Life Savor!

Chapter Two of SQUIRREL! CHIMNEY!

Last night friend Barbara, the critter expert, suggested that we call Animal Control today and tell ‘em we have an agitated animal down our chimney and fear it might be rabid. They would then come and remove it. “That’s their job,” she said.

[With an aluminum pole and a noose????]

She also said it might well be a raccoon, and she should know. For many months she had them in her attic, finally had to scramble to catch sight of where in her flat roof they were getting in. When Robert said he didn’t think the opening in our chimney cap was large enought for a raccoon, she answer dryly, “You’d be surprised.”

Last evening he ingeniously blocked our fireplace opening with a big Foamcore piece, then a folded-up card table, then wooden braces. You’d have thought there was a giant fanged woolybooger in there, but mostly he did it to help me feel less nervous. Besides, neither of us wanted the animal to finally drop down into the ashes and then tear around the house, trailing soot and leaping from table to table, sofa to chairs, on our Persian rug.

This morning we banged on the damper and heard no sound in reply. So either RoBear’s Rope Trick worked, or the rodent is a sound sleeper or demised. After he pulls the rope up, R will come down off the roof, don a thick jacket and gloves (wishing he had a catcher’s mask), and move the barricade aside just a tad to peek in as he opens the damper. If nothing falls down it’ll be a glorious anticlimax to the whole melodrama. If something does fall down … well, I guess then we’ll slam the barricade back in place and call animal control.

Also anesthetize me and Buddy Bear.

Right now the pup is reluctantly taking a nap. (You’re putting me down now, Mom? At 11 in the morning? Sheesh!)

I’ll pause now to lurk at the top of the hall and peer nervously around the wall while Mighty Hunter does his thang.

Later:

Actually, I helped hold up a towel as Robert pulled open the damper. I thought my barely-slide-the-barricade-aside plan was better, but he’s the boss of this exercise. I had my shrieks at the ready but nothing fell out! The critter had indeed climbed back up the chimney, probably via the rope, and we imagine him saying to his mate, “Honey, I found a great warm place for our nest, but it didn’t work out. Now fix me a really stiff drink.”

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Right now we’re having the Drama of the Squirrel Down the Chimney, clawing at the flue. As Robert said, it’s like something out of Edgar Allan Poe, with long fingernails scritch scritch scritching at the underside of the coffin lid. Brrr!

Buddy Bear the YorkiePoo is heroic. He keeps telling me There’s something in the chimney, Mom! He barks and grrrrrs to punctuate his alarm, acts like he’s ready to take all his seven pounds into battle. Robert says No Way—a hysterical squirrel could tear the pup’s face off.

My liege lord has now gone to Lowe’s to buy a rope, which he will lower down the chimney so the squirrel can climb up and back to freedom. I suspect that he (Robert, not the squirrel) is actually enjoying this. He’s been humming the theme to Mighty Mouse. I’m anxious about his being up on the roof, especially at night, but he valiantly assured me that he’ll set up a tall light stand and one of his 1000-watt photo lights.

I should probably charge admission.

Meantime I’ll be cowering in the garden room or our bedroom, with Buddy beside me, because if the little bastard doesn’t shut up pretty soon I’ll shove him up the chimney. I mean, he’s been trying to catch a squirrel all his three years …

When Buddy first alerted me this afternoon, I put him down for a nap and then fled to the office to meet with my 5:30 client. But I called Robert and said, “I am terrified to go back in that house without you.” I mean, that frantic scrabbling of rodent claws on the metal damper is horrible—both scary and pitiful. I even lined up friends for all three of us to bunk with (GOOD friends!), till I realized how silly that was.

So now I’m hiding out with the TV on high volume. Robert just stuck his head in the bedroom door and said the rope is in place, but so still is the squirrel. If the little dude hasn’t exited by morning, Robert the Squirrel Hunter plans to pull the rope up, smear it with peanut butter to get the squirrel started, then lower it again. He currently has put a small flashlight just inside the chimney top, so the squirrel can Go To The Light.

Lord. I hope it’s a squirrel. It could actually be a very large rat! He recently found a dead one near our tightly closed trash bins, with its throat torn out. At first we thought Buddy had finally caught and killed something, which broke my heart, but an experienced pet owner said Naaaah, if the Budster had killed it, he’d be trotting around the yard showing it off. It was probably a cat.

But … a few years ago our next door neighbor Julie had a BOBcat on her back deck, tufted ears and all. She called animal control, and a young woman showed up holding an aluminum pole with a noose on the end of it. Julie eyed it and asked, “What’s your plan … for the bobcat to come stick its head in there?” Of course, it was long gone by then. At first I doubted Julie’s identification, but she is an extremely pragmatic woman, not at all given to hysteria like … well, it develops, like Moi. Besides, we read a couple of days later about a bobcat spotted only a few miles from here.

So I’ve got a scritching scrabbling large rodent in my chimney, a derring-do husband planning peanut butter treats, the possibility of a rat invasion from the creek, and the memory of a bobcat big enough to carry Buddy off.

I can’t have a drink on my new diet, so I guess I’ll take a couple of melatonins and try to think happy thoughts at bedtime. I can hear a sarcastic voice in my head saying, “Good luck with that, duckie.”

‘Night.

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As everyone in earshot knows, for two weeks I’ve been on the Every Other Day diet. You do a semi-fast on, say, Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and eat normally (!) on the other days. In two weeks I have lost six or seven pounds (my scales like to tease me) and gained considerable smugness.

I have also been the biggest bore in the world, laser-focused, OCD about it all. I’ve recorded every morsel, kept calorie counts, micromanaged a food journal. Then on two “UP” days I scarfed 500-calorie burgers, even curly fries, and felt triumphantly rebellious. It was like playing hooky, only tastier.

In short, I have regressed to adolescence.

I know you may be thinking, “So what else is new? You’re always uppity about something.” But this is a new kind of rebellion in which there really is a Perceived Authority to rebel against: FOOD. Lovely, naughty, seductive foods have had a hold on me for too long. Now I’M in charge! (I could say Large and in charge, but that’s too close for comfort).

Still, a couple of nights I flipped the bird to the diet and had two small glasses of red wine (75 calories each) and two chocolate truffles (50 calories each, they’re kind of dry and cocoa-ish). So, who or what was I rebelling against then? The food? The diet?

As my waist begins to assert itself, I’m encouraged. I just created a new blank journal, a table in which to record the next two weeks. Maybe I’ll get relaxed about it all, give up this intensity. I’m so not an obsessive person. Well, except when I’m writing a book, and I’ve already given that up.

Though if you haven’t read Put Your Big Girl Panties On and Deal With It &/or Sizzling Sex in 30 Days, please do. Like dieting, I’d hate to think I did all that and nobody cared.

That absolutely will not happen with dieting. Robert the Goodman is cheering me on, and we have a shack-up at an elegant hotel planned for two weeks from now. I want to look good in, and out of, my black teddy.

Calories will not be invited to that event. I may undo some of my good work, but I intend to eat and drink whatever I want. Damn the diet! Full speed ahead!

Till then, though, cottage cheese and blueberries are my friends.

Hoping you are the same … Roz

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Happy 2010! What a challenging decade we’ve just been through. As a friend wrote, “Happiness is the 00s in the rear-view mirror.” So, welcome to the shiny new-and-improved decade.

[Do you say two-thousand-&-ten or twenty-ten? I say twenty-ten because I used to say nineteen-eighty, etc., but I think I'm in the minority. If you vote strongly for either one, drop me a note at roz@coachroz.com and tell me your rationale. I'm open, either way.]

Why am I late in sending this New Year’s greeting? No excuse. Just lazing through the holidays and waiting for inspiration. It came this week in the form of an obituary about a woman I never heard of but would like to hold as a role model for living life out loud. I’m changing only her name.

“On January 4, 2010, at the age of 65, (Dottie Jackson Morrow) passed away. One who did not know Dottie might say she was laid to rest, but such a person would be wrong. Dottie did not rest in her earthly life, and there is no reason to believe that she has started now. … Rarely was Dottie not in the presence of friends, all of whom she considered family. She would meet random people in unlikely places, and she would nurture relationships that would last. If she liked you, she loved you, and she treated all her friends as best friends. … Dottie embraced life with a passion unattainable by most, and she did more living in her 65 years than most could do in 100.”

There was also a sentence about how she met and married her soul mate, but that’s not essential for living with gusto — it’s just a gorgeous added-value.

I was particularly intrigued that she would “meet people in unlikely places” and nurture relationships that would last. That is a delightful adventure, and it was very affirming to have it validated. At one of my birthday parties, friend David said, “Roz was with Robert at a concert, and she leaned over at intermission and said, ‘What’s a good-looking guy like you doing here alone?’ — and that’s how she picked me up. Is there anybody else here that Roz picked up?” And lots of hands went up. I was both embarrassed and tickled. I hadn’t realized how often I do that, just strike up a conversation with a stranger who can become a friend.

Think about it. How else, really, do we make friends? I mean, they are all strangers when we first meet, so unless a mutual friend introduces us, it’s kind of up to us to start the connection. What’s to lose? They weren’t our friend before we met, and worse-case scenario, they won’t be afterward. Of course, I’m assuming safe environment and prudent behavior.

Here’s what “Dottie’s” obit reminded me of. Decades ago, when I was in corporate America instead of a counseling practice, I would become close friends with another employee. We might lunch together a couple of times a week, maybe see a movie, certainly support each other when we were sure we could run the company better than its leaders. (Lord, I was SO young.) When one of us moved on, we swore we’d continue to see each other often, but we didn’t. And now I can’t even remember their names.

For years I’ve considered that a natural occurrence, that the trajectories of our lives just parted — but maybe if I’d nurtured those friendships the way Dottie did, I’d be richer in friendships than I am.

So in addition to the ritual I’m-gonna-lose-20-pounds resolution, this year I intend to stay better in touch with friends I seldom see but dearly treasure. I thank “Dottie” for reminding me, even from beyond her life, how sweet such relationships are.

Meantime, I can revel in the memory that I introduced David to one of my best girlfriends, and they’ve just celebrated their 26th anniversary. I’m so glad I picked him up, and I intend never to set him down. Now I want to get crackin’ on emailing or calling some others I’ve neglected. They are just too precious to let fade away.

Hoping you feel the same … Cheers!

Roz

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I just read back through my last three posts (a writer’s self-gratification…or not), and realize that they are all about vehicles. As a psychotherapist I ask myself whether there is a hidden significance therein. So far the answer has come back, Naaaah.

But the number of wheels is a recurring theme.

First, let’s eliminate any fantasy about unicycling. Not now, not ever.

Then we come to the Segway, the two-wheeled sci-fi-looking “personal transporter” that scared the living bejeebers out of me. That was a disappointment. I acted no-big-deal about it, but actually, I felt like a failure. A balance-impaired failure. That’s the truth, damn it.

Then I wrote about my beloved Austin Healey, with its four mag wheels, a mighty heart, a throbbing voice, and considerable sex appeal that enveloped me when I drove it. Hey, I was very very young back then. Then when I tried to climb back into my Healey days, I found they didn’t fit any more. Well, duh, no wonder.  I’m now in what I call Profound Middle Age, with way more sands in the bottom of my life’s hourglass than in the top. Physically too, come to think about it, though I’d rather not.

So there I was, a failure at space-age two-wheeled vehicles (balance too impaired to risk a bicycle) and gorgeous yesteryear four-wheeled ones.

Ah, but Fate had a gift for me, the three-wheeled scooter! Picture this. Two sturdy wheels in back and one in front, giving it a turning ratio similar to simply reversing direction when you walk. Capable of jogging speed. Bright light in front. Only a wimpy beep for a horn, but you could customize it with a klaxon bulb horn. The word REVO stamped into the floorboards, suggesting revolutionary overtones. Available in candy apple red.

Now as I look into the future and ponder how I’ll fare if my knees and ankles continue to mutiny, I see myself on a sassy scooter that’s narrow enough to go through almost any doorway, peppy enough to outdistance a fast-walking partner, and flamboyant enough to keep my spirits way up.

Back in west Texas when I was a girl, there was a cheerful saying: “Keep your dauber up!” I heard it all the time and thought it just meant, Keep smiling! Be of good cheer! When I found out it had a naughty, sly meaning I stopped using it.

I just this minute decided to dust it off.

So hey, friend, keep your dauber up! Whether it’s a scooter or a Harley, an outrageous haircut or spontaneous trip (I’m a believer in cruises), an impulsive decision to write your memoirs or to never again send out Christmas cards—whatever pumps you back up when you’re feeling deflated, go for it! Throttle open, and damn the number of wheels!

Love, Roz

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Tags: celebrate, go for it, middle age