A sign of better times

I recently posted a sign over the kitchen sink. It reads: "If you dirty it, then you must wash it. The Management." Notice I've given myself a promotion. I'm no longer chief cook and bottle washer.

Mom smirked when I told her about my new plan to do less cleaning up after all the able bodied men in the house. I actually heard her do this over the phone. It sounds like it's spelled. "Smirkff," she said and right away I started worrying that this experiment in training my children and my husband to be better roommates was doomed to failure. She told me to tell her how it was going in a week's time.

Well, it's been a week and it's still working. It's all due to the paper plate with the marker message on it that's taped to the kitchen window. When the boys see the sign it reminds them that I'm right there, looking over their shoulders, making that Dog Whisperer noise, that "tch" sound that stops them from setting down a dirty plate or cup somewhere convenient and prompts them to run some hot water and soap over them and then put them in the dish drainer.

It hasn't been perfect. I still have to empty the dish drainer from time to time, otherwise the stack gets teetery, and broken china was never part of management's vision, but if you look at it as a way of counting how many dishes I don't have to do every day, it's impressive. I'm thinking of making another sign on a paper plate, enclosing it in a ziplock and hanging it in the shower. "If you shed it, you must clean it out of the hair trap. The Benevolent Dictatorship." I'm due for another raise.

Bleeding creativity

My fingers are sore and stiff today. Why, oh why do I ruin the skin on my fingers trying to execute these elaborate hand sewing projects? I must be going senile. I know this, not because words and names I used to know escape me, but because I've forgotten once again what a pain it is to push a needle through six layers of denim at a time. Satin stitching a teal border on a blue jean pocket is a cool way to hide a hole on a pair of pants destined to be made into a big purse, but it's also a very painful way to express oneself. Does it make you more creative if you bleed on your projects?

One minute I was searching the house for the pile of old jeans I'd last seen moldering in a corner of the living room, the next I had cut them up into rectangles and was piecing them together in interesting ways, not caring what this would mean for my poor fingers. If you're going to the trouble of hand making a fashion accessory, racking up hours of labor and pain in the process, then the end product has got to be cool, cool enough to draw admiring remarks and envious looks from all your equally craft-crazed friends.

Twenty four hours into this project, I've already decided to reduce the number of pockets on it from four to two, soon to be one, maybe, probably, definitely. And I'll just paint on any more embellishments I think up from here on out. For one thing, it'll be easier on my hands, and for another, this way I may even get to use the purse before Christmas. Besides, if I don't scale back on the amount of effort required to finish this endeavor pretty quickly, it will end up tucked away in a shopping bag somewhere, filed in my mind as another PTBCSWIFME (Project To Be Completed Sometime When I'm Feeling More Energetic).

The thing is, projects like this one -- labor-intensive, spur of the moment and falling into the category of Biting Off More Than I Can Chew in a Weekend -- always prompt me to think inconvenient thoughts while I'm doing them. Thoughts like, I could walk into any number of thrift stores and pick up a perfectly serviceable purse for $4 or less and paint it to look like something I would be proud to claim as my own and it would be a lot less trouble than what I'm doing now. The problem with this solution is that nothing is open until 10 am (it's 8 am now) and I have no money, not even an extra four dollars, which is precisely what prompted this whole project in the first place. Also, I wanted a bigger purse than what I'm using now.

Unfortunately, I think that this purse will also be too small to be practical. Stupid to start with my son's old blue jeans, really. They're a size 8. Slim. There's only so much yardage available in jeans this size. The purse I'm building has to be able to carry my wallet, my checkbook, my sketchbook, my notebook, any current sewing projects, my water bottle and snacks. In other words, about 20 pounds of stuff.

I had a bag like this when I was in college. It also held, in addition to the list above, a masonite board, clips, an 18" x 24" pad of newsprint, assorted drawing pencils, tubes of student grade acrylic paint, paint brushes and a plastic can for holding water. As I recall, it was while I was carrying all this plus four bags of groceries up a flight of stairs to my apartment that I experienced my very first back spasm, which put me on the floor, then in my bed for two weeks. I lay there, waiting for the pain to go away, meantime consuming ibuprofen by the handful and counting the minutes until my boyfriend got home from work every day so he could help me to the bathroom.

On second thought, maybe there's enough fabric here after all...

That dog

That dog lays on the couch
legs every which way
completely open to the universe
accepting herself as a creature on a blue gingham covered stick of furniture.
She doesn't wish the cushions were stuffed with feathers
she doesn't worry the curtains
which are trapped behind it
and don't hang straight as a consequence.
She just sprawls on the end
spreading herself as thinly as possible
on the pillow and the seat
cocking an ear when my pen scritches across the paper
slashing in the lines for a checkerboard pattern.

Taking comfort where you can find it

When she came to the phone last night she sounded so fragile, so near to tears and so bewildered.

"I did it wrong," she said. I didn't ask her to tell me what she'd done. My sister had already told me in an earlier phone conversation that Mom had used a pen knife. "If she'd really wanted to kill herself she'd have used the scissors. They were sharp," my sister said.

I found myself wondering if she'd made a mess of her clothing. Was there blood on her sheets? Mom told me that the nursing home staff had called for an ambulance and then she was at the psychiatric hospital. "I thought it was taking a long time to get there and then the driver said we weren't going to the regular hospital," she said.

Mom feels a need to visit the hospital on a regular basis. When she stayed with me, before we moved to Florida, we averaged a trip to the emergency room about every three weeks. She'd go and the staff would hook her up to all kinds of equipment and they'd monitor her for an hour or two and then send her home. She'd be okay for a few weeks and then something would trigger another anxiety attack and her heartrate would jump and she'd have to go again.

Invariably, it happened over a weekend, when she couldn't see her doctor. My husband felt sorry for her but he used to get very frustrated by what he thought was a waste of time and resources. "Do you think you're having a heart attack?" he'd ask her sternly and she'd tell him no. "Then you don't need to go to the E.R. Emergency rooms are for emergencies. You're not in danger of dying so you don't need to go."

Sometimes a talking to was what she wanted and she'd subside for a day or two. But sometimes she'd insist she needed a doctor to look at her. When my husband took her he always fumed a little afterward when the medical staff would send her home without having changed anything in her list of medicines. He kicked himself for giving in to her panic.

I remember a story Mom told me about the time right after she'd given birth to one of my older brothers. She was hemorrhaging badly and suddenly she could see herself below where the doctors and nurses were busily trying to save her life. She floated up and away and then saw a light and started toward it. Then she was stopped. I can never remember who it was she said stopped her progress toward the light. It was two or three people, I remember that, and one of them was a saint, I remember her telling me that, too.

She said these people stopped her and told her she had to go back, that it wasn't time for her to go yet. She said she argued with them about this, that she wanted to go on toward the light but that they were insistent that she couldn't, not yet. And so she went back, she said, but she was angry that she'd been turned away.

She would have been around 35 years old then. I always think about the pull of that light on her and how powerful it must've been to tempt her away from a family of now five boys and a husband. Or, alternatively, how unhappy she must've been to want to leave so soon.

Maybe when you're freed from your body you leave your emotional, glandular self along with it. As her child I try to think up reasons for her to want to leave me and this one is as comforting as any other.

I've been here before

My brother left a message on my answering machine yesterday morning, "Marie, it's your brother. Call me as soon as you can," and I thought, "It's Mom."

I know it's Mom because I can't think of anything else that would make his voice sound like my dad's voice -- deep, authoritative and brooking no nonsense. I call him and he answers, "Good morning," in a tuneful way so that I know my first thought, that Mother had died or was mortally ill is wrong. He wouldn't sound so cheerful, I think, so normal, if it was really bad.

He rants for a little while about the upcoming election. "It doesn't matter who we elect! We're fucked, either way! They're both going to raise taxes!" I ask him if this is why he called, hoping that this will, after all, turn out to be nothing more than a brother/sister jam session, bu he says no, and all at once he's sober again, serious. "Mother tried to kill herself last night by means of a sharp implement to her wrist." "One wrist?" I ask. "One wrist," he says. "So, not a serious attempt?" "No, not a serious attempt."

I feel sorry for my brother because it's him that's closest in proximity to Mom than anyone else, so it's him that has to deal with Mom. It sounds bad, to say it like that, "deal with Mom," but there isn't any other way to think of this thing with my mother.

WEATHERING THE WEATHER: A week in the life of Tropical Storm Fay

Day 1 - Supposed to have a hurricane by next week. Jacksonville mayor says prepare now. Not sure what to do. Fill water bottles? Have a shower? Replenish liquor cabinet? Decide to take the dog for walk. Then think about panicking.

Day 2 - Pace around house, look for things to do. Dust the piano, fix the blind in bedroom, do laundry. Start sorting things. Wait for Fay. Supposed to be tropical storm strength when she gets to Jacksonville. TV weathermen tout their Doppler radar reading skills. "We've got DOUBLE DOPPLER RADAR and we know how to use it!"

Day 3 - Fay stalls south of Jacksonville. Watch the news, track the storm online and start to feel a tiny bit anxious. Open bag of Doritos. Think it's good these storms are spaced out every few weeks or I'd be a blimp by November. Give kids permission to eat Pop Tarts even though they're technically part of storm food stockpile. Realize if I didn't have a wholesale club membership, I'd probably go broke buying snack food. Review new vocabulary words: maximum sustained wind gusts, wind shear, category I, category II, tropical storm, tropical depression.

TV weatherman predicts if storm breaks up then the worst we get will be rain bands. Doesn't sound terrible. Think seriously of getting a DC to AC converter for the car to power the fridge. Slap myself and try to remember that this is an adventure. Stare at Doppler radar. Try to see a pattern in the waves of blue, green, yellow and orange. News anchor announces, "No school tomorrow or the day after. Keep the kids home to help prepare for the storm."

Moved everything close to the house last week and now it looks like none of it will have to come indoors. No room for it anyway. Think about starting a window painting. Haven't gone for a walk or a run in three days. Start to feel fat.

Read through the messages on internet forum. They're equally divided between panicked newbies trying to get definitive answers to the question, "If it's coming, how scared should I be?" and relaxed veterans who shrug their shoulders and reminisce about storms gone by, "Remember 2004? That was the year from hurricane hell!"

Day 4 - Make repeated trips to the computer to check www.weatherunderground.com. Stare at storm tracking and 5-day forecast screens and play the satellite animations over and over again. Wonder why they don't update them every fifteen minutes instead of just eight times per day. Think about installing storm shutters, remember I don't have any. Wonder if it's too late to go get plywood from Lowe's. Eat rest of Doritos. Lay in bed, listen to crickets and cicadas, sure it's one of the warning signs of a huge hurricane in the book, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," that I read last year.

Day 5 - Move all non-perishable food items into the dining room. Only room in the house that doesn't have windows. If roof blows off we'll have food at least. Need water jugs there, too, and a bucket with a garbage bag and kitty litter in case we can't get to the toilet. Where do I put the mattresses? Go looking for bag of ranch flavored Doritos. Make mental note to save nacho cheese flavored Doritos for last next time. Marvel that storms are so big that they take days to move just a few miles.

Day 6 - Stare outside at trees for signs of incipient blowage. Wonder if the line of pines on the east side of the house will act as a wind break to prevent riding lawnmower from being picked up like a child's toy and whipped into the neighbor's house or if they'll just fall over and crush everything in their path. Look up how to calculate height of the tree using yard stick and protractor to see if it could hit house. Check weatherunderground.com again.

Start making dish rags from old athletic socks. Decide to throw socks away instead after realizing that I'd be too embarrassed to use them. Clean some more. Realize that if storm drags on much longer I'll have cleared off every available surface in my house just in time for it to float away.

Cut up old blue jeans to make hurricane afghan, consisting of small squares with spirals embroidered on them. Add designs of swirling clouds, crashing waves, Doritos. Wish I had more chips. Wonder if it would be completely tacky to call neighbor to see if she has any. Notice that spirals have fewer coils the more embroidering I do. Wonder if this means I'm feeling more relaxed. Use up last of white embroidery floss and think seriously about going out during a lull to see if any craft stores are open. Picture self getting tased by cop for being stupid.

Start painting a window. Listen to weather man predict more rain, more flooding for today and tomorrow. Admire dexterity of person performing sign language next to the governor while he talks about what to do and what not to do. Notice there is no sign for "utilize" and "impacted."

Get phone call from neighbor that "There's a tornado headed straight for us." Gather children and dog and huddle on futon mattress in hallway. Listen to radio weatherman talk about bands of color on Doppler radar that only he can see. Decide the whole thing is ridiculous. Wait until five minutes before official end of warning issued by national weather service and then disperse. Lose power for long enough to find and light two oil lamps and four candles. Listen to someone's generator running a block away. Congratulate myself on not buying one.

Day 7 - Fay gone like she never existed. Air is liquid and warm. No standing water in the yard, even. Put on running shoes, leash the dog and go out to take our chances. While out of house review lessons learned over past week: Buy less snack food, stock up on craft supplies, turn off television, read more books, panic less, breathe more.

Family Recipe

Our trip up north so far is turning out a bit differently from last year. For one, it’s just me and my two teenage sons squeezed into the Corolla, instead of five of us all spread out in the Expedition. For another, we had to roll down all the windows three times the first day to let the "bad" air out. Boys have no inhibitions about releasing inner demons in mixed company. Car games tend to have a different focus as well. I quit playing "20 Questions" when the last three answers turned out to be complicated weapons systems that only the boys knew anything about and which subsequently prompted arguments about classification ("It's a rail gun!" "No, it's not! It's a mass driver gun!"). Most of the drive I spent thinking ahead to my family reunion, part of our annual summer vacation.

When I was a child our family reunions were held at my uncle's house. He and my aunt lived on a lake and they had a big L-shaped dock that stretched a hundred feet out into the water. After arriving we'd spend the day getting sunburned, playing badminton in the big back yard, swimming in the cool water, hoping that this was the year we'd be allowed past the second ladder to the deep end and the diving board where the big kids hung out.

Always my mother made sheets of baked chicken and a pan or two of apple slices to bring for the potluck and the smells of both would make us crazy the whole drive there. I remember the women in the kitchen, heating food, the men outside sitting in lawn chairs or playing lawn darts. There was a player piano in the rec room in the basement and we kids, there must’ve been a hundred of us, would take turns pushing the pedals and watching the keys magically go up and down, not really hearing the old timey music, just hurrying through to the end because the fun part was flipping the lever to make the paper roll rewind, and listening to the snap, snap, snap sound as the little metal hook on the end released and whipped around over and over.

When it was time to eat we'd make a beeline toward the back of the house where the cloth covered picnic tables held stacks of plates and plastic silverware. A line would form and, shivering in our wet bathing suits, we’d shuffle up either side of the food table under our parents’ watchful eyes, careful not to take dessert before we'd had some "real" food first.

Besides my mom’s chicken, and my aunt’s chicken, and my other aunt’s chicken, there would be meatballs in barbecue sauce, bowls of potato salad, soft rolls with butter, lemon cake and fruit pies. There were huge watermelons cooled in the lake, then cut into half moon slices. These were eaten standing up and a little hunched over so the juice dribbling down the sides would miss your bathing suit. We ate them all the way to the white rind, saving a mouth full of seeds to use as ammo on our cousins.

After lunch my uncle would take us out in his motorboat, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other on the back of the seat, standing and watching the waterskiers skimming over the water behind us. I never attempted to waterski, sure I couldn't in a million years attain that perfect balance between the pull of the boat and the push on the skis, admiring the others who circled around and around the lake and made a game of letting go of the handle at just the right moment to come coasting all the way back in to the dock.

Things have changed in the past twenty years. My aunt and uncle no longer host our reunions. Most of their generation is gone now. Instead of meeting at someone’s home we get together at a park with picnic pavilions and a swimming beach. There are fewer of us that show up every year, partly because we’re more scattered and partly because it’s difficult to commit the time and effort to come.

As children we played in the water until we were so tired we could barely lift our arms to wave goodbye and we sprawled in the back of the car, sleeping all the way home. Now we’ve become the grown ups we watched as children, content to sit at the picnic tables under the shelter, talking for hours and looking at photos.

There are ultimate Frisbee games played in the field at the front of the park and someone usually brings water pistols. This year my sister brought a ball and chalk to play four square. At the end of the day we gather together for one of my all time favorite games in which a family member sets the camera to take a picture and then runs like hell to get in the shot over and over because someone keeps saying they blinked until finally said family member falls down from heat exhaustion while everyone else cracks up.

In an effort to help boost the turnout numbers this year my brother organized a recipe book to mark our reunion. He contacted family members via email this past spring requesting pictures and recipes. I put it together on the computer, then posted it online for downloading. We got a good response from the families with over thirty pages of recipes, covering a broad range of foods from appetizers to desserts, although there was a curious duplication of effort regarding a particular dish so that at one point we thought about calling it the Marfia Big Book of Baked Bean Recipes.

My brother hopes the recipe book will become part of the reunion tradition for us, binding us closer together as a family, encouraging us to add recipes and pictures to it every year. Everyone will be able to participate regardless of where they live and no matter what age they are. We’ve already heard from family members who want to be included in next year’s book, so I’m sure it will be a success. My favorite picture in this year’s book is the group shot on the front. Everyone’s laughing because I just made it into the shot before the camera went off. Unfortunately, I blinked.

BEACH NIGHT

"Under no circumstances are we cancelling tonight."
"Okay."
"If there's a tornado, maybe, but anything else, we're still on,
all right?"
"Right. (Tornado, maybe?)"

I'm on the phone with my friend, talking about our beach night
tonight. Once a month, on the night of the full moon, we drive to
Mickler's Landing, a public beach south of Jacksonville. We bring
folding chairs, blankets when it's cold, thermoses of herbal tea and
something we've written to read aloud. We've tossed around a few
names for our group, including the Full Moon Women's Writing Circle,
the Moon Maidens and the Loonies, but nothing has really stuck. It's
the getting together that counts.

Earlier this month we had to cancel our plans because a newcomer to
our group had a previous commitment. My friend and I have
decided we're going to meet up anyway, just the two of us. "I really
need this," she says, and I realize that I do as well.

When I moved to Jacksonville from Ludington I left more than a house
behind, but it took me a while to sort out what else was missing.
Some things were obvious, like dentists and produce markets and
trails through the woods. Some things took a little longer to
identify, like where to drink coffee while writing in the morning,
the best place to sit while talking on the phone and faces you know
and who know you back.

When we arrrive at the beach we walk to a flat spot, then arrange our
chairs and take turns reading what we've written. This month's topic
is "The path not taken." My friend decided in the middle of writing
her essay that it was actually about parts of herself that she'd
failed to nurture. My piece turned out to be about learning to love
the life you've got instead of the one you wish you had.

After reading we walk up and down along the water, carrying our
sandals, looking for shells. I recently borrowed a book from the
library about decorating with sea shells and so I'm gathering
materials for a project. I don't know what I'll make, only that
I'll need lots of shells to make it with. We pick up orange, brown, blue,
striped, smooth and ridged shells and put them, whole and fragmented,
into a bucket.

Back in Michigan the only shells I've ever found are zebra mussels
and snails. When I was a teenager I would collect lucky stones, small
fossilized plant segments with a hole through the middle. I got to be
pretty good at seeing them among all the other stones on the beach.
I'd like to develop that skill down here to spot shark teeth. I tell
my friend that I won't feel like I've really settled here until I
find one for myself. I've been studying them in the stores so I can
see the shape in my mind. She says she's been here twelve years and
hasn't found a single one.

In Ludington, past First Curve, the beach is lined with dunes. On
this beach in Jacksonville as far as we can see in either direction
there are lines of mansions staring out to sea. We talk about what it
would be like to live in one. "Maybe it would be like living in a
magazine photo shoot," she says. "Too clean and perfect, like nobody
lives there." I think about my own house, evidence of life scattered
over every surface -- dishes, clothes, books, receipts, loose change,
and lately, shells.

Most of these houses seem empty, with long rows of dark windows. My
friend says she and her husband decided a long time ago it wouldn't
be worth it to live in one of them. "You'd have to evacuate for every
hurricane," she says. "And you have to replace the light fixtures all
the time because they corrode in the salt air so quickly." She adds,
"I wouldn't mind walking through one, though, just to see what it was
like."

I think that if I had a house on the water I'd never leave it. But
I've never lived on an ocean. Maybe, when the sea rose up and crashed
against the shore I wouldn't want to stick around to see what
happened next. It's not something I'm likely to experience anyway.
Shoreline property is even more expensive down here in Florida than
it is back in Michigan and, by the looks of these places, once you
have the land, you're required to build a castle on it.

My friend and I return to our chairs and then talk until nearly
midnight. We speculate about whether the lights floating slowly by on
the horizon are a barge or a cruise ship. Occasionally a helicopter
flies past, hugging the shoreline, probably from Mayport, a naval
base just north of us. We wave but they don't wave back. I tell her
about my chopstick diet and she tells me about her daughter's dream
to fly an airplane. Eventually we stop talking and just lean back in
our chairs and look at the stars. I think about how the Big Dipper I
see here is the same one I see when I'm in Ludington. When the
mosquitos come out we pack up to go home.

As I drop my friend off at her house I ask her what next month's
writing topic is. "Moments of joy," she says. Piece of cake, I think.
I'll start with tonight and go from there.

Fair Game

Back in Michigan tourism season is just getting under way. There are more visitors crowding the beaches and walking the state park trails. You have to park your car a little farther away from the entrance at Wal-mart. The stores, restaurants and galleries are open seven days a week instead of "by chance" and there are fishing tournaments and fireworks and parades and art fairs to look forward to. I feel nostalgic thinking about all the cool stuff I'm missing up north.

So when an artist friend asked me if I'd be interested in selling my window paintings at the Lake Asbury Pottery and Art Fair just south of Jacksonville I told her, "Sure." It seemed like a pretty good deal. She said the organizer of the event was looking for more vendors, the entrance fee was cheap and she'd even loan me her tent. I thought about how I'd enjoyed strolling through the art fairs in Ludington in the past and how I'd always wanted to try to sell my stuff in an art show. It would be fun to hang out with other artists and watch people browse through the booths. I pictured a pretty green lawn crowded with tents and the spaces between filled with folks in brightly colored summer clothing. Maybe I'd get lucky and sell some stuff. How hard could it be?

Right away I threw myself into preparations for the show. I made lists of materials I'd need to make more window paintings, like more window sashes and window paint. I started thinking about things I'd need to sell the finished work, like a credit card imprinter and a receipt book. I thought about how to arrange my booth to create an inviting retail space. I'd have a guest book available for people to sign up to get regular updates on my latest art. I'd have a giveaway at the end of the show. I'd have three pricing tiers — a high end, a mid-range and a low end product — to tempt every customer no matter how much money they had to spend. I'd craft free-standing sculptures to hang my paintings on. I'd make eye contact with everyone who passed by my booth because as I'd once smugly told my then six-year-old daughter who was trying to sell Girl Scout cookies at K-mart, "If you don't ask for the sale, they don't have to buy."

I had plans. Unfortunately, they were more suited to a six month lead time instead of three weeks, which was all I had. Instead of 30 paintings I ended up with nine. I didn't have time to make 50 window clings, only 21. The mid-range set of products never happened. The clever sculptures to hold the paintings devolved into precarious bamboo tri-pods, held together at the top with twine. After three weeks of furious activity I was tired and discouraged and wondered how I'd ever thought this was going to be an easy project.

The day of the art fair was a beautiful one, pleasantly warm, with a light breeze. The sun shone brilliantly through the leaves of the tree under which I had set up my tent. I had hung my paintings and strung up the window clings between the tent supports. From the booth space to my right a pair of watercolorists came over to offer encouragement. "These will sell," said Edith, after introducing herself. "They're beautiful." I felt reassured about making the decision to come and was grateful for her comments.

I carefully aligned my credit card imprinter with the edge of the table. I had special business cards stacked in a neat pile, ready to give away, and my cell phone was close at hand, pre-programmed to dial the credit card authorization number if a customer wanted to buy a window painting with a credit card. I daydreamed about quitting my day job and making art 24-7 in a cute little art studio/gallery in my back yard.

Al, the vendor on my left, asked me to watch his booth while he made a final dash to the restrooms before the show opened. "Remember, $2,000 takes it all," he joked as he left.

It was beautiful all day, perfect art fair weather. But no one took advantage of it. Well, that's not precisely true. There were about sixty people who came to the show and that includes toddlers and dogs. I found out weeks afterwards that there were two other art events happening at the same time as the one where I was, each well-established, well-attended and well-publicized. Funny how you can completely not recognize a losing proposition when you're blinded by hopeless optimism.

Later that day, Al told me that Sundays were terrible sales days at any art fair he'd ever been to. He was trying to cheer me up. I didn't point out that it was Saturday. He left again to use the facilities, but this time dropped the price for everything in his booth to $500. I'm pretty sure he was still joking.

At the end of the day, when we were packing up to go I ended up buying a bird feeder from Al. I did it to thank him for helping me set up and tear down my tent, and also for his kindness in not mentioning that when I first got there I arranged my booth so that it faced away from the flow of foot traffic. "I figured you knew what you were doing," he said.

The day wasn't a total loss. I had one person sign up for my mailing list who asked if I did work on commission. I may have gotten drool on my shirt then. And toward the tail end of the day a gallery owner stopped to admire some of the paintings and ask if I'd be interested in selling them at her shop. I nearly asked her to adopt me. And I sold two clings for a total of $14.

I'm not sorry I did the art fair. I met some good people, gained experience giving impromptu workshops on window painting to other equally depressed vendors and learned that displaying artwork at leg cocking height is extremely dangerous when there are loose dogs around.

What's more I can now cross this off my list of things to do before I die. I've moved on to the next item which is, "Learn How to Fly." How hard can it be?

Trash talking

"What an amazing coincidence," I tell my husband. "Ludington is having their spring clean up the weekend that you'll be there hunting for morels."

"Let me guess. You want me travel 2,000 miles so I can trash pick windows?"

"Please?"

My husband is leaving to go to Ludington this weekend to spend a few days combing the woods for morel mushrooms. This is an annual outing for him and he's looking forward to the trip. Maybe he'll be lucky and find lots of fungi. He's bringing his GPS unit to be sure of hitting every one of his secret spots in the woods. Last year he forgot to take it and he's sure he missed finding the morel motherlode for that reason. I'm glad he's going, but not because of mushrooms. It's spring clean up time in Ludington and he's promised to bring me back some trash.

In Ludington in the spring people put out all the bulky items that aren't allowed during the rest of the year. This is the signal for flat beds and pick up trucks to crawl along the streets, looking for free stuff on the curb. When we lived in Ludington it was a bigger deal than Easter. We'd pack up the kids, the dog and Grandma in whichever vehicle had the most storage capacity and drive up and down the streets of Ludington, looking for treasure. Once we brought home a heavy old cash register, a big brass one with a segmented drawer on the bottom and numbers that popped up behind the glass along the top. The kids played store with it for a year and then we put it out on our own curb during the following spring clean up, tired of barking our shins on it in the living room. I like to think that it's entertained eight or nine other famlies with small, button-pushing children since then, endlessly rescued from and discarded on a different curb every spring.

We used to take the opportunity provided by spring clean up time to empty our own house of old computer parts, building materials and things that were one or two parts shy of being garage sale fodder.

I wasn't sure of the proper etiquette during those times when I'd be outside hauling things to the street and someone would pull up to look over my castaway items. Should I greet the lookers with a "Hi, how are you?" and an offer to help them load up or would that be embarrassing? Would acknowledging their presence drive them away like startled deer caught in mid-forage? Maybe they'd prefer it if I just pretended they weren't there at all.

I settled this the way I usually do, by not quite doing one thing or the other. I'd wave a little, smile a lot and fade back to the house to watch from behind the living room curtains, commenting under my breath. "Yes! They're taking the couch! Hey, hey, hey! What about that piece of countertop over there? C'mon, buddy. You know you want it. Yes! It's history! It's outta there!"

I'm a rubbish picker, a rag puller and a dumpster diver from way back. Along the window sill in my office lie trophies accumulated during neighborhood walks: a Fiona head, some wire, a chewed up scoop, a rubber heart that says "Barbie" on it, a green plastic lizard, and a purple bird-shaped cookie cutter. Once I found a heavy buck knife and I picked it up thinking my husband might like it. A few steps farther on I found the sheath for it. I decided it had probably belonged to a teenager. They tend to congregate along the ditches down here at night, drinking their parents' Natural Light and casually boinking in the bushes. I felt no guilty twinges for taking the knife home, figuring a slew of flyers saying "FOUND: BIG FAT KNIFE - CALL TO IDENTIFY" posted on telephone poles would net me a whole lot more trouble than I cared to endure.

There isn't a spring clean up in Jacksonville. People don't put out trash down here, they sell it. Recently I've been scanning the roadside for wood windows. I need them to paint pictures on to sell at an art fair that's coming up. They're amazingly difficult to find around here and it's particularly galling to know that I used to pick up old windows by the boatload every spring in Ludington for free. Unfortunately, down here they're considered vintage and priced accordingly.

I visited a salvage place called Burkhalter's last weekend looking for some single pane wood sashes, lured by the pictures of cement elephants, rows and rows of pink and blue toilets and demolition slide shows on their website. They're located right in the middle of old Jacksonville, about a half hour north of where I live. I found windows by the hundred there, years of dust on them, most of the glass broken, covered with dirt and grime, stacked upright in an old shed that my son, who was with me, declared too creepy to enter.

Starting price for these crumbling beauties was $20 each with additional numbers of panes adding to the total. I asked the guy minding the store to cut me a deal on four and he nearly choked. Obviously he was very attached to them.

I miss spring clean up in Ludington -- the air of anticipation, the annual appeal in the newspaper asking people not to put stuff out until the night before their scheduled pick up date, the cars full of avid treasure seekers, necks craning out the windows, pulling over to grab a lawn chair or two, only to exchange them on the next block for a better looking pair on another pile.

But most of all I miss getting enough raw material to keep me chin deep in art projects for the rest of the year in exchange for a few hours driving up and down the streets. Last week I caved and bought enough windows to see me through the art fair but it's not the same. There's something addictive about finding cool and funky junk and turning it into cooler and funkier art. It's the thrill of the hunt mixed in with my natural cheapskate tendencies that makes me do things like ask my husband to look for trash for me while he's on vacation. Any normal person would be happy with a postcard, although if he happens to find cool ones in a pile somewhere, I hope he'll bring them back. I need some for a decoupage project and free's a great price.

A beautiful season

"I hate working in the garden," snarls my oldest son. I ignore him because, according to my newest expert book on child rearing, "Animal Training Techniques for Parents Who Have Tried Just About Everything and Are Totally Desperate," I must ignore the behaviors I don't want and reward the behaviors that I do want. Right now I want my boys to help me plant the garden. They're not showing any signs that they're even remotely interested in doing this and, according to the book, I shouldn't force them to do anything they don't initiate themselves, either purposefully or accidentally.

On the other hand, I need to get this garden in sometime this century, so I decide to help things along.

"I'll make shakes as soon as it's done," I tell them. This particular bribe works because, as a part of my laissez faire approach to parenting and also to encourage them to at least fantasize about living on their own, I'm no longer making meals for them on a regular basis, and so, since it's nearly noon and they haven't yet figured out how cereal in a box, bowls in a cupboard, spoons in a drawer and milk in the fridge all come together, they're starving.

Eventually, we all make it out to the garden. I'm armed with a map of what is to be planted where, a rake, a hoe, some stakes, string, seed packets and a lot of determination. I'll need that last thing in the face of all this decided lack of enthusiasm. Currently, they're standing around the garden perimeter, looking at me as though I'm an evil overseer and they're the oppressed peons. "You start planting this corn," I tell one, pointing to one end of the garden, "and you can make hills for pumpkins," I say, marking off another patch. They sigh and get to work.

My husband cheerfully rototilled a monstrous-sized garden plot against the fence between ours and the neighbor's yard last weekend. I can't help but notice that since he's gotten a rototiller there's a lot more garden than there was when he just had a shovel and his back to make a plot with.

The soil is cool and dry and sandy. My youngest son is carefully shaping little mountains, using the yard stick to determine the proper radius of each mound before he begins and then plunging it through the center after he's done to make sure that each is 9 inches tall. He's the meticulous one. The other son is making what can only be described as organic looking furrows for corn, having obviously decided that stakes and string are for losers. I figure that the corn will come up anyway, straight or crooked furrowing aside, and I praise his artistic way with a line as well as the other child's masterful engineering abilities.

About this time of year in Ludington I would be busily talking myself out of starting vegetables from seed. There would still be a threat of snow in the forecast or an ice storm, and I'd be hoping the crocuses and hyacinths in the back yard would survive it. My tulips would be thinking about poking their heads out of the ground in another month, but I'd be out there every day anyway looking for signs of incipient blooming.

Here in Jacksonville, planting season starts in March, with none of the desperate longing for green shoots that presages springtime in Michigan. You go from hot weather where everything is wilted to watery weather where everything has molded to cooler weather where everything is dulled to warm weather where everything has suddenly sprouted. No dark depressing time in weather or in attitude from which to recover. Spring happens regardless of the fact that I haven't suffered through bone shattering cold and consequently don't feel that I've done anything to deserve such a beautiful season.

Yesterday I took the daffodil bulbs that my neighbor gave me way back in January out of the vegetable bin in the fridge and put them in pots on the patio. It seems like cheating, shocking them like that. My neighbor, more used to the seasons down here, is already enjoying yellow daffodil blooms. My bulbs got tired of waiting for me to remember them and sprouted in the shopping bag I'd wrapped them in, tucked away behind the carrots and broccoli.

The boys and I manage to get two kinds of corn and twelve hills of pumpkins and squash planted before we call it quits for the day. They're cheerful going back to the house, as well as filthy. Amazing what a little grubbing in the dirt will do for even the most sullen teenager. There is more garden to plant on the south side of the house and another patch on the north side that's due to get gourds and cukes and flowers. We'll finish it up later in the week. Barring any more unauthorized rototillage by my husband, we should have everything in the ground by end of the month.

I listen as my sons congratulate themselves. Gardening isn't so bad. They can see light at the end of the tunnel. This, of course, is where they're completely wrong. I set chocolate shakes down in front of them to reward them for their good behavior like it says in my book and then I go research cookie recipes for next week, when we have to start weeding.

Running down a dream

This morning I am sitting at the table on the patio at my home in Florida, waiting for my body to stop sweating so I can go inside. Sweat condenses into puddles wherever my body comes in contact with the chair or the table. I feel spongy, like I'm made of frogs. My legs feel like someone has been hitting them with ball peen hammers. Little uncontrollable muscle twitches run up and down my thighs. My face is flushed and I smell vaguely like vegetable soup. My husband came out a little earlier to give me a hug and then noticed the steam wafting off me and recoiled. "You've been running," he said.

Last week, after stepping on the scale in the bathroom, a combination of hope and dread in my heart (doesn't regretfulness use up any calories at all?), I came to the inescapable conclusion that I was never ever going to be the kind of person who is satisfied with a half cup of anything and so I started running again.

I had successfully quit running almost two years ago after we'd first moved here. I had lots of good reasons for stopping. It was too hot, there wasn't any good place to do it that didn't require driving to get there, and my feet hurt. Since then I've resigned myself to the heat (it's only jungle hot three months out of the year) as well as the lack of running trails (there are probably venomous snakes sunning themselves around every turn anyway) and found a foot doctor (funny how a really expensive pair of inserts can fix so much that is wrong with a person).

So I've officially rejoined the mouth-breathers on the side of the road, dodging traffic, school kids and stray dogs every morning. My own dog comes with me, and should she provide the wherewithal, I carry, in addition to my radio and headset, a bag of warm poop. Sometimes I like to imagine how it could become a useful slinging weapon should some felon decide I was worth an assault. (Here, you knave! Take this!)

Running is a way to reduce stress, or at least re-direct it. The constant panic that I feel when I run (I can't possibly be getting enough air to keep this up past the next segment on "All Things Considered") leaves no room in my head for other worries (what if my legs fall off before I make it back home?).

Running focuses my mind on what's really important. I don't care anymore about what my neighbors think of the outfit in which I've chosen to appear in public (baggy black sweatpants with artistic bleach spots on them and a t-shirt that's been washed so many times it's practically transparent) because all I want to do is get done running as quickly as I can in order to get the whole soggy mess off and camp under a cold shower.

Running is paradoxical. While it's the quickest way to get my required minimum daily exercise over with, it feels like it takes forever to accomplish. I set and re-set goals for myself every fifty feet (I'll walk when I get to the next driveway. Maybe when I reach the next beer can. I'll walk now).

Running is something that my body does with or without my brain's consent. There were times when I was sure I'd talked myself out of going for a run (It's too cold; it's too hot; it's too early; it's too late; I think I might be sick; I'll run twice as long tomorrow), only to find myself jogging along the side of the road once again and not really remembering how I came to be there. (So obviously, running also brings on short term memory loss. Probably this is a minus.)

Best of all, running means I can eat as much as I want whenever I want (choose between buttered popcorn or potato chips with sour cream? Heck no, I'm having both!) as long as I don't care what it is, since by the time I finish running I'm too hot and smelly to go to the store and get anything really good (I guess I'll finish up that bag of wrinkled carrots in the vegetable bin and pretend that they're cheese puffs).

Last night I dreamed that I was running through the woods. My legs felt strong, my breathing was slow and even, my feet gobbled up the ground, nimbly skipping over the path. I felt as though I could go on forever, never tiring. When I awoke I put on my shoes and my sweatpants and my hoodie. I grabbed my radio and my dog and went running.

It was hard. I had to stop and walk every other block to catch my breath. My legs were heavy and slow and it took forever to get back home. Sweat dripped off the ends of my hair, down my back and the sides of my face. It all felt familiar and absolutely wonderful. The best part is, there's a big barrel of cheese puffs with my name on it waiting for me in the kitchen.

Morning Ritual

I make it last as long as I can.
One mouthful, set the cup down.
Another mouthful, feel how much cooler it's gotten since the last one!
A final mouthful and I'm staring at the blank white innards of my mug,
unbelieving.
23.5 hours to go before I can have another.
Damn.
It wasn't even good coffee.

Rock and Load

It's Saturday morning and I'm listening to my son doing color commentary on the state of the refrigerator.

"This is disgusting. Yuck. Who put this in here?"

He marches out of the kitchen and thrusts a half empty can of green chilis toward me.

"Mom, are we saving this?"

I don't want to crush my child's newly found zeal for search and destroy style housekeeping, but I happen to know that my husband put this can of chilis in the fridge, doubtless planning to use it for some culinary masterpiece in the near future. If I tell my son to throw it away, my husband might be annoyed. I weigh my husband's probable future irritation with my son's overwhelming need to use the bulldozer approach to cleaning the refrigerator, i.e., everything not nailed down gets pushed into the nearest garbage can, resulting in an appliance that is sparkly clean, fresh smelling, and above all, emptier than when you started.

I recall feeling exactly this way a long time ago, just prior to our move from Grand Rapids to Ludington, except that it was a house I was emptying instead of a refrigerator. I'd been upstairs cleaning the attic and stumbled across a large sack in one corner. Inside the sack were rough pieces of alabaster, pink and white and gray-veined, ranging from a few as small as a baseball to some as big as a loaf of bread.

Maybe it had something to do with being hot and dusty from hours of clearing the detritus that had accumulated after twelve years of cohabitative bliss, maybe it was because I knew that I'd only scratched the surface of what still needed to be organized, maybe it was because I distinctly recalled having moved this same sack of rocks at least three times in the last seven years, but right then I knew I'd never hated anything as much as I hated those rocks.

It didn't matter anymore that I and my husband had driven six hours to collect these very stones, sacrificing an entire afternoon to climb around on quarry piles in the hot sun, determined to find the perfect raw material for sculpting candle holders, incense burners and miniature busts.

That day in the attic I had exactly 72 hours before I had to pile everything we owned into a 24-foot truck. The contents of that sack were no longer potential art projects, they were a bag of rocks that weighed about thirty pounds and they represented everything I hated about moving.

I hated having to organize and pack up our stuff in order to move it when it was only going to get unpacked and disorganized the moment we reached our destination. I hated making choices about what had to go or stay and I particularly hated making choices about someone else's belongings, which these rocks technically were. They weren't just my rocks. They were my husband's rocks, too.

That's why I decided to do what I did. After all, he was already at the new place, possibly working hard and not having to pack up the old house. I was resentful about the whole arrangement. Also I was getting help loading the U-Haul from my brother and already was having a hard time justifying the bajillion books that were coming with us. ("Don't they have books in Ludington?") How could I possibly explain a bag of rocks? ("Marie, did you know that this sack has rocks in it?" "Yes." "Don't they have rocks in Ludington?")

Decision made, I crashed the sack down three flights of stairs and dragged it to the curb for the garbage men to take away in the morning. If I didn't accomplish anything else that day it was fine, because the bag of rocks was gone and that was four square feet of misery I wouldn't have to cram on the truck.

The next day on the phone, my husband asked me if I'd remembered to pack a certain bag of rocks. Naturally I told him that I had no idea where they were. Thinking about it fifteen years later, I'm sure I'd throw them away and lie about it again, no problem.

Now my son stands in front of me with can in hand. He's transferred his irritation with me for giving him this particular chore to the refrigerator itself and his body is stiff with that air of righteousness that's so conducive to a good cleaning session. I know exactly how he feels.

"Go ahead and pitch it," I say. "I'll think of something to tell your dad."

What I've learned (since yesterday)

Living on a budget is a lot harder than I thought it would be and even though the little budget monitor in Quicken with the colored bars says I've overspent in six categories with two weeks left in January, I'm in the yellow in six more and green in the other twenty so it's all right.

My herbal tea tastes a lot better with lemon in it and it's worth $3.99 a bag to have the lemons in the house so I can drink it that way.

My family prefers to talk my ear off at the end of the day when I'm flat on my back in bed and hovering between guilty attentiveness and desperately sought after oblivion.

Some days my boys are perfectly ready to sit at the table and study math or listen to French tapes but other days they only settle down once they've been outside and beaten each other over the head with foam wrapped pvc pipes.

Darning a sock using six different colors of embroidery floss is a lot more satisfying than using just plain white. Sometimes I wish the holes were on the tops of my socks so I could more readily admire my patch jobs.

Doing embroidery is the best way to watch a scary movie because I'm so concentrated on what I'm doing that I can't see the graphic torture scenes that seem to be prominently featured in every dvd we get the the library lately and which will haunt me until the day I die.

The mail does get delivered on Martin Luther King Jr.'s actual birthday so this year my quarterly tax payment for January 15 will be one day late.

I don't need to print out my favorite color palette to use for a reference because it's in my head.

Drying sheets on a clothes line in the sun beats tumble drying every single time even if it takes two days on account of rain.

When I call my mother and there's an awkward silence in the middle of our conversation it's because she's holding the phone away from her ear and she can't tell that I've stopped talking.

I can sit on the couch for three hours at a time watching a football game between two teams that I couldn't care less about.

Sometimes when a child gets up in the middle of the night it's not because he's in agony from a muscle cramp or having an asthma attack or sleepwalking but just because he needs to use the bathroom.

As long as my son wants me to stop whatever I'm doing to come admire his computer animation project I will do it, even if I don't share his same fascination for mechanical killing machines and stick men.

Popcorn with butter and salt and Parmesan cheese will never take the place of Lay's Potato Chips with sour cream but it's pretty close.

The little signs indicating the changing seasons in northern Florida include: lizards and window frogs disappearing sometime around Christmas; red maples putting out new leaves at New Year's; seed packets going on sale at Walgreen's ten for a dollar two weeks before the Super Bowl.

Driving like a jerk just happens when you're in an SUV. When I drive my Natural Disaster other drivers slam on their brakes anticipating that I'll cut them off, so I usually do because when everyone is going 80 mph it's not a good idea to be messing with people's expectations.

Transformations

She's a lot younger in the mornings
before we begin the walk.
Her body is a coiled spring
the leash a live squirrel in her mouth.
She shakes and waggles and bounces.
Then we pass through the gate
and she's all business,
sniffing, peeing, heeling.
By the time we turn the last corner
she's acting her age,
doggedly making her way back
to food, water,
and the soft spot on the couch.

Making friends

I've begun to feel more at home here in the south and I think it's because I've finally made some new friends. I still have all my old friends back in Michigan, still write to them as often as I can, still plan on visiting when I make it back north, but there's nothing like having a girlfriend available for a cup of coffee and a good talk every now and then. That had been missing until just recently.

It was hard after we moved. I wasn't quite prepared for how isolated it would feel to be plopped down 1800 miles away from everything I knew. A friend who recently relocated from Colorado to Arizona said it was like "moving to Mars," and it was. I thought a little thing like a two-day drive wouldn't be such a big deal. I could always send pictures via email or chat with people online. And there was a Wal-mart on every corner down here, just like everywhere else. But it was weird. People talked differently. I had to keep asking my neighbor to repeat herself, tried faking comprehension a couple of times and then one day I broke down and asked her what some of her phrases actually meant. She didn't know either.

I recognized that I was lonely and, remembering what I had done when I first moved to Ludington, I called the Jacksonville Chamber and was shocked to discover that it was going to be a lot more expensive to become one with the local business community than it had been in my old home town. Truthfully, half the fun of going to the meetings in Ludington was sitting at a table with someone you knew. It was never about networking, unless you counted yakking with friends as networking.

In desperation I joined a health club. This worked a little better. At least I was around women for an hour a day. Unfortunately, we spent so much effort trying to hear the authoritative voice from the speakers telling us when to change stations that there was very little concentration left over for plain old girl talk.

I started to wonder if I wasn't doomed to be friendless in Florida. Maybe I'd already used up my quota for friends according to some universal scorecard. Maybe I just sucked as a friend and it was obvious to everyone but me. Or maybe I was just out of practice at finding friends. It had been a while since I'd had to start from scratch.

I thought about the first friend I ever had, a girl in kindergarten who drew square-butted horses with curly tails and Egyptian eyes. I began to draw horses like hers and that made us friends until someone stole my friend's affections by adding bows and ribbons to her own horse drawings. I could've drawn bows and ribbons too, but it wasn't something that made any sense to me as an artist. How did the ribbon get there? Horses can't put ribbons in their own manes. Where's the person putting in the bow and how would you draw him or her? While I was trying to figure out the repercussions of tail and mane adornment, my friend drifted away from me. The obvious lesson here was that friendship was fleeting, something I already knew. Or maybe it was that sometimes you just have to accept people as they are and not expect them to always make sense.

But lately things are looking up on the friendship front. I joined a homeschooling group back in August so once a week I'm surrounded by people as crazy about their children as I am about mine. I also have nodding acquaintances who I see nearly every day when I'm walking my dog. Admittedly I know more of the dogs' names than the humans who are with them, but we wave companionably to each other while determinedly keeping our animals on our own side of the street.

This past September I met a woman who has similar interests as me. She's homeschooling a daughter about my youngest son's age, and she likes to write but wishes she had more time to do it. Last month she passed along the location of a really great thrift store. I knew then that we were destined to become close. You know you have someone's trust when they declare out loud that old jewelry is the only kind worth wearing, that the pretty towel and candle holder in their kitchen used to be a gun rack, and that they're a sucker for sequined sweater sets for $4.99.

This new friend and I meet every full moon now for a "Beach Session" at a local park south of town. We bring folding chairs and hot tea and the latest updates on our children and husbands. The updating part can last several hours. Then we take out our flashlights and we read each other something we've written ourselves. It's my favorite part of the night, sharing a creative effort with a kindred spirit to the sound of the surf in front of us. I think about how the moon over our heads is shining on Ludington, too, and then home doesn't feel so far away. It's right here, with my friend.