Monthly Archives: July 2014

A Tale of Two Owls

Memories

Owl #1

One warm July night twenty-three years ago my husband woke me from a deep sleep telling me I had to get out of bed and walk up the street with him. It was almost midnight. He’d gone for a late-night walk, probably contemplating the enormous change that was going to happen within a few weeks when he would become a father. I told him I didn’t want to go for a walk. I was tired. I just wanted to sleep. He insisted I get up and go with him and said I’d be glad he woke me up but I had to hurry.

So I dragged my heavily pregnant body out of the comfort of my bed, put on a pair of shoes and followed him out the door and up the street. We walked about half a block when he turned into a driveway. I said he was crazy — we didn’t know these people and now we were going to trespass on their property? He didn’t listen and walked further up the driveway.  Then he stopped and pointed. I looked in the direction of where he was pointing and didn’t see anything at first, but then I saw what he was pointing at. It was an owl sitting on a fence post.

I’d only ever seen one or two owls in my lifetime before this one and was indeed glad he woke me up to see the owl. We continued staring at it, wondering why it was in this neighbor’s yard. Then I understood. It was a plastic owl nailed to a fence post to keep other birds away.

I could have thanked my husband and gone back to bed, but I was 8 and a half months’ pregnant and he’d just awoken me from one of my last full-nights’ sleep in who knew how long so I could look at a plastic owl in a stranger’s back yard at 11:30 at night. No, I didn’t thank him, I told him it was a plastic owl and I was going back to bed.

Owl #2

plastic owl from the window

About a year ago I walked into our bathroom and looked out the window that faces our back yard. Our back yard sees lots of bird-life and I see a fair number of birds while doing my business in the bathroom. This day I was surprised and excited to see an owl sitting on the back-door neighbors’ house. I squinted at the owl for a while then ran to get my binoculars. Yeah, it was an owl all right. It was a plastic owl they’d attached to the glass roof over the door of their office probably to keep birds from pooping on the roof.

A plastic owl

Of course this owl reminded me of the owl from the summer our daughter was born. But you know something? Every single time for months when I’d look out the bathroom window my heart did a little flip-flop thinking it was an owl. Then I’d remember the other owl and smile. Lately I no longer think it is a real owl, but I still smile at how happy my husband was the night he thought he found me an owl.

Guns and saccharine

Things, ,

Drawing of a handgun with the caption "This killed 9000 Americans last year. Drawing of a pack of saccharin with the caption: This killed 4 white rats...Caption under both reads "Can you guess which one's been banned?"

Back during the Reagan administration I clipped this political cartoon out of the paper. I don’t know if it was the Elgin Daily Courier News or the Chicago Tribune (or even the Chicago Sun-Times). I taped it to the front of my desk at the school where I worked. While the message was probably lost on the moderately functioning developmentally disabled students I taught, at least the teachers who popped into my room would know I was for gun-control.

I’ve not changed. I despise guns. I truly believe that if we had better gun control (I cannot see the United States ever banning guns) we would not have the same murder rate in this country.

Unfortunately the gun control issue has become very contentious in recent years. Gun proponents call on the Second Amendment and claim that guns are not responsible for the gun deaths in the country. Those in favor of gun control point out that if the guns were not available to most of the folks who pulled the triggers the people they shot would still be alive. To me it is obvious who is right. It is clear as day to me that if we had better gun control those 20 children killed in Newtown, MA would have celebrated another birthday. The 32 college students killed at Virginia Tech would have graduated by now and the 12 people murdered during the Batman movie in Aurora, CO would still be alive and able to watch more movies.

The number of gun deaths in 2013 is reported to be 12,000 according to http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/31/president-obama-gun-control-push, however there is really no data on gun violence anymore because the Republicans blocked the CDC from researching gun violence saying they didn’t want to fund propaganda. (http://www.propublica.org/article/republicans-say-no-to-cdc-gun-violence-research)

Yes, the saccharin comparison is a bit misleading. It turns out that saccharin was never banned in the United States, although, according to http://enhs.umn.edu/current/saccharin/reghistory.html, in 1981, probably the year this cartoon ran in the paper, “The National Toxicology Program (NTP) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) listed saccharin and its salts as “anticipated human carcinogen” based on Canadian rat studies.”

Anyway, I wanted to make sure this clipping was saved and I was able to tell the story of how I came to have it in my collection of everything.

A lesson learned

Life, Musings, People, , , , ,

The past few weeks have been full of family. I spent a week with my mom in Elgin then my mom and nephew visited us for a week (they drove back with me). Clare flew in from Olympia a couple days before my mom and nephew left, then Andrew, who is working in Boston this summer, visited a few days later. This story begins the afternoon after Andrew left.

Clare offered to drive Andrew back to Boston. They left Monday morning and got to Boston by 3:30 in the afternoon. At 3:45 I received a telephone call from Andrew asking me to check his old backpack for his keys. I found them and told him I’d send them right away.

I packed up the keys in a small Amazon box and drove to the post office. I hate going to the post office so I was grumpy about it. Plus Andrew interrupted me from working and I was grumpy about that — I’d hoped to put in lots of hours the first half of the week so I could spend time with Clare when she returned from the Northeast so I was grumpy about that too. Also I was just plain cranky for no real reason.

The post office we go to is about 20 minutes away and traffic was starting to build up. The parking lot was nearly full, so I expected a long line, but there were only a few customers in the building. Three or four workers were behind the counter and I was seen in about a minute by a woman who was sitting down and didn’t return my smile when I approached her. When I explained that I needed the package to be sent “next day postage she asked sullenly, you mean overnight? I said yes. She handed me a cardboard envelope and told me I needed to fill out a form. I took the envelope and form and walked back to the work station but could not find a pen. The woman behind the desk asked me what I was looking for and when I told her I needed a pen she said I could use hers but not to walk off with it. Because I was in a grumpy mood I said that she seemed to be in a bad mood.She said that any time she gave anyone a pen they walked off with it and postal workers had to buy their own. While I filled out the form she helped another customer, but that person had many packages so I went back in line (longer now) in hopes of getting someone else which I did and this person was not at all sullen. She was very nice in fact.

I felt bad for being unkind to the first woman and even thought about apologizing to her, but ended up just going home, feeling bad the whole way home and into the evening.

Fast forward to this afternoon around 1:30 when my phone rang again. This time it was Clare who I’d dropped off at Dulles Airport this morning to go back to Olympia.

“Mom! Guess what I forgot!” she said either cheerfully or nervously — it was hard to tell.

“I don’t know, what did you forget?” I asked.

“My keys!” she said.

“Oh no! Not you too!” I said. (secretly annoyed)

“Can you send them priority like you did for Andrew?” she asked.

I could have argued that Andrew’s situation was different — he was new to Boston and lived in a boarding house whereas Clare lived with a roommate and friend who had a set of keys — but I told her that I would send the keys today.

That’s how I found myself at the post office again on a Monday afternoon. This time, however, I knew better. I picked up a mailing envelope and form and filled the form out as I stood in line. I’d not pre-wrapped the package — but did put it in a bundled up pair of socks so the keys would not rattle around in the envelope. I secretly prayed that the woman that I was rude to (because she was rude to me is not an excuse) had the day off, but no, there she was, sitting in the same spot she sat in a week ago. And as luck would have it, she was the one open when it was my turn.

This time I didn’t try to smile, but was courteous. She started out sullen, but became almost warm by the time I was finished. The fact that I’d already filled out the form was good, the fact that I was not as grumpy as the last time was probably a positive as well. The socks (heavy SmartWool(TM) hiking socks) were too big for the envelope and I explained that I was only using them so the keys would not rattle. She wouldn’t touch the socks but explained that I should take them apart, place the keys in one sock and fold it over and place it in the envelope along with the other sock. They fit, I thanked her and left. This time I didn’t feel bad and was secretly happy Clare left her keys behind.

I think I will save this in my list of life lessons. Just because someone is rude — appearing to be having a bad day — you don’t need to be rude back even though you may want to be.