Halloween Weekend in Oak Park

Sara and I spent Halloween with our friends Henry and Maria in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. Here’s a dozen pics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step write up

Just finished a week on the road. First off I delivered a car and a trailer loaded with furniture down to Sara’s daughter in the DC area. I am still impressed with the audacity of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission – how they can collect tolls with straight faces is beyond me. Like Sisyphus – their work is never done. The entire length of the PA turnpike is dotted with construction equipment, ghost town rest areas, giant concrete barriers stacked into time sapping mazes and speed traps. There’s a sign somewhere along the infuriating length of roadway declaring that the stretch of road is “America’s First Super Highway.” To which I can only reply, “Yins are out of your minds!”

After exiting the pay as you go obstacle course in Breezewood – that fast food and motel Mecca, we headed south into Virginia to deliver the loot and spend a couple days with Sara’s daughter, son-in-law and trio of boys. Shoes were bought, dinners were grilled, trampolines assembled, runs ensued, biking the old Dominion trail and a yellow jacket attack were highlights of this visit.

Thursday we headed into the city – the city being Washington DC – or more accurately Alexandria to have dinner with a friend and fellow author Sandra Whitaker who has just taken the job of literacy coordinator for all of the Department of Defense schools around the world! Not too ambitious an undertaking – do ya think?

Then we drove up to Millersville PA to speak at the Pennsylvania Writing Institute. The Writing Institute is a national project that believes in order to teach writing effectively in the classroom teachers should be writers themselves. So a whole lot of the emphasis of the program is on developing the teachers as writers so that they may share their experience as practitioners with their students rather than lecturers, a little goose / gander action.

We love these gigs. Sara and I have come into this profession through a side door. Starting as writers and then becoming educators – so, while our paths may be a reflection to the teacher’s journeys the ground covered is essentially the same. We spoke at a Writers Project Institute in South Carolina earlier this year and while having a great time we were received really well. Same in Millersville PA – the group was attentive and ready to work even though it was the last day of their weeklong summer residency (one of the questions submitted on an index card at the end of the day was a request for more writing exercises!)

Doctors Donna and Kim proved to be wonderful hosts and even went the extra mile of being advocates for our foo foo dog Suzi when she was kicked out of the ballroom by some self important catering manager. We had the additional pleasure of seeing our good friends Will and Sue Mowery in attendance as well. So, even though the drive across the state leaves much to be desired the natives do seem to be friendly – except of course for that catering manager.

26,400 feet - but who's counting?

This year my preparations for triathlon season have been as much an exercise in pain management as it has been training. My first tri is this coming Sunday in beautiful Fairport Ohio. Those of you who have followed this blog for any length of time know that my least favorite portion of these races is the running part – I lumber down the road pretty much as if I were dragging a studded snow tire attached to my waist via a twelve foot length of swing set chain. So I have paid particular attention to this portion of the contest this year and even entered a handful of races – including the Cleveland Marathon.


Okay, here’s a little aside – back when I was growing we had Great Danes. One of the males used to run away every time a certain female dog that lived over the hill would come into heat. My mom or dad decided to attach a tire, complete with metal wheel hub still embedded in the center, with a length of chain to this canine Romeo. The set up didn’t keep him in his yard but it did provide a nice path in the snow with which to track him by. The swath cut through leafless blackberry bushes, under split rail fencing and across chilly ponds. Such is the power of puppy love.

Needless to say (ever notice the caveat “needless to say” never stops a person from making whatever the unnecessary comment is? Needless to say – my performances haven’t equaled that of a love struck Great Dane – but I did beat the goal of cracking into the eight minute mile pace in this past Sunday’s five mile Johnnycake Jog. The race runs past my parent’s house – the starting line for that Great Dane – and they and Sara cheered me and my son Franklin on and snapped these pics.

Franklin moving along a whole lot quicker than his dad.

Hook Line and Sinker

Spent Memorial Day at my sister's farm - Here's a pic that she took of my son Frank that just defines bucolic. The tall blond is Stella and the short salt and peppered one is Mabel.

Raining cats and...

This is our foo dog Suzi – she is a Papillion. Supposedly Mari Antoinette carried one of these bat eared fuzz balls to the guillotine with her.

What makes our Suzi so special is that she is a weather dog, a canine meteorologist if you will. Her capabilities are rather astounding. Every morning when we wake up we shout “all dogs outside!” and Suzi and her undocumented step brother Hector, the Rat Terrier mix, shoot out of the door like thoroughbreds from a starting gate. When they return one can discern the current weather conditions via a quick inspection of Suzi.

IF SUZI IS:

Soaking wet – chances are good it is raining and appropriate actions need be taken before venturing out into the world.

Covered in icicles – It is snowing or very very cold – dress warmly – remember 90% of body heat is lost through the head.

Panting with ears drooped – it is too hot for yard work – make lemonade and find shade.

Blowing down the sidewalk like a hairy tumbleweed grabbing onto then losing grip on mailbox posts and street signs – you just may have a hurricane on your hands – head to the basement.

Corkscrewing a couple hundred feet into the air barking like the horn of a car alarm – you got yourself a tornado going on – to the basement!

Refusing to come in, instead electing to lay in the grass sporting tiny little white framed sunglasses next to the blow up pool – well, you just may have to use one of your “sick days” – grab whatever book you’ve been meaning to read and hit the hammock.

"This has been coordinated test of the Suzi emergency broadcast system in your area. A small self important dog that can quickly warn you during emergencies is being tested. If this had been an actual emergency such as a 'tornado warning or severe thunderstorm warning’, official messages would have followed the alert dog. This concludes this test of the Emergency Suzi Alert System."

In Dog We Trust

We live in a very doggy neighborhood.

This morning our neighbor’s beagle was trying to warn the whole block of some imagined, impending danger and began barking and howling around 5am and continued this feat for three hours. God knows what was rattling around inside the little guy’s skull that made him decide the best course of action would be wailing like some Scottish ghost walking the upper floor halls of a moss covered castle overlooking Loch Ness.

I come from a canine friendly family – my parents have bred and raised English Mastiffs for years and usually have a half dozen or so of the 200 plus pound dogs lumbering around in a pack around their place. One of my sisters raises boxers – a breed that always looks to be incredulous and another sister has a farm where her mismatched pack of dogs roams unencumbered. We have a beagle mix of our own named Hector Wingnut Rodriguez who was brought home from a Home Depot parking lot and our foo foo dog – Suzette Crème Fromage a Papillion with a mild case of OCD.

Even with all this experience I rarely can guess what is going on in a dog’s mind. Why does Suzi suddenly jump from a deep sleep and race to another part of the house? Why did Mikey – a one eyed Boston terrier we once owned lick walls? Did Hector expect us to pay him for the trenches he dug across our back yard? What is the next door neighbor’s beagle’s problem? Who knows?

One of my favorite inscrutable dog actions is my parent’s pack of mastiffs harmonized howling whenever they hear a siren go by the house which - since a fire station is only a block away - happens with some frequency. We don’t know which of their dozens of dogs started the tradition but even as one is replaced with the next the habit is passed down so that the entire mob joins in the a cappella choir.

My father is near the top of the food chain when it comes to backyard mechanics. He has a garage that is better equipped than most Sears car repair centers. So his is the place where brake jobs, oil changes, and even bodywork and paint jobs are performed. On several occasions I have helped with different projects including the resizing of eight foot tall four foot wide metal storage bins where I learned to become quite proficient with an acetylene torch.

During one of these activities – instigated by me – bodywork and painting of a friend’s RX7 my dad was seriously injured. While crouching down to primer the back bumper of the little sports car he tipped over accompanied by a snapping sound. Both of his knees are replacements and we assumed that one had given out. Lying on his back wincing as if he were listening to a preliminary round of American Idol the old man is shouting at me to “Snap it back – snap it back!”

And I’m going like, “What the hell you talking about snap it back!?”

“Damn it, just pop my knee back in!”

Now might be a good time to let you know my dad is a lunatic – he’s been kicked in the teeth by a horse he tried to stop by grabbing its tail as well as being ejected like a champagne cork from the back porch while working on a live 220 line. Thus I took his suggestion of popping his knee back into place like it was part of a Lego set with a grain of salt. Even so I picked up his foot to see what could be done. His leg flopped around like a broken bicycle chain wrapped in a tube sock.

“Ain’t no popping into place happening here – I’m calling 911,” I said.

That’s when the magic happened.

As the ambulance arrived – sirens hailing their approach my parent’s mastiffs were in ecstasy. It had come! Their howling finally paid off – the magic squealing flashy light thing that they had been summoning through generations of champion producing bloodlines had paid off. Their ancestors were avenged and now smiled proudly down from canine Valhalla upon their progeny as they rolled in the grass flashing the whites of their eyes and kicking their legs as if they were experiencing small electric shocks – which they may have been. Like an obscure aboriginal legend passed down during clandestine rites of passage ceremonies these dogs had no idea why they howled and to suddenly be face to face with their deity – well let me just say it was overwhelming.

Dad had fractured his femur but he healed well and is up and about again and now his dogs have a new story to pass onto their pups, of the time when the siren – every bit as magical as Ulysses’ - actually paid a visit.

Suzi wants in

Telephone Survey

The phone rings
I answer before I finish swallowing
So
I am choking on my lunch
As I gasp I imagine
Dropping the receiver
The recorded message continuing efficiently on
My skull careening off the kitchen counter
Like the first bounce of a cue ball
Tossed down a flight of concrete steps
I will instinctively and ever so momentarily
Regain my balance
Then slowly spinning on my left heel
As a pastoral paddock gate
Silently swings in an early spring breeze
I list then fall onto the white tiled floor
Eyes as wide as a hoot owl
The color washing from my flushed cheeks
I begin to turn blue
My dogs sit side by side in the doorway
Cocking their heads in mummed amazement
While my hands become the feet of a chicken
Hanging in Chinatown butcher’s window
My right leg kicks as if electrically stimulated
Upsetting the cat’s water dish
I convulse like an automobile running out of gas
Then become exquisitely still

My dogs simultaneously cock their heads in the other direction
The larger of the two ventures forward
Sniffing as if he is reading the smells around my body
The other
Jumps onto the counter
And finishes the macaroni and cheese

It's a tough life but someone has to do it.

Hector and Flat Stanley helped me drag the bags out. We're (Flat Stanley and I - Hector is staying home with the housesitter) off today for Jakarta and Bali. Should be interesting - it'll be a bit warmer than Kazakhstan - about a hundred degrees warmer!