Where the Wild Things Are

I love living in this part of the country. The opportunities for encountering wildlife lurk around every curve of that two-lane country road. And sometimes you don't even have to leave home to meet up with some interesting characters.

For example, there was the opossum that came up on the back porch in search of cat food. It fell off the porch and into a trash can. I don't know how long it was in the trash can, but by the time we found it, we feared it was dead.....until it blinked. Bruce and I removed the trash can and its contents to the back yard where we laid the can on its side so the opossum could get out. It didn't move. For several minutes, nothing. Then Bruce tilted the can so the opossum slid out. It landed awkwardly and then sat there, hissing at us. Finally, it got up and waddled, very slowly and stiffly, to the edge of the woods and disappeared into the undergrowth. Personally, I think it could have used an adjustment. But Bruce doesn't do hissing animals.

Then there was the week that I saw a mountain lion running across the road in front of me...not once but TWICE. Mind you, the experts will swear pumas no longer inhibit North Carolina. But there was no mistaking the feline stride and the long tail. It was about the height of a German shepherd but longer and the tail was at least as long as the body. Both times it flashed from one side of the road to the other about 100 feet in front of me. I saw it/them at different places, but along the course of the same creek. It was cool! and completely unexpected. Luckily there weren't any cars following me either time, because I slammed on my brakes and turned around in my seat to watch it run away.

Other road sign sightings have included wild turkeys, quail and just recently a weasel. You can also plan on seeing deer, opossums and raccoons on a regular basis.

But the most exciting animal I ever saw, walked as calmly as you please right down the sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon. I wouldn't have given it another thought, dismissed it as one of the mulitude of feral cats that inhabit my town, except for the way the mockingbird was reacting. The squawking and swooping were so obvious and unusual that I took a look out my front door to see what was happening. My first thought? That's quite a big cat.

Another look and I realized that "cat" had pointed ears with tufts, whiskers that gave him a squarish face, and almost no tail. It was no cat, it was a bobcat, walking down the sidewalk and then down the alley across my street, accompanied the entire way by a chorus of squawking, flapping, very upset birds.

So, like I said, you gotta love this part of the country....you never know what you're gonna see. And that doesn't even count the marine animals--the dolphins, shark, terrapin, turtles, flying fish, nudibranch, anenomes, Portegeuse Man O'War, sea stars, hermit and surf crabs.

It's true....we really do live where the wild things are.

Where Do They Put It?

For the last week and a half, my nephew has been staying with us. It's the first time we've spent much time together, so there was some awkwardness at the beginning. We had to kinda feel out what the relationship would be.

He's a great young man...but like many 19-year-olds there's a couple of things that the mother of four girls is having to deal with for the first time. Things like left up toilet seats, the sheer volume of food consumed, the time spent talking to, texting to, get ready to see and hanging out with girls, the way the hard-working, focused, considerate young man vanishes in two seconds flat if there's a chance do something with a girl.....

It's actually been quite eye-opening, and I now have a much greater appreciation for the mothers of boys. You may not have to deal with whining....but how you even keep food in the house is amazing to me....three peanut butter and jam sandwiches at a sitting!! Yikes!

So, I guess it's a good thing I'm getting this exposure, because at some point my girls are going to start bringing these guys over and this way I won't have a total shock.

Again, my hat is tipped off too all you parents of boys! You go, girl!!!.....right back to the grocery store, because you are sure to be out of something necessary--like milk, bread, peanut butter or jam (all of which have run short in my house during the last few days.).

Here a Refrigerator; There a Refrigerator

They're big, hold lots of food and generally we take them for granted. We don't celebrate their birthdays and Hallmark doesn't have cards expressing appreciation for their efforts.

Truthfully we really don't pay them any attention--other than to yell at kids to keep the door shut-- until there's a problem.

All that changes when they stop working properly. The first sign? The dreaded ice cream "mush." It's all down hill from there.

So, we've had our white "icebox," as my Gram calls them, since we bought the house in Winterville--that's 16 years ago. In case you didn't know, that's truly ancient for a refrigerator. For the purposes of the economy they consider the life span of a refrigerator to be five years-do the math, in human years our refrigerator is 230 years old. (For those of you interested, I used the life span of 72 years--a youngster these days.)

Anyway, I digress... so, we've had the ice cream issue for a while, but lately the problem has crept down out of the freezer into the fridge, resulting in not-so-cold milk, a horror to be avoided at all costs in my house. The decision was made....the purchase of a new refrigerator is necessary.

The biggest issue? Not what color--still want white; Not style--still want freezer on top. Biggest issue--SIZE.

Can we replace the one we have with a similar one? Answer...NO!! In the 16 years since we were last refrigerator shopping, the world has gone wacky. Fridges now come in two sizes--microscopic and immense. Ok, so that's an oversimplification, but the reality is that there is huge size gap in capacity. You can get 18 cu ft or 21 cu ft. Some smaller; many larger--but in the crucial size we needed those are your choices--nothing between.

Add in my desire for glass, split, repositional shelves and the options become, shall we say, limited. End result? After hours spent online researching, checking out the options in EVERY local retail establishment and measuring and remeasuring the available opening, the decision is made...the fridge is ordered....and arrives speedily. After a quick reposition of door hinges, the removal of the old fridge to under the carport, the new beautiful fridge is slid into position and .....

DENIED!! It's too wide by almost an inch--culprit? The floor moldings and the non-plumb walls of this old house!!! How many times did we measure that space?!! How many times did we check and recheck the outside measurements of the fridge??!! AAARRGGHH! So, time to make another decision--keep the fridge, remove the molding and slide it in? Or send it back to the store....

Bruce is handy, he can get the moldings off...so fridge is left sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor., making loading and unloading the dishwaster interesting. Food, which was already removed from the old fridge is installed in its new home and we wait for Bruce to get home.

That night after two hours of painstaking work, carefully prying off the toe-molding, then the cap-molding and finally the actual molding, the fridge is once again lined up, ready to be positioned in its new home, it rolls into the space and......DENIED AGAIN!!!

It's still too wide, by the smallest of margins, less than 1/8". The discussion of options is heated....shave off the countertop, move the electrical outlet, just shove it in there and hope for the best...final decision--time to buy another fridge and have this one taken back (which they will do for 30 days--thank goodness!).

So, back to the internet....searching one more time for a fridge with enough space inside for the food and with a small enough outside to fit in the space. What I wouldn't give to have a pocket universe fridge--like my mom's purse, much smaller on the outside than the amount of stuff she manages to fit inside--mental note, talk to a physicist about that, but again, I digress--

Final conclusion, we will have to settle for a fridge that isn't really big enough (Bruce is going to have to cull the hot sauce collection. He will no longer be able to have an entire door bin), but will fit in our limited space (and look weird because it will really be too small).

Now, where to get it....not the first store....so back to Sears for a Kenmore--last one survived for 16 years, maybe the next one too....

Nice guy helped us, we picked one with all the bells and whistles--including through door water and ice..funny since we don't have the water hookup, but that can happen in the future. We made his day because we bought the whole protection package and everything. Phone call to other store, come get your fridge. They'll be there Monday, new new fridge comes Tuesday. So, the old fridge comes back into the house after Bruce gave the coils a good cleaning (I don't want to know how Bruce got it up the steps himself--he mentioned something about laying on the side??!!) and naturally the inside has to be cleaned after sitting outside in 90 degree weather for two days.

End result, spotless old refrigerator and for about 48 hours this last weekend I owned three refrigerators.....an old one that once it was cleaned is now freezing and chilling perfectly--OF COURSE!!; a new one that is too big and occupying the walkthrough from the kitchen to the dining room and a new one that is paid for but still on route to my house.

If I have to think about refrigerators for the next five years......it will be too soon!!!

Lesson learned--before buying a new fridge try steam cleaning the coils of the old one......

Working (or not)

Tomorrow's my last day of work for the semester, actually for the whole summer. I'm not due back on campus until mid-August. I was kinda crowing about it while I was talking to Bruce. You know the whole, "I'm done with wooo-ooorrkkk!" "I'm done with wooo-oorkkk!" His response was "So am I, until tomorrow."

It suddenly struck me--as much as I look forward to my summers off, how hard it must be to work full-time at a "real" job. Don't get me wrong. I work hard getting ready to teach, counseling and remediating students. But it doesn't feel like a real job because I spend a significant amount of my time listening to other teachers and having meetings. I mean it's nothing like the work I used to do, where I had to account for every minute of my shift and had people watching how much time I spent on the phone.

I don't remember much about when I did work full-time, but I do remember my boss one time telling me that he thought I was the only person he'd ever met who worked between vacations. It wasn't that I was always taking time off...it's just I like planning vacations and generally I have a couple of them lined up at any time. Even back when Bruce and I had no money, we would pack everything (including the dog) into the back of my Celica (like the one above--same color and everything) and go camping for a week. The vacations cost more now (lots more), but the concept is the same. I like finding where to go and stay and what to do while we're there.

Ok, so lesson for the day....remember that no one really loves getting up every day and going to work. Even if they are doing something they love, it still gets old. Therefore....keep your feelings of good fortune to yourself.

Birds

Last weekend, before Mom went home, we went on an outing to this really cool bird sanctuary near Scotland Neck. Apparently, it's been there for a while, as a breeding facility for threatened and endangered waterfowl. Over the last couple of years, it has received some new money and support from the North Carolina Zoo. So it has expanded and is becoming a neat little place to go and see not just their waterfowl, but also pheasants, emus, cranes, owls and other feathered creatures.

It's set up by continent with the birds enclosed by fences and netting so you actually walk into their aviaries. It was really impressive to stand so close to swans and have to watch out for the ducks that were swooping and zooming around overhead. (I was going to say "duck" to avoid the ducks...but it just didn't work....) I was quite impressed and am already planning to take the kids for a visit this summer as one of our weekly outings.

Ok, so that was last Saturday. A couple of days later, must have been Wednesday, I was putting off going to bed because it was Mom's last day and I knew I was going to miss her (which I am). We'd been switching from station to station on the TV, not really watching anything in particular. When there it was...Tippi Hedron driving her convertible down the winding road to Bodega Bay, the love birds in the cage on the front seat. It was Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."

I've seen this movie a bunch of times, probably more than ten times in its entirety and parts of it many more times than that. Imagine my surprise when Sarah asks, "What's this?" She'd never seen it. So...we watched it all the way through. Mom didn't get her packing done, I didn't do any laundry like I'd planned and certainly didn't get to bed at anything close to a decent hour.

Needless to say, even with all the modern computer graphics and really gory things that appear in horror films now, there is nothing like experiencing a Hitchcock movie for the first time.

So, why these two things together? I had this thought...what would it have been like if instead of flocks of gulls going crazy, it was flocks of emus or swans? Birds that can really cause some damage to people. What would it be like if the birds in those aviaries suddenly decided one day they didn't like the people that wandered through their enclosures?

It's true....I do think of bizarre things from time to time....

How to begin

Seems the whole world has jumped into blogging. Sharing their thoughts and experiences with the world. Me, I just want a place to record things, what's happening, what I've learned, what I wish I could manage to learn. Essentially, it's a digital, computerized notebook. A place for me to spout and rant without much editing. (Not completely without--nothing drives me crazier than typos and grammar problems. After all the Panda is my hero--well, the author of the book anyway.)

During the school year I don't have time for this kind of self-indulgence--one too many hats, I guess--but this summer I thought I would try it out. See if I found it fun, interesting and worth the effort. Maybe I'll even let people know that it's out here. Or maybe not.

At any rate, this is my life...so let's see how it goes.