Tidbits VIII

by Donna Schoenkopf

Dawn

I woke up at 4:30 this morning. Wide awake. Let the dogs out and made myself a delicious cup of coffee. I like it strong. Someone told me it was espresso strong. That seems about right. I take milk and sugar in it. It is a lovely morning drink. In fact, I became a lark after being an owl for years and years, because of coffee. After I began drinking coffee I would wake up early just to have a cup. Or two.

I love being a lark. The day is fresh and new. I watch color filling in around me. I live in a house that feels like I am living outside because of all the glass.

I am in my third year here and still am overcome with its beauty.

Dogs

My dogs stink. (Oh. I’ve just said my DOGS, plural. I guess Angela Davis is now officially mine, even though I have never said it out loud or even to myself. She was a neighbor’s dog, but I began feeding her when she showed up skinny and shy. Then she had puppies and after an unfortunate incident involving my official dog, Diego, I took it upon myself to have her spayed. She has never left.)

Neither of my dogs tolerates being bathed. I almost accidentally strangled poor Diego trying to hose him down. Same with Angela Davis. So they stink. Sometimes they stink from skunks. Sometimes, I SWEAR, they have rolled in sewage.

It makes it hard to give them really, really good petting. But I do. Then I wash my hands thoroughly.

Mating

I was out weed whacking the other day. As I straightened up to unkink my muscles I happened to look at a sunflower leaf, just at eye level. There were two grasshoppers sitting there, not moving. Identical, except for size. The smaller one was on top. They were obviously in the process of providing me with more baby grasshoppers. I was curious as to how they connected. It took me a long time to figure it out but finally I saw how they managed.

I am here to report that grasshoppers have very large sex organs and that they stay hitched up for quite a while.

Sexy little guys.

Bridge

I started (twice) taking bridge lessons at the Presbyterian Church on Tuesday nights.

My dear mother loved bridge. When I was a girl I would come home from school on some afternoons to find her and three of her friends sitting at the card table, ash trays at their elbows, playing bridge. There never was much talking during play, but when the last trick was taken there’d be a little conversation, mostly rehashing the play.

My mother told me that you never, ever really learn the game of bridge.

This made bridge seem like a pointless exercise and also a scary one, so I never learned to play. But after reading Justine’s nice e-mail about beginning bridge lessons starting, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and showed up.

Everyone was vaguely my age. I knew a couple of people from my environmental club. I realized after a few minutes that every single person there had played bridge before. Except me. Ai yi yi. But I kept my wits about me and listened intently and wrote notes and kind of understood a little of it.

This went on for the next several lessons. I enjoyed it very, very much. Then one Tuesday night I forgot to go. When I returned the following Tuesday I was hopelessly behind.

So I quit.

But another e-mail, announcing a new beginners class, got me excited again. I signed up for a second time.

The first lesson was great. But, wouldn’t you know, I forgot to go to the second lesson and knowing what happened the last time I missed a lesson, I gave up.

I guess my learning bridge just wasn’t meant to be.

The Supermarket

I go to a local supermarket and have discovered that differences in the California and Oklahoma cultures are the most evident there. It used to drive me nuts. I would come out of the store mumbling about rudeness and talking to myself half way home about “some people” being very inconsiderate.

So what in the world got me so riled up?

Well, in California people always (at least, ALMOST always) say “excuse me” when they need to get around someone and the other person responds in acknowledgment. In Oklahoma very few people say anything to each other in the aisles. When I’ve said “excuse me” to people they do not look at me or say anything. It’s as though I am invisible. Or crazy.

I think this is because in Oklahoma it is impolite to talk to someone you don’t know. Or to look at them. (Sort of like staring at someone you don’t know. It’s just plain rude. And kind of challenging.) In California nobody knows anybody at the supermarket because there are so many people, so people talk to strangers because everybody is a stranger.

In Oklahoma people stand in lines that stretch across the main thoroughfares in the store, making other shoppers find alternate routes. In California, if you did that, you would be considered very, very rude. I think the difference is because it is so crowded in California that consideration regarding other people’s space is important in order for the system to function. In Oklahoma, because the population is sparse, people don’t realize they are in somebody else’s space.

I am still trying to adjust.

Little things mean a lot.

Lawn Care

I mowed my lawn this week. I hadn’t mowed it since 2008. I hadn’t mowed it for three reasons:

1. I have had horrible luck with my lawnmower and my weed whacker.
2. I couldn’t bear to cut down the most beautiful wildflowers you’ve ever seen.
3. And I am lazy.

Yes, I’ll say it. Out loud. With pride. L-a-z-y. I deliberately say I’m lazy because I am trying to get over my guilt at not having this place looking neat and tidy. So I own my laziness. I wear it like a crown.

But I digress.

My lawnmower was impossible to start. My battery operated weed whacker finally refused to take a charge, my gasoline powered weed whacker that replaced my battery operated one wouldn’t start anymore. So I literally sat around and watched the grass grow.

Because the grass was so tall, and I water the yard almost everyday, I got an ENORMOUS amount of chigger bites all over my poor old body.

So, in spite of financial considerations, I purchased an electric corded weed whacker and an electric corded lawnmower.

I am in heaven. It’s so easy. No pulling of starters. No spark plugs. No running out of power. No gas. Ahhhhhhhh.

My yard is gorgeous.

Who knew?

Anthony

Maybe tonight my grandson, Anthony, his mama, Lynda, and Anthony’s two cousins will be here. Lynda is driving from Los Angeles to Tennessee to see her dad and they will stop here at Chigger Lake to visit for a day or two.

I am so excited I am on tiptoes.

Anthony is eight. He is blond and handsome and smart and nice. He is athletic and scholarly and serious. I love him.

He used to come to my house for visits when he was little. We would pick lemons from my backyard lemon tree and bring them to the kitchen. I taught him how to cut the lemons carefully. I had a great old juicer that Anthony loved to use. He loved to show me how strong he was in pulling down the handle and he loved watching the juice flow into the glass. We would add sugar and water and then he would taste it and tell me if it was sweet enough and we would keep adding sugar until it was just right. Some ice cubes in the glass, pour in the lemonade, and wasn’t it fine!

It was a dear time.

Sometimes we went on walks in the neighborhood, up and down steep San Pedro hills, and we’d look at flowers and trees and walk down to the cliffs.

Once we almost died on those cliffs. It was awful.

I had been down the trail to the tide pools many times before and knew Anthony would love it there, so off we went. When we were about halfway down the dirt path to the pools we came to a place in the trail that had been recently washed away by heavy rain. The trail ended abruptly in a sharp drop-off, a deadly drop-off, ending a long way down, in a jumble of boulders. “We could be killed!” I thought, so we turned to go back up the cliff but the dirt began to move under our feet and we began to slide backwards. I immediately sat down to stop and held Anthony tightly. Every time I tried to get up or crawl up, I slid a little more because I was holding onto Anthony. Anthony said, “I don’t like this,” very seriously, as only a four-year-old can, and I said, “I don’t like this, either!” We were stuck. And there was nobody around. I was overcome with intense fear and guilt.

Finally, after quite a long time, Anthony said, “ I can do this myself,” and turned and without another word, started crawling up the hill. Immense waves of relief came over me and I began inching up after him. It was easy to do now that I wasn’t having to carry Anthony or hold his hand.

The long walk home was ... I don’t even have words for it.

ANYWAY, he’ll be here tonight or maybe tomorrow. I can’t wait to see him and his mama, the lovely Lynda, and his cousins.

We are going to tour Chigger Lake after I spray everybody with insect repellent. We’ll look at everything, plants, birds, insects, the fish jumping out of the water of the pond. Later we might go for a swim in Shawnee Lake and have a picnic. We’ll paint rocks or collect seeds from wildflowers or sit on the deck and talk about life.

Maybe we’ll make lemonade.

It can’t get any better than that.

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