Frontyard

Our frontyard is a 70 foot bluff. Before having my current frontyard, I thought geological change proceeded at a snail's pace. I was wrong.

When we moved here, my husband built a sturdy 70 foot long set of stairs to get us from the top of the bluff to the beach. One day he walked into the kitchen and asked me to define "rubble". Before I could answer, he led me to the frontyard. The seventy feet of stairs were gone, either buried or contorted like a modernistic sculpture. A giant section of the cliff had let go during the night; the stairs were history. My husband applied advanced engineering techniques on stairs number two.

Various cliff-dwelling neighbors try ingenious schemes to shore up the bluffs. We, however, think it's futile to turn our frontyard into a graveyard of sidewalk slabs and demolition rubble. We prefer the natural rubble of mudslides. It's just a fact of geology that nature whittles down the high points. Mountains do become valleys. Our egos get whittled down, too, if we refuse to recognize this scientific principle.

Some years our cliff will be almost nude, brown sand with crater-like pits and vertical gullies. Other years it will be lush green and home to large swaths of wildflowers. The best year occurred when my husband dumped a wheelbarrow of seeds he had raked up from under our bird-feeders over the edge. By August we had a parade of sunflowers cheerfully marching down the bluff to the beach.

Poplar trees brave the volatility of the cliff. We learned their survival secret after our first major landslide. A 50 foot tall poplar simply slid 25 feet down the cliff. We were certain it was doomed. Not only did it send down its roots again, it has spawned a grove of baby poplars. If only we could go with the flow this easily.

But, to me, our most amazing cliff dwellers are the swallows. Hundreds of these swift little birds dig holes in the top of the cliff for their nests. What a marvelous act of faith.

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Dodos

(This blog is dedicated to Judith, Nick Nick and Tin Tin)

I recently came across a small story I wrote for children many years ago. Here it is in its entirety.

This is a little story about two dodos, Lulu and Mimi, who lived in New York, New York. Lulu liked to dance the cha cha with her pom poms. Mimi would can can in her pink tutu for hours. Both Lulu and Mimi liked to yo-yo in time to tom-tom music. When the dodos weren't dancing or yo-yoing, they would eat their favorite foods, bonbons and pawpaws. But all good things must end.

One day Lulu waved bye bye and boarded a choo choo for Baden Baden, Germany. The next day Mimi took a choo choo bound for Pago Pago, Samoa. These trips were two big boo-boos. Everybody knows you can't take trains to Baden Baden and Pago Pago... you have to take boats. What dodos!

No one has seen Lulu or Mimi since. The end.

Rumor has it that Lulu has turned up in Walla Walla, Washington where she is now a go go dancer (a go go dodo). She dines on mahi-mahi.

Mimi, ever the artist, has been spotted in Lapu-Lapu in the Philippines where she is doing art in the Dada style. She listens to Lang Lang in her spare time and drives a Nano from Tata Motors.

If you hear news of these irrepressible dodos or their friends, send emails or postings chop chop.

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Locavores

One of the newest words in the Merriam Webster Dictionary is "locavore". The word is defined as a person who only eats locally sourced food.

As lovely as this concept may be, I will never achieve locavore status. Those of you who know me realize that I can't grow grass, let alone something as agriculturally challenging as a tomato.

If I ever did succeed in getting a foodstuff to sprout, I'm sure our animal friends in the Tooley Cafe, locavores all, would view the garden as a delightful annex to the Cafe.

Since gardening is ruled out, I would have to resort to gathering. This course is also problematic.

For example, we have a local cheese factory and creamery fifteen miles northwest of our house. It features 100 Wisconsin cheeses, butter made on the premises and 50 cent ice cream cones (in case you need a cholesterol fix before you get the cheese and butter home). Unfortunately, the store that supplies our house with toilet paper, laundry soap and cat food is fifteen miles in the opposite direction.

It gets worse. Our local farmers' markets are 15 miles away at other compass points, and their hours of operation coincide perfectly with my work hours.

At this point you might be viewing me as the perfect subscriber to a weekly produce delivery (aka "a surprise box") from a local farm.

Alas, I'm not that noble! The thought of coming home from work to an overflowing crate of turnips and kohlrabies or 75 zucchinis is completely unbearable. I foresee no "Animal, Vegetable, Miracles" for me.

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P.O.

I have the perfect post office. Being a person who loves mail, this is a fortunate circumstance.

My post office is the size of a stamp. Not many of us postal patrons can fit in the lobby at one time; fortunately, there aren't many people in Cleveland, WI 53015, and we just don't choose to go to the post office all at the same time.

I'm sure the average New Yorker, or any big city dweller, would give a week's wages to have a post office like mine. Even at Christmas, we never have to wait in long lines. Granted, we might encounter a neighbor or two, but standing forever in a queue of grumpy strangers just doesn't happen here. The situation is akin to having your own personal post office.

One glitch did present itself when we first moved up here. I ran over to the post office around noon to mail a letter and found the doors locked. The postmaster had gone home for lunch. The postmaster goes home for lunch every day, a real anachronism in today's America. I might apply for this job.

Naturally, blessings like an incredible post office don't come without responsibilities. Little P.Os live or die based on the volume of mail they process. You will be getting snail mail from me frequently. I must do my part and keep the mail flowing at 53015. Hundreds and hundreds of Valentine, Easter, Halloween, Christmas and birthday cards are among my outgoing contributions. My twenty-three magazine subscriptions insure the incoming flow.

I can only think of one feature my post office lacks. (Anyone who has read Rita Mae Brown's charming mysteries, ghost written by her brown tabby cat, Mrs. Murphy, will know what's coming.) My post office doesn't have a resident cat or dog.

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Roadtrip

I was coming home from work last week, driving through Green Bay, when a van pulled in front of me. The back window of the van was covered with a film of dirt. Written in the dirt was the following message:

HELP!
2000 miles, 2 kids, sleeping wife.
Its true!

The plates on the van were from Washington state.

I'm sure that many of us have taken road trips that could have benefited from similar, large infusions of humor.

One of my more memorable trips started out calmly. I had just finished school in June, summer days lay ahead, and my husband and I were setting off on a road trip to NY City to visit our daughter and her husband.

I was happily driving through Pennsylvania, relaxed and carefree. My husband was napping. Then, as I paid another toll on the Pennsylvania turnpike, a small voice whispered in my head, "There are no tolls on the road to New York City." I pulled over at the next rest stop, woke up my husband and announced that I had made a rather major navigational error. Apparently I thought I could get to NYC on automatic pilot. I was actually well on the way to Washington D.C.

Moments like these can be the beginning of the end to a marriage. But my husband had the best possible response - he started laughing. Soon we were both laughing so hard we could hardly read the road map. The map revealed I had gone 130 miles on the wrong road. To get back north again the route went through Hershey, Pennsylvania. Who can't be happy in a town that smells of chocolate and has street lights shaped like Hershey Kisses? We even hit the Holland Tunnel by 6:30 that night.

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