Tom asked if either of them telemarked, he got little response.  We said some sort of “have a good day,” and they waved us on.  Tom and I were back at the truck in a snap, loading our gear and peeling off layers of fleece, now sweaty from our ski.  Once we were packed up, stripped down, and ready to pull out, I said to Tom, “Something’s not right about that scene back there.”

“What do you think is going on?” he asked.

“They’re stealing skis from Crystal,” I asserted.

“Yeah, that’s my impression, too.  Why would anyone have a ‘Load Here’ sign from a chair lift?”

“Oh!  I didn’t even notice that,” I said, now recalling the yellow sign by the skis.

“I’m going to turn them in to the police,” Tom said.

“What?  We don’t really know they’ve done anything.  There might be an explanation for what we saw,” I said weakly, hating the idea of pointing a finger at some kids who just seemed suspicious.  After twenty-five years of working in schools, most kids seem suspicious to me.

Tom conceded that we didn’t really see anything illegal, but he hates the idea of anyone using wilderness land for dubious purposes.  He was certain that the boys were a couple knuckleheads up to no good.  I concurred, and speculated there was another accomplice.  Someone shipping the skis down from Crystal.

Not more than a mile down the road, we spotted a Forest Service Law Enforcement truck pull off the road on our right.  We pulled off after him, and Tom told the officer what we had seen.  He took Tom’s name and cell phone number and turned his truck around.  Tom and I drove on toward Green Water, and then home.  A short ski behind us, but now we know where our ski stuff is and maybe we’ll get on our way earlier for the next outing.

By the time we had unloaded and cleaned up at home, Tom received a phone call from the officer.  We had nailed it.  The two boys at Buck Creek and a third, an employee of Crystal Mountain Ski Resort, had been running a ski theft ring.  The situation was pretty much as we had surmised.  Kudos to Tom for being willing to report.  I’m sure if I were alone, I’d have dithered over that decision, afraid of tattling based on an impression.  But Tom was resolute from the start.  His passion for the sanctity of the outdoors wouldn’t allow him to dismiss an odd scene as nothing more than an odd scene.  If I could sew, I’d make him a brown suit and green cape, in gore-tex, to wear as we hike, paddle and ski.  Tom Schmidt, Nature’s Super Hero…or at least mine ( :