DRIVE VS. FLY

Someone, probably my husband, sent me a link to this dude's web/blog. And with a last name of "Snider," what else could you do beside make (and publish) snide remarks?

And although I'd make the argument that your name helps make you who you are, but I've been proven wrong way too many times (Joy, Angel, Jayne, Bruce) to try that dance again.

You make what you want out of your life, regardless of the label your parents stuck you with - look at Engelbert Humperdinck (who was actually born as Arnold George Dorsey in India - and next time you are in a game of trivia, use this information to your advantage... no charge).

But some thing that this guy wrote.... well, at least it gave me a topic for tonight.

The first part I do kinda agree with (again, this is here, I am simply parroting what he wrote) - "Traveling is an ordeal. I don't know why anyone ever goes anywhere. Our ancestors had the right idea: live your entire life in the village where you were born, and if you venture out on a trek, assume you're going to freeze to death, get lost, or be attacked by ring wraiths. "

Especially the part about being attacked by ring wraiths.

But his next paragraph... "Air travel, which is supposed to be the fastest and most convenient method of transportation, is actually the most arduous. Even when things go smoothly, it's exhausting. Our bodies simply weren't designed to be shoved into giant metal cylinders and hurtled through the air at several hundred miles per hour. They definitely weren't designed to withstand baggage fees. "

Okay, well, that the last sentence is true.

But has this guy ever driven a real distance? I love driving, and I hate flying... but I have also driven from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Torrence, California.

Non-stop.

With a puppy.

Now, I'll admit this might have been a once-in-a-lifetime trip - I mean, how often do you get to:

- Deal with hard, driving rain the entire trip, completely destroying your plans to camp-out several nights on the road (thus saving on motel costs and reinforcing your self-image as an environmentally-aware-and-Mother-Earth-type of the brave 70's woman) and forcing you to drive about 2,000 miles with only intermediate gas and restroom breaks every 4-6 hours

- Getting to know a complete stranger who responded to your note on a shared-ride-bulletin board at Western Michigan University but of whom you know nothing more about than she needs to get to Las Vegas as quickly as possible. Las Vegas. 'Quickly'. Hmm.

- Handle a six-week old mutt puppy who had just left his mother (one of the few times I could use the word 'bitch' and actually be politically correct) and his fellow litter-mates to drive in a car for three days straight, 24 hours on the road (times 3 makes, what, 72 hours?)

- Drop off your passenger (and the puppy) in Las Vegas, sleep for two hours in the car, and then drive five hours to get to Torrance California

Now, honestly, would it be in any way possible to have this kind of adventure if you had been stuffed into a commercial jet for three hours?

NO.

Which is why I feel flying over lengthy distances is perhaps worth the pain and torture of waiting perhaps an hour at the airport, going through 15 minutes of the security check, watching either a grade-B movie or three episodes of a television series, and actually having to WAIT 5-10 minutes for your luggage to arrive after you have raced from the gate to the baggage arena.

Anyone out there wanna express their opinion?

EXCUSE ME?

It's easy to get inpatient with people.

People who get in the "8 Items Or Less" express line when they have the entire store's stock of Michelob in bottles in the shopping cart.

The driver in front of you who, when the light finally turns green, is twisted around trying to adjust the DVD which is keeping his toddler happy, and (obviously) does NOT stomp on the gas (as he should) the INSTANT the traffic light begins to twitch its wavelength towards 495 mm & frequency to 606 THZ (i.e. green).

The grandmother who repeats the same stories that you have heard from your infancy, forgets what day of the week it is, asks you the same question time and time and time again...

Wait a minute, that is me. Right now.

Alzheimer's and senile dementia were both blessings for my mom. Yes, she couldn't hold on to an explanation for more than a few seconds, but she also had forgotten all heartache, bitterness, and anger, and became an extremely agreeable person.

Hmm.

Only trouble here is that since I let go of most of the anger, bitterness and heartache a long time ago. And so with the memory going...

I'm sorry, what we were talking about here just a minute ago?

Oh, yes, this was prompted by my husband's difficulty in listening to his mother tell him "four times" the same story during our weekly call.

I'm going to be there very, very soon.

Wait... where am I going to be?

GETTIN' DOWN AND DIRTY

I don't mind dirt.


I try to keep my fingernails clean, I vacuum, I dust things when it becomes too obvious. I wash my hair a lot, and I take a bath almost every night (not for cleanliness so much as relaxation).

But I also live in southern Arizona, where dust is simply a significant part of the environment and our culture - sparkling clean cowboy boots that would be fine in New York City look silly down here. Same with real pick-ups and blue-jeans.

(Although I still can't get over paying money for jeans that LOOK worn and have holes. I could have made millions if I'd saved all of mine and kept them to sell on ebay)

And I must admit, I simply love dirt from horses.

I love the way horses smell, I love grooming them, I even love cleaning up AFTER them. It's the exact same infatuation ten-year-old girls go through - I just never outgrew it... as well as some other pre-adolescent traits, my family would add.

But I have a unique specimen in my Najale.

He is a cuddler.

Which is real cute with puppies and kittens, but is somewhat ridiculous for a 16.1 horse who weighs almost 1,000 lbs.

The weather has been good enough the last few days that I've gotten back with some 'serious' training (serious horse training, by my definition, means you actually put a halter on and use a lead rope and ask the horse to do something... almost anything).

And Najale has been remarkedly good, responsing correctly to voice commands, lunging nicely and paying attention to me.

Er... maybe that 'paying attention' should be translated into the lanuage of Najalese, where it means "every-time-I-do-something-correctly-for-Mom, I get to come over and nuzzle-slobber-rub-my-big-stinky-face-all-over-her-shoulder-and-face."

Proof?

I took a shower after working with Najale for almost an hour - scrubbed pretty hard - and STILL got the white bath-towel I used to dry off looking like THIS.

A to B to C becomes Z

It's funny how images change. To me, for years and years and years, Germany was a scary nation of Nazis, beer and sausages - then it was home & two of my kids' birthplace (Joy, I do apologize for the fact that you are forced to put "Monchengladbach" on any sort of form asking for your place of birth).

Jim Wilson was a nice quiet guy I graduated with - then he was a movie producer with Kevin Costner (and suddenly was also much taller and better looking than I remembered).

And growing up in Los Angeles, Mexico was a quiet, picturesque and colorful land of serapes, tacos, and extremely poor people.

Now. living on the Arizona border for the past ten years, Mexico is the view from my windows. The landscape has changed little, but the actual border has progressed from a simple barbed wire fence to the "wall", as we refer to it down here.

But suddenly, via national news, Mexico is

an eruption of drug-related violence, weapons trade, mass murders and kidnappings.

Military support, international government officials meeting and people suddenly finding other vacation spots.

Okay.

Now, somebody please explain to me how Jesus got translated into the Easter Bunny.

YOU ARE NOW IN THE FUTURE

Jen sent this wonderful YouTube link about a Conan O'Brien guest talking about how "Everything Is Amazing, and NoBody's Happy."


It's sort of a neat coincidence (or cosmic luck,) that tonight I was talking to my older brother (57 year-old hippie who tunes pianos in Wisconsin - I could write a book), and we were comparing some futuristic 50's predictions, and how things actually turned out.


I loved how my brother put it - "We didn't get robots like we expected - we just got smarter appliances."


Instead of a robot to answer your phone, the phone became an answering machine - then cordless - then wireless. To clean your house, we didn't envision Dustbusters, bagless vacuums, carpet washers. In fact, wall-to-wall carpeting wasn't common until what, the 60's?


The Internet - Issac Asimov's "Multivac" in 1956; iPhone to a Star Trek communicator; H.G. Wells described portable television.. this was in 1899, folks.


If you were able to view the future in, say 1956 (year of my birth - yes, when dinosaurs roamed the earth), how would you describe these to the cavemen who lived back then?

- An iPod? DVDs?

- Electronic voting? (Well, at least when it works correctly; I'm still miffed that Gore lost in Florida back in 2000)


- How you could file your taxes on the Internet?

- How we use debit cards?

- ATMs - man, how did we live when you had to go the actual bank BEFORE 4 p.m. to get cash? Hmm... maybe that's why we are all so badly in debt - another topic for another time.

- Having closed-caption television (a necessity of life for me-of-limited-hearing)


- Using automatic sliding doors every time you go into the mall.... heck, what about MALLS?

And for goodness sake, a BLOG?


Now, granted, there are some things we all thought would have by now.


We would all be a heck of a lot smarter - we would have eliminated wars, disease, and have communities on the moon and Mars... and certainly better late-night television.


But hey, I'm very happy about the things I do have.

I got to wait HOW long?!?

There is an annoying commercial that had been driving me NUTS ever since I saw it about a month ago.


Although I am beginning to wonder if I imagined it - I can't find a video of it on YouTube, so maybe it doesn't really exist in this particular time-dimension....


This is about a guy who is all upset because of 'irregularity' - not having 'regular movements' - needing to 'improve your digestion' - you know what it's referring to.

(Completely random thought - why is it okay for the word 'penis' to be on television, but somehow 'bowel movement' is not appropriate? Anyone wanna tell me?)



So this middle-aged American white guy (yeah, let's typecast this dude, okay?) is distraught because, and I quote, he "can't wait seven days!" for the 'other' form of relief (yogurt? drinking water? regular exercise? fiber?) for his... well, his "problem."

So he HAS to have the whatever-the-immediate-relief-thing is.


But this is the phrase in the commercial that just kills me - "I can't wait seven days."

So I just gotta find this fellow and ask him, "So where are you gonna be in seven days?"


It's like when people, when talking about going back to college, say, "But man, I'll be forty by the time I graduate!"


So you aren't going to be forty if you don't go back to school?


If you are forced to take a 'shorter' remedy for your digestive tract problem, than you are restricted from taking a 'longer', perhaps better one, that may take - GASP! - SEVEN DAYS!?


We, as Americans, are such an immediate gratification freaks.


However.

I must admit something.

I had a skin biopsy two weeks ago.

And didn't find out the results until yesterday, after 17 days of waiting.


It was just a place on my shoulder that never healed up; sort of like an open scrape. And if two family members hadn't already been diagnosed with skin cancer, I probably wouldn't have done anything about it for quite a while.


But once the "c" word is out there, it's just what comes back the next time you have, say, a sore - an ache in your side - trouble breathing - etc. etc. etc.


I'm okay - I've got what is called "actinic keratosis" (which sounds like it should be some sort of adorable disorder toddlers develop from drinking kerosene, doesn't it), which is the most common precancerous growth - and only about 5% develop into actual skin cancer.


But boy, did I want that 'immediate' report. Right then.

RUNAWAYS

Some things in my life are as predictable as the sun rising in the east, Wal-Mart not having enough cashiers, and the U.S. Postal Service having a minium of six people waiting in line at any given time of day.

Also, in my universe:

1) I can never walk out of Target with less than $45 worth of merchandise, even if I came in for only one thing.

2) The moon will always set 10 minutes before I expect it to, necessitating a literal walking-by-faith-and-memory walk for about 40 yards around 11:30 p.m. to say good night to the horses.

3) My dog Murray will never refuse a piece of bologna or an opportunity to go outside with me.

And 4) each and every day, both my horses will be lined up at the fence right by their water tank at 3:30 p.m., and if they are not fed by 3:45 p.m., Najale will begin whining every three and one half minutes until they are.

Guaranteed.

So today at 3:55 p.m., when I glanced out the kitchen window and see - GASP - no horses at all. No whinnying. No hoof stomping. Nada.

My heart stopped for just a moment.

The dogs and I went outside, walked slowly and deliberately to the gate, calling the horses loudly by name.

Now, my horse, he hears his name if I whisper it inside the house next to an open window. Literally. Sometimes he responds to me just THINKING about him.

He has never, in the five and a half years I have owned him, once ignored a call from me - because there might just be food involved.

If Najale is sound asleep on the ground (which horses don't in general, so of course it's the only way mine does), he does not leap to his hooves like a regular horse., but he will peer sleepily at me and will let me sit on his side and pet him (this horse is either incredibly trusting or just plain stupid, I'm not entirely certain which).

So with no response this afternoon, when normally there would be two hungry horses responding (doesn't mean I don't feed them enough, just means Najale is an incredibly vocal PIG), I began to panic just a bit, and began to mentally list possibilities:

- They could have jumped the fence and taken off for greener pastures. Not that there really are greener pastures at this time of year in southern Arizona, but there are a number of spots along the fence that either horse could easily hop over if they really wanted to.

- Both horses could have died at the extreme far end of the pasture, burying each other so I won't notice the bodies - or maybe they both preferred cremation, who knows.

- Najale and/or Sally could have been stolen by someone looking for a pleasure horse without knowing Sally is an insane Thoroughbred who believes she is running at Belmont whenever you get on her back, and Najale who, despite his age, is a goofy baby who has never had a bit in his mouth and opens only voice commands... when he feels like it.

- And the final, and least likely one of all, is that they are BOTH standing compactly side-by-side inside their shed at the exact angle and spot where their hooves cannot be seen from outside of the fence.

And yes, they were.

Whew.