Baseball: A Squirrel's Memoir

Although spring is one of my favorite seasons of the year, there is one aspect that I hate. Baseball. I can tolerate baseball on television. I can sit next to Cal and embroider, and we have painless husband-wife bonding time. But that’s not what I hate. What I hate is organized baseball teams. Okay, it’s not that exactly. I’m really glad that Jake is playing on a high school team—good exercise, male war bonding rituals, etc. What I hate is bleacher duty. Freezing my butt off in the stands during the early spring. (How can February be considered spring? It was two degrees above freezing this morning.) I hate marinating in my own sweat and serving as mosquito bait by early summer.

I’d hoped when little league was over that we were done with sports. Little league was its own exquisite torture. Besides three boys on three teams playing at three different locations at the same time, Luke also became an umpire at age 12 when he passed the umpiring exam. And because he was big for his age 6’1” and broad and, therefore, more physically intimidating, he was the behind-the-plate umpire, who got screamed at by parents and coaches alike. (This was New England and they scream at umpires. Yeah, that was fun for me, sitting in the stands and having to keep my mouth shut.) Oops, sorry for that digression.

Now before you think that I was one of those women who was never exposed to sports, who never played, I wasn’t. I played women’s softball. I was the catcher. (I think I was assigned the position because it was the spot where I could do the least damage.) And everything was fine, until there was a play at home base. I got on the bag, crouched, and readied my glove. As the ball came towards me, I caught a glimpse of the runner. She was a freight train. I was a skinny, stupid squirrel standing on the tracks, keeping her from softball glory. But I steeled my muscles and my resolve. I would catch that ball, and she would be out. My teammates were counting on me...Freight-train girl plowed right threw me. I ate dirt. And the idea of balls, gloves, and bats as a fun pastime was forever lost.

Yeah, so baseball has started. Jacob is excited. Let the games begin. I’ll be that mom in the stands cheering the team and yelling, “Go, Jacob. Run over the catcher! You can do it.”

Friday Five

Today is the last day of summer vacation for me. School starts up on Monday. I couldn’t decide whether this Friday Five should be nostalgic for the summer or looking forward to the fall and winter. So it’s both. List what you’ll miss about summer and what you are anticipating in the next few months.

1. I miss the days when I can stand outside and let the heat penetrate my skin. I always imagine that the sun’s rays are sharing their power with me. (I know that’s hokey, but it makes it easier for me to embrace the heat.) I’m looking forward to cold breezes that bite the skin and give me a zest for life.

2. I’ll miss the butterflies, snowy egrets and the hummingbirds. But bring on the freezing death of cockroaches, mosquitoes, and biting black flies.

3. I’ll miss swimming pools and the ocean. On the other hand, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

4. I’ll miss homemade ice cream, cranberry juice popsicles, and watermelon. But it’s time for steaming hot chocolate made from dark chocolate cocoa.

5. I’ll miss getting up whenever I want (I hate alarm clocks). But there’s nothing like watching the pink of sunrise streak the sky.

What are your Friday Five?

Attack of the Mutant Blood Sucking Creatures

I have blogged numerous times about my extreme hatred of mosquitoes. How mosquitoes are a scourge to me. How even Deep Woods Off is merely an aperitif to the mosquitoes who feast upon me. And you know how I have tried almost every remedy known to humankind, including fans, vitamins, vodka (wiped on the skin, which may have been my big mistake because if I’d have drunk the vodka at least I wouldn’t have cared.) The newest mosquito remedies I’ve heard of are Listerine and fabric softener sheets.

I haven’t tried either new remedy. In fact, I’ve “come to terms” with the fact that I am a mosquito feeding ground. And I can live with that. Assuming that I buy cases of topical Benadryl gel.

Then I discovered that there are worse things than mosquitoes. I suppose I should have known something like this might happen. I have always attracted blood thirsty feasters. When Cal and I were first married, we went sailing in San Diego bay. Afterwards, we were pulling the catamaran, and my legs were stinging. I assumed it was salt water on freshly shaven legs. It wasn’t. I stepped out of the water and discovered clear jelly-fish like creatures turning pink with my blood. Cal and I ripped them off. Over the next couple of weeks my legs got severely infected. It was an omen.

A couple of months ago, I woke up in bed yelling. Some creature the likes of which I have never seen was biting me. I ripped it off my arm and flung across the room. Cal thought I’d had a nightmare because the “alien bug thingy” I described couldn’t possibly be real. Even when I pointed out the fangs marks on my arm, he was doubtful. But he agreed to look for it since I said I couldn’t go back to sleep until it was dead. When he found it, he said, “Oh, wow! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.” This was also an omen.

The final omen occurred on vacation. One evening we were swimming at the beach. I finished my saltwater frolic and sat on my beach towel to let the salty water dry on my skin. (There’s nothing like the taste of salt water on your lips. Bliss. I really am a selkie.) Anyway, after a few seconds of bliss, I felt stings. I opened my eyes. Big black flies were clustered on bare skin, sucking my blood. I swatted. They circled and came back. I covered myself in beach towels; they found the edges and flew underneath. Needless to say, the beach outing came to a quick end.

And these bites did not respond to Benadryl gel—I wanted to scratch my skin off. Thankfully, the bites have faded. Especially since my kids told me I looked creepy with bites all over my neck. The bites were everywhere, but the neck ones were particularly nasty. But here’s the thing. This time I recognize the final omen. The Apocalypse of Mutant Blood Sucking Vermin is coming. Prepare yourself. And remember, Benadryl probably won’t work.




P.S. Yesterday I posted a short excerpt from the sequel to Screwing Up Time. Click here to read it.

Stripping

M’kay. Please tell me that you knew this post was about paint stripping. ’Cause my blog is definitely G or PG.

Early this year, I got a lovely idea. The boys’ bathroom, which is also the bathroom-that-everyone-who-visits uses, needed work. But it needed to be cheap and do-it-yourself. Over Spring Break, Luke and I repainted the ceiling and the trim. Then I fixed and re-grouted the old honeycomb tile. Now that summer is waning and I didn’t get any house projects done, I decided the bathroom door and the bathroom linen closet door needed doing.

Cal and I bought heavy-duty stripper. The metal container is covered with skull-n-crossbones and “peligro” warnings. Cal took down the doors and brought them outside. The bathroom now has a privacy sheet—my boys aren’t complaining, but they aren’t impressed. Our dog Jezebel thinks it’s cool.

Today I started stripping. Then I found out that 70+ years of varnish, stain, and paint does not come off easily even with peligro stripper. I also discovered that bare skin which comes into contact with peligro stripper gets chemical burns. Finally, I discovered that even though I coated myself with death-to-mosquitoes bug repellent and the air was redolent with essence of toluene and other vile chemicals, the mosquitoes still bit me. And when I scratched my bites, the toluene does not make the bites less itchy, it just makes them burn like...well, you know.

After four hours of stripping, I now have a “box” full of scraped paint. One door is down to the wood grain after five rounds of stripping. The other isn’t close after three. And, of course, this is only the first side. Round two is Wednesday.

The Eleventh Plague

Do you know what I hate about the South?  It’s not the heat.  Okay, I don’t like the heat.  I sort of hate it—but in a I’m-so-much-tougher-than-this sort of way.  It’s the heat that makes steel magnolias out of tulip-type women like me.

The thing I really hate is the mosquitoes.  I know I’ve had numerous mosquito related posts, but finding a mosquito flying in the house in mid-November has got to be a sign of the apocalypse.  Seriously.  What else could it be but the Eleventh Plague?

If you think of mosquitoes as irritating insects, I guess you don’t understand the horror of it all.  But remember, mosquitoes are miniature vampires.  The only reason that they don’t make you undead is because they’re too small.  But here’s the thing, mosquitoes are changing their DNA.  The fact that they’re alive in mid-November is proof of that.  And they are changing their tactics—they’re organizing.  (I know because I can see the “just wait” in their sneering multi-focal eyes when they bite me.) While a single mosquito can’t make you undead on its own, a swarm is a different animal all together.  A swarm could suck you dry on the way to the mailbox, which is when they like to attack me.  I’m sure they’re all under our Southern magnolia tree waiting to strike.  The mosquito in the house today was just their advance guard.  It’s coming...the Eleventh Plague.  Beware the mosquito apocalypse.  Don’t say that you weren’t warned!

Feasting on My Flesh

As of yesterday...all the summer projects are done!! WooHoo!!

However, there is a downside. Jake and Matt stained the deck swing. Don’t get me wrong, the deck swing looks fantastic. But, they ended up with as much stain on themselves as on the swing. And the stain is oil-based so it doesn’t wash off. Big splotches of reddish brown decorate their legs and arms and even their faces. Both boys look like they’ve caught a skin disease—reverse leprosy or something like that. And Jezebel must have tried to help. The fur on her rear-end is red brown. Not very cute for a black Lab.

Cal tackled another summer project, painting the siding. Being an adult, he had less spills. Though for some reason the inside of his ears were Software Gray. I didn’t ask how that happened; I’m not sure I want to know.

As for me, I scrubbed and stained the two park benches. And since I’m an adult and wore gloves, I came out pretty clean. No weird blotches of any kind. Unless you count mosquito bites. Why is it that I can spray myself with Deep Woods Off—uber-high amounts of DEET—and the mosquitoes don’t care? They still bite. I am covered with swollen itchy patches. No, “bite” isn’t what they do to me…they feast upon my flesh. I must be the equivalent of lobster bisque for mosquitoes. (If lobster bisque doesn’t do it for you, you’re free to imagine steak or Veggie Burgers for my vegetarian friends.) So what’s a girl to do? Scratch, slather on more Benadryl and pray for an early freeze. I’m sure I can feel a chill on the breeze already…oops, that was the air conditioner.

A Really Big Fan

I understand the purpose of honey bees—they make honey. Yum, especially delicious in a tisane sipped on a summer’s night watching fireflies. You see, I even understand the purpose of fireflies from an aesthetic point of view.

Of course, I have to watch the fireflies from inside the house. Why? Mosquitoes. What is the point of mosquitoes? They seem to exist only to spread disease and misery. I will not expatiate on the vileness of the winged insect. I don’t need to because everyone knows how heinous they are. Other than providing food for bats, which is not something to be scoffed at since bats are cool, I can’t see a reason for the existence of mosquitoes. I suspect that they are a result of the curse. When I read between the lines of Genesis 3, I’m sure it’s implied, “and mosquitoes shall bite the tar out of you.” But, that’s not quite true. They bite the tar out of me, not out of Calvin. He can sit outside on the deck for hours during the cool of the day, and they avoid him. If I venture outside an alert goes out to every mosquito in a ten mile radius. It’s like tornado early warning signals or the tsunami sirens I heard growing up in Hawaii. That reminds me, Hawaii doesn’t have mosquitoes. They have heat and humidity, but they also have tradewinds. All the blood-sucking vampire bugs get blown out to sea and die.

What we need is a giant fan. Instead of spending our money on DEET-containing products that probably lead to cancer of various body parts, we could pool our funds and install a giant fan on Missionary Ridge. We could blow the mosquitoes down to Georgia. Or better yet, install a couple of fans and blow the bugs down to Alabama—I don’t have any friends in Alabama.

I’m accepting donations to the Really Big Fan Project. Maybe I could get government funding—no doubt this would qualify under the stimulus plan. Heck, if they can bail out banks, car companies, and maybe the state of California, then I think the Really Big Fan Project should be able to rake in the cash.

Vodka Repellent

If it’s the month of May, you can count on me spending time Googling mosquito-repellents. You see, I am the queen of mosquito bites. You’ve seen the illustrations of Pigpen with his cloud of dirt—imagine me in the place in of Pigpen and then imagine a cloud of mosquitoes instead of dirt. That is what my summers are like. The bugs bite me on the way out to the mailbox.

Every year I try some new remedy that doesn’t include slathering myself in DEET. I don’t mind the DEET if I’m going to spend the day outside, but going to the mailbox ought not to necessitate a frosting of sticky, poisonous goo. I’ve tried vitamin B—tons of bites. I’ve tried eucalyptus oil—I could get used to smelling like the woods on a rainy day, but it didn’t discourage the bites at all.

I’ve heard that oscillating fans keep the beasties away, but it’s hard to carry my own personal oscillating fan on the way to the mailbox. I need a different method.

I’ve been reading the “natural” websites. They recommend misting yourself with vodka. Yes, you read that right. Misting your skin with vodka. Apparently, mosquitoes don’t like smell of vodka. (I thought that vodka was odorless, but whatever.) The only problem that I can foresee is that my mailman might come to the door one day and spy my spray-bottle of vodka. He’d ask one of my boys (our mailman is extremely nosey), “What’s in that there bottle?” And, I have no doubt, my son would say, “Oh, my mom mists herself with vodka every time she goes outside—it keeps the mosquitoes away.” To which, the mailman, who is also a gossip, would think, “Yeah, right.” Before I knew it, everyone would hear about my “vodka repellent” and they’d think I was imbibing some odd mixed drink from New England…maybe I need to look into alternative ways of dealing with my mosquito issues. I bought a bat house; I should get Calvin to hang it, soon.