Manicure for Mom

This week, Megan and Annie have come home for a visit.  We've had a lot of fun "girl time," doing lots of "girly" things like paint our toenails pink and put feathers in our hair.  The other day, we all went grocery shopping.  Walking down the beauty products aisle, Megan spotted some do-it-yourself artificial nails.  She grabbed the package, flipped it over, and read the instructions.

"Hey, this seems easy enough."  Megan said to me over her shoulder.  I walked over, Annie on my hip, and looked at the fake nails.

"Well, try it.  If they look bad, I'm sure you can take them off."  I said.

"What if they don't come off?"

"I'm pretty sure they'll come off."

"Yeah . . . I want to try them!"  She tossed the package into the shopping cart, and we continued down the aisle, looking for more hair-feathers, but not finding any.

That evening, Megan opened her nail kit and began applying the glue and pressing the plastic fingernails onto her fingertips.  When she finished, her hands looked quite elegant.

"See?  Some girls spend 60 dollars or more on their nails, but I got these nails for five bucks!  Look how great they look."  Megan flashed her fancy fingers in our faces and paraded her home-done manicure for all to see.  Those fake nails really did look great.

"Mom!  There are extras in the package.  Do you want me to do your nails too?"  Megan offered.

"Sure.  Will I be able to get them off?  I don't want them to stick forever or rip my real nails off."

"Oh no!  I don't think they'll rip your real nails."

"Well, all right.  I might as well try it."  Mom was hesitant but relented with some encouragement.  Megan sparingly squeezed little drops of glue onto our mother's nails (she didn't want to put on too much glue and have the nails stick forever).  The finished display was a sight to behold.  Each motherly finger was crowned with a perfectly shaped, perfectly painted fingernail.  We all admired the manicure and complimented Megan on her wonderful, brilliant, fun idea.

Megan absolutely beamed, "Why would anyone go get an expensive manicure when they can just go to the grocery store and get nails like these?"  Oh, the fingernails were great fun, great fun indeed.

The next day, Mom woke up having lost two fingernails sometime during the night.  Searching the sheets, she located one nail, but not the other.  Oh well, so goes the five-dollar manicure.  She still had eight gorgeous fingers.  Throughout her daily activities, Mom discovered that opening packages, changing diapers, and manipulating touch-screen contraptions proved impeccably difficult with such ridiculously decorated digits.

But Mom's manicure didn't keep her from fixing a fabulous lunch of "ultimate nachos."  This delectable dish is created by first laying down a crunchy bed of tortilla chips.  Then add some re-fried beans, taco meat, cheese, avocado, fresh tomatoes, salsa, and sour cream.  Everyone sat around the table enjoying "ultimate nachos" and zesty conversation.

I stuffed a few loaded chips into my mouth and began to chew, relishing the flavors and savoring the textures.  The mushy beans, the slippery sour cream, the juicy tomatoes, and the crunchy crunchy tortilla chips.  I crunched down on a chip that didn't really crunch back.  I kept chewing, but that little chunk of chip just would not crack.  When I finally realized that this object must not be a chip, I swept it up with my tongue and daintily picked it from my lips with my finger tips.

On seeing what I held in my fingers, freshly retrieved from my mouth, my stomach contorted, a wave of cold sweat nipped at the nape of my neck, and the masticated fiesta clinging to my molars turned to mud.  My gag reflex kicked me in the gut; I flew to the kitchen sink and spat out whatever was left in my mouth.  Then my body began to shake uncontrollably and tears spurted from the corners of my eyes as a fit of laughter overwhelmed me.

Returning to the table, holding my stomach and heaving with laughter, I held aloft what I had pulled from my mouth--a perfectly shaped, perfectly painted fingernail (with teeth marks).  A close examination of my sweet mother's fingers showed that only seven fake nails remained.  I never did finish my lunch.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!  We sure love you.  How about I cook dinner tonight?

How You Know Your Baby is Growing Up...

-You can't hold them on your lap anymore

-They start eating solid food

-Their voice gets deeper... and louder

-They don't listen as well as they used to when you call to them

-They stop eating dirt and begin to eat trees

-They grow out of their cat collar and have to wear a real halter

-They chew their cud

No More Night-light

As a child, I always slept with a night-light. I guess having an overactive imagination made me "overly" sensitive to the dark. At night, I imagined that I saw monkeys hiding among my stuffed animals, aliens poking their heads up from the foot of my bed, bigfoot lurking in the closet, and Morlocks (an H.G. Wells-inspired horror) drooling in the shadows. That's where the night-light came to be my angel of slumber. Without this beacon in the dark, my nights would have been littered with fantastic frightening creatures of my imagination.

I have long since grown mature enough to turn off the night-light, but somehow not that overactive imagination. Sleeplessness remains a frequent night companion. That isn't what I'm writing about.

Back to the night-light. When Eudora was still a wee one, I always kept a light in her pen, above where she slept. It took two giant extension cords to rig that luxury. The light offered a small source of extra warmth during those long Teton Valley nights, but mostly, having light for some of those 10 pm feedings was greatly appreciated by the "nurse maid."

I am still afraid of the dark. I realized this one night a few weeks ago. It was 10 p.m., I had mixed up a bottle for baby, and was headed out to the lamb pen to tuck her into beddie-bye. The night was cloudy. After that bigfoot show on the Discovery channel I had watched the other day, my imagination was working on overdrive. I ran as fast as I could to the lamb pen, focusing my thoughts on the little animal crying "Maaa maa!" The light was shining bright; I unlatched the door, closed it behind me, and began feeding Eudora her bottle.

The wind was blowing--gusting, really. There was a slight hint of skunk in the air. I heard the greenhouse door lift out and settle back in place with the breeze. My common sense knew the sound was made by the greenhouse door and the wind, but my imagination refused to settle on anything sensical.

By the time I heard the smacking of Eudora sucking on an empty bottle, my mind was swimming in surreal and unsettling imaginings. In my head, I was so certain that bigfoot was standing just on the other side of the tarp behind me. That was the stench of sasquatch wafting with the wind. Every noise in the dark, every rustle, every scratch was the footfall of a gargantuan, nightmarish behemoth.

Eudora was settling down for the night, and it was time for me to run across the dark yard to the house. I started singing outloud, in a quavering voice, "Whenever I hear... the song of a bird..." The greenhouse door wacked again. I slipped out of the lamb pen and latched the door. "...or look at a..." The winded gusted with an eerie howl. I frantically looked around me--all was dark. Locking the lights from the house into my sights, I moved forward. "...a blue blue sky. Whenever I feel the rain on my..." Something slunk through the shrubs in the hippie-neighbor's yard. That was it. I yelped and dashed madly to the back door.

After that night, I never again went out to a ten o'clock feeding by myself.

Not until I reduced Eudora's feedings to twice a day did I finally take out the light. That was the beginning of this week. I figure if a girl is old enough to start eating solid food, she shouldn't need her night-light anymore. As long as Eudora doesn't have any bigfoot nightmares, she should be okay. And as long as I don't have to go outside in the dark, I should be okay.

Oh, and by the way, I do eat solid food and sleep without a night-light.

(clap! clap! clap! clap! clap!)

The Lamb Who Talks in Her Sleep

What more can I say about Eudora? There's so much; I don't know where to start.

Well, it didn't take too long for her to fatten up. Within a couple weeks she was a regular old chub-a-bub. She ate 4 times a day. I felt somewhat tied down sometimes. Suddenly, Saturday no longer meant sleeping in. To the queen, Saturday was no different than Monday or Thursday. 7 a.m. was breakfast time, every day.

I didn't mind. It was fun to take her out onto the lawn and watch her hop around, kick her legs, and eat dirt. She followed me wherever I went, never straying too far and always coming when I called.

Moving home to Driggs was quite the experience. Eudora had been in the car a few times before--we'd gone to visit cousins in town and then gone to Grandma's house. But Bjorn always drove while I sat in the back with Eudora. This time, I was on my own, it was a 4-hour drive, and I had a car-load of stuff plus a live, energetic, toddler lamb on board. I'm a resourceful gal, and so is my aunt, Cami. She provided the chicken-wire and duct-tape and I built a cover for my "lamb-child-transporter." The good news: it worked! The bad news: she pooped in Preston, so we had to pull over and do a little clean up. After that, Eudora slept most of the way home. She's a good girl like that.

So we made it home to Driggs, and Eudora made friends with the ancient Schwinn bicycle doing storage time in the lamb pen. I continued to feed her 4 times a day, and she continued to grow and grow.

Some of my favorite things about Eudora:

-When she gets excited, she jumps up onto the bale of straw in her pen, paws at it, then leaps off, kicking her back legs behind her.

-Every time I walk out the back door and yell "Baby!" She calls back, "Maaaaa maaa!"

-She loves to eat dirt. I don't understand this, but it must be a little kid thing. When we started giving her grain, she wouldn't even nibble at it . . . unless, of course, it fell in the dirt.

-If I talk to her in my "silly" voice, she walks over to me, wags her head, and her ears flap back and forth. That's how she laughs.

-Sometimes, I sit on the swing in the back yard, and she hops up next to me and chews on my hair, my face, my clothes.

-She chews everything.

-If she is tired, she will lie down at my feet so I can scratch her face. While I scratch her, she sleepily scratches me back with her little bottom-teeth on my leg.

-If she is very tired, she will lie with her legs stretched out and fall deep into sheep sleep. One time I caught her having little lamby dreams. Her tiny hooves twitched, and her baby tail flipped and flopped. I even heard her talking in her sleep, but I couldn't make out what she said. Something like, "Mmm . . . Mammmaaa . . ." What a weird-o. Who does that?

-When we take her out to play, especially when the sun is shining (which, apparently, is a rare occurrence in Teton Valley), she kicks, and bucks, and romps around on the grass, enjoying her freedom but never straying too far from mom.

-The best of all is the way she recognizes me as mommy.

Eudora gives me a reason to get up every morning. It is impossible to look into those big, darling, trusting, lamb eyes and not feel good about life.

Eudora

Writing for fun--it's been a while. Sometimes when a person's heart breaks, pieces go flying. And if the break is bad enough, some of those pieces fly so far that they get lost somewhere in the person's soul. I lost my music piece; I also lost my writing piece. Funny, seeing how those were probably the two biggest pieces of my heart.

It's not easy to find the pieces and patch them back in place. Imagine attempting to place an edge-piece of a puzzle somewhere in the middle, and you'll have it about right. Anyhow, the point is that I haven't written this way for a while. But Laura did it--she found the piece for me, and now I've somehow got to get that edge-piece snuggly planted in the middle of my puzzle heart.

What do all these things have in common?

-Coalville

-The D.I.

-sprouts

-poop

Okay, so really nothing, except Eudora.

It was a better than average day. Last week of April; a Thursday, I believe. No rain (or snow, for that matter), and I was driving to a random, little, Utah town: Coalville. Bjorn napped on the passenger side. Only a 2 1/2 hour drive.

Remember what I said before, about pieces flying? Well this was after the pieces flew. Did I mention that flying pieces such as these tend to run off with chunks of aforesaid person's sanity? It is true. They say people do crazy things, when in love . . . I'm proof that after the fact, crazy becomes less of a random display of affectionate actions and more of an irrevocable state of pathetic being.

Basically, the paragraph above is stating my mental state as unstable.

I'm kind of crazy.

Coalville. People asked me, "Aren't there people with sheep in Cache Valley? Why go all the way to Coalville?" Well, there is nobody named Vera in Cache Valley. Vera lived down Elkhorn road in Coalville, and she had a little nursery full of baby, orphan lambs who needed moms. So I drove to Coalville. We got lost a couple times trying to find Elkhorn road, and had to stop and eat our turkey, ham, and sprout sandwiches. A couple dirt roads and a few rickety bridges later, Vera introduced us to the babies. Out of the bunch there was one white one. It was a rather sad-looking waif, skinny as all get-out and smaller than the others.

"Is that one a girl?" I asked Vera, pointing to the scrawny bag of bones in the back. Vera verified that the lamb was a ewe. and she was just born the night before. "Then that's the one I want." I didn't think twice or have any difficulty in making my decision. We loaded the lamb into the car. She rode inside a giant green tub that I purchased at the D.I. the day before. I sat next to her, and she basically screamed the whole 2 1/2 hours home. When she wasn't screaming, she was going to the bathroom. Occasionally she would sit down and snooze for 10 minutes, but at the next bump or pothole she was back up and wailing.

I decided to name her Eudora, after the author Eudora Welty. I was debating between Eudora and Willa, but after seeing the spunk in that baby's eyes, she was clearly a Eudora, not a Willa. Bjorn wanted to call her Queen BathSHEEPa.

We finally got home to Logan, and Bjorn got Eudora to drink her bottle. Then we tucked her into bed. The queen slept in the bathroom that night. Well, she slept until 4 a.m. when she started crying, "Maaaaaamaaa! Maaaama!" I knew that meant me. Dragging myself out of bed and slipping into my blue slippers, I trudged into the bathroom and sat down on the floor. Eudora wobbled on her baby legs over to me, lay down with her chin in my lap, and fell asleep.

The queen slept in the bathroom that night, and so did the nurse maid.

Thank you, Laura, for inspiring me to write again. And yes, you can link this post to your blog, if you like. That was my first day with Eudora. Since then, oh man . . . Lots of wonderful days. I will write more soon.

ALERT!!!

I thought I ought to let everybody know that I've decided to postpone my mission until June 1st. I am going to finish one more semester of school and yes, there is a B - O - Y in the picture as well. Wish me luck with all my life-decision-makings!

Final Portfolio

I think all of these poems have already been posted in their infant stage, but most of them have undergone major revising since then. These are the poems I put in my final Poetry Portfolio. Of course, no poem can ever be perfectly polished and finished, but I've put a lot of work and "word-time" into these. Enjoy!



September

September exists
in my hands
like a breathless dawn brimming
over edges of mountains;
light leaks into valleys
captively cupped,
kept, like a handful
of sand slowly slipping
through fugitive fingers of time



Confession of an Ocean

Inside I hide an awful truth--
a murderer am I. Because of me,
the beauty of a blue-eyed youth
will wash away. Because of me,
a German prince's heart will never hear
that sound which distance muffles with her blue
and heavy laughter, which is mine. His fear
is everything they'll never get to do.
A notion stretching love
over an ocean,
an impression, a conception of
something imagined,
a fancy, a whim, the separation in
the wasted waves that sin.
I sense no sorrow, but
tomorrow both the lovers will give
in.



Pheasant Sighting, 8:13 am

Peeking out at sunrise,
gradually glowing,
green tail feathers slip
through November,
cutting across 13th.
Crisp, clacking claws on
pavement carry him into
the neighbor's corn.
Announcing his reign,
new day glinting off
a despotic beak,
tossing his head
the pheasant hails
the morning.



Trying to Understand Things

"Things include a lot of
things,"
he said. Dismal drops of July rain like
brushes on a Zildjian,
chink chink-a chink chink-a
things things things.
Silver strings and callused fingers
sing
the song my heart abandoned, and a
satin tear upon my cheek, an empty
chime,
falls in time, as all the elements of disappointment
culminate that rhyming thing.
"Somehow, I seem to know already what you're
saying
behind what you say." He said.
A ping-a-ling, a troo-la-loo, a frenzied rhythmic
dunk-a-dunk
hollow plunk of stripped piano keys,
"And just what is that?"
I ask.
A naked symphony of
misunderstood circumstance.



What is the Possibility of You Coming to Germany?

Swimming to the surface
of an upside-down sea,
in a turtlneck of turquoise,
unable to breath.
Am I drowning?
am I trapped--
bashed between violet and green?
Then let me be lost

in noncommittal limbo,
waiting . . .
for a response, a clue, a smack in the face;
stop smothering me with un-breathable space.
Your silence is screaming:
break me . . . break me . . .
suffocating.

Will you be fine without me?
Will your music fill the emptiness
that used to be us?
Will you find another melody?
Will you forget the tune of me,
the fingering,
the chords,
the chorus, the bridge, the key?

Secretly, I hate you
for being away,
unwilling to dream,
unwilling to wake.
You say, "Join me in Germany,"
but why? You forgot to tell me.



Evening Gown

I long to trim a yard or two
of blue straight from the sky and stitch
the fabric, hue by hue, into
the ultimate and unattainable
raiment of angels--
a fabricated gown with
tamamushi beetles sewn
in sunset stars along the neck,
a band of silky lupines looped
about the waist,
a baby-blue train bustled up
at the hip like a pompous hibiscus,
closing the seams with his claws,
a barn swallow clings
to the clasp in the back, and
ninety-three powdery underwings swing
from the hem when I trip
into twilight.