Mysterious things are happening around my house.
Strange, eerie, beautiful (and sometimes maddening) things.
Those of you who follow me on Facebook are well aware of the MASSIVE beehive that has taken over a portion of my property … and my life. If you’re not yet familiar with THE HIVE, don’t worry. The saga will likely result in a metaphor-rich post about productivity, fertility and sweetness. It’s obvious the all mighty honey bee is my latest animal spirit guide.
When Henry was an infant he went through a ghost phase. And by ghost phase I mean he saw ghosts (ie: waved at Nothing, smiled at Nothing and acknowledged the presence of Nothing in a way that was both unsettling and mystical to his reasonable parents.)
This phase lasted from about nine to 12 months of age. It began one morning when I waltzed plodded bright bleary-eyed into Henry’s room and spotted him staring into space, smiling and blah-blah-blahing at a very specific Nothing in the corner of his room.
“Good morning Henry,” I said.
No reaction. He was too preoccupied with the Thing I Could Not See to pay me any mind.
For three whole minutes my perfectly rowdy baby failed to whine, coo or so much as nod in my direction. Although I was invisible, the Thing I Could Not See remained perfectly in focus.
I stared at the Nothingness he was staring at.
What on earth was he looking at? Or better yet, WHO was he looking at?
“Henry? Yoo hoo? Good morning,” I sang croaked.
It took some effort to divert his attention. When he finally did turn to face me he gave a little goodbye wave to the apparition in his room.
“Sweetheart, did you see something over there?”
He smiled smugly as if to say YOU DUMB ADULT. YOUR EYES ARE TOO OLD TO SEE WHAT I SEE. Returning to his usual helpless state, he threw his arms in the air and grunted – the universal baby sign for GET ME OUT OF MY CRIB DAMMIT.
This is Henry when he was four months old. He couldn’t crawl and he couldn’t sit. He was nursing every few hours and puking every few minutes. He was smiling. Always smiling. He did that pretty frequently pretty early on, which I took to be a good sign.
My baby will be happy, I said.
And boy was I right. When he’s happy, he’s really happy. When he’s frustrated, he’s really frustrated. He exists in a perpetual state of One Extreme or The Other.
Sometimes he’ll hang around in The Middle. When he’s in The Middle you’ll know it. He’ll bring you a book and in his most civilized babble, ask you to sit still with him and read.
He likes to flip the pages on his own. Usually he turns to a picture of a cat, or a dog, or a truck. Each time he’ll identify these creatures as “lights.” Everything is a “light,” or as he likes to say it, “ite.”
My kid loves the light. Airplanes are repeatedly identified as “ites.” Dogs are ites. Squirrels are ites. The garbage truck is an ite.
Henry aches to be in the light every second of every day.
I swung by Dollar General yesterday afternoon to pick up some odds and ends.
While I was standing in the discount DVD aisle, a little boy about five years old ran up to me clutching two stuffed horses.
He was galloping. The horses were pretend galloping and pretend neighing.
I was considering purchasing a $4 As Good As It Gets DVD.
The child nuzzled me. The horses in his hands nuzzled me.
I put down the DVD. Wondered what Jack Nicholson was up to lately. Turned my attention to the kid at my waist; the brown horses neighing at my enormously pregnant stomach.
“You like my horses?” He asked.
“They’re very beautiful,” I said, bending down to meet him.”You take good care of them.”
“They’re race horses,” he replied.
“They look very fast,” I said.
“They need a bath.”
“They look perfectly clean to me.”
“Oh no, they stink like dirty horses,” he said turning his attention to the DVD display in front of us. I scanned the store for his parents. The only adults I could see were two presumably homeless men buying generic cola at the checkout counter.
“You buyin’ a movie?” He asked.
“Was thinking about it. You got any suggestions?”
He thought about it for a minute and then wildly galloped his horses in the air.
“I think you should buy a horse for your son,” he said.
I looked around for sign of another child. Surely, this kid had seen another boy in the store and assumed he belonged to me.
There were no other kids in the store.
Just me. The boy. The clerk. Two horses and two bums.
I wasn’t sure how to address his comment.
Technically I don’t have a son. Not yet anyway. I mean … well … I do, but he’s not exactly running around the house begging for toy horses even though lately some of his kicks and jabs make me think he’s ready to come out and play.
I looked at the boy suspiciously.
Where are your parents, dude?
I was in a hurry and in no position to explain pregnancy to a five-year-old.
So I said, “I don’t have a son.”
The boy tilted his head to the side. Nudged my stomach with one horse.
“You will soon,” he said, grinning.
—-
True story. It’s rekindled my belief in animal spirit guides.
For more on this picture, see the end of this post. ω
1. There’s a freewheeling monkey on the lam in my neighborhood.
That’s right. You heard me. And it’s old news at this point. The vagabond monkey has made national headlines for months, including CNN, ABC News and The Colbert Report. It’s apparently a Rhesus monkey, native to Asia and it’s been running around Tampa Bay since 2008, eluding wildlife authorities and popping up in random housing developments as far as 50 miles apart. Efforts to tranquilize the monkey have proved futile. Twice it’s been hit by darts and each time scampered away, forcing authorities to increase their dosage. One trapper suggests the primate is at this point, addicted to the darts. No one knows for sure where the hell the monkey came from, although authorities claim it was likely separated from a wild troop in the Ocala Forest. Last it turned up swinging from a tree in a pool cage near my house. The woman who owned the house, snapped a picture and then watched as the monkey proceeded to go berserk, fall into her pool, clamber out of the water and then escape through an open screen door. When the woman surveyed her property later, she noticed several grapefruits were missing from one of her trees. Not only is this monkey ballsy. It’s got some 67,000 fans on Facebook. According to several eyewitnesses, he looks both ways before crossing the street. That’s more than I can say for some people. I say let the monkey go. He’s a smart, self-sufficient go-getter.
2. Living in a town that hosts the Grand Prix is like living in a beehive.
I mean that in the best possible way. I’m not afraid or perturbed by bees. It’s just that from a distance, race cars, as any Nascar-loving yahoo will tell you, sound a lot like an approaching swarm of killer bees. The only thing slightly perturbing about the Honda Grand Prix is that it sets up shop every spring on the waterfront in downtown St. Pete, closing entire stretches of road that Joe and I frequently bike. The race itself is only one weekend, but the track takes weeks to rig, which means Beach Drive and Bay Shore Drive are closed from Central Avenue to Albert Whitted Airport for almost a month. Two years ago, we rode around the barricades thinking it would be an adventure. The race was still weeks away and we figured no harm could be caused by two wayward bicyclists tooling around a racetrack. However, at one point I stopped paying close attention to where I was going and by a millimeter avoided slamming my face into a mesh fence. Since such a near-miss should not be taken lightly, Joe and I no longer jump barricades when the Grand Prix is in town. Well, for the most part.
3. The only notable thing about the new Tom Cruise flick is Cruise’s porcelain veneers.
You don’t have to be married to a film critic to figure this one out.
4. There’s nothing like running past a one-armed fisherman to keep you motivated.
This happened two weeks ago on a particularly awful run, the kind of run you force yourself to go on because you’re a.) in a lazy mood and b.) achy from previous runs. Mustering motivation, I tied on my shoes – dubbed “the boats” by my sister PK due to their gargantuan size and canoe-like shape. After reaching for my toes once or twice in a pathetic, half-assed attempt at stretching, I sprinted out the front door and down the road. Two minutes into the run it was clear I would need some sort of mental pick-me-up in order to persevere through the next three miles. Rounding a cul-de-sac on Coffee Pot Boulevard I came upon a one-armed fisherman baiting his pole on the edge of a seawall. He used his left stump to steady the pole and his good hand to lace a grub through the hook. Without realizing it, my body began to pick up speed, my left knee throbbed less, my feet felt weightless in my boats and my spirit soared. I’ve thought about the one-armed fisherman on every run since and I’ll no doubt think of him when I’m dogging it this Saturday in my first triathlon. If some dude can bait a pole with one arm, I can run, bike and swim for 1 hour and 40 minutes.
5. Worried your lifeguard husband is ogling babes in bikinis all day?
Well, you haven’t met the guy who works at the North Shore Pool in downtown St. Pete. While swimming laps this week, (in preparation for the above mentioned triathlon) my best friend Ro and I watched a male lifeguard apply sunscreen to the back of an 85-year-old woman wearing a skirted bathing suit and a plastic babushka. Hello job perk!
ω I interviewed Bill Walker, a commodities trader-turned Appalachian Trail hiker last month for The Observer. A short version of his long story is here. Faced with limited photo options on a stormy day, I chose to shoot Bill walking on Siesta Key Beach in the rain. And no, he’s not 7 feet tall. He’s 6 feet 11 inches. ω
Surely I’m not the only girl who does this before leaving the house. Surely I’m not the only girl who tears through her closet like an animal trying to find something decent and cute and flattering to wear to parties, interviews, or dinners with friends. Surely we all do this.
I blame the fact that I work from home. I blame the fact that I spend a good chunk of my day conducting phone interviewing and writing stories in a T-shirt and underwear. I blame the fact that I now despise shopping in any store that sells trendy summer scarves. I love summer scarves. I’ve always loved summer scarves. Why did they have to become trendy?
I blame the fact that my sister PK gives me her hand-me-downs. That the pug sheds on everything I own. I blame sweatpants. If sweatpants are so unacceptable, they should be uncomfortable and smell like sewage. If something is soft, loose and moderately clean, I’m wearing it. But why must these rules change in public? Why!?
Tonight I spent 30 minutes trying to find something to wear to a company party. My wardrobe is so G.D. old you’d tell me to shut up if I told you when and where I purchased my stuff. For example, I wear a pair of Old Navy jeans from 9th grade on a regular basis. They’re Joe’s favorite jeans. As you might recall, last year I purchased a pair of $150 7 For All Mankind ass jeans from Stein Mart. But of course it’s the saggy bottoms from 9th grade that Joe loves best. (Note: Yes, I shop at Stein Mart. It makes me feel old and retired in all the best ways.)
The black shirt I ended up wearing tonight was PK’s when she was in high school. I used to steal it and wear it to work at Waldenbooks when I was in college. It has a tiny pocket on the shoulder, so tiny my friends nicknamed it “the condom pocket.”
The white pants I wore came from Block Island, Rhode Island. My best friend Ro and I pedaled across the state in 2004. When we got to the coast we decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a ferry, where we landed on a tiny island with big biking potential and too many bars. After three hours on the island we were so drunk and tired we missed the 8 o’clock ferry back to the mainland. The third reason why we missed the ferry was because I came across a killer sale at an uppity boutique, where yes, I bought the white pants.
So tonight I wore the Rhode Island pants and PK’s condom shirt. After 30 minutes of ripping off one ill-fitting garment after the next, (including a new tweed dress from Ann Taylor) I decided to go with an old and well worn outfit. I always do this.
Anyway. I digress. My sloppy fashion sense wasn’t supposed to be the focus of this post. Instead I signed on here to tell you that a couple of weeks ago, while my sister PK was watching The Bachelorette, a gecko shot across her living room floor. Freaked by the sight of this reptilian invader, she decided to trap it under a ceramic Japanese cereal bowl. She said it was her only option, that she was too engrossed in The Bachelorette and therefore incapable of relocating the beast. I know this because I unknowingly called her during a commercial break.
And now for a funny short story from home:
My mothership has a pet chipmunk. He’s not a pet in the sense that he sits in a cage in the house and runs on a wheel or plows around the living room in a clear plastic ball. He’s an outdoor pet and he lives, for the most part, by his own means.
He popped up five years or so ago, a little brown chipmunk with a racing stripe on its back. My mom found him nosing around her garden. She says he appeared shortly after I moved away. He was nibbling on sunflower seeds and millet in her bird feeders, which explained why her feeders were mysteriously losing seeds within hours of filling them.
Rather than shoo him away, my mothership, the patron saint of woodland creatures, stray cats, one-eyed bunnies, wayward frogs and ailing birds, started filling the feeders with extra seeds and extra millet. And the chipmunk that she had so cleverly named Chippy did not protest.
Sneaky synchronicity has reared its fateful head again!
Rooster (aka Cock): Rooster is a symbol of resurrection and sexuality as he heralds in the dawn of a new day. Often, good news is at hand when Rooster appears in Dreamtime. However, watchfulness is key as the dreamer must be ever aware of being overly arrogant or cocky. Rooster reminds us to avoid fighting at all costs. The lesson is to respect others while honoring ourselves, or we just might find ourselves ensnared in a ruse of our own making.
The Rooster is a solar symbol and represents sexuality. Those with a Rooster as a Totem may have had past lives as early Christians or ancient Greeks. A Rooster totem brings enthusiasm and humor and a sense of optimism. The Rooster is a totem of great power and mystery with ties to the ancient past and clues to your own hidden powers. It is the enemy of evil spirits and can bound them with the light of day.
“That frog,” I told Joe, “is going to get stomped on.”
Remembering a former new age-y boss, who once confessed to me during a long Christmas shift at Waldenbooks, that he had a groundhog spirit guide, I decided to reference the frog in Ted Andrews book, Animal Speak.
According to Andrews, if a frog has presented itself, “it may be time to breathe new life into an old project or goal.”
The frog is a symbol of fertility, rebirth and resurrection. Since I’m in no hurry to get preggers, I took this is as a message to get cracking on The Book, which I realize has nothing to do with returning The Dress.
Armed with frog knowledge I took off to purchase a present for a friend in downtown St. Pete, and as usual, I passed a gaggle of bums, and as usual, one of them called out to me.
“M’am,” he croaked. “Can you spare some change so I can get ointment for my foot.”
This is a new one, I thought. Foot ointment. Surely this bum – I’ll call him Jed – has milked other ailments in the past, but foot ailments? C’mon, dude. Wear shoes and your feet won’t slough off.
I reached into my purse, pulled out a dollar bill, handed it to Jed and snapped, “That foot. Is dis-gusting.”
Jed took the dollar bill and nodded gratefully, his ruddy face creasing in the afternoon sun like an origami crane. It hit me just then, like a sack of bricks to the belly, that bums are ageless. Not ageless in the sense that they are young, but ageless in the sense that they are without an age. To those of us who pass them by, bums are just bums with no names and no ages. No numbers and letters to hang over their heads. Just time.
“Linda,” said the one saleswoman. “Get over here. You’re not gonna believe how well this dress fits.”
“Like a glove!” Squealed Linda. “Oo! We’ve been waiting for someone to buy this dress!”
“How long do I have to return it?” I asked.
“Return it?” They snapped. “Why would you return it?”
And then, two weeks later I returned it. I think the saleswomen had a bet, because when I walked in with the dress in a Target bag, the one smirked at the other like, Itoldyouso.
“Well that’s too bad,” the one woman said. “It fit you like a glove.”
On my way up 2nd Avenue I passed Ann Taylor, walked inside and purchased a fetching tweed number for the rehearsal dinner.
