The First Frost of the Year

The first frost of the year arrived this morning, heavy and hard to scrape due to the fog that had settled under the Cedar branches. For some reason the only ice scraper I can ever find is the one so badly warped that it only clears two small half-inch strips at a go. Takes a long time to clear the window that way.

The fog made for a dramatic sunrise this morning on my way to work though. Hanging low over the bay making the whole sky the color of peach sherbet. The fog was so thick that you could look straight into the sun without squinting.

The mill is barely humming this morning, which is just fine with me. I spent every night this weekend staying up far later that anyone with kids should. I did manage to get the garden cleaned out finally, picked up the remaining bricks that the older boy left in the yard and did some raking. Ike hung out in his stroller watching and laughing every time I put another sunflower stalk in the yard waste container. Afterwards, when our hands and noses were red with cold we went back inside and sat in front of the fire. This year, that’s just about Ike’s favorite place to be. Watching the flames dance and pop as he kicks his legs talking to the fire like it understands him.

The older boy spent both days at different birthday parties: Saturdays being at a bowling alley and Sundays being at old friends whom we met at our first baby class before he was born.

It made for a quiet weekend around the single wide I tell you what and though it was nice for a change I wouldn’t want it to be permanent or anything. When the first frost of the year arrives you want to be around someone you can put your cold feet on. Someone you can put your cold feet on and they’ll love you just the same.

Counting Scars

Yesterday, Sweetie got it into her head to start counting Ike’s scars. Though he’s only a little more than two, in a lot of ways he’s more the grizzled veteran who, though haven gotten his lions share of Purple Hearts, has not let this affect his overall outlook on the world. In fact he seemed more than happy to be on the receiving end of Sweetie’s epidermal version of connect-the-dots: laying on his back at the far end of the couch, trying to both watch the fire in the fireplace, and pay close attention to Sweetie, to make sure that she wasn’t putting any undue pressure on his latest scars, the ones that live on both sides of his left leg.

His body reads like the pages of a diary annotated and footnoted for that little added kick, when the reading gets too dry. “Remember his first scar?” She says and I can honestly say I don’t. But Sweetie knows that if you put your fingers on his soft skin the scars act like a roadmap back in time. Like returning to any house you’ve ever lived in, though you might not remember the address, when you drive around the city you know just how to get there.

Sweetie counts “One, two, three, four…” Ike catches the eye of our older boy and starts to laugh. In front of the fire the house is nice and warm and Ike is enjoying hanging out in just his diaper: Tentatively kicking his sore leg once in a while and making a high-pitched squeal in between belly laughs.

“Five, six, seven…” She runs her hands over his leg and asks “Do I count one scar twice if he’s had more than one operation there?”

“I don’t know.” I say. “If I were shot twice in the same spot, I think I would say I’ve got two scars. I mean scars are nothing if not the stories of old battle wounds.”

“Eight, nine ten…” Not all his scars are long and snakelike. Some are round like the little holes left from a B-B gun a friend might have fired at you when you were a kid. Others, like the new one on his leg, stretches like an earthworm dried by the sun. The scar he got when he received the new liver extends the whole length of his abdomen. The stitching, making it look like some sort of albino millipede from South America.

“Ten, I think.” She says. “Unless you want to count all the blood draws, IV sites and stitch marks.”

“No, ten seems like a good round number.” I say. “I don’t think you can count being poked with a needle, even after you’ve been poked more than a hundred times with one.” I guess to me, there just nothing more un-heroic than an ex-junkie showing the remains of his life story through old tracks in his arm.

How many needles were there I wonder? How many stitches? How many yards of thread were used, or staples, or tape?

I try to think if there was ever a time that he didn’t have all these scars. Did I ever run my hands over him without feeling one? The first 36 hours or so would have been about the only time I guess. Actually now that I think about it, that’s not true; we had Ike circumcised only hours after he was born…

I almost ask if Sweetie counted that one, but I don’t. Ike, watching the fire, takes a deep breath and quietly says “da-adah-adah” in that certain way he has of letting me know that all is right with the world.

The Prairie Dogs

It’s been a mostly wet weekend these past few days, and though I spent a good part of them in the older boys room painting and putting in carpet, it was really more the weather to spend in front of the fireplace drinking hot coffee and playing cards. Weather for reclusion not inclusion.

I finished mixing down The Prairie Dogs show I recorded when we played last month at Shakabrah Java. I’ve put one of the songs up right below the notes area so if you want to hear it, feel free to download it. Sometimes this causes me to exceed my data exchange limit (whatever that means) and they shut down my site for an hour. I’m hoping that doesn’t happen but all they’ve done so far is to send me a nasty letter. If it happens to you just come back after a bit and try again.

I don’t think we’ll be releasing the whole recording for public consumption. It turned out ok, but the performance on some of the songs leaves a bit to be desired, so I think I’ll just put a few of the better songs up for now. We’re playing there again on the 14th of December and are planning on recording that performance as well, in the hope of putting some of the songs on our upcoming CD.

Up next, The Prairie Dogs are playing in Seattle at the Rendezvous Jewel Box Theater in Seattle on the 22nd of November, 2002. It’s a great little movie theater/music venue that we played at back on a Thursday night in late August this past year. It seems they liked us so much that this time they’ve agreed to let us play on a Friday. It was a fun show, with The Hunchback Of Notre Dame playing on the big screen behind us the whole time.

Right now the rain is coming down in sheets. The metal window frames that hold out the water are wet with condensation, and the corners of the glass are all fogged up. There’s a stack of paper that I should be going through on one end of my desk, my laptop near the middle and a small clearing, housing a mostly cold cup of coffee over on the far side. Though winter has not yet arrived, you can tell the rain knows it’s only a mater of time until, when holding my hand up near the glass, I can touch the cold, cold wind outside.

Funeral Oration For A Mouse

I have won the battle.

Though there were many skirmishes along the baseboard line that he won, in the end the battle was mine. He was an inventive mouse: Capable of infiltrating the dishwasher to eat un-scraped dishes and still-dirty silver. He eluded the mousetrap more than once, by painstakingly licking off the peanut butter until the trigger was bone dry.

It was sharp Cheddar that got him in the end. Cheddar that I pressed tightly against the triggering mechanism so that he would have his work cut out just to free a few bites. I haven’t killed many mice in my life. I’ve killed an enormous rat that lived in the basement of our old house, but not, I think, a mouse.

Unlike rats, mice are rather delicate creatures. One can’t help but think themselves a cartoon cat, full of evil and death. Hating them not so much as carriers of disease but for their independence and cunning.
But the mouse had to go.

My friend Michael sent me this poem by Alan Dugan as conciliation and I thought I’d put it in the Forum this week.

FUNERAL ORATION FOR A MOUSE

This, Lord, was an anxious brother and
a living diagram of fear: full of health himself,
he brought diseases like a gift
to give his hosts. Masked in a cat's moustache
but sounding like a bird, he was a ghost
of lesser noises and a kitchen pest
for whom some ladies stand on chairs. So,
Lord, accept our felt though minor guilt
for an ignoble foe and ancient sin:
the murder of a guest
who shared our board: just once he ate
too slowly, dying in our trap
from necessary hunger and a broken back.

Humors of love aside, the mousetrap was our own
opinion of the mouse, but for the mouse
it was the tree of knowledge with
its consequential fruit, the true cross
and the gate of hell. Even to approach
it makes him like or better than
its maker: his courage as a spoiler never once
impressed us, but to go out cautiously at night
into the dining room -- what bravery, what
hunger! Younger by far, in dying he
was older than us all: his mobile tail and nose
spasmed in the pinch of our annoyance. Why,
then, at that snapping sound, did we, victorious,
begin to laugh without delight?

Our stomachs, deep in an analysis
of their own stolen baits
(and asking, "Lord, Host, to whom are we the pests?"),
contracted and demanded a retreat
from our machine and its effect of death,
as if the mouse's fingers, skinnier
than hairpins and as breakable as cheese,
could grasp our grasping lives, and in
their drowning movement pull us under too,
into the common death beyond the mousetrap.

From "Poems", 1961