Day 11 = Family Road Trips & Footprint Pie

If your family owns a second property, the last thing you want to happen is for one of them to sit unloved and abandoned. I think my grandfather's philosophy was that if you weren't at your vacation house every single weekend, you were wasting your hard-earned money. The exception to this rule was the deep freeze of winter when only fools and hunters enjoyed the area. While hunting trips were the norm for my father and grandfather, they were no fools. Inclement weather, as in 600 feet of snow accumulation, meant our weekend trips slowed down a bit between the months of December and March. For the rest of the year, our weekly routine usually went like this:

Every Wednesday, my mom's mom took a two hour car ride from her house to ours. She would usually bring the following items with her: her black leather handbag, her oldest sister, her three sons, and two dozen donuts. We would spend the day snacking on donuts, petting deer, watching ducks walk on the backs of stinky carp, riding ponies and roller coasters, and observing the local Amish. If time allowed, we would squeeze in a bit of shopping. We would then eat dinner and watch a few sitcoms on television before they finally left for their big journey home. This would give my mom just enough time to tidy up and start preparing for the arrival of my dad's parents the following morning. They would come to our house on Thursday en route to the family cabin, stay over one night, and head out again the next day. On Friday, after my grandparents left, my mom would spend the next twenty-four hours frantically cooking and packing for our upcoming weekend away.

On Saturday, my dad worked until noon. He would come home, stuff a sandwich into his mouth with one hand, and load up the car with the other. Then off we'd go an hour and a half to our camp in the wilderness. Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday would be divided equally between working around the cabin and relaxing in the forest. On warm summer evenings, we would enjoy toasty campfires and roasted marshmallows. When it was cold or rainy outside, we would stay indoors, snacking on potato chips, pretzels, homemade popcorn, ice cream cones, and root beer floats while watching episodes of Hee Haw and The Mandrell Sisters. Late Sunday evening, we would load up the old jalopies and caravan back home.

Monday was reserved for unpacking the suitcases, using up leftovers from the cooler, and doing the vacation laundry. Tuesday was continued laundry, coming up with Wednesday entertainment plans for Gramma's weekly visit, and menu planning for the next weekend trip. This routine would repeat every week from March to November, with a few extra weekends thrown in during the off-season. Every single week my mom did this without complaining, without whining, without beating her children, without banishing all of the grandparents from our property, and without divorcing my dad. Can we please get a hearty round of applause for the lady of the house?

I always took my mom's weekly routine for granted. I had no idea the enormous amount of effort that went into preparing to spend a weekend away from home until I was in my late twenties. The first time my husband and I were preparing to go to the cabin solo, I called my mom in a panic. There was so much to do, so much to pack, so much to cook, and so far to drive and this was way before we were responsible for the care of a dog and a child. "How did you ever do it all?" I snuffled. My mom said something nonchalant like, "Oh, honey, don't be so dramatic. After a few trips, you will have a system in place and it will be no big deal." But inside, I know she was really like, "Finally, at least one of those ungrateful bratty children that I brought into this world has recognized how difficult and crazy it was to make that trip every single stinking weekend. Even though it was great fun, it was completely and totally exhausting!!!" It is no wonder my mother made me start packing my own bag at the tender age of four. It wasn't easy, but I learned quickly. It only took a few weekends of wearing a scarf, a pair of mittens, a two-piece bathing suit, and a sparkly mini skirt while it was snowing outside to learn the error of your ways.

Once in awhile, my dad would be able to sneak away from work one day early and we would drive up on Friday night instead of Saturday morning. In hindsight, having one less day to get ready for the weekend was probably not ideal for my mom, but my sister and I loved taking that trip at night. My dad would put the rear seats down in the back of our Scout to make a cozy little bed for our journey. He would roll out two snuggly, sleeping bags that my mom had made for us and off we would go bouncing to sleep on the floor of our trusty old Scout. Completely unsafe by today's standards but totally awesome and exhilarahting back then. We loved to watch the stars stream past the windows and if we managed to stay awake until the halfway point, there was a surprise that was only visible at night. We drove through a little town whose pride and joy was a pretty little fountain bathed in rainbow floodlights. It stood out as a beautiful sparkling beacon in the middle of the darkness.

It's amazing how something so small could produce shear rapture in the hearts of little girls. I'm sure my exhausted mom could have done with a little less happy shrieking. She probably considered putting a few drops of NyQuil in our travel thermos of Kool-Aid, but of course she never did. Once in a while, on holiday weekends we would be lucky enough to catch a fireworks display en route. No matter how tired my parents may have been, my dad would always pull over into a parking lot. We would all lay on the hood of the Scout and watch the crackling explosions of glittery sparks flying through the night sky. When the last firecracker fizzled, we'd be back on the road.

It didn't matter that we went to my grandparents cabin in the woods almost every single weekend, our excitement over our upcoming adventures never wavered. There was always something new and exciting to do when we finally got there. A few times during the year, wild fruits would come into season and we got to enjoy picking the fresh berries. We would bring buckets of them back to the house and my mother and grandmother would wash them and use them to whip up delicious homemade pies. If you have never picked your own berries for a pie, you may be unaware that it takes about eight hundred buckets of berries to make a single pie. This is especially true when you practice the one for the bucket, one for the mouth picking technique of which I personally am a great fan. I mean technically we were never supposed to eat unwashed berries, but I think this edict was simply put into place so that we actually put some of them into our bucket. Early in the summer were blueberries and late august brought raspberries and blackberries. The thrill of this juicy pursuit was increased even more by the possible presence of rattle snakes and black bears.

Blueberries usually grow in sunny openings on the forest floor, a favorite hang out for snakes of all sorts. And the penchant for berries by the black bear is well known. Last summer, I woke up early and went to pick some berries for a pie. My grandfather used to spend hours doing this very thing. I imagine he used to whistle or something to avoid surprising any berry munching black bears. I was carrying my sleeping son in his hiking papoose and I ended up singing every song that I could think of at the top of my lungs. I guess bears do not enjoy show tunes as I successfully shooed away any big, fat, napping bears with bloated, berry-stuffed bellies.

On one of our weekly adventures, my grandfather had gathered a bumper crop of berries. More than we could use in a weekend, so my mom took them home to make a pie for the following week. She had carefully wrapped the dessert in tin foil and placed it on the seat between her and my dad. Unlike the modern day SUV, the Scout was not known for having a smooth, bump-free ride. So as not to risk bouncing the berries right out of the pie and coating all passengers with sugary polka dots of blue and purple berry bits, the pie was carefully placed on the front seat between my parents, a spot usually reserved for me. Perhaps being unaccustomed to riding in the back actually caused the problem. Possibly, I had been overcome by a mental fog after having my brain rattled around inside my head for over an hour in the Scout.

As we grew closer to our place in the mountains, the excitement and anticipation grew to unbearable levels. From the moment my dad turned off of the hard road and onto the paint destroying powerhouse of fresh tar and chip, it became impossible to contain our frenzied energy. Turning down the long driveway and staying in our seats for the entire length of it was almost too much to bear. As soon as the car came to a rest, the doors flung open and we shot out of every opening in the car like a bunch of jacks in the box.

One flaw in the Scout was that it was a two door vehicle, trapping the little ones in the back until someone older and stronger came to operate the lever on the front seat in order to free us. While this practice was frowned upon as unladylike when we were dressed up for special occasions, in the mountains, we were free to fling our whole bodies over the front seat in order to escape. As I flung my little leg into the front, I felt a strange sensation inside my right sock. A syrupy, sticky substance had somehow oozed into my shoe. After a split second of confusion, I remembered what it was. I had neglected to heed my mothers careful warning about the berry pie on the front seat. In my over exuberance to escape the confines of the vehicle, flailing around for a familiar foothold, I had inadvertently placed my right pig smack in the middle of the precious pie.

Frozen like a deer in headlights, I was unable to move knowing that somehow I had done the unthinkable. If ever my mother wanted to beat one of her children, I'm certain that it was at this moment, but miraculously she did not. When my own toddler is making me crazy, I often think back to how my mom handled things when we were little. Oddly enough, I don't ever remember her hanging us over the railing of the deck by our ankles. She probably wanted to plenty of times but she always showed great restraint. Say what you will, but we all know that kids have secret super powers to make adults totally lose their minds. For example, it is hard to keep your cool when a toddler decides to help wash your only pair of glasses by throwing them into the toilet. He then proceeds to laugh hysterically while you blindly root around the bathroom like a mole in search of your freshly flushed spectacles. In an effort to help me remember that it is never okay to shake a child, even when you really really want to, I composed this special little poem.

"Ode to Motherhood and Footprint Pie"

The one thing my dear mother

had asked me not to do

had accidentally happened

As berries filled my shoe.

Afraid to make a movement

And coat the car with scum

I stood there on the pastry

With my white sock turning plum.

Unable to remove my foot

All hopes of rescue fleeting

My fate was still uncertain

I was sure to get a beating.

The careful woven lattice

now threatened to unravel

The sugared golden top

peppered with bits of gravel.

My dad was first to find me

He tried to save the treat

But no amount of patting

Could hide the print of feet.

We saw my mother coming

And she would find out soon

Her signature dessert

Had become a stomped on ruin.

But when she finally got there

She did not scream and shout

Only for a second

Did we fear she might freak out.

Despite the little footprint

The pie could still be saved

And everyone still ate it

In fact they even raved.

So here's a little tidbit

That might someday help you out

When your children make you crazy

Don't yell and scream and shout

Tell them that you love them

And help them make things right

Wipe the berries off their shoe

And tuck them in at night.

The things that make you angry

And want to try to sell them

Will someday make great stories

That you can laugh and tell them.

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Day 10 = Flaming Flip Flops & Burn Barrels

Every spring, my mom, my sister, and I would go shopping together in order to purchase some flashy, new summer footwear. Except for a brief foray into the world of plastic jelly shoes, my preferred tootsie enclosure for the summer was without question the flip-flop. Only back then we called them "tongs", pronounced like the pinching kitchen gadget, it was actually spelled thongs. At some point, in order to avoid any awkward confusion, everyone moved towards more family friendly terms like flip-flops, flippies, and flippers. Unlike the colorful cheapie ones that you can currently find at places like Old Navy, the old school flip-flop had substance.  They were made of two thick black pieces of rubber joined together in the middle by brightly colored stripes. These stripes usually matched the woven strap that kept it on your foot and there was a sort of cross-hatched pattern on the top surface to give you a little bit more traction. The definition of "a little bit" in this case being almost none at all. There was a brief period of breaking in that needed to happen in order to achieve maximum comfort.  Once the straps had softened and an impression of your foot had been made, they were the perfect summer footwear, barring a few, teeny, tiny complications.

First of all, this was not an all-terrain shoe. In fact, I almost never wore them on adventures that took place in the heavily forested areas that my family frequented. There was absolutely zero tread on the bottom providing absolutely zero traction. On a grippiness scale of one to ten, with ten being the suction cupped toes on the tootsies of a tree frog and one being a pair of penny loafers on an icy sidewalk, flip flops received a negative six. In fact, the surest way to ruin a flip-flop beyond repair was to attempt to cross a bit of slick, mossy terrain while wearing them. As the bottoms of your feet would come into contact with increasing amounts of moisture, they would start to slip around dangerously until one final ankle-breaking sideways slide blew the sandal completely off your foot. Usually the little rubber piece that held the strap in place had pulled completely through the sole of the flip-flop. This kind of irreparable damage meant the end of your summery slip-on.

If you weren't extremely careful, making your way through wet grass could have the same unfortunate outcome. But even worse than wet grass was tall grass. Inevitably, some vicious, unbreakable stringy plant strands would weedle their way up between your toes. Wading through a piece of heavily weeded woodlands was torture.  It was the equivalent of balancing razor blades between your toes, taking a hike,  and hoping they didn't cut you to ribbons. When you made it to the other side of a field, you had to stop and check to see that all of your toes were still actually attached to your foot.

Finally, if you are not already aware of this, the flip flop is not a viable water shoe. Those of you that spend most of your time at the local  pool or on sandy ocean beaches may underestimate the importance of proper creek footwear.  (FYI - the word creek does not rhyme with leak.  It is actually pronounced crick just like the word stick.)  When swimming in rocky bottomed rivers, correct choice of  footwear is essential to your survival. Before the invention and widespread availability of Aqua Sox, Tevas, or what we refer to at our house as the Plastic Prison Clog, people had to improvise their own watershoes. I usually went with an old pair of sneakers but the lengthy drying time and increased weight were considerable drawbacks to this particular option. Therefore, one might think the quick-drying, light-weight flip-flop to be a reliable second choice. Unfortunately, unless you've been hanging by your toes from trees in the off season, the ridiculous amount of toe strength required to keep flip-flops securely on your feet in fast moving water is nearly impossible to sustain for any length of time beyond three minutes. You will find yourself shoeless in a matter of seconds, and unless someone is downstream to catch your fast floating flippers, your day is about to get worse. In the few minutes, it takes you to gingerly make your way to shore, you will end up with banged up bare feet that are bruised and bent beyond all recognition. And by that time your former footwear will have already traveled three towns down river.

If you are still not convinced that forests & flip-flops just don't mix, I am sure that one of my aunts would be happy to offer a personal testimonial. Before she and my uncle were married, she spent the weekend with our family at our little cabin in the wilderness. Being a city girl, she was not familiar with the importance of forest friendly footwear, a detail that my uncle accidentally overlooked in the process of packing. In an effort to conserve suitcase space as they would be making the three hour journey in a Corvette, my aunt attempted to pack light. While the Corvette may have been a cool way to travel, it was not overly roomy.  Space was especially limited due to the inclusion of a third passenger, a disgruntled, misplaced Malamute who found herself jammed in the back instead of in her usual shotgun seat. My aunt had selected a single pair of all purpose footwear, a cute little pair of woven leather flip-flop sandals  Despite the perils of hiking in huaraches, my uncle chose to go the distance anyway, following an out and back mountainous path for many many miles. On the return route, he ended up carrying my aunt piggyback because her poor little feet were blistered beyond reason.  Amazingly, her poor piggies recovered and they still eventually married. 

Outside of the wilderness, flippies should have received a green light, but even at our house on flatter ground, the flip-flop was highly controversial footwear. For a number of reasons, my father is not a fan of the flipper. While my mother, my brother, and I prefer barefoot freedom, my sister and father do not.  My sister doesn't do bare feet very often, but she does own a lot of sandals. However, my dad's motto is: "Socks...never leave home without 'em, unless the house is on fire and your sock drawer is fully engulfed."   Unless his foot is carefully tucked under a comforter or riding a wake in a water-ski, the man is never without socks. In fact, I may have only seen his bare feet five times in my whole life. Therefore, he had zero appreciation for the flip flop.

In fact, his tolerance was even lessened each year by the numerous flip flop tragedies that were guaranteed to occur. You really should not run, ride a bike, or try to engage in any kind of sport while wearing a pair of flippies. As an adult, you have learned this lesson the hard way so many times, that you would never even consider breaking into a jog while sporting a pair of flip-flops. Even croquet is out of the question. And if you should unexpectedly find yourself at the batting cages, hitting a few balls is only for the completely crazy. One foul ball to the big toe is all it takes to put you out of commission for the whole summer. It takes littler kids a while to catch on to the danger of mixing sporty pursuits with summer sandals and unfortunately the learning curve is steep.

My dad is a really laid-back, funny guy. He rarely yells and prefers calm lectures to lashing out. However, the one thing that could make him lose his cool faster than you can say the words flickering flame was a flip flop safety violation. Everyone else in the household who wore flip flops was able to avoid incident except me.   Every year, I seemed to meet up with the same fate. In a hurry to race off the deck in search of adventure, I would lose control of my flippie clad feet and nearly knock my teeth out. This would bring out the threats from my dad. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do to avoid certain disaster, besides slow down, but the consequence was always the same. My dad warned that if I fell one more time, he was going to burn my flip flops.

Gasp. He wouldn't. My mom had spent good money on them. Now lest you picture my father sitting around a campfire with a smoking rubber sandal speared on a hot dog roasting stick, allow me to explain. Nor was he maniacally laughing and holding a lighter with a six inch flame to my sandals. In those days, out in the country, depending on where you lived, trash pick up was not a guaranteed part of life. So, people either buried trash in their backyard or invested in something called a burn barrel. This was an empty fifty-five gallon drum with a few holes poked in it, usually balanced on some cement blocks. It's purpose was a safe place where country folk could burn up their trash. Not very classy or environmentally friendly I know, but it gave kids a legitimate excuse to play with matches, so at the time I was all for it. It's not that different from the now defunct process of sending city trash to a local incinerator.  The burning process just happened to be a bit more up-close and personal.  At least we were reponsible for our own ash clean up, instead of pawning it off on the poor state of New Jersey.

Anyway, life would continue this way with idle threats and a mounting list of ridiculous flip flop related injuries until one day my dad would snap, throw the flip flops in the trash and subsequently burn them. As I watched the thick, black smoke rise from a flaming pool of hot, gooey melting rubber, tears would roll down my cheeks. A combination of sorrow over the shoes and searing pain from my most recent wound attributed to inappropriate footwear. The remainder of my summer would include a steady diet of sneakers and socks for me, but in my heart I found comfort in the fact that there was always next year. Despite my dad's protests,  my mom would once again allow me to select a pair of sassy new sandals at the beginning of next summer. And there was always the outside chance that someday my flippies would actually stick around long enough to see the month of July.

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Day 9 = Dial 9-1-1, We Have a Cake Emergency

When it comes to sweets treats, I am forever ruined, a total snob who can easily identify a store bought baked good from fifty meters out. I grew up in a home lovingly referred to as "The House of Snacks." It is no wonder we don't all weigh 500 pounds. We were constantly surrounded by an endless parade of baked goods that effortlessly waltzed out of our oven and onto our kitchen counter. We gladly offered asylum to all the unfortunate refugees from snack-less homes within a 250 mile radius of our home. If your household was made up of health fanatics and heart patients, or simply unskilled in the art of homemade treats, you were welcome to stop in for a frosting fix at our place. If your own family possessed brilliant bakers, but for some reason your supply of sugary sweets had unexpectedly dwindled, you could find some solace chez moi.

If you were hosting a potluck feast and you wanted to ensure that dessert was divine, having my mom on the guest list made it a sure thing. And it wasn't just my mom who baked. My dad also dabbled in the culinary arts. In his circle of friends, my brother is known as The Dessert King. And my sister's sweet snackery has also been frequently requested by others. After sharing a sweet something at a party or event, people often ask me, "Oh my gosh, where did you ever find the time to learn how to bake?" I usually respond politely that I learned from my mother and grandmother, which is true but doesn't exactly answer the question. The truth is that when your nearest neighbors are a head of sixty cattle, a field of corn stalks, and a couple of goats, your options for entertainment are less than ideal. Long summer days of social isolation allowed me to hone my household handiwork, including baking. I'm also excellent at toilet scrubbing and shelf dusting, but for some reason, I don't get nearly as many compliments in those areas.

At some point, living out in the country led my mom to began dabbling in cake baking for fun and profit. Being thirty minutes from a grocery store was not always convenient for party planning, so if you needed a party cake, you could order one from my mom. You name it, at some point she has probably made a cake out of it. The sky was the limit, whatever you had in mind, she could effortlessly create out of fluffy frosting and chunks of cake. In fact, the only design she ever refused were molded Easter lambs. Unbeknownst to the average person, these luscious little lamby cakes had a fatal design flaw. They were made using a two-piece cake mold and the neck was actually too small to support his big, fat, wooly noggin. Upon unmolding the little guy or in the middle of icing him, the head would inevitably break off. Of course it could be reattached with a glue made of frosting but should it fall off again, the trauma would be too great to risk. Slicing a cute little lamby cake was bad enough, but completely beheading him at the annual family feast crossed a line. Sending the pint-sized guests screaming from the kiddie table was a major holiday party foul.

Long before the rise in popularity of numerous cake baking gurus on reality tv, we lived the drama first hand in our own little kitchen. My mom not only created cakes for every occasion from birthdays to bar mitzvahs, but she also specialized in the wedding cake. Of all the things on reality tv that are staged and scripted, I can assure you that any over-the-top drama related to cake transportation is probably 100% accurate. Thankfully, the heyday of my mom's cake baking enterprises were wrapping up long before reality television became a household word. My mom would probably not want to share with viewers that she did most of her cake decorating in her bathrobe and slippers.  For freshness, her works of art were created either late the night before or early the morning of the event which lead to this seemingly odd wardrobe choice.  Like an athlete with lucky socks, her special cake decorating uniform seemed to ensure sugary success.

Not only did my mom make wedding cakes, she made delicious wedding cakes which is a rarity. You will already know this if you have attended more than three weddings in your lifetime. You know that you are most likely going to get cake at the end of a wedding reception. I think it is this period of anticipation that makes it so much worse when the beautiful cake that you have been admiring all evening ends up tasting like sweetened sawdust that someone carefully enrobed in bunch of lard. Of course, this tragic fate never befell any couple whose cake was supplied by my mom. Along with tasting amazing, you could count on the fact that my mom's cake would also be extremely sturdy and stable. Not once did she experience any kind of cake slump or slide. I mean the only mishap experienced by her crack delivery team (a.k.a. my dad) was that his thumb once slipped and stuck into the side of a cake.  This little snafu was no match for my mom, who always carried a little emergency frosting repair kit with her. A few seconds of TLC was all that was needed to patch up the little hole and no one was the wiser, not even the guy who got a little extra frosting with his slice of cake. There were, however, countless near misses when the delivery driver (a.k.a. my dad) had to slam on the brakes unexpectedly. For some reason, whenever your vehicle is bogged down with twenty-two lovely wedding cakes coated in forty pounds of frosting, you can guarantee that some little old lady is going to pull put out in front of you. She will then continue to make your life miserable for at least fourteen of the next fifteen miles required to get to your destination.

Eighty percent of the weddings that I have attended in my life were blessed with a beautiful, scrumptious cake that my mother made. At weddings where my mom was not responsible for providing the cake, she was frequently called upon for her expertise in cake triage. I have lost count of how many times we have lived this awkward little scenario. Our family would be seated at a table enjoying our appetizers when an urgent summons would be sent to our corner of the room along the following lines: Attention guests, a cake emergency has been reported in the building, it is leaning fifteen degrees to the right and sliding eastward at two inches per hour. We're afraid it won't make it until the cake cutting ceremony, can anyone help? Calmly and swiftly my mom would jump into action. She would call out the directions, I need four shot glasses, two chopsticks, a butter knife, and a bowl of water, stat. And with that she would set to work on the seemingly impossible feat of emergency cake repair, re-engineering the original frosted structure and saving the day.

I recently attended a wedding where the entire cake was crooked, precariously threatening to ooze off the table at any moment like some kind of sugar laden mudslide. If the situation deteriorated further, I knew I could get my mom on the horn to walk me through the steps necessary to repair this impending disaster. Instead, realizing that they were only minutes away from having to scoop smooshed slices of cake off the parquet dance floor, the bride and groom made a rather unorthodox move. Perhaps cutting the cake before actually walking down the aisle was somewhat avant-garde, but it was the only way to avoid certain doom.

In the end, although it sounds a bit cliché, it's not the cake that truly matters on the big day. I always use my own wedding as an example. My mom was traveling ten hours to be at the event, so having her create one of her signature cakes was out of the question. If she had attempted to make it in advance, she and my dad would have surely arrived with frosting smeared on the backs of their seats, the backs of their heads, and probably the inside of the windshield as well. This makes for really tricky lane changes when you have a giant glop of frosting completely blocking your vision. Not wishing to put them in an unexplainable incident with local law enforcement over an icing induced accident, I considered option B. This would have had my mother trying to whip up a cake in the confines of a mini kitchen in an extended stay hotel room. Equally problematic. Although my mom would have been totally willing to do either of these things for my wedding day, neither choice was ideal, so in a brief flash of bridal sanity, I opted to go with a local bakery.

We tasted and tested and discussed for hours before finally coming to an agreement on the final design. Two days before the wedding, the caterer called in a panic. The cake lady had been frantically trying to get a hold of me for some reason. I called the bakery back immediately and she demanded to know why I hadn't returned any of her calls. Uhm, because I had not received any messages from her, otherwise she would have heard from me. Never mind that despite providing her with three different contact numbers, we were mysteriously incommunicado. I needed to find out what the urgent problem was with the cake. As it turns out, she simply needed to know if we were still interested in her cake services. Despite paying her in advance, there was some confusion on her part as to whether or not we still wanted the cake we had purchased. I thought the fact that we had already paid for the requested wedding cake should have cleared that right up, an obvious oversight on my part. She hadn't heard from us and thought we had buyer's remorse, abandoning her cake in favor of a better deal somewhere else. She explained that this sort of problem comes up a lot in the cake making world. Strangely enough, I was unaware of this phenomenon. At no point had anyone ever left my mom stranded with an enormous 200 slice wedding cake for a better bargain with another baker. I started to panic. My mom could work a lot of cake miracles, but pulling a wedding cake out of thin air twenty-four hours before an event was not part of her repertoire.

On the big day, I was relieved to find that the requested cake had in fact been delivered. Unfortunately, it was nothing like the one we had discussed. You would think that this might reduce the bride to nothing more than a sobbing, soggy pile of taffeta and tulle, but amazingly it did not. I would only dwell on this disaster for a whopping twenty seconds before realizing it just didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. I had just married the love of my life. I had patiently waited twelve years for this day and I wasn't about to let some crummy wedding cake ruin my moment. That's what I learned on my wedding day. I always try to share this nugget of knowledge with boggled brides-to-be, but no one ever listens. When it comes down to it, nothing that you have been worrying about, working on, and losing sleep over for an entire year leading up to your wedding day matters. Not a messed up cake. Not the fact that your priest accidentally said half the mass in Latin. Not the fact that the harpist your mother-in-law hired tried to shake down the best man for more money. Crazy harp lady misplaced the check that was mailed to her weeks in advance. Not the fact that you and your spouse found yourself dancing to a country love song when you repeatedly specified no country music, unless requested by a guest. Oddly, that particular honky-tonk gem was a special dedication that came from the DJ himself. However, in the end not one of these things mattered, least of all the cake.

Despite it's unexpectedly austere exterior, the wedding cake was actually quite good. Too bad none of our guests got to taste it. It was sliced and boxed and misplaced somewhere in the bowels of the kitchen. In hindsight, I think it might have been part of the kitchen staff's evil plan to spirit away my cake for their own personal enjoyment. Eventually, their plot was foiled but it was much too late. At the end of the night, the cake was miraculously rediscovered and rushed out to the ballroom to find that only a handful of stragglers remained to enjoy it. I hope they ate it right away as the frosting didn't keep well overnight. Frosting that had been wonderfully fluffy and delicious the day before morphed into a stiff, congealed, gelatinous blob the next morning. Not very yummy leftovers. If people were hoping to enjoy a sweet little snack on their journey home the next day, they were sorely disappointed. I bet they took one bite and nearly chucked it out the window. From the Poconos to the Ohio border, Interstate 80 was probably littered with little white blobs of frosting spittle.

Luckily, our little anniversary cake was safe as it had been sent directly to the deep freeze. We carefully transported it back home without any damage, but we should have known that it was doomed from the start. Two weeks after returning from our honeymoon, a hurricane blew through our neighborhood, knocking out the power for three days. This is how my husband and I found ourselves sitting in the dark in the middle of our living room, eating the top of our wedding cake. Unfortunately, it was only the one month mark instead of the one year mark. Thanks to years of my mom's careful baking tutelage, I would be able to whip up a sweet little replacement the following summer in order to celebrate our first anniversary. The key part of this statement being "I would be able to". My ability to create a culinary masterpiece was not showcased when that particular day arrived due to the overwhelming exhaustion we were experiencing as owners of a three month old. I thought it was better not to turn on the oven in my delirious state induced by the fact that I had enjoyed only three winks of sleep in the previous ninety days. Between breastfeeding, burping, and bathing a barf covered baby, I am certain that my husband and I would have really enjoyed a homemade cake creation. Too bad I lacked the energy to walk across the room towards the oven, let alone use it. Instead, in the interest of time and safety, our anniversary celebration was sponsored by Hostess. We jammed an old birthday candle into the middle of a Ho Ho and called it a day. We might have even finished it before passing out face first in our plate, but who can remember?

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Day 8 = Comfy 2.0

For generations, my family has maintained a vacation home in one of my favorite places on Earth, a chunk of  wilderness in northwestern Pennsylvania, lovingly referred to as "the mountains." My husband, who grew up surrounded by "real" mountains in the anthracite region of the state, scoffs at this misleading description. I admit that my grandfather's preferred word choice was probably more accurate. "Dearie," he would say to my grandmother, "Let's head on up to the hills." But it doesn't matter what you call it, the truth is we all love it there. Unless you call it... "The Wilds."

I recently became aware of a tourism marketing campaign that has dubbed this particular area and it's surrounding real estate as "The Pennsylvania Wilds". I found this out when a former student asked me if I had ever been there. Despite spending two-thirds of my life there, confused by this strange nomenclature, I said no. In fact, until I googled it, I thought it was either some kind of animal park or my second, more likely guess, an annual biker convention. Once I realized what place it actually referred to, I laughed out loud. After all, unless things have drastically changed in my absence, no one that I know in Pennsylvania actually uses that description. The next day, I warned my student that if he wished to avoid sticking out as a tourist, he should avoid referring to the area as the "PA Wilds".  In hindsight, I fear I might have set him up for failure.  Truth be told, no amount of linguistic subterfuge would allow this prepster from the suburbs of New York to blend in with the locals. Even if he traded in his Hollister hoodie for head to toe camo, the poor guy wouldn't stand a chance. God help him should he ever find himself at Cougar Bob's Tavern, where seamlessly disappearing into the hometown crowd is key to one's survival.

Going to the mountains was always filled with adventure and fun. Who needed summer camp, when you could squeeze your entire extended family into a three bedroom, two and a half bath ranch home. It's true that the accommodations might have been a bit undersized for the amount of guests it was required to hold, but we didn't care. The acres of surrounding forest that served as our playground certainly made up for it. Like any summer camp worth its salt, it offered loads of activities. The outdoor sort could enjoy swimming, boating, water-skiing, hiking, and fishing as well as salamander, tadpole, and crayfish wrangling. For the budding athlete, the sports field offered volley-ball, badminton, jai-a-lai, horseshoes, croquet, archery, riflery, and a trampoline. You could also enjoy large group games of Hide 'n Seek, Wolf, or Spud. If it rained or you weren't a big nature lover, you could participate in a variety of indoor activities. On the living room floor were a boatload of vintage board games, along with card games like Uno, War, Baloney, Spoons, and Speed, plus every version of Solitaire you could ever imagine.  At the kitchen table, you would find a formidable arts & crafts area and on the nearby linoleum floor, you were likely to witness a rowdy tournament of Jacks, Tiddlywinks, Dominoes, or Pick-up-Sticks. For the younger crowd, there was a lovely sandbox full of recycled kitchen gadgets used to maneuver grains of sand, a teeter-totter, and a colossal handcrafted swing set. Not to mention the food was out of this world.  Finally, weather permitting, every evening came to a close around a toasty, crackling campfire under a blanket of shimmering stars.

Having a giant sleepover with sixteen or seventeen of your cousins allowed you to find out a lot of interesting personal information about your relatives. The kind of details that might slip right by you if you hadn't been squeezed together in such tight quarters. Not being a family blessed with extremely keen eyesight or perfectly straight chompers, nighttime was when the teens broke out the contact lens cookers and special teeth straightening contraptions. A tiny parade of woobies, special pillows, and snuggly stuffed things trailed down the hall behind the little kids on their way off to bed. Unless of course they were too old or too cool to be seen with one. In that case, it was usually jammed inside their pillowcase for safe keeping beyond the judging eyes of older, cooler cousins. While this practice was universally overlooked, it could be quite a rough, unforgiving crowd for thumb-suckers.

Among the ratty blankies, one-eyed teddy bears, stuffingless bunnies, and one-eared koalas, a single nighttime pal stood out. He was an egg shaped little pillow with pre-flattened arms and legs...less stuffing, less problems. He wore a little pair of loud, patterned pants on his bottom half, and his top half was all white, except for his little tuft of yarn loop hair. He had a face on both the front and back of his head, but not in a scary monster sort of way.  It was more like having two friends in one. The front version was sleeping and the version on the back was awake, but that wasn't even his best feature. He had a little snap on his belly that allowed his outside to be entirely removed and laundered. This amazing design greatly reduced the amount of spittle, snot, and snack remnants that were allowed to accumulate on your beloved bedtime buddy. He went by the handle Comfy. Lot's of people made the unforgivable error of mistaking him for Humpty Dumpty to which the exasperated reply would always be, "He is NOT a Humpty Dumpty, he is a COMFY!!

As a little kid, I admit that I may have suffered from a fairly serious case of Comfy envy. Sure, I had my own special teddy bear with a wind up crank on his hiney.  He played rock-a-bye-baby and he slept with me every night, but the lure of Comfy was hard to resist.  I noticed that he was quite a popular guy around camp.  Almost everybody had one except me and my two siblings. My brother was probably in the too old range and my sister was probably among the too cool set. Since most of my cousins lived in the city, I simply thought Comfy was probably some trendy toy that just hadn't yet become available in my rural area.

Then one day, I asked the burning question that would turn my entire world on its ear. "Hey cousin so-and-so, where'd you get that Comfy?" Her unbelievable reply? "What a silly question, you know you're mom made him." "What!" My face grew hot as I instantly found myself under the influence of blind seething rage, bubbling up from the depths of my injured six year old soul. The fact is that I actually did NOT know that my own mom was the mastermind behind these highly coveted little guys.  More importantly, why in the world was I walking around without one? In the entirety of the craft making kingdom, there has never been a more heartbreaking slight! I spun on my heels to track down my mom. I made a beeline for the kitchen, where she was elbow deep in a vat of potato salad, prepping lunch for the masses. An arc of potato salad flew through the air when I struck from behind. "WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO DOES NOT HAVE A COMFY? DON'T YOU LOVE ME?" I wailed.

My startled mother turned to face me head on, half-coated in mayonnaise, unsure of how to handle this delicate subject. She had hoped it might not come up but that plan was currently a wash. An infuriated little beastie was charging directly towards her demanding an explanation. The truth was that the Comfy crafting program had been discontinued, a result of a massive Tri-Chem shortage at the end of the seventies. Tri-Chem or liquid embroidery, was the craft supply used to create Comfy's two cute little faces. If a giant tube of permanent, indelible fabric paint and a roller ball pen could reproduce, their offspring would be Tri-Chem. Like the vinyl record, the bell bottom, and the macramé planter before it, Tri-Chem was the hapless victim of time marching on. While most of these things had newfangled replacements like the cassette tape, the stirrup pant, and the embroidery floss friendship bracelet, Tri-Chem did not.  Washable fabric paint that could stand up to the intense amount of love bestowed on the Comfys of the world was not yet available at that time.  Once the last metal tube of Tri-Chem found itself crinkled up and dried out, lying lifeless in a big metal box under my mom's bed, so was the end of the Comfy. Although the production line that churned out Comfys had been silenced long before I was born, this did little to improve my mood. "Well, you should have made one for me anyway." I yelled. I stomped off to pout on the swings, knowing that I would never know the joy of snuggling a Comfy of my very own.

Until one day, he found me.  Every spring my mother hosted a community yard sale of epic proportions in our garage. (The details of which are far too great to be contained here, but I do promise to revisit garage sales in the future.) On a table at one of her yard sales is where I discovered an abandoned, unwanted Rescue Comfy in need of a good home. Some unfeeling child, who had probably become too old or too cool for Comfy had haphazardly tossed him aside. She and her cold, black heart had hastily slapped a masking-tape price tag across his right eye.  Cruel.  It wasn't even the closed one.  The cost of heartbreak in those days was only 75 cents.  I knew what I had to do. I ran to my room, grabbed my piggy bank, and launched its contents across the floor. I crawled through the change on my hands and knees, scrambling to gather the required sum.  Worried some other savvy shopper might snap him up in my absence, I raced back with the exact change clenched tightly in my fist. I had impressions of nickels on both knees and a dime stuck to my left shin, but I didn't care.  I had to be the one to save Comfy.  It was my destiny.

I snatched up the Comfy and practically flew to the card table where my unsuspecting mom was sitting behind a little metal cash box. "Mom, I found a Comfy. He was all alone on a table and nobody else wants him. Can I keep him? I have the money and I promise to take good care of him. Please, please, please?" I begged. Her response? "Well alright, but he needs a bath." and with that, she ripped off his little cloth body and chucked the whole thing into the waiting washer. From that day forward, he has continued to live with me, even when I moved to Paris. Fortunately, improvement in the quality and durability of fabric paint in the early nineties also brought with it the resurgence of the Comfy. Now my son can snuggle his very own Comfy as he drifts off to sleep each night, only he prefers to call him by his full name Comfy-Cozy.

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Day 7 = The Perils of Being the Bratty Youngest

At some point early in our relationship, long before we were ever married, my husband revealed to me a not-so-shocking bit of information about myself. Based on his own keen observations of my behavior, and the obvious fact that I am the third of three siblings, he informed me that I was a prime example of the common species "bratty youngest". He specializes in recognizing the unique set of character traits that are exclusively reserved for the last little one to leave the womb. His expertise in identifying these hot-headed, impulsive, spoiled individuals comes from the fact that he himself is the calm, reliable, responsible middle child. Excluding one uncharacteristic outburst in the the middle of ninth grade, I was surprised to discover that he had never, ever given either of his parents any significant amount of grief, certainly not by bratty youngest standards. When I first observed this mythical creature in his native habitat, I was astounded. No matter how many tricky situations came his way, this guy was an absolute rock. For years, I watched in awe as he gracefully sidestepped every possible parental disagreement that came his way, without raising his voice even one time. This sort of feat is practically unheard of in the land of the littlest child.

For example, I once went on a "date" with him that included involuntary participation in a grueling outdoor endurance challenge being hosted on the lawn of his childhood home. Despite my efforts to rabble rouse, I soon found myself standing in his parent's front yard with a strange object in my hand called a rake. Being the bratty youngest, I had witnessed others using this awkward garden tool, but the correct way to maneuver it was completely foreign to me. Luckily, I am a quick study. Imagine yourself stranded deep in the middle of a 500 acre deciduous forest that has never been harvested. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to remove every last crunchy dead leaf bit, knocking out a minimum of 100 acres before breaking for lunch. I thought I could handle it, until I began to notice the startling amount of floodlights that had been installed around the borders of the property. It was obviously going to be a long day and an even longer night. In order to avoid sacrificing the next seven days of our life, we would have to press on through to the wee hours of the morning. The only interruptions to this overwhelming, monotonous, leaf-slogging drudgery would be brief pauses for hydration, a few high protein snacks, and a handful of thirty-second pee breaks.

When faced with the enormity of this annual task, the bratty youngest part of me wanted to bust my trusty rake in two, launch it into a nearby ravine, and stomp off to my room in a huff. The only problem? It wasn't my rake and I didn't have a room there. Besides, these people were not my parents, who were required by law to love me, no matter how bratty and awful my behavior actually became. His family had a choice when it came to their level of fondness for me. So, with that thought in mind, I half-heartededly began pretending to push around a few leaves. Not to mention, while I had taken a few moments to ponder my options for escape, the unflappable middle child had already raked up a fairly impressive, Everest-sized mountain of leaves. My own efforts had contributed approximately sixteen. To make matters worse, my future spouse maintained a 100% complaint-free work environment, even whistling a jolly little tune to himself while he cheerily raked away. In a genuine display of bratty youngest-ness, I felt like clobbering him with my rake, but I remembered once again that just like his family, he too had a choice when it came to keeping me around. So, without another peep, I grumpily continued to rake deep into the night.

Eventually what started out as some kind of proving ground for the new girlfriend morphed into a somewhat pleasant annual family tradition. I'm not going to lie about it by saying that I actually looked forward to the backbreaking chore each autumn, but I sure did grow to love the company. Perhaps I am finally beginning to reign in my bratty youngest ways. Of course, there are still some days when little miss bratty britches threatens to rear her ugly head, but most of the time I can successfully persuade her to put a sock in it. To those who have fallen victim to my undeniable bratty streak, I truly apologize, especially to my parents who continued to keep and love me, even when it might have been preferable to send me packing. An adolescence of cruel child labor in the coal mines was probably well deserved.

Also, I would like to thank the two guys who first handed me a rake. The first one was my own father. Despite taking a bit of poetic license in my story, of course I had held a rake before. However, the duration of my raking efforts never lasted very long. The sole purpose of our endeavor was for entertainment, not lawn aesthetics. My dad and I would only continue raking long enough to gather enough leaves so that throwing ourselves into the pile didn't risk bodily injury. After years of living in the controlling confines of the city, where anti-leaf propaganda was allowed to run rampant, leaf maintenance at our house had gone the way of the dinosaur. My dad's signature technique was to run them over repeatedly with the riding lawn mower until they were chopped up into little bits, then allow nature to do the rest. We enjoyed this kind of freedom, because without breaking out a pair of binoculars, none of our neighbor's lived close enough to analyze the leaf count in our yard.

Unfortunately, my future in-laws didn't enjoy the same luxury as their homestead was an island of leafiness in a sea of leaf-loathing neighbors. These nearby folks were an aggressive lot who weren't afraid to threaten your livelihood, your home, or your children if you didn't have a comprehensive leaf management plan in place. Fear of retribution by an angry mob is the real reason that I found myself helping out with the annual leaf clean up, not some kind of prospective daughter-in-law hazing program. With a mixture of relief and sadness, the annual family raking ritual has long been contracted to an outside bidder. While I am hardly sad to have abandoned my former rake wielding post, I would give the sun, the moon and the stars to spend one more day of raking in the company of my husband, my son, and my dog, with my father-in-law serving as the foreman of our motley little leaf-gathering crew.

Happy Father's Day to my own fantastic father, who is still willing to throw himself into a pile of leaves, in spite of the fact that he will most certainly regret his exuberance the next morning. To my incredible husband, I promise to continue to work on banishing my inner brat. Thank you for seeing all that I am beyond my bratty birthright. And, to my amazing, late father-in-law, thank you for all the laughter and bits of wisdom that you shared during our crazy leaf-raking marathons. Each of these men have dared to brave the brat in his own unique way. Finally, though the last few paragraphs have been fairly dad-centric, I would be remiss if I did not also mention my mom in a post about being the bratty youngest. Amazingly, she has always managed to love me anyway, bratty bits and all, and for that I will be forever grateful. It was only because of Father's Day that the boys stole top billing. No worries, there is probably not enough space on the entire Internet to handle the massive volume of writing that I would need to do in order to atone for the snarky transgressions of my youth. Until next time.

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Day 6 = Dog is Actually MOM's Best Friend Not MAN's

From my earliest childhood memories to the present, every household that I have ever been a part of has included at least one family dog. That being said, I should probably address the fact that the phrase "family dog" happens to be a complete and total misnomer. While every member of the family usually enjoys the company of said dog and undoubtedly, each of those people truly loves the hound in question, one issue remains unresolved. The ongoing myth that dog care is some kind of team endeavor, equally divided among all interested parties, stops right here. The truth is that there is only one person who is left solely responsible for all facets of Fido's care beyond ear scritches, treat tossing, and belly rubs. On some level, we all know that this unsung hero of all things canine is almost always...wait for it...the momma.

Sprayed in the snoot by a skunk? It's Mom who busts out the electric can-opener and thirty-five tins of tomato juice. Embedded tick behind the left ear? It's Mom who dons the rubber gloves and grabs the trusty tweezers. Rolled in some disgusting unidentifiable dead thing on the back forty? It's lucky Mom who gets to shampoo the naughty little stinkpot. Shed such a ridiculous amount of fur that it looks like someone may have sheared an entire herd of sheep in the middle of the living room? Unwilling to risk the demise of her personal household vacuum, it's Mom who wheels the ShopVac in from the garage. Needed to be driven to the vet before the invention of doggie seatbelts and travel crates? It's Mom who restrains the wily dog and his razor-like toenails in the passenger seat, while simultaneously driving the car (because Dad is at work and she values her children's eyesight). Did someone mention overgrown talon-like doggie toenails? It's Mom who ends up lying on the floor, clippers in hand. Unsightly chunks of fur matted to the rump of Rufus? See previous response. Accidental gunshot wound in the height of deer season because Rex wasn't wearing his hunter safety vest? It's Mom who races his bleeding little dog body to the vet (because again this stuff always happens while Dad is still at work), nurses the poor pup back to health, and knits a blaze orange sweater to avoid ever having to relive that kind of dog-related trauma in the future. Had your hind leg mostly ripped off by the neighbor's vicious German Shepherd? It's mom who sits in the passenger seat (because for once Dad is actually home when this kind of nonsense goes down), dog in one arm, mangled leg in the other, until they finally arrive at the vet's office where unbelievably they are able to sew the limb back on. Pooped on the rug after you were just outside to demonstrate that for some unknown reason you are ticked off at your humans? It's Mom who fires up the carpet steamer to swiftly swish the stains away. Barfed all over the house after you ate an entire one pound bag of M&M's that were hidden as a surprise treat for the kids, but to everyone's surprise horror the clever dog found them first? See previous response.

Our first family dog The first dog that my family owned and loved, whose care was the complete and total responsibility of my mother (even on days when she might have been feeling sick and she could have used a hand) was named Sandy Cocoa. Sandy enjoyed the good life inside our cozy abode, happily curled up next to our nonexistent hearth in a little wicker basket. She had earned this place of honor the hard way as not only had she miraculously recovered from both a gun shot wound and a ferocious dog attack, she had survived the birth of no less than six litters of puppies. While there is no denying that our sweet Sandy may have been known as a bit of a hussy in those days, she was my very first dog buddy and she was incredibly patient with me. Not many dogs would allow a toddler to use their fatty flank as a step-stool to boost herself up onto the living room couch. Of course, this carefully orchestrated maneuver was only attempted when my parents weren't looking. Sandy's repeated indiscretions allowed many of our friends, neighbors, and relatives to share in the joy of dog ownership whether they wanted to or not. In fact, we could even count ourselves among the many beneficiaries of Sandy's promiscuous one-night stands as that is how we acquired our second dog.

In a moment of weakness, my parents allowed my older brother to keep one of Sandy's puppies for his very own. By now, we all know that despite all of my brother's fervent promises to the contrary, it was my mom who ended up with two dogs to care for instead of one. This is probably why my parents only agreed to allow him to keep one of the puppies on the strict condition that it live outside. My brother reluctantly agreed to this arrangement as long as his new dog was welcome to sleep in the garage whenever it got really cold out. His reasonable request was granted and with that we became a two dog household. In an unprecedented display of sibling kindness, my brother allowed my sister to choose the name for the new addition to our brood, a decision that he rapidly regretted, when she insisted on calling the new little pup Cookie. In the days to come, the even greater irony of this particular name choice would quickly become apparent.

Any chances that we might have originally had of persuading our parents to allow Cookie to join us inside the house were completely and totally annihilated when it was discovered that Cookie suffered (along with the rest of us in her company) from an ongoing problem with Doggy B.O. Therefore, as originally agreed, Smelly Cookie lived outside in a red wooden dog box lovingly handcrafted especially for her by my older brother. There were not enough HEPA filters on Earth to purify the cloud of stink that completely enveloped this poor little hound from stem to stern. It was at that point that the name Cookie came to be seen as a rather odd choice for a creature that brought anything but gingersnaps and pizzelles to mind. Unless of course you had dunked them in milk a few times, left them in the backseat of a hot car in the middle of July, tossed them into a putrid swamp, fished them out again after sixteen days, and then tried to make them smell better by sprinkling the now rancid baked goods with a dusting of powdered sugar. While no one could identify the source of Cookie's all-encompassing stinkiness, it didn't prevent us from repeatedly attempting to cure it. In the end, no amount of scented shampoo, perfumed powder or designer doggie spray could mask her mysterious malodorous condition. Of course, the whole family loved her anyway just not within the confines of the house or even worse the car. On road-trips with Cookie the Stink Mutt in tow, it was the humans who happily hung their heads out the car window not the other way around. Needless to say, Cookie didn't get out much.

For a brief period of time, we also ran a foster program for temporarily orphaned hounds, with "we" meaning my mom of course. Our family's My mom's first foster dog was a rowdy Alaskan Malamute named Chase, who belonged to my Dad's younger brother. Chase arrived at our house after my uncle's family sold their urban dwelling and moved out to a cute little place in the suburbs. Chase had been able to hold her own downtown, where no one even raised an eyebrow at this wild, wolf-like beast whose howls at the moon could barely be heard over the din of the city streets. However, she was having a bit more trouble making friends in suburbia, land of family friendly cul-de-sacs, littered with cute little lemonade stands and perfectly manicured lawns. I want you to know that I purposely chose the term littered here because that's exactly what happened after Chase smashed through their carefully placed folding tables, sending cups of sweet, syrupy liquid flying through the air, and screaming, sticky children scrambling off in all directions. Despite her enormous size, Chase was never aggressive towards tiny tots, but true to her name and her sled dog roots, she was a sucker for the thrill of the chase. Unfortunately, this piece of information does little to assuage the fears of the poor chasee being run down by the perceived likes of White Fang.

Chase also got caught up in a bogus lawn service ring that specialized in unauthorized removal of freshly-laid vibrant, green sod from the yards of practically every neighbor within a two mile radius. The nightly howling that had once gone unnoticed became the focal point of a neighborhood rally specifically organized to enforce the right to enjoy a quiet and peaceful existence as stated in bylaw #613B of the Homeowner's Association of Greater North Royalton. In short, they told my uncle that it was either him or the dog. So, big 'ole Chase came to live at our house way out in the sticks. Together, my mom and I built her a super-sized dog house.  I have a feeling that my dad probably had a hand in that as well.  Mom and I painted it red and white on the outside and christened it "The Moose Barn". Unlike my mom's other two dogs, the good news was that Chase was not accident-prone, promiscuous, or smelly. No one cared that she howled at the moon and she could dig as many holes in the yard as she wanted without any repercussions, but her time at our house would be relatively short-lived.

Put the tissues away kids, nothing bad happened to her. In fact, for a dog of her size, she lived to be a ripe old age. It's just that a few years later, after having several more unpleasant run-ins with the local HOA, this time concerning non-dog related matters, my uncle came to the realization that perhaps life in the suburbs was not for him. So, he and his family packed up their entire life and moved a short distance down the road from us, which in countrified terms means about 15 miles as the crow flies. Once they were settled on their spacious new property, they came over to reclaim their precious pooch along with the fancy new digs that she had acquired under our care. Chase was happy to be reunited with her own family as they were with her. We all missed her a lot, but happily we still enjoyed frequent visits. Even my mom missed Chase, but not too much, after all, she was still the sole care provider for Sandy the Strumpet and Hong-Kong Stinky.

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Day 5 = Isolating the Crafty Gene

If you should find yourself in my mother's company, it will not take long to discover that she enjoys crafting handmade things. Among her many specialty items is the crocheted afghan. Not in the "Oh...my nana used to crochet little afghans that we just loved!" kind of way because unfortunately, all too often, these end up being wonky misshapen excuses for blankets.  While made with love, they usually come in colors that no one in their right mind would ever put together unless they were blind or drunk or both. The works of art that my mom creates are more in the category of "Holy Moses, your mom actually made that?!?!" Why yes, I am always proud to say, she did.

Any exclamation of disbelief at the impressive quality of her handiwork is almost always followed by a pressing second question. "So honey, are you kids talented like your mother?" Because the response "Are you freaking kidding me?" is inappropriate under almost all circumstances, I usually try to come up with a more diplomatic and refined reply. I explain that while I may have inherited a minute amount of her artisan genius and I do dabble in crafts from time to time, my incredibly busy schedule prevents me from engaging in such creative pursuits. However, this is not exactly the whole truth.

You see, my mom is not just some lady who enjoys slapping some flowers, baubles, and ribbons together and calling it a day. She does not simply do "crafts". She has been creating beautiful objects of art for sixty some years. And due to the unfortunate fact that her own mother struggled to sew on a button, ninety percent of her skills are self taught. She is like some kind of craft superhero able to effortlessly replicate almost any challenging project you throw her way. If these crafty superpowers are lying dormant somewhere within me, I have not yet been able to successfully tap into them on a regular basis. Perhaps I am like a young Luke Skywalker and I simply need more focused training before I am capable of accessing the crafty force field that is my destiny.

I once attempted to make a granny square afghan as a gift for my friend's graduation. If you are not familiar with this lost art, I will attempt to sum it up. Basically you repeatedly crochet the same square pattern about fifty times and if you want to get a little fancy, you throw in a new shade of yarn whenever the mood strikes. This freedom of choice is probably what gets so many grannies in trouble in the color department. Anyway, I ended up with a big pile of (and I want you to know that I am using this term loosely) "squares". It was more like some rectangles, a few rhomboids, a really messed up oval, and a few completely unrecognizable alien shapes impossible to categorize here on Earth. Guess who came to the rescue? Good 'ole mom swooped in and saved the day weaving the pile of wannabe squares into a beautiful afghan.

Since crocheting didn't seem to be my scene, I thought I might like to try knitting a pair of slippers. If you are not familiar with this lost art, it is when you take two needles that are connected by a length of plastic, make little loops around them with yarn and slide them back and forth until a garment magically appears. If you can do it without poking your own eye out, stitching a piece of your sleeve into the pattern, or cussing like a sailor, you should consider it a great accomplishment worthy of praise throughout the land. With instruction from my mom, I was able to finish a single slipper which I offered to her as a gift in appreciation for her extremely patient guidance throughout the process. She accepted it in good faith, the agreement being that at some point in the future I would actually make good on my promise to produce a second matching slipper. That was at least 25 years ago and if she were relying on me to come through, her right foot would still be quite frosty.

For a period of time, I was into doing counted cross stitch. If you're not familiar with this lost art, it is when you use a needle and a bunch of different colored strings to make teeny tiny X's on really pricey special fabric. Repeat until your fingertips are raw, you have a debilitating cramp in your forearm, and you yourself become cross-eyed.  Finally, when you fear that you cannot handle even one second more, a beautiful picture appears.  After completing a few small projects, I foolishly decided that I was ready to take on the mother of all cross stitch projects. I sauntered over to the local fabric store and chose an extremely intricate pattern of a lovely Victorian bride. Despite the fact that it required about 3500 different colors of embroidery floss and it could have easily been used to decorate the wall of a small castle, I pressed on. It was meant to be a gift for my cousin's wedding but the ceremony came and went and despite pulling a few all-nighters the week of the big event, the project remained unfinished and ungifted. I finally presented it to the bride and groom a year later on their first anniversary. I am pleased to report that the happy couple is about to celebrate their twentieth year of bliss and my doctor says that the feeling in my fingers should be returning any day now.

Perhaps that helps to explain why our attic is like some sort of wayward home for abandoned crafts. Among the victims, are a half finished cross-stitch portrait of Bert and Ernie intended for my best friend's little sister after the birth of her first child. Unfortunately, her son is now eleven and his once insatiable interest in Sesame Street is now hopelessly extinct. There is also half an afghan up there intended for my husband. I began working on it several years ago, and I crocheted religiously for a few months until summer arrived. Completely understandable that fun in the sun would delay things, right? Actually, I never realized the pitfalls of trying to crochet an afghan in the heat of summer in a house that lacks air conditioning. After completing only two rows, I found myself drenched in sweat and coated from head to toe in multicolored bits of yarn fuzz. I looked like a giant walking lint trap. I've been meaning to get back to work on it, but it's summer again. Succumbing to heatstroke in a freak crocheting accident is not part of my grand plan so I promised myself not to go within ten feet of the thing until the leaves start to fall.

There is one more issue that arises when you have a mom, who is capable of creating amazing pieces of loveliness with a few swift motions of her dainty little fingertips. It can sometimes be hard to remember the old saying that practice makes perfect. Full disclosure: As a child, I was not always the best practicer which most likely led to the unfortunate early demise of my baton twirling career. It's probably for the best. I mean when you finally get to the point where you're ready to wave around a metal stick with two flaming fireballs on each end, it is usually not advisable to simply wing it. While the amount of practice required to achieve crafting success is similar, the majority of my mom's projects did not achieve the same level of danger. I say majority because back in the day my mom relied on an old school, heavy-duty industrial strength hot glue gun. There is nothing more death defying than the risk of accidentally adhering your left thumb to a holiday wreath with searing hot liquified glue that oozes out uncontrollably at the same temperature as molten lava.

Even if my mom and I sat down together to engage in a safer endeavor like flower arranging, the importance of practice would still become glaringly apparent. If you were to place our finished masterpieces side by side, you would observe the following. My mom's arrangement would be a thing of beauty, full and balanced and secured with a delicate hand tied bow of bright blue satin. It would rival anything you might find down at the local floral shop. Mine would look like I scooped up a bunch of wildflowers from the backyard, freshly slain by my dad's weed whacker, tied a ratty crooked ribbon around them, and tried to dress the whole mess up by jamming them into a pretty vase. Always positive and encouraging my mom would remind me that her first attempts at flower arranging were fairly disastrous and that it takes patience and practice to improve. In the meantime, I would appreciate any recommendations for a reliable florist. I'm so busy NOT finishing all my other craft projects that I'm just not certain if I can find the time to master artfully positioning posies anytime soon. However, what I do know is that from here on out I will be changing my standard response when people inquire if I, too, am über talented like my amazing mom.  I will gracefully reply, "Not yet, but I'm still practicing."

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Day 4 = Sequined Eyepatches & Preschool Gambling

When I was a little girl, before I went off to kindergarten, my mom and I had a sort of Thursday ritual. I always thought of it as a special time just for us to spend together without my other siblings hogging up all of her attention. In reality, having me along was merely a pleasant bonus in the middle of a ridiculously hectic day caused by the fact that at that time we only had one vehicle. We were early trendsetters in the automotive world, long before the rise in popularity of the SUV as family friendly transportation. While almost everyone else we knew were cruising around in sedans and station wagons, our family ride came in the form of a creamy tan colored International Scout with extra classy faux wood paneling down each side. Despite our rural location, a typical trip to our local shopping mall usually didn't require us to go off roading, but should the need arise...we were ready.

Having one car meant that after my dad went to work each morning, my mom was hopelessly marooned in the middle of farm country until his return that evening. In an effort to reduce the inevitable possibility that my mother would fall victim to a raging case of cabin fever or worse that we would completely run out of essentials like groceries and toilet paper since this was long before anything was open twenty four hours, my parents devised an insane yet workable solution. Once a week, my mom would drive my dad to work. She would then take the car and we would spend the next six hours running around like maniacs until she successfully completed every single possible task that one might need a vehicle in order to accomplish. No matter what the day brought, we always finished up in time to be waiting outside my dad's workplace when he strolled out the door at the end of his shift. Of course that is how I remember it, but if you ask my dad, there may have been a few times when we might have arrived just a teensy bit late.

Anyway, at some point, my mom was able to finally adjust to the fact that the nearest supermarket and shopping plaza were over half an hour away. She learned some handy tricks like buying generic items in bulk, freezing emergency dinner rations, and calling on the neighbors for a cup of sugar from time to time. Once our Thursdays were no longer spent in some kind of errand-running frenzy as though we were contestants on one of those timed shopping game shows, the two of us had time for more relaxing ventures. One of the caveats that my family was able to enjoy after fleeing the suburbs of Cleveland was the ability to be closer to my dad's extended family. While my dad's parents went off to seek their fortune in the big city, everyone else was content to stay behind in Pennsylvania. As a result, after morning errands, my mom and I often spent the afternoon with some of my dad's relatives. My personal favorite was paying a visit to the cute little house where my eighty year old great grandparents resided.

While we were there, we would help them out with whatever little things they might need. For Great Grandma that included hair care but, unlike his wife, Great Grandpa was mostly bald, so he didn't require any kind of extensive grooming. As many women grow older, they opt for a shorter more manageable hairstyle than the ones they once wore in their youth. You can witness this firsthand in our family photo albums. My mom's hair starts out being piled on top of her noggin into a cute little bun which disappears shortly after my arrival in favor of a lower maintenance pixie cut. While many women are willing to part with their lovely, long locks after a certain age, my great grandmother was not one of them. She had beautiful, silvery-white hair halfway down her back which she often wore in a crown of braids. My mom would help her wash it and style it each week. It was fascinating to watch except when I was busy gambling with Great Grandpa.

In an odd twist of fate, my great grandmother ended up having only one eye in the latter years of her life. It is a topic that I always find a bit tricky to navigate even among friends. I mean not that having a one-eyed great grandmother comes up all that frequently but still when it does...awkward. The problem is that we all grew so accustomed to it that sometimes we nonchalantly blurt it out forgetting that for most people, this can be rather shocking news to hear. She had some sort of ocular ailment that caused her to lose her eye and rather than having a glass eye or wearing an eye patch, she simply opted to have her eyelid permanently sewn shut. Incidentally, this little nugget of information does little to reduce the initial shock value. In hindsight, I guess it is kind of weird to be so blasé about have a one-eyed great grandmother. She herself was always somewhat worried that she would scare little children, but I never knew her any other way so it didn't make a lick of difference to me. In fact, I was completely fascinated by the fact that her eyelid seemed only lightly closed as though her one eye was just taking a little nap. It seemed to defy physics, because if you have ever tried to lightly close only one of your eyes while keeping the other one open, you will find that it is practically impossible to do without scrunching up the entire other half of your face. I know this because I spent years in front of the bathroom mirror trying to recreate this phenomenon with little to no success.

As for the eye patch, I can see why she didn't go that route. I mean really who do you know who wears an eye patch besides bad guys in movies and pirates? My sweet grandmother hardly belonged with that crowd although she was the type of tough lady that could have held her own among them if need be. Beyond the unsavory company, if for some reason just for kicks you yourself have ever tried on an eye patch, you will know that it creates an impossibly difficult situation when it comes to styling your hair around the unflattering elastic band. Not to mention the complete and total lack of fashionable choices available in the eye patch department. I know this because for a brief period of time in the late 90s, my own mother ended up sporting an eye patch after suffering from a bout of Bell's Palsy. Unwilling to settle for the standard issue patch available in only two options, ecru for unfortunate good guys and midnight black for pirates and baddies, she sat down at her sewing machine and whipped up some more becoming options. It was around the holidays and along with eye patches that were coordinated to her daily outfits, in her collection, you would also find a pudgy little snowman, a jolly Santa, a version in candy cane stripes, a glittery red one, and a green one with a mini white marabou border. Maybe if my great grandmother had had such lovely choices, she too would have opted for the patch.

Anyway, while my mom washed and styled Great Grandma's hair over the kitchen sink, I got to hang out with Great Grandpa in the living room. You could always find him in his special chair and he wasn't always known for his warm and fuzzy demeanor around small children, but for whatever reason, he spoiled me rotten and I absolutely adored him. We often played cards and along with old childhood standards like Solitaire, War, & Go Fish, he made sure to include a variety of other options as well. I mean every four year old should be prepared to play both Blackjack and Po-Ke-No, right? It's no wonder that I eventually became an educator because even back then my rather progressive great grandfather obviously recognized the importance of real world skills.

After Great Grandma's hair was dried and carefully re-coiffed into her signature braided up-do and Great Grandpa and I had placed our final wagers and tallied up our daily winnings, my mom and I jumped back into the trusty Scout and raced clear to the other side of the county just in time to fetch my dad. This weekly Thursday routine would continue until I entered first grade. I attempted to persuade my mom to sign me out of school on Thursdays, but she steadfastly refused. Every Wednesday evening, I pleaded, sobbed, and begged her to let me stay home, but she was a rock. Even then I knew that she was doing what was best for me, but can you blame me for trying? I mean what first grader would choose to spend their day reading about the lives of boring old Dick and Jane when she could be pretending to be at a beauty parlor with her great grandmother, playing dress up with bedazzled eye patches designed especially for the discriminating pirate, or shooting craps with her Great Grandpa before rounding out the day in an off road four wheel drive road rally with her mom in the driver's seat? Seriously, the only thing that Dick and Jane brought to the table were a balloon, a tabby cat, and a little red wagon.

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Day 3 = Row, Row, Row, your Couch Gently Down the Stream...

Once upon a time, there was a lovely young couple who had the crazy idea that leaving the hustle and bustle of city life behind in order to strike out on their own in the middle of nowhere sounded like a fun adventure. Not all of their children shared this same enthusiasm especially since by the early 1980s, my family and I had been living squashed together in an extremely teeny tiny home for about ten years. The place would have made a loft in Manhattan feel like the Palace of Versailles. There are little girls who own dollhouses with bigger bedrooms than the one my sister and I were forced to share and everyone was starting to become jealous of the roomy living arrangements enjoyed by the average sardine. There was only one elf-sized bathroom for our family of five and when my grandparents came for their weekly visit, my parents gave up their own bedroom in exchange for sleeping bags on our living room floor.

I am about six years younger than my parents were during this period of time. My husband and I have recently returned from a weekend in the Adirondacks where we camped on an island that was only accessible by boat. Space constraints in our kayak severely limited the amount of gear which we were able to reasonably transport to our campsite. Foolishly, among the luxury items that ended up on the chopping block were our foam sleeping mats. We have been back for almost a week and our poor bodies have still not completely recovered. I am still awkwardly holding my neck to one side as though I have just heard a strange noise off in the distance. My husband's spine is now permanently kinked into the shape of a lightning bolt and he is stuck in the little tea pot position at "tip me over and pour me out." I simply cannot imagine sleeping on the floor once a week. Obviously, they loved my grandparents a lot. I'm not sure if I love anyone that much!

Things continued that way until one day, when my normally patient, kind and loving mother simply snapped. Who could blame her? I mean how many mornings can you wake up after the dog steps on your face only to realize that somehow during the night you ended up with carpet burn from the middle of your chin to the top of your left ear, feeling like it is probably a good idea to put the chiropractor on speed dial. What's a lady to do? Did she give my dad's parents the boot? Nope, she went and grabbed a circular saw to do what needed to be done.

In order to comprehend the events that followed, you must be aware that my grandfather was a collector of sorts, not the type of guy that you might see on an episode of Hoarders or anything, but like most of his generation, living through the Great Depression deeply impacted his world view. He simply could not bear to throw perfectly good items into the trash. He was a part of the reduce, reuse, recycle scene before it even existed as an official movement. He was the very first person I ever knew who recycled aluminum. In the cupboards of his home, you could find the following items carefully stored in zip-lock baggies waiting patiently to be re-purposed at some future date: old rubber bands, washed out drinking straws, crinkled twist ties, cleaned plastic bread bags, and varying lengths of string. His philosophy was not strictly limited to small household items. My grandparents maintained two residences and our place was located halfway between them. While our house was itty bitty, our property was not so sometimes the larger stuff ended up landing and languishing at our house for a considerable period of time until my grandpa came up with a new use for each item whether it be lumber, hunks of metal, heavy equipment, or kilos of packing peanuts.

That fateful morning, my mom had her eye on a large stack of plywood that had been lying around the backyard for awhile and she set off to work at a frenzied pace in order to resolve their sleeping issues while simultaneously gaining some much needed extra storage. After the kids were at school and my dad left for work, she spent the day designing, building, and upholstering an amazing sectional sofa which solved three issues. 1) It used up most of the nuisance lumber. 2) It contained numerous hidden storage solutions including six roomy storage compartments under the seat cushions, cubby holes inside all of the back rests with loads of book shelving along the bottom. Her innovative creation made the best designer/organizer on HGTV look like a piker. 3) And most importantly, it rested on castors and the three pieces could be easily wheeled together to make a full size bed so that my parents didn't have to wake up face down on the floor every Friday morning.

Anytime that my mom took on this kind of project, her goal was to finish it before everyone else returned home for the day. By the time we stepped off the school bus that afternoon, there would be a beautiful new couch waiting for us in our living room. It lasted for many years, and it would become a cozy little home for crafting supplies, toys, photo albums and books. When my dad built us a much larger new house on the same plot of land, with two bathrooms, a proper guestroom and enough square footage to host our entire extended family if need be, it would be rolled across the lawn and into the family room of our brand new basement. Despite its longevity and quality construction, depending on your point of view, it may have contained one tiny design flaw, an inadvertent oversight by my mother that could have happened to anyone really. It turns out that the random pile of seemingly unloved lumber that my grandfather had temporarily abandoned at our house wasn't your average everyday pressboard. It was actually extremely expensive grade A marine plywood.

I'm not sure exactly what he was eventually planning to do with it, but I guarantee that he did not intend to have it made into a cute little sofa that swallowed up loads of clutter, provided comfortable sleeping space for two, and could also be rowed to safety in an emergency should our family find ourselves stranded by rising flood waters. It didn't help that it would have to be some kind of unprecedented 100 year deluge since our house rested on one of the the highest points between Pittsburgh and Erie. If rainstorms that hadn't been seen since the time of Noah should arise, we would be ready to start loading up the ole davenport with animals two by two. For a while my grandfather could only see it as a really expensive place to park your derriere, but the rest of us preferred to think of it as one more way to increase the versatility of a piece of furniture lovingly handcrafted by my mom. Eventually, even Grandpa was able to come around to our way of thinking.

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