We have a lot of possums in our neighborhood. They freak some folks out, but they’re great to have in your yard—they eat bugs like ticks and they’re immune to rabies.
But those possums don’t always stay in the yard. Andy and I found one in the garage one night, sitting in a bag of dog food, chowing down. He blinked once at us and kept eating kibble. The possum continued to stuff his unbothered little face as Andy dragged the bag out of the garage and into the yard. Eventually the possum sauntered off into the night, sated.
We got a giant plastic container for dog food storage the next day.
Andy and I had a rare date night at a fancy gala when our son Dalton was in middle school. I was excited that there would be dancing. Andy was excited there would be good food he didn’t have to cook. Dalton was excited to finally be at home, alone, with unlimited time on his gaming computer.
But no sooner had the dancing begun than I got a phone call: “MOM! There’s a possum in the kitchen!”
“What?! Are the animals attacking it?”
“It’s in the corner under the chair and the dog barked but couldn’t get to it. I locked the dog and Boss Cat in my bedroom.”
“Well done, we’re on our way!”
We hurriedly exited the event (WHICH WAS NOT CHEAP, ALAS FOR DESSERT) as Dalton texted me a picture:
Halfway home, Dalton called again: “I got it out of the house!”
“Great job! How?”
“I set up exercise mats and cushions blocking off every path except for one to the door. Then I opened the door, got a broom, and kind of herded it along the path until it ran out the door.”
We congratulated Dalton on his ingenuity and speculated that the very small possum squeezed under the gap in our security door, possibly to escape a predator. Except fleeing into a house with a bully mix and a fierce cat was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. That possum was darn lucky that 1) our house is small, with minimal open space between furnishings, and 2) Boss Cat preferred to hunt other predators.
After we hung up the phone, Andy shook his head and said, “I can’t believe he got the possum out of the house.”
And do men not notice all details, or are they unconsciously—or possibly VERY CONSCIOUSLY—selective?
I’d like to say they are selectively obtuse, but my hair stylist once cut off more than 12 inches of my hair; Andy didn’t notice until all our friends complimented my new look.
More recently, there was our clock:
For one of our anniversaries, I gave Andy a crystal and mirrored glass clock. It sat on our sideboard, where we could see it while watching TV or hanging out in the living room. It was invaluable when counting down to bedtime or calculating our son Dalton’s various pick up/drop off times for school, sports, and all other activities.
I looked at that clock multiple times a day for nearly a decade. I figured Andy did, too. Especially since the cat liked to knock it over with a loud THUNK when she was hungry. (The cat was always hungry.)
Recently the clock stopped working consistently (possibly due to years of thunking). Sometimes it would keep time after I changed the battery. Sometimes it wouldn’t. I pointed this out to Andy, saying, “Honey, the clock is having issues. If only there was, I dunno, an engineer who could look at it.”
Andy did not take that hint, nor any of the others I dropped over the next month. I gave up and found another clock online on sale—this one twice as big and three times heavier. It arrived while Andy was at work. I set it up, put the old clock in the garage, and waited for him to notice.
New Clock
The cat noticed right away. There was angry tail lashing when the new clock proved unthunkable, but cat moved on (i.e., attacked a nearby picture).
It’s been weeks since I replaced the old clock.
The new clock works.
Our framed photo of Dalton is now battered and covered in feline teeth marks, but the new clock has yet to be knocked over.
And Andy?
He still hasn’t noticed.
Old clock & new clock. Are you an Andy or do you see a difference?
Update: Andy read my post and insists that he “noticed the clock last week and just didn’t say anything.”
It’s a Sunday morning. I breeze into my son’s room with, “Good morning, sunshine! I’m gonna need your help cleaning up blood.”
Dalton groans. “Again?”
“Yep! It’s much easier for you to get the baseboards and under the dining room table.”
You may be wondering why. Because Dalton’s knees are three decades younger than mine and my husband’s, of course.
Wait. Was it the blood you were wondering about? Cleaning up blood is simply our new morning ritual. And not because we’ve embraced sacrifice.
It’s because of our dog. More specifically, his tail.
Tankie, our rescued staffy/cattle dog mix, wags his tail with unmatched ferocity. I say this having endured the lashings of master tail waggers. I grew up dodging a chocolate Labrador’s tail. I endured repeated beatings from the tail of Woofie (Dane-Labrador-American bulldog). And I would choose to be hit by Woofie’s tail while wearing shorts and sporting a severe sunburn over being hit with Tankie’s tail in padded gardening pants.
We no longer allow drinks on our coffee tables. Hell, we no longer allow ANY items on our coffee tables. A single whack from Tankie’s tail turns a Kleenex box into a dangerous projectile.
While I do not condone tail docking, I began to understand its history. Especially among cattle dogs.
The funny thing is, Tankie never cut his power tail on anything. I don’t know if that’s because said tail was battle hardened during his time on the streets of LA or if it’s genetic. But his tail could—and did—smash against everything from iron furniture to glass-edged tables to an angry cat’s claws without the skin ever breaking.
It took Tankie’s own teeth to draw blood.
While we were away among the sequoias in March (post to be written some day when I’m not spending hours cleaning up blood), Tankie had anal gland issues. An abscess formed and then ruptured. Our pet sitter thought Tankie stank and gave him a bath. This didn’t help the smell. It took our return and a trip to the vet to identify the culprit as the anal glands, which is a pretty common canine problem, though we’d had Tankie for years without his anal glands acting up.
Tankie got antibiotics and a cone to keep him from licking his butt.
Tankie, who is nicknamed “The Relentless,” because he never gives up trying to get you to throw a toy or ball for him even after he’s walked 5 miles and played ball for an hour, managed to contort himself enough to access the body part closest to his butt: the tip of his tail.
The tail mauling occurred overnight. When Tankie excitedly greeted us at 5 AM the following morning, his tail left a bloody trail on walls, doors, and furnishings.
Exhibit A: Bloody tail smear on Dalton’s bed frame
There was blood on curtains. The tablecloth. The floors. The white kitchen cabinets.
No rug escaped gory baptism.
Tankie’s tail wags with such force and intensity that blood landed in the upper corners of windows.
Exhibit B: Just one little spot of blood…out of thousands
Future owners of our house will someday find flecks of blood on the ceilings and wonder what gruesome murders we committed here.
We’ve spent the last month trying all kinds of bandaging and cone-like deterrents so the tail can heal enough to stop making our house look like it belongs in Nightmare on Elm Street).
Here Tankie models the “pillow cone” and a sock bandage.
Milton was in a pot. He smelled amazing and looked lovely. We gave him a few quarts of water every 2-3 days to keep him from drying out. If a little water seeped out, it was caught by a large, circular plastic tray under the pot.
We didn’t have to worry about Milton tipping over (too heavy!) or the cat playing in the water under the tree.
We didn’t have to mess with a stand. Milton was delivered to our living room and picked up from our living room. Easy-peasy, I thought.
Until I was on the floor, cleaning up pine needles after Milton’s departure.
I flipped back the rug.
There was MOLD. Nasty dark green mold in a few places on the rug, but mostly on the wood floor.
I was too freaked out to get a picture of our mold, but here’s a photo that looks similar from a Reddit thread on moldy floors.
How could this be?!
Milton’s tray didn’t leak. I was always checking to make sure the floor and rug were dry.
I’m not sure why this didn’t happen with previous potted trees in the exact same spot. Maybe the trees were smaller. Maybe the humidity was higher this year (we had many foggy days in the second half of December). Maybe it’s because we had to remove the backing from our living room rug when we had it cleaned years ago. Maybe the seal on the wood flooring eroded over the last decade.
Handy Andy got out his mask, his sander, his little shop vac, and went to work. After sanding, Andy used polyurethane to seal the wood. We turned up the heat to decrease the humidity and speed up drying time. Once the polyurethane had cured, Andy lightly roughed up the area with sandpaper again and applied another coat of polyurethane.
Three coats and three days later, the floor looked like this:
Some areas look a little bit lighter, but it’s mostly under the rug.
The hardest part was probably keeping the animals away while the polyurethane dried. Tankie, especially, was determined to huff polyurethane at every opportunity. He had to be outside or locked in a bedroom for several hours each day.
Gate we used to try and keep Tankie’s nose off the polyurethane
I check the floor and rug daily. It’s been almost a week, and no sign of the mold reappearing.
But I’m sure I’ll look again. Daily. Obsessively. For the next year.
I thought my frugal husband would use Milton and the mold as ammunition to not spend money on a Christmas tree next year. Instead, he’s merely planning a modified dolly for our next tree.
While we were sheltering in a church in Thornbury, we chatted with some locals.
“We expect rain,” one man told us. “Hail is rather…odd,”
“I’ve not seen hail before,” another agreed.
Andy nudged me and said, “It’s her. If she has an event or vacation, there will be rain, hail, or snow.”
“Shhh, honey, they used to burn witches around here,” I joked.
My Lawyer Sis, on the other hand, is the good weather witch. The day of her wedding, in Washington, D.C., (notorious for summer afternoon thunderstorms) not a drop of rain fell until she slipped indoors at midnight. Then it poured.
But just as my (admittedly imaginary) rain witchery is ultimately no match for Southern California’s dry climate, Lawyer Sis is stuck with D.C.’s cold and gray winters. In an effort to combat seasonal depression, she sometimes flies to SoCal for a visit in the winter. She spends days sitting on our south-facing patio, yelling, “No! Get away!” at me when I offer her hats, umbrellas, and sunblock.
This year, her trip was from last Thursday through the weekend. I had warned her about the incoming atmospheric rivers: one was scheduled for Wednesday-Thursday, the other for Sunday-Wednesday.
On Wednesday, as the rain fell, Andy asked, “Is she still coming?”
“Yep.”
“She’s counting on her sunshine witchery?”
“Yep. It’s a solid gamble. I don’t have any events and it’s not my vacation.”
But what we did have, hidden under the asphalt shingles on our roof, was a problem.
The rain was much heavier than expected on Wednesday. We got two inches overnight. As soon as Andy left for work on Thursday morning, I heard dripping. Water was falling on the hall bookcase, coming from an HVAC vent in the ceiling. I headed into our unfinished attic with my phone and a flashlight.
Sure enough, water dripped from the roof, splattering insulation around the ducts. I rigged a bucket to catch the water and dried up the wood and insulation as best I could. Then I set up a fan and called my husband.
“It’s leaking where they put in metal flashing and vent for the new furnace and AC three years ago,” I reported.
“Shit. Want me to come home?”
“Nah, nothing else to do here and you have to pick up Lawyer Sis. Her flight is early and I have to get back to cleaning while I file an insurance claim and call the roofer. But I’m behind schedule so DRIVE SLOW and pick up something for lunch!”
Lawyer Sis waved my apology away. “It’s just nice to be where the air doesn’t hurt my face. We had a whole week of twenty degrees or less!”
It rained again that night, but Friday was gloriously sunny. Saturday was also unexpectedly sunny.
“Looks like your sister’s weather witchery is stronger than yours,” Andy chuckled, after he’d climbed on the roof and applied some roofing patch to the flashing. (We have yet to hear back from the roofer and insurance companies are currently as inundated with claims as California is with water.) “I think we can get rid of the bucket!”
“Not for long,” I countered grimly. “Now that I have a hole in the roof, just wait…”
Andy grudgingly put the bucket back. It was filling up again Sunday evening.
I sent Baby D into the wind and rain to take out the trash. Upon his return, he announced, “There’s a plant in our backyard.”
I envisioned someone’s airborne potted palm landing our yard. “Wind must’ve blown it there.”
I grabbed the flashlight, headed outside, and discovered…
…that my son is a master of understatement.
Our twenty-foot Ficus tree had been uprooted and lay across the backyard. Next to it was my beautiful fuchsia bougainvillea, its trellis ripped off our cinderblock wall.
The downed tree Dalton casually described as “a plant” in daylight.
Later, after Andy checked out the damage, he asked, “What kind of replacement tree do you want?”
“I don’t want a replacement,” I grumbled. “They had matured to the perfect height to block the view of Cop Neighbor’s ugly, oversized Chino Hills tract house. Plus, I wanted the bougainvillea to continue dumping leaves in his yard because it pisses him off.”
I glowered out the window, where the wind was driving sheets of rain nearly horizontal. “Stupid rain.”
Andy patted my shoulder and said, “At least your perverse weather witchery is stronger than your sister’s?”
As a child, the conversation at my family dinner table was always better than the food on the table. (I kid you not–Kraft Mac & Cheese was the best meal of the week.) My dad might have political anecdotes from Capitol Hill. My stepmother might tell us how one high school gang tried to break into her classroom to get at another gang. Or we might get a story about our great-grandfather learning how to swim by diving off a piano in a flooded southern parlor from my mom.
My Chinese American husband’s family was all about the food. I learned the hard way that no one expected conversation at the table. Everyone concentrated on eating. This makes sense when the food is both tasty and served immediately (e.g., dim sum). It also makes sense if you’re eating a dish like chicken feet, which involves considerable mouth aerobics, ending in spitting out chicken toenails.
Baby D meets chicken feet.
Andy’s dad also wasn’t much of a talker, unlike practically every person in my family. My family told jokes, made fun of each other, and competed to get the best laughs. We all also like to show off share information.
Maybe this is why Andy’s a better cook than I am. He tastes as he goes and even plates artistically, believing the food should always take center stage.
I love good food, but I also want to hear about spouse/ spawn’s days. The breakfast/dinner table is the place where I find out what’s going on. I believe that communication is connection and sharing is caring.
Andy, on the other hand, hoards information. And he hoards it as long as he can.
I’d walk into the kitchen and say, “That smells good. Whatcha making?”
“Stuff.”
“Sooo…what’s for dinner?”
“Food.”
“Oh my God, would it kill you to tell me what’s for dinner one time?!”
Apparently, it would. Because not once did Andy actually volunteer to tell me what he was making. I had to piece together clues from ingredients and cookbooks on the counter.
Now, when Andy asked me what I was making for our Christmas party, my response was: “Oh, I’m going to do cream cheese sugar cookies with buttercream frosting with about one-quarter teaspoon almond extract, plus candy cane and chocolate meringues—and I’ll need the food processor for both the candy canes and to chop up the chocolate chips extra tiny so they don’t get stuck in the piping tips and also maple sugar rugelach and did you know that I had to order maple sugar from Ben’s Sugar Shack in New Hampshire this year?! I can’t find it ANYWHERE. Or and I’ll make those chocolate cookies with white chips that are your favorite, do you want coconut in them or not?”
It’s a point of pride that, when asked “why?,” by Baby D, I never once responded with “Because I told you so.”
Instead, I dumped elaborate reasoning and detailed explanations on my child until he either fled the room or could out reason/ argue me into changing my mind.
Andy’s least favorite view
The only information my husband shared freely was how much he hated all the boxes in the garage. We had many boxes. That happens with a house less than 1200 square feet and minimal storage space. Heavy blankets, comforters, and winter clothing were stored in the garage in the summer. Window fans and tubs of light linens got stored in the garage in the winter. There were two bicycles, suitcases, pet supplies, cleaning supplies, the extra refrigerator, extra chairs, an extra banquet table, portable chairs for soccer matches, a team soccer canopy, a team bench, and 8 containers of holiday/ season decorations.
Every so often, when Andy got snarly, I cleaned out/ donated anything we no longer used. Andy’s grumbles subsided, especially when I pointed out we’re one of the only families on the block that actually put a car in our garage.
I kept tabs on all the storage containers with decorations, though.
Not long into the pandemic, packages started arriving for Andy. There were at least a dozen. Some were large. One was very heavy. A few were small.
“Gardening supplies?” I guessed.
Andy said, “Stuff.”
I rolled my eyes and let it go. The following weekend, Andy spent an entire day moving items around the garage. He went to Lowe’s and returned with giant mobile shelves—the kind that you can roll together so they take up less space but then roll apart for access once the car is out of the garage.
Also the kind of shelf energetic offspring will try and ride down the driveway when Dad is carrying “excessive” Christmas decorations to the garbage bins.
After rescuing child, shelf, and decorations, I planted myself in front of Andy and announced “That’s it. You’ve been bitching about the garage more than usual and there all these mysterious boxes. What are you DOING?”
“Stuff—”
“NO! No more bullshit ‘stuff!’ For all I know you’re setting up a fucking meth factory!”
Andy said, “It’s not a meth factory.”
I crossed my arms and inhaled. Deeply.
Andy hurriedly added, “We can’t go to the gym so I’m turning one of the bikes into a stationary bicycle so I can ride it to get cardio because I can’t run anymore on my bad knee and walking takes too long. I’m trying to make more space in the garage to set up the bike.”
“That’s…great. But…why wouldn’t you just tell me that?”
Andy shrugged.
“You know, mouths are for more than eating!’ I told him. “They’re for talking! For sharing information! If you’d just explained what you wanted to do, I would have helped you. I could have gotten rid of some boxes, consolidated a few things, figured out how to make more space.”
“Really?”
“What, did you think I’d say no?! To something as important as you being healthy?”
“Uh…”
And that’s when I realized that Andy HAD thought I’d say no. Just like his parents always said no—no sports, no extracurricular activities, no curfew extensions. Andy was so used to his family saying no, he’d learned to never offer information which could result in a “no.” It was maddening…but also understandable.
I consolidated a few boxes of decorations and donated some boxes of older blankets to charity.
Andy’s cardio area, with gardening/ soccer hat on bike.
Andy set up his bike. He rides it several times a week.
Sometimes, now, he’ll tell me what he’s cooking.
The other night, at the dinner table, Andy stopped eating long enough to ask Baby D, “So, little boy, what did you do in school today?”
I didn’t plan to take the summer off from blogging. Every day, I’d think, “I’m going to write the post about rescuing the cat! Or the one about husbandly information hoarding!”
And every day something would happen. Maybe an ant invasion. Maybe non-stop emails about soccer. Maybe another volunteer organization needed something handled. With the country opening up again (sometimes in very stupid ways), I had more visitors this summer than ever.
It was also summer vacation, which meant Baby D was home. I dread summer vacation. Yes, Dalton is more independent now that he’s older, but also more argumentative about chores. About screen time. About EVERYTHING, actually. Continue reading Power Trip (#340)
My Chinese American husband doesn’t see dirt. At least, not in our house. He’s got a whole dirt manufacturing thing going on in our yard with multiple compost piles, but can he spot an errant leaf or Lego on the floor and pick it up? Haha, no. Not even after he’s experienced multiple late-night Lego fire walks into our son’s bedroom.
Back when we were dating, Andy would get mad about his roommate leaving crumbs on the kitchen counter.
My Chinese American husband grew up in tropical Hawaii. When he moved to Los Angeles, his mom sent him with an electric blanket.
Years later, I laughed over that blanket before donating it to charity. I grew up on the East Coast, spending many holidays in New Hampshire. “Southern California is not cold,” I told Andy. “Twenty below on a chairlift is cold.”
The disparity in our experiences was highlighted during vacations. I ignored Andy’s advice and ran up a sand dune barefoot on the island of Kauai, yelling, “How hot can it be?”
I thought I’d made peace with the freaky-assed crawl space below our house in Los Angeles. It’s not a nice, solid basement, but makes sense to have easy access to plumbing and the electrical lines for our drip system. And after multiple years, the only scary thing lurking under our house had turned out to be our own mischievous dog.
