The Benefits of Not Being Born a Blue Blood

Posted in authors, blogging, Books, Education, Excercise, Gardening, Health, History, Holidays, Humor, Medicine, Nature, Pets, Science, Storytelling, travel by Shelley Sackier

There is nothing I love more than suddenly getting the undeniably gleeful itch to go on a trip, and then, just as suddenly, coming to my senses and feeling around on my head to see if I’ve developed a large lump that would suggest some sort of tumor or disease, or maybe even discover the whole thing is absent.

I think I’m like a lot of people in the world—those who can envision the excitement of an exotic location, a change in weather, or discovering new cuisine—but it’s right thereafter I have those dreamy notions, all perfect and picture-worthy, that I remember every trip is actually three trips built into one.

And then I also suddenly remember how much I hate to travel.

Usually, everything comes to a screechingly swift and mind-clearing halt.

Except this time.

This time I got caught up in all the romance of it: I’d travel alone, create a schedule based on only my whims and interests, and I’d not have to share a bed or bedroom with anyone that spent a good portion of the night farting, belching, snoring, or hacking up large chunks of lunch or half their body hair.

Solo travel.

The other bonus is the whole fly by the seat of my pants kind of planning.

Except … I am a total planner. And planning is the heart of part one in a three-part trip.

Those three trips inside every adventure away from home?

The planning phase – the trip as you build it and see it in your mind
The experiencing phase – the trip as you live it hour by hour and moment to moment
The remembering phase – the trip as you want yourself and others to recall it

Two out of three phases require some mind gamery, and in some cases, therapy once complete.

So, I leaped into the planning phase—the dreaming, the scheming, the OH-MY-GOD-I’M-GOING-TO-USE-AI-FOR-THIS phase.

Yeah, I had a serious sit-down chat with Artificial Intelligence and after asking it the wholly boring traditional questions whose answers I always first seek out like: What should I do in this town? And What should I eat in this town? And Where will I find a place where the people are allowed to pour scotch? I then grew tired of traditional and began asking questions that a five-year-old might ponder.

Where would you go if you had legs?

Where does it smell the best in this town?

Can we meet for a drink and use your credit card to pay for it?

After soaking in a few weeks of the blissful planning phase and creating my seriously-this-will-be-amazing itinerary, I did the one thing that always makes every highly orchestrated schedule implode on itself: I embarked.

I somehow suffer from amnesiac qualities that are in full gear during the planning phase—I forget how much I love historic markers and cannot stop from pulling over onto the side of the road to read every one of them—even though most of them are simply pointing out yet another place George Washington had slept. Truly the man should have been tested for narcolepsy.

I forget how I am so giddy being on break from the “every day” that I will engage in conversation with cashiers at the filling station, or women in any restroom, or every stray cat lying in the sun on the sidewalk for hours.

I forget that I am a total sucker for every notice and signboard request to “please snap a photo of this landscape and send to our club/organization/county offices so that we can chart the progress of our cleanup efforts/garden growth/bluebird house project.”

I forget how I can be halfway through a trail hike and come across a somewhat hidden chemical manufacturing plant that, upon pressing Google for information, harvests horseshoe crabs for biomedical research. I then discover that Horseshoe crabs’ blood is collected to support the production of LAL, or Limulus amoebocyte lysate, a clotting agent that aids in the detection of human pathogens in patients, drugs, and intravenous devices. And then I finally discover that a horseshoe’s blood is blue! Feeling very Erin Brockovich-like, I realize I have uncovered absolutely nothing except a creepy photo of how these crabs go through the bloodletting process.

Altogether though, these activities completely obliterate any timetable I’d painstakingly crafted, and my days are filled not with seaside lounging, wine tastings, garden walks, and museums, but rather rusty highway markers, indifferent alley cats and camouflaged fowl, and the eyeroll-worthy wasted pursuits of seafood cruelty.

This … is how I spend my time.

Finally, of course, I come home, and being the well-practiced fiction writer that I am, must craft a slightly racier version of the truth. An embellishment here and there, a tale grown taller where height was needed, a yarn spun with a rainbow of color where it might truthfully have been categorized as beige.

The historic marker may have a map taped to the back of it which leads me to a dilapidated governess-in-training school, where a tattered and overlooked diary reveals the daily abuses suffered by schoolgirls whose once wealthy families fell on hard times, forcing them to offer up their female issue for future employment—if they could make it past the cruel headmaster’s daily taste for vehemence and depravity.

The footpath placard’s request for an uploaded snapshot unleashes a deluge of texts and phone calls not from The Nature Conservancy, as advertised, rather an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency stating that my latest photo reveals I am the closest individual to the Lesser Spotted Great Ebony Igris which is believed to be used by certain foreign countries as a spying device, and what ensues is a day-long chase to gather closer proof to their suspicions. Clearly, Citizenry Science working at its full potential.

And the blue-blooded horseshoe crabs whose vital liquid is drained from their heart until it ceases to flow? What more could I add to that really. It’s perfect already.

This is how it goes. The trilogy of one trip. I look back and wonder at its success. I wonder if I am rested and sated with tasting a week of different living. I wonder if it was money well spent. I wonder if I will remember the true details and recall them with fondness over time.

I wonder if anyone will buy the new book I will start penning tomorrow—the one about an illicit ring of runaway governesses who harvest horseshoe blood for mountains of cash and open an elite spa and recovery center for repatriated creatures involved in avian espionage.

Perhaps it is better to travel hopefully, than to actually arrive at all.

~Shelley

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Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

31Jul2022

In Memory

Posted in beauty, death, emotions, Family, Friendship, Pets, Reflections, Relationships, Storytelling by Shelley Sackier

Dear Reader,

I pause this month from my normal scribbles to share the sad news of my sweet hound’s passing. Haggis has been the inspirational source of countless essays within this blog, as only a dog that is either full of devilment or saintly radiance could provide. He possessed the latter in spades and will be dearly missed. My heart is crushed, an unabating anguish is my new familiar—an indifferent timekeeper I must walk beside but yearn to part with. As deep as the blistering pain is—the price to have shared a path with him—it is one I will pay, as I was lucky to have known him at all.

The Power of the Dog by Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way

From men and women to fill our day;

And when we are certain of sorrow in store,

Why do we always arrange for more?

Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware

Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy

Love unflinching that cannot lie—

Perfect passion and worship fed

By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.

Nevertheless it is hardly fair

To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits

Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,

And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs

To lethal chambers or loaded guns,

Then you will find—it’s your own affair—

But… you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,

With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).

When the spirit that answered your every mood

Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,

You will discover how much you care,

And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,

When it comes to burying Christian clay.

Our loves are not given, but only lent,

At compound interest of cent per cent.

Though it is not always the case, I believe,

That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve:

For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,

A short-time loan is as bad as a long—

So why in—Heaven (before we are there)

Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

29May2022

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Kill No Weevil

Posted in beauty, Communication, Health, Humor, NASA, Nature, Pets, Spirits by Shelley Sackier

Last week, one of my cats did something weird.

That statement, in and of itself, is a little unusual, as this particular cat is always doing something weird—talks to lamp shades, tests the running water temperature from a faucet before agreeing to drink from it, and as she’s left-handed, she insists on ergonomic southpawed Fiskars, so for me to notice … well, I think you get my point.

This new particularly weird thing was her staring at a small crack in the wall. A puncture wound of sorts, straight through the plaster. And then the next day, she put both her paws on either side of that wound, standing meercat style, and began a new phase of the “what’s behind the wall” festival.

I sat there with her for a while one day. Heard nothing, smelled nothing, and I certainly didn’t get any of the creepy, hair-raising, goosebump inducing feelings she’s produced in me before when discovering that she’s likely communicating with someone who died in that general vicinity (I spent a fair amount of time this last year in an old cottage that once served as a hospital for a Civil War arsenal compound, and this cat—along with all the house cats—spent countless hours with wide-eyed expressions, howling at a stairwell.).

This time was still just a mystery waiting to be solved.

But as of last night, my dog joined her in the wall staring competition. Now two furfaces were trying to convince me that I should take a sledgehammer to that plaster work just to see what has taken up residence there.

Again, I sat with them both as they studied the inner cladding of my laundry room, its blinding whitewash lacquer revealing nothing and instead simply generating the occasional cock of one of their heads. Alas, we must remember, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I would have agreed without argument that both could hear something my ears were not privy to—the pattering of mouse feet, the fluttering of insect wings, the terrifying audio NASA has just released from a black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster—if it weren’t for the fact that one of them was stone deaf.

But maybe there is scent as well as sound, as the deaf hound can certainly still identify from three rooms away the fact that I ate a piece of bacon twelve hours ago.

I’ve called the pest company I have a quarterly contract with, and they gave me the choice of a visit from someone on their varmint team or a technician within their paranormal investigations department, but either way, they’ll be dressed in a hazmat suit and would be spraying some sort of exorcistical holy water. I’m still deciding.

At one point, during one of the bewhiskered gatherings, I joined in. I sat on the floor, stared at the plaster puncture, and focused. Things grew a little blurry and I began to feel like I was searching and waiting for a Magic Eye image to appear—some 3D illusion requiring patience and perhaps a lost instruction booklet to successfully view.

Then I closed my eyes and simply focused on sound. The hound is barrel-chested; therefore, his breath is so audible, one can nearly hear all the pleural friction taking place in his ancient lungs. The cat has a habit of licking her lips and swallowing frequently, which to me indicates that whatever’s behind the barrier is either worthy of salivating over or she is fostering a nervous tick revealing how she’s trying not to freak out. It might also point toward dental disease, but that’s a next month’s problem.

While the three of us concentrated on something only two of us were truly aware of, a second cat slinked in. She looked about the room, quietly assessed the vibe, and then crawled into my lap, wedging one bony shoulder into the crook of my knee and keeping one eye open whilst the other took a break. The next few minutes of silence was equal parts unsettling and soothing.

The next afternoon I came upon the weird cat, again, simply paying homage to the drywall. I sat down, assumed the position, and waited for the wooden floor patter of the remaining eight softly padded paws to make their way to our small, shared space—which they shortly did.

And whether everyone was intrigued by the invisible entity, waiting with curious anticipation as to its reveal, or some were simply there to catch half a face full of shuteye, what was clear was that this chunk of fading linoleum was becoming a slightly sacred space.

And apparently, we were settling in for a spell.

And perhaps a spell is what we were under, as the next thirty minutes escaped unnoticed. Maybe this was the point—maybe that peaceful half hour was meant to be experienced in a state of heightened oblivion. Not asleep, not awake, just present, like the thing we could not see.

A ringing telephone brought us out of our stupor with the answering machine announcing, “Hey, this is Marvin from the Ratty Shack. I hear you’ve got a problem. Give me a call and we’ll get rid of it.”

I then stared down at the blinking, watery, and in some cases, cataract clouded eyes of my fur family and said, “I vote we wait on Marvin. Same time same place tomorrow?” We left in tacit agreement.

Life goes on. Pestful but peaceful.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

31Jul2021

Life’s Luck: From Lemons to Sour Grapes, Mine is Weirdly, all Fruit Related.

Posted in authors, Books, Cooking, Folklore, food, Gardening, Health, Humor, Medicine, Nature, Pets by Shelley Sackier

Last month sucked. I mean really, really came out looking like an ugly puckery lemon.

I smashed a finger in between two 75lb boulders (yeah, while trying to do that rock wall myself—from last month’s blog).

I got a wicked thrashing from a wrathful, hell-bent-on-sparing-no-one poison ivy plant.

I got diagnosed with a second basal carcinoma (treatable skin cancer that plagues many pasty white Midwesterners who are unfamiliar with this thing local people call summer).

I broke my lawnmower.

I was stung by a wasp whose last dying wish was to leave a flesh wound and memorial to himself the size of an award-winning walnut.

And I got a UTI.

Okay, none of this stuff actually happened last month. That was a lie.

It happened this month.

Month and candor aside, the reality of so many calamities all at once did not bode well under the “Thank God, I got my Covid vaccine—it’ll sure be great to get back to normal” mindset I was cultivating.

Those thoughts ultimately tanked, and in their place crawled splints, bandages, skin grafts, physicians, lab techs, prescriptions, pills, ointments, potions, and spark plugs.

It was often hard to keep track of what went where, and on one miserable afternoon I found myself visiting the library to pick up a book I was hoping would take my mind off my miseries.

I was in line, waiting in the lobby for my turn to come in and approach the desk, when I heard someone triple tsk from behind me. I turned to see a woman as wrinkled as an old crabapple, her white hair braided and wrapped into a bun, held together with what looked to me like a couple of birch twigs and a meat thermometer.

I smiled, nodded politely, and turned to face forward again, only to hear her sigh and utter, “Dear me,” under her breath. She tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned, pointed to one of the many bandages wrapped around my arms and said, “You really should let that breathe.”

“Let what breath?” I asked.

“Your poison ivy.”

I looked down at the book she was holding in her arm. Kitchen Witchery: Spells, recipes, and rituals for something something magical something enchanted something something. I narrowed my eyes at her and tried to ascertain how this witch had discovered one of my ailments. “How do you—”

“You haven’t quite covered all your blisters,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, I really got walloped this time.”

She shook her head. “What did you do, roll in it like a dog in a cowpie patty?”

“No, I was weeding, but I bet my dog had a hand in spreading it.”

“Do you hug your dog?” she asked, pointing for me to move forward in line.

“All the time. He’s the best dog I’ve ever—”

“Stop doing that.”

“Exactly. I know. The oils on his fur transfers to my skin …”

“Not where I’m going. Stop doing it because dogs hate to be hugged. It makes them feel like they’re being devoured, and they’re helpless in that arm lock of stupid humans.”

“Oh.” I stared at the floor for a second before catching sight of her book again. “Well, I’d have to say that I truly feel like I’ve been cursed with something these last few weeks. Just one thing after another.” I looked up at her with a crooked smile. “Any hex breaking spells in that library book of yours?”

“You’re hoping some magic wand will wave away your poison ivy?”

I shrugged. “And my rock-smashed finger, wasp sting, skin cancer—anything that can alleviate those scourges?” I pointed out the ailments around my person.

The old woman studied me for a second or two, opened her book, thumbed through a few pages, and then slammed it shut with a crisp snap. “The book suggests not so much any incantation or elixir, but it is very precise on one specific action.”

“Oh?” I felt my eyebrows raise with hope.

She rolled her eyes. “Stay inside.”

I felt like an idiot.

She looked at me like I was an idiot, so I suppose my feelings were justified. “Ah, well. I suppose most of those wonky spells are simply drivel and gibberish. Are you just reading the book for fun?”

She glanced down at the book again and then spread it wide open to a page with a black iron caldron holding a bounty of vegetables from the garden it sat within. “Nope. I wrote this little beauty—there’s only one copy, and I convinced the librarian to put it here on the shelves. The problem is, I lost the original recipe for my mother’s tomato soup, and every time I want to make it, I have to come back and check out the book. Now that,” she pointed at the page, “is a cure-all for just about everything.”

I gave her a wary look. “How about a urinary tract infection?”

She cracked a smile and spat out, “Ha! That, my friend, is just a curse on all womankind. And no amount of kitchen witchery can make much of a dent in its presence.”

I shrugged. “I guess sometimes we’re just unlucky.”

“As I see it, your dog is going to get a bit luckier with no more hugs. Although sadly for you, I’d say it’ll be some time before anyone is going to want to wrap their arms around your bandaged body.” She searched the ceiling and then said, “Maybe try a bottle of wine.”

“Hug a bottle of wine?”

“No. Drink it. It won’t cure anything, but it’ll sure keep you from being cranky while Mother Nature deals with all your ailments.”

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

28Mar2020

On the Cutting Edge of Shear Madness

Posted in emotions, History, Humor, Leaders, Pets, Politics, Relationships by Shelley Sackier

There is a venerable phrase many of us have heard countless times in our lives:

Doveryai, no proveryai.

Or if your Russian is a little bit rusty, Trust, but verify.

It’s an old proverb American writer Suzanne Massie passed on to Ronald Reagan before he began traveling to Russia to discuss U.S. and Soviet relations during his presidency.

It became for him somewhat of a trademark phrase.

It became a lodestar for many of us, a crutch for a few, but sage advice for all.

A week ago, my hound, Haggis, had none of the typical skepticism that normally washes across his face unless spotting a jar of peanut butter, his leash, or the hind leg of a freshly shot deer in my hands. But this was because he could no longer spot anything.

Literally. His hair had grown to a length where it could serve as an emergency ladder should he be close to a second story window and we had a fire.

So, when he finally heard the hair-raising snippets of my hair-cutting scissors, that skepticism shifted straight into suspicion and finally parked itself at defiance.

I had never cut his locks before, and he believed it was best if we left it that way.

Today, we find a great swath of our population experiencing a crisis of trust.

And why is that? The reasons are many. Understanding them is paramount and will likely shift the way we think, plan, behave, and move forward.

Together, this globe is redefining what life upon this planet is like. We are forced to assess our work, our relationships, our lifestyles, and the unforeseen shape they will morph into down the road.

Over the next several days I employ great determination during my time of internationally urged self-isolation to convince myself and my great hairy hound that I can accomplish the Herculean task of carving through his shrubby mane in the same way most of my fellow humans try to muddle their way through the maze of subterfuge, pretext, and great gobs of misinformation clouding our sight of the truth.

Daily, I place him in an unnatural position and beg him to be still as I scissor away for the space of an hour. I listen to the news: the practitioners, pundits, the press, and the president—each one with a decreasing sense of belief.

I feel Haggis tremble beneath the sound of sharp shears, and I put the scissors down and soothe him with all the ridiculous cooing tones meant to bring forth some ease. But I echo his same tiny twitch of skin when I’ve nipped him with the tip, or when they broadcast some new tally.

Every day certain numbers shoot up, and others slide down. We are warned by some and encouraged by others. Who do we trust? Who should we trust?

With boastful reassurance, I tell Haggis that he’s going to look fine—don’t gaze in the mirror, don’t question my actions, don’t think about it too hard. Trust me.

Each afternoon I hear about people who have heeded and those who’ve just balked. About those who have saved lives and those who have risked them. I wonder if, when this is all over, and I’m face to face with strangers, will I look at them with a fresh question: can I trust you?

And each afternoon I stand from my work, look at the dog, take a deep breath, and exhale with despair.

Good lord, what a mess. I’ve never done this before. And clearly it shows.

I fill him with flattery and maudlin praise, hoping he can’t see through my bluster and swash. But he feels my inexperience. And he knows that whatever my actions, I’ll not feel them as keenly as he does. He discovers at some point—day four or day five—that I’m frustrated with this routine, I’m wishing it over, and I’m unhappy with the results.

But he also knows that there’s no turning back, and this is where his lack of trust in my skills begins to crystallize into disregard.

I am somewhat offended as each day he pulls away from me, refusing to hand me a hoof or his chin.

You’re going to slow.

You’ve made a right mess.

Look here, now I bleed.

I hear him.

I should have left this up to the professionals. Although this is not a choice. We work with what we have, and a large team of experts does not appear at my door.

Each day I scooch the hound outside, toward the mile-long stretch of road between us and the mailbox. I keep my fingers crossed, hoping no one sees as we walk along. Haggis is only mid-way through this pruning, sporting a thick Mohawk down the length of his back, a mop-head, and four legs that are shaved only three-quarters down, making it appear that he is a belligerent teen prancing about in dog-friendly Uggs.

A neighbor stops his truck and rolls his window down slowly. He eyes the two of us with suspicion.

Has he got the virus?

No, I answer. He’s in the middle of a haircut.

Looks like he’s got the virus.

It does my ego and my confidence no favors to receive yet more criticism, and I mope the rest of the way home.

But tomorrow comes, and after convincing Haggis to climb atop the coffee table/barber’s chair once more, I ask myself a critical self-esteem building question:

What would Vidal Sassoon do?

It’s true—it’s not particularly hashtag worthy, but it seemed relatively uplifting for the moment.

And when one is on one’s own, navigating uncharted waters and expecting choppy results, one will search for signs of inspiration, direction, and security wherever one may find it.

(I’m lookin’ at you Dr. Fauci …)

We muddle through and trudge along. We rise to the occasion and make a small difference.

We find places to put our faith: in facts, in evidence, in one another.

And until we emerge on the other side, knackered, shaggy, and injured, we offer kindness if not confidence.

A spoonful of peanut butter can go a long, long way.

Surely the Russians knew that.

~Shelley

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Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.