Approving the frog farm should have been enough, but finding metal salad forks in my freezer clinched it for this year. Once again, cousins camp would be a learning opportunity. For me.
Ten grandkids, ages sixteen to three, gathered for a few days of fun while I facilitated and fed them.
My eleven acres provided a rich environment for exploring and digging.
I had gathered a gallon jar full of buttons to use for crafts. (Well, my sister found the jar at an estate sale, and the prior owner must have spent a lifetime saving buttons.)
“That’s a ka-jillion buttons,” I said, turning the jar from side to side.
Math Boy, who is twelve, smiled. “Ka-jillion is a complete number. You can’t have a ka-jillion and one.”
Learned something.
We painted rocks on day three, to be followed by the button craft and then building miniature gardens.
The ka-jillion button craft paled next to finding a water tank and adding water, rocks, and sponges, then lovingly pouring in caught frogs. Voila! A frog farm.
We never dipped into the ka-jillion buttons.
While throwing together a meal, I discovered metal forks nestled atop the ice cubes.
The fifteen-year-old explained that when someone lays icy forks on the counter beside regular forks, placing your forearm on the forks feels like you’ve laid it on a grill. No actual burning involved. How cool is that?
The fourteen-year-old provided the forearm and then howled. “It feels like that!”
I’m sure that trick will be a hit at my next birthday party.
The best story of the week came when some of the kids accompanied me and my dog for a stroll beside a local canal. Scout likes to dive in for a swim, but the kids were skeptical that he would jump in the water.
“He does it as often as he can,” I assured them.
“Does he drown very often?” one asked.
So at cousins camp this year, I learned about icy forks. How to assemble a frog farm.
We’d traveled an hour and a half for a tasty lunch with our cousin. Going straight home was not an option.
My sister and I had made this trip, and you’re probably thinking we folded in some shopping afterward.
Not exactly.
“Could we go to this estate sale?” she asked, pointing to a tiny map on her phone.
It was only thirty minutes away. Not on our way home, but, hey, the sun was shining and we’d just finished this great meal and conversation with our cousin. Why not?
That question gets me into trouble a lot.
But away we went.
“What are you looking for?”
“An anvil.”
I never expected rare pottery or collector figurines. But an anvil?
As we drove (I put her behind the wheel of my car), I wondered what an anvil would do to the trunk. Would it punch through the floor of the trunk and bounce behind us on the highway like an escaped rabbit?
“Can we even lift an anvil?” I asked.
Minor details. She shrugged. “Somebody will help us.”
The anvil sold a half hour before we got there. She was sad. I was suddenly grateful for the extended conversation about future travel plans with our cousin that delayed us for a half hour.
So my sister went on the hunt for other treasures. She’s an artist. She sees things differently.
And we stumbled onto a room, books cascading from wall to wall. All free.
I didn’t need to go further. I started plucking books and stacking them. I am a writer and a reader. This was close to a perfect afternoon.
My sister started searching through the piles of books, too. She’s an artist who doesn’t do much pleasure reading, so I guessed she must have taken up a new hobby.
We left with as many books as we could pile from fingertips to bottom of chin.
“Wow, you must have found some interesting books,” I said.
“Yep,” she said. “I need some nice-looking books for the decor in my Airbnb.”
Here’s your quiz: what do four states, Carhenge, and a tornado have in common? If you said my sister and me, you’ve been paying attention.
This all got started when my sister and I drove six hours from home, into Wyoming, to visit family. We had a full day for the return trip, so why not go a different way?
Ah, you can see the problems forming like storm clouds on the horizon, huh?
Hold that metaphor. You’ll need it later.
We started out in Wyoming (state one) and drove east to Rapid City, South Dakota (state two) for breakfast. The skies were vast and clear blue.
Then we turned south toward Scottsbluff, Nebraska (state three), inspired by the prairie, the rocky bluffs, and massive fluffy clouds.
Detouring to the Replica
Then somebody in the car who wasn’t me wanted to go to Carhenge. Why not? We re-programmed our maps app.
Carhenge features dented cars and pickups buried and arranged like a to-scale replica of Stonehenge.
The founder’s motto is “Why not?”
After checking out every old car in the park, we reprogrammed our maps app to take us home. We’d get back to Colorado (state four) early afternoon.
That’s what we thought.
Our maps took us east. We didn’t notice because the road curved like limp spaghetti. Well, and because we were talking a lot, too.
“We’d better not be going through Sidney,” I said.
“Why?”
“It’s out of our way.” I checked the app.
Going East After All
We were heading straight for Sidney. Too late to correct. We were better off staying the course and getting home from the east rather than north.
As we closed in on our hometown, I was studying the weather app when my sister said, “Those clouds south of us look ugly.”
“Radar shows the red spot in the storm will stay south of us. You won’t have to drive through it this time.”
When we were out on the road and came onto a storm, she was always the one driving through the red spot–that howling, angry rain-and-wind part of the storm. She gets growly about that sometimes. “Do you see what I see?”
What We Both Saw
I looked up from the app. “A tornado.” I loaded up the camera app.
I shot pictures while she fidgeted. To be fair, the tornado was more of a wannabe with a wimpy, pale tail.
“It won’t cross the road,” I said, looking at the weather app again. “And it’s dissipating.”
“I’m not driving past a tornado.” She veered across two lanes of traffic--she checked first--and took us off in yet another direction.
Our six-hour trip took about ten hours. But the tornado subsided. We visited Carhenge. And we did not go through a fifth state to get home. A good day overall.
My morning's confidence should've been a giveaway. But, no. I confidently assured my fellow travelers, who had to go through airline security with a baby, that I’d wait on the other side of security for them.
After all, I have TSA PreCheck. I didn’t have to shed my shoes or jacket. The TSA people in my line always brought me chocolate mints and an arm flourish as I walked through. (OK, I might have exaggerated that part.)
But that morning, I cleared the metal detector with no problem, only to watch my carry-on bags slide to the other side of a glass wall.
How was I supposed to get them over there?
Some Good Sense...
I did have the good sense not to reach over the barrier or I might be writing this from a cell.
Before long, I realized that the other side of the glass wall was reserved for suspect bags.
Like mine?
They were flagging quite a few, so I stood by patiently–which of course I always do (stand patiently, I mean)–until they got to my bag.
The attendant peeled back the zippered cover and went digging. She snagged my shaker bottle with the plastic bag of powder stuffed inside.
“That’s just protein powder,” I said. She didn’t even look at me. Instead, she scurried to another counter, dipped a small sample out of the bag, and dripped something onto the powder from a bottle that looked like it held eye drops.
“It’s protein powder,” I said. In case they were confused.
Nope. Not confused. My powder tested positive for something–they didn’t know what when I asked–and so my suitcase innards, my electronics, and I all got a pat-down.
Then they re-packed my suitcase, including the protein powder, and sent me on my way.
Repacking It All
I texted my hosts for the week: You may be housing a terrorist.
She texted back: Is it too late to run a background check?
Haha.
My morning’s confidence had melted away in the pat-down, but then I thought about my fellow travelers. Have they made it through security yet?
Right then, their text message arrived. Oh, good. I could still help. Maybe carry the baby. Or a bag.
Then I read the text: We’re at the gate.
I Learned
I once held the belief that airport security lines took forever. Long snake lines measured in eons.
But I’ve learned. Nothing takes as long as being threatened with protein powder prison.
I have never been a smoker except for one puff when I was six years old, but that one puff has produced some weird stories.
Several years ago, back in the day when we still answered the phone without knowing who was on the other end, I got snagged by a survey taker.
The questions had to do with tobacco use. Had I ever used tobacco?
I am entirely too honest. That puff at age six leaped into my consciousness and I told her I had once. I regretted that transparency shortly.
No Obsession Like a Survey Taker
She jumped on my admission like a starving wolf. “What did you use?”
“Um, well, I was six years old, and I took one puff.”
“Was it menthol or filtered?”
“I was six years old. And it was one puff.”
“What brand of cigarette was it?”
Really? You'd Ask Again?
“I was six years old, and it was one puff.”
“Did you continue the habit?”
“I was six years old, and I never wanted another puff.”
She kept asking, and I only had one answer.
What I’m going to share with you didn’t fit into her survey questions. But we’re friends and I am entirely too honest.
Here's The Story
At age 6, I approached my dad after supper one evening. He sat at the dining room table with a cigarette poised between two fingers, white smoke drifting like a lazy river toward the ceiling, and a glimmering glass ashtray beside him.
I guess I was staring with eager eyes. I thought he looked sophisticated, although I'm certain I didn't know that word yet.
“Would you like a puff?” He beckoned to me.
Yes, I would. I scooted up to him, eager to share this special moment. I lifted the white tube to my lips and took a long pull on the cigarette.
A loooong pull. One loooong draw.
White Heat
Dragon's breath first roasted my tonsils before descending with white raging heat down my throat. My lungs were seared and my stomach rolled with burning coals.
The scalding smoke slammed into my eyes and my nose filled with the stench of dead mice and scorched banana peels. Angry flames blew out my ears and singed my eyebrows.
My throat cramped like a sore muscle. My toenails curled with the heat and hot tears ran down my cheeks.
Certain that my life was about to end, I spun and sprinted on my hot, toasted legs into the bathroom. I stuck my mouth under the faucet, slapped the cold water handle open, and tried to drown myself.
As rushing water sluiced across my tongue in the faint hope of dousing the fire, I had one thought, assuming I survived: Never again. A single swallow of the dragon’s breath was more than enough for me.
Done, Done, Done
I imagine that was Dad’s idea, and it worked.
Besides making me a lifelong nonsmoker, the experience also had another benefit. My experience roasted the caller’s survey results.
I had considered titling this post “News You Need” because I am a former small-town journalist and my brain thinks that way.
But then I found out that I had missed the rapper feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Obviously, I’m not keeping up on the news. So don’t count on me for that anymore.
Veering off into left field (something I’m known for), I set journalistic intent aside and instead move to the next obvious thing: open my computer supply cabinet.
A Trip Back in Time
I like technology, and this cabinet is a treasure chest of years of technological changes.
I don’t have my Apple IIc up there (I wish I did!) but, of late, opening the door to that cabinet means a spaghetti snarl of cables and discs emerging like hungry pythons that I have to push back with my foot while I slam the door.
It’s made finding a USB charging block challenging.
I finally gritted my teeth, started pulling stuff off shelves, and found Monkey!
Monkey Now
Monkey is a little plush monkey with a coin purse for a backpack. I carried him for years when the kids were home. Monkey marked the location of car keys and carried quarters for gum ball machines in his backpack.
Our Fellow Traveler
“Go get Monkey,” I could tell the kids, and they raced back with the fuzzy guy in their hand. He was part of our travels.
He retired when his backpack zipper split and the cord tying him to my purse broke. Maybe at the same time. He had the Velveteen rabbit look to him.
And I had saved him?
As I turned him over in my hand, the memories bubbled up from times when the kids were at home. Trips to the park. The flip house the kids and I gutted. County fairs where they showed goats and a horse. A flight to Los Angeles to visit the USS Iowa. Our laughter when the mint plants were pummeled by hail. The trees we planted together.
So many memories.
Moving On
I set Monkey aside and kept digging.
A crumpled earbud set curled in the back corner of the cabinet. Oh, yeah, I wore those on the flight we took to San Diego. We visited the zoo and Sea World and watched whales from a boat.
The 30-pin to VGA Adapter (don’t ask) pushed up to the surface as I dug around. I used it in a photography class I taught. You had to stand on your ear in those days to be sure the adapter connected the laptop to the classroom projector, but we managed and had a great time talking about photos of kids, flowers, and dogs. Sunsets, too.
Some misguided person (that’d be me) saved Apple product boxes, thinking those could help value when re-selling said product. I had a white rectangular Apple mountain on the second shelf, which made a Minecraft square-block avalanche.
The boxes don’t help resale value much, but didn’t even trigger memories. I had an iPhone X once? And an SE? An iPad Air? Some of these could have been for my husband or kids, but for some reason, I was the box keeper. I mean, Apple makes beautiful boxes. But still…
Some Old DVDs
Moving on, I found several old DVD programs on the top shelf sitting like tombstones. OLD means dinosaurs installed those programs on their Commodore 64s. Not really, but can you say Windows 98?
The shelves were an archeological dig. I had a great time remembering. Then I threw handfuls of cables and cords and disks and adapters into the trash bag.
The old computer stuff is mostly gone. (I took a couple of pictures but, really, who needs to see a 30-pin to VGA adapter?)
What about Monkey?
He’s staying. His memories are far warmer than Windows 98 and the iPhone X box.
Him and the USB-C cables. I’m not completely impractical.
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