Author Archives: Kathleen Fox

Desperate House Finches

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

When we got a bird feeder last winter, I thought we were setting ourselves up for something refined, relaxing, and educational. Watching and identifying the pretty little birds that came to the feeder while we sat at the dining-room table over our own meals would be rather like reading National Geographic as one enjoyed one's tea and cucumber sandwiches.

The reality has been educational, all right, but not quite in the way I was expecting. I wasn't ready for all the drama. The preening and showing off. The bitter sibling rivalries. The violence. The raiding. The multi-generational sense of entitlement. It's like watching professional wrestling or Desperate Housewives.

When you get to know them, birds are like people at a crowded cafe who are loud, pushy, and have terrible table manners. They fight over spots at the feeder, chasing one another off and using appalling language. Finches tolerate other finches but go after the chickadees. None of the smaller birds come near when the blue jays are eating. Wrens do their best to slip in and out under the other birds' radar. All this brawling surely must use up more energy than they get from the few sunflower seeds they manage to snatch in between scuffles.

In the past few weeks, we've had an increase in activity at the feeder. This surprised me at first, given that there are insects, ripe berries, and ripening seeds all over the neighborhood. Then I came to realize that most of the visitors, though full sized, are obviously adolescents. Some of their adult features, like the blue jays' distinctive topknots, aren't quite developed yet. They still have a fuzzy look, as if their feathers aren't fully grown out—or as if they just got out of bed in their dormitories and didn't bother with grooming.

What do you do when Mom and Dad shove you out of the nest? Go to the nearest all-you-can-eat buffet, of course. Why go search for seeds, bugs, and berries if you don't have to? "Chokecherries? That's sooo last year! Bugs? Eeeuuew! You go to all that work to catch one, and it still tastes like slug on a stick."

That's when the awful truth hit me. We have created an avian welfare state. A whole generation of birds in our back yard is learning to count on a handout. This year's adults have taught their children to come to the feeder. And next year, when these young ones have children of their own, it will be a multi-generational welfare system. That's assuming any of them survive, given their inadequate food-gathering skills.

We could just stop feeding the birds during the summer. But somehow, once we've started, it's hard to quit. It would feel terribly mean to cut off the food supply they've grown used to. Besides, we'd miss the birds. They may count on us for food, but we count on them for entertainment. Even now, as I'm in my office, my background music has been the chirps, whistles, and squawks from the deck outside the open window.

So I guess we'll just have to buy a bigger bag of bird seed. We may have created a welfare system here, but it's a cycle of dependency that goes both ways.

Categories: Wild Things | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Forbidden Fruit

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

It was chokecherry-picking heaven. The bush stood by itself, only a few steps away from the road, surrounded by nice hospitable grass with no thistles or tall, scratchy weeds. It was loaded with clusters of fat, ripe berries within easy reach. It was a perfect spot for filling our bags.

Except for the minor detail that it was on our neighbor's property.

It wasn't as if we didn't have enough chokecherries of our own. The bushes near our house were loaded as well. We had already picked most of the berries we could easily reach. Even though our chokecherries were protected by prickly plum bushes and overgrown thistles (never mind whose fault that was), we could have gotten more with a little bit of effort. Or we could—theoretically at least—have stopped with the four gallons we already had in the freezer.

But I walked and drove past the neighbor's bush every day. I had watched its abundance of berries turn red and then grow darker and darker until they ripened into deep black perfection. I knew he wasn't going to pick them. In all the time I've lived here, he never had. I knew that, because in all the time I've lived here, I've been casting covetous looks at his chokecherries.

Those berries were so perfect. So ripe. So plentiful. So tempting. Every time I walked by, I could practically hear them calling, "Come pick us before the turkeys get us! Pleeeease! We're too good to waste!"

Finally, one morning this week, I allowed myself to be led eagerly into temptation. An accomplice in crime and I, carrying bright red grocery bags (nothing like being conspicuous about your thievery), walked up the road and trespassed. We stripped handful after ripe, juicy handful, filling our bags with satisfying speed.

We didn't even flinch when cars went by, though it did cross my mind that we might have been wiser to do our chokecherry-filching after dark. I had never noticed before how many of the neighbors drive down the road first thing in the morning. Fortunately, the owner of the berries that we were so busily helping ourselves to wasn't among them. Not (or so we told ourselves) that he would have really minded, anyway.

Eventually, my henchman managed to drag me away, leaving plenty of ripe berries on the bushes for the birds. We made it safely home with our heavy bags of stolen fruit.

I now have six gallons of chokecherries in the freezer. That ought to be enough for plenty of jelly—even after I soothe my conscience and acknowledge our neighbor's unsuspecting generosity by taking him several jars. It would be the right thing to do. While I'm there, I might even ask permission to pick his chokecherries next year.

Categories: Food and Drink | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Preserved Asparagus

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

Dill pickles are delicious. Asparagus is tasty. That does not automatically mean that it's a good idea to combine the two.

Years ago, my late husband brought home a gift from a friend—a jar of the friend's mother's homemade pickled asparagus.

Asparagus was far and away Wayne's favorite vegetable. When he was growing up in eastern South Dakota, his family had asparagus in abundance without ever needing to plant it, because it grew wild all over the place. The most plentiful spot for it on their farm was a shelter belt that they called their "asparagus trees." This brought them funny looks from people who were pretty sure that asparagus didn't grow on trees.

His mother would cook asparagus with butter, cook asparagus with cream, and freeze asparagus. One thing she didn't do, however, was make pickles out of it. We thought it would be fun to keep the jar until she was visiting, so we could all find out together what pickled asparagus tasted like.

We stuck the jar in a kitchen cupboard. There it stayed, because, of course, by the next time his mother came to visit, we had forgotten all about it.

Time went by, and life went on, bringing its larger and smaller gifts. It also brought tragedy. Wayne was killed when his small plane crashed into a tranquil piece of North Dakota prairie, a lot like the place he had grown up.

A few months later, I sold our house. One of the things I found when I was packing was the jar of pickled asparagus. I stuck it into a box with the other canned goods and hauled it to my new house, determined not to forget about it this time. I planned to give it as a gag gift to one of the friends who had helped me move, but unfortunately he didn't make it to the thank-you dinner. (Not, as far as I know, because he had heard about the pickled asparagus in advance.)

When I sold that house over a year later, the jar was still in the cupboard. I moved it again. This time, though, I wasn't going to stick it away and forget about it. One evening, with no guests, no special occasion, no reason whatsoever except curiosity, I finally opened the jar to taste the pickled asparagus.

One taste was more than enough. Asparagus has a strong flavor to begin with. When you compound that with a too-generous amount of garlic and an overkill of dill, you have, in my opinion, committed a culinary crime. By giving cupboard space to the jar all that time—not to mention moving it twice—I had no doubt been guilty of aiding and abetting. The pickled asparagus went straight to the compost pile, where the deer avoided it for weeks.

The moral to the story? When life hands you unexpected gifts, don't stash them away in a cupboard. Open them right away. It gives you a chance to enjoy them and maybe even get some more. Or, if they turn out to be pickled asparagus, it allows you to save yourself time and trouble by getting rid of them right away.

Categories: Food and Drink, Living Consciously | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Wait—What’s That Fly Doing In My . . . ?

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

The backstroke, presumably. Or maybe the crawl. But whatever style it's using, that fly is swimming for dear life, because it isn't in the soup.

It's in the urinal. (For someone with less restraint, this would be a perfect place for a truly tasteless comment about pee—er, pea soup. Luckily, I refuse to indulge in such low humor. It would be hitting below the belt.)

But back to the fly. Flies, rather. I haven't seen them myself, but I am informed by a reliable source that in the men's bathrooms at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, there are flies in the urinals. This is not a reflection of the hygiene there—we are talking about the Dutch, after all.

Nope, these are painted flies, realistic little critters manufactured into the porcelain, rather like their prehistoric ancestors frozen in amber, except not as collectible. They are there for a reason—target practice. According to my reliable source's reliable source, adding the flies has improved the accuracy of airport urinal users by 80%.

And just how did they come up with that statistic? Who collected the information? It seems to me that peering over a guy's shoulder to assess his accuracy wouldn't do much to improve his aim. Besides, stationing an unfortunate researcher in the men's bathroom with a notebook for long periods of time just might result in reports of suspicious loitering and possibly an arrest. "Research? Yeah, right, buddy. You can tell that to the judge!"

Maybe they just asked for an estimate from the people with the most to gain from the project. I'm sure the workers who clean the bathrooms would be delighted with an 80% improvement in hitting the designated target.

Some of you—parents of little boys, for instance—might be interested in trying this technique at home. If so, I'd recommend an alternate version. It doesn't involve installing a permanent fly in your toilet bowl that might be a bit startling to guests.

All it takes is some Cheerios. I've seen this recommended as a toilet-training aid for little boys; you just drop one in the bowl and encourage the trainee to sink it. (M & M's might work, too, but that would be wasteful. I wasn't even willing to sacrifice one just to find out if it would float.)

I didn't realize this technique had its own theme song until we got a DVD of the Vermont folk group The Woods Tea Company. One of their songs is "Sink the Cheerio," by Pete Sutherland. It's a lively tune that, appropriately enough, is somewhere between a sea chantey and a drinking song.

It is also just reminiscent enough of "Sink the Bismarck" to give the whole endeavor a sense of purpose. It serves as a reminder that, if you want to succeed, it's important to have a clear target. Especially if you're trying to hit it on the fly.

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Not Worth the Paper It’s Printed On?

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

There it was, in the grass right beside the road. Cash. A bill that, even at first glance, was obviously larger than a one, a five, or even a ten.

Maybe some of you take your daily walks in the kind of neighborhoods where people go around with so many hundred-dollar bills in their pockets that they're likely to lose one every now and then. That doesn't happen where I live.

Oh, it's a nice neighborhood, a wooded, hilly area on the edge of town where the deer consider front-yard flower beds a place to go for lunch and where walkers are more likely to encounter mountain lions than muggers. Still, people don't scatter cash around with reckless abandon. The most money I've ever found during a walk was a ten-dollar bill, and I felt guilty about that.

So seeing what looked like a hundred-dollar bill in the ditch was the most exciting thing that had happened to me that day. (True, it was only 7:15 in the morning, but still.) Until I picked it up and realized it wasn't a hundred-dollar bill.

It was a million-dollar bill. It looked reasonably real, too, with the funky shaded color of new U.S. currency, official-looking seals and signatures in the right places, and an appropriately offset picture of our 19th president, Rutherford B. Hayes.

I might have gotten a lot more excited, except I happen to know that the government of the United States doesn't print million-dollar bills. The largest denomination that's been printed since 1969 is the hundred. The few remaining $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills that might still be around are taken out of circulation whenever they show up. These are still legal tender, though, so if you happen to find one in a ditch be sure to check it out carefully.

Fake or not, I stuck this one in my pocket to take home. Without my reading glasses, I couldn't make out the two scroll-like areas on the back that were filled with teeny, tiny printing.

Actually, reading glasses weren't enough. It took a magnifying glass. I learned that the "million dollar question" was whether I had a prayer of getting into heaven. The answer was no, unless I would repent and turn from sin—said sin being specified as lying, stealing, blasphemy, and adultery.

This inspiring little diatribe raised several questions. First, since meanness, violence, and murder weren't listed, are those behaviors okay? Or, even with the teeny, tiny print, was there just not enough room to list them?

Second, if I'm walking along minding my own business, and I pick up a fake million-dollar bill that's lying by the road, does that make me a thief?

Third, if a religious organization prints fake million-dollar bills, hoping to entice people into picking them up, isn't that more than a little bit like lying? Wouldn't it also qualify as leading people into temptation?

Fourth, is it really a great idea, once you have people's attention with a fake million-dollar bill, to print your message so small that they have to use a magnifying glass to read it?

And finally, why pick on Rutherford B. Hayes? The man never got a chance to be on our genuine currency. Using his image on a fake is only adding insult to injury. Maybe his descendants should sue. They might get a settlement. It might even be paid in million-dollar bills.

Categories: Just For Fun, Money Matters | 3 Comments

The One-Armed Hitchhiker

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

My, how times have changed since the early 1970s. A recent problem with my car reminded me of a trip from those days, when my mother and I went to bring my older sister home from college for the summer. On the way home, we picked up a hitchhiker.

By "how times have changed," I don't mean the risks of picking up hitchhikers. I mean the fact that a car could be loaded with all a college student's stuff, plus three people, and still have room for a hitchhiker.

Anyway, he was someone we knew, a guy from my sister's high school class who was also on his way home for the summer. He had one arm in a cast after breaking it in what I vaguely recall as a bicycle accident, but which may have been a fall down the stairs or a barroom brawl for all I know.

Close to the end of the trip, a tire went flat. We hauled stuff out of the trunk until we uncovered the spare, the jack, and the tire iron. With three perfectly able-bodied and competent women and one one-armed male hitchhiker, who do you suppose changed the tire?

He did.

None of us were exactly helpless females. I'm sure my mother could have easily changed the tire. After all, she hauled grain to town during harvest season (and, as the elevator manager once told my father, "Lots of women bring grain in, but she's the only one who backs up her own truck.")

But our guest insisted. We let him, with as much help for his one-handed state as he would allow. All three of understood that this wasn't simply a matter of getting the tire changed as easily as possible. It was about letting him be chivalrous, even with one hand tied behind his back, as it were. It was about allowing him pay us back for the ride. It was, to some degree, a matter of his self-respect.

Maybe it was foolish. Maybe we were being overly-sensitive to someone's fragile male ego. Maybe Gloria Steinem and other true-blue feminists would not have approved. Maybe, as times have changed, a young man today with his arm in a cast wouldn't feel as obligated to do the manly thing. Which is probably just as well.

Still, the tire got changed. We finished the trip and dropped the hitchhiker off at his house with thanks on both sides. Impractical? Maybe. Old-fashioned? Possibly. But I remember it as a mutual exchange of respect and courtesy.

Sometimes a flat tire is more than just a tire.

Categories: Remembering When | 1 Comment

Psst! Wanna Buy A . . . ?

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

Somebody, somewhere, must have sold my email address. A couple of months ago, I started getting tons of spam. Most of these weren't obvious online scams, but semi-legitimate messages from people all over the Internet wanting me to buy stuff that some of them may have even actually had for sale.

If I had only taken the time to respond instead of just deleting the messages, here are some of the ways I could have enhanced my life:

I could have eliminated my credit card debt. Oh, wait, I haven't had any credit card debt for years. I could have improved my credit score—maybe by getting rid of all that debt, or maybe by applying for one of the many job opportunities that were sent to me.

Or I could have ditched work entirely and taken a vacation abroad. For some reason, an industrious email marketer somewhere had the idea that I desperately wanted to go to Italy. (Not, presumably, by charging the tickets to a credit card.)

I could have stopped snoring—whether my own or my spouse's, the email didn't specify. I could have signed up to get a monthly bag of coffee. (If you can't sleep, you can't snore, right?)

I could have kept my pets from barking. I could have helped my pets sleep better. Maybe because I stopped snoring? Too bad I don't have any pets.

My favorite piece of spam, however, came from that always-reliable source, Nigeria. I quote: "During the auditing and closing of all financial records of the Central Bank Of Nigeria it was discovered from the records of outstanding to be transfer to your account but then will had that you are dead, now that i find your email address and some personal information, i decide to mail you just to confirm if you are dead truly."

I wonder whether my failure to reply was taken as confirmation of my demise.

As a result of moving and updating my website this week, I was unable to send or receive email for one whole day. The withdrawal symptoms weren't pretty, but with the help of caffeine, chocolate, and a support group (online, of course), I was able to get through the trauma.

Like many other difficult life experiences, though, this one had a silver lining. Ever since I got the email working again, I'm not getting any spam. It's a great relief. But I do hope the nice man at the Bank of Nigeria still believes I'm dead.

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

Mohs for the Nose

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

It's interesting to notice the way people give you a quick look, and then carefully don't stare, when you have a large bandage across your nose.

Back in March, I noticed a small bump near the end of my nose. It didn't hurt, it didn't look especially ominous, it didn't get any bigger—but it didn't go away. Eventually I made an appointment to have a dermatologist look at it. They did a biopsy and told me it was skin cancer. Last week I went in to have it removed.

The procedure the doctor used is called Mohs surgery. They cut off a layer of skin and examine it for cancer cells. If they find any, they cut off a second layer. This is repeated until they take off a layer that is cancer-free. I was fortunate; all the cancer cells were removed in the first layer.

The only part that hurt was the shot to numb my nose. Still, it wasn't a lot of fun. There is something very personal about having someone come at your face with a sharp knife, even when you know it's for your own good.

As the final step in the surgery, the doctor made a U-shaped incision and pulled the skin down to cover the site. More accurately, he pushed the end of my nose up under the skin. He said cheerfully, "You know how, as you get older, the end of your nose sags? That is never going to happen to you."

Maybe I'll appreciate that eventually. Right at that moment, I really didn't care. By the time they finished securing everything with a fat white pressure bandage and a lot of tape, it felt as if someone had duct-taped the end of my nose to my eyebrows.

After two days, I was able to take that bandage off and graduate to a large band-aid. It's a challenge, by the way, to get a band-aid to fit your nose. After considerable trial and error, I figured out that trimming off about half of the sticky part to make a sort of band-aid butterfly worked reasonably well. I'm considering publishing a small pamphlet of my designs.

As you may be able to tell, I'm a firm believer in humor as a way of coping with stuff, like surgery, that isn't a lot of fun. Skin cancer, however, isn't really a laughing matter. It's the most common form of cancer in this country. One in five Americans will develop it. Forty to fifty percent of those who live past age 65 will get it. The good news is that it's almost always curable when it's detected early, and it can be prevented.

The three primary types of skin cancer are basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. Basal cell is by far the most common. It rarely spreads to surrounding organs or results in death, but it can damage surrounding tissue and can be disfiguring.

The second most common type is squamous cell, which is what I had. This type can spread, though only a small percentage of cases do. It does cause about 2500 deaths every year in the United States.

The third type, melanoma, is the nasty one. It represents only about three percent of skin cancer cases, but it causes over 75 percent of the deaths. The father of one of my friends died from melanoma a few years ago. Again, however, melanoma is nearly 100 percent curable with early detection and treatment.

Detection is one defense against skin cancer. It's a good idea, after age 40 or so, to see a dermatologist for an annual skin exam. This is especially important because many cancers are inconspicuous little spots that aren't nearly as obvious as the one that appeared on my nose. It's also a good idea to become familiar with your own skin. Know what moles, scars, and age spots you have. If you notice one changing, or you see a new spot that looks suspicious spot, don't wait. Call a dermatologist and have it checked. For some excellent information on what is suspicious, go to www.skincancer.org.

The second defense against skin cancer is prevention. Preventing skin cancer is based on one simple strategy: protect yourself from the sun. The basic tools for sun protection are simple:

Sunscreen. Use it, early and often. PF 15 at a minimum, 30 or better if you're going to be out in the sun for a long time. For women, it's a great idea to form the habit of using a daily moisturizer with sunscreen.

Long sleeves. If I'm out hiking or working in the yard, I've learned to wear a long-sleeved cotton shirt rather than a tee shirt or tank top. It's actually just as cool. Besides it keeps you from getting a tee-shirt tan that makes you look funny when you put on your swimsuit.

Hats. A baseball cap will shade your face. It doesn't protect the back of your neck, though—unless you want to wear it backwards and really look like a dork. Even then, it won't do a thing for your ears. What you need is a broad-brimmed hat. I was excited to find hats at www.tilley.com, where they are available in a variety of sizes—all the way down to 6 7/8 for people like me with kid-sized heads.

Shade. Stay in the shade as much as you can, and try to do most of your gardening and other outdoor activities in the morning and evening rather than the middle of the day. True, your neighbors might get annoyed when you mow your lawn at 6:00 a.m. But then they probably won't invite you to their 4th of July barbecue, which will give you another opportunity to stay out of the sun.

Protecting yourself from the sun doesn't mean regarding it as the enemy. The sun, after all, is so essential to life on this planet that many cultures over the ages have worshipped it as a god. Like many gods, it demands to be treated with respect. If you don't, there will be consequences. That's as plain as—well, the nose on my face.

Categories: Living Consciously | 1 Comment

“It Was a Dark and Stormy Night . . .”

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

All the classic elements were present: The group of people thrown together in a primitive environment. Attacks by wild beasts. A less-than-successful search for food in the wild. Fire. Floods. Ominous weather. Gunfights. Mysterious, threatening strangers. Even a pregnant woman ready to go into labor at any moment.

It could have been a great low-budget scary movie. But, actually, it was just another typical family camping trip.

Just in case a little hyperbole may have crept into the first paragraph, perhaps I should clarify. Maybe a campground along the Missouri River in eastern South Dakota doesn't exactly qualify as a primitive environment. But hey, the cell phone coverage was spotty at best—and the closest wireless Internet access was at least three miles away.

The wild beasts? Okay, they weren't bears or mountain lions, but mosquitoes. There were hordes of them, though, and they were vicious. The search for food in the wild? Well, those who went fishing didn't quite catch enough for everyone for supper.

The fire, of course, was necessary for the roasted marshmallows and S'mores. The flooding and the ominous weather were real enough. Just ask the two people who went swimming under what in drier years is a picnic shelter. The thunderstorms, thankfully, passed north of us and all we got was a few drops of rain.

The gunfights were real, too, with countless shots exchanged from loaded weapons. One of the main participants was a retired law enforcement officer. The other was a toddler with less training but at least as much determination and a pretty good eye. The innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire didn't seem to mind. It's not a bad thing to be shot with a water gun on a 90-degree day.

The nine-months-pregnant mom missed her great opportunity by not going into labor. Her husband swore he could have the camper hooked up and on the road in seven minutes if necessary, but he never got the chance to prove it. Oh, well. Some people just don't have a full appreciation of the finer points of dramatic tension.

The mysterious, threatening strangers? Unfortunately, they were all too real. The fright factor is a little too genuine when you're awakened at 2:00 a.m. by a couple of drunks shouting and beating on one of the tents in your campsite. Even if the tent isn't yours, you're uncomfortably reminded that tents don't come equipped with deadbolt locks.

When the staggering pair came back at dawn, they decided for some incoherent reason of their own to pull a marker post out of the ground. This was in front of the family tent where four little kids were sleeping. Their mother's reaction was, "Get the baseball bat out of the van!"

The drunks were hustled off down the road by a pair of brothers-in-law who were more than big enough—and mad enough—to handle them even without the bat. The loaded water guns, though, might have come in handy. Meanwhile, back at the tent, someone else was calling 911. It was quite satisfying a bit later to see a burly cop, looking like a stereotype straight out of Hollywood, holding one of the drunks upright by a pair of handcuffs as he marched him past our campsites. One of them was arrested, and their hearty-partying group was evicted from the campground.

We learned later that the drunks were part of a large family reunion whose members had reserved about 20 campsites. I'd love to have heard the story from that family's perspective. Were the rest of them angry at us for turning in their sons/grandsons/nephews? Or did the drunks belong to "that" family—the one that the rest of relatives only invite to reunions because they have to? Maybe it was a relief to have them gone.

I just hope the reunion organizers had taken all their group photos the day before.

Categories: Just For Fun, Travel, Wild Things | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

Pointed Lessons from the Grandkids

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

Important life lessons one can learn from having a couple of grandkids visit for a couple of weeks:

Lesson One: An 11-year-old and a 12-year-old, even ones who are enthusiastic about hiking, are likely to run out of steam two-thirds of the way up Harney Peak to such an extent that one of them is sure he's "gonna die." Yet those same kids, at the end of the steep six-mile trip up to the summit and back down, will have ample energy to spend an extra 45 minutes scrambling up, down, and over the rocks around Sylvan Lake.

Corollary to Lesson One: A tired child who is "gonna die" is not amused when his loving grandmother's response is, "Does that mean I can have your lunch?"

Lesson Two: If your ego is somewhat fragile, it is a mistake to get out the dominos and teach two very bright grandkids to play Mexican Train.

Lesson Three: A dart that hits a sliding glass door just right (or just wrong) will shatter it.

Corollary A to Lesson Three: A large flattened cardboard box is not as effective a backstop for a dartboard as it may seem.

Corollary B to Lesson Three: A non-dart playing grandmother who thinks a good place to set up the dart board is in front of the patio door would do well to get a second opinion.

Corollary C to Lesson Three: Dart-shattered safety glass doesn't immediately fall out of its frame, but it makes ominous crinkling noises for at least half an hour.

Corollary D to Lesson Three: It takes a lot of masking tape to secure a large piece of heavy plastic over a broken sliding glass door.

Corollary E to Lesson Three: The estimate from the glass repair shop for replacing the glass in a door is enough to make a frugal grandmother wish she had suggested playing poker instead of darts.

Corollary F to Lesson Three: Breaking the shattered safety glass out of the door frame by tapping it with a screwdriver handle is sort of fun—but when you figure the per-minute cost, it's very expensive entertainment.

Corollary G to Lesson Three: When a friend who hears about the broken glass says, "It could have been worse—at least it wasn't an eye," she is absolutely right.

Lesson Four: If the kids want to come back next summer, they'll be welcomed with open arms, homemade cinnamon rolls, and plans for new hikes. Oddly enough, however, the dart board will have mysteriously disappeared.

Categories: Just For Fun, Living Consciously | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

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