Strong, Silent Type

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My husband is generally a man of few words and not someone earlier in our marriage I would have pointed to as a philosopher, but things change. Steve is Executive Vice President of Prime Lending. It’s a big job. Neither of us participate on social media and sometimes I feel like everyone in the world except us loves it. One day I asked him why he’s not on social media and his response was rather breathtaking.

“First of all, I don’t think I’m all that interesting and I don’t find anyone else all that interesting either. I aspire to a state of grace, not perfection. I always had pressure to be perfect and I’ve learned it’s not realistic. You can always be graceful and elegant, but you cannot be perfect.”

This must have been something that had been on his mind. The first sentence answers the question about social media. The other three seem unrelated to the question but so eloquently communicate something he’s learned over the years that he has obviously embraced wholly and make him seem pretty interesting.

It’s been fascinating over the past 20 some odd years watching this man grow, change and evolve. My bohemian albeit extremely talented and affluent brother once referred to him as “a banker with a soul.”

Amen

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Hair Drama

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Let me try to explain this to you. I’ve been trying to explain this my entire life. My hair is really curly. I mean really curly. It dries naturally in frizzy ringlets. I have tried EVERYTHING under the sun to love my curls. My bathroom cabinet looks like a beauty supply store with so many lotions and potions to try to love curly hair. One called “Be Curly” made my mom laugh when she saw it.

I’ve been to curly hair “specialists” to cut my hair in strategic ways and sell me products that were supposed to change my life and make me love my curly hair. Never worked and took as long to do the friggin’ process of putting all the goop on the hair, hanging forward to squish the hair as it air dried as it does to blow dry the damn stuff straight!

Once a year something weird happens and I don’t know what it is and my hair dries naturally and it looks phenomenal. That’s the photo you see on my blog….It only happens once a year so I CANNOT depend on it.

Okay, anyway, I know I have new followers and BY THE WAY THANKS TO YOU NEW FOLLOWERS! But you don’t know that I am a Pickle Ball player! Yes sirree! I’m 58 years old, I was a tennis player for 25 or 30 years and then my husband found pickle ball for me after I had back surgery because he was scared I wouldn’t be able to play tennis again. My mom calls my husband a “peach” and he is. I’ve been married 20 years and I’m madly in love. But I digress.

Pickle ball is a combo of tennis and badminton, and some say ping pong. I said in an earlier post I don’t get the ping pong connection except that we are playing with a paddle instead of a racquet. We play in a gym on a badminton size court and it is a fast, aggressive game that gets us sweating in minutes. It is so fun and so addicting. I play 4 to 5 times a week for two to three hours a day. I’m blessed I have that kind of time for recreation. I’m also really good at it, an advanced player.

Oh, has anyone ever told you about Dallas weather? Air conditioner one day, heater the next. Humid usually then suddenly dry. Ice storm then heat wave. I’m not kidding, it’s the weirdest weather I’ve ever seen in my life. Luckily my sport is played in a gym!

But, back to my hair. Women in Dallas use hairpieces. This has never occurred to me. I was intrigued and bought a thing that plops on a high short ponytail I create on top of my head. It’s the EXACT same color of my highlighted hair. I just pull my own hair up, rubber band it, stick the hairpiece on, pin it secure with bobby pins and I’m looking good and set to go. No humidity worries (it’s synthetic hair so it doesn’t frizz) It changed my life in terms of how long I spend on my hair and I’ve since bought a couple other styles of hair pieces!

I was at pickle ball one day playing hard and confidently. I made a great shot and turned to go retrieve the ball because I was the server. As I stepped to the baseline to serve the ball, my friend who was on the opposing team bowed her head toward something. There is the middle of the court was my hairpiece. I had forgotten to pin it in!

“Scary, Andie!” someone from the stands yelled.

“Rug rat!” someone else shouted.

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Beetle

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My grandmother called me “My precious Annie.”  For some unknown reason, my grandfather called me “Beetle” which was short for “Annie Beetle Bum.”  All my aunts, uncles and cousins on the maternal side of my family still call me Beetle.  Cute and strange.  I had an Aunt-in-Law whose name was Kioko.  She was Japanese and not fluent in English.  After 15 years she found out my real name was Andrea and not Beetle.  She was shocked. She didn’t know what sounded right or not right for an American woman’s name and Beetle was all she’d ever heard.

One time, 20 years ago at my sister’s wedding shortly after I had married, one of my drunk uncles came up to my husband Steve and blurted “You got the Beetle!”  Steve now calls me Beetle most of the time.  So sweet how things like that stick and perpetuate over so many years.

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“OUCH!!”

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“Ouch, oh god!” I exclaimed.  “OW!”  Helen made consoling sounds but kept on working.

I was born with several congenital abnormalities and as a result I’ve had more surgeries than the average person and maybe a few more aches and pains.  Big areas are my hips, low back and since taking up pickle ball my shoulder and elbow.  I probably play more pickle ball than I should although who is to say?  (Is 14 hours a week too much?)

She calls it “Korean Massage” but what Helen does is outrageously deep tissue muscular therapy.  It keeps all my parts working and I see her twice a month.  She is a master at her craft and if the issue is muscular, she can fix it.  It might take a while but she will do it.  Her Christmas card to me said, “Thank you for letting me keep your body updated.  Happy Christmas.”  I supplement her work with regular stretching so I can joyfully and addictfully continue playing my sport.  (I take the creative license on my own blog to make up words!)

Helen is Korean and trained in her country and in the US.  She is soft-spoken, subtle, graceful, highly intelligent and respectful.  When I enter her space she performs a slight bow.  I return the gesture.  Her English is coming along but isn’t fluent.  We have a wonderful time together.  I am very good at understanding accents and I’m very patient and persistent in trying to understand what she is saying and we’ve made huge strides in in our communication.  She tells me I’m “opened mind” so she feels comfortable as we go back and forth until we understand what the other is saying.  We do all this while she is expertly finding any and all areas on my body where my muscles might be sore, tight or utterly killing me.

I look forward to seeing Helen every other week but I don’t look forward to the pain.  As I drive away however, I am pain free so it’s worth it.  Today as she worked on me I was saying “Ouch!! and OW!”  At these times she models a deep breathing technique and I can hear her and begin doing it myself.  Sort of like Lamaze for childbirth.

Then this gentle soul quietly said, “You say ouch and ow, some people I work on say son-of-a-bitch or mother fucker.  I know what son-of-a-bitch means but what about mother fucker?”

My Hero

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The below photo is, of course, Jane Goodall probably in the sixties. She lived alone in a hut in Africa studying chimpanzees. She is the first person on the planet to observe/discover that any animal other than humans use tools; a gigantic discovery and disconcerting to say the least to the very conservative christians.  We now know that all the other great apes are also tool discoverers and tool users.  That includes Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Bonobos, Orangutans, and of course humans.  Yes, we are one of the great apes.  Probably not the best one because we are the number one problem for the rest of them in terms of endangered numbers.  These guys, chimps and gorillas are SO highly endangered that if things go on the way they are they will be GONE in the wild in 20 to 30 years.

Please recycle your electronics.  Cell phones, lap tops, etc. have a mineral in them called Coltrane which they mine in Africa where these apes live.  Their habitat is being destroyed and their areas to live diminishing because of this mining.  Not the only problem but one of the the big ones.

Jane is in her 80’s and still working tirelessly for the great apes. I saw a speaker at the zoo where I volunteer as an amateur expert on the Western Lowland Gorilla and the Chimpanzee and Jane is his boss.  He was UNBELIEVABLE.  His commitment to this effort was so complete and his guts were even more impressive. He lives in Africa working against extinction.  This guy is doing scary stuff.  AND he said sometimes he’s very scared. He said it’s worth it. I get that, if my life ever changed radically, I could see myself going and doing something that scared me to death, might be good. When I shook his hand and made eye contact all I said was “Wow,” and he locked eyes with me.

Look at Jane making contact with that baby Chimp!  She is the first person EVER to give animals NAMES while studying them. Before her it was xj2 and x78 and completely not allowable to designate them personally.  With Jane it was Flo, Fifi, Fin and Freud and many more adorable names. She shook up the scientific community like you can’t believe which I utterly love. Chimps can be very aggressive and everyone knows that the worst comes out in any mother animal when they feel their offspring is threatened.  I would estimate the baby in this photo is about 6 months old which means his mother was very nearby watching this and trusted Jane implicitly. Look at this photo and allow yourself to cry!

egyswcp

The Bike

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I’ve always been generous and sort of acted affluent, even when I had close to nothing!! So weird. My stepfather put a roof over our head and gave mom a menial amount of money to feed us and that was about it. I’m grateful to both of them. They were doing the best they could. But if I wanted hair conditioner, chapstick, skin lotion or anything other than the utter basics, I was on my own. I started babysitting at 12 so that I could buy myself those things. I had major experience and credentials because I had a baby brother and sister born 8 and 12 years after I was who I helped raise so I was a successful babysitter from the start.

REALITY CHECK: In those days, I babysat for 50 cents an hour!! If a mother was gone for two hours, she would give me four quarters! And then I’d go buy my hair conditioner from Gemco!

When my brother Sean was 12, I was 21 waitressing making pretty good money for a young girl and it occurred to me that no one had ever bought him a bike. I paid my rent, my bills, my college tuition and my books by myself but I thought every young boy needs a bike. And if his parents aren’t doing it for him, I will! I thought.

So, I did. I went to Gemco, bought a gorgeous bike perfect for a young boy, the right size the right color and it cost me about $175. Big bucks in those days. I snuck it in on Christmas eve after the “kids” had gone to bed, put a huge bow on it with a card that said “Merry Christmas Sean!”

In the morning, Sean’s father (my step father) was very excited about this and took a little credit for it. This was a long time ago and memory is a weird thing but I remember Russ giving me credit but also taking some himself which struck me as soooo strange.

Sean never rode that bike once. He wasn’t a bike kid. I saw it rot on the side of the house. Maybe my Mom and stepdad knew something about Sean that I obviously didn’t. He wasn’t a bike guy!

Years went by but one time Sean said to me, “Yeah, but I remember when you bought that young kid that bike and wow, what that meant to that young kid!”

Even though he never rode it, the gesture made him happy and he never forgot it and that makes it all worthwhile.

Let Me Save Your Life

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“C’mon little guy,” I said under my breath, “let me save your life…”

I love animals and I know it sounds weird but I also care about bugs, worms and lizards. I simply can’t stand it when there is any kind of critter in my house who I know will die a slow painful death if they stay in my house. They will either die from starvation, lack of water or exhaustion from frantically trying to get out of the house as some insects do. Lizards are a little more low-key than that, but boy, are they fast when you try to capture them. (Little do they know, however, of my in-depth experience from when I was 12 or 13!) All these guys need to be outside to survive and I suppose they get in my house by either flying in when the door is open or riding in on our dogs.

I cannot focus on anything else when one of them is in my house trying desperately to get out knowing it will be dead if I don’t do something about it. I know what you are thinking, How in the world does she even know these things are in her house?! How does she hear them or see them? The answer is my house is very quiet unless the dogs are going nuts about something and also very uncluttered so I probably see and hear things people with noisy, cluttered houses and closets don’t see and hear. I even save flies, I don’t think most people care about flies and I get that.

I have created a sophisticated tool kit for capturing small creatures I find in my house. Here it is:

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It is a half of a manila folder and a green drinking cup that has the Masters Golf Tournament logo on it. I have no idea where this cup came from because while my husband and I both enjoy golf, neither of us has ever been to the Masters. Just ask my husband; I will sometimes spend upwards of half an hour trying to save bugs, lizards and worms with my tool kit. (Well, worms don’t take that long….hehe.)

Today as I was getting ready for Pickle Ball, I was in my closet and some movement on the hardwood floor caught my eye. I didn’t have my glasses on and I’m pretty much blind without them so I ran out to get them, put them on, entered the closet just in time to see the most adorable, tiny, baby lizard run for cover. This guy was beige colored with brown dots all over him. He had the cutest face I’ve ever seen all full of the brown dots. He was no more than 3 inches long. I ran for the pantry where I keep my sophisticated tool kit and set to work. I’ll tell you, I know lizards but this one was savvy. I was throwing my hung clothes out of the closet onto the floor, I moved my Elfa organizing shelves out of there and was trying desperately to get this little sweetie pie in my green cup and out to the back yard.

No luck. The lizard was out smarting me. I was begging with him but to no avail. I was heartbroken. Finally, I had to leave for Pickle Ball and arrived half hour late.

I forgot all about it. When I got home 3 hours later sweaty and happy from the sport I adore, I took my dogs out back and sat on a chair while they pooped and peed. I suddenly remembered the adorable little lizard and my heart sunk. Maybe he’ll be slower now because he is hungry and thirsty. God, if he’s still even in there and if I can even find him, no chance, I thought.

I retrieved my tool kit and determinedly headed for the closet. The clothes were still on the floor and the Elfa shelving was still out. I knew the chances of finding this lizard were slim but OMG, there he was! Tucked into a corner and yes, a little slower than he had been earlier in the day. I chased him around a little and said a prayer and begged him quietly to let me save his life. The challenge with the sophisticated tool kit is that once you’ve got the critter trapped in it, for instance you’ve got a butterfly trapped against a wall with the cup, is that when you shimmy the manila folder against the wall to secure the capture that you don’t break a fragile wing or leg or whatever. Ya know?

Anyway, this adorable lizard made what could have been in the wild his fatal mistake but in this situation saved his life. He was tired and hungry and thirsty so for whatever reason he thought his best bet was to climb up the wall in a corner. I am SO grateful to the Master’s organization that their green cups are so cheaply made that I was able to literately bend it to the degree that was like a corner! What’s that called you smart people? A 45 degree angle? A 90 degree angle? I used to know all this crap but I just don’t care anymore. I care about saving lives.

Little guy fell into my cup and I covered it with the manila part of my sophisticated tool and brought it outside. I set the little guy free in my back yard on the dirt under the foliage where he so wants and needs to be.  I saw his tiny head move from side to side. I can only imagine what his lizard joy must have been.

Poo Poo

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I’m a person who has memories from a very young age.  It’s kind of surprising from a psychological standpoint because my childhood was pretty traumatic.  I remember once being in my mother’s arms and hearing her tell my father that his raised voice ‘made the baby cry.’

When I was a very young child, anything I didn’t like I referred to as “poo poo.”  My mom never corrected me likely because she was happy I wasn’t saying crap or shit like she did.  I think she thought poo poo was harmless.

Then we got a new babysitter.  She was ancient in my eyes.  Probably at least 39.  She looked old!  I mean, when I was 3 my mom was 24.  Even at 3 I did not like this woman.  Our dog Heidi was allowed under the kitchen table when we ate our meals and the four of us little girls would swing our bare feet over her fur.  She loved it.  She also loved the crumbs and other goodies that would drop from the table during our meals.  This lady hated Heidi and would not let her under the table and if I remember correctly, I think she kicked her once.  I was livid, but I was only 3 and the old bitch was 39.  What could I do?

One day I called something I hated poo poo.  She grabbed me by my wrists and said that if I ever said that again God was going to do something very, very bad to me immediately.  (Great caregiving  ….eh?)  (Yes, “eh,” my grandmother was Canadian.)  I did not for a second believe her but I had to prove it to myself.  When she let go of my wrists I turned toward my bedroom and walked away.  “Yes, have a good cry about it,” she called after me.

Uh, no.  That’s not what I did.  I went as deeply into a cluttered and disorganized (beyond belief) closet in the pitch black, made myself comfortable on a pile of clothes on the floor and whispered, “poo poo.”  And then I waited.  Nothing bad happened.  I emerged from the closet and I waited all afternoon and nothing bad happened.

I never trusted that woman to begin with but now I knew she was a liar.

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Great Apes

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I don’t usually write fiction but I dabble in it from time to time.  Here’s something I wrote a while back.

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I’m in fifth grade but I really should only be in fourth. Mom started me early and then I skipped a semester in second grade because I was way ahead of everybody else in math and reading. It was hard because all of the sudden I was in a class with other kids I didn’t know and all my friends weren’t there.

I do love to read. Mom says I’m amazing because I learned at two. She says that as soon as I could see the words on a page I could understand them, as if I was “remembering” how to read instead of learning how. Now they say I read at a tenth grade level but I don’t think that’s true because all I like to read about is Great Apes. Chimps mostly but also Gorillas and Orangutans. I don’t think Mom likes it. She always tries to get me to read her books; books for grown-ups, grown-up’s stories, science books and doctor books. She went to work this morning before I woke up and she left me a book called, “The Old Man And The Sea.” Her note said to read it and we’d talk about it together when she got home tonight. I tried to read it because I want to talk with her but it’s boring and I don’t really understand it. She’s not home yet anyway and it’s almost my bedtime. Sometimes I wish she would read about Great Apes. I think she would love it if she tried it. I asked her if she could read one Chimpanzee book instead of her science books and then we could talk together about it but she says she doesn’t have time.

My Mom’s a surgeon and says she works hard so we can have nice things. We live in a house that is really too big for a Mom, a kid and a baby-sitter. There are so many dark, quiet rooms in our house that no one ever sleeps in. No one even goes in to some of them except the maid to clean. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I had twelve brothers and sisters sleeping and playing in all these bedrooms. I think our house would be better like that.

Mom says I’d be a great doctor because I’m so smart and she’s saving her money for my medical school. She bought me a video about the inside of bodies. We watched it and it was really gross. We talked about it for a little while but I don’t think it was a very good talk for my Mom. She seemed kind-of nervous and I don’t think I said anything she liked. I really wanted a video called “The Wild Kingdom.” I wish she bought that one because I think we would have had a better talk then. That’s OK because I can read my books instead of watching videos.

I don’t know my Dad. I asked her about him for the first time and she told me not to worry about him because he is not good enough for us anyway. I can’t help it; I think about him all the time. I hope he isn’t alone or lonely. I think he might be good enough for me. I wonder what he looks like and what he reads about. I wonder if he ever thinks about me. If I had a little girl who I did not live with, I would call her on the phone, at least. I would call my Dad but I think Mom would get mad if I asked her for the number. When I grow up, I am going to visit him.

Mother chimpanzees take good care of baby chimpanzees. They hold them and carry them everywhere they go. Mommy and baby chimps hug, kiss and snuggle and the Mom picks the bugs off the baby. When the baby gets a little older, she picks the bugs off the Mommy. It’s really cute and it’s for good grooming but also a way they show love. Mommy chimps spend the day teaching the baby things and they sleep very close together and keep each other warm. The Daddy chimp is always somewhere near-by and protects the Mommy and baby.

Sometimes, after school, when the baby-sitter is sleeping, I pretend I’m a baby chimp.

 

 

How Can I Get Some Sleep?

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There are some very strange and wonderful sleep techniques in the animal kingdom.  Here are some of my favorites!

The albatross is a sea bird that spends much of its life soaring around hunting. Its lifestyle doesn’t leave a lot of time for sleeping, so it’s believed the albatross sleeps while flying taking hundreds of little power naps lasting only a few seconds each.  Sounds exhasting.

Koalas (They are not bears, they are marsupials and it’s incorrect to call them koala bears. Just koalas) sleep on average 20 to 22 hours a day. Most of their time is spent sleeping because they require a lot of energy to digest their toxic, fibrous, low-nutrition diet and sleeping is the best way to conserve energy.

A bottlenose dolphin sleeps by shutting down half of its brain, and the eye opposite the snoozing hemisphere. The other half of the brain (and opposite eye) stays turned on to watch out for other dolphins or predators. It also tells the dolphin when to come up for air. After two hours or so, the sides switch, so both eyes and brain hemispheres get their sleep. This process isn’t unique to dolphins. Fruit bats, porpoises, iguanas, seals, birds, and ducks do it too. Who woulda thought?

When ducks sleep, they line up in a row. The ones at each end of the line keep the eye facing away from the group open to watch out for predators, and close the other. The ducks inside close both of their eyes. The single brain hemisphere sleep in the bookending ducks keeps the whole row safe. Then the bookends switch off with ducks inside the row.

Adult giraffes sleep on average 30 minutes a day and usually in 5 minute segments. It’s the shortest sleep requirement in the entire animal kingdom! They also often sleep with one eye open to watch for predators but from what I understand it’s not the single brain hemisphere thing so I don’t quite get it. But 30 minutes!? God, I need at least 9 hours!

There are species of sharks that need to swim constantly to keep water moving over their gills. These sharks seem to have active periods and restful periods, rather than undergoing deep sleep like we do. (In particular like I do.) They “sleep” with parts of their brain less active, or “resting,” while the shark remains swimming.

Otters know that predators aren’t the only concern when they are asleep. There’s also the possibility of drifting off (no pun intended). When sea otters fall asleep, they do so while lying on their backs at the surface of the water and in groups, sometimes in seaweed forests or holding hands to keep from floating apart. Soooo cute.

Desert snails can sleep for years. One famous incident involved an Egyptian desert snail assumed dead by a British Museum staffer who affixed the snail to an identification card. Four years later, traces of slime were discovered on the card and the shell was put in water and the little guy crawled out!! OMG!

Starts sounding a little boring the way homo sapiens just get into bed and go to sleep.  (Or, worse, not go to sleep. Hehe.)