Progress

 

 As a little kid, I was astonished by elevators. The first time I remember using one I was with my grandparents. We walked into a bank lobby filled with tall counters, scattered seating areas, potted plants, and walls lined with office doors. The department we needed was on another level so we were told to take the elevator. We turned and walked into a windowless metal box, and I watched wide-eyed as the giant door closed us in.

I had no idea what was about to happen, and I gripped my grandpa’s hand tightly while I counted to ten. When the door opened, all the furniture had been moved. All the people were swapped out for new ones. Even the carpet was a different color. And that’s when I figured out how elevators work.

Magic.

It all happened so fast! While we stood behind a metal door for ten seconds, a bunch of people rearranged the entire room. And when it was time to go home and we got back inside the elevator again, they put everything back the way it was before. Kind of exhausting, if you ask me.

In a sense, elevators are like time machines. While you sing along to ‘elevator music’ that was chart topping when you were a teenager, that box you’re standing in moves you between realities, all with the push of a button. It happens so fast! Push a button in a mall elevator, and suddenly the smell of Cinnabon floats in from a food court. Wave goodbye to a hotel lobby and when the door slides out of the way, a swimming pool magically appears. Wait a little longer for the door to open inside a skyscraper's elevator, and when you step out, you’ll be dodging pigeons.

There’s no end to the possibilities! Look at all the progress we can enjoy just so we don’t have to climb so many stairs.

Could we please stop? I can’t keep up with how fast the furniture keeps changing.

Progress has altered the way we function in the world. But, just like elevators, there’s a little glitch with the way it behaves. It moves so quickly, I'm in a daze. Cable is out, streaming is in. Venmo is in, checkbooks are out, just like cash. I picked up lunch at Taco Bell today and when I paid for it, the teenager in the window thanked me profusely for giving him exact change. Which, I know from previous experience, means he was terrified of breaking down a ten-dollar bill on his own. Pretty sure that isn't progress.

Then there’s transportation. A few things have changed since I learned to drive. No longer do I have to crank my own window up and down. Now I just push a button and watch it go. I don’t need a road map anymore because I have a Siri. And, thanks to the camera on my dashboard, now I can watch in real time while I back into somebody’s bumper.

Also, I can count on one hand the number of kids I see who actually pedal their own bikes in my neighborhood unassisted. The rest of the horde ride eBikes. Saints preserve us. Electric bikes are about to make me lose my mind. Watching out for them in my peripheral when I’m on the open road is the equivalent of dodging mosquitoes at a Florida picnic in July. They’re everywhere and they’re deadly.

Here’s the thing about eBikes. You don’t need a license to ride one on a busy street. All you need is an eBike. You don’t have to obey traffic laws or signal your intentions or look both directions before you pull out in front of an old person who thinks driving her car into a canal would be a fun way to spend the afternoon. Most eBikers don’t bother with helmets, either.

Scooters have gone electric, too. And skateboards. And unicycles. Unicycles! I saw one lit up like a Christmas tree last year and thought I was a having a close encounter of the third kind. But that’s not the most alarming thing. All of these modes of transportation can travel between twenty and twenty-eight mph on sidewalks and in bike lanes and on surface roads. So far I haven’t seen them on the freeway but I’m pretty sure that’s coming.

And I used to think normal traffic was stressful.

Then there’s Waymo, the autonomous vehicle with a giant, spinning donut on its roof. Here in the desert, driverless cars are multiplying like rabbits. One of them even tried to follow me home this week. Unnerving. I’ve heard they do that in cul-de-sacs sometimes, entire herds of them. Instead of returning to the mother ship to await their next mission, they stage in dead end streets, circling all their station wagons like they’re about to be attacked by hostile natives. That’s a strong possibility, too, considering their self-imposed traffic jams make it impossible for locals to leave their own garages.

I don’t know when we gave up using people power to propel ourselves around, but maybe it was when Mr. Ford saw the Wright Brothers fly through the sky and thought to himself, “Hey! I like the idea, but with some modifications.” Of course, I could have that backwards.

All I know is Grandma never had to deal with this kind of stuff. Of course, Grandma never had a driver’s license, either. Still, now that I’m one of millions of boomers trying to keep up with technology while my eyesight slowly gives way to cataracts, is this really a good time to release robot cars of any kind on an aging society? Just asking.

I shouldn’t have asked. I’m betting you’ve got your own frustrations with most, if not all, of the machines I just described. But there’s another one I just ran across. Not literally. Nearly, but, well, let me explain.

I’ve seen them a few times, but I’m still not used to them. I was about to pull out of a strip mall driveway onto a busy street a few days ago when something weird caught my eye. A flash of red showed up in my periphery. It looked like a giant vegetable headed straight for me and, for a second, I thought Return of the Killer Tomatoes was a real thing. I mean, it could have been, if I’d pulled out in front of it. I definitely would have squashed that rolling red tomato.

It was doing twenty mph in the bike lane. Everything clogging up the highways now runs at twenty mph. I’m barely used to looking for kids on scooters and electric bicycles, and now I have to keep an eye out for rotund red robots, too. Just like its Waymo cousin, this one was unmanned and automated. But unlike Waymo, it had big eyes on the front of it. Big LED eyes! Funny, friendly eyes that moved to and fro, like a character that just escaped from the movie, Cars, and couldn’t find its way back.

I mean, come on. I can’t take much more of this. Our streets are turning into cartoons. What’s next? Waymo fire engines and police vehicles? Bucktooth pickup trucks and muscle cars that flirt with volkswagons? How many hot wheels are going to clog the streets before I wave a white flag and start calling for an Uber?

I didn’t know what the heck I was dealing with, so when I got home I looked it up. They’re the brainchild of Door Dash, and each rolling automaton is called “Dot.” Appropriate, since that’s all that would be left if my Tahoe had run over it. Inside their bulbous selves they can carry up to six pizzas and presumably a small, hungry child. I’m just guessing about the pizzas. Apparently, they fill a niche in the Phoenix area market where hungry homeowners and businesses alike take one look at their outside thermometers and think to themselves, “That’s robot weather out there. I’m calling in for take-out delivery.”

The company’s website gushes about their desire to lean into electric vehicles because they reduce emissions and traffic congestion. Not so fast. If I’d run over the dang thing, like I came close to doing, there would have been increased traffic congestion just from Looky Lou’s standing in the street, laughing. In my opinion, the only way to make a Dot safe is to make it a lot more visible. Instead of being 1/10th the size of a car, they should have supersized it, just like the hamburger and soda it was carrying.

All this to say, now when I get out on the open road around here, I don’t have time to watch for other cars. I’m too busy protecting myself from electric skateboarders, electric scooters, disoriented driverless cars, eBikes, and delivery units with glandular problems, when all I wanted to do was escape my house and pick up a salad.

I don’t know how to handle all these changes. I’d blame it on progress, but I think it’s really the fault of elevators. If I close my eyes, could all the magical people please put the furniture back the way it was before? 

Yeah, I didn't think so. 

I should have never left the ground floor.

**Seen above, actual image of a convoy of rolling tomato dots. 

    It's getting weird out there.

The Art of Waiting

I look at my thin-skinned hands, scarred from life and age. Old lady hands that will never be held by his again. And I think, it’s over. My life with Rob is over. You might think that, after five years of living without him, I’d have already come to that conclusion. I did. And now I’m doing it again.

That’s how grief works. The hole in my life that took his place is permanent. It’s a life sentence. The waves of sorrow are less frequent now but, when they hit me, they’re just as turbulent as ever and I have no choice but to ride them out.

I sought counseling right away just before he died, thinking he had a long recovery ahead and I’d need help to navigate that difficult road. Instead, I was the one with the long recovery ahead. Only, I don’t believe you ever recover from losing your beloved. You learn to live alongside it but the loss, the hole, is still there, because he isn’t. He isn’t here.

Counseling felt like I was attending Grief School. It was there that I learned firsthand how grief works. I was late to class, I guess, something I’d always been thankful for, and also a little bit worried about, inexperienced as I was. But I didn’t need to worry. Whenever Grief finally shows up, it doesn’t leave. You’ll learn its lessons right on time.

I didn’t want to meet with a “Christian” counselor. I’d already heard the rounds of comments about trusting God from other Christians. About being “tested” by God. Learning whatever lesson He was trying to “teach” me. Basically, the word on the street was that God was the bad guy. Or I was. Comfort from some people felt a lot like friendly fire. No one meant to shoot me down, but they took aim on my grief and I got in the way.

The last thing you need when your heart is broken is to feel guilty for not being a stronger believer, a faithful servant, a better example. Being human was not allowed. I could be selling Christian counselors short since I never spoke with one, but since I’d already been told by a few Christians to “never question God,” that losing Rob was “God’s will,” that the reason God took him and not me was that “God still has work for you to do, Eula,” and that I should not “pitch a tent in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” I felt certain that this unfamiliar pain probably would not be understood by those who had not yet lost their beloved spouse.

So, I met instead with a woman who respected my belief in God, encouraged me to lean into Him and sit with Him, and told me the truth about how long grief lasts. “It takes as long as it takes,” she said, shaking her head at the statement that a lengthy grief was the equivalent of staking my claim in the Land of Sorrow and trying to set up shop there. “There are no shortcuts,” she told me. “The only way through it is through it.” She was referring to grief, not the valley of the shadow of death. Which, in the case of losing my darling, was way more than just a shadow. It was the real thing.

She was patient. She did not judge me or anything I dared to tell her. After our sessions ended, I spent a year online connecting with other widows and listening to a “grief coach.” You can’t say I haven’t tried to find my way. It’s what I do. I keep trying.

But here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about recently. I’ve been told that my relationship with Rob didn’t die with him, but “it changes.” Well, that’s an understatement if ever I heard one. I’ve also been encouraged to speak to Rob any time I need to. I do that anyway. After forty-four years together, even death can’t shut me up. And, in that regard, our communication has definitely “changed,” since Rob doesn’t speak up the way he used to. Or, another way of looking at it is that he’s as quiet as he always was when I took too long to get to the point.

But what did they mean when they told me my relationship with Rob would go on, but would change? It never made sense, and you’d think it would since I’m the authority on what it’s like to have to live without him now. The “advice” felt so ethereal, vague, woo woo. I’m pretty sure it had Rob laughing if he was listening in. He's always been a practical kind of guy.

It was meant to comfort me, but it didn’t. And, I suppose, in the world of widowing, maybe not every bit of advice will fit every kind of widow. That’s fair. But if that widow is a believer in Jesus Christ, if she knows that the Holy Spirit lives inside her as her Comforter and Counselor, and if her darling is also a believer, then what is the comfort that actually does its job when the two of them are torn apart and one of them must keep living with her feet on ground muddied by her own tears?

This is where comfort happens for me. Jesus cries with me. He never criticizes me, no matter what I have to say, and I’ve had a lot to say in the last five and a half years. If that isn’t grace, then grace doesn’t exist. On a side note, that’s also the reason I love Jesus, because He accepts me as I am. A flawed human being who is also His.

He has carried me from Day One. Actually, from T-minus 35 and forward, for the five weeks that Rob’s life hung in the balance, and we hoped against hope that he’d make it. And afterward, when I stopped talking to God because I didn’t understand and I was hurting and blaming Him, He did not turn His back on me. He held me. I knew He was doing it and after a while, I started talking to Him again. Yet He’s never once made me rededicate my life or grovel at His feet, begging His forgiveness for not having enough faith. He just kept carrying me and walking with me through this thing that takes as long as it takes.

And what about Rob? Where does he fit into all of this? Well, I can tell you one thing. He isn’t dead. He’s more alive than he’s ever been, more alive than I am. He’s “waiting” for me, if you can use that word for a place that exists outside of time. I sometimes think of him as being away on assignment. We’ve been in that position before, or maybe you didn’t know that. We were engaged in April of 1975, two weeks before the Air Force sent him overseas, and I didn’t see him again until a week before our wedding in September of 1976. Eighteen months of letters and rare phone calls, a year and half spent waiting for him to come get me while he waited to be free to do it.

I’m waiting again. In the Spirit, I sense him sometimes. In this world, I get signs from him sometimes. In my dreams, I see him often. But my arms are empty, my bed is cold, my tears come daily, and I miss him like the moon would miss the sun.

I’ve heard all kinds of descriptions of where our loved ones are once their bodies die, usually from people who are unsure if God exists or if He loves them. I wish I was a better communicator of the reality of who God is. I’m a pretty lousy witness. A terrible debater. Even a weary widow. But Rob is not hiding among the stars. He’s not the energy around me. He’s not my spirit guide or an angel or a personal assistant scheduling my future. He’s also not relegated to just memories and photos, stories and a tombstone.

He’s alive. We’re apart and I hate it. I keep telling God that I don’t understand death. I don’t understand the space between Rob and me now, knowing he’s alive when I can’t see or hear him. But when I asked my son, the Anglican priest, where Rob is, his answer came easily. “He’s in the arms of God, Mom.” And so am I. I have been since Day One, T-minus 35, carried by the One who also carries my darlin’.

If God carries both of us at the same time, then Rob is as close as my heart.

I’ll try to keep remembering that on the days when my hands look old, my tears keep falling, and I’d give my right arm to hear him speak to me again. He’s waiting for me.

It’s not over if he’s waiting for me again.

Check, Mate

I’ve never understood the game of chess. Or math. Or strategy, for that matter. Other than that, I think chess is the perfect game to play. When you stop to think about it, it’s even a good analogy for life, if your life is anything like mine. Since I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time, I cross my fingers, fake my way through it, and hope my queen doesn’t get taken out. 

There’s just one problem. In my life, I’m the queen. And usually I’m in jeopardy, so maybe a better name for this game would be Jeopardy.

I “learned,” and I use that word liberally, to play chess when I was ten and my opponent was old.  “It’s not really that complicated,” he told me. I had my doubts. Not only did it look complicated, but it also looked boring. Where were the dice? The gingerbread pawns from Candyland? The colorful spinners? Right away I knew I was being set up for failure.

But since I had a grownup paying attention to me, I pretended to enjoy moving little wooden toys around on top of a map while I tried not to die.

“It’s not a map,” he began. “It’s a chess board. And the pieces here aren’t toys. That’s not a horse, it’s a knight. The knight doesn’t move like the other pieces. It’s sneaky. It moves over one and up two.”

I scratched my chin as I listened. So, the horses in chess can dance, cha cha cha. Or else they stumble over their feet, like they’ve had too much to drink. Got it.

“What about the little castles?” I asked. “What do they do?” Well, they weren’t castles, I was told. They’re rooks. But they looked like castles, so why not call them castles? "Because that's not their name," I was told.

I let out a sigh. This was such an old person’s game.

Nothing about chess seemed normal to me. It was confusing. The pawns were the weakest players, but as a consolation they could move two spaces forward on their first attempt. After that, they lost all motivation. They had no awesome superpowers like the little castle pieces, I mean rooks. Rooks can slide all the way across a whole row of squares, forward or backward or sideways, like they’re wearing ice skates. That’s cool.

The best thing about pawns is that you can use them for ransoms. That’s not the best thing if you’re a pawn, though, because it means you’ll be sacrificed when you reach the other end of the board instead of being rewarded for crawling all the way over there while avoiding enemy capture. 

That’s not how we treat our own military, and I don’t think pawns should be treated that way either. “No man left behind,” that’s our motto. But if you’re a pawn, all bets are off. At the finish line, you’ll be finished. Then you'll be exchanged for a more important, yet careless, player who failed his mission and was taken hostage earlier.

If you ask me, that’s a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Pawns, it turns out, are only useful if they agree to go to prison and be tortured in place of a castle or a horse or a vain queen who was too busy flirting with the bishop to avoid being captured. 

So, we began to play. The object of the game was to act like I was learning strategy. I’m not a very good actor. I play chess like most people play checkers—hurry and get all your pieces over to the other side of the tiled squares so you can be King. Incorrect. That’s how you get all your pieces moved off the board and your King gets checkmated.

Oh.

And while we’re on the subject, what’s up with the King? He’s actually less powerful than a pawn. It’s like he’s got shackles on his ankles. No one respects a King with shankles. He can only move one square at a time in any direction. So why is he the King? The queen is way more powerful. Just like the little castles, she can slide from one end of the board to the other any time she wants to, and even diagonally, like she’s doing retail therapy in a shopping mall. But the King? The guy making all the money? His feet are glued to the floor watching everyone else have all the fun.

Who came up with these rules? I bet it was the Queen.

I began to make my horse do fancy dancing, sent my rooks sailing into my opponent’s bishop and soon there was a growing graveyard of all my players lying in enemy territory, giving me dirty looks. It was disappointing to find out that bishops are actually sneaky and violent—they crash into you diagonally when you least expect it. That's not very spiritual. But it is convenient that they know how to deliver the last rites.

I was having so much fun I couldn’t wait for the game to be over. When, after an hour, it was finally finished, I had three pawns left, all frantically trying to take down a King while they dodged an entire brigade of horses and castles. I had managed to eliminate five of my opponent’s pawns and watched in dismay as my queen pledged allegiance to the other team.

It ended the way I knew it would. In simple terms, my strategy was to name all the horses, have the bishop marry the Queen to her King, watch as they welcomed eight little baby pawns into their royal family, and live happily forever in their tiny little castles.

“That’s not how you play chess,” I was told right after I was checkmated. Well, that’s not true. I just proved that’s how I play chess.

Come to think of it, that’s the last chess lesson I ever had. Maybe I do know strategy.

With thanks to Ingrid Lemaire for permission to use the darling photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: chess | look at the birds behind her on the wall | Ingrid Lemaire | Flickr

Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies

For more than three hours I sat at a small table with my laptop, listening to nine other people do the thing I’ve never had the courage to do—enter the infamous lair of Dungeons & Dragons. The horrifying role-playing board game my younger self feared would lead my children down a cultic road that would either corrupt or enslave them, possibly even leaving them addicted to creativity, imagination and a love of story.

Silly me.

The Warriors, ranging in age from nine years old to forty-four, were brave. They were talented. They were thrown together by chance. And I, embedded as I was within their small entourage, witnessed the timeless clash of good versus evil. When it was over, I came away with one thought in mind.

What the heck just happened?

First, allow me to introduce the cast of players who met up by chance at The Inn at the Edge of the Woods. The name has a lovely ring to it and sounds like a charming B&B I might want to visit some time. No. This is a creepy Inn at the edge of creepy woods. None of the players should have stopped in at the inn. If they were smart, they’d have sought out a Super Eight instead. It would have been a lot less scary.

In real life, the brave adventurers are all related. Katy, my daughter, is mother of Allie, Juliet, and Will, and wife of Dan. Jessica, my daughter in law, is mother of Tully, Moira, and Iain, as well as the wife of Lee, my son, the game's guide, and brother to Katy. Now that we've come full circle, let me confuse you a little more. 

Enter the infamous game of D & D.

The first visitor is Kithri, aka Katy, an ancient druid (Celtic priest) who is, apparently, a poor money manager. She owes her guild a lot of cash and needs work. I don’t know what she looks like in this fantasy story, but in real life she’s smart and pretty. It is simply her character who is lousy with money.

Next is Jade, aka Allie, the pirate, who announces to the room of strangers at the Inn that she is “very undeveloped, so I might not be helpful at all.” Perhaps this means she’s no good at swashbuckling but great at theft. She needs a new crew, wants to go on a sailing adventure, and also needs to make money.

At this point, I think what the whole team needs is a good financial adviser. Hopefully one of those is about to enter the dining room.

Now we meet Zadath, aka Tully, who plays the role of a barbarian, a big and gray Goliath animal. Definitely not a typecast for this fifteen-year-old with her gorgeous head of red hair and sparkling blue eyes. But she did growl really well. I was almost convinced. Zadath is an ex-soldier, a drinker, in between jobs and – you guessed it – looking for work.

Apparently, this Inn is a magnet for the unemployed. Good luck getting reimbursed for their rooms and supper.

Next through the door comes Vaelopria, who had to spell that name for me. AKA Juliet, who in real life is called the Animal Whisperer, Vaelopria clatters into the Inn with hooved feet. The attractive centaur is a ranger on the run from her herd. Betrayed by her brother, she ran into the inn to hide out. She is the first to arrive with spare change in her pockets, if centaurs had pockets.

Now we meet the half-ork brothers, Norris and Boris, who may still hold a grudge against their parents for those rhyming names. Norris, who goes by “Chuck,” is played by Dan and in real life is the husband of Katy/Kithri as well as the father of Boris aka Will. Norris stopped by the Inn for a pint and was shocked to see his brother Boris there, perhaps because Boris is underaged.

This is already starting to feel like an episode of The Young and The Restless if it took place in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

So Norris, or Chuck, is a wandering monk, but not the religious kind. Instead, he’s a martial artist skilled at harnessing mystical energy for combat. Which explains why instead of praying for the creatures he encountered on this ominous evening, he flew through the air, landed a reverse roundhouse and sent the misty green zombies’ heads flying.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Now to his brother, Boris, who in real life is a space entrepreneur renowned for co-commandering a C.A.R. through portals where he and his enormously talented Commander save the universe on the daily. Boris is a fighter who fights with a great sword. Boris wants a dog. He went into the forest in search of a wolf, saw the Inn, and stopped there to get some sleep.

Major mistake.

At this point, I began to wonder if the Inn was really a “Dungeon” and questioned where all the “Dragons” were. I did not have to wait long. Osborne, aka Iain, a minute but heroic paladin, arrives. Osborne, a knight renowned for his chivalry, is . . . duhn da da duhn . . . dragon born. Finally. Osborne has apparently just returned from another incursion and stops by the Inn looking for shelter and entertainment. “I saw the lights,” he says. Of course. Dragons are drawn to bright things.

Interesting that our knight in shining armor is also dragon born. Am I the only one who thinks that’s an oxymoron? We’ll see how this plays out.

And finally, the Racoon, aka Jessica, the wisecracking genius who brings comedic relief throughout the entire adventure. Racoon is a rogue, a quintessential scoundrel. She likes to make the rounds at local Inns to steal from stupid drunk people. She knows that The Inn at the Edge of the Woods also has the best stew around. She shows up intending to steal, but this Inn doesn’t have enough guests, so mostly she’s here for the stew.

Now to the staff. Vester is the hired help at the Inn. Anonda runs the bar and is the wife of Glen who is not a people person. Poor choice of occupation, in my opinion. The couple are retired adventurers. I had no idea that was an actual paying gig. They “gathered their loot” as it was explained to all the other guests, bought a place away from civilization, and opened it up for strangers and zombies, as we shall see.

So, to summarize. Pirate Allie/Jade has lots of loot, is rich, and because of that she gets to sleep in her own private room. Centaur Juliet/Vaelopria wants to stay in the stable, naturally. Fighter Will/Boris is afraid he’ll get murdered if he sleeps in a shared room. He and his brother/father Norris/Chuck/Dan decide to sleep in the same room. Hope that works out. Rogue Raccoon/Jessica is waiting to see who gets the nice rooms because they obviously have money that she is willing to take off their hands. Everyone else sleeps on the floor in front of the warm hearth.

Only, on this night, no one sleeps. At all. Or gets a refund.

This is where the dice come in. All six or eight or twenty of them, I don’t know. I lost count. Every player brings their own specialized set of dice to the event. They’re weird looking and also strangely pretty. They’re not cubes. They look like Temu versions of cubes. Close, but no cigar. From what I could tell sitting across the room from where the action was taking place, every die had a purpose and was rolled to determine things like “perception” or “strength” or “levels of intelligence.”

Apparently no one arrived at the Inn with any awareness of how smart or strong they really were. Instead, they had to rely on chance by rolling numbers ranging in size from, I suppose, zero to as much as 23. I think I heard 23 announced once. Right away everyone cheered and said, “Great! The bad guy is dead.” So, from now on I plan to avoid the number twenty-three. Just to be safe.

The Dungeon Master, aka Lee, casually referred to as the “DM”, shared the story of the Inn with its guests. His daughter, Moira, the musician of the family, provided an ever-changing background of sound effects and musical accompaniment. The DM explained that he would give the group a scenario to react to and then the reaction reacts to their reaction. I think that's what I heard. I was still busy trying to make sense of the dice.

With every piece of the plot, the guests followed the square on the board representing them and decided on a new plan of action. Usually that meant rolling one of the specialized dice to determine how well the assault played out. “You’ll either attack or cast a spell. When you roll your damage, let me know,” the DM said. “I’m not keeping track. This is so you can enjoy combat.”

Enjoy combat. Hunh. I think I saw Boris swallow hard at that one and look at his brother/father, the non-religious monk, perhaps wishing his father was more spiritual and less gymnastic. I don’t think Boris enjoys combat. Not if he’s afraid of being murdered in a shared room.

All of that information overload led to a popcorn break because warriors require sustenance. I didn’t eat any because a) I’m not a warrior, and b) I don’t like popcorn.

When they returned to the table, all hades broke loose. As soon as the cheese board was presented, the hostess, Anonda, asked some of her guests to go upstairs and invite an old woman in one of the rooms to join them for supper. The red-headed barbarian, the centaur and Osborne the paladin volunteered, but the woman’s door was locked. Vaelopria, who has no manners, kicked the door open with her hooves and the group found the guest dead in her bed.

This is exactly what Boris was afraid of and probably why he didn’t volunteer to go with the others.

The diminutive knight, renowned for his heroism and chivalry, suggested that they kill the dead woman. Clearly, he forgot to roll his die for intelligence points. Though the other guests were seated downstairs drinking ale and chowing down, they listened to the drama playing out upstairs and offered free advice.

Boris said to be sure that the old dead woman isn’t a zombie. Racoon said to remove the head because maybe that kills zombies? I’m not sure. The DM rolled his eyes. “Kick the door open, find a dead woman, dismember her, as you do,” he commented sarcastically. Then he instructed the whole group to roll their die to determine their levels of intelligence. A little late for that one, I think.

Let me explain. No, let me summarize. The woman is not dead. She is creepy, though, has a raspy voice, weird eyes, and frightens the murderous group who broke into her room with these terrifying words: “I hunger.” Well, maybe you had to be there. She follows up that acknowledgement with, “The children come for the kine.” Then she attacks the centaur, the barbarian, and the knight. She’s pretty tough.

But here’s how this battle and all the others following throughout the long, dark, weary night played out. Orva, the comatose guest, jumped at the paladin, tried to bite him, but didn’t succeed. “Roll your three twenty in and add your dexterity bonus,” the DM directed. The paladin attacked Orva with a mace, rolled his d20 and added a mace number from his cheat sheet. 1d6, got a five plus 3 equals 8 damage points. The centaur can now kick the old woman. Rude. She rolls a 16 which only allows for a smack on the face. The centaur rolls again, gets a 1d6, adding a strength of 9, and was victorious. “That takes her out,” the DM announced. “She’s gone.” And the peasants rejoiced. Racoon now says to remove the entire body, not just the head.

At this point, you may be weary, realizing that we’ve only just begun. Every round at the table takes six seconds in D&D time and thirty minutes in actual earth time. My back was beginning to ache where I sat at my little table, typing, typing, typing.

Allow me to hurry things along here. You’re welcome.

Tonight’s episode is reminiscent of the old game of Clue, where strangers attend a banquet in a creepy inn, suspicious at first of one another, and eventually must pull together to discover who the real killer is and work as a team to defeat the enemy. I took thirteen pages of notes during this initial encounter. Oh, yes, you read that right. This three-and-a-half-hour episode was only part one. Part two will be difficult to pull off as the members of our heroic little entourage live in two different states separated by two thousand miles.

While the Gang of Three were fighting a dead woman, they also searched her room to the enjoyment of Racoon, but the dead woman woke up and got creepy while her belongings were being ransacked, so who can blame her for defending her dead self? The frightened trio ran downstairs and described what was happening. Everyone wanted to call the cops. I didn’t hear about any D&D cops in the introduction, so, as I suspected, they were on their own.

The couple who owned the Inn were shocked by this turn of events, and right on the heels of their shock an earthquake took place, apparently. The building began to shake and disintegrate causing the DM to jump into action.

“Roll a dexterity saving throw for me!” he ordered. “Unless it’s bubbled in your proficiency, then it does something unintelligible.” I think he explained what it does, but it was unintelligible to me. Sometimes I couldn’t hear very well from my little table. The barbarian rolled a 10. “Roll a d4,” the DM said. She got a 2 and a picture frame fell off the wall and smacked her in the head. “Take a 2 damage,” she’s told. “Scumbag,” she says. That’s what she gets for standing under a picture frame.

Now everyone “runs” outside and here the story takes an ominous turn. A river of misty green, highlighted by glowing green eyes, rushes down from the mountain, headed straight for the Inn and certain destruction of our band of roguish heroes.

Time for another popcorn break. 

Really?

Afterward, the DM summarizes everything they’ve experienced thus far, which begs the question, are these guests the brightest and best if they’ve already forgotten the trauma they just experienced? Just saying.

“What do you guys want to do?” the DM asks. No one asks me. I want to go get some chocolate. I didn’t get any popcorn. Racoon wants to know if the windows are zombie proof. They’re thick and cheap, she’s told. Boris wants to order another round of ale and move a table in front of the door. Centaur believes the green, misty zombies are after one of the guests and suggests that the group sacrifice someone. “You first,” her mother, Kithri/Katy says.

The centaur sighs and pushes a table against the door while Kithri snarls in the corner of the room. Despite their best efforts, the Inn is compromised and the creatures push their way inside. This is what the DM tells them. If you ask me, I think the DM is a double agent.

The pirate suggests that everyone go upstairs so they’ll only need to barricade one floor of the Inn. Racoon and the paladin agree and go upstairs together so they can better view the chaos down below. Boris pulls out his crossbow and takes up a position at a window. Table stackers roll their d20 for a strength save. 10 and 19 plus five. Chuck Norris rolls a 12 and adds 2 proficiencies on top of that. Racoon gets her bloomers in a knot and declares that she wants to kick some old lady. “Bam bam bam!” she yells.

I check my watch. One hour in. Gonna be a long siege.

The redheaded barbarian throws an ax because she moved 6 up and 3 over on the board. She attacks with a 1, 5, 4, or 7 and did not hit. The ax clatters out of the way. I think if she’d just thrown all six of her dice at the green-eyed goblins, she’d have done more damage.

The DM would have let everyone roll at once now that the security of the front door is in question, but no one has religious training. Then why do they even have a monk? The monk rolls his wisdom score, gaining a 10 which is possibly a perfect number. However, he gets no credit for it since we all know he’s not skilled in religion. The team guesses that if someone can light a candle and is willing to sacrifice a hit point, it might satisfy the creatures and keep some of them at bay. Boris volunteers. My hero.

The centaur gets under a table and shoots with her longbow, rolls her attack and is rewarded with a 10 and a 14. She hits, adding a dexterity bonus to the damage. “2 points of damage over here,” the DM declares. I don’t know. It looked like more than to me. The pirate hits a zombie with her pistol. Shooting isn’t very efficient with the undead, I presume. Pistol whipping gives more points of damage perhaps. She rolls a 13 which hits and winds up with 5. I don’t know why.

Upstairs, Kithri the druid is in wolf form. Her speed is unknown, but probably a 16, according to the DM. “I’m biting to attack!” the wolf says, before asking how far a wolf can jump. “40 feet,” she’s told. She growls menacingly but chickens out. I mean, if I was a wolf I’d have jumped 40 feet in the opposite direction.

Hoo boy. You have no idea how hard it is to summarize 3-1/2 hours of combat into one readable blog. My speed on these keys is 140 wpm which, I believe, should give me 26 points of attack. In the future, that’s what I’ll negotiate for.

Basically, the Inn is in utter chaos. The barbarian got wiped out and took 6 points of damage as well. “Why do they hit so hard?” she cries. “They nasty,” her mother/Racoon says. Someone with a blowgun rolls a 5 which is not enough because Zombies ain’t afraid of blowguns. Norris attacks using his monky martial arts. “An 18 will hit, roll 6 and add 4 to it,” the DM, who is not a mathematician, tells him. The non-religious monk flies through the air after rolling his die four times, landing with a thud which crushes the skull of a zombie. “I double killed him!” he says in victory. The DM nods and replies, “What you notice is there’s less of him left than there is of some of the other undead.”

Which made me laugh, but no one else did. War is serious, I guess.

It was all pretty messy after that. One by one, the green misty creatures who infiltrated the Inn were taken out by the whole crew until only the warriors and the Innkeepers were left inside. I lost track of Zester the capable servant early on and suspect he escaped through the back door, never to be seen again. But since I don’t have a die to roll to support that theory, we’ll never know for sure.

There were breath attacks, kidney shots, and 15-foot cones of fire from the dragon-born knight. This paladin is the youngest warrior at nine years old, but I don’t doubt one bit that he can exhale a 15-foot fire blast in a breath attack. I watched this kid lick ghost pepper sauce off his finger earlier that day and he didn’t even flinch. Or drink water afterward. He really is part dragon.

Orva, it turns out, has a perpetual mission to spare the Inn and perhaps the entire fantasy world by making a deal with the green-eyed, misty undead annually, but struggled with her plan this year. Which is why the river of zombies flowed out of the woods, hungrily searching out fresh brains. I think. It makes as much sense as whatever the truth actually is.

But, in the end, they all did their part to destroy the green underworld. As the final enemy hit the ground, a green vapor dissipated and his body zipped away back into the Fay Wild which I cannot explain because I don’t even understand what it is. But I can tell you it caused a sense of distress to the warrior crowd. I felt it, too. I thought once they killed everyone that I could go home and get some sleep. But, no. I had two more pages to type.

A final discussion about how to bring the outside threat to an end led to the obvious question, is there even a winner in this game? Do the zombies stay dead? Does the green mist cause respiratory failure? I think if everyone threw all their dice into the air and ran out the door, we could rest up and call it a night before the demon tree in the woods could turn all of us into Chow Mein.

Dawn approached, walls were popping, floorboards creaking, swords were flying, hundreds of undead bodies were strewn everywhere. It was the Alamo all over again. But at least the green mist disappeared as the sun peaked over the distant hill. “So, we survived the haunted barn?” someone asked. I never heard that the barn was haunted. “Yes,” they are told, “and you can loot the bodies. But you won’t be blessed if you burn down the building.” Well, duh.

So, what have we learned? Following a 3-1/2 hour game, I reduced thirteen pages of notes down to seven for a total of more than 3,700 words on this Word document. All eleven participants, including the DM, the sound technician and the scribe survived what can arguably be called the most disturbing and terrifying night of their lives and yet, as far as I know, no one had nightmares afterward.

For myself, when the dust settled, my eyes were bloodshot, my fingers cramped, my back was aching, and I wished desperately that somehow I had learned to enjoy eating popcorn as a child. All in all, as I packed up my gear, I reasoned that I had suffered about seventy-five hundred points of damage during the entire altercation.

That’s the last time I bring a laptop to a gunfight.

Secret Identity

I have a confession to make. 

I’m not who you think I am.

I know you’ve always thought of me as mild mannered. An average homemaker. A failed farmer. Even a conspiracy theorist. A little too sensitive at times, and a bit naïve at others. Perfect. That’s exactly what I wanted you to think. You can’t have a successful psyop if everyone knows your game plan.

But in keeping with my dedication to humanity, I think the time has come to reveal my true identity to a select few. It doesn’t come without a lot of soul searching. This is a risky move. Some of you will be unbelievers and that’s okay. I can handle it. Just know I’m doing this for you.

I am the Commander of a time traveling spacecraft. Last week, during a critical and dangerous mission, my Co-Commander and I saved the planet Jupiter from certain destruction. You can see how significant to the safety of the galaxy we are. We alone are bringing you world peace. You’re welcome.

We entered a portal in my exquisitely equipped C.A.R. (Cosmic Aircraft Ride), encountered alien resistance, neutralized the enemy, safely exited the gravitational pull of the King of Planets and, most importantly, we did not die. This is a key point.

Assignments and destinations are the responsibility of my Co-Commander. Only after saving Jupiter did he inform me that the King of Planets is arguably the most dangerous planet in our solar system. Its gravity is so strong it can pull in other planets, moons, comets, C.A.R.s, and anything else it wants to, which only makes it stronger. You could say that gravity is its superpower, increasing its air pressure. Frankly, I don't know why we needed to save it. It sounds like a despot planet to me.

In simple terms, if you ever decide to go there yourself, it will turn you into a squashed pickle, my co-pilot informed me. Or a prune or a raisin, he said, or a craisin which he likes better than raisins. Also, “Jupiter possesses The Great Red Spot, a non-stop storm which has been raging for more than three hundred years. It’s so big it’s literally the size of Earth and could gulp Earth and it would be gone. The End. Kaput.”

That’s a direct quote.

I was briefed about all of this while we were enjoying a cold one from Starbucks immediately after completing our last assignment. Visiting Starbucks is the way we defuse our post-combat stress. This is no luxury. Oh, no. It’s absolutely critical for the health of our nervous systems. The expense is even tax deductible if you itemize on Schedule A. Probably. Potentially. I’ll have to get back with you on that.

After his disclosure, I turned to my associate and calmly said, “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MADE ME GO THERE! WE COULD HAVE DIED!” He only smiled, reminiscent of his grandfather whose favorite phrase in the face of potential disaster was, “It ain’t nothin’ but a thang.”

I’m done with Jupiter. Still, in the overall scheme of things, it was just another day at the office.

You’re probably wondering how we became secret agents who are indispensable to the survival of our planet. Let me be clear. We did not choose this dangerous path. No one does. It chooses you. I reference your skepticism over the entire premise. It merely proves that you were not chosen. Sorry about that.

Still, I’m glad you asked. You’re probably also curious about the identity of my Co-Commander. To the world he is but a modest thirteen-year-old boy posing as my grandson. But to the universe and beyond, he is a boy genius. More knowledgeable about space than Elon Musk. More logical than Rob McLeod. More courageous than me. Slightly. Only slightly. Actually, that one’s a toss-up.

We discovered the presence of the portal to inner and outer space quite by accident one afternoon while driving my C.A.R. through our local car wash. Don’t laugh. Superman had his phone booth. We have a car wash. But it’s no ordinary auto spa. To the uninitiated, the blue tinted suds smothering your vehicle may appear to be innocent, but the truth is those clever little bubbles are covertly stealing your memory of the entire experience. Be careful in there.

I would have never believed this prior to that unfortunate incident four years ago when I forgot to close the sun roof on my Tahoe while riding helplessly through the tunnel of terror, but now it all makes sense. Aliens made me do it, they with their memory stealing, brain scrambling, baby blue bubbles. Don Ho was right. Tiny bubbles make you feel fine. And stupid.

Anyway.

I’ve lost track of how many missions we’ve been on since we discovered the portal. But it’s a lot. We’ve gone deep into the center of the earth. Traveled to distant galaxies. Taken out aliens both inside and outside the portal. You have to. Those outside the portal may have the appearance of everyday cars and trucks, but they’re manned by aliens who know we’re there to interfere with their hostile plans.

We have weapons, of course. To the casual observer they appear to be constructed from cardboard, but if we exposed the nature of the rare earth material we use that makes my Blat Gun as light as a feather and more lethal than a Bunker Buster, then you’d want one, too. And trust me, you’re not qualified to carry one. You’d shoot your eye out.

We also have aluminum grenades that do double duty as walkie talkies, to use earth terminology. Mind you, we have to make sure it's in the correct mode of operation before we hold it next to our heads. That could ruin your day.  Recently, my Co-Commander, code name W.I.L.L. (Wickedly annIhilates Loser aLiens) designed a multi-purpose machine gun with a semi-automatic mode. Technically, it has plasma capabilities that even the American military has never heard of. I don’t know what those are, but it does have a really cool scope.

Even though we’re a great team, we’ve had our disagreements. One of the most common has to do with my vernacular. It’s not quite up to snuff. During combat, I often get terms like “interstellar” and “stratosphere” mixed up. It’s an easy mistake.

I asked W.I.L.L. about my grasp of cosmos vocabulary and he acknowledged that it’s lacking. “Maybe so,” he said tactfully. “Maybe in that specific field.” This is where the point of contention occurs, though. In the heat of battle, while alien tentacles pull us down and sublimation covers the windows of our C.A.R., all heck breaks out inside our spacecraft. There’s a lot of screaming.

But W.I.L.L. always knows exactly what’s going on. “I’m turning it on to burst mode!” he yells out. “Sublimation is occurring!”

I didn’t know what burst mode does to combat sublimation, so I broke the question down into its individual parts. “What’s sublimation?” I asked, while I obliterated another extraterrestrial with my Blat Gun.

“You’re the Commander and you don’t know what sublimation is?” he said, as he blew up an alien’s body like a child eating a jelly donut. Eww.

“Rude,” I responded. “Don’t be insubordinate. Remember your rank, Sergeant.”

That’s back when he was just a Sergeant. We had a disagreement about that, too. He insisted that he was just as important as I am and even questioned why only I was a Commander. He thought, since he sat up front beside me in the co-pilot’s chair, that he should be the Commander, too. Naturally, the logic of my response was impeccable.

“I’m the Commander because it’s my C.A.R.” I insisted.

Of course, these were top secret deliberations, but in the end I decided to promote him to Co-Commander. Because he’s awesome. And because he’s the only one who knows exactly how our weapons work.

Also, he alone has, supposedly, read the entirety of the three-hundred-chapter Commander’s Handbook. I’m still on chapter three. I’ve had other things to do. But since I’m a little bit behind, I decided to ask him recently whether or not there are multiple solar systems in our universe. I was curious. W.I.L.L.’s reaction was utter astonishment.

“Did you even read the back of the Commander’s Handbook? Did you even read the cover?”

Well, of course I read the cover. And I’ll read the back when I get there. Frankly, though, this is just more evidence of insubordination. If this continues, my only recourse will be to demote him. Privately. I might not even tell him when it happens. He intimidates me a little.

So, there you have it. The honest truth about how I spend my time now that I’m retired. I’m saving the world one extraterrestrial at a time. I’m ready at a moment’s notice to respond to one of W.I.L.L.’s unexpected text messages, “Do you want to go on a mission and kill some aliens?” 

You know I do. I’ve wanted to ever since I watched Lost In Space when I was a kid. Will Robinson was the obvious genius behind that family of astronauts. And now that another W.I.L.L. has emerged in this battle for supremacy, I’m as committed to the mission as he is. 

Just as long as we stop at Starbucks afterward. It's for my health.

With thanks to Scouse Smurf for the rare footage seen above of an undisclosed portal to outer space. Or a car wash. The original photo can be viewed by following this interstellar link: Day 299 Car Wash | Scouse Smurf | Flickr

Blanket Forgiveness

I meant well.

I knew the first year anniversary was coming up. I wanted to send her one of the many blankets I’ve knitted and keep on hand in the guest room closet. Each of them has a little leather tag that reads, “A Warm Hug.” That’s what you need when you’ve lost the love of your life. When you’ve just made it through The Year of Firsts. You need a warm hug. Actually, that’s only one thing you need, but I wanted to send it to her and let her know that I know.

Boy, do I know.

Except I have this problem with procrastination. I might need therapy to get to the bottom of this. Here’s the thing. I don’t like wrapping gifts, mailing letters or mailing boxes. I have actually written and addressed stamped letters that I never mailed. What is wrong with me? We’re talking stacks of Christmas cards, handwritten and sealed in envelopes, that I found in a drawer on the Fourth of July because I never mailed them in December. Since I didn’t finish writing all the cards I wanted to send, I didn’t end up sending any of them.

See? People like me keep therapists in business.

But my dear friend lives in Florida and, since I have no plans at the moment to drive back there, I had to mail my warm hug to her in a box. This required extra effort. I had to package it and tape up the box and address it and follow through by actually taking it to a UPS store.

I know, right? Blister producing, sweat dripping, muscle cramping effort. You'd have thought I was about to dig the Erie Canal.

Please understand. I really wanted to do this. But I knew who I was dealing with here. The person I was dealing with has a mysterious phobia about mailing stuff. So I prayed. I actually had to pray for motivation to follow through on my heart’s desire. Motivation that would turn out to be greater than the inclination to stare at a blanket on my shelf and wish I’d sent it when it mattered.

I am pathetic.

But God is not. He listens to weird prayers like that, and one afternoon motivation struck. I got up like a woman escaping a coma and found a box for a blanket and tucked in a handwritten card and taped it and labeled it and put on my shoes and drove it to a UPS drop off.

I was so happy! Not only did I get up off my keister and do something for someone I love, but I did it in a timely manner and it was on its way, just like that, flying off to Florida to surprise my heartbroken friend. A warm hug en route. I could hardly wait to hear when it arrived.

But.

You knew there would be one, right? I woke up in the middle of the night three days later with a terrible thought. Isn’t it weird when that happens? Why didn’t I get that terrible thought three days sooner in the middle of the day when I could do something about it?

I knit a lot of blankets because I can’t afford the kind of therapy that I really need. Knitting blankets is therapy for me. They also provide a rotating color palette for my living room. I’ve used and worn out a number of these homemade throws by now. Including one lovely green one that was folded on a shelf in my guest room closet in case I decided to repair the hole that appeared in the middle of it after a few months of use.

Oh.My.Gosh.

A cold sweat swept over me at three a.m. Which shelf did I take that blanket from? Why was it separate from all the other new blankets waiting in queue to be sent to someone else after another motivational prayer? Surely I didn’t send my grieving friend a pilled blanket with a hole in the middle of it that smells like my feet? As a surprise????

That’s a terrible surprise.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been nudged on the shoulder by God and brushed it off like it was a pesky gnat. That still, small voice that I’m learning to lean on now that I don’t have Rob’s quiet voice to question my sanity and decision making is often a little too quiet.

I know what you’re thinking. “You’re blaming God for this foul up?” You bet I am. I heard Him say, “Are you sure you put a tag on that blanket?” when I was about to seal the box. But I always tag my blankets. What He should have said was, “Inspect thine blanket for holeyness.”

I think God should have been more specific.

Lying in my bed that night, I hoped I was wrong. I hoped it so hard that I refused to search the other stack of blankets for a damaged one. I hoped when my friend texted the next week that my thoughtful gift had arrived that she would reassure me it was perfect because, after all, at that point this was all about me.

I have never been so embarrassed in my life. When I told a mutual friend what happened, and once she stopped laughing, she said through her tears, “You sent a homeless person blanket to your grieving friend?”

Yeah, I did. And it smelled like my feet.

I forewarned my Florida friend that she might be receiving a sub-par present from me and asked her to let me replace it if that was the case.

            You’re so crazy, she wrote. That’s one reason I love you. 

And when my worst fears proved to be true, and I couldn’t stop apologizing, she wrote this.

Let me put my gift together for you:

The card had a hummingbird. My grandmother loved them and had collectible hummingbird plates.
It was a knitted blanket. I still have a couple of different ones people have made for me. I love blankets.
It was green, like Mike’s soft fuzzy blanket.
It was from a dear friend.
It was from a friend that knows the pain and heartache of losing her spouse.
It was connected to many things in my life. It was so thoughtful, and brought memories along with it that you didn’t even know about.

Like I said, she’s a dear friend.

So, God’s answer to my prayer for motivation was interesting, because I have never been so motivated as I was the day I kept my promise and packaged up a NEW blanket and mailed that one to my friend, too. It had no holes, no body odors, no pilling. And she loved it.

It was one of those humbling times in life when, despite your best efforts, you screw things up. And yet, in the end, it all turns out beautifully. I don’t know what my friend ended up doing with the first blanket, but she really loved the blue color of the next one. It also arrived on another difficult day in her life, a day when a second warm hug mattered.

I’m just relieved that this one didn’t smell like my feet.