Survivor Woman

We were talking with our friends, Mick and Jeanette, last night over dinner, discussing the economy and possible strategies for saving money on food items. Husband found this to be the opportune moment to do his gig on how he loves to eminate Bear Grylls and Les Stroud, the Survivorman-types.

"I've eaten wasp larvae!" he stated proudly, "And I found it to be very nutty."

I repressed the desire to say 'you are what you eat.'

"It was delicious!" he went on, "so sweet and quite satisfying."

Jeanette was looking across the table at us in undisguised horror. Unabashed, Husband was elaborating on what items could be used as food, should the need arise. It is true that once on a camping trip to impress my teenage sons, I ate a winged ant. I mentioned this and how humorous it had been to me that when the boys did it, each time they talked I could see a stray whispy ant leg on their tongues. For some reason the legs were difficult to scrape off, after the fact....

Jeanette, at this point, was absolutely recoiling in horror, and giving me a look that said, "I guess I've never really known you, all these years....I thought we were the same..."

Mick amiably joined in the conversation and contributed the several food sources that he knew of that might not be considered as such in the course of day to day living. Jeanette turned to him as if he had just grown another head. It was clear that she wanted out of the conversation.

When Husband revisited the exquisite taste of the wasp larvae, Jeanette had had enough. She took a deep breath, and blurted out, "Couldn't ya just....DIE?"

Guess she won't be drinking camel urine anytime soon....

Funky Chickens

I have a little Texan friend named Penny. Nothing amuses me more than to hear her tell a tale, or to listen to her rant when she gets all riled up about something...it's just plain funny.

I've known Penny for a while...we'd been neighbors in the town I live in now, when we first moved there, eleven years ago. Then she and her husband, Ray, moved out to the Country and I hardly saw her anymore. Then, O Joy of Joys, WE found a place out in the country, too....only two minutes away from Penny's place...(she and I timed it).

Not only was she interesting to listen to; she was interesting to observe. I was at Penny's home one day around lunch time. She has four kids; and school was out for the summer so they were all there for the day. She lined up the herd at thier bar stools and was 'fixin' to feed them. We gabbed while she made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, lining them up on the countertop. Before she handed each one to the designated kid, she stood up on her tip-toes, and with both hands, put all of her weight onto the sandwich...in a move similar to CPR.

I was amazed...why would someone take a perfectly good sandwich, and flatten it like that...was this some weird kind of a punishment? Had this kid made her mad or something? But I watched, mouth agape, as she did it again a second, third, and fourth time. When I found my voice I croaked out, "Wh....wh....WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THOSE????"

Penny turned around, calm as a summer's morning, and spoke to me as if she were talking about clipping coupons or some such task, "They're smashed sandwiches." And she left it at that, and continued on with our previous conversation. But I couldn't leave it alone.

"Why did you smash the sandwiches?"

"They're 'Smashed Sandwiches'," she said again.

"But....WHY?"

Penny looked at me like, 'doesn't everyone do this?' and said, "The kids won't eat them if they're not smashed. They don't like the fluffy bread. It makes them gag."

I didn't know what else to say. I told my kids about it, and they tried it....but flat bread makes THEM gag.

Not long after the smashed sandwhich incident, Penny began talking about things they used to do as children at her family home in Texas for fun. She mentioned hypnotising the chickens.

"WHAT?....." I gasped, "You're kidding me...you can't hypnotize....foul....!"

"Yes you can, we did it all the time," she drawled.

Since we had chickens at our house, I asked her to come over and show me, for proof. She was over in two minutes. None of our children were around to witness two mommies leaning over a chicken, performing an odd experiment. But this was what it was like to hang out with Penny....we did strange things all the time, and while I'd be laughing to myself, she always thought it was 'normal'....part of her charm.

"....So ya go like this..." she was saying, holding a chicken's head down to the gravel driveway's surface, "You draw a line right in front of it for a while, real slow-like, in the dirt. Just keep doin' that over 'n' over, 'n' the chicken's eyes'll git real glassy-like..." She ran her finger in the dirt repeatedly. I was skeptical; waiting for the punchline....I just knew it was some sort of a joke she was playing on me, Penny was like that.

But after a moment, she stopped drawing in the dirt and took her other hand off the chicken's head. It stayed there. It wasn't moving. I could see that it was still breathing, but other than that; still as a statue. One of the more amazing things I've seen in my lifetime, really. She stood up, rubbing her hands together, proudly.

"See, I told ya I could do it," she said, "NOW, it's very important to know how to 'snap' them out of it...er else y'all will just have this zombie chicken runnin' around yer yard..."

And with that, she leaned down close to the chicken's head again, and suddenly clapped her hands loudly together, while simultaneously shouting out, "YOU'RE A CHICKEN!"

The chicken 'came to', shook its head a few times, and walked away like a drunken sailor.

I tried it again, on a different chicken, once Penny drove away. I just had to see if I could hypnotize an animal. I could.

But my rathermost large mistake was that of sharing my newfound skill with the kids, who began hypnotizing chickens left and right. When we got our chickens, we had twelve. After the hypnotizing tutorial; we had two.

It seemed that one fateful night when I allowed the kids to sleep out in the yard on the trampoline in the delightfully warm summer weather, TJ got the bright idea to hypnotize them, all at once. Jordan and Sis were accomplices. They did very well, hypnotized ten at a time (they couldn't find the other two)...they just forgot that one little detail of waking them back up. By morning, there were feathers and beaks scattered all over the lawn....the foxes must have thought they'd died and gone to Heaven when they happened upon our yard. There were ten sitting 'ducks' (chickens, in actuality) for them to 'feast till they couldn't feast no more' on.

"HOW could you have slept through the slaughter of TEN animals, just a few feet from where you were?" I asked, bewildered. "What, are you ZOMBIES or something?"

".....no, we were....hypnotized!'

Oh, good grief. Who is your mother again? Didn't you say her name was....Penny?

Love That Dog!

I've heard it said that of all the things a person misses, they'll miss their dog the most.

I miss my dog.

Callie is an Australian Shepherd. She's black and white and looks more like a Border Collie, but isn't.

Some folks at church were selling their dog's latest batch of puppies for a few hundred apiece. I wanted a dog in the worst way. It seemed to put an exclamation point on a REAL home. A dog meant stability and family and....everything good.

We'd just finished building our country home. It took eleven and a half long months. During that time we'd endured not having a kitchen for three of those months. (My kids would no longer eat hot dogs, fast food, or anything microwaveable.) During the summer months, we lived in a camp trailer behind the house, with the boys spreading out into a tent off to the side. I had no clothes dryer; we dried them outdoors, weather permitting. I did my dishes for a time at the spigot by the well. It had been a tough year. If any family deserved a dog, well, we did.

So I picked up the pup on Christmas Eve, and tried to hide her upstairs in the bedroom, when the kids were fast asleep. The very first thing she did was to make herself comfortable right on top of the ExMan's pillow. The very next thing she did was to urinate all over said pillow. So, for me, it was love right from the start. Who knew that he'd turn out to be a schmuck after all? Callie did, that's who. They say that really young children and dogs have an uncanny ability to judge people. Peeing on his pillow? Sounds right to me, Callie. Good, good dog! Let's see that trick again!

I put an enormous red bow on her head and brought her downstairs on Christmas morning. There are no words to express the elations emanating from my children. They were enamored of her, as was I. She was smart as a whip and had a spunky little personality....and, curiously...she was very....snouty. As in, she used her 'snout' a lot. To unearth things, and almost as another limb. Like an ardvaark. It was funny to watch.

Being an outside dog, and living on a farm, she learned the parameters of the acreage and rarely crossed them. We didn't have fences up yet, and so I was impressed with this. I was irritated, however, when we rode the four wheelers around the track we'd constructed, taking them over the jumps at high speeds, only to find Callie waiting for us at the end of the track, too late to stop sometimes. I ran right smack dab over her, once, and felt terrible about it. It seemed like every time we turned a corner, there she was. It was causing me to take oaths.

It wasn't until the trampoline incident...Callie had leapt up onto the trampoline to join the kids up there, much to their delight... (where she was actually nipping the kids in the leg to collect them into a tight, circular group), that it dawned on me. I smacked my hand on my forehead....of COURSE, of course! She's a herding dog! She was HERDING us!

The appearance of a dozen chickens solved that problem. Callie had her work cut out for her, trying to keep them all confined to one little circle....all the livelong day. We all felt somewhat sorry for those chickens....acres and acres to roam on, and the dog made them stay in just one tiny spot, all the time. She was very O.C.D. that way.

Adding to her joy was the adoption of two turkeys, male and female, named Tom and Girl Turkey. Then, the ducks...also a couple....Daffy and Darla. Callie was in her absolute element.

She was an ideal dog, in every way but one. Scads of room to relieve herself, and she had but one favorite spot. The very middle of the very front of our yard. And not only that...she never failed to squat but at the exact, precise moment that a car was driving by.

It began to be a joke among the neighbors. Need to find their house? Just look for the black and white dog, doing its 'business' front and center of the yard!

I got fed up with it once, and yelled (as if she understood) out the front door while she was in the very act, with an audience driving slowly by in a roadster on a Sunday drive....."WHAT!" I yelled at Callie, "Have you no PRIDE, Dog?"

She merely glanced at me. She was too busy...concentrating.

"We have a BACK YARD, too, ya know!" I hollered. She didn't seem very interested at the moment.

The only thing I could do, after years of trying to dissuade Callie from using the front yard...was to own it. We had a farm with a publicly defacating dog. A ranch, really, with all of the animals grazing and roaming (when Callie wasn't looking). In my mind the idea was forming for an archway at the head of the driveway, with a lovely sign, in fancy letters. Perhaps if we put it into a foreign language....like Spanish...it would sound better.

"Squatting Dog Ranch" was what I'd wanted to name the place. But that was hard to translate out. So, I tried, "Ranch of the Dog that Squats". Which in Spanish is:

"Rancho del Perro que se Pone en Cuclillas".

A bit long, but there you have it. I thought it had a certain 'ring' to it. Not unlike the urination ring that was forming in the dead-center of my front yard. Perhaps we could further assist her, by painting a bull's-eye in her usual spot, I suggested to ExMan. He didn't think that was very funny. Being the private type, this blatant display of Callie's bodily functioning was extremely painful for him. At church and around the area, he'd been teased mercilously. Somehow, that made me love Callie just that much more.

Years later, when the kids and I made a run for it, needing to leave the situation at the 'Ranch', we took our Callie with us. She spent one miserable day and night in the little square, fenced backyard that didn't have any foul at all to chase...and we knew. You can take the country kids out of the country...but you can't take the dog. It would have been animal cruelty. The farm was all she'd ever known. We brought her back and released her onto her beloved pasture, with her friends the chickens, the turkeys, and the ducks....and her favorite yellow spot on the lawn. It was where she belonged, after all.

I haven't seen Callie in a long, long time. I heard that she wore reindeer antlers for Christmas, and had a sweater on last summer. It doesn't seem right, somehow, for such a spunky dog to have been brought so low. Does her 'new' mistress know that if you're not nice to her, she'll wet on something very personal of yours? Does she know that Callie is a passive-aggressive, like me, and will chew up the Italian shoes of the very person you're trying the most to impress, while they're visiting your home? If not, she had better beware...

Love that dog. Always have, always will.

God and Sweet Corn

ExMan and I had an on-going dispute for years about the nature of God and the way He answers prayers.

ExMan thought that God didn't want to be bothered with the tiny little details of everything...that if you needed or wanted something that wasn't that big of a deal, you should just 'get it yourself', or find a way to get it yourself. God, after all, had enough to do without listening to every little whiny need.

I am more of a fairy-tale person, and had the belief that any wish, no matter the size, is important to those who love you, (i.e. God) and, if possible, (and not harmful to you), it will be granted.

And one August day in 1998, I was proven right.

I was seperated from ExMan for the first time. We had been apart since April, and had already signed papers to dissolve our marriage. My children were eight, five, and four years old. I was scared to death. I remember that I cried daily.

I'd wanted desperately to stay home with my children, but the fact remained that I needed to make an income. So I turned our home into a daycare, and took on six little ones, the majority of them under the age of five. Add that to my three and I had a total of nine kids running around the house on a day to day basis. It got a bit wild at times.

They were good children and they all got used to each other and we became somewhat of a family. None of the kids could ever call Dominic by his true name....he was chronically called, "Donimic". His mother seemed to find that amusing, and I got tired of trying to correct them, so the name stuck. Each of my children had a playmate their own age, at any given time. It worked out all right.

I did struggle with not being able to just hop into the car and run to the market whenever I wanted... I'd always been sort of a free spirit... My daycare was open from six a.m. until six p.m. and I was commited to being within my four walls during that time. So I got cabin fever a lot.

One day I was standing at my sink, looking out the window. The field behind my new subdivision hadn't been developed yet, and I could see the rooftop of the Farmer's Market, just over the bend, near the highway. I'm sure I began to salivate because I couldn't think of the Farmer's Market without envisioning their mouth-watering sweet corn. Oh, how I wanted some at that moment!...It would've made such a wonderful dinner.... But there were two immediate problems. Problem number one; I did not have a car large enough to put ten of us into, to drive around the block to get a simple bag of corn.... Problem number two: I wasn't even sure at that time that I had the money in my purse for as much as one bag...I was dirt poor that month. We were barely making it.

So I put the thought out of my head and focused on the task at hand, which was the dishes. Then it was wiping someone's nose. Then it was blood-hounding down someone's unsavory nappy to change....and on it went. There is always something to do when you have a house-full of kidlets.

Five minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was my friend, Linda. She had two bags in her hands, laden with...sweet corn.

She couldn't understand why I burst into tears. As I blubbered, she tried to explain that she was driving towards her home up the hill, and was 'told' by a little voice to stop at the Farmer's Market... and get some sweet corn; so she did. Once the bags were in her car, she asked the 'little voice' who she ought to give them to. My name popped into her head, and without questioning, she drove right over to my home.

After all of the daycare kids and the daycare moms exited the building... I had sweet corn that night for dinner, with my children seated around me. We buttered and we salted and we peppered and we season salted and we added hot sauce and parmesan cheese to our heart's content. It was heartwarming to look around the table and see bits of corn and butter on the corners of each of their cute little mouths. I had a heart full of gratitude. To God, and to Linda.

And I knew why we had sweet corn. Because I had the wish for it, that's why. Not even big enough to be called a prayer, not even enough effort put into it to be called a meditation; just a thought that had flitted across my mind and was caught by God and assigned out to one of his angels; one that was willing to listen and obey the tiny prompting that was planted in her mind.

So DOES He care about the tiniest thing on your mind?

I think He does.

One summer's evening in 1998, He showed me that He did. And I haven't doubted since.

Long Live the King(s)

The day we met Saul Vivas completely changed my life. He was the ultimate performer.

We had just moved in across the street, in a rural neighborhood in Pennsylvania. There weren't many kids around our age. We were dying to play with the herd of boys kitty-corner from us, but Mother said that their dad 'drank a lot of beer', so we weren't allowed to associate with them. Bummer.

But right across the street there was a little kid named Saul...or, Sauly, as his mother called him. Sauly's dad worked for Marx toys. You should've seen our eyes popping out of our heads the first time we saw their garage with the door open. Both bays were full of toys to ride on. Big Wheels and Green Machines and scooters of every kind. Wagons and cars with their own batteries that went all on their own, and that round thing with the swirlies on the handles, where the handles are actually wheels, too, with handles on them...and when you sit on it, it's impossible to steer, but still totally fun...

We thought we were dreaming.

And Sauly's dad said that we could come over and play with his son any old time. Oh, and we were willing. Because playing with Sauly meant playing with all of Sauly's cool toys. His dad was very wise; he knew Sauly would never be lonely with that sort of a deal set up.

Sauly was only four when we met him, but he was a great little kid. We were older, eight and seven, but it didn't matter. He was pretty savvy, and we all got along well. His mother, Netty, had the most interesting hair. It was red-ish....sometimes more on the pink-ish side, and she piled it into a high beehive-style. I was perplexed by it. I liked to watch it. It didn't move. Ever.

The novelty of the toys wore off, but we continued to play with Sauly. He was great at hide and go seek, and loved a good game of Cops n' Robbers. He could yell, too. When he was the cop, and he caught you, you knew it. Many a time I was scared halfway out of my wits when he'd holler, "GOTCHA, YOU BAD GUY!"

Our interests shifted to that of the theatrical. Sauly was welcomed in the drama circles, too, because of his uncanny impersonation of Elvis. His mother was a huge Elvis fan; she had every last one of his records. On rare occasion, we'd be invited into their home to listen to the Elvis records. We'd never even heard of him, up to that point. Why, you ask? Because my mother did not care for the King. Not only that, she even went so far as to write a poem about him while she was in high school. It went something like this...."There once was a man named Elvis. He liked to wiggle his pelvis...."

Whether or not this is an original phrase on her part, there's no telling. That was the poem she claimed to have written. Unbeknownst to her, her teacher was an Elvis adorer, and she recieved an 'F' for a grade...first one she'd ever gotten. So the whole Elvis idea had left a negative impression on her psyche, I suppose. Hence the fact that we had no prior knowledge of him. Add this to my mother's general disdain for rock and roll in general, and, well...you get the idea.

We absorbed the Elvis records. We were learning every song, and went home to sing them loudly around the house. Mother's 'No Elvis' plan thusly...backfired. But Sauly was the best. (It didn't hurt that he was a boy, plus he had Elvis's coloring, too). He could sing, move, and look the most like the King.

We began to have elaborate talent shows in our basement. The whole neighborhood was invited at times. On certain evenings, we drew quite a crowd, seated on our couches and folding chairs down there. Other kids in the neighborhood got involved, too. We did silly little skits and what-not, but the main event was always Sauly and his Elvis songs. I think that's what drew the people in. He was just plain good. Imagine watching a four-year-old perfectly imitate a rock and roll legend. It was really something.

Since we didn't have any rock music around our house, we had to go with what we did have. We played Andy Williams records (my mother adored him!) and sang along. Not extremely hip, but what could we do. We tried. The audience always clapped politely; so we were happy. We didn't know that we were sort of nerds. My husband still teases me about the big crush I once had on Andy Williams. Hey, he looked good on the cover of the album!....AND he seemed like a really nice guy. So there.

We played with Sauly for years. No longer did we need the lure of the Marx toys, nice as they were. Sauly became like kin to us. We were always happy when our chores were done and Mother granted us permission to go across the street to see what Sauly was up to.

The day that Elvis died was a sad day around the Vivas home. I hadn't realized it at the time, but Sauly's mother was literally in love with Elvis Presley. She had fantasized about leaving her husband and becoming his next wife, and had made that clear to her husband, who had loved her dearly and stayed with her, despite her loving another man.

We didn't see any of the Vivas family for days. There were black pieces of material hung on all of their windows. It was kind of creepy. They mourned for almost a week. I wondered what Sauly was doing, stuck in their house like that. I wondered if he was okay. He emerged several days later, still a fairly cheerful kid that was fun to play with, but he toned down the Elvis impersonations quite a bit. He rarely did them after the King's death.

When we moved in the summer of 1978, our little acting troupe was disbanded. But we were great once. The best.

I wonder at times about where Sauly is now, and how he's doing. I hope that every now and then, even if he no longer has the curly black hair, or the hips for it....that he gives it all a shake, and does those moves that only the King....and Pauly...could do so well.

Long live the King(s).

Blue Jeans and God

My sister attends a Very Conservative Church.

As with almost all churches, you have those that really live what they believe, and those that make a big show out of pretending to live what they believe. It's all about the recognition and the glory for the latter set. Unfortunately, a lot of those showier types tend not only to be primarily concerned with their reputations, but they seem to feel the need to police others' behaviors, as well. Whenever I meet up with one or two of these, the phrase, "Mind your own backyard!" comes to mind. I find these people tiresome and tend to avoid being affiliated with them, but there is always that random chance that some of whatever they're suffering from will rub off on you. In a word....Ick.

In this Very Conservative Church, my sister Lillian works in the Nursery. There are several helpers in there, one of them named Janice. Janice does not try to run with the proud little church crowd, she is one of those Real Christians that marches to the beat of her own drum. She cares more about what her God thinks of her than she does of her peers' feeble and fickle opinions.

This Very Conservative Church has a fairly strict unofficial dress code. People are 'allowed' to wear a pair of jeans to the services...but they'll get stared at, and possibly even shunned. Those not of this particular faith, who may be used to other churches' 'Come As You Are' services, are not aware of this initially. Usually, if they continue week after week to attend, they will be, at some point taken aside and encouraged by long-time members to wear a nice shirt and tie if they are male, and a skirt or dress if they happen to be female. This is a well-known 'unwritten rule' among the regular congregation.

So Lillian was surprised to see her Nursery co-worker, Janice, who is a lifelong member, in a nice pantsuit at church. By various and sundry staunch churchgoers, she was getting gawked at. People were wondering if she was 'losing the faith'. Lillian simply asked Janice why she was wearing pants. Janice, seeing that there were other adults around at the time, smiled at Lillian and said she'd tell her 'later'.

When 'later' arrived, she related this rather amusing, yet all-too common (for this and other congregations) tale. Anna, another Nursery co-worker who happened to be mentally challenged, showed up the Sunday before in a pair of jeans. She had the mentality of a five-year-old, loved working in the Nursery with the children, was eager to please anyone, and wouldn't hurt a fly. She hated nothing worse than to be told she was doing something wrong, and tried to be super 'obedient' in everything she did. She was a sweet little soul.

But a well-meaning Church Lady approached her last week in the Nursery and told her that it was 'hard to feel the spirit of God while she was wearing pants to church'.

Poor Anna had no idea....all she knew was that, unknowingly, she'd displeased God by throwing on a pair of jeans, versus a skirt that morning. She hadn't been trying to upset God or anything...she'd simply been trying to get dressed. And then go to church services like a good Christian should....Who knew that in the doing of this, she would actually offend... Deity...?

As Janice told Lillian this story, it became clear as to why she was wearing that sporty pantsuit just one week later. She was trying to make a point on behalf of her little friend, Anna. Janice was feeling the 'spirit of God' just fine in her pants at church, thanks very much. And she made sure to make herself very visible to the extremely self-righteous biddy that had made the rather idiotic comment the week before.



There are times that I find it hard to voice what I believe. I struggle with the words. But when it comes to seeing what I DON'T believe, that.....seems to flow.

I don't believe that God's blessings require a dress code. I think He could speak to you, even if you were buck-naked. I've had many a shower-time inspiration, so I know this is true.

I don't believe that you have to have your hands or arms or eyes or head a certain way to pray. I don't believe that knees always have to be bent. I do feel that this is a very respectful, and helpful position in which to worship, but it is certainly not required. I believe you could be standing on your head and still pray, and be heard. God is really kind that way.

I don't believe you have to use correct pronunciation, or grammar, or the proper words to have God hear you. He meets you wherever you are. If, for some reason, language issues or a stroke keep you from being able to form the words, He sees what's in your heart, and He still hears.

Come to think of it, when it comes to wardrobe... I've felt more spiritual in a good pair of broken-in jeans than I have in most other attire. No binding at the beltline or Dry Clean Only labels. I think our friend Anna was exactly right.

And God.....I don't think He was offended at all....or perhaps He was....but certainly not at Anna.