the horsey tree

Baby boy officially has a new tooth. It is sharp and pointy and sits right there on his lower gum.  It seems very cruel to think of the many more sharp, pointy intruders that will one by one creep into his little innocent mouth in the coming months. But, I am proud of how the little guy has handled this first rather unwelcome guest. My happy baby is back.

So, in addition to my sweet little baby boy, I have an almost two-year-old problem child. He is a canine, of the mutt variety, named Rolen.  Rolen appears to be mostly german shepherd, but is all black and smallish (about 35 pounds). He has large stand-up pointy ears–his most distinguishing feature.

Rolen is a very high-energy dog. We used to make almost daily trips to the dog park, his favorite place in the world, to visit Sadie and Bucket and Maggie and other notables. My mutt is one of the fastest dogs there and likes to lead the pack in laps around the park, ducking under a bench for a time-out when he gets tired or intimidated by the several panting pups close behind. Since C was born, it’s become much more difficult to get Rolen to the park (children are not allowed). So, we try to get him some exercise by throwing the tennis ball in the house or having some doggy friends over to play. Although these diversions are helpful for my ADD dog, he needs some serious run/play time which he has not gotten in quite a while.  If it’s been too long since he’s had some outlet for his energy, he goes a bit psychotic and, out of desperation, he decides to take matters into his own hands paws. At night, before I go to bed, I take Rolen to the grassy island in front of our apartment for his last potty run of the day.  If he’s in a needing-to-exert-energy-or-I’ll-explode state, here’s what happens:  He will find a stick. He will crouch down and wag his tail, attempting to get me in on the play.  I will huddle up in my coat and annoyedly tell him to "go potty." …to no avail. Rolen has decided it is play time. He MUST play.  He will NOT potty until he has played. So, after I make a lame attempt to get the stick, he decides I am not worth the effort and he decides to run laps.  Mind you, he is on his leash.  Nothing is chasing him.  He has nowhere to go. He just runs around and around the little grassy island at top speed.  There is a tree in the middle of the island.  So, to avoid him wrapping up myself and the tree in coils of his dog leash, I walk briskly around the tree….around and around, while he runs his laps.  Eventually, he decides he really does have to go potty and then I convince him that it’s time to go inside. It’s quite a sight: My crazed dog, on one end of the leash, running big circles as if his tail was on fire and me, at the other end, circling a tree. I’m usually laughing at the spectacle we are making and wondering if any of my neighbors are looking out their window and sharing the joke of our night-time routine.

Tonight, I suppose Rolen was a bit more desperate than usual. He didn’t wait for the late-night potty run.  He decided to run laps around my basement.  He jumped on the bed, off again, across the room, on the futon, off again, across the room. Repeat.

Right now we’ve reached a temporary calm. He is sitting by me on the floor, chewing a bone.

I have a six-month-old baby boy (C).  And he is, undoubtedly the cutest baby on the planet. I realize that the vast majority of mothers think this about their children.  I also realize that there is something called "bias." The vast majority of mothers are evidently blinded by such bias. I, however, am not.

My baby boy is moving a step closer to adulthood. He is getting his first tooth. It’s quite the tragic event in his little life. The tooth is right there on the surface but is taking its grand old time to break through. So, my little guy is in an uncharacteristic fuss. It must be a bizarre feeling to experience a hard sharp object surfacing for the first time through those little baby gums. I am eager for it to come on into his little mouth and stop causing so much trouble.  I will, however, miss C’s toothless guffaws.

haircuts, for one. definitely worth the money.  Maybe not worth a week’s earnings, but worth SOME money, at least.

This is the conclusion I have come to after spending no money on my recent haircut.  I have, for some time, cut my husband’s hair.  I cut my baby boy’s hair. I have always paid close attention when I get my hair cut (I’m not so good at making polite conversation with the stylists, so I at least attempt to learn something). So, I figured I’d give a go at working the shears on my own head.  Mind you, this decision came after a bad couple of days and an urge to be spontaneous and productive all at once. I do not often have such urges and even more infrequently do I follow through with them.  In fact, ever since childhood when a stylist looked at my hair when I went in for a trim and condescendingly asked if I had tried to cut it all by myself (which, of course I had not–she had cut it last), I have warded off this particular urge. Nonetheless, this week, something about the stress/frustration of the previous days drove me straight to the bathroom to find my hair-cutting scissors.

disaster. I, evidently, did not learn the tricks of the trade well enough through observation.  And, evidently, the stylists often have good reason to condescend to those do-it-at-home hair cutters. The funny thing about this is that, while I am not pleased by the state of my head, I am not devastated.  It will grow back. And, until then, I can do my very best to hide.

The episode, overall, was a definite learning experience.  Here are some bits of wisdom that I will heed next time I am tempted to cut my hair.

1. Paid professionals, who cut many many heads of hair each day, have, all my life complained about my particular head of hair because it is slippery and thick. Slippery and thick, it seems, does not equal "easy to cut."

2. I have incredibly straight hair.  Straight hair does not hide mistakes. It does its very best to point them out.

3. One cannot see the back of one’s own head, much less see what one is doing with scissors at the back of one’s own head.

4.  If one dares to cut one’s own hair, she must make absolutely sure to leave enough at the end so that the hair can be pulled into a relatively nondescript ponytail and so pretend that all is well.

5. If one, in a burst of spontenaity, makes the first cut too short, one must continue to cut the rest of the hair to match.

6. Cutting one’s own hair saves NO time whatsoever as she will be driven to pull the scissors out of the drawer for one more correction, (fully convinced that the disaster can still be salvaged) every time she goes to the bathroom for the next several days.

7. If one keeps making "one more correction" or tries again to "even it out," one has a very high chance of ending up with very little hair on one’s head and a whole lot of hair on the bathroom counter. 

8. One must finally reach the point of making the best of one’s new look or pleading the help of a paid professional and admitting that "yes, I did cut my own hair."  

When I was growing up, my family had a "Cottage" on Cod Creek, off of the Rappahannok River, in Virgina. We would go there on weekends, especially during our summer break from school. So many of my childhood memories stem from our days at The Cottage. The house was at the end of a culdosac, on a street in Sherwood Forrest (yes, actual name of the development). Several large windows went up to the peak of the A-Frame on the side facing the water. There was a large red-painted porch which stretched across the back of the house and looked down a grassy slope to the water. My sister and I were not allowed in the back yard unsupervised, lest we might inadvertently go rolling down and meet an early demise, a sure drowning. There weren’t many kids in the neighborhood. The only one I remember was a little girl at the end of the street. She was called "little Sarah." I have no picture in my head as to what she looked like. I don’t even remember meeting her. I just remember that her parents had let her name the family dog.  He was called "Yum, Yum."

My family became good friends with some of our older neighbors and they became "aunts" and "uncles" to me and my sister. Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Coke lived next door. Uncle Coke re-built his porch twice in the ten years that my family owned the Cottage. The first time, Dad took the wood and built us a tree house, propped between three tall trees. The second time, Dad gave the tree house a second story, jail-like, to appease Mom who was nervous about her little girls reaching greater heights. Our dear Aunt Ellie and Uncle Frank, lived across a little inlet. He had been a policeman but had been injured in some riots, earned an early retirement and took to full-time fishing. She was Polish and ate herring and gave us dollars to rub on midnight, each New Year’s Eve. She always said "Go with God" when when parted, she lit candles at the Catholic church, and whenever my mom had a how-to question about medicine or cooking or what-not, she’d call Aunt Ellie because she was full of common sense.

So, my sister and I had lots of play time together–much of it outdoors. Jen was known to choose books over exploring–but at the Cottage, we would explore together. There was the treehouse, and hammocks, and a tire swing, and–in the summer–a clown head that you plugged into the hose and a stream of water would shoot up and ballance his hat several feet in the air. And, there was the horsey tree. The horsey tree grew up a couple of feet, took a 90 degree turn to go right for a couple feet, took another 90 degree turn and went back up for quite a ways. Thus, it formed a sort of a bench, or, for us, a "horsey" that we could ride and sit on. It was to the left of the house, off some distance, amongst several other traditionally vertical trees. I have vague memories of sitting and talking, and sharing stories at the horsey tree.  Mainly I just remember it being there…and going there by myself to sit.  It was a sort of landmark in the yard.

I loved the cottage. I cried when we sold it. Jen was in high-school and had more pressing engagements on the weekends. Mom and Dad realized that we didn’t use it enough to make it worth-while. But, I wished we used it more. And I cried. But, to no avail.