Cold Ode

Yesterday, I caught a cold.

Today, it's what's got me.

I'm puttin' scarves around my neck

And whiskey in my tea.

My ears ache with a vengeance.

My bones are sore, to boot.

If Mom were still alive today

She'd brew sarsaparilla root.

She'd rub my chest with Vapo-Rub

She would make me stay in bed.

She'd pour concoctions down my throat

And lay hot cloths on my head.

She'd pile on quilts and covers

Until I soaked the sheets with sweat.

She'd make me sleep the day away

And serve food, soft and wet.

She'd yell at me if I got up

And order me back down.

She'd feed me oatmeal with a spoon

And do it with a frown.

She'd mend me with her voodoo.

Cured in two weeks from her ways.

But with her gone I'll have this cold

Another fourteen days.

 

L G Vernon 2009
(sniff) 

The Escape

Here's a super-short story I wrote a few years ago~~Enjoy! LG



Mouse-ear sized leaves shimmered in the sunlight overhead. Green, so green. Mariah peered north. There was nothing, yet.

“I’ll be there. I’ll meet you by the elm at the corner of the pasture. Wait for me,” he’d said. Mariah smiled, recalling the flash of his grin.

She eyed her suitcase, then sauntered around the tree's trunk, fingering the bark. Please come. Please, please. She squinted north again to the rise in the dirt road. Her mind said she heard the sound of a car. Her breath caught; she lifted the suitcase, then dropped it. No, no car, yet.

The screen door banged against the empty house. The windows mocked her. He’s not coming, you know, they said. He never was. Mariah smoothed her pink dimity skirt, then her curls. He liked her curls. She moved to the other side of the tree so the house couldn’t see her. Tears throbbed in her throat, burning her eyelids.

“He’ll be here,” she declared. Breezes tickled the mouse-ear leaves, dappling her with shadows. His car crested the rise. “Told you so,” she whispered to the house.

“Hello, Mr. Bundy,” she said, climbing into the sedan.

“Hello, Mariah, dear—and please call me Ted.”

Smashing the Atom~~One Boob at a Time

When I was a kid I loved tests. I remember the Iowa Tests with great fondness. I can still smell the sharpened  Number Two pencils and see them lined up on my desktop in all their yellow splendor. I always did well on tests~~one of those egghead-nerd-music-geek-can't-run-for-squat-kids. I couldn't catch a baseball, either. But I was really good at those tests.

Now I hate tests.

Because of my advanced decrepitude, I fall into that medical demographic called Tests-R-Us. And, since my birthday rolls around every September, it's Test Month. I do appreciate that these things are important and  I enjoy extraordinarily good health (other than being roughly the size of the Hindenburg), in no small part because of preventative screening, I'm sure. Except for requiring an emergency c-section during the birth of my daughter~~a baby so humongous I couldn't have popped her out with a shoehorn and an overhead crane~~I've never had surgery in my life.

Well, I take it back. There was the matter of the jigsaw puzzle I made out of my right leg during the Queen Mother of all rollerskating mishaps when I was twelve. I will be forever grateful to the orthopedic surgeon who happened to wander into the ER room that New Year's Day. I can still see the look of relief on my mother's face when he turned to her and said, "I can fix this."

Anyway, I saw my doctor for a routine visit back in August and I knew what was coming by the look on his face as he went over my records. "Hmm," he said, "I see it's time for your annual bloodwork, your pap smear, your colo/rectal exam, your pneumonia shot, and your mammogram."

"Oh, goody."

Becky, his nurse and co-conspirator took his notes away and told me to meet her at the nurse's station and she'd have my appointments all lined up. "What do you want to do first?"

'Heroin," I answered.

So, for my birthday month, I got shots, learned what it will be like when I am captured by aliens and am victim of the anal probe, had my blood sucked out by a woman with a barbed needle and absolutely no understanding of human anatomy, and~~last but not least~~I got a mammogram.

Two days after my birthday I hopped on down to the radiology lab, which now has new exterior packaging and is called the Women's Imaging Pavillion. It's even separate from the regular radiology lab.
I know all this because when I arrived for my mammogram, I went to the wrong building. I walked into the regular radiology lab to find myself in the presence of a county jail prisoner in jail yellows, accompanied by two deputy sheriffs. They were the only people there. They all watched curiously as I walked up to the counter. "I have an appointment at 11:15," I said, very quietly, to the receptionist.

The woman behind the counter asked for my name, which I provided, then looked at her computer screen. "I don't see your name. What are you here for?"

This poor guy behind me has probably been in jail for 6 months, I thought.  ". . . er . . . uh . . . my annual mammogram," I whispered, with great subtlety.

Unexpectedly, the woman behind the counter developed the vocal skills of a tobacco auctioneer working without a microphone. "A MAMM-O-GRAM? OH, MAMM-O-GRAMS AREN'T ADMINISTERED HERE. FOR A MAMM-O-GRAM, YOU HAVE TO GO DOWN TO THE NEXT BUILDING."

I really did not want to turn around at this point. But since the only exit door was across the waiting room behind me, and since I lack the ability to walk through walls, I pivoted to see the prisoner sitting, open-mouthed, his eyes rivited on my not inconsiderable chest.  In that moment I knew absolutely that Waldo, or whatever his name was, would be back at the jail giving the guys in his cell block an earful in an hour. For the purposes of his story, I would be transformed from an upper middle-aged matron into the hottest babe in shoe leather~~probably sporting several tattos and enough body piercings to set off airport metal detectors.

Resisting the urge to pull my jacket closed, I scampered off and drove around to the next parking lot where I parked and went into the proper building. I knew it was the right one because there was a sign out front with a ballerina-shaped line drawing of a woman on it, with Women's Imaging Pavillion in script so fancy I could barely make it out.

Considering that men are victims of breast cancer, too, I wondered where they go for their mammograms.

Upon entering, I couldn't help but notice that the waiting area was substantially different than the sterile metal and naugahyde one I had just left. The room was huge, high-ceilinged, with skylights offering indirect natural light that accented several floral arrangements, artistically scattered on tables here and there. The furniture was soft and low, in muted tones of mauve and grey. The dulcet-voiced woman behind the pink granite reception counter took my name and told me to have a seat.

I had sifted through several printed advertisements for local atheticians, dermatologists, and plastic surgeons, as well as a stack of magazines~~not a Popular Mechanics or American Rifleman among them~~and had just settled down to read an informative article entitled Sex After 50, when a perky woman in a scrub outfit with pink flowers on it came out and asked me to come with her. "Hi, I'm Ashley," she told me by way of introduction as she ushered me down a long hallway, "I'll be your mammographer, today."

She was so perky, in fact, that I expected to hear the 'keep your seatbacks and tray tables in an upright position and here is the oxygen mask' talk at any second. She opened a door into a tiny dressing room, with another door on the opposite wall. "Take everything off on top," she said. "You can leave your necklace on, just turn it around so it hangs down your back." She gestured to a small basket on top of the cabinet. In it were individually-packaged moist towlettes, an aerosol can of anti-perspirant, and some tri-fold brochures about the Women's Imaging Center. There were also several discount coupons for a local spa. "Use the towelettes to wipe off any deodorant you may have used," she said. "There's a gown in the cabinet. Put it on, open in front, and come out the other door when you're ready."

I thanked Ashley for her help. She left and I did as she'd instructed, reaching into the cabinet to extract the 'gown', which turned out to be a shawl kind of thing that just draped over my shoulders, hanging down in the front and back, and sized for someone with the dimensions of a rhinocerous. I had just put it on when Ashley tapped on the other door. "I'm ready when you are," she called.

I strolled out of my feminine little cubicle, covering my front with one half of the front of my bolero, cavalierly tossing the other around my neck. "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille," I declared. Ashley laughed and I noticed she had a heating pad on the mammogram machine. She was holding what looked like some small bandaids~~with pink flowers on them, what else?~~and said, "Let's put these on, shall we?"

Before I knew it, she whipped the fronts of my bolero back over my shoulders and smacked the bandaids~~one for each side~~on my chest, like little blindfolds. "Do I get a cigarette, too?" I asked.

"Oh, there's no smoking in The Pavillion." My humor was clearly lost on her. She took the heating pad off the machine, and for a little woman,  proved surprisingly powerful as she dragged me into its clutches.

Now, for those of you who've never had the inestimable pleasure of a mammogram, let me tell you all about it. The machine itself is tower-shaped, with a set of clear plexiglass 'shelves' that protrude from one side. Controlled by foot pedals, these shelves are actually a set of large flat pincers, between which the anatomical parts in question are squeezed, one at a time.

"I hate this," I said, as Ashley used the foot pedals to raise the shelves up to the level of my chest. Then separated them so 'I' would fit in between.

"Well, to be honest, not a single woman has ever come in here and said, 'Whoo-hoo! I just looooovvee this!'" she remarked, as she plopped half my chest onto the bottom shelf and pushed and shoved, until it, with its pink, flowerdy festoon, was in the position she wanted. "Don't move," she said.

I heard the servo whir and the top shelf of the machine began to descend. In short order, my bazoom had taken on the dimensions of a large, white pizza. There was another noise, Ashley said, "All done," and the shelves came apart.

In a matter of seconds, Ashley shoved down that side of my bolero, pulled up the other side, whirled me in place and was taking the other picture. "I'd like a dozen wallets and an 8 X 10 for the family album," I told her as she wiped off the shelves.

Ashley led me back down the hall to my cubicle where I thanked her. "But, tell me," I said, "if I broke my leg or needed to have my knee x-rayed, would I come here, this being the Women's Imaging Pavillion, and all?"

"Oh, no," she answered. "You'd just go to regular radiology for that."

So, while I got dressed I wondered just who the Women's Imaging Pavillion was fooling. Are there really women who wouldn't go for mammography if they had to go to regular radiology for it? Is the minor embarrassment I felt when the purpose of my visit was announced so vociferously at the wrong building really enough to prevent women from availing themselves of life-saving prescreening? C'mon. Big girl panties are availble on aisle five.

As I walked out of the huge, luxurious building, I wondered how many free mammograms could be performed at the regular radiology building, if several million dollars hadn't been spent on The Pavillion.

Oh, and a couple of other things before I forget: Those little pink bandaids hurt like a bitch when you pull them off. And~~if men had testicular exams with machines like these, they'd invent ones that were much, much more comfortable.

For now, I'm just Linda.

Gardening in the Rockies~~Losing the Battle, and the War, too

These little beauties on the right (yes, little is the operative word) are a squash and a tomato~~
perhaps the most expensive squash and tomato in the country. They serve as examples of what judicious gardening practices can produce during an interesting growing season in southeast Wyoming.

I love to garden; I really do. I love scrounging around in the garage in order to find my gardening tools, having haphazardly tossed them in there during a September blizzard the previous year. I love pulling on my gardening gloves for the first time in the spring, feeling the frenetic rustling and scrabbling of the spider families nestled there, apartment-style,  in the fingertips. I love watching those same gloves rocket across the garage to hit the windows on the opposite wall and slide down behind Bill's table saw. But I digress . . .

In case you didn't know, and most people don't, (considering that the Weather Channel weatherpersons are more apt to spout the 'F' word than they are  the 'W' word),  Wyoming has been in the throes of a serious drought for several years. Seven years, I think. But God forbid the weatherpersons should ever tell the rest of you what goes on in our neck of the woods . . ..  'Yes, folks, that winter storm is barreling out of Canada into the Dakotas. By tomorrow night it will be deep into Wyo----F*&k!----DID THAT MAKE MY HEART POUND, OR WHAT, BOB . . . heh heh heh, I almost mentioned that state where Yellowstone is!' . . ..

Anyway, back to the drought. Since we live on a well and electrically pump our own water, I haven't grow a garden at all during the drought.  Pumping water for irrigation is not cost-effective. That was my excuse, anyway. Truthfully, I haven't grown an in-the-ground garden for many years. For other reasons.

We have rabbits.

Not pet rabbits, although we had those, too. Kc wrangled them at the county fair, along with chickens, ducks, geese, guinea pigs, and turkeys, for several embarrassingly formative years that she avoids speaking of with great skill (maybe she'll be a weatherperson--she does like the 'F' word). But, I digress, again . . .

Back to the rabbits. Cottontails by the dozens inhabit our property. These are not Thumper-from-Bambi rabbits. These are John Rambo-from-Rambo rabbits. When we still had Buck the Wonder Dog, they were kept at bay, but with his passing some years ago, there has been no stopping them.

Get another dog,  you say.

Uh, no. Thank you for suggesting that, though.

See, it's cold here in the winter. In fact cold is insufficient as a descriptor for the bone-deep chill of 'W' in winter. As a weatherperson would say, if they EVER mentioned Wyoming, 'It's F^%&ing freezing out there!' So, that handy-dandy, outside-type, summertime dog would become a Nanook of the North Dogsicle, or, more likely at our advanced age and soft-heartedness, become an inside dog~~fast, quick, and in a hurry~~thus negating his effectiveness as a rabbit extermination system.

Back when there was Buck the Wonder Dog and no drought~~when conveniently-occurring thunderstorms full of water came over every day or so~~I grew a summer garden, 50 X 80 feet.  I ordered seed from Burpee and a host of other seed companies, their catalogues entertaining me through the cold winter months as I planned out the incredible harvest I'd enjoy, come fall.

We had a Troybilt rototiller with which Bill plowed the garden. Oh, how I looked forward to early spring, the kitchen windows thrown open to the sound of him cursing like a weatherperson as he was dragged from one end of the plot to the other by that huge machine. Once he was finished and had limped back inside, I used stakes and measured out my rows, following the diagram I drew when I ordered my seed. It usually took me two days to plant.

Buck (during this period nicknamed 'the bastard') stayed on the perimeter of the plot, cowed by my screaming, but if I went into the garage for something, I occasionally came outside to see him running in great arcing swaths through my carefully planted rows~~thus his nickname, and my purchase of a sturdy chain which attached him to his doghouse. I used the appellation so frequently that Kc, then very small, called Buck 'a bassett'. She'd climb up on the baseboard heater under the dining room window and yell through the glass, "Buck, you bassett, you be'er stay out'ta Mom's gar-nen." (see?? A born weatherperson).

Anyway, while Buck was around, I grew some amazing crops. We had corn, sugar snap peas, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, several kinds of squash, kohlrabi, turnips, beets, carrots, cabbage, brocolli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and pumpkins, along with a variety of herbs, including catnip, which now grows 'volunteer' everywhere the seed stops. But once Buck was gone, everything changed. Everything.

I'd plant, just like always, and as soon as the tender plants came up, they would come in the night. Rabbits. Dirty bassetts, as Kc would say.  I'd get up in the early morning, dawn my gardening ensemble (fodder for another blog, another time), grab a cup of coffee and walk out in the sunlight to enjoy the fruits of my labors. Half a row of corn would be gone---HALF A FIFTY-FOOT ROW! Sometimes a whole row~~or several rows. Muttering like a weatherperson, I replanted at first. But I soon saw the futility of that.

I soldiered on, though, often flying out the backdoor, grabbing a hoe or a rake on my way through the garage to scatter the gray army into the lilac bushes at the back of the garden. Herds of rabbits munched through my produce like popcorn-eaters at a dollar movie. Disdaining the weeds that sprouted between the rows, they hoovered up whatever I'd planted. My garden became a chewed, shriveled wasteland.

The last straw came when my well-meaning husband helped some friends clean out their barn. They brought truckloads of manure out to our place. I was thrilled! We lovingly spread it on the garden. The following spring, several noxious weeds, including bindweed, which the rabbits ignored, came up with a vengeance. They proved the end of my in-the-ground endeavors.

Since then, I've turned to container planting. I plant flowers and vegetables with some measure of success. Last fall, I was in town and cut behind a local feed store to beat some heavy road traffic (in Wyoming a tractor is usually involved) and found a bonanza. Store personnel had foolishly discarded a six-foot square, two-foot deep, metal bin. Why, it was perfectly good! I wheeled my 84 Chrysler with the big dent in the front passenger door (it's perfectly good, too) into a parking spot and marched right inside. Oddly, the manager looked relieved when I asked him if I could have the bin. I agreed to pick it up as soon as I could drive home and return with Bill and his truck.

"Boy, the neighbors are gonna love this," he mumbled as we hefted the bin into the back of Old Blue an hour later. It was pretty rusty and had a couple bullet holes in it. I didn't care.

"Yeah, it's gonna be great, isn't it!"

We hauled my bin home and pulled it out of the truck, dragging it over near the woodpile so I could take the winter to decide what I was going to do with it.

"F%^king fantastic," Bill the weatherperson murmured.

Come spring, we carried my bin up to the house and placed it between the front flowerbed and a huge spruce tree, on a spot I call no man's land, because grass won't grow there. I used two bricks in place of the bin's missing leg and positioned several of my pots around its perimeter on the ground, envisioning a veritable Oasis of Bliss once the plants grew in. Then Bill and I were off to the garden shop at Walmart. I needed soil for my new planter, and plants for everything.

Once at the garden shop, I asked the clerk if she could tell me about the various potting mixes they had in stock. She ambled over to the pallets of bags and stared into space for a few seconds. "Well, they're mostly dirt, I think." I agreed, deciding not to ask her about the fertilizer stacked nearby. Bill brought the truck up, and we loaded twenty bags. I also bought plants: three kinds of squash, a dozen tomato plants, several herbs, geraniums, dahlias, petunias, lobelia, snap dragons, pansies--you name it, I bought it.

I wrote a large check and presented it to the dirt expert. Bill drove us home, where he pulled right up to the Oasis of Bliss. I tossed some rocks in the bottom of the bin, for drainage, and he cut open and dumped the soil in. I carried the plants over onto the concrete in front of the garage, where they could 'harden up' for a few days before I planted them. Bill watered down the new earth in my bin. All was right with the world.

A few days later, I planted, watered, gave everybody a shot of Miracle Grow fertilizer, and waited for things to burgeon. But the weather remained cool, so it was slow going. Finally, in early June, it began to warm up a bit, and the drought was declared officially 'over'~~not by the TV weatherpersons, mind you, but by the National Weather Service. They apparently can utter the 'W' word without risk of instant flagellation by the Weather Gods.

It was raining everyday, and my baby plants were loving it. Then one day it hailed. Just a bit (I forgot to mention, it hails a lot, here). Everybody survived. Things were moving right along by then. My squash plants had secondary leaves and a couple of blossoms ready to open.

A couple of days later, I was packing to go to a writers' conference when I heard the emergency weather radio go off. Severe thunderstorms, it said. Right here, right now.

It hailed.

Huge hail.

Hard hail.

Lots of hail.

The ground was white with it, the gutters clogged with it. It hailed so hard I couldn't see my Oasis of Bliss. The roar of hail hitting the house was deafening.

As the storm passed, I could see large chips of asphalt roofing in the water pouring off the roof. Out the back windows, I could see paint chips all over the ground. I knew before I went outside that our roof and our siding were gone. I was right; they were.

The Oasis of Bliss, my Island of Joy, was flattened. All my plants were beaten to mush, photosynthesis a thing of the past. I sat in my recliner and cried. I called the writers' conference and told them I couldn't come. Then I called the insurance adjuster. For a while, in the after-storm quiet, I was a weatherperson in the privacy of my own living room.

The adjuster showed up two days later. He's a very nice man and estimated that the storm did about $12,000 damage to our house. A siding crew came and put on new siding. There were so many roofs damaged that I'm still on a list for that repair, which will be done in the spring.

The Oasis? I was going to replant, but a few days after the storm, wan leaves began popping up. In short order, I had four squash plants, two tomato plants and a host of flowers that magically reappeared amidst the wreckage. But our nights through the summer have remained cool~~too cool.  And it hailed more.

My Oasis of Bliss looks like a barfly. The plants are tattoed with brown fractures, their spindly limbs scarcely able to bear their own weight. In spite of vigourous fertilizing and occasional weatherperson-type peptalks,(C',mon you little motherF^%&ers, grow) they've remained measley--weak--pitiful. Like small, effete high school sophomores, cruelly forced into football by hopeful fathers.

It was snowing when I got up yesterday morning. I went out in Bill's slippers and my ratty bathrobe and pulled off all the green tomatoes and the single zucchini you see in the picture above. I told the plants goodbye and thanked them for their wasted effort.

It froze hard last night. I think they were  relieved.