Candy Rant

Affection Takes Many Forms

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:14:00 +0000

My sister's son, Rob, knows how much she likes peanut butter pie, although he himself finds it as repugnant as canine droppings. There was a special deal on peanut butter pie at the restaurant where he was eating lunch. $1.00 a slice. So he took a piece to her house while she was at work, left it on the counter, and labelled it in this loving way.

Our Neck of the Woods

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:26:00 +0000

We've been in this rental house for almost 3 months now, and it is still barely habitable. The family room, the one with the fireplace that we're hoping to huddle in front of when the vicious winds blow, is still filled with crap. Boxes, unboxed things, stray lampshades. The third "bedroom" is a flurry of clothes and boxes, disturbed only when I go digging through it to find more stuff to wear to work.

Then there's the garage, which is overwhelming. PIcture the warehouse at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Yeah. It's that easy to find things out there. I'm missing a crucial box of books (crucial in that I wanted to teach from a couple of them before the semester ends) ((it's a box of half of my poetry books written by authors with "B" last names)) and Scott is missing some important paperwork. But when we open the door leading to the garage, we reconsider and quietly close it before the angry stacks can make us out in the dim bulb haze.

I swore that Friday would be the day we'd go out there and hunt, but then I came home from work Thursday night with one of the many illnesses that lurks the classrooms and airspace of the Big Giant University like foot-dragging phlegm mummies. Thus, I have spent most of the weekend sleeping.

Meanwhile, Scott is making the most of his pre-new-job time by cooking up some of the tastiest things ever, all fancy stuff like this cod smothered in peppers and sesame seeds and a million other things, baked in parchment paper. It was the best fish dish I've ever eaten. If only my salary were high enough to just employ him as my own blisteringly good chef. But alas, it is not.

My neglect of my blog is unprecedented. I was pulled into the dark forest of my first semester back, and busy to the point of near-psychosis. I have two great classes and then there's the third one. That's another post. Maybe. I don't want to give the monster more power by speaking of it.

We're in the last few gorgeous days of the fall, the ones before the I'm-going-to-kill-you icy winds and ice storms and overall weather that will make Scott have to fight the urge to strangle me for taking him away from Phoenix, where it's just now becoming insanely nice outside. At least I hope he fights the urge.

68 Years Together

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:59:00 +0000

This photo was taken at my wedding in June 2007. Dad is, as you know, in a nursing home now. Their 68th anniversary was October 23rd. He doesn't say much anymore, but just yesterday he told Mom "I love you. You're beautiful." She had not heard that from him in awhile. The man still knows his sweetheart.

A Month Passes

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:13:00 +0000

Or just a day SHORT of a month since I darkened the door of this blog.

My life has been fragmented and happy and busy and uneasy and strange and OK and rotten and joyful and drenched in grief.
In other words, the usual.

I'm in my old job and I did really miss it, but I can't help feeling that I've just stepped out of a 2-year suspended animation. Like Phoenix never happened. And neither did Mrs. Fossilfuel or living in 116 degree heat or losing Hankie. Or all the other stuff that really did happen. The way my family went TILT.

Recently, a new tilt there. My sister and I have not been speaking for three weeks. It was horrible. I have had exactly one fight with her, ever, 5 or 6 years ago, and it was over in one day. This one? Not even a fight. Just a sickening parting of ways. Long story, too personal.

Tonight, about 20 minutes ago, she and I both, at the same moment, started to cry over missing one another. I went to the computer to write her. She had emailed one minute before. If I hadn't stopped to pee, we'd have bumped into each other in cyberspace. It's always about the bathroom with me.

I'm convinced that God had a hand in this. The timing was too exact. Scott agrees. He says "God called it a draw."

I have nothing big to say. I'm just glad I get to be, and have, a sister again.

The Town Hoard House

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:23:00 +0000

After a dozen times of passing this house on the way into my hometown, I had to have a photo. My family told me it has looked this way for at least 6 months. No, the neighbors haven't complained.

My new favorite show is "Hoarders" on A & E. I've never devoured any TV program like I do this one. Scott can't stand to watch it. It freaks him out. The various hoarders all have houses that are packed with crap. All kinds of crap. One 21-year-old guy was convinced he could not throw anything away, especially the shedded fur that came off his beloved dog. He was terrified that by disposing of the fur, he was shortening his dog's life.

An elderly couple hoarded cats. They were not sure how many cats they owned, because most were in hiding, inbred and antisocial and diseased. Finally, Animal Control came to visit, with a court order. Guess how many cats they found in that house? SEVENTY-ONE. Guess how many were alive? Thirty-five. Yes. 36 dead cats, from muffin-sized kitten carcasses to an old tomcat who had died draped over a box and had become a perfect, stiff square.

When the cleaner-outers of the house got to the garage (also, like the house, piled a foot deep in debris, cat poop, etc.) they lifted up a board and a skunk popped out and sprayed them, then ran like hell for parts unknown.

When I watch the show (Monday nights, 9:00 central time) I am, in no specific order, disgusted, fascinated, entertained, and made to feel deliciously, stupendously normal.

That is worth the 65 bucks a month for "extended basic" cable.

Goodbye, House

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:28:00 +0000

We're a little sad today. The sale of our Phoenix house closes tomorrow, and it was a very difficult house to give up. We can only hope we're going in the right direction, and trust that our prayers for guidance and for lack of stupidity are being answered.

This was my favorite place in the house. The drafting table is a used one that Scott found for me on craigslist for Valentine's Day one year. Used for many years by an architect who is now retired. One of the coolest gifts ever.

Odd Emotional Waters. Flimsy Oars.

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:13:00 +0000

One of the problems with having a parent in a nursing home: the roommate. My dad's roommate (we'll call him Corduroy) is driving my mother mad.

Corduroy came in to Shiny Meadows in March, recovering from a fractured hip. He is coherent, somewhat friendly, and 80. The center of his life is the TV suspended from the wall in front of him.

I get it. I get needing the TV on for hours and hours and hours. Life can be lonely, and most certainly a nursing home existence is a pointedly lonely one. The problem is, Corduroy keeps his TV on, blasting, every night, all night long. Dad actually does go to sleep and snores like a bear cub with the noise, but the idea of him having to "put up with that damned TV all the time" has driven my mom to distraction. She calls Shiny Meadows late at night sometimes, to ask the night nurse if she'll turn off the TV. Corduroy is sleeping. He will never know the TV is off. And the night nurse says "It's Corduroy's right to have it on." And my mom says "What about Freddie's rights?"

My dad is next in line for a private room at Shiny Meadows. There are only six of them on his wing of the building. They are currently occupied by:

1. John, an elderly former local politician who is tired and bent over in his wheelchair and whose daughter was my 8th grade home-ec teacher.

2. Annie Mae, 80-ish, in dementia, back and forth between sweet and smiling and pissed off and troublesome for the staff. She regularly decides she is going out to get into her car and taking off to find her mother. On other days she is weeping because she thinks her mother has just died. This breaks my heart. As though going through the loss of your mother once isn't enough. She is the pickiest eater in the wing, often counting on her devoted daughter to bring her a milkshake. She likes sweets, as do virtually all Alzheimers patients. Also confined to a wheelchair.

3. Smiley, 85 or so, a skinny little fragile woman who darts around on her walker like a waterbug scooting across a pond. She has a real name, but one of our family friends who died in Shiny Meadows a few months back dubbed her Smiley because she never ever smiles. Hurries to the dining room, eats quickly, heads back to her room, pronto.

4. Blanche, a night owl. Mostly in a wheelchair, still coherent. My parents have known her forever. She and my dad have always chided one another for their polar political beliefs. When Dad first came to Shiny Meadows, Blanche could get a reaction from him when she said "Here comes that Republican. You know, I'm a Democrat." Dad would say "Oh NO." It was thrilling to Mom and me, having him react to anything. Blanche likes to sleep all day and roll around the hallways at night like a ghost. To keep her occupied, sometimes the night nurse lets her sit behind the nurses' station. But if there is anything to eat, Blanche finds it and eats it. Unapologetically.

5. Sophie. 85 or 90. Wears the same black and red flowered blouse almost every day. Has a constantly itchy back. My mom scratches it for her, through the black and red flowers. Moves along in her wheelchair with her feet, and sits and watches everything around her for entertainment. Quiet and sweet. Has started seeking my mother out for back scratches.

6. Then there is Marzo. She gets around on her walker, is coherent some days and not others, and she wears pink Crocs. She does her leg exercises in physical therapy, back and forth, back and forth, very well with little effort. My family has also known Marzo forever, partly because Marzo has been alive forever. She is 104 years old.

Here is the odd water I'm paddling in: If my dad had a private room, we could put an extra bed in it, a double bed, so that not only could my mom lie down and rest during her long, exhausting hours at Shiny Meadows, but she could also spoon/cuddle/be next to Dad. There would be no Corduroy blasting his blasted TV. There would be no worries about the next roommate and what he might be like.

But of course for Dad's turn at the private room to come around, one of the six would have to go home, or die. None of these six Shiny Meadowers is going home.

Smiley has been in a weakened state a couple of times, once after she took a header onto the cement floor. She's better now and scooting around quietly, her black eye healed, the tennis balls on the feet of her walker sliding past like the stockinged feet of a shy girl at her first sock-hop.

Blanche and Annie Mae are as healthy as horses.

Sophie is a quiet mystery, but seems pretty sturdy.

John is too sleepy to assess.

Marzo has had a rough spell. She got sick with something flu-like last week, then bounced back, though her bounces only go so high at this age. And now she's weak and in a wheelchair and on oxygen.

I used to make jokes to Mom about sneaking in to Shiny Meadows late at night and offing Marzo with her pillow, but Marzo would probably kick my ass and get me down and snap me in two with a thigh-lock.

I do not wish any of these people a quicker death. It makes me feel sick to want a private room for Dad as much as I want it. Mostly I want some rest for my mom.

Mom says Marzo, although 104, "is just as scared to die as she would've been at 80." This is something I have thought about more than is probably healthy. Are we supposed to be less afraid of death the older we get? I'm afraid at 50. I'm afraid of more things now than ever. I need sleeping pills now more than ever. Makes no sense. My life is better than it's ever been, and still fear eats me up.

As I'm going to sleep at night, I often pray for every person at Shiny Meadows. I ask God to rush through the halls like a whoosh of steam, touching every person there with some sort of peace. And then I wait for my pill to bring me sleep.

The Sacred Sisterhood

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:39:00 +0000

Now that I'm back at the Big Giant University, I realize just how much I have missed you, sorority girls! What a dismal two years I spent without even a glimpse of your precise, matching first-week-of-classes outfits. Your glowing white shorts and highway-cone-orange T-shirts with "Go Greek" written in its curlicue font. If, instead of girls, you were letters written in longhand, you would all be "i"s with sweet little hearts for the dots.

I have missed your quotable quotes. Like the girl who walked out the door of the sorority house and spoke into her cell phone: I have to hang up now. I have to concentrate on walking.

Or the earnest sister shaking her donation can out on the quad, yelling "Give money to cancer!"

I was welcomed back to campus by the happy strains coming from the sorority house on the corner near the English Building. And by "strains" I do mean that you were all yell-singing at the top of your lungs: "Jessie's girl! I wish that I had Jessie's girl...Where can I find a woman like that?"

I sometimes wonder if I am alone in my cringing over you. But then I am reassured. Just yesterday I assigned the impromptu writing assignment to my freshman class "Who Do You Wish Would Just Shut Up and Why?" Out of 22 students, 9 chose "sororities." With no coaching from me.

Please, we like, LOVE you. You totally have to keep, like, entertaining us. Oh. Em. Gee...where did you get those shoes you're wearing?! Those are totally the cutest flats I have ever seen. I'm like, dying.

Trying to Schedule Some Breathing Time

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:57:00 +0000

I'm hoping for one day next weekend when I don't have to work on ANYTHING. No lecture prep for teaching, no unpacking, no computer classes, nothing that requires more energy than the remote control and/or turning the pages of a book and/or burrowing into my bed like a frightened weasel would entail.

So get ready, Scott. Your cable days are numbered. When I take that day off, you will be forced into cold turkey: No "Ice Road Truckers" or "Man vs. Wild" or "Pawn Stars" or "Colony" or any of those other shows you've recently discovered. I knew cable would try to steal our souls and eat them like a shovel-full of mice gnawing on two little packets of stale Quaker Oats.

Yesterday I turned the big five-oh. A week before that I weekended with 7 girlfriends from my undergrad days. Lots to write about. When I can. And if I can stay away from the TV. Curse you, Animal Planet.

Ominous

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:12:00 +0000

My sister took this photo just before a nasty storm in Indiana tonight. I love the sky when it gets scary.

System Overload

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:45:00 +0000

We're still in the Cardboard Stonehenge phase of unpacking. Our house is more unsightly and awkward than eating a drippy plate of spaghetti on a first date.

Scott is making a valiant crack at un-cluster----ing it, but there's a long way to go. For instance, since this house is half the size of our Phoenix house, we had to tell the movers to put most of the 180 boxes into the garage. We've brought maybe a third of our belongings into the actual house and still we have to do bird calls to find one another. (Gomer Pyle: "Hootie hoot!")

Today was my first day of teaching orientation. Even though I've taught at this Big Giant University before, for 9 years, there is much new evil technology to learn. Becoming equipped to use a computer in the classroom in various multi-media acrobatics is something my brain takes to very slowly. But the guy teaching the course on it today shot instructions out of his mouth so hard and fast, he was like a frat boy doing his first projectile vomiting. All in technobabble.

His teaching style was a fireworks display, but I need to be treated like a tired old basset hound. Just put one Milkbone biscuit on the plate and let me look at it, smell it, walk away from it, come back, and lie down for a nap before I consider eating it.

The other thing I'm trying to do: come up with a syllabus for each of two classes I've never taught before. "Winging it" is an understatement here. When you have to go look up a word in the description of the class you're going to teach, it's evident that you will be a quarter of an inch in front of your students. And they're gaining speed.

My brain is riding a carousel, and it's going faster and faster and is doing its best to fling me off into the big bowl of the cotton candy stand. I will be pink-sugar-coated and left to turn into a river of sugar-sap by the 2 staples of midwest weather: humidity and rain.

But now my family is two hours away instead of a long flight away. I'm glad to be home.

The Adjustment Period Begins

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:07:00 +0000

We got to our rental house last night, having never seen it before. A friend of ours, who also happens to have introduced us, and so is the hub of this Scott and Candy airline, came to look it over for us, and deemed it acceptable.

Which it was, except for the air conditioner not working when we got here, and the amazing layers of filth the former residents left. OK, not like featured-on-Oprah dirty, but very annoyingly dirty, everywhere. We cleaned the bejeezus out of our house in Phoenix when we left. Four people, including Scott and I and 2 friends, spent 7 hours cleaning. Mopping, washing baseboards, turning the place inside out with various cleaning products. It glimmered.

Then we get here to squalor. The bar has been set so low for cleaning that when we leave this rental house in a year, we will not be cleaning ONE SPECK. In fact, we may throw a mud-wrestling and corn-shucking and pudding-puking party the night before, and leave the remains on the carpet.

In other areas of moving glitches, our truck full of stuff is two days late. This would not be a problem if only we hadn't lined up 4 moving guys to unload the truck when it gets here. We've rescheduled them twice, and now have lost them, and if this were Phoenix we could drive our pick-up down to the Home Depot any morning of the week and pick up some illegals who are milling around outside looking for work. But it is not Phoenix.

I start teaching at the Big Giant University again a week from Monday. Next week is some tech training for how to teach from an e-book, which terrifies me. It will hurt. I just know it will. I would rather use something I'm more savvy with. Like flash cards.

THAT Kind Of Exhaustion

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:12:00 +0000

Maybe you know it? That kind where you get ready to move, and you sort and purge and make 40,000 phone calls and stay up late over and over again, especially the night before the movers come (tonight) and you get down to that "Don't look at it! Just throw it in a box!" mentality and you have no earthly idea what it is you just taped inside that cardboard container, (it could be shoes or china cups or clinky bottles of perfume or a stray mongoose or lizard) but you just keep writing "Fragile" on it because YOU are fragile from all the pressure and the hurry and the goodbyes and the excitement and the sadness and the lack of sleep and the muscle aches and the "cricks" in your neck.

That kind. The exhaustion that makes you think that even though your next step after the movers leave is to drive across the country, that little task looks easy in comparison.

This is our last night in our beloved house. We're moving to the Midwest. Closer to our families.

And as last evenings in a house go, this one was superb. Our best friends came over and for dinner we had an unforgettable last-minute combo: Pizza Hut pizza, and a bottle of Dom Perignon. We toasted. We gave them all the goodies from our freezer. They went home. We swam in the pool under a full moon, then kept packing until our heads were numb with sleep.

Taking my numb skull to bed now. No Scott, that ain't you. You are the boy I'm going on the adventure with.

Maters

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:09:00 +0000

These tomatoes are impressive even to people in Phoenix who have become jaded by the abundance of glimmering produce in every store. Even the post office here is knee-deep in fat squashes and glowing raspberries the size of golf balls and big-hipped artichokes that beg to be taken home and steamed.

And these tomatoes, grown by my sister, hail from humble little Indiana. She is one ridiculously good gardener. Except for one little slip-up this year: She planted pumpkin seeds with her 5-year-old granddaughter, and what came up were watermelons. ALL. OVER. THE. GARDEN. Taking over like a gang of crocodiles.

She has to pick one of her cucumbers the size of a battering ram to whack them over the head with.

It Looks Like Love To Me

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:17:00 +0000

A few months ago I wrote a post about Jinks and Beulah, two residents of Shiny Meadows who have been married since the trees that were eventually chopped down to build the Ark were seedlings.

My sister took this photo of them today.

He Had To Have Her

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:38:00 +0000

One of the reasons it's taking me SO long to pack stuff is that I'm going through every single one of the boxes I've been dragging along with me through the past FOUR moves, in an attempt to purge.

Today, I'm shredding old student papers. I glanced over the first page of one, and had to share the opening with you. This is from an introductory fiction writing class, circa 1999.

She was easily one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Her vibrant black hair glowed like a quiet creek. Her skin was the perfect shade of honey brown. Her eyes sparkled like the shimmering chandeliers that grace Buckingham Palace. And her body --ooh her body-- curved flawlessly from head to toe.

Although I had been in a similar predicament before, the feeling of nausea still felt fresh. Anxiety trampled through my tender veins as fear swept across my flesh like bugs scatter when the lights are turned on. I freaked like a stereotypical suburban school girl: "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!"

I know she felt it. I know she felt my eyes. I looked at her like Oprah looks at a fresh piece of fried chicken. God I wanted her. But could I have her?

Now an update. In little groups. Of three words.

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 06:49:00 +0000

Moving across country.

Two weeks away.

Closer to family.

Feelings are mixed.

Leaving beautiful house.

Leaving delicious winters.

And ridiculous summers.

Packing boxes constantly.

Too much stuff.

Still attempting downsizing.

Realtors bringing people.

Not enough people.

Market really sucks.

We pray lots.

Stress points: VOLCANIC.

Another update soon.

Maybe a haiku.

They Had To Be Stopped

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:57:00 +0000

In our backyard, there is a palm tree.
In the palm tree resides a community of pigeons, numbering around 13.

We have been tolerant. We have put up with the feathers floating on the surface of the pool water, and the buoyant shit-splats that look like chewed gum bumping into us when we swim. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES WE CLEAN THE POOL WITH THE BIG BUTTERFLY NET.

Lately, it has gotten ridiculous. Not only have the pigeons been screwing as much as frat boys claim they are screwing, but their feces output has been almost otherworldly. Between all the screwing and the dropping of pigeon logs, you'd think the pigeons would be svelte and thin. No. They're all getting as big and bulbous as turkeys and taking on a welfare mentality.

Guess what? Today, we hired a guy to give our palm tree a most severe trimming. Picture Amy Winehouse's big ratty bouffant sliced down to a Marine-approved burr cut.

Take that, you shitting machines. You, who deposited so many layers of shit on the branches of our palm tree that the shit-chunks would finally launch downward from their own weight, falling like shit-baseballs onto our lawn, and then bursting into even more unsightly shit-pancakes.

Scott and I came outside this evening to see all of you confused like the morons you are, sitting dejectedly on our neighbor's roof. How triumphant we were. Scott doing a little dance and saying "Take that, bitches!" It was a day where we said "Take that" a lot.

I took photos of you in your exile. We laughed as we walked into the house. I downloaded the photos onto the computer and decided to go take more.

The neighbor's roof was empty.

You were all back in our tree, jockeying for position and trying to perch your fat asses on branches no longer than cigarettes.

I was a bit sorry that I decided to relay this information to Scott. It might have been better if I hadn't seen him burst out the back door and then go ballistic with the garden hose, snapping it like a whip and pinching the stream with his fingers so he could blast you out of the tree. While gritting his teeth and telling you what shitting bitches you are. This is what happens when you go back for more pictures.

I Know...How Could I Possibly Get Rid of This???

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:43:00 +0000

I'm purging again. And this time it's serious. I started the process (this one) about a year and a half ago. It continues. The goal is to cut my possessions by half.

I am EVEN giving up my Pablo Cruise girlie tank top. Acquired that night in 1979 when I met them in person and got my picture taken on various pop-rock laps. They were crazy, I tellya. Get this: the lead singer skateboarded onto the stage. Take THAT, Ozzy Osbourne! You and your silly chomping on bats.

It's Our Second Anniversary!

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:12:00 +0000

And it has been quite a two years. The happiest of my life, and among the saddest. I've learned big thick lessons about how you have to love life and soak up all the joy as though you are a piece of dry cat food in water, even when family tragedy comes and splashes you out of the water bowl.

Today has been very laid back. We napped, ate some really good pasta that Scott cooked, and are anticipating the return of my visiting sister, niece, and grand-nephew from up around the Grand Canyon. All of us went there on Sunday. Scott and I came home yesterday, incoherently tired but full of Grand Canyon afterglow.

The Grand Canyon. That thing will just shut you up.

A post about our dreadful but memorable honeymoon is here.

Avian Randiness

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:09:00 +0000

It's happening again. Bird sex. This time it is the huge pigeons that live in the palm tree behind our house. I have always been leery of these birds. Ever since I got in the habit of going outside at night and shining a flashlight into the tree. The first time was July 4th, 2006. I was visiting Scott before we were married and it was way too hot to drive over to see the fireworks. Who gives a rat's sphincter about fireworks when it's 112 degrees at night? So we went outside, sat with our feet in the pool, and it was really peaceful except for the flutter of the creepy birds in the palm tree. I got a flashlight and shot it up there at them and they just hung there like big obnoxious fruit. Juicy, fat feather-berries, blinking their eyes like "Do you friggin' MIND?" It was their accusatory look that got me. The nerve.

So today, when there were FOUR of them in the tree having such vicious sex that my sister and niece and I could not hear our own conversation, I took action. I got the garden hose and held it as high over my head as I could, and put my thumb on the end of it to make it spray really hard, and water-blasted their crude behavior right out of the tree. They took off for parts unknown and stray feathers floated to the ground like cigarette ashes. I felt empowered.

I sat down and enjoyed the quiet and wholesomeness.
Then they zipped back into the tree, wet but unfettered, and resumed their positions.

Calling All Bird Experts

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:30:00 +0000

For the last couple of days there has been an abundance of bird sex in our backyard. There are two doves that are especially into it. For the first time in my life, I saw two birds having sex. (And then a second time, and then a third.) Most people have probably seen this by the time they're middle-aged. I was on the phone with my mom, looking outside, when the two birds were banging like there was no tomorrow. I didn't know they were doves, and only found this out when I described them to Mom. She knows her birds.

"And I do have a bird book, you know," she says.

Here's the question for the experts:

After the doves finished with their jackhammering, they did this little ring-around-the-rosie dance, all wings and speed, only it was more of a "Oh-my-gosh-we-just-had-sex-I-canNOT-believe-it!" dance. It was at lightning speed, around and around in circles, so that I lost track of which bird had been on top during the freak show.

Normally I would not be very concerned with which bird was which. But I was this time. Why? Because as soon as they stopped and shook off their dizziness, one of the birds pecked the HELL out of the other's neck. The back of the neck. Peckpeckpeckpeckpeckpeckpeck. Really hard. And I want to know, bird experts, was it the female pecking the male? Or the male pecking the female? My mom's theory is that it was the male telling the female the bird equivalent of "Slam bam thank you m'am" or just "Good girl!" But I'm not convinced. Could it have been the female pummeling the male in a "You never buy me jewelry!" kind of way?

Happy Birthday, Dad!

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Today Dad is 91. Our favorite CNA at the nursing home, Marlene, brought him a cake and a balloon. An extra-sweet thing to do, especially considering that she doesn't get paid nearly enough.

It's not easy to think of a gift for someone in a nursing home. The residents there are surrounded by things that were given by well-intentioned people, but that go unused. Scented powders and crossword puzzle books and way too many extra pairs of slippers and lap robes. People only have so many feet and laps.

Mom got out a red Sharpie and drew a reminder for Dad, on a pillowcase, that she's thinking of him when she's not there. I just love that she did that.

Candy Indulges in a Treat

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:42:00 +0000

Today I finally went to get a massage. Scott gave me a gift certificate (almost a year ago) for a day at a spa and at long last I scheduled it and went.

Every time I get a full body massage, I come back to one thought: If I could get one of these every week, my life would be transformed. I don't care about having a boatload of money or fame or a mansion or trips around the world. I just want a weekly massage. But still, I only go about once a year.

My appointment was at 2:00. I put on the satiny robe and the black rubbery sandals ("Candy! You look simply rubbery today!) that went slapslapslap as I walked across the Italian tile floor.

For the next hour, Christina, an angel from a far corner of heaven, worked my muscles with her angelic hands. Little golden harps burst out of her hands, so angelic were they. I could feel the stress stubbornly marching out of my body, resentfully carrying its duffel bag of rage grenades, now defused.

Here is a sample of what went through my head during the massage:

I remember now. I LIVE inside this body. It's like a case for my brain and my thoughts and my freak-outs and my memories...pheasant under glass. My body is the glass and my brain is the pheasant. Dude.

I'm so limp. Deadweight. I'm dead. She's putting that oil on me in some ancient burial ritual. I'm going into a pyramid. She's going to friggin' swaddle me and put me in a pyramid...

How could a hand massage be so amazing? I don't remember this. My hand has fireworks melting inside it. No! OUTside. Fireworks are running down my wrist. I have to try this on Scott. Pay attention. Pay attention. Remember what she's doing. I can't. I can't pay attention. I'm Smuckers. I'm jelly in a jar. I'm like a jello mold that someone took the mold off of before it set. I'm a pool of lime jello with carrot bits.

WHY don't people talk more about their feet? I cannot believe it. All those pressure points in the bottom of our feet are like buttons that open little doors to other worlds. Why isn't anyone talking about this? Why aren't people getting up out of their cubicles and stopping their cars to get out and talk about FEET?

And it went on like this. Because stress, when it is approached like the big sticky, watermelon-sized grenade that it is, and cut up into bits smaller than the end of a toothpick, frees your brain up. You can stop thinking just for a blip about the what ifs. It is sad that this mode of thought is so foreign that it feels like another galaxy.

After the massage, I went out to the pool and was thrilled to see I was the only one there. It was a small pool, only 4 feet deep, with a jacuzzi next to it. For the next hour, I floated around on a giant raft that took up about a quarter of the pool. I was in massive relaxation mode. The sun was my friend. The water was my friend. The blue of the sky was my friend. The little waterfall at the end of the pool was my very best friend. Each time my blow-up barge drifted over there, and the waterfall splashed onto my feet, I thought "Oh no, little waterfall! Don't do that!"

I decided to try the jacuzzi. As a rule, I do not like jacuzzis. They are always too hot, and there are mutated things growing in them that can make you sicker than if you ate a spoiled mayo sandwich and washed it down with a malaria smoothie. I hung my legs down into the bubbling, frothing water. Yes. Too hot. Or almost too hot. I stood in the jacuzzi. I was feeling confident. Maybe I could take this much heat. I would playfully walk across the jacuzzi and test out my tolerance for the hot water.

It had been a long time since I'd been in a jacuzzi. I forgot there was a farging DEEP part in the middle. Picture a cartoon woman walking over a manhole without the manhole cover. Down I went, water-too-hot or not. I burst up and hacked like a cat and thanked God that I was the only person in the pool area.

But because I had had a massage, I didn't really care. I still felt warm and peaceful and loose like a very cooked noodle. Cooked even more from the pasta water jacuzzi.

I drove home in a daze, listening to Pat Metheny. I ate the fancy granola bar provided by the spa. I knew I would be worthless when I got home, good for nothing. De-stressing me is like throwing a fish up onto a dock. There it is, mouthbreathing and lost and stunned, asking Where is that substance I normally live in?

Just for tonight, I'll live in the gentle scent of black cherry and almond oil on my grateful skin, which is covering my grateful muscles. Tomorrow I fall off the dock, back into the water.

Festive Decor

noreply@blogger.com (Candy Rant) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:16:00 +0000

For Scott's party, we did not hold back on gettin' out the fancy things.

This is the plaster bust of Richard Nixon I painted when I was 13. We surrounded it with polka dots and votive candles and it looked a bit like a seance at a clown's house.

Our guests liked it, because, like their host and hostess, they can't tolerate anything that hints at chintzy.