Category Archives: Front Page

Digger

My mom once saved a hamster from being roadkill.  It was a fall evening, and my mother, my sister, and I were on our way to Montgomery Ward, which for those of you under the age of 50 was a discount department store.  There was a major intersection near our house, bordered on three corners by pear orchards, with a shopping center on the fourth.  As we waited at the stoplight, we saw a small critter in the streetlights, skittering back and forth in the middle of the intersection. 

“What is that?  Is that an animal?”

“It’s a hamster!  Mom, it’s a hamster! It’s going to get run over!”

So Mom pulled over, grabbed an empty black paper Montgomery Ward bag, and made her way to the middle of the intersection.  Somehow she managed to shoo the rodent into the open bag and avoid being roadkill herself.  We folded down the bag, and Mom drove us home.   To me and my sister, this was all perfectly logical.  Something needed saving, so we saved it.

“Daddy, we found a hamster!”

“Mom saved it! It’s in this bag!”

My poor father was beleaguered his entire life by the shear number of non-human living beings that found their way to our home.  He just hated it, and we ignored his hating it.

With a heavy sigh he took the bag, and looked in.

“Oh for criminy sakes, that’s a gopher!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, the teeth!”, he cried, making a gopher face with his front teeth hanging over his lower lip.  “You risked your life for a damn gopher!  Get rid of it!”

“Oh.  Rats.”  Lisa and I were disappointed.  We thought we had a new pet.

We drove to one of the pear orchards, and set our rescued friend free, before continuing our journey to Montgomery Ward.

Fast forward about fifty years. 

Montgomery Ward is history,, but I have a gopher in my backyard!  He’s really cute, and he does look a lot like a hamster, except of course for two huge long teeth.  

I don’t begrudge the gopher a little space.  Our dog Ziggy, however, thinks Digger, as I call him, is here to play.  At first, there were just one or two gopher holes.  But then Ziggy would stick his nose in a hole as far as it would go, and start frantically digging.  At one point he dug so deep his entire head was in a hole.  Digger doesn’t like the intrusion, so every time Ziggy digs, so does Digger.  Add to that Roy, who is much like Ziggy, maniacally running around shooting airsoft pellets down the holes, and you’ve got one very busy gopher.

There are two problems with this.  One, my lawn is a mess of holes.  And two, Ziggy keeps bringing a ton of mud into the house and it’s a heavy job keeping up with the transfer of topsoil indoors.

He actually caught Digger once, and we all frantically ran outside to rescue him from Ziggy’s jaws.  Well, Julia and I were on a rescue mission. Jackson and Roy were just bloodthirsty.

“Drop it!” I commanded in my mom voice.  Ziggy does not like my mom voice.

He did drop Digger, it was my mom voice, after all, and one of the kids corralled Ziggy and locked him in the house.  We were terrified Digger was mortally wounded.  His fur was wet, but we couldn’t tell if he had been punctured.

“You should have just let me shoot him!” Roy said hopefully, lifting his airsoft gun.

“Let me put him out of his misery,” Jackson said, grabbing a shovel.

“No, it wouldn’t be quick, you’d have to keep hacking at him!” I cried.  “Let him go home and die in peace.”

So we watched as Digger dug just a little, then stopped and stared at us, although I understand gophers have very poor vision.  Then he turned, and dug a little more, stopped, dug some more, until pretty soon he had a small depression, and he hunkered down in it.  Then he frantically dug at one end of his little depression until he connected with one of his tunnels, and disappeared.

Ziggy still sniffed the holes, which we tried to fill in, but Digger was gone.

Until…he was back.

Digger was only gone for a few days before he returned full force, and Ziggy was on the prowl.  As Ziggy dug into Digger’s fresh holes, Digger would just move along with new holes, thus spreading the destruction, and the dirt, like before.

Jerry bought a “Gopher Hawk”, a trap that drives a spike through the gopher like a stake through a vampire’s heart.  I forbade him from using it.  I didn’t want to kill Digger, I just wanted him to move along.  Instead, I bought two live traps, baited them, and set them outside fresh holes. Following the instructions, I was careful to use gloves so the traps didn’t smell like human.  Every couple of days I moved the traps to whatever holes looked freshest.  Jerry had also bought stakes that make noises only the gopher can hear, and moved them periodically. 

This went on for some time with no progress, and Jerry was foaming at the mouth to use his Gopher Hawk.  Then, we saw fresh holes on the far side of the lawn, quite a distance from the original mess.  Ziggy was immediately sniffing and digging for gold.  Um, gopher. 

And that’s the last we saw of Digger.  I was pretty sure the new holes were just a stop on his way under the fence to our neighbor’s yard.  The old woman who owns that house had a major stroke a couple of years ago, and no longer ventures outdoors.  Her pot smoking grandsons and their girlfriends have moved in.  No way they will even notice any holes in the yard. 

Well, so long Digger.  Maybe the neighbors are growing pot back there and you can get yourself some good cannabis roots.  Mellow out, chill in your tunnels.  Party on, dude.

Except…it was a clever gopher ruse.

Observe along the rose bushes that border the house in the other direction, through the weeds and to the other fence. 

Little piles of dirt in a line.  Then, a perfect gopher hole, and another, closer and closer to the fence.

No, Digger, no!  Abort, abort!

Not that direction!

Because on the other side of that fence, is the most perfect yard ever.  If I took a photo, you would think it was photoshopped. Pests don’t dare cross the line.  No weeds dare grow. Nobody will be furtively trying to return a Gopher Hawk to Amazon in that house.  They probably have an entire arsenal of extermination weapons.

I put out the humane traps again, but obviously Digger’s tiny brain works better than I gave him credit for. 

Ziggy showed no interest in these holes, not even sniffing, so it could be too late.  I’m still keeping a close watch, however.  Because in that area of our yard are raised vegetable beds.  You see where I’m going with this.  If I find vegetables being eaten from the roots up, we are going to have a problem, my little friend and I.  Don’t mess with my food source, dude.  I have food aggression.  There’s still an unopened Gopher Hawk in my entry hall. 

Don’t make me use it, Digger.  Don’t make me use it.

Wrapping Up Christmas

My kids ruined Christmas for me.

Or maybe they just ruined me for Christmas.

When they were small, I made a concerted effort every year to remind my children of the true meaning of Christmas.  We had an advent calendar with little pockets.  I drew an outline of a stable and taped it to the wall next to the advent calendar.  In each little pocket would be stickers I had made to complete the scene: stars, the star, sheep, shepherds, angels, Mary and Joseph, and of course, baby Jesus.  They each would remove a sticker and stick it onto the make-shift nativity scene. Naturally, they fought over who got what sticker, or who removed a sticker first.  “Christmas,” I would say, ‘is a birthday party for Jesus, where everybody gets presents.” Santa? He was a good soul who loved Jesus and children so much that he flew all around the world to help good little children celebrate.

We had a real nativity scene, too.  By “real”, I mean little clay figures.  Not real people.  But those little clay figures look like toys to kids, and mine were no exception.  They couldn’t keep their hands off, and frankly, I was happy they noticed it.  Unfortunately, the inevitable happened, and baby Jesus broke.  I glued Him back together, but He was never the same.

Regardless of how I phrased it, there were presents to look forward to. So, three kids.  Maybe 10 presents each, plus stockings.  Five or so for my husband, gifts for my sister, my dad’s sister Niki, my mother’s brother Joe and his wife.  Every year, we spent Christmas Eve at Niki’s house.  This was a lifelong family tradition, but it meant getting home late and still having to wrap presents, even though I always tried to get as much done before Christmas Eve as I could.  I would literally be up all night trying to finish the wrapping.  I’d get an hour or two of sleep before the greedy little bast….uh, little darlings came in to wake us up to see what Santa brought. 

I wasn’t willing to let some fat old man take all the credit, so there would always be three presents each, wrapped in different paper, and placed away from all the others, that Santa would leave in the living room.  Of course, all the coolest stuff came from Santa.  But the rest came from Mommy and Daddy.

Christmas day would be spent first at church, then cooking and cleaning, since the family came to our house Christmas day.  It was a formal meal with fancy tablecloths, real napkins, china, crystal,  and silver.  That’s how my mom always did it, so that’s how I did it.  I don’t have a large formal table, or even a small formal table, but I would set up folding tables and chairs in the family room, and bring out the finery.  

In between all that fancy stuff, I helped Jerry wrestle toys out of packages, and assemble. Have you tried helping a kid get a toy out of the box it came in?  There are endless plastic sheathed wire ties.  It takes forever.  Heaven help you if the thing then needs to be put together.  And you’re in deep doo-doo if you forgot to buy batteries.  There is nothing like a kid getting the toy of his dreams Christmas morning, and not being able to play with it because his exhausted parents forgot to buy batteries.  Hell hath no fury.

My aunt eventually passed away, and then everybody also came to my house Christmas Eve, although it was casual, since I would still host a formal dinner the next day.  Nevertheless, it meant a late start on finishing the wrapping.  Up all night.

Add a couple more kids to the mix.  We are talking some serious wrap loads, now.  Over fifty gifts every year, kids, husband, parents, sibling combined.  Eventually the Christmas Eve tradition fell away as my parents became too elderly to come to my home, and my sister and I split Christmas and Thanksgiving duties.  But I started moving slower, too, and caring for my parents filled the hours I would have spent wrangling little ruffians, so it never seems I have any more time.

I also have a little cottage industry, sewing a product for ice skates.  It all started when my daughter was figure skating, and it makes a great gift.  A great Christmas gift.  So I get a ton of orders from November 1-December 20, and I’m exhausted every year.  And all the sewing makes it hard to keep up with the wrapping.

My point?  I’m still working my ass off right through the Christmas season! 

It ends a little earlier, though.  I can come home from Christmas dinner and not have to wash china or build toys.  I can sleep.

But I long for the day when I can sit back and enjoy Christmas.  When I can slow down, enjoy picking out a reasonable number of gifts, sip a hot toddy by the fire Christmas Eve instead of being up until dawn wrapping.  I don’t know what’s in a hot toddy, but it sounds good.  And our fireplace doesn’t draw well, so unless we renovate, there won’t really be a fire.  Not even the fake yule log on TV because we ditched cable service as an unnecessary expense.  I guess I could find it online.  And if you read “No Place Like Home”, you know the seating options here are limited…

So we are really talking about sitting at my computer at the kitchen table, sipping something that isn’t as cheery as a hot toddy, but hopefully alcoholic.

Except what does that mean?  There is no one to give gifts?  All the kids are grown and gone, and we are alone?  There are no grandchildren?  Santa isn’t real?

And if I’m honest, I really, really miss having little kids, and not just at Christmas. 

And I miss the traditional Christmas Eve dinner, the fancy kind my aunt always had.

I miss hearing an excited little voice cry out, “Just what I wanted!”

I miss fighting over the advent calendar stickers.  I even miss broken baby Jesus.

I guess I don’t really want things to change after all, but they already have, and they will change more.  However, I have five children.  And one can assume they will each have children.  I’m going to have a heck of a lot of grandchildren.  Which means a lot of gifts.  And parents who would be happy to have some help wrapping, and fighting toys out of boxes and putting them together.  The wrap load isn’t going to get lighter, it’s going to increase exponentially. 

So fix me a hot toddy, and make it a double.  I’ll drink it while I wrap. 

No Place Like Home

My children come from a broken home.

Literally.

Our home is broken. 

The microwave doesn’t micro any waves.  The glass stovetop is held together with duct tape.  The washing machine sounds like a freight train, and it costs less to buy a new one than it would to repair this poor thing that has lived such a hard life.

All but one of us uses the guest bathroom to shower because the master bath is almost exactly the same as it was in 1964, except no longer new and shiny.  Try old and nasty.  We did change the toilet to a Toto many years ago, since the company’s claim it could flush a golf ball erroneously made us think it could handle this family’s output.  Toto toilets have different insides than the standard chain and valve toilet.  There is some sort of plastic tube shaped gadget that is responsible for the flushing.  Something is wrong with ours because when you flush it, it sounds like a fog horn, and is just about as loud.  Or maybe it’s just howling in distress.

Six people using the tiny guest bath with poor ventilation has led to the entire bathroom rusting.  The faucet handles are rusted and can’t be removed without breaking the porcelain.  Same for the pipes that lead from the wall to the pedestal sink.  All around the edges of the medicine cabinet mirror is, you guessed it, rust.  The bathroom window is cockeyed and the seal broken between the double panes, so there is something funky living in that space between.  However, it is very easy to open if you forget your keys and need to break in.  I can attest to that personally. 

There are two pocket doors in the house but the tracks to both were broken years ago by boys roughhousing.  Since fixing them means cutting into the sheetrock to replace the tracks, the doors remain stuck forever between the walls.

I don’t have enough chairs to seat people at the kitchen table even if the table were available for seating.  The matching wooden chairs broke one by one over the years, and then most of the folding chairs.  In the living room, our lovely sofa made it through three cats until Toby came along and shredded it to pieces.  I keep covering the shred with a throw blanket, and the should-be-grown kids keep pulling it down to use as a lap blanket, and never replace it.  The matching chair started to fray at the arms and someone who refuses to confess picked at it until all the stuffing is exposed.

In the family room, the sliding glass door has no handle.  There’s a finger sized whole where the handle should be that works great for opening and closing, unless you have sausage fingers.  Then you have a problem.  The lock is a 2×4 cut to just the right length to fit behind the closed glass pane.

The box spring on my bed has also been shredded to pieces by my fat cat, and the mattress has a Jerry-sized valley on one side.  I cuddle up to my husband at night but then I roll downhill into his valley and can’t get out.  It’s safer to stay on my side. 

The decay has spread from major installed appliances to small appliances.  I took out our blender when preparing desserts a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and it was broken.  I bought a new one at Best Buy, but the motor burned up as soon as I plugged it in.  And it didn’t even blend first.  Thanksgiving morning, our trusty coffee maker wouldn’t make any coffee.  The green light came on but the machine moved no water.  I ended up boiling water and pouring it slowly through the filter. 

We had so many plans for this fixer of a house when we bought it almost 20 years ago.  We fixed some things right away, but those things now need to be fixed again.  Five kids and years of crisis after crisis have taken their toll on the house and on our finances (not to mention our psyches, but that’s another story).  No repairs are in sight.

My kids don’t care; they have friends over with no shame.  But me?  If you come to my door, I’m going to block your entry.  We can chat on the porch.

I know it’s all surface nonsense.  The roof is sound, thanks to my dad paying for a new one once we could see daylight when we looked up in the attic.  The walls are solid and the doors all close (well, except the pocket doors).   

This house has raised three kids which became five, seen the birth of a child, four high school graduations (fifth pending, he’s a senior), been home to many beloved pets, and witnessed untold laughter, tears, celebrations and arguments. 

It’s been a home.  And really, what more could I ask?