Every year I seem to plant my garden earlier and earlier. Everyone, particularly my friend Angie, warns me what a terrible idea that is. Yet in the past four years, I haven't lost a single thing that I put in the ground due to cold. (Lost plenty to dog trampling and their cavalier attitude about what qualifies as a restroom, but not cold. Never cold.)
This year, since it's the first time gardening in the new house, I went conservative. I finally heeded Angie's texts instructing me to "Step away from the potting soil, you annual assassin. Everything will die a frosty death."
The Ides of March came and went without me taking one trip to Home Depot, even though I found myself driving by really slowly. I did not celebrate St. Paddys with the buying of the green, nor did I see in the first day of spring with a big bowl of pansies. In fact, all of March passed and more than half of April without my purchasing a single bulb, bud, or twig, despite having turned my whole yard into an explosion of color and flowers by the end of March last year.
But this year? Careful, Cautious, and Patient were my middle names. Granted, I may have distracted myself with hunting down antique bowling trophies, but still, the resolve was real.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
So, finally, on yesterday, April 17th, I bought my first round of plants and spent a warm, albeit windy afternoon arranging them in planters and digging big holes to accommodate tender root balls.
Then I woke up to this:
Somehow this is Angie's fault.
Let me begin by saying this is pretty much Fletch's fault.
When we made the decision for him to quit his job back in April, it wasn't because he was working a job he hated for a soul-sucking corporation that was drawing every bit of joy out of his life, nor was it because the business end of writing had grown too tricky for me to manage myself.
Mainly, I needed him around in case a possum were to die in the yard.
And yet today when this very circumstance arose, he was in a classroom learning how to work QuickBooks.
Which is why I can't be blamed for what happened next.
I mean, he CHOSE to leave me home alone. He made the conscious decisions to put on his khakis, grease up his head with a liberal supply of hair product, and leave this morning with absolutely zero regard to whether or not I might need to bury a marsupial rodent marsupial. (Is it both? I'm not sure because the person I'd ask wasn't here today.)
The story begins last week during lunch. Fletch and I were having the sandwiches that he brought home from Jimmy John's because a major component of his job is to make sure I don't eat nothing but Froot Loops and then have a sugar crash in the afternoon.
Anyway, all of a sudden, Libby leapt to attention and began to glower at something beyond the sliding glass door. Unusual, because there's absolutely no one/nothing Libby doesn't like, including the entire banana plus peel plus a portion of an overripe pear she swiped and digested today.
We followed her gaze all the way to the back of the yard where a possum was having a little lunch of his own. Specifically, he was enjoying a fresh pile of - brace yourself - dog waste.
"They eat poop?" I asked, incredulous and appalled at the same time.
"Yes," Fletch replied. Whether he knew this because he's a walking Wikipedia or because he was simply stating what he was seeing, I can't be sure.
"So do we still need to hire the doody removal service?" I asked. Recently we had a few warm days when all the snow in the yard melted and all the dog crap magically reappeared. The guys who take care of our lawn are supposed to remove it but A) it's winter and they aren't around and B) their usual preferred method of "removing it" entails driving a riding mower over it, chopping it up in a thousand shards, and then nodding enthusiastically when I'd inquire if it were gone. The whole thing turned into a bit of a Mexican standoff (in the figurative sense, not in the non-politically correct sense) and we needed a better long-term solution.
"We'd probably need to bring in more than one possum for that to be effective."
Do you see? Even when Fletch is talking out of his ass, he comes across as authoritative and a source you can trust, hence his continued employment.
(Also, if I were to fire him, I'd have to pay him unemployment.)
(I checked.)
I took a photo of the possum and posted it on my Facebook fan page. Some people told me that if we're seeing a possum in the day, he's likely ill. I relayed this information to Fletch who then said, "How do you know they're sick? They're in their bathrobes?"
We had a few more spottings over the rest of the week and then once it snowed again, we didn't see the little guy, so I sort of forgot about him.
Last night I went to let the dogs out right before going to bed. They'd already done their final out for the evening but then Libby got everyone to wrestle and they all inhaled a gallon of water after their battle.
Did I mention what a little troublemaker Libby is? She's sweet and adorable and so much fun but she totally instigates every bit of naughtiness in the house because she simply doesn't know better yet. We can't take our eyes off her for a minute or she'll do something like climb onto the kitchen table and raid the fruit bowl.
As Libby's yet to master the command "come," we keep her on a very short leash. In fact, the few times during the day that we don't walk her, we clip her on a long lead within the backyard so she's always in our sight when she takes care of business. (There's one tiny hole in the fence by the pool mechanicals and we have it blocked off, but this dog has a vertical leap like you've never seen.)
In terms of being smart, Libby is very, very pretty. She's sweet and trainable, but she's not really much of a "critical thinker." This is evidenced each time she clotheslines herself on the long lead, which is every time she goes outdoors. She's yet to figure out where her personal forcefield ends and her wipeouts are both spectacular and frequent. No matter how many times we slowly and deliberately demonstrate her reach, nothing seems to stick.
As for the other dogs, Loki's a pain in the ass at night because there's too much good stuff happening in the woods behind our house and although he's well acquainted with the "come" command (and royally treated when obeyed) he chooses to ignore us and I end up traipsing through the snow in my bathrobe in slippers to retrieve him. Last night I decided to clip Loki to the long lead and simply let Libby do her business to save myself the aggravation. Libby's always sucking up to him and I figured she wouldn't leave his side.
I figured wrong.
So I, of course, found myself dashing through the snow in a robe and a pair of Crocs as Libby made a bee-line to the one open spot of the fence, while Loki barked his damn head off while standing frozen on the patio, not doing his business as he was afraid to make any sort of movement while clipped to the forty feet of lead line.
Libby and I then spent a good deal of time playing hide and seek in the artic air, culmintaing in us reaching the hole in the fence at the exact same time. However, between the of the two of us, she had the good sense not to trip over the small grayish object right in front of it.
Apparently the possum had returned at some point earlier in the day.
To die.
As I brushed snow off my knees and scrambled for the puppy, I had the choice to avoid hypothermia by keeping my robe tied shut, or I could remove the belt, arrange it into an ad hoc leash, and drag the frisky puppy away from a serendipitous snack.
I picked the option that didn't include a midnight run to the emergency vet.
Mind you, none of this would have happened if Fletch hadn't gone to bed early in anticipation of rising early for his class in the morning.
When I came inside - and after I defrosted - I woke Fletch up to tell him I'd found the possum and that he'd need to bury him. He mumbled something about property taxes and Animal Control and promptly went back to sleep.
I spent all morning taking all three dogs in and out on leash because I didn't want them near the dead possum. When I finally got a hold of someone at Animal Control, they told me they don't pick up dead animals in people's yards and I should simply double-bag him as though he were a sack of groceries and toss him in the trash.
Bet that's a bitch when a deer croaks in your yard.
Anyway, not only did that feel unspeakably sad, but I didn't want to piss off the kid who picks up our trash in his little golf cart, so I decided a proper burial was in order.
I emailed the following to Fletch:
Which is your good buryin' shovel?
To which I got no response.
So I found the pointiest one in the garage, donned my warmest (and most somber) coat and set to my task.
I thought the possum would be happiest being laid to rest in the woods. Funny thing about the ground in Illinois in January, though - it's rock solid. I think that's why Chicago's gangsters are always dropping bodies in the river - so much less difficult.
As I scouted the landscape from my spot in the woods, I spied all the places where Libby has been digging on the side of the house. I figured the ground must be warmer there as she's able to displace a good deal of dirt in a fraction of a second, so I found a lovely spot directly beneath the window on Fletch's side of the bed. I dug down some and figured that amount would be sufficient.
Then I steeled myself for the worst part of the task - moving the possum. I walked over to where he was, and gently attempted to lift his body on the the business end of my shovel.
The little bastard was frozen solid to the ground.
For two horrifying minutes I attempted to pry him loose from his final resting spot until I finally freed him. I wanted to be gentle and respectful but mostly I didn't want to break off any bits because I was pretty sure Fletch didn't want me showing up at his class shrieking about possum parts.
Then I brought him over to his hole and placed him in the ground, quickly tossing shovels of dirt on and all around him.
I said a few words over him and tried to sing Sunrise, Sunset but realized I didn't actually know most of the words and was pretty sure I had the "where is the little girl I married?" line wrong. Then I stepped back to admire my handiwork and just as I was congratulating myself on a job well done, I had the split second thought that maybe he wasn't actually dead and was just "playing possum." Then a flock of geese few over, squawked, and I jumped out of my skin.
I took some twigs and fashioned a little cross to adorn the mound of dirt, which, frankly looked a lot easier when Pa Ingalls did it on Little House on the Prairie.
When I got inside, I emailed Fletch again:
Possum is buried. Shovel is still outside because you might want to rinse it first.
Then I began to wonder if I'd dug his grave deep enough, so I did a quick google search.
Yeah, way off of on that one.
For future reference, should you ever find yourself in the position to be burying a marsupial rodent marsupial, I suggest you do the google search first.
Fletch finally had a break in his stupid class and sent me a note where he used the word "bio-hazard" no less than three times.
Again, if YOU don't want me accidentally creating bio-hazards, then perhaps you should stay home.
For lack of any kind of appropriate response, I ran errands.
As I was checking out at the grocery store, the clerk asked how my day was going.
Listen, if you're not prepared to hear the response, "Not bad, but I buried a possum," then perhaps you shouldn't ask such leading questions.
Anyway, I don't really have a definitive ending to this story, due to the nature of shallow graves and Libby's propensity for digging.
So perhaps one day we'll see the possum again.
Until then, let's all have a moment of silence for the marsupial rodent marsupial I called Chewie.
Godspeed, my friend. Godspeed.
P.S. I'm home alone again tomorrow.
P.P.S. But I'll probably just go see a movie.
Smug.
That's how I'd describe myself on December 4th when a Lake Forest High School hockey-dad delivered my Christmas tree.
So very smug.
And now for the backstory: I'm fairly organized in most aspects of my life, particularly professionally. Unless there are extenuating circumstances (e.g. discovering my house is sinking or deciding to start over completely on a different book), I meet my publication deadlines.
Despite my best efforts at procrastination, I turn in all of my Tribune Media Services columns absolutely on time, and often early.
My book tour prep begins months in advance and I have packing down to such a science that I can do a week-long junket with only carry-on luggage.
Yet somehow Christmas never fails to sneak up on me and I always find myself scrambling at the last minute.
The problem is I hate how the holiday season starts earlier and earlier each year. I always keep track of which retailer starts force-feeding its customers Christmas cheer the earliest. Last year's big offender was the Walgreens in Logan Square because they sold decorations in October and this year, the Macy's in Vernon Hills made my naughty list by be-ribboning and and be-dazzling their display windows in September.
Sept-frigging-tember.
Plus, the only reason I was at Macy's that day was to buy a new swimsuit.
Point? In my little Jen-centric world, Christmas doesn't officially begin until I put up my tree, which I always do between December 10th to 14th. I'm all about the live tree and I normally don't like to bring one in much earlier because it gets dry and messy.
I also buy all my gifts online during this time period and for some reason I'm perpetually surprised when the e-tailers blow their promised delivery dates, despite this happening every year. Occasionally there's a little twist on this scenario in which Fed Ex/UPS drops the ball and I spend two days Twittering death threats at anyone in a brown shirt or white truck.
Because I don't want to gift-wrap backorder slips, I inevitably end up doing the annual Christmas Eve Day Target run which, in terms of collective bitch-panic, is second only to the Lincoln Park Whole Foods on Thanksgiving Day Eve.
By the way, if you're at all skeptical about man's inherent goodness, I advise you to avoid both places on those days, particularly if you're looking for the last Just Dance for Wii game or a can of pumpkin puree.
ANYWAY, I was determined not to let Christmas best me this year. So when a high school kid offered to pre-sell me a Christmas tree on a late October day so sunny and warm my roses were still blooming, I jumped at the chance.
Smug.
That's what I was as I wrote out my check.
This would be the year I didn't freeze my ass off, trudging from tree lot to tree lot to find the right size and make.
I wouldn't be picking stray needles out of the backseat for a whole season, nor would I lose another pair of gloves to sap.
As an added bonus, not only would the team drop off my tree on the first Saturday in December, they'd even give it a fresh cut and set it up in the stand, thus putting me anywhere from six to ten days ahead of my holiday schedule.
Smug.
My tree was delivered exactly when promised. The only snafu was that my celing is a good two feet lower than my estimate, but that was nothing that couldn't be fixed with a chainsaw. I had to wait a day for the tree to dry off, as it was snowing like crazy when delivered, but there I was on the evening of December 5th, drinking eggnog in the twinkling light of the decorated tree, celebrating the season with the special kind of smugness borne of prior planning.
Over the past few weeks, I've routinely filled a big water pitcher in anticipation of topping off the tree stand. But each time, I'd only have to add a few drops because the stand always seemed full. Yet despite my best efforts at hydration, the tree seemed to get drier and droopier.
Then I noticed the crack.
A few Google-searches later, I learned that when a Christmas tree dries out too fast, it can develop tiny cracks. Or, in the case of my tree, an enormous North-South, Civil-War-style schism dividing one half of the trunk from the other, which completely eliminates the tree's ability to absorb water and thus turns our festive testament to timeliness into what's essentially a wick.
According to everything I read, experts advise returning the tree to place of purchase before it spontaneously erupts and engulfs the holiday in flames. I asked Fletch to help me drag old Burn-y to the next hockey game, but he politely declined, so, instead of doing all my holiday baking, we found ourselves shopping for a new tree on Saturday.
By the way, you know who buys their Christmas tree on December 18th?
Assholes, that's who.
We hit four towns in search of a non Charlie-Brown variety tree and then Fletch had to cover me as I dove for the last appropriately-sized Fraser fir in Lake County. (It's possible that pushy young couple was only walking past us on the way to the six-foot Noble firs, but we weren't taking any chances.)
We froze all the way home while our new tree - or as Fletch calls it, The Treequel - hung out the open back window, oozing sap and needles all over the cargo hold of my car.
Then we spent yesterday un-decking the halls only to re-deck them.
I'm a lot less smug now.
Plus, I'm still waiting for my backordered items.
And I've yet to get to any of my baking.
So when you see me at Target on Friday, be sure to say hi.
Not pictured: panic.
Hey! Look at me! Typing on the internet!
Haven't seen THAT in a while, eh?
So, before I can get to the story of my prolonged absence, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that my friend Stacey's new book Good Enough to Eat comes out today.
Here's the thing - this book is certainly Good Enough to Buy on its own merits in terms of plot, characters, and dialogue. Stacey is an accomplished writer and her stories never cease to hold my attention.
What you may not know is that she's my best friend and outside of Fletch, my most trusted adviser. There are very few decisions I make without consulting her and I absolutely didn't choose a house until she saw all the options.
Stacey is my better, more rational me. She's been responsible for talking me off the ledge more times than I care to mention in regard to my writing career. (Stacey, please make note that this year's "I don't want to be a writer anymore" meltdown is scheduled the week before Thanksgiving.) And the few times she's not around, she's the voice inside my head keeping me from doing stupid things, meaning if I DON'T have food poisoning, thank Stacey.
This weekend after diagnosing myself with walking pneumonia, I got the following note from her:
"Dr. Lancaster, step away from the WebMD. You don't have pneumonia. You have a cold."
(FYI, I have an 0 for 100 record of properly diagnosing my symptoms on WebMD.)
Then she went on to tell me if I was a dead woman if I put a tanning bed in my basement after I mentioned I was looking a bit pale.
The way she can connect the dots to the conclusion I hadn't even yet reached is a bit scary.
Or comforting.
Mostly comforting.
Point? Not all of you will be lucky enough to have Stacey in your lives, but you can have a piece of her through her books.
Available at fine booksellers everywhere!
P.S. If you're around at noon today, tune in to see Stacey making her famous Roasty Tomato Soup on WGN's noon broadcast!
Anyway, as I mentioned, here I am on the internet. Although our move took longer than I thought (anticipated, budgeted for, could have ever possibly imagined, etc.) it eventually ended. In theory, I should have been happily banging away in the Word Factory weeks ago. I had my office all set up two weeks ago and I was ready to get to writing, what with my new book being due at the end of the month.
The, um, network fairy had different ideas.
For some reason, Fletch got our internet connectivity to function in every room except the one where I actually work. This sounds like a minor sticking point, but I always write on a desktop because I loathe how all of our laptops have the hypersensitive touchpad instead of the tracking point in the middle of it. Apparently I have lazy thumbs because I'll be in the middle of a paragraph and then I'll accidentally touch the stupid square and suddenly my text is flying all over the page.
This may or may not have resulted in a thrown laptop on three previous occasions.
Anyway, as my due date loomed, my agitation grew as I can't write without an internet connection. I need constant access to an online dictionary, thesaurus, Wikipedia, Perez Hilton, etc. On top of that, the book I was writing wasn't ready to be written.
I've never struggled DURING the writing process before - it's always either in the time leading up to write or after I've finished writing when the niggling self-doubt begins. (See: Annual Late Fall Freak Out, Stacey Fixes.)
I've spent months working on a memoir about doing charitable work. The premise is funny in that I intentionally put myself in situations I know I won't like in the hopes that hilarity would ensue. And in many cases it has, but the thing about volunteering is that the more you do, the more you realize needs to be done. And as I put my stories together, it became increasingly clear that I needed more time to give this book its proper due.
Fortunately, I'm with a publisher who trusts my instincts so we decided to swap some due dates. Now Involuntary will come out late next year and Apocalypse House debuts in May. Somehow writing (thinly veiled) fiction about two city-idiots moving to the suburbs to fix up a house currently makes the most sense.
And I will do that.
As soon as Fletch fixes my goddamned network connection.
The good news is that Fletch now has ordered all the tools to make everything work.
The bad news is said fix precipitated a visit from the irony fairy on Friday morning.
"Listen, I'm really sorry it took so long to get this figured out," he said, standing in the doorway of the dining room.
"Here's the thing, Fletch," I replied. "I think the problem has been that you're too theoretical." I was seated at the big table, waiting to go over a friend's book proposal. Wind started to ruffle the stacks of paper we'd worked all morning to print on our assed-up network so I rose to close the window.
"How so?" he asked.
"You spent your whole career designing networks, but you never had to - Jesus, why is this window sticking so much? - actually build one yourself. See, the problem is you know how everything works on a macro level, but on the micro level? No so much. And, argh. What. Is. Wrong. With. This. Window? Still. Stuck. Argh. In this case, you're like one of those guys who - ARGH - is so convinced that he knows where he's going - OOF- that he refuses to ask for directions and-"
And... then this.
"What just... how did that... Shit! Fletch! Come help me!"
He moseyed over to inspect the damages.
"I don't know what happened!" I cried. "Can you get this damn thing back in?"
He poked his head out the window. "Well," he started. "Theoretically I understand why the window fell out, but in practice I may simply not know what I'm doing. You see, on a macro level I have an idea of where you went wrong, but on a micro level..."
This is the face of smug.
And yes, it took me fifteen minutes of apologizing to get him to fix the damn thing.
Today, should all the parts arrive, he'll do the same for our network and I can go back to work on my computer proper.
Until then, please enjoy Staceys' book... and Fletch's possible upcoming blog post titled Good Enough to Say I Told You So.
"I know! While Fletch is at Home Depot, I'll go down to the basement and bring up the table the old owners left! And I'll have it all set up with the new chairs [our only furniture until our official move on Monday] so we'll have someplace to sit that isn't the floor when he gets back!"
...
"This doesn't seem heavy at all! But the weird root-cellar-y door I'm supposed to take this out has a big spider on it. I'll just bring it up the regular basement stairs and through the house."
...
"Look at me rolling this bastard all the way across the basement! This is almost TOO easy."
...
"Hmm. I don't recall the basement stairs having such an angle to them. No problem, I'll just use my geometry skills."
...
"Oh, hey, remember when I was the only senior in the sophomore geometry class?"
...
"Okay, okay, okay, got it. Now I just need to ease this out the basement door and... now I have a new geometry problem."
...
"Perhaps we should have asked for a 'wider-door' homeowner credit."
...
"Well, apparently shouting at the problem doesn't work."
...
"Nor does swearing."
...
"Or sweating."
...
"What if I... nope."
...
"How about I... no dice."
...
"Would it be possible if... no. No, it would not."
...
"Fine. I'll admit defeat. I'll just roll it back down and out."
...
"And now out doesn't seem to be an option."
...
"The more I try to shift it, the more it becomes wedged."
...
"Fine. I can admit defeat. I'll just climb over it and have Fletch deal with it."
...
"Alrighty, I'll try going under."
...
"DAMN IT."
...
"Academically, I knew I'd end up trapping myself somehow in the new house, as that's kind of my homerun swing. Like the time I was vacuuming and the big mirror fell on me and I got stuck under it and Fletch couldn't hear me screaming because of the vacuum. I guess I just wasn't expecting it to happen so soon."
...
"Suddenly that spider doesn't seem so bad."
...
BTW, this is what Fletch came home to:
"Surprise!"
