Author Archives: Kathleen Fox

The other day I got a package in the mail. A small package, looking suspiciously like a paperback book wrapped in a manila envelope.

The address was hand-written, with everything spelled right. The first name was “Kathy” rather than “Kathleen,” which implied that the package came from someone in my family. Or at least someone who had known me before I started high school and began using my full name in an attempt to distinguish myself from the six other girls in my class named Kathy.

But the return address, in Seattle, was June somebody-or-other I had never heard of. True, I have cousins in Seattle. But none of them is named June, or has married a June, or even, as far as I know, has a girlfriend or a poodle or a parakeet named June.

On the back of the envelope was scrawled, “Thanks!” Inside, in excellent shape for its age, was a paperback copy of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There was no letter tucked inside, no name written on the first page, no sticky note on the cover with a scribbled note saying, “I found this in a box of books in the garage and remembered that I borrowed it from you in 1970 when we were both in Dr. Weinkauf’s Contemporary Lit class. Sorry it took so long to return it.”

Besides, I didn’t go to college with anyone named June. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone named June. Some 20 years ago, I worked for someone who knew June Carter Cash, which was a remote connection even then.

Maybe, I thought, this was a sign that I should suggest Cuckoo’s Nest for the book discussion at our family reunion this summer. We’ve decided to read and discuss two books, one classic and one contemporary. And the reunion—this can’t be a coincidence—is in June. Obviously, the Universe was sending me a message.

But before I got around to passing that message on to the rest of the family through an email, one arrived from my niece. Sara, by virtue of taking the initiative to suggest several book titles, had been unanimously chosen by the rest of the family to pick out two books for our discussion, and this email announced her choices.

One of them, even though it hadn’t been on her original list, was Cuckoo’s Nest. Add in the wonders of Internet shopping thanks to Amazon.com’s used-book department, and my mystery was solved. So much for signs from the Universe.

But, whether the choice came from the Universe or from Sara, it was a good one. Based on previous emails, I thought the classic book was going to be The Great Gatsby. I wasn’t especially looking forward to renewing my acquaintance with all those selfish, obnoxious characters.

So, thanks, Sara, both for choosing the books and for going to all the trouble to order them for us. I just have one small complaint. How can Cuckoo’s Nest be a “classic” book? It was practically new when I first read it in college, and obviously that was only a few years ago.

Books by Charles Dickens are classics, certainly. Or by Jane Austin. Or Mark Twain. Even Faulkner and Hemingway. But those authors all have one thing in common. They wrote their “classic” books well before I was born.

The workshop in the basement has a workbench in it.

Admittedly, that hardly seems like a startling bit of news. A workbench is a perfectly reasonable—one might even think necessary—object to find in a workshop.

But this workbench has been a work-in-progress for nearly a year now. It’s been that long since we decided to turn the then-laundry room into a workshop. (Okay, I decided, and the other party involved, wise and accommodating man that he is, said, “Yes, dear.”)

Phase one, moving the washer and dryer into the downstairs bathroom, went quite quickly. Maybe this was due to the involvement of several professionals—a carpenter and plumber, an electrician, and a flooring installer.

The next step was to build a workbench for the old laundry room/new workshop. Somehow last summer came and went without this being accomplished. Last fall would have been a good time for workbench-building, but we were busy. Winter wasn’t the best time for such a project, which had to be done in the garage (unheated and fully occupied by two vehicles), because one can’t built a workbench in a workshop which has no workbench to work on.

I’m certainly glad I don’t have a problem with procrastination.

Anyway, a couple of months ago, I finally got started. Conditions were auspicious—we were having a spell of warm pseudo-spring weather, and my spouse and his car were out of town so I could clutter up his side of the garage with amateur carpentry.

I had the design clearly in mind. I had the materials—odd pieces of recycled lumber from various other projects. I had a new handsaw and two new sawhorses. I had a tape measure, a square, a sharp pencil, and my reading glasses. Despite all these tools, when I got done measuring and sawing, there was a certain lack of precision in my four posts and eight support pieces. Sawing straight along the line on top of the board wasn’t the problem; it was that three-dimensional thing that did me in.

Assembling the pieces with deck screws presented difficulties, as well. I finally figured out that holding the corner post, holding the two-by-four crosspiece, holding the screw, and holding the drill required four hands. Which meant waiting for my spouse to get home.

Eventually, with him doing most of the heavy work, we built a workbench. We set the countertop, purchased from a salvage store, onto the frame. Unfortunately, we could see an embarrassing amount of daylight between the top and the frame. That nit-picky straight sawing thing again.

One quarter-inch shim and a bunch of planing later, we were ready to attach the countertop. He did the “lie on the floor and drill up through the supports” part. I did the “sit on the top so the screws would go into the countertop instead of pushing it away” part.

Which proves that she also helps who only sits and weights.

This week I cleaned my office.

Big deal, you say. Some people do that sort of thing all the time. They file papers, pay bills, answer mail, and even dust their desks.

Well, sure. Some people wash their cars every week, too. And wash windows twice a year. And clean out their refrigerators before stuff evolves into fuzzy green new life forms. I have more urgent things to do. I’m not sure what they are, exactly, but I know they have a higher priority than cleaning.

But this wasn’t that kind of cleaning. This was get-rid-of-clutter cleaning. Serious spring cleaning. Inspired, no doubt, by the six-plus inches of April snow piling up outside the window.

I started my excavations in the antique oak wardrobe. It held an embarrassing amount of stuff. Floppy disks that no computer of mine has had a drive for since 2003. Instruction manuals for printers I no longer own. Yellowed old greeting cards and mismatched envelopes. Two plastic boxes—one still marked “1977” on the front with permanent marker—intended to hold cancelled checks. Old bank statements, obsolete computer parts, and newsletters from an organization I no longer belong to. A box of stuff from a failed political campaign.

A padded envelope holding several “Ross Perot for President” buttons. I’m keeping those. In another 20 years I’m sure they’ll have gone from “oddity” to “collectible,” and—assuming I remember they exist and assuming I can find them—I can sell them and take a cruise around the world.

A plastic bag full of “Pecos diamonds,” thumbnail-sized quartz crystals from New Mexico. They’re pretty, they were fun to collect, and I have no need whatsoever to keep them. Do you suppose it would confuse the geologic record if I tossed them out into the front yard to mix with the plain old South Dakota gravel in the driveway?

Then it was time to do something about the file cabinets, long past their prime. Which, since they were cheap metal ones, hadn’t exactly been “prime” to begin with. The drawer I used the most opened and closed with a shriek of anguish straight out of a B-list horror movie. The other cabinet, presumably squashed in one of my frequent moves, had a top drawer that could only be accessed by prying it open with a pancake turner.

I bought a new file cabinet. The box said “some assembly required,” which I realized meant the drawer handles needed to be attached. The handles were included, of course—tucked safely away inside the bottom drawer. Which couldn’t be opened because it had no handle. No problem; I had a pancake turner and I knew how to use it.

After a day of sorting, tossing, organizing, and wondering why on earth I ever kept that, my office makeover was complete.

Now, I have my files moved to the new file cabinet, which sits inconspicuously inside the closet. The wardrobe has been tidied, rearranged, and relieved of at least 50 pounds of clutter. I have tossed three trash bags full of stuff. I have a box of things to take to the Salvation Army. My desk is organized, dusted, and invitingly bare.

And the three unopened photo albums are stacked neatly on top of the two boxes of unsorted photographs. Oh, well. That’s a project for another day. Maybe we’ll have another spring snowstorm—next year.

The headline in our local paper was factual and restrained in tone. It gave no hint of inappropriate humor or delight in someone else’s misfortune. Still, I’m sure reporters and editors at the Journal, as well as newspaper people all over the country, were slapping one another on the back and howling with glee this week.

Why? The headline says it all: “Woman Bites Dog, May Need Shots.” (And yes, I double-checked the date on the story. It was April 3, not April 1.)

John B. Bogart, long-time editor of the Sun newspaper in New York during the late 1800’s, was the source of a saying that’s become a journalistic cliché: “When a dog bites a man, that isn’t news. It often happens. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”

This week, in Minneapolis, it happened. Even better—just to keep the story fully up to date and politically correct for the 21st Century—the biter was a woman, not a man.

When a pit bull jumped a fence to get into her yard and attacked her Labrador retriever, Amy Rice was afraid the intruder would kill her dog. So she “took matters into her own mouth,” as the Associated Press phrased it, and bit the pit bull on the nose.

The pit bull was quarantined. The Lab went to the vet for stitches. Ms. Rice, who bit the attacking dog hard enough to draw blood, was waiting to hear whether she would have to get rabies shots.

The article, at least as published in our paper, omitted a lot of the details. Such as exactly what happened in between “biting the pit bull on the nose” and “the pit bull was quarantined.” I would think there must have been some intervening events. Screaming, perhaps. Bleeding, no doubt. And quite possibly some interesting explanations to the animal control officer.

The pit bull may, of course, be in quarantine because of the possibility of rabies. Or maybe it’s just hiding out of sheer embarrassment. It’s a pit bull, for Pete’s sake. It’s a certified bad dog, with such a fearsome reputation that its kind is even banned from entire cities.

How on earth is the poor, humiliated creature going to explain to its tough-guy pit bull buddies that it met defeat at the hands—or rather the jaws—of a mere human? It might just as well have been overpowered by a poodle.

Wild turkeys, at least according to hunting magazines, have a reputation for cleverness. They are considered wily prey who are difficult to find and challenging to hunt.

This reputation does not appear to be substantiated by the behavior of the wild turkeys in our neighborhood. Admittedly, these are urbanized turkeys, so maybe they can’t exactly be described as “wild.” Perhaps their once-keen minds have been dulled by soft living among people who are more likely to feed them than hunt them. Or perhaps those minds never were all that keen to begin with, and the wild turkey’s reputation has been exaggerated.

I tend to favor the latter theory. In part this conclusion is based simply on comparing the size of a turkey’s head—and therefore the presumed size of its brain—with the size of its body. In part it is based on observing the behavior of the turkeys that hang out in the neighborhood.

Yesterday, for example, as I was working in the kitchen, I noticed a single hen out in the back yard. She appeared to have strayed away from the flock. Or maybe the others had conspired to leave her behind in some fowl form of a middle-school prank. Whatever the reason, she seemed lost. She stayed in one small area of the yard for the length of time it took me to wash the dishes and clean off the counters. She would take a few tentative, high-stepping paces in one direction, then retreat to her original position, then make a small circle, then stand still for a few minutes, then look all around and start pacing again.

About half an hour later, I spotted her in the front yard. She still appeared to be fretting. If she had hands, she would have been wringing them. By that time I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. I just hope the rest of the flock came back and found her, because she certainly didn’t seem likely to ever find them.

Then there are the birds, caught trotting along the road, who respond to an approaching car by staying in the middle of the road and trying to outrun it. Of course, my opinion of such a bird’s intelligence may well be prejudiced by the fact that a trotting turkey, seen from behind, is one of the most ridiculous and undignified sights nature has to offer.

I’ve never hunted turkeys, so maybe the truly wild ones are a lot smarter than I’ve given them credit for. Or maybe it’s just that hunters have a different perspective than I do.

There is, after all, the story I heard during last spring’s turkey hunting season. It rained heavily for two days—washing out roads, flooding creeks that are usually dry, and turning fields and pastures into bogs. On the second day, a turkey hunter ended up stranded on a small island in a creek whose normal trickle of water had risen into a flood. He spent most of the day there, sodden and cold, until someone finally hauled a boat in and rescued him.

For all his soggy struggles, he didn’t end up with a turkey. The birds, wily or not, at least had enough sense to settle in somewhere out of the rain.

“Everybody collects something.”

At least, this was the belief of the man across the table at a recent dinner we attended. He had been talking about the various things he has collected over the years. Then he went on to ask the rest of us, “What do you collect?”

Since this was a geology gathering, the obvious answer for several people was “rocks.” Oddly enough, the answer usually came from the spouses, not the geologists. Evidently geologists don’t admit to collecting rocks; they claim to acquire rocks for purposes of research. Never mind that, to a non-geologist, the difference between the two is not readily apparent.

Other people at the table talked about collecting coins, stamps, glassware, books, and marbles. Handy, I suppose; you would always have a few extras in case you lost yours. One might collect stuffed animals, either the toy kind or the I-shot-it-myself kind. A few women (Elizabeth Taylor comes to mind) appear to collect ex-husbands.

I know a woman who collects frogs. Well, not actual frog frogs; stuff with frogs on it and stuff shaped like frogs. Some church historian somewhere probably collects collection plates. My grandkids collect Pokemon cards, especially the oldest one, who has hundreds of them and is frighteningly knowledgeable about them and will probably use them to finance his college education.

When the conversation came around to me, I couldn’t think of anything I collect. Not purposely, anyway. To a disinterested observer glancing at my desk, I suppose it might appear as if I collect paper. Anyone looking more closely in various parts of the house might guess that I collect cobwebs, or maybe dust bunnies. (At least collecting dust bunnies isn’t quite the same as collecting dust.)

Honestly, though, I try not to collect things just for the sake of having them. It can get out of hand way too fast. You buy some cute little thing that has picture of a teddy bear or a cactus or a rhinoceros on it, and then you get a second one because it goes with the first one, and before you know it people are giving you the stuff as gifts, and bingo, you end up with cacti or rhinoceri all over the house, and you have to build on another room.

So I don’t necessarily agree that everybody collects something. But the man across the table, to the couple of us who claimed not to collect anything, asked a further question: “What is it you have that you always want another one of?”

Well, when he put it that way, I could say that I collect stories. That’s what I always want another of. That’s what interests me the most. Any time I read an odd item in the paper, or hear about some dramatic event, or learn some random bit of trivia, I always want to know the story behind it. Who did it? Why? What happened before that? What happened after that? There’s always a story, even if I have to make it up myself.

Stories. That’s what I collect. Each one is unique, there’s always room for one more, and they never have to be dusted.

When I got the mail today, there was an envelope from the office of the county treasurer. This reminded me of two things: First, my car license stickers expire at the end of February. Second, ever since I mailed in a check for the renewal a couple of weeks ago, I had forgotten all about it.

As a general rule I send in my renewal form and check sometime in January, so I get the new decals in plenty of time. Of course, then I usually procrastinate until the last day before I get around to putting them on. Still, at least I have them in my possession, and sometimes I even know where they are.

This year, what with one thing and another, I didn’t think about renewing the tags until I happened across the reminder postcard well after Groundhog Day. I knew I was pushing my luck when I sent my check on February 11, expecting to get the decals back before the deadline. Thank goodness it’s Leap Year. I’m still legal, thanks to that extra day of grace.

Like a good little procrastinator, I trotted right down to the garage and put the decals on my license plates. I’m renewed, up to date, and on the right side of the law. As will be obvious to any police officers who happen to notice. They won’t even have to check whether my decals are orange (last year’s) or green (this year’s).

It’s obvious that I just put new stickers on, because the lower right-hand corner of each license plate has a little spot that’s been carefully scrubbed. They show up more clearly than the decals do, because they are the only two clean places on the whole car.

I’m going to have to paint two rooms in my house, pull up carpet, refinish a hardwood floor, call in an electrician, and buy new curtains. Oh, and did I mention write a novel? And it’s all my daughter’s fault.

You see, she bought me a picture. It’s a marvelous photograph titled “Solitude,” done by one of her friends who is a professional photographer. It shows a tall, February-bare tree leaning over an empty park bench. Behind it, just above the horizon, the sun shines through mist rising from the surface of Canyon Lake, casting long, soft shadows across the foreground.

The photograph would make a perfect book cover for a bittersweet, slightly eerie novel. If I write that novel, it might start out with the mystery of someone who vanished early one morning 35 years ago and has never been seen since.

Before I think about writing the book, though, I have to find a place to hang the picture.

I want it where I can see it regularly. The logical place, then, would be my office. Except that with the kids’ graduation and wedding pictures, the grandkid’s school pictures, the quilted pinwheel my mother made, the important quotations in calligraphy, the watercolor of the cat, and the calendar and bulletin board that are supposed to keep me organized, I don’t have much wall space left.

The living room? The spaces there are horizontal, and this picture is vertical. The formal living room/dining room? It’s already filled with prints and carpets from the Middle East. Besides, I don’t spend a lot of time in there.

The guest room? Too unused. The bedroom? Well, possibly. Or, an even better idea, I’ll move some of the things on my office walls into the bedroom and the guest room to make room for this photograph. I wouldn’t dare demote the grandchildren, but maybe the cat and some of the calligraphy could go. I’ve been meaning to put some things on the walls in both of the bedrooms, anyway.

But before I do that, I want to paint those rooms. (This involves spackling the holes and cracks in the wall, applying two coats of paint, and then—using the handy-dandy stud finder and laser level I got for Christmas—putting new holes in the wall to hang pictures. I’m sorry if the logic of this escapes you.)

Painting a room isn’t quite as simple as just painting it, of course. There are those busy brown-patterned curtains in the bedroom—it’s long past time they were replaced. And there is the carpet in the guest room, also brown-patterned, that is probably old enough to have voted for Ronald Reagan. I’ve been wanting to pull it up for months, even though I know that will only lead to sanding and refinishing the hardwood floor beneath it.

Then there is the outlet in the guest room that doesn’t work, and the light switch in the bedroom that only works if you give it that extra little tap in just the right place. Hence the electrician.

But it’s okay. I’m certainly not complaining. I’m delighted to have the picture. When Seth wins his first Pulitzer, I can tell people, “Oh, yes, I knew his work before he became famous. I have one of his early photos. It’s marvelous. And it only cost me $1500 and two weeks of hard labor.”