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.
I enjoyed the dream of living on a hobby farm. Until the Day of the Cat.
On the Day of the Cat, a glorious spring morning, I was milking a goat in a sealed room (meaning we kept our barn cats out). Our four-year-old daughter climbed onto the big feed box at the wall and looked behind it.
“Mom, there’s a cat back there.”
I froze.
How had a cat gotten in?
I was afraid to ask, but did. “Is it dead or alive?”
She studied the gap between the box and the wall. “Dead. Can I pick it up?”
“NO!” Yuck.
My husband was typically the designated handler of all things gross. Dead things. Spiders the size of a child's fist. Mysterious smells. He is a man of courage and strong stomach. But he was forty miles away at his job. I was home alone.
Well, just me and a curious preschooler who was already angling for new ways to interact with the deceased.
“Leave it alone,” I added because I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. She huffed and crossed her arms, but stayed put, feet dangling, watching me.
I drew a long breath, avoiding any mental images of what a dead cat smashed against the wall might look like.
Believing strongly in the principle that it’s better to face the horror than let it hang over your head all day, I finished my morning barn routine s-l-o-w-l-y and squared my shoulders.
It was time.
I gathered my supplies like someone preparing for battle.
✅ Hand sanitizer
✅ Thick trash bags
✅ Face mask
Back into the milking room I marched with my daughter right on my heels. She wouldn’t miss this for the world.
Paint dries faster than I moved into the room. I leaned over the feed box and looked down the gap.
There, tattered and soiled, lay…
… a purple and white stuffed cat toy.
I stared at it for a long moment.
“You said it was dead,” I said to my daughter.
“Well, it’s not alive.”
So ended the Day of the Cat. Minus, as it turned out, any actual cat.
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.”
If I ever start a story with the line “My sister and I…”, buckle up. We have some strange adventures. For example, last weekend my sister and I went shopping for an anvil and came home with two armloads of old books. That story is coming in a future newsletter.
But let’s jump into this story.
My sister and I were on a road trip, driving close to the edge of the Earth. We hadn’t seen a house for 5 miles. We hadn’t even seen a cow for 5 miles. The only living things in sight were two antelopes racing across a far hill.
Not to worry. We weren’t bored; we were talking. Then I looked down at the speedometer. I was driving 80 mph.
“Oh, man,” I said and immediately lifted. Lifted is a racing term I learned from my husband. I don’t race. Except maybe when driving at the edge of the Earth.
As I lifted, we flew past a crossroad with a state patrolman sitting at the stop sign.
He pulled me over. He walked up to my window. “Do you know why I stopped you?”
“I was going too fast,” I said, and he nodded. “How fast did you catch me at?” I wondered if I had managed to slow down at all before he clocked me.
“Eighty.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He took the usual stack of paperwork back to his car. When he handed it back to me, he leaned down and looked into the car. I don’t think my sister waved at him, but, knowing her, she might have. Then he said, “Use your cruise control after this.”
He walked back to his car and pulled away. No ticket. No warning ticket.
My sister and I both took a deep breath as he drove over the next hill.
I owe that nameless patrolman big time.
And that’s why I have given my sister permission to nag me about the cruise control.
Meet Ryven Ashcroft who fixes gas masks in a world where the air can kill you. Today, he gets a break. His biggest problem is a chess-playing drone.
*****
The chess set looked like it had escaped the teeth of a wood chipper. Barely.
Outside, the toxic Murk swirled yellow against the windows.
Ryven sat beside a small table and scratched his head. “Which bottle cap is my queen?” If he was going to play, he planned to win.
“The green one,” Edl said, not looking up from his remote.
“There are three green ones.”
Edl had to look. “Gyro oil. Hang on. Jinks isn’t ready.” A small drone that resembled a spider hovered over the chess pieces.
Jinks has opinions about chess. Not all of them are legal.
Ryven ignored him and slid the oil cap to a cracked square in the center of the board. Had he just moved a knight? Or a pawn? “Your turn.”
“Jinks’ turn, you mean.” Edl slid his thumb over the remote and then squeezed his eyes to focus on the chess board.
“Well, make your move,” Ryven said.
“He’s thinking.”
They both watched Jinks dip down and knock over a skinny can of seal compound. The can clattered onto the floor and rolled under a chair.
“What kind of play was that?”
“E7,” Edl said.
“In whose world?” Ryven grabbed a coolant lid and set it on a square. “That is E7.”
“Vintage rules. Jinks uses modern rules.” Edl slid his thumb on the remote again. Jinks beeped and then hovered again. It darted to the board and grabbed a fork.
“Is that your rook?” Ryven said. “What mastermind takes his own piece?” Switching from vintage rules to modern ones took some concentration that he didn’t intend to give.
Edl leaned close to Jinks. “Drop it.” The fork clattered onto the board, scattering pieces like a mini explosion.
They both stared at the cleared board.
Then Edl raised his free hand in the air. “Good job, Jinks! Check mate!”
******
Jinks is just getting warmed up. So is Ryven. Sign up here.
In a world far, far away, in a time nearly forgotten, my college roommate, Phyllis, and I buckled on skis to ride a T-bar lift.
T-bar lifts are extinct today. (That’s not accurate. See the footnote if you care.)
Back then, T-bars ferried skiers to the top of the mountain while weeding out the unworthy.
You’ll have to decide that part.
A T-bar requires two skiers to step into the loading area, grab a vertical pole attached to overhead cables, and stand as the crossbar hits your thighs.
Here are the rules:
Rule #1: Don’t sit on the bar.
Rule #2: Keep your skis pointed straight forward at all times.
Rule #3: Keep your balance while the terrain bucks like ocean waves under your feet.
Rule #4: Choose the right person for the trip up the mountain.
We stepped into the loading area and up we went. I slid up the incline, my skis holding straight.
Phyllis’ skis, on the other hand, began making giant S-curves on the slope. “Whoooooaaaaa,” she yelled.
I clung to the center pole until the T-bar bucked, twisting to the side, and dumping me onto the snow. The heel of my ski caught on the crossbar , dragging me up the mountain on my back.
After some frantic kicking, I broke free of the t-bar and rolled to the side through deep powder to escape the next pair of skiers.
I lost track of Phyllis.
I finally shoved through the trees and stood at the edge of the wide slope.
As I was resettling my goggles, which were resting more on my ear than my nose, Phyllis skied to a stop beside me.
She gave me a once-over. “What happened to you?” She had righted the T-bar after it dumped me and made it to the top of the slope. Now she looked like a sleek skier while I looked like a snowball.
I could have pointed out that she broke Rule #2 and #3. I could have complained about snow dribbling off my stocking cap.
But I had broken Rule #4. And that might have been the most important one.
Footnote: Today, out of approximately 2,400 ski lifts in the USA, only 88 are T-bars. They’re cheaper to install and operate. But they have more rules.
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