Ducky

The morning started badly.

I had been up for about 20 minutes when I realized that dinner was not going to work out as planned, so I decided to whip up some hummus on the fly so it could sit in the fridge and the flavors could meld before dinner. But that just didn't work. Either I don't know how to use my blender, or I don't know how to make hummus (most likely a combination of the two), but at any rate, it was a chunky, blobby mess when I gave up because it was time to leave. Marcos promised to work with it when he gets home tonight, to make sure it's edible.

I was driving down the street near the creek when Marcos said, "Oh, ducky." I looked over at him and noticed that he looked concerned, and also I didn't see any duck.

"Where?  I don't see a duck," I said.

"It was a little baby duck, and he was walking down in the ridge next to the curb."

"In the gutter?" I asked, horrified.

Some of you already know my feelings about waterfowl- just ask Holly and Marcos what my reaction was to their suggested Thanksgiving tur-duck-hen. Let's just say it was definitive, and unyielding. I love ducks, and geese. I don't believe in much, but I honestly believe that I was a duck in a former life. If this was the Harry Potter universe, my patronus would be a duck. There is very little that can cheer me up faster than seeing a duck in a stream, or just walking in the grass or flying. Every single time I see a duck, or geese, I point out the window and say, "Duck!" or "Geese!" and if the person I'm with doesn't look, I am deeply offended. I believe in the old Native American adage: Ducks are God's favored creatures, as evidenced by the fact that they can walk, swim, and fly.

The mere thought of this poor duckling running down the street in the gutter was horrifying to me. I knew he was going to get run over. I didn't see him, and I'm a very observant driver. Lord only knows what would happen when the next teenage girl, putting on mascara and texting on her way to school, drove by.

I shouldn't have looked in the rear view, but I did. The little duckling rounded the corner and was running- yes, a running duck- towards the stoplight. All I could think was, I hope he gets to the corner, where there's a curb cut and he can get up on the sidewalk and onto the grass. The curb was too high for him to jump and he had little useless baby ducky wings.  The longer he was in the street, the larger chance he stood of getting run over by one of us useless humans. This is the plight of the urban duck.

Then I started thinking, even if he gets to the grass without getting run over, is he going to starve to death? Where is his mother? Did she just go off for a morning swim in the creek, and now she's going to come home and notice that one of her babies is missing?

As I drove away, the waterworks began. If I lived in Wisconsin, I would have stopped and captured him and given him to Shoshanah. I think he was a mallard. He would have fit right in on the farm. But I don't live in Wisconsin, and most people I know don't even have much of a yard. We're urbanites. We don't have provisions for ducks, and my cats would eat him if I took him home.

I felt silly for being so upset over a ducking I don't even know. I was sobbing and wiping my eyes and apologizing all the way to work. Marcos was helpless to stop it.

"I'm having such a bad day, I'm sorry," I cried.

"Don't be sorry. Your day will get better," he said.

"Not for the duck!" I sobbed.

I would love to tell myself that the ducky made it to the grass, and then his mama came back. Or that he fell in with another brace of ducks that was passing through on their way north for the summer. Or that a kind jogger came by and scooped him up, taking him home to feed him sardines and oyster crackers and let him have a dog bowl full of water to swim in until he got big and strong enough to fly away, and start a flock of his own. But I'm older, and wiser, and yes, more cynical than that, and I know that it probably didn't end well for ducky.

Adventures in Cubicle Eating

Eating lunch at work can be boring. I've consumed more leftover spagetti, cold, with a plastic fork, while surfing the internet than I care to admit. So today, I thought I'd jazz things up.
Enter... the mystery ramen.

Can anybody read this?

I specifically bought this stuff because I had no idea what it was. I knew it would be spicy, because of the pepper on the front and the red-hot broth. I actually looked the entire package over at my desk twice before finding a tiny label that had the nutrition facts in English. According to the label, it's "Artificial Spicy Fish Flavor." Yum. Spicy? Fish? Ramen? Three of my favorite things. Well done, thus far.

I thought about lunch all day, even turning down an invitation to go out with friends so I could eat what I had dubbed the Magical Mystery Ramen. I was both frightened and excited. It was like waiting in line to go on the Cyclone. 

Finally, at 1:00 I went to the break room and broke the package open. There were noodles, a packet of brown powder with dehydrated veggies, and two packages of goop: a tiny one of red goop and a larger one of brown goop. They were oily and I had a heck of a time getting them into the bowl. I thought the red goop was the hot stuff, but as it turns out it was just the flavorful goop, whilst the brown packet was DEVIL HOT GOOP. Another interesting thing is that the dehydrated veggies were green onion, tiny slices of very hot red peppers, and what can only be described as artificial fish flakes.

Here's what it looked like:

See the tiny pepper?

It was all pretty tasty, but I was right that it was hot. Really hot. Not quite Thai hot, but hot. Definitely not for punks.

The moral of this story is: Always take a chance at the Asian market.

Another Case of the Wee Smalls.

I woke up just a few minutes ago, feeling quite antsy about something. Do you ever wake up from a dead sleep, feeling nervous? What is that about? What could have possibly woken me up from a dead sleep and made me nervous? What event or series of events managed to flood my system with adrenaline, but doesn't allow me to remember it? Why do I fixate on things like this?
As you probably know, I swim three times a week, and I have sniffed out a pattern. It always seems that this happens to me when I have been overexposed to the chlorine, either by accidentally inhaling some while I swim (which happens more often that I care to admit, I'm afraid), or, as happened tonight, by getting it in my eyes.
I've always swam using a snorkel, because when I first started going to the pool regularly, about 4 years ago, I was not lithe and limber enough to get my face up out of the water high enough to breathe, and also even breathing once per stroke was not enough and I would end up at the end of the pool, gasping for air for a minute between each length I swam. So I started using the snorkel, thinking I would eventually stop using it when I got a little better at what I was doing. But as is the case with so many things, complacence set in, and I never did it. In January, my trusty snorkel broke a strap, so Marcos went out and spent something like $35 and gave me a new one for an early birthday present. Much to my dismay, it's been nothing but problems, and tonight I believe it actually gave up the ghost and stopped holding out the water altogether, so I spent half an hour pouring chlorinated water out of my mask and cursing before finally coming to the conclusion that I was going to have to pull on my big-girl pants and finally stop using a snorkel, and get some goggles.
I stopped at Target on the way home and bought some shocking pink goggles. Wish me luck!

On a completely unrelated note, a realtor from London started following me on Twitter this week. Is the universe trying to tell me something?

Beware the ides of March

March has begun with a lovely couple of days. It's nice and warm, in contrast to the entire month of February, which sucked around here. I've always been an advocate of February. I feel the need to defend her against all of the people who get seasonal affective disorder. But this year, I was happy to be done with February, truth be told.

For some reason, as a child, I thought that the saying, "Beware the ides of March," referred to taxes. Now, of course, having read Julius Caesar, I know what it's actually talking about, but for some reason that's still what I always think. Like that line in "Livin' Lovin' Maid" where he says, "If you can clarify, please do," but I spent most of my childhood and adult life thinking he said, "And you can terrify me, Stu." It is silly and childish and doesn't make any sense, but I'm stuck with it now, forever.

So close

I came very, very close to shaving my head yesterday. My problem is that I dyed my hair red last spring, which I've done countless times in my life.  But, for the last three years or so, I've been swimming three times a week, which tends to strip the dye right out of your hair. I'm not going to stop swimming for the sake of "beauty," so what I've ended up with is hair that is that particular shade of red that dark brown hair becomes when the dye fades out. Then, I dyed it back to my original color, but that dye stripped out, too, so I can't get rid of this lousy non-color I've got going on.

This has all been going on for some time, but I believe that the thing that sent me over the edge was that I have been forced to blow-dry my hair due to how f-ing cold it's been here in Colorado. You can't just get out of the pool and go outside with it wet. And hair that is dry and brittle from being dyed and blow-dried repeatedly looks lousy. So I decided to have Marcos shave my head. But he wouldn't do it. (He's actually very supportive of the desire to shave my head, and encouraging, but he doesn't want to do it himself for fear he'd mess it up).

I may have Holly shave it today. Or else I'll go to the haircut place and get something done to it there. But either way, my hair is going to be much shorter soon, I think.

Greetings from the Christmas Unicorn

Merry Christmas!

Everything is better with a unicorn!
And for the kids, here's a special message from the Holiday Armadillo.

It's a Grand Tradition

It's this time of year when I miss my mom the most, starting at Thanksgiving and going through the new year. She passed away on Christmas Eve in the year 2000, a couple of months before I met Marcos, kicking off one of the worst bouts of depression I've ever been through. Right after my mom died, my dad and my brother and my uncle would make remarks about how much she loved Christmas. I kept my mouth shut, but I really don't remember her loving Christmas. I think perhaps she had a love/hate relationship with it. True, she was always the one who dragged out the Christmas tree and had us decorate it, but I think money problems often kept her from celebrating in the manner in which she would have liked.

I remember when we would decorate the tree. My dad would put the tree together and string the lights on; then, my mom would pull out the ornaments and hand them to us one by one, telling us exactly where to put them. Actually, she'd let us put them up, but she had veto power over the final placement.  Over the years I grew resentful of the process, but I loved the finished product. Sitting in the living room in the dark, with the lights cheerily blinking, I could forget the anguish we had gone through to get it all decorated.

There was one ornament that I liked most of all. It was a homemade ornament either made by or given to my mom when I was born. It was made from a clear plastic disposable cup, which had been heated and melted into a slightly different shape. Then, it was filled with cotton balls and tiny plastic angels, and there was a pink 70's ric-rac trim around the lip. It aged visibly over the years. By the time I left home the plastic had turned yellowish and the cotton, too, from years of being in the home of two smokers. But I loved that damn thing. I wonder if my dad still has it.

Nowadays, I adore Christmas. I felt very ambivalent about it for years, because of the shadow of my mom's death looming over it, and also because I haven't been a Christian for years (truth be told, since I was twelve years old). But now I truly love it. I love the lights, the decorations, the music, giving and receiving presents, our traditional lasagna dinner, stockings, hanging out with friends and family, and good feelings. My favorite part? Decorating the Christmas tree. Marcos hates it, but he likes the finished product, so it's all good. A family tradition has been passed down.