Oklahoma Dreaming: Tidbits IV
by Donna Schoenkopf
Rosie
Once again I wait for Rosie the Cat. She has been gone a month now. She is a fearful little thing, always has been. She is frightened of everyone and everything. She was adapting to son John after I kept her indoors WITH a litter box (a BIG sacrifice on my part!) for two weeks. Most of the time she stayed under my bed, but came out to eat and to cuddle with me.
But Angela Davis, the neighbor dog, a smallish Malamute/Pomeranian (???) from down the road, who was never fed and cringed a lot, began hanging out at my house because I fed her a few times and petted her. She chased Rosie. And she was as fast as lightning.
Did she get Rosie? Did Rosie just permanently decide to leave?
I miss her so.
It is three hours from when I wrote the above paragraphs. I have just gotten off the phone with Orval, one of my neighbors.
Orval has a large working barn/shed. I called him to see if he’s seen Rosie.
AND HE HAS!!!! He’s seen her several times and he heard her last night, meowing behind the barn. I asked if I could drop off a big bag of cat chow for her and if he would feed her.
“Why, sure,” he said.
I am dancing on air!!!!!! Hallelujah!!!!
Son John
My twenty-six-year-old son is here with me. He sleeps in the living area. (I have no bedrooms.) He smokes on the deck. He eats a lot. He watches sports on TV. He rides his bike and exercises at the YMCA. He drinks Rockstar energy drinks.
When he goes out on the deck which looks down the hill to the pond, he feels better.
When he rides his bike and exercises, he feels better.
When he goes online to the UCLA chat room, he feels better. Sometimes when I’m washing dishes in the kitchen area I glance over and see his smiling face. Then I feel better.
He loves Diego the Dog and Angela Davis the Neighbor Dog but he is allergic to cats and says he doesn’t like them.
Mucus
Boy, do I have mucus. Chest mucus. It’s been with me for a month. I have to use my asthma inhaler every day, sometimes twice. It started with an allergic reaction to the dry hot wind which carries every allergen known to Man. I had several days of prolonged sinus drainage down the back of my throat. This made my throat sore. So I decided to take the CVS generic for Claritin.
Cleared it right up. For a day. But, and I should know this by now, it resulted in turning all that free-flowing, clear, sinus drainage into thick mucus. And now the mucus won’t go away. It’s lodged in my chest. I hack and cough it up.
I grow old. I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Lou Dobbs
Got rid of him. Me and my buddies at Media Matters. Signed the petition and lo and behold! He was gone within the week.
Wow.
As Nelson Mandela once said, and I paraphrase, “It’s not that people have no power. It’s that they have all the power and they don’t realize it.”
I realize it.
So Shirley, if you’re reading this, I’m glad you’re not pessimistic any more. But now it’s time to get rid of the cynicism. (Shirley and I would argue in the old days when we both taught at 61st Street School about whether or not we could change things. She said no. I said yes.)
Ha! I’m right.
Road Kill
This week there has been a virtual slaughter out on Killer Highway 177, right at my turnoff.
Two large dogs together. One was a German Shepherd and one a large mixed breed. Killed together. Were they looking for Angela Davis, who is in heat?
The next day a sweet little frou-frou kind of dog was squashed at the median line.
And a mother skunk and her baby.
And, I repeat, all right at my turnoff at the top of the hill.
Jeez.
Am I next?
Washing Dishes
Have you ever noticed how washing dishes de-stresses you? Try it sometime. Just fill your kitchen sink with hot, soapy water. Put the dishes, glasses, silverware in and with your dish cloth and scouring pad go over them slowly. The water is soothing. The bubbles are happy. The dishes sparkle as they stand in the dish rack in neat rows.
The world has order and meaning as chaos is washed away.
Ahhhhhhhhhh.
I used to tell my students about how one’s ideas of work change as one gets older, that when I was a child, chores were torture, especially washing dishes. I repeated, for emphasis, that I used to HATE washing dishes when I was their age. It was like a living hell. (When I said the word “hell,” they gasped.) But, I said, as I got older the pain of this particular chore began to lighten. After a while I could get through it more quickly and it wasn’t so painful. Then, after years and years of dishwashing, it began to be pleasurable. And that, when you are grown, lots of things you used to hate become things that you love. Especially work.
They looked at me. And believed me. Kids are like that. Especially when they’re eight years old.
Nothing like a sinkful of hot, soapy water and a dish rack full of clean and shiny dishes to brighten your day.
Tax Break
So I did my taxes. And the nice lady at H&R Block told me that I might be eligible for an $8,000 tax break for new homeowners.
I cannot TELL you how happy I was. Obama to the rescue! HOW did he KNOW how much I needed that money?
The nice lady told me to call back in July, when they weren’t so busy, to see if I qualified.
I forgot about it. Then I remembered last week. I called and made an appointment. I was excited and licking my chops.
I went to their office and we began the paperwork.
But, because I am a good person who regards paying my taxes as patriotic, yes, PATRIOTIC, I told her that I had had my house assessed last year, in September, even though nobody would know I was even out there in the boonies, and guess what?
I don’t qualify anymore. I put myself on the tax rolls three months too early. If I had had my house assessed this past January, in 2009, instead in September of 2008, I would have qualified.
There is no “god.”
The Cinderella Motel
The Democratic Club met this Saturday at the Cinderella Motel on Independence in Shawnee. It’s a shabby motel, trying to rehabilitate itself. I have some pretty intense memories of this motel. I shall share two.
It is winter. It is about 1974. I have returned to Shawnee with my two little boys to visit my family. I shall not go into the details of what happened, but there were some very, very, VERY intense interchanges between my stepfather and me. I stood at the top of the stairs and declared my declaration. Never mind what it was.
My sainted mother, who had rarely criticized me for ANYTHING in all my life, cried out that I always caused trouble whenever I came there.
I swept my children up and drove to the Cinderella Motel, which was new and the pride of Shawnee.
I got a room. My boys and I opened the drapes and looked out.
There was snow on the ground.
I felt the most wonderful relief. I was free. I had spoken truth to power. I was filled with elation.
The boys marveled at the snow. We turned on the TV. I started thinking about my trip back to California.
About an hour later I heard a knock on the door. I looked out the window and there was my mother, standing in the snow, in her little slippers and a thin little jacket, her face in pain, waiting for me to open the door.
I opened the door and we fell into each others’ arms, crying.
Second memory.
It is 1992, I think. Son John and I have been on a road trip because it is summer and I don’t have to work. (A REALLY good perk of being a teacher!)
We have stopped in Shawnee. Stepfather is long dead. Mother is older. We decide to stay at the Cinderella Motel.
I tell John about what happened the last time I was there.
We walk into the motel to check in. The owner is there. You can tell he is the owner because of the fear the other employees have of him. He is a mean little man. There is an intense smell of fetid cigarette smoke in the lobby. I ask for a room with two double beds.
“Sorry. All we have is a single.”
“Okay, how about a rollaway bed?”
“Nope. Don’t have any. We can give you some blankets you can put on the floor. There’ll be a five dollar charge.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
“Take it or leave it.”
We were tired and I wasn’t willing to go any farther, so I said I’d take it and we went to our room. There was an indoor pool and John loves to swim so he hopped into his suit and we walked over to the pool. We opened the door and a blast of chlorine hit us in the face. It was horrendous. I told John it was too horrible to swim in, but he begged to go in, so I let him.
He swam around, had a great time, got out of the pool and the whites of his eyes were beet red. I’m not kidding. BEET RED!
We went to the room, tried to rinse out the chlorine. Went to bed.
The next morning we went to check out and the owner was in the office, smoking a cigarette. I very nicely told him about the problem with the chlorine. He immediately got huffy and told me there was NOTHING wrong with the pool. His face was rigid. His breath stank. He snarled.
I was taken aback. And then I got mad. I told him about my son’s beet red eyes. And how I resented paying five dollars for two skanky blankets and, by the way, his whole motel STANK of cigarette smoke. And that I was calling Best Western about his crummy attitude and his nasty motel.
And I strode out.
When I got back to California, I called Best Western.
The owner, it turns out, was a famous right-winger in Shawnee. (Jim told me this later.) He was so crazy he would go to school board meetings to try to reduce teachers’ pay. He ran for the school board because he hated public schools so much. He wrote hateful letters to the editor about it. (The reason he could read was because of teachers. How ironic.)
And the motel continued to degenerate into a complete pit.
Yesterday I was back at the Cinderella. The old owner is long gone. We have our Democratic Club meetings there now. It is still nasty, but not nearly as bad as it once was. The smell is almost gone.
And the buffet is excellent.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
Ann Calhoun, you took the words right out of my mouth--all of them! I too just recently fought off a sinus infection w/my neti pot and hot salt-water gargle. Saved a doctor visit! Also, I began using handkerchiefs about a year ago instead of paper tissues, and I swear they work much better. Tissues are made of wood from trees, trees are sprayed w/who knows what, and doesn’t that gunk end up inside your nose along with tiny bleached wood chips? Cotton or linen hankies can be found at thrift stores. Just wash them in hot water and soap, rinse well and hang to dry, or--this tip from my hankie-collecting friend who has a book that said Jackie Kennedy did this: Spread the wet hankie out on your bathroom mirror and let it dry there. It’ll stick. Looks sweet, looks ironed, and is visible evidence you’re taking care of yourself and recycling.
Finally, my country cat Star had to be moved from the farm after Mom died, so I took her to my niece’s outside of Meeker, but she didn’t care much for the big gangling resident black labrador. So she packed up and moved along down to the neighbor’s barn. They had horses and some of her best friends were horses! The owner said it was OK for her to stay and he’d feed her. I vouched for her vermin-killing ability. A win-win situation!
2009-11-17 by Judy SingSome oregano “tea” should help you with the mucus. Just boil some dry oregano leaves, like you would with any other tea, the water should turn into a pale brownish color. You can sweeten it with honey and maybe squeeze some lemon in it too. Doesn’t taste very good but it’ll help.
2009-11-17 by Violeta RiosAs always an insight into your mind, thank you dear girl. The Cinderella was always one of many stinkholes in this biased town, sigh. My nastiness is showing thru. sorry
2009-11-19 by Janice Wood
Got sinus issues? Get a neti pot! My Doctor put it best: When your hands are dirty you wash them. Same with your nose. Your nasal passages get dusty, pollen-y, crudded up so you wash it out with salt water. Easy.
He’s right. Works like a charm. Salt water gargling, too. Old timey remedies that actually work.
Hope kitty turns into a barn cat at your neighbors. Peace and quiet, PLUS . . . mice. What’s not to love about that? Maybe she’s found her niche!
2009-11-17 by Ann Calhoun