Living a dream

In Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” Owen Wilson plays a shaggy-haired, highly successful screenplay writer who pines for life in the 1920s. Those years, to him, were the golden age of art, beauty and contentment. Longing to get closer to his dream, he tries to convince his fiancé to move with him to Paris. He imagines a simple, beautiful life: writing novels in an attic with a skylight, walking the Parisian streets in the rain, finding artistic inspiration on every corner.

In the movie, his fiancé wants nothing to do with it. Her dream is to live in Malibu with matching $28,000 deck chairs.

But I was smitten.

I think, right now, Seattle is my Paris. Today’s daydream of a perfect, fulfilled life is to live somewhere on the Kitsap peninsula, surrounded by ocean and mountains, close enough to enjoy the wonderful city yet far enough out to satisfy my country-dweller’s soul. I love the rain, so that’s no obstacle, and it will make sunny days that much better. I envision a part-time writing career, leaving plenty of time for wandering city markets and auditioning for plays. I’d memorize lines on a back porch overlooking the bay, serenaded by the rain in the trees. Matt would get home from his theater tech job and we’d cook dinner together and take walks along the edge of the bay. On the weekends we’d go hiking or boating or sell baked goods (me) and jewelry (Matt) at a market booth. Some nights we’d go to the city for sushi and a show. Others we’d stay home and watch movies with friends. We’d have a dog. And a garden. And a canoe in the garage.

And so on and so forth. It’s enjoyable to focus on the details as long as a dream doesn’t become an obsession. I think it helps life preserve a certain sense of wonder. And what would life be like without anything wonderful?

Extremes

Darling, I don't know why I go to extremes,
Too high or too low, there ain't no in-betweens;
And if I stand or I fall,
It's all or nothing at all,
Darling, I don't know why I go to extremes.
                                                           -Billy Joel


Which is worse: a long, slow death by drought, or having everything swept away in an instant by a raging flood?

Every day there are more photos of Texas dying – cattle lying on the parched ground, too weak to stand; farmers forced to abandon their farms; catfish struggling to breathe in the shallows of a disappearing lake.

Then, over the past weekend, the images of a hurricane – water raging down once-inhabited streets; mature trees ripped from the ground; a daughter sobbing into her father’s lap on stairs that no longer lead to a front door.

I think a drought can feel worse because it takes so long for everything to die. A flood comes and goes in a matter of days. The destruction is terrible and yet over almost too fast to think about. Once over, it’s time to rebuild.

A drought drains resources as well as hope. One life after another is slowly shut down; places that may have made it through the battering winds of a storm stand no chance against the deliberate force of time. By the time relief comes, it may be too late.

Neither is better; I feel guilt watching the news and longing for Vermont’s rapid, raging water to pour down our rivers and refill our lakes. I don’t really want that extreme – I don’t want any extreme – but it can be hard not to reach for extremes when you are surrounded by one already.

A Million Miles

I finished re-reading Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years today. I read it for the first time shortly after hearing him speak at a church in Tyler, TX when the book had just come out. Many of these stories stick in my mind more than those in his other books – all of which I adore – as I remember the way he told them and the extra details he was able to add.

Don (I know that’s informal, but I honestly think he’d prefer that to Mr. Miller) focuses on stories in A Million Miles. He writes about how his life, his own personal story, doesn’t feel meaningful or complete. He gives examples of people who have grown lazy in their marriages, people who never reach out and take that next crucial step, who stop understanding that there’s something better.

At a crucial point in his story, Don tells of paddling across a seemingly endless inlet in the dead of night. “I think this is when most people give up on their stories,” he writes. “They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and the change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can’t see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger.”

I feel like I’ve been drifting between shores for quite some time now. The concise way of summing up my feelings about it is this: waiting is hard. And the detailed version: Waiting is one of the most difficult things faced in life. Lately I’ve felt stuck in an endless loop of waiting: waiting for a job, then once a job was found, waiting for finances to get better. Finances haven’t gotten better, so now it’s waiting for Matt to get a job, waiting to find out if he can go to school, waiting to see if we can afford to fix the cars, waiting through endless calls about debt we can’t pay, waiting for the day we can finally be out on our own again, waiting to feel like an independent adult again, waiting for a feeling of accomplishment, waiting for the next step.

And believe me, this isn’t sitting around, twiddling thumbs waiting. This is constant searching, constant questioning, constantly striving for something to finally go right. This is waiting that attempts to drain all resolve.

Almost every day I struggle to not be crushed beneath the thought that this could all be my fault: that I moved us down here and into this failure because of something I couldn’t handle. Last fall when I finally scrapped my pride and applied for unemployment, my application was denied, saying I had left the position because “the work was too hard.” I had the chance to explain my case, but it did no good. And because of that, those words have never left me.

I worked for that company a total of three days last September, and they felt like the worst days of my life. I crammed the hours trying to learn the policies, procedures, and complicated figures that would help me succeed. But when I got home after 9 PM the third night, knowing my trainer would be leaving the next morning, I knew I needed more time. I wasn’t yet ready to handle that kind of enormous financial responsibility without someone there to double-check my work. I knew could learn it, but not that fast. I met with them the next morning, stated my reasons, and asked for more time. I was denied. I turned in my keys and left.

I drove to the empty mall parking lot across the street and cried until I could barely breathe. Matt and I had made the move on the promise of reimbursed costs, and now we had nothing. We had signed a new lease and paid the fees the day before, and now we had no way to keep it. Our bright new future turned into a backwards tumble down a hill.

After four months of searching, I found a new job. At my current job I make more than I did in Longview, but not by much. The job I left would have doubled my salary and then some. That job would have let us live in an apartment with 1,000+ square feet of space, save for a house, make loan payments on time and send Matt to school with manageable debt. But the other job didn’t happen.
“What if” can be two of the most dangerous words in the world. They have the ability to heal, but also to crush. “What if I hadn’t left? What if I had blundered my way through and eventually got it right? What if this is all my fault? What have I done to us?”

I tell myself to not play the guilt game, but it happens anyway. I know that I'm much happier at this job than I ever would have been there, but that doesn't stop the feeling that I, and I alone, did this to us. That I gave up without good reason. That I destroyed our only path to contentment.

I know God has something in the future for us, but it’s hard to keep up hope when your husband has received dozens of job rejections, your two cars need serious repairs and your credit card is creeping ever closer to the max.

There are times when I just want to give up everything in the hope that our next try will be better. I’m not giving up hope, and I’m not letting doubt overtake me, but I am saying that it’s hard. I anticipate the moment Donald Miller describes, when he and his fellow paddlers reach the other shore and are awed by the glory of the scene around them. "It’s like this with every crossing, and with nearly every story too,” he writes. “You paddle until you no longer believer you can go any farther. And then suddenly, well after you thought it would happen, the other shore starts to grow, and it grows fast. The trees get taller and you can make out the crags in the cliffs, and then the shore reaches out to you, to welcome you home, almost pulling your boat onto the sand.”

I’m impatient, and I’m worn out, but I’m waiting. I don't expect our future to be perfect, but I'm ready to draw closer to the shore and further from doubt.

Animal Escapades (Part 2)

Let me start with a couple of Useless Tips for Ridding Your Yard of Raccoons:

1) Put a radio outside and leave it on all night. The sound of human voices will deter coons from entering the area.

Reality: Raccoons are smarter than that. They quickly realize that there are no actual people sitting outside yakking it up all night.

2) Install a motion-sensor light to scare raccoons away.

Reality: The raccoons in our yard must have taken "Humans 101" at the local coon college. The light came on, they scattered...and immediately regrouped when it became apparent that nothing more than light was going to happen.

What we didn't try was my genius idea of large swaths of flypaper around the pool for little coon feet to get stuck on! What? Stop giving me that look. It could have worked. Oh, never mind.

Partial success was reached this morning due to Papa's perserverance. Two nights ago he baited a cage with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and didn't set the catch, hoping to lure them into a sense of security. It worked. Free dinner #2 was set out last night, this time with the cage set to snap shut when entered.

"There's at least 8 of them," he observed after watching them from a darkened corner of the pool cabana. "Two separate families that bicker over food and territory."

Lo and behold, an adolescent-size coon was caught. I went out this morning to look before leaving for work. He scrabbled about, chewing on the remains of a cardboard label advertising "Large raccoon trap! Perfect for raccoons, opposums and similarly-sized animals." As we approached he crouched low, facing a corner, nose nearly touching the wire. My brother and I sat on the concrete closest to him. He met our gaze with his wide, dark eyes, but didn't move.

My comforting instinct urged for me to reach through the tiny squares and smooth his hackled fur, but I knew a snarl and snap would instantly greet my fingers. We spoke quietly to him. It's strange to be faced with an antagonist and have them meet your gaze with fear. It's much easier to be angry at a faceless opponent, to mutter "you darn critters!" when they aren't looking you in the eye.

I am eternally grateful to be the daughter of a man who will humanely trap and release an animal instead of stuffing it or skinning it or turning it into stew. As we sat by the cage, Papa came out with a piece of bread. He tore off small pieces and pushed them between the bars. The raccoon lifted his head, not quite turning around, but sensing the presence of food. As I left for work Papa lifted the cage and carefully set it in the back of the truck, taking him away to a second chance at life.

Mr. Jones

I would just like to pause for a moment and say how awesome Dean Jones is.

Dean Jones. Disney classic. Star of some of the best family films of the 1960s-70s. And he's totally handsome. Personally, a guy like him is much more appealing to me than some 19-year-old with hard abs and hair gel. I wouldn't even know what Dean Jone's abs look like, since he never had to take his shirt off to sell a movie.

Dean Jones is handsome, wholesome, charming, and a strong Christian. The latter part of his career has been spent touring his one-man show "St. John in Exile." He has done dozens of Biblical re-enactment projects, videos, TV series, etc., and done them well.

As a kid we rented "The Love Bug" series over and over again, and I've recently been able to introduce my younger siblings to those movies, "That Darn Cat," and soon "The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit." Dean Jones usually plays a smooth but slightly flustered character, surrounded by a situation he can't quite control on his own. He starts off as a bit of a hotshot in "The Love Bug," but of course soon proves his heart of gold.

The Love Bug (1968)

That Darn Cat (1965)


So anyway. Dean Jones. Great guy. Fun family films. Go find one today. The end.

Dog story

Before school was out for the summer, I ended up behind the school bus a few mornings each week. There are several “no outlet” streets in our neighborhood, so the bus will often stop at the beginning of the road to pick up the gathered children instead of venturing down each narrow country cul-de-sac. I began to notice patterns for each group: the parents that drive their kids to the end of the road as opposed to those who walk; the mom that goes with her little girls up the bus doors every day, hugging them and straightening their backpacks as they board; the little “thanks for waiting” wave she gives me while heading back to her own car.

But of all these observations, my favorite is the shaggy dog.

The first cul-de-sac stop picks up 3-4 kids, and at least two of them are siblings. One clue is that they stand together, and the other is the shaggy little dog sniffing around beside them. He investigates the ditches and bushes as the children wait, but jumps to attention as the bus approaches. He bounds after them as they walk to the door, circling their feet as they board. The bus pulls away and he, proud to have gotten them off on another days’ adventure, trots stalwartly homeward.

I picture their mom glancing out the window as he trots into the yard each day. Whether she’s busy washing dishes or feeding a baby or gathering up her briefcase and keys, his loyal appearance assures her that her children are safely on their way.

The unconditional loyalty of that little dog assures me that if anything were to happen to those kids, one of two things would happen: he would not leave their side, protecting them with all his shaggy might, or he would run home as fast as he could to bring help. I imagine the tightening in their mother’s chest if he didn’t come back, her thoughts of “what happened?”

I’m sure there are days when he’s distracted by a squirrel or an interesting smell, but I’m also sure he makes a priority of getting home. He’s got the rest of the day to explore and play. At seven each morning he’s there to send them off, and I’m sure that at four he’ll be there to walk them home.

Animal Escapades (Part 1)

Last night Matt and I were sitting out at my family’s pool, dipping our feet in the water and talking. We were seated beneath the one light bulb hanging from the side of the cabana, and the underwater lights were on, providing a shifting, watery glow. I heard a chuck-will’s-widow calling in the distance. I turned my head to hear it better and gasped in surprise as I was greeted by four masked, shining eyes. Two medium-sized raccoons were headed toward the water from behind the cabana. My startled reaction startled them, and their ringed tails disappeared again into the darkness.



Mom has been on a get-rid-of-raccoons campaign due to a recent slew of destructive events, so Matt and I turned off the lights and waited in the dark for them to return. My family has recently gained a pair of archery bows (one compound, one recurve), and Matt recently purchased sharper tipped arrows for just such pest removal (or at least scaring away) purposes.
As we sat in the dark we could hear the coons chirruping in the trees, but nothing reappeared around the corners. While part of me acknowledged the cuteness of the creatures, another part knows just how my mom feels. In the recent months they have inhabited my dad’s workshop (and you thought rats were bad!), eaten fish meant for the pond, stolen household items accidentally left outside, and continually muddied the pool and deck with their little food-washing feet. And if mom’s chickens keep laying in bushes instead of their nesting boxes, they will probably start stealing eggs as well.

I think what surprised me the most is that they were headed for the water even though the lights were on and we were talking. Like the deer, the raccoons seem to becoming more and more accustomed to close human proximity. The deer just don’t care anymore, strolling through yards and across roads at all hours of the day. If you step outside they’ll lazily look up at you, but not bother to move unless you shout or run toward them. They eat the fruit from the trees and chew young saplings to the ground. The other day I saw one sticking its tongue through the garden fence in an attempt to reach a corn stalk. Deer can still be beautiful to watch, but it’s hard to enjoy their majestic nature when they are destroying your summer harvest.

Wow. It's amazing how many results you get by image googling "deer sticking tongue out."

I suppose it’s just a constant territorial battle: as the area becomes more and more developed, the animals adapt and grow bolder in order to survive.
In other animal news, I saw a very large (and very dead) porcupine on the side of the road yesterday morning. I had no idea that porcupines were native Texans!


It looked exactly like this. Only...dead.

My dad saw a guy collecting the quills later that day, armed with heavy gloves and a sack. What are good uses for porcupine quills? Does that guy scour the roadsides for prickly roadkill, or what this a first-time collection?

That situation always makes me a little sad: “Whoa! A porcupine! I’ve never seen one in the wild before! Oh...it’s dead.” Live animals are just…well…most things are better when they’re alive. Unless you’re wearing or eating it. Then I am a firm believer in whatever you are wearing or eating no longer looking like a live thing at all.

So anyway…we’ll see how Raccoon Adventure Part 2 goes. Pretty sure the hubster is going to camp out tonight to try and scare them off more permanently by shooting sharp things in their general direction. Your cuteness can’t always make up for your troublemaking,  you fuzzy little creatures.