Gravity

I don’t look at trees the same way now. Or hawks flying in the air, in the lucky off chance that I actually recognize and can identify one. I pick up random feathers outside my front door and place them on my windowsill, thinking they’re a reminder that you’re close by. I have a collection of dimes that come my way one at a time, all stored in my truck’s center console, “Yankee kisses,” a friend told me in explanation. 

The evening clouds floating across the sky, backlit by nature’s color wheel, pulse in an open invitation to wonder about the miracle of their temporary artistry. A hummingbird feasting on the daily purple blooms outside my window stops me midstream and I pause, my fingers hovering above the keyboard as I watch the tiny bird who hovers, feeding from my flowers.

Are you watching me work the way I watch birds fly, Baby? Are all of these things reminders that you see me and we’re less than a breath apart now?

It’s not as though the colors seem more vivid when I watch the rhythms of life play out beyond my picture windows every day. In truth, everything beautiful took a back seat to the vibrancy that was you when you were here. I hate to admit it, but there’s a tarnish over the world now. Or maybe that’s just a haze that I look through. We loved the mountains, you and me. But when you died there, I knew I’d never forgive them. Now I dream of being near the ocean because its restless yet calming waves echo the longing in my soul for the serenity I lost.

Something has changed in me. I never used to give a thought to heaven except on Sunday mornings as we all sang hymns about a place I’ve never seen and can’t imagine. I believed in it, of course, but I couldn’t identify with it yet. Now I want to know what you’re doing there.

If there is a fourth dimension to living, I guess I’ve found it. Or rather, it has found me. I’m not making that up. Our thirteen-year-old grandson is captivated by the concept of space and time and tells me that time is the fourth dimension. That seems logical since time is invisible, untouchable, elusive, even restless. We can’t capture it or slow it down. It lives outside of us but traps us within its mathematical boundaries.

I guess.

I’m no mathematician.

I think time is the invisible veil that stands between the two of us, baby. You’re outside of it, free as a bird, wholly alive, living out the eternity mankind longs for. While I remain trapped within its parameters, my feet held to this ground by another invisible force—gravity.

You escaped gravity, Baby. Way to go. You’re amazing.

So, the waving trees and their blowing branches. Jesus said we see the effects of the wind, but we don’t see the wind itself. We don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going. We can’t control it. But we know it’s there because we watch the breeze ruffling the leaves.

Everything important is invisible.

I guess this sounds like the ramblings of the woman who loves and misses you. All true. But the moment I knew you escaped the gravity that still holds me down, I began looking for you in the open sky above, searching for you as if by peering at the atmosphere overhead I could spot a tear in its fabric and see you peeking through.

Not exactly Biblical, but since Jesus used a lot of word pictures to try to get his points across, I guess I’m in good company.

Something has changed in me. I don’t just see this moment or that sunset or our grandbabies and children the same way anymore. And I wonder, while I'm staring off into the distance, if your face is inches away from mine wishing I realized you are looking back into my eyes.

Maybe you are.

With many thanks for Nina Canela for permission to use the beautiful artwork seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link:

GRAVITY | ENB + ReShade (my own config) | Nina Canela | Flickr

Questions

I have questions. They go beyond easy answers. Beyond political motives. If they’re that hard to explain, what am I doing analyzing them here as if I can figure things out?

I don’t know. It’s just one more question.

My heart broke two days ago like that of many others when a good and kind man was murdered in public. I assumed people across the board would condemn this brutal act. Some did. Many did not. To my shock, many people on various platforms celebrated the death of a thirty-one-year old husband and father of two. Members of Congress decried a request for one minute of silence to pay respect, yelling in opposition and making fools of themselves.

Which is ironic. Charlie Kirk was murdered for upholding our First Amendment right to free speech, a right guaranteed to every one of us across every persuasion. Even the right for congressmen and women to vehemently object to a request to come together in silence. Instead, they opted to exercise their right to free speech over simple respect for a dead man.

Kindness sometimes leads a person to limit their rights in deference to someone else. Love does that, too.

The same thing happened in a gathering of the EU when a Swedish member of the European Parliament yielded the majority of his speaking time to request a moment of silence on behalf of Charlie Kirk and his family. As some members stood quietly, the majority of the cast of characters exploded in anger like out-of-control school children.

A man was brutally murdered and they refused to acknowledge it. How is that kind of behavior from public officials even human?

And yet. In countries like Spain and Germany and South Africa large gatherings of people lit candles and prayed together. They held photos of Charlie inscribed with condolences in their languages. I didn’t know his influence spread that far. Actually, it was worldwide as leaders across the globe and on every continent expressed their horror and disdain for the cowardly act of violence that took his life.

Like many, I learned he’d been shot via an email I read on my phone. He was still alive at that point and I prayed for his recovery, searching the internet and TV news programming for any updates. It looked bad and soon enough came the word I and others most dreaded.

I’ve spent the last several days trying to put my finger on why this has hit me so hard. I’ve been hit very hard a few times in my life. The most recent was when my beloved husband died more than four years ago. That’s a wound I will live with for the rest of my life. But this shock resonated differently. I finally realized the last time I felt this way was in 2001 when our country was attacked by terrorists we’d never heard of. The horror that spread across the U.S. when the towers fell, the Pentagon was hit, and the 4th plane went down in rural Pennsylvania was a jolt to our sense of security.

Barbara Walters hosted a television special soon after entitled, “Who Is Al-Qaeda And Why Do They Hate Us?” Because most of us in America had no idea who they were or why we were on their radar. We found out why they hated us. We’ve never forgotten. But that was an enemy from without. Now, within, we are falling apart. And yet it’s so difficult to identify why our country is so divided and how to repair the damage. You would think the way forward is through open debate and respect when viewpoints differ. But that requires actually listening to each other.

There’s a good reason that Abraham Lincoln, another martyred man, quoted someone else who was also hated for the things he said. “A house divided cannot stand,” Jesus warned.

We are a house divided.

Are those among us who champion free speech, no matter how vitriolic it is on either side of the aisle, hated for preserving this freedom? Was Charlie hated because he valued the exchange of ideas and invited people into open debate? Is free speech so dangerous that it must be controlled by a partisan government or else stand by while its proponents are put to death?

Someone wrote this week that, “Words are not violence. Violence is violence.” I agreed at first. But reading between the lines and searching the gray area between black and white, now I’m not sure. There are plenty of words currently being slung around that lead to hate and violence, most of them by an irresponsible media. Just ask any Cuban refugee what an authoritarian regime really is. Or an immigrant from China if the Chinese party-state is fascist.

If we’re going to use nouns, we need to know what they actually mean. And we need to be aware of the tremendous impact and influence social media has, particularly on young people. Perhaps this is one reason Charlie Kirk reached out to this demographic. Because he knew that words can tip the scales and lead to violence when there are no alternatives to hatred.

I’ve watched many of the debates and speeches Charlie gave in the last year and a half. Like Charlie, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ and conservative in my world view. And like him, I don’t hate people who see things differently than I do. If I learned anything from listening to Charlie, it was the importance of hearing others and respecting their right to believe as they do and say what they want. As long as it does not lead to violence.

I’m afraid for our country. In addition to knowing first hand his family’s grief and the theft of his life, this is why I feel so distraught by Charlie’s assassination. If it happened to him, it could happen to anyone. It strikes at the heart of the American experiment. Between the Bill of Rights and the modifications that followed, there are twenty-seven amendments to our Constitution, and the first one, the premier right listed by the founders of this remarkable country, is the right to free speech and assembly.

Plenty of people have died in the last two hundred fifty years to protect that right.

And now there’s one more.

Word Play

And so our worst fears have already materialized. AI has crossed over from being useful to being a useful idiot.

I knew this would happen.

All I did was ask my phone a simple question. “When did Arizona begin calling dust storms haboobs”? I watched its little mind spin as it searched the universe for a specific date. That’s all I wanted. The answer to “when?”

I remember where I was when I first heard that the term “dust storm” wasn’t good enough for our weathermen anymore. I was visiting friends in Idaho the day someone first videotaped an impressive rolling wall of dirt, sand and dust as it swallowed Phoenix whole and then called it a haboob, whatever that was. But what year did that take place?

Either I speak with a lisp or I need to clean my iPhone’s ears out. The answer was curt.

Arizona did not start calling dust storms “her boobs;”
the term used is haboob.

 

Oh, for pity’s sake. Dust storms don’t even resemble boobs. Doesn’t my iPhone even know me? Why would I ever ask a stupid question like that? Instantly offended, I searched my screen for a place to respond. Of course, there wasn’t one. How clever of you, Artificial Intelligence, to protect yourself from correction. You can dish it out but you can’t take it.

I took a screen shot of my scolding and today I asked it the same question. Once again, AI researched what it heard instead of what I said. If this keeps up, I’m going to have to put a parental block on my own phone.

I did get the answer to my question, though. It was 2011 when our local meteorologists first latched onto the term. I remember seeing pictures of the massive storm on my friend’s computer way back then, mouth agape, asking, “What the heck is a haboob?”

Listen, I’ve lived in Arizona’s desert for more than forty-five years of my life. I’ve seen my fair share of summer dust storms. Maybe you’ve never experienced one, but they’re nasty. They trash swimming pools with silty soil and leaves and lawn furniture. They’re dangerous to drive in, especially on freeways, reducing visibility to zero. They cover everything in dirt and are rarely followed up with a good washdown from the very monsoon storms that cause them.

Like I said, nasty. And windy. But that’s all they are. They’re made up entirely of dust and wind and possibly small rodents. Thus the term, “dust storm.” Which, by the way, is the translation of the Arabic word haboob - Dust Storm.

Sigh. I know. I’m making a butte out of a knoll, or a mountain out of a mole hill. (Doesn’t really roll off the tongue the same way, does it?) I’m just saying—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Here’s my real beef, besides the insertion of foreign phrases that do nothing to clear the air. The source of haboobs across the Sahara Desert are thunderstorm downdrafts. They occur when a collapsing storm creates a wall of airborne sediment miles long and thousands of feet high.

On the other hand, dust storms in Arizona are caused by thunderstorm downdrafts. They create a powerful outflow, lifting dusty silt and debris from the ground and forming a wall of airborne sediment that can be miles long and several thousand feet high.

Well, that certainly clears it up.

They’re the same thing.

I guess scientists wanted a new word to describe a really dramatic wall of dirt that looks more impressive than our ordinary run of the mill variety. So when in the 1970’s they noticed how our dusty summer monsoons resembled dust storms in Sudan, they imported their word for dust storm and substituted it for our word for dust storm. In 2011 the internet adopted the name permanently.

Genius.

The videos of the haboob we experienced here last week are definitely impressive. But I was home for this one and the only difference I saw between The Great Haboob of 2025 and every other dirt flurry I’ve already experienced in the desert this summer was more wind and the delight of seeing my patio chairs fly across the back porch.

Desert rats like me don’t get that excited by new terms for old storms. And, in my opinion, weathermen who think we do are ha-boobs. 

Mother Nature doesn't care what you call her little temper tantrum. Just remember to lock down your patio furniture and cover the pool before the next one hits.

Can you hear me now, AI? Put that in your hookah and vape it.

With thanks to Jasper Nance for allowing the use of the amazing photo seen above. The original can be viewed from this link: Haboob!! | Moments before impact 4x10mm image panorama | Jasper Nance | Flickr

Arachnophobia

My sister is afraid of spiders. She’s not alone. It’s the fourth most common phobia behind fear of loneliness, death, and public speaking, in that order according to one psychologist who I presume has a fear of actual research.

I only say that because no one else on the planet ranks phobias the same way that person did.  Fear of speaking in public nearly always comes in first, and on other lists it’s second following the fear of death. As a former dues paying member of Toastmasters, I can tell you from experience that the fear of dying and speaking in public are two sides of the same coin. So pick your poison.

On almost every list I found, the fear of spiders falls somewhere between fourth and tenth. My sister’s paranoia is so severe, though, she says if she sees a spider in her house, she’d rather burn the whole place down than have to kill it herself. I think she’s kidding, but that would explain why her husband is such a dedicated member of their local volunteer fire department.

I’m not sure why spiders scare my sister so much. I never put one on her head or in her bed when she was little. Maybe she saw a scary movie once or read a scary book about them. Or maybe her older brother is to blame. I’m betting the odds there are pretty good.

For myself, I have a co-existent relationship with spiders. We have an arrangement, a quid pro quo. They are free to cavort on the outskirts of my house but never on the inside. And if I see one of them come out in public while I’m watching television, I will chase them down like the trespassers they are, smash them into oblivion, and then lecture their dead carcass about how this is all their fault.

“We had a deal,” I always tell them while their eight broken legs lay there on the floor, twisted like an untalented contortionist. “Stay outside where you belong or I’ll kill you. Tell your little friends.” But, of course, they can’t because they’re dead. That’s what they get for not listening.

I have my own fears, but it’s not spiders that scare me. On the list of phobias, the fear of dying from poison is in first place. Specifically, dying of scorpion poisoning. This arachnid scares the living crap out of me. Scorpions are of the devil. Wolf spiders may be big and hairy, but they only cry wolf. Daddy longlegs can be big, too, but they just walk weird. I’ll admit that black widows and recluses are worthy of respect, but they’re both introverts and we leave each other alone. But scorpions? Their only reason for living is to try and kill you. Even their tiny little offspring are murderers. Just step on one and find out. No, I’m kidding. I absolutely do not recommend that.

Trust me.

Unfortunately, here in the desert scorpions are more indigenous than Native Americans. Yet, while various tribes were pressured unfairly to vacate the premises in past centuries, scorpions have been allowed to remain. This I do not understand.

Tribal people taught us how to cultivate land and grow corn, survival skills that should have led to gratitude and peace instead of the left foot of fellowship. Scorpions, on the other hand, which carry on their persons the literal Sting of Death, have never once been rounded up and deported.

I call that injustice. The only possible conclusion is that even the government is afraid of scorpions.

I live in a house that has apparently issued an open invitation to the vile things. This at a time in my life when my eyesight is going on the blink, so to speak. My only self-defense is to pay close attention whenever I walk to the bathroom, spotting these terrorists and nuking them before they nuke me.

This is challenging. See the paragraph above.

I’m not saying that I’m going blind. I’m just going old. And I like to go barefoot when I’m inside which makes me a prime target for golden, floor-inhabiting assassins who range in size from a chia seed to George Washington’s face on a quarter. They’re not that big and they blend in with my wood floors.

Unless they’re on the move, they’re hard to see.

After living here for a few months and executing the first couple of dozen scorpions who invaded my turf, I called for some backup. I hired professionals who swore they’d make my home “scorpion proof.” We must have had a misunderstanding. They were not promising an exterior as unyielding as Trump’s border wall. By “scorpion proof” they meant it would take some serious alcohol to get my mind off the next twelve hours of throbbing pain if I killed a scorpion with my bare feet. No chaser.

Turns out they weren’t kidding.

Following the inevitable and horrible assault I suffered, the company came and re-sealed the foundation of my entire home with their expensive product. Three times. They then sealed every plumbing pipe connected to every source of running water. Stood on my baby grand piano to unscrew the vent in the ceiling above, sealing that and the other eighteen or so heating vents scattered throughout my home. They sealed every door, skipping the double-paned windows, and when my bank account went belly up, I still managed to squeeze out enough to buy a warranty that will last for perpetuity or until the bug company goes belly up, too.

And still those little b . . . bugs find ways to show up in my house and scare the bejeebers out of me. And who has to confront and destroy them? Me. Just me. It’s grisly and gross and gives me the chills. But brother, I want you to know that practicing on dead spiders has paid off. I’m getting pretty good at doing this nauseating thing I can’t seem to pawn off on someone braver than me.

First, I make sure I’m wearing sturdy shoes and I stomp them to death. Just one good solid stomp because I don’t want to tick them off and have them run at me if their little armored bodies survive what I did to them during my adrenalin rush. Next, I grind them into the earth with my leather soles and then, if they’re not stuck to the bottom of my shoe, I grab a pair of scissors and cut the little sucker into so many pieces it meets Jesus dressed like a piece of sushi. That way I know it’s really dead. If it turns out it is stuck to the bottom of my shoe, I burn my shoes.

Then, just before I scoop up their deceased selves with an entire roll of paper towels, I lecture them. I remind them that we had a deal. That I paid out all of my children’s inheritance to a highly recommended pest control agency to make my home impenetrable. Every demonic little scorpion within ten miles was put on notice to never cross the DMZ into my house again. And if they’d just paid attention, they’d still be living the good life outside with their little friends.

Turns out scorpions got no scruples. Nor can they read the fine print. And not once has one of them ever apologized.

It’s hard to eradicate arachnids. All we can do is try to protect our borders. But I do think if I ever build another house, I’m going to dig a mote around the entire thing and fill it with so much Jack Daniels you can see it from space. I did a little research and it turns out that alcohol is not only a threat to humans, it’s lethal to scorpions. When intoxicated by the stuff, they repeatedly stab themselves with their own stinger, which leads to their own deaths.

Maybe that’s what Muhammad Ali meant when he said the secret is to “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

Now that’s what I call “scorpion proof.”

With thanks to Josh More for permission to use the terrifying photo seen above. The original can be viewed, if you dare, by following this link: Bark Scorpion | Josh More | Flickr

Out Of Time

It’s been a long time, Baby. I miss you.

Have I told you that before? Yeah, once or twice. Are you leaning over my shoulder right now, watching my fingers fly across the keyboard? You’re probably sighing a little at the way I carry on like this. Or maybe – maybe you miss me, too.

I keep wondering, are you allowed to miss people when you live in Heaven? Do you even realize I’m not there yet? Or maybe the experience of “yet” doesn’t even exist since there’s no actual time happening there. Is “happen” even a word you use when you live outside of time? Am I making any sense?

I think I’m giving myself a headache.

I keep trying to understand what your life might look like now. I was so afraid right after you left that you’d forget me. I wanted to know if you still need me, but I was afraid to hear the answer because I assumed you don’t. How could you? Why would you? You have everything now. Everything except me. The best thing is you’re face to face with Jesus Who is perfect love and joy and peace.

How can I compete with that?

I went to a funeral this week, the first since I drove to Florida to attend yours four years ago this month. It’s only been four years since I sat on that front row at the cemetery, staring at your grave. Four years might not sound like a long time but now I count the time in ‘day after days’, so actually it’s a lot.

Not for you, I guess, since you guys don’t need clocks in Heaven, but you may remember that here, in this dimension, if you don’t have a clock you won’t have a job or friends or a hair appointment. Even the sun and the moon believe in clocks down here. But I’m betting that when I finally show up to get that hug from you that I’m dying for, you’ll think I was right behind you the entire time, so to speak. And for the first time ever, you won’t even care that I’m a little late.

Living someplace where time doesn’t matter anymore sounds like heaven to me.

There are probably lots of things we won’t need once we get to the Other Side, like trust. Do you ever wish I could trust God now as well as you did? It’s not a fair question, you know, since you can see Him face to face and I’m still stuck here depending on faith. You don’t need faith anymore, or hope either. What remains, the Bible says, is love, and you have that in spades. Now that I think about it, I’m guessing you don’t have the Bible there, either. When you have the Author, why do you need a book?

I know, I’m rambling. Sitting here trying to burn off pain. It happens off and on every day, even after all these days, all one thousand six hundred and sixteen of them. 1616 days. That doesn’t sound like a lot either unless you live them one by one like I do. That reminds me. Did you know there are actually 1,026 pieces in a 1000 piece puzzle? I do. Except for mine which only had 1,025. I know because I counted out every piece of one last week to see if they were all there.

Well, it passes the time. I keep coming back to that word you don’t even need anymore.

I’m not sure I’m widowing right, baby. I still cry every single day, multiple times a day. When all the widows I know feel safe enough to be honest, they admit they’re doing the same thing. So, either I’m widowing right or we’re all widowing wrong. Either way, I’m in good company. Except I’m so sorry that the reason I’ve met these women is because their hearts shattered just like mine did.

I stand at your tall dresser when I get ready for bed at night, look into your face in the photo I took of you on our 40^th anniversary Alaskan cruise and, just before I fall apart, I ask you, “How are you not here?” After all this time, it’s still inconceivable to me. I guess you are here. Everyone says you are, that you’re always with me. But if that’s true, it’s so unfair that you can see me and I can’t see you.

Nothing is fair about this.

I didn’t want forty-four years with you. I wanted more. A lot more. I deserved more. I know you know the answers to why I didn’t get more, why you didn’t get more time with me, but I don’t have the luxury of full knowledge the way you do now. I have to keep living in the time-space continuum.

You know, Will and I go on adventures through time and space together now. We found a portal. Maybe you could meet up with us there sometime. Some people call it a car wash, but we know the truth. He and I go there to save the universe. We climb inside my silver spaceship, follow the portal into another galaxy, fight off all the bad guys, take a few hits, endure cosmic slime and alien boogers for which I’ll need an actual car wash later, and just before the intergalactic volcano heats up our craft to the melting point and blows us to smithereens, we complete our mission and return to our planet safe and sound.

Sometimes Will gets confused by my pseudo-scientific explanations about how the aliens are trying to destroy us. He looks at me with a quizzical expression on his face and wants to know, “Are you making that up?” Well, duh. We’re in a car wash and calling it a portal. Of course I’m making it up. That’s when I tell him, Chief would be so much better at this. He’d know how to talk SciFi with you, and the two of you would probably annihilate seventeen evil galaxies instead of the typical one or two you and I manage to pull off. But Chief is busy in heaven and I’m the one driving this spaceship now.

I had to promote him to co-commander two weeks ago since he’s so much smarter than me when it comes to space stuff. I’m still the main commander, though. He’s too short to have a driver’s license. And besides, I own this spaceship.

You’re starting to worry about me, aren’t you?

Join the club. I worry about me, too.

Life is SO different now without you here beside me. It’s very quiet. Which is why I watch a lot of television. I need to hear human voices even if they have no idea who I am. It’s a poor substitute for you. I told Katy the other day that I watch Hallmark movies because they’re predictable and cheerful and have a good ending, but they also make me cry. It’s hard to watch even fake love stories since you’re not here to love me anymore. So, then I switch over to conservative politics on YouTube because there’s definitely no love there. Everybody’s mad about something going on in the country and pretty soon my tears stop and I’m mad, too. But then I get tense and uptight, but I can’t go back to Hallmark, so I found this guy on YouTube who cuts lawns for people in Detroit for free, and for an hour at a time I knit and watch a guy whacking weeds. It’s captivating and peaceful. Just a nice guy with a good heart going out and loving his neighbors. The way our son does.

And then I think of you and how good you were at keeping our yard looking nice. This guy loves doing yardwork just like you did but, the sad thing is, no one ever comes outside to help him. They thank him and appreciate his hard work on their behalf, but he does it all by himself. If you were here, I know you’d help him. If we lived in Detroit, that is. And pretty soon, even though there’s no love story and no angry politicians on his channel, I’m crying again because you were so good at doing lawn work and worked just as hard as this guy and I don’t know if I ever told you how much I loved that about you.

This is getting really long. I’d worry that I’m taking up too much of your time, but I don’t think you have any. Still, let me finish with the lyrics to a song Dan wrote about me this week. He uses an app to write songs about all of us. They’re awesome. And it makes me feel better about the way I spend my time now.

“She knits in the morning, she knits in the night,
Scarves for the summer? Feels just right.
She’s got yarn in the fridge, needles in her shoes,
And a pie in the oven she forgot to use.

She watches lawnmowers go vroom-vroom fast,
Commentates like it’s a NASCAR blast.

Eula Time, it’s cozy and loud,
Pies on the table, head in the clouds.
Knittin’ like lightning, bakin’ with flair,
Yellin’ “That’s a Briggs & Stratton, don’t you dare!”

She’s a one-woman show with a pie-stained map,
And she’d rather watch mowers than take a nap.”

I guess I do have a lot of things to help pass the time, and now there’s a Top Forty hit song to prove it. I’m finishing that novel I started five years ago. I’ve knitted about two dozen blankets in the last couple of years that I give away to friends and family. And I’m keeping Kleenex in business. I have a lot on my plate. I guess I can’t complain. Oh yeah, and Will and I keep saving the Universe one galaxy at a time. I understand if you can’t meet up with me in the portal. At least I still see you in my dreams.

I’m doing fine. I really only miss you sometimes.

Like every time I breathe.

With thanks to Christoffer Undisclosed for permission to use the photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: sundial | It was actually off by a few minutes, but never mi… | Flickr

Existential Threat

We live in perilous times. I’ve been following news reports for months, keeping a finger on the pulse of global tensions and national politics and another finger on my own pulse to see which is more erratic. It’s a toss-up. 

I have solutions to offer but so far the president's advisors haven't contacted me. I’m confused by this. I’ve responded to every poll I read online. You’d think that would count for something. Ironically, friends don’t seek out my opinions either. People seem content with their own point of view and don’t really care about mine. Weird.

I’m not taking any of it personally, even though as a card-carrying baby boomer my gray hair ought to count for something. I’ve lived through so many national crises, surviving everything from the Vietnam War era to two national toilet paper shortages, that I could be labeled a National Treasure.

None of this matters to those in the Situation Room, though, so I’ve decided to let Washington handle Putin and Xi Jinping and Iran’s Ayatollah. I don’t have time to consult with them anymore. I’ve discovered an even bigger threat to my homeland security than nuclear holocaust, and the responsibility for dealing with this existential threat has fallen to me. At this very moment I am tracking down a terrorist hiding in tunnels right outside my own front door.

There’s a gopher in my yard.

I haven’t actually seen him in person, but he leaves mounds of calling cards everywhere he travels. For weeks he’s been building a subway system deep underground without my permission. He has no permits. No right-of-way. No legal authority. But every few days he comes up for air and sunlight and I find a big pile of dirt and a new hole in my lawn.

I think he’s part amphibian.

Well, I’ve had enough. Two weeks ago as I backed into my garage, I pointed through the driver's window at his little construction zone and snarled, “You’re going down. I have plans for you. I’m bringing in the bunker buster bombs.”

It was no empty threat. I’ve been doing my research on YouTube, y’all. I know what gopher traps look like and I’ve learned that I like my fingers too much to risk losing any of them. Those are best left to the professionals. My son-in-law came up with a method of his own. He prefers to flood the tunnels with a hose and when the soggy survivor pokes its little head up out of the ground, he’s waiting nearby with a golf club to play Wack-A-Mole.

It's all so violent. I even saw one YouTuber repeatedly throw lit matches into a gopher hole without explanation until on the third try he blew up his whole front yard. I didn’t see a gopher come flying out, though. I think his kamikaze idea backfired and he probably came away with singed eyebrows and nothing good to show for it.

“There has to be a better plan,” I told a friend of mine.

“Well, whatever you decide, just don’t use those little sticky traps,” she said.

“What sticky traps?”

“You know, those little open-air boxes that exterminators leave lying around to catch bugs. Lizards and geckos are always getting stuck to them instead of roaches and end up dying a gruesome death, all alone, even though everybody knows geckos are good and lizards eat bugs. The very bugs the sticky traps are supposed to be exterminating.”

On the other end of the phone, I waited patiently for her to finish her story before I started laughing.

“I really don’t care,” I said.

But my friend wanted me to care.

“One time,” she continued, “a friend of mine heard screaming coming from her garage and when she investigated, there was a mouse stuck to one of those traps. She asked her husband to set it free and he said he would, but she listened to the poor little thing screeching all night long. He didn’t get around to going out there until the next morning and when he did, do you know what he found?”

“A dead mouse?”

“No!” she said. She lowered her voice and I could almost hear the screaming violins from Psycho playing in the background. “All he found were its little hands stuck to the trap.”

“Its hands,” I repeated.

“Yes! Isn’t that awful? I mean, it just makes me so uncomfortable to think some poor little mouse is running around in the woods without any hands.”

I couldn’t think of a funnier image myself, but maybe I’m just a sinner and need to repent.

A day or two later, my daughter passed on an unlikely piece of advice from her neighbor. The way to kill gophers, she heard, is to stuff their tunnel entrance with fluffy, white marshmallows. It upsets their digestive tract, she said. And they’ll die, she said. Potentially.

Well, it sounded easier than blowing up my front yard. So, I bought a bag of s’mores-sized mallows which my grandson and I may or may not have indulged in that very afternoon, forcing me to buy a second bag of marshmallows the following day because, as the neighbor told my daughter, “if they smell human scent on the mallows, they won’t eat them.”

Naturally. Rodents got scruples. The poisonous marshmallow should probably be organic, too.

The next day I launched Operation Gopher Buster. Having assimilated all my intel and gathered my stockpile of mallow ammo along with another weapon of mass destruction - a long, wooden dowel from the patio door track - I prayed for courage and launched a limited missile attack. Stabbing into the soft dirt mound near the driveway, I located the entrance to the terrorist’s tunnel and let half a bag of marshmallows rain down on enemy territory.

But I forgot to requisition a shovel. The aerated soil filled the hole as soon as I flicked it away with the half-inch wide pole. Determined to make the plan work as is, I pushed one of the mallows into the general area of the gopher hole and withdrew the dowel rod to repeat the maneuver. A sticky, dirty, puffy square emerged with the dowel, shish kabobbed.

Undeterred, I shoved a second mallow into the ground just like the first and skewered that one, too, followed by a third and a fourth. Now I was angry. The gopher was proving more clever than I first thought, but I was determined he would not make a fool of me. I could do that by myself. I lost my cool, beating the ground and the mallows with my stick, stabbing the candied ammo until they lay helpless in the dirt at my feet.

The tunnel, if not stuffed with marshmallows as planned, was now hidden by marshmallow crème.

Out of breath, I gathered my desecrated dowel rod and the half-empty bag of ammo and headed inside the house. Even if the mission failed, I held out hope that I would at least be able to harvest a crop of marshmallows in time for Halloween’s first campfire.

It’s been two weeks since my sneak attack and tensions seem to have de-escalated in the volatile region. No further dirt mounds have been discovered. No new holes have been seen. Also, no marshmallows have sprouted.

I'm taking no chances, though, just in case he survived a case of food poisoning. We’ll be irrigating next week and as the system of tunnels is flooded with water, I’ll be waiting and watching for signs of the furry little urban guerilla. If he emerges, I’ll be ready for him.

I picked up a box of matches this morning. Pray for my eyebrows.

With thanks to Andrea Garza for permission to use the photo of the criminal seen above who may also possibly be on display in the United States Post Office. The original mug shot can be viewed by following the link below:

Gopher | Andrea Garza | Flickr

Random Acts of Kindness

I have this friend, and I may be using the term a bit loosely, who is . . .  how shall I put this . . . one fry short of a Happy Meal. I’m pretty sure somebody dropped her on her head when she was a baby. There’s just no other explanation for the random acts of kindness she sends my way. Her behavior leaves me dumbfounded, the same way a mother would feel after finding her two-year-old covered head-to-toe in bright pink sludge, happily devouring her favorite lipstick like it was a popsicle. Brain damage. I think my friend has brain damage.

We’ve been friends a really long time which tells you a lot about the lengths I’ll go to when it comes to loyalty. I mean, I pray for her, of course. Somebody has to. I just wish somebody would pray for me whenever we get together. I could use it.

Pam is a first-rate prankster and I, apparently, am her buffoon. For example, she loves to shop, but she is no ordinary shopper. She never buys anything herself. Instead, as we roam around Home Goods together, she drops bizarre items into my cart when I’m not looking. She hopes I won’t notice, not even when we reach the register, and that I’ll actually pay for those things and take them home, eventually realizing her contributions were awesome and that what I most wanted in all the world was an anatomically correct cookie cutter shaped like a man. She thinks I was dropped on my head as a baby, too. And she still owes me five bucks for that disgusting baking implement I never meant to buy.

Once, as we drove to Hobby Lobby, aka Pam’s Promised Land, we stopped to pick up a couple of drinks at Starbucks, which is Nirvana for me. She was ahead of me in the drive-thru and when I reached the window, the somewhat nervous acting barista told me my drink had been paid for by the person in the car ahead of me.

“Oh, that’s so nice,” I replied. “That’s my friend, Pam.”

The barista didn’t smile or nod. She just kept her eyes on me as she handed over the beverage straight-armed and then quickly closed her window. Well, maybe she’s a new hire at Nirvana, I thought. We can’t all be extroverts. I met up with Pam in the Hobby Lobby parking lot and thanked her for paying for my drink.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “I told the barista to be careful when you drove up because you’d just been released from a mental facility.”

I still haven’t returned to that Starbucks.

It’s taken me years, but I finally figured out that the best way to avoid being humiliated in public was to stop shopping with Pamela. It’s not that hard to do since she lives a few hours south of me, yet still, somehow, I was slow to settle on this solution. I think it finally came to me in her favorite craft store, Michael’s, one afternoon. Pam calls me “Red” because I used to pay good money for that hair color which has now gone gray, and I call her “Smalls” because The Sandlot is one of my favorite movies with its plethora of sarcasm. Since Pam has given me ample opportunity to actually lose my mind, I often remind her, “You’re killing me, Smalls.”

We got separated in Michael’s that afternoon, which was a blessing because that meant the only items in my cart were things I had placed there. I didn’t know where she was and that’s how I wanted it. It was not how she wanted it. Suddenly, over the intercom, a woman’s voice broadcast throughout the entire store, “Red, your party is waiting for you at the checkout counter.” Like I was a toddler and had lost my mother. Or like my name is actually "Red."

I abandoned my cart and fled the store, followed closely by Smalls who had no idea what was wrong with her idea.

Reminiscing here about this relationship, I’m starting to get a little itchy, the way you do when you hear the drone of a mosquito flying around your head. Those pesky things don’t hang around because they think you’re fun. It’s a warning that their talent requires a victim.

There’s more. Like the annual Christmas competition we’ve held for the last twenty years to see who can transform last year’s homemade monstrosity into something entirely new and potentially clever while remaining decidedly cheap. Pam is the queen of craftiness in more ways than one and her imagination knows no bounds. But it should. There are laws.

It all began with a massive Christmas ornament I gave her. A gilded frame with a lovely photo of me which I’d turned into a necklace. She wore it in a Starbucks while I stood beside her, frightening yet another barista. The next Christmas she replaced my photo with hers and made it the centerpiece of something best left forgotten. It was the last time one of her Christmas gifts to me even resembled what I’d created the year before. I have proof. There’s an album on my phone of every disturbing present ever received from her. I titled it, “Pam’s Brain.” It’s dark in there.

One year she gave me a Styrofoam hand with a bouquet of poinsettias glued to its painted fingernails, heavily glittered along the base with my name attached in bright pink foam letters. I pulled it out of a Christmas bag while we were seated inside Starbucks. Immediately I was surrounded by a couple of random customers who “ooh”ed and “ahh”ed over it, asking Pam where she’d found it and gushing insanely about its inherent beauty. I was speechless, suspicious that the whole thing was a Tik Tok set-up. When they left, Pam admitted she’d begged them to behave like that while I’d gone off to the restroom. The con artists. They should be ashamed. I hope they got coal in their stockings that year.

A couple of Christmases later, after dismembering my classy rendition of a bird nest where the repurposed sparrow was nestled inside a pair of gifted yellow rubber gloves à la Pam, she created a terrifying caricature that I can only assume was a self-portrait of her inner soul. She used a short, white pedestal for the body with another Styrofoam head glued on top (made up like a super model), the familiar yellow rubber gloves hanging off the side for arms, little rubber baby doll feet, a teeny tiny black hat atop stringy golden strands of hair, and the everlasting bird propped on its shoulder. When I brought it home, it scared my dog. I rescued the bird and threw the rest of the Wednesday Adams wannabe in the trash.

See what I mean? Dark. Very very dark.

The next time she returned the bird to me, she glued it onto a six-foot wicker giraffe equipped with a sign that read, “The Blue Door,” a guide to the casita I live in on my daughter’s property which Amazon drivers can never locate. This gift at first seemed thoughtful. She wanted me to place that long-necked planter in my front yard to help with my deliveries. She said. What I think she really wanted was for my neighbors to believe that I escaped from a mental facility. Her motivation remains a point of contention between us, especially since she became attached to it and named the giraffe Gertrude. I stuck Gertrude in the rear of my garage for the next year where it still drove me to distraction. I gave it back to her the following Christmas in a much-reduced form. I cut off its head and mounted it on a wooden plaque. Her husband is an avid hunter and their home is filled with proof of the deceased. Now she has a head of her own, which is good because I think hers is defective.

By now, you may be thinking I’m being too hard on Pam. She’s just got a good sense of humor, you say. She picks on me because she loves me. I’m too sensitive. Laugh a little, Eula – life is too short. Well, today is my birthday and a few days ago I received a birthday card from Pam.  I thought she was so thoughtful to remember and make sure it arrived here on time. Birthdays are a little harder now that Rob isn’t here to celebrate, too, but friends and family come alongside me. Despite her strange love language, Pam remains a loyal friend to me and her card sat in queue with a couple of others waiting to be opened this morning. I texted her that it had arrived and thanked her for her thoughtfulness. She told me I was welcome.

I should have known.

This morning, also Mother’s Day this year, I treated myself to a Dunkin’ Donut breakfast and iced coffee, brought it home and sat down in my recliner to enjoy while I watched tv. Afterward, I picked up the birthday cards I’d received and began to read them. There was a flowery version from a longtime Toastmaster friend. And a butterfly decorated birthday wish from another sweet friend who lives nearby. And Pam’s. I slid open her envelope and was instantly glitter bombed. Metallic, pink glitter in every size from normal to microscopic exploded from the envelope’s interior, covering my blouse, my hands, my freshly vacuumed floor. Overhead, the ceiling fan joined in the celebration, blowing pink stardust all over the side table and down my jeans. I never even pulled the card out. All of this was just peripheral damage.

I took the card outside—carefully—and stood barefoot on the sidewalk to shake it out, brushing off more sparkles which, on this breezy morning, blew back in my face and decorated my toes. Afterward, the outside of my house matched the inside. I think this is revenge for killing Gertrude, the Blue Door giraffe. Now my house is pink.

I returned to the kitchen and ran water over the card so I could at least read what Pam had written. It was sweet and full of confidence that she'd chosen the right color of glitter. It’s still drying on the counter beside my kitchen sink which is now pink and sparkly, too. And then I sent a photo of my blouse to Pam and thanked her for the birthday glitter which, I told her, went well with my outfit.

“You’re welcome!” she wrote back. “Happy Mother’s Day! Did it get into any food or drink? That was my goal.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

Last year, Pam and her husband moved half an hour south of where they used to live. You would think the extra distance would give me peace of mind. Not so. Not until DOGE makes good on their promise to eliminate the United States Postal Service and protect innocent bystanders like me from devoted friends like Pam.

If only I’d known earlier what’s behind her fascination with low tech terrorism and disturbing Christmas presents. I think I've figured it out.

I think she's an operative for the Taliban.

The pink glitter bomb is what gave it away.

p.s. I love you, Pam. It was a lovely thought. But I still do not regret what happened to Gertrude.

All That Glitters

The thing is, I was a little bored that evening. And kind of depressed. I thought a little retail therapy from the comfort of my easy chair would cheer me up, so forty-five dollars sounded like a steal for something so pretty. And it was, which explains how I got robbed.

Let The Buyer Beware.

Maybe I should get that tattooed on my texting finger.

You know they saw me coming. It’s called Bait and Switch—advertising one thing and swapping it out for something else. It’s not the world’s oldest profession but it’s about as honorable. I’m not excusing myself. Like I said, I was in a funk, which led to online scrolling and the next thing you know, I took the bait hook, line, and sinker. In my defense, their webpage did look professional. I mean, it looked good. And it sounded good. Therefore, I surmised, it must be good.

No. It was not good.

Even though their array of quilts were truly beautiful, I was even more impressed by the stunning 4.86 stars out of 5 they earned, drawn from 421 happy clients. See? I read the reviews. I’m a careful shopper. Also, the description was written in impeccable English, something I’ve learned to check before I click the “Pay” button. Guess I can’t count on that anymore, not with the rise of AI. Finally, like it was a seal of approval, they boasted that their custom pieces were from “an American quilt and patchwork design company” with a mailing address here in the states. Made in America. That’s good, right?

See the previous comment. No. It was not good.

I’m usually a lot more suspicious than you might think, having learned from my many mistakes. Sadly, the pathetic printed replica of a quilt I thought I was ordering was probably the fourth or fifth scam I’ve fallen for in the last four years. Remember those platypus socks I ordered last year? When I complained that the supersized feet were so roomy I could use them to carry groceries, they offered me five bucks if I’d just keep them. I tried to donate them to Goodwill, but they refused to take them and told me people don’t have feet shaped like that. Six! This is the sixth fraud I’ve been victimized by. I forgot about the weird sandals I got in the mail once—wrong style, wrong size. Other than that, they were perfect.

I would say it’s my own fault, considering how I didn’t notice their two full pages of fine print until I went searching for them after a 5” x 8” envelope with my “table runner” arrived in the mail. That’s what I get for not realizing a “design company” might substitute photographs of real quilts in their advertising and cover their butts with the warning that “there may be up to a twenty percent variation in color, pattern, binding, and stitching compared to the sample photos due to the production process.” I mean, seriously. It was just too many words to try to understand.

Possibly it was a math problem. Twenty percent variation in all four parts of their “production process” means the final product is eighty percent different than what was promised. I’d say the carefully crafted piece they sent was perhaps twenty percent of what I expected. Now I get it.

They lied.

So, I complained and now we’re in negotiations via PayPal. The quilt company appreciates my feedback and understands my “concerns about the design and quality of the product” they sold me. But rather than refund my money, “as a token” of their appreciation for my “understanding and patience” they’ve offered me a thirty percent discount on my next purchase.

How stupid do they think I am?

It’s a rhetorical question. Geez.

I’m probably making too much out of this. After all, I’ve ordered a lot of things online that have been okay, especially during the last four years. So what if the suitcases I’ve purchased are better suited to doll clothes than mine? At least they fit in my truck when I travel. And those headphones I just bought for my cellphone? Sure, there’s a bit of a buzz in the background while I’m talking to people, but it’s only on my end. No one else is complaining. I’ll admit I thought I was buying actual sofa pillows that one time, not just empty pillow covers. But after I went to the store and bought pillows to shove inside them, everything worked out fine.

All in all, I think we’ve learned a good lesson here. Read the fine print. Sleep on it before deciding. Fight for your refunds. Don’t fall for the thirty percent good customer discount. Return to brick and mortar shopping. Actual therapy is superior to retail . . . wait. Is that the doorbell?

My Etsy order just arrived!

I’ll get back with you.

In case you're curious, quilted table runner on the left is what was advertised. Photo on the right is for sale by owner. Or for free.