Coon Dog

Arrow howling at a tree

My dog has never been trained in the art of hunting. I've read Where The Red Fern Grows, and I know how much patience is required to teach a dog such skills. I do not have patience.

So, I was confused when I heard my dog howling while I was making breakfast. Glancing out the window, I saw that he was safe and fine sitting under a tree. But the howling was relentless. Then he began barking and running in circles. I called him inside, but he was not to be moved. Finally, I walked to him and noticed by the torn up grass under the tree that he had been involved in the act of running in circles for many hours.

Why Arrow was howling at the tree

Not familiar with the ways of the wild, it took me a mighty long time to figure out what was going on. Then, in a flash, all that I had learned from Where The Red Fern Grows came back to me - not just the part that made me cry for days. But I remembered the part where the dogs hunted. I looked up into the tree. And there it was - a raccoon. A very large, very frightened raccoon.

My dog could not have been more proud.

And, honestly, I was just a little bit proud also.

Until the next night when he trapped thee raccoons on the neighbors porch at 3 AM and woke their family up with his ferocious barking.

Not proud.

Nature Invasion

I love living in the country. It is peaceful. Nature surrounds us. Nature invades us. That part I don't like.

The kids were in bed, a gentle breeze was blowing in the open windows, the sounds of frogs, and crickets floated through the air. It was utterly peaceful. I seized the moment. I grabbed a book, opened all the windows in my bedroom, and climbed under the cozy blankets to read. Nobody knows how to party like I do.

I quietly read for at least ten minutes, hardly daring to believe I was lucky enough to participate in a leisure activity, when I heard the rattling of the screen door that leads from my bedroom to my back deck. I thought it was the wind, and did not tear my eyes away from the words I was devouring in the book I was reading. But the rattling continued. I chose to glance toward the door, more out of instinct that actual decision, just in time to see a black MOUSE ENTER MY BEDROOM! It squeezed under the screen door, scampered across the carpet, and caused my heart to pound like a jackhammer. I flung books, pillows, and blankets in all directions as I attempted to climb the wall and take refuge on the ceiling. This, along with blood curdling screams, induced the mouse to turn right back around and exit my room by the same route he had entered it.

So, now I know that screaming and throwing things is an effective weapon against mice.

And I think I need a cat.

Terrible Wreck

"Mom! Let me in!" Emery screamed outside my bathroom door.
"I'm not dressed," I explained.
"It doesn't matter!"
Sensing the distress of the situation, I left the water in the shower running, dripped across the bathroom to my robe, and quickly put it on. When I opened the door, a blond-headed, red-faced girl howled in my direction.
"Did someone hurt you?" I asked, alarmed. "Did you break something? Are you scared?"
"Worse!" And she shoved her foot into my face. It will never cease to amaze me how a child, when scared, can contort their body into a multitude of gymnastic shapes in order to bring attention to the injured part. But what I saw left me woozy.
"Your toe is all bloody," I yelled, because I'm good at deducing things.
"I was climbing the apple tree, and I reached for a really big apple, but I fell, and when I was falling down the tree a piece of bark slid between my skin and my toenail."
"Eww," I muttered as the darkness closed in around me and my knees turned to jello. "We'll have to get tweezers and pull it out."
"You can't," she cried. "It's not a solid piece of wood. It's all soft and when you pull on it, it just crumbles."
So I carried her, in my soaking wet robe, to the kitchen and put her foot in the sink. After soaking it in water long enough for my scalp to stop tingling, I told her to bite into an apple really hard as a distraction while I tried using a needle to pry the chunk of bark out from under her toenail. Alas, the child spoke truly when she said that the bark just crumbled. The needle was totally ineffective. Then I placed the poor girl into a bath hoping the warm water would eventually disintegrate the wood. The only thing that course of action succeeded in doing was to irritate the poison sumac rash that covered her body.  Finally, I attempted to use a needle to scrape the crumbly substance out of my daughter's nail bed. That action induced screaming likely to cause deafness in our neighbors. She bit my brush in half and screamed so loudly I expected my eardrum to climb out of my body and run away.


We spent the rest of the evening in the ER where she brought the nurses to tears with her sad face. They rushed to give her ice, Advil, a pillow, a pony. That is when I decided to take her with me every time I have to wait for endless hours.

The doctor finally numbed her toe and dug out all the bark with special tweezers only doctors are allowed to play with.

Then Emery's phone buzzed. She had a text from a friend asking how she was doing. Without even a slight pause, Emery responded, "I am a terrible wreck."

I looked at her laying on the paper-coated table with a nasty rash all over her body from poison sumac, a horrifying big toe,  tears running down her blotchy, red face, and I agreed with her diagnostic.

But she's my sweet, little, terrible wreck.

Disaster Muffins

Some weekends are gentle and leave you feeling relaxed and refreshed. Mine wasn't. It came in like a lion and devoured me. But that is another blog for another time. The point is that I was tired. More like exhausted. So, at 10:00 Saturday night I should have gone to bed, but I had to make muffins for Jesus.

My church is pretty awesome. It is full of great people that I really like, we do a lot of fun stuff, and it meets in a movie theater so sometimes I get popcorn, and that is about all I need to make me happy. Because football season is upon us, and because my church is pretty great, before church this Sunday we had a tailgating party. We all met in the parking lot, brought breakfast food, and celebrated great weather and football before church. Which is why I was making muffins at 10:00 the night before.

I am not what you would call a baker. I don't bake. But, I decided muffins were pretty safe, and to make them extra special, I added some of the delicious Michigan blueberries my mom gets for me every year. They are bigger and juicier and sweeter than any blueberries you can imagine. I added them with a smile just imagining all the church folk devouring the muffins and pounding down my door for the recipe. I would say, "Well, first you have to go to Michigan and pick the blueberries."

I'm not sure what happened. There really is no explanation. They were a disaster. They never got puffy on the top, and they needed to bake much longer than the recipe called for. When I tried to take them out of the muffin tin, they exploded.


Due to the large amounts of hysterics, my husband sensed something in the kitchen was amiss. He entered the kitchen, sized up the situation, told me to go watch TV, and totally redeemed the situation. He, the muscular construction guy, made beautiful muffins.

I'm not a baker.

Classical Music

The classical music station owes me about a thousand gallons of gas.

When my kids are riding in the car with me the radio station has to be set to screamo, rap, or rock that rocks. And we have to listen to it loud. While I can only handle about three rap songs before I begin to rip out my hair by the roots, I am actually growing to enjoy the screamo. I sometimes even play it while the age appropriate people aren't with me.

But, sometimes, when the rulers of the radio dial exit the vehicle, I push that dial to the classical station. Violin concertos and piano sonatas fill my mind. They fill my mind and leave no room for such mundane thought as, "I'm going to the grocery store." I just drive. I don't mean to. I mean to do my errands in a timely fashion and return home to accomplish housework. But, instead, I just drive. I have ended up downtown when I was headed to the jr. high school. I have chased a long forgotten gravel road, wondering where it ended, when I intended to show up for my haircut.

Violins are my favorite. They make my soul smile.

I get wrapped up in the story of the music. I want to lie in the grass and watch the clouds decorate the sky. I do not want to shop for bread and milk and boy's underwear. And I usually don't. Which is why the classical music station has cost me a thousand gallons of gas. And my boys wear old underwear full of holes.

"It's okay kids," I want to say. "You might not have breakfast or underwear, but my soul is smiling."

Worth it.

It Happened

"Mom," Makenna sobbed over the phone, "I've had an accident."

My heart stopped moving and my lungs ceased breathing. Then came the words I was waiting to hear: "I'm not hurt. Everyone is fine."

Having teenagers is scary for so many reasons. The number one reason for fear, in my opinion, is that they are legally able to place themselves in the driving position of a motorized vehicle and DRIVE AWAY. Whoever made this a legal activity did not have teenagers. My daughter thinks Raman Noodles constitutes a great breakfast, and she has lost her debit card three times over the summer. Yet, she is legally able to DRIVE AWAY.

And just to ensure that I will someday be very good friends with a heart doctor, my two sons are also now driving. These are the boys who drove a go-cart into the bonfire. Yes, the actual fire. Luckily my son's only accident since legally driving has been to crash my precious Jeep into a tree. Nobody was hurt.


Mike and I hightailed it over to the accident site where the police assured us that Makenna handled herself responsibly and was not at fault in any way. We hugged Makenna and her friends, who were shaking and chattering like frightened birds, and we spoke to the woman who had pulled out in front of Makenna's car, who was wandering like a zombie. I think the police were glad when they could finally leave.

"The most scary part," Makenna said, "was that even though I was responsible for what happened to everyone, I had no control over the situation. It just happened."

Ironic, I thought to myself as I watched her get into her sad, broken car, that is just how I feel.

Death Machine

Isn't there some unwritten law that a person should only defy death one way at a time? Because I would like to make a citizen's arrest. I saw a man riding a Harley. Riding a Harley is not bad, but, while placing his unhelmeted life on his death machine, he was also smoking.

First of all, how does a cigarette stay lit while being blasted by wind? Doesn't it blow out? Or, doesn't it - literally - blow out of a man's mouth and into the road? I experienced moped riding last year for the first time, and, while exhilarating, it was also quite windy. Things blew off of me all the time: my sunglasses, my headband, thirteen sacks of groceries I was trying to transport, my skirt. I don't want to talk about it. Admittedly, I raced that thing up to 25 mph, so the wind was quite strong. But, I have a feeling Mr. Harley was planning on going even faster. How does a measly cigarette stand a chance? I've seen the way people hold those in their lips. There must be another unspoken rule that, not being a smoker, I am unaware of. It must state that the cigarette should only barely touch the lips and only one millimeter of the cigarette is actually allowed to come in contact with saliva. When talking to someone in such a situation, it is impossible for me to tear my eyes away from the smoker's blatant dare to gravity. I just stare at the butt of the cigarette sitting precariously on the outer half of a lower lip and wait, with baited breath, hoping that it does, and then hoping that it does not fall to the ground. I'm torn.

That's not all though. This man, while placing his life on a death vehicle and simultaneously inhaling cancer, pulled out his cell phone and began texting. I nearly rolled down my window and yelled, "Excuse me! Both hands should be on your death machine at all times!" If I had his cell phone number, I would have texted him the phone number for the suicide prevention hotline. Clearly, he was looking to end it all.

What has this world come to?