Bald Eagle pair, Bozeman, MT

Everyone should get to see a bald eagle up close, at least once in their lifetime.  Aren’t you glad they finally banned DDT?

Baby Maleesha - Montana 1977

What a chunk.  See guys, it’s totally genetic.  It’s why my bikini modeling career never took off.

Check out that funky diaper.  My mom told me that she always had to put two diapers on me because (!!!) my LEG kept popping out of my hip joint and dangling there in the breeze.  The doctor said (I’m paraphrasing) “Aw, shucks that ain’t nothin’ to worry about…just put those diapers on extra tight and it’ll all work itself out.”  My mom took this to mean put two diapers on for extra support.  Kind of like wearing two condoms*.

My dad tells me that when I was a tiny baby, the cat would jump in the crib with me and nap.  The cat didn’t seem to bother me, so they let the cat sleep in the crib with me.  If you have ever read a parenting book (note: parents in the 1970s did not have parenting books OBVIOUSLY) you know that the number one goal of a cat near a baby is to suffocate said baby by sitting on the baby’s nice-scented, but delicate, noggin.  Luckily for me I didn’t die, and I love cats to this day, since I probably imprinted on that cat (mommy!).  This paragraph has nothing to do with the pop-out leg, but here it is anyway.

When I heard about my pop-out hip, I immediately thought of all of my orthopedic woes of today.  Was I just born with joints that wanted to bust free from their ligaments?  You never know.  Have YOU ever heard of this?  Butte was very different in the 1970′s…perhaps my parents had me checked up by “Bob McGinn: Veterinarian, Rodeo Clown, OB-GYN.”

All’s well that ends well, and I have two happy healthy children today.  I am proud to report that neither of them had pop-out legs.

*Teenagers…don’t actually do this

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow at the front door.  The front door, which was half-window, was the only glass in the house that had a curtain… a yellow thin cloth hanging from a cheap white curtain rod.  It wasn’t thin enough to totally obscure the man standing at the front door.

I froze, calculating the possibilities.  I was pretty new in town, and no one from work knew where I lived yet.  It was around 8 AM on a Tuesday, too early for something to get delivered.  Then I realized that whoever was standing there, was just standing.  No knocking, no ringing the doorbell.  Who the hell was standing at my door?

I slowly backed up the stairs, and suddenly the doorbell rang.  I had the feeling that if I could see the shadow of him through the flimsy curtain, he could see me too.  The doorbell rang again after a few seconds.

I went to the door and pulled back the curtain.  An Asian man stood on my porch, smoking a cigarette.

“Can I help you?” I asked, without opening the door (because only stupid blonde women in horror movies actually open the door).

“I need you to let me in,” he said in a heavily accented voice.

“Why? I asked.  The obvious question.

“Gonna s&#k and f&$k,” he said.  The hair on the back of my neck stood up in fear.  I’m not the type to scream and run in frantic circles, so I said the first thing that came to my mind…a stern “You need to get off my porch right now.”  He didn’t budge, instead he looked me in the eyes and took a long drag of his cigarette.  I dropped the curtain shut and slowly backed away, trying to think of a plan.  He rang the doorbell…not just once, but over and over.  BING BING BING BING BING…

I darted up the stairs to grab my phone and my KA-BAR .  The doorbell kept ringing.  I came back down the stairs, still thinking, thinking.  The man was still standing on my porch.  I yelled “Go AWAY!” and then I turned to go down the stairs to the basement.  But I doubled back quickly, just in time to see him dashing off the porch.  I knew he was on the way to the back of the house to try to keep me in sight.  As he rounded the house, I dashed into the kitchen and slid behind the island (so convenient!) and I dialed 9-1-1.  The emergency dispatcher answered immediately.  ”Someone’s trying to break into my house,” I said.  I peeked around the corner.  Sure enough, he was on the back deck…something glinted in the sun.  He was holding a knife.  The door into the house from the was one big window.

The green dot is me hiding behind the kitchen island. The red dot is the perp...everyone knows that red is the color of perps everywhere.

I gave the dispatcher my address.  ”Do you have anything you can use as a weapon,” she asked me…she sounded afraid for me.  I thought of all the calls she might have taken in her career that ended badly.

“I’ve got a knife,” I said.

“Is it a big knife?”  She really did ask that.

“It’s a big knife,” I assured her.  She recommended that I find a place to hide until the police arrived, but I had to stay behind the island.  If I made a break for anywhere else in the house, the Bad Guy with the Knife would notice.  I peeked around the corner again.  He was furiously tinkering with the door lock.  It was surely only moments until he busted in.  I mentally pictured how I would hold the knife, how I would keep him from grabbing it, which door I would run to if I had a chance to escape.

BAM BAM BAM!  There was a serious knock at the door.  I was still on with the dispatcher.  She told me it was the police…I wasn’t sure whether or not to leave my hiding spot just yet or not.  But I looked to the back door, and no one was there.  I cautiously went to the front door and pulled back the curtain.  Two of Colorado Springs’ finest were on my porch.  I opened the door.

To summarize the story, it took three minutes for the po-po to get there.  One of the officers stayed with me, while the other went around the house looking for the Asian man.  Even though he was on the back deck seconds before they arrived, the police could find no sign of him.  They promised they would do regular patrols in the area for a couple of days.  They remarked how they hadn’t had a 9-1-1 call in this neighborhood for fifteen years.  One of the officers asked if I owned a gun.

“I don’t,” I said.

“Do you know how to use a gun?” he asked.

“Yes,” I told him.  ”I had this in my hand the whole time though,” I said, and I pulled the KA-BAR out of my pants (heh).

“Oh man,” he said.  ”You gotta get a gun.  They’re a whole lot easier than fighting someone off with a knife.”

“Yeah, we don’t recommend knife fights,” the other officer agreed.

***

I couldn’t sleep at my (just purchased) home for days.  My boss and his wife let me have their spare bedroom until I got curtains and replaced the windowed door with something more solid.  The following Saturday, a team of co-workers came over to help do some basic renovations, put wood blocks in all the sliding windows, and things like that.  Eventually I was able to sleep there, but there is nothing quite like the threat of violence to take the shine off of one’s new home.

Looking back, the guy must have been high.  If he wanted to get in, he need not bother trying to pop the lock with his weenie knife…he could have just broken the window and let himself in. I was prepared to fight, and since he was a little Asian dude, I think it would have been a good match.  Luckily for me, it didn’t come to that…but to this day, I still sleep with my KA-BAR tucked safely under my pillow.

After I was done cleaning up the glass shards, I ran to my computer to look through my pictures.  If there was evidence of human-like activity, it would be recorded somewhere in C:\..\My Pictures.  Yes!  YES!!!  Clicking around my clogged hard drive, I found lots of photos.  Whoa, I did a lot in 2011.  And by December I had forgotten most of it.  This means two things:

1. I guess my short term memory is shot

2. I should really look through my pictures more often

Here are some things I did in 2011:

JANUARY

Macy turned three, and she helped me make her birthday cake.  She wanted it to be purple, so by gum, we made it purple.  It was a fun day.  Baking with a toddler, or eating spaghetti with your feet…I am not sure which is messier.  I haven’t tried the latter.  Maybe this year.

Girls just wanna have fun

FEBRUARY

It must have been really cold in February 2011, because I can’t find very many pictures of it, so using my powers of deduction I reason my hands were too cold to operate the camera.  I did find one picture though, from a drive on the way to the farm.  Both of my parents have February birthdays, so I was probably headed that direction to say happy birthday.  I think it’s kind of pretty.  But cold.

MARCH

Went to San Francisco for two weeks.  It was a business trip, but I had the whole weekend to play.  I saw the zoo, ate lots of great food that is generally unavailable in Montana unless you cook it yourself, and got really lost in the Muir Woods.  I got to do lots of touristy things too, like drive across the Golden Gate bridge, and hang off the side of a streetcar.

That's a giant redwood (behind me)

Random dude surfing near San Francisco in March 2011

Hanging off the streetcar. Wheeee!

APRIL

No clue what I did in April, as there is no photographic evidence to jog my decaying mind.  If anyone knows where I was in April, you can contact me via the Intercluster.

MAY

May brought me on a whirlwind trip to Colorado just to visit friends.  Lots of fun packed into a very short time.  I saw the Maroon Bells for the first time, hugged the lone stoplight in Buena Vista, and participated in International Game Night with the gang.

Pikes Peak from Red Rocks park

Best shirt ever

JUNE

I participated in the Relay for Life with some cool chicks that I work with.  We had a Gaga theme, and I hand-sewed a meat dress together.  No cows were harmed in the making of said dress.  It came out looking a lot like meat (from a distance, anyway).  And our team won for Best Costumes.  I like to think I contributed.

JULY

July was kind of a rough month.  The kids’ dad had New Girlfriend move in with him after only a couple of months.  Why was this rough?  Because the kids really seem to like her, so it’s going to be very hard on them when she inevitably moves out.  I didn’t want to see my kids go through another major loss.  But who knows, maybe they will really stick together, I thought.

July wasn’t all bad, no no.  The kids got a trampoline.  The first day we had it, Macy jumped for so long that she threw up all night.  She was bouncing in her sleep.  These are tough lessons that children have to learn.  Moms need to learn them too.  She had eaten a LOT that day *shudder*.

Some children are upside down

AUGUST

I went camping and hiking in my favorite place on earth, Glacier National Park.  I saw Iceberg Lake, which was totally worth the 10 miles and bottle of Motrin.  I also had the privilege of hiking on a trail that was closed off due to imminent grizzly bear danger.  This was a fantastic week and is worthy of its own entry in this little blog.  Someday.

Iceberg Lake in August

SEPTEMBER

In September, some of my cousins brought their children over to the farm for a family picnic.  I put together a treasure hunt for the kids…complete with clues, maps, and TREASURE!  There were six clues that led to a box full of goodies such as toys and candy and crafts.  I hope they had fun.  I want to do it next year, too…but I have to make the clues harder.  Those little boogers are clever!

Kovneskys are very prolific with the children - only two are mine

All the kids got to pick out a pumpkin or two, and they liked playing in the “log cabin” my dad built for AJ and Macy.  Good times were had by all.  All families went home with a bucket full of vegetables, whether they wanted it or not.

OCTOBER

My son AJ turned 7, and his dad put together a trip to a Bobcats game for all of us and two of AJ’s friends.  AJ is mad about football.  Because of his obsessive nature, I am learning a lot about football due to proximity of him.  I caught myself getting really into some games this year.  Not sure if it’s a mid-life crisis or what, but this has never happened to me before.  A good mom has to support her kids, though, so I am glad he picked football and not golf.  If I had to watch golf on TV, I think I might die.  Here is us freezing our tails off at the game (The ‘Cats won).

The cold, cold wind was blowing directly in our faces

I also got a new friend in October.  This is my bengal Sammie.

Cat and mouse

NOVEMBER

I turned 34 on 11/11/11…and instead of partying like a rockstar downtown like I had planned, I spent my birthday curled up in bed with the flu.  See, this is why I never plan things.

The ex’s girlfriend moved back out.  Shocker.  I could go on, but it’s not polite.  Let’s just say no one will ever be able to please the ex.  I have to admit, though I am sad for my kids, it was a little bit validating for me.  Honestly, I hope they work it out and she moves back in, because if they don’t, there will be a New Girl moved in before the end of 2012.  And for the Mom, it’s not fun to worry about your children when they are with the New Girl.  Is she a psycho?  Does she hate children?  Will she be a bad influence?  This last one was pretty good…she will be hard to top as far as stepmothers go.  But that mofo is HARD to live with, so who knows what the real story is here.

DECEMBER

December was a lovely end to the year.  I got a Kindle Fire from Santa, and apparently it was just the thing I needed to get back into reading.  I was very against e-readers, but now I am a convert.  I will always love the smell and feel of books, but this superb little gadget is much easier to tote around the country.  Makes my carry-on a little more manageable.

Right after Christmas, I got to spend a fantastic couple of hours with photojournalist and friend Holly Pickett.  It was so much fun to catch up, and she reminded me of a party we threw at her house one night when her parents were out of town.  I had forgotten all about the older kids showing up, the big stain on the new carpet, and the dude who sat in a houseplant.  Remembering sillyness of yore was a much needed end to the year, a year in which so many serious events coated the nightly news.

Well, there you have it!  I *DID* do something in 2011.  I know one thing I didn’t do enough of…writing…which is regretful.  The only way to make up for it is to write more this year.  Blogging, writing, hell I am even going to attempt a journal.  New years are good for new starts, and while I don’t make official “resolutions”, I like to think I feel just as hopeful and reenergized with each January first.

So here we are in 2012.  I look forward to all of it.  See you along the way!

My son has a 10 gallon aquarium in his room.  It’s got some fish in it.  Nothing fancy…some guppies (which I will elaborate on shortly), a few neon tetras, and…well now I think that is it at the moment due to some untimely fish deaths.  We settled on a fish tank instead of a snake, hamster, tarantula, or lizard.  He begged for one (or more) of those other creatures that some pass off as “pets” but I talked about how much more entertaining a fish tank would be.  I can’t even tell you how much I am NEVER going to have a tarantula in my house.  Nu-uh.  No way, no how.  I would take a snake before I took a giant spider…but I think both would give me the heebie-jeebies and I would never be able to sleep, in perpetual fear of the “pet” escaping his lair and crawling all up in my sheets at night.  Lordy, just writing that is going to give me nightmares.

So back to the fish tank.

I am having WAY more fun with the fish tank than my son is.  (Another sidenote: an extra benefit to having children is that you get to relive a lot of your childhood hobbies!) I dutifully change the water, feed them twice a day, and sit and watch them.  They are fascinating!

No one warned me about guppy sex though.  Those little bastards are ALWAYS doin’ it.  I watched for weeks as poor Yellow Mama Guppy got more marble-like.  One day she swam to the bottom and hid behind a plant…that is when I knew the wee guppies were coming soon.  Over the course of a couple of days, there were suddenly a dozen or more guppettes darting around the aquarium.  They seemed to know the best thing to do was to hide.  Apparently the brains of fish are even incapable of recognizing their babies as their babies.  Instead, they see the fry swimming about and think “Mmmm, a snack!”

It’s been a few weeks and now the fry are triple the size, and are freely swimming among the bigger fish.  They are still quite tiny, but they are beginning to show signs of their fish-individuality (one has a spotted tail now, another has an orange spot appearing on a fin).  I am starting to worry about what will happen as they come into guppy-adulthood…will I need to upsize the tank?  Get more square footage?  Hope for college scholarships?  I don’t know.

For now, I am content to sit in front of the tank and watch the algae bloom admire the simplicity and peace of tiny fish swimming among the brown gravel and replica of a treasure chest.  Even if my son is bored with the fish (I’m sure he wishes it was a tank full of lizards) I am still enthralled.  Black Mama Guppy and Silver Mama Guppy are looking pretty round this week.  I think we are getting another load of baby guppies soon.

I scanned the fridge to see what else was in there that may or may not come in handy.  I am talking about non-staple items; things that are likely to expire before you ever use them.

- Olives

- Whipped Cream

- Hot Mustard

What do you keep in the fridge Just In Case?

No shopping for me this year (Black Friday shopping).  I have done it before and I am over it.  Although sometimes, if you go with a friend, it feels more like a sport.  If you are one of the brave souls going shopping this evening/tomorrow morning, may all your lines be short!

The kids and I put up the Christmas tree at my mom’s house yesterday.  It is probably the earliest we have ever decorated.  I love the lights and the sparkles that come from a lighted, decorated Christmas tree.  If a family puts up a tree in late November and takes it down after Christmas, and they do it that way every year, that means we spend 1/12th of our lives in the presence of a fancy tree.  I don’t mind this fact at all.  If I could have a tree all year long I probably would.  I might change it up…throw some flags on the branches for the 4th, eggs for Easter, things like that.  But on the other hand, it would be really hard to dust.

Everyone is sleeping right now, and I am typing while A Very Gaga Thanksgiving is on in the background.  Ha!  It seems to be the only thing on that looks remotely interesting.  Back to the Future II is also on, but I have seen the Back to the Future trilogy so many times that I can recite them all and successfully argue their plotlines.

As I write this, I realize it may be one of my very worst (worstly) written pieces.  I am not even going to go back and proof it.  Lately, I am just happy to be posting at all.

I can’t even tell you how many times I stare at a blank page, trying to will out something.  It is as if my writing spark has gone away.  I have so many things to say…so many things to rant about, things to rave about, ideas that I want to share.  But when I get to the blank page, it suddenly seems overwhelming.  Or worse…it seems like it’s not worth it.  I don’t know how to snap out of this funk.

It is also the most depressing time of the year…daylight wise.  Sure, the holiday blahs will most definitely strike, but it’s getting dark by 4:30 now.  At 5 PM it feels like it’s 10 PM.  The lack of light is really getting to me.  If anyone has a spare SAD light sitting in their closet, you can go ahead and send it to me.  I will pay postage.  Maybe if I sit in front of a SAD light I will feel better.  Sometimes in the winter, back when I had extra funds, I would go to a tanning booth.  It was never to get a tan, it was to get a boost of UV rays.  I would come out of the blue-tinged booth feeling a little more peppy.

Oh, hold the phone!  Gaga is now being interviewed by Katie Couric.  I strongly dislike Katie.  I don’t know why.

Thinking of media icons has me sad about Andy Rooney, who we lost a short time ago.  I loved Andy Rooney.  He was such a crotchety old thing.  But he spoke his mind in a simple way and that is harder than it sounds.  I believe there is an art to simplicity and not many people can pull it off so magically.  Lots of folks think that speaking and writing and being has to be fancy, with flair, calligraphic.  But being simple, plain, and crystal clear in communicating is a true talent.  In my li’l old opinion anyway.  Nothing grates me more than reading a piece that is so embellished and overdone, that you can practically hear the author gloating about the size of their vocabulary.  Please.  If you have written something that alienates the vast majority of potential readers, what good is it?

Again, I believe simple is an art.  Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code was simply but sloppy. Collins The Hunger Games (at least the first one) was simply written, but executed brilliantly.  The average reading ability of adults (in the US…not sure about other places) hovers somewhere around the eighth grade.  If you have a message, dumb it down.  Sad but true!

(Maybe that is why I am not going to proof this column? Ha!)

I am not musical.  I wish I was.  I love music, but can’t play an instrument.  I admire my son in his guitar-taking-classness.  He loves it.  He knows so much more than I do now.  It’s great.  I hope he sticks with it…but that will be his choice not mine.  I will gently encourage him to stick with things, unless one day he comes home and says that he’s really interested in studying demonology or something like that.

Oh no, Lady Gaga is weeping at something Couric just asked.  I don’t know what it was, as I am not paying attention.  I like Lady Gaga.  I know a lot of people do, but I think she is super talented.

They say we are getting a blizzard tomorrow.  Said blizzard is predicted to make a mess out of the highways.  I will be on the highways.  I hope that the weather guesses are incorrect.  Or if the guesses are correct, I hope the snow flies after I am safely back at home.  Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house, we went.  Now we have to get back.

I hope you managed to read this far.  I am sorry if it was incredibly, stupefyingly boring.  These days it is all I can do to type a sentence.  I am probably depressed.  I am prone to clinical depression, and living in the Way North where the SAD lurks in the dark winter months does not help.  The sparkling Christmas tree in the corner of my eye helps, though.  I do love shiny things.

I didn’t plan to come here and complain; it’s just that I need to distract myself from the impending chill.  Naturally, the furnace died, since it’s Friday evening and the owner is out of town.  I *could* call an emergency furnace shop, but I have about three dollars to last me until payday.  I could float a check, why not?  Everyone is doin’ it!

My feet are cold and my nose…oh, Cold Nose is a terrible feeling!  I don’t recall ever having this problem before!

I had to shut the breaker to the furnace down…it was making a horrible screeching sound on and off, which now I recognize as probably a belt or something like that going renegade.  When it finally stopped, all I heard was a constant buzzing, like it was trying to work, but, no.

High five!