Mighty Mighty Moofty

Maxie fancies herself a bit of a superhero – something akin to Wonder Woman with some 40-year-old virgin thrown in.  

 

It’s not a far stretch.  Squint your eyes, and you can almost see her royal blue cape flapping in the wind. She can bound great heights, balance nimbly on rocks and fences, and, despite her bulkiness, perform a delicate ballet. Some seem to think her pale blue eyes and Richard Alpert eyeliner give her special zombie-like powers.  It’s all balderdash and supposition, but lends to her overall mystique. 

I imagine her more the old school Wonder Woman -- not the modern, slutty one with her tight leggings and denim jacket, but the wholesome Amazon in star spangled granny panties and eagle blazoned bustier -- all the better to show off her powerful thighs and prodigious chest.   She stands for truth, justice, and the American way of life.  She rose in utero from a flood-ravaged Mississippi to emerge and be born in California where her true identity was revealed.  Don’t let her mild mannered demeanor and wide-eyed naivety fool you.  She’s a steel magnolia. You mess with her or her posse, and she’s going take you down. 

Her secret identity unfolded when I suffered a sudden and devastating hearing loss.  I had total and immediate loss on one side.  The other side severely overcompensated, making it nearly impossible to leave the house alone.  For several weeks I sat vulnerable in our Fortress of Solitude, unable to do much of anything.  She proclaimed herself my personal bodyguard and laid out plans to vanquish the enemy. 

Her top priority is to protect both me and the Fortress from nefarious package delivery people.  In this endeavor she is highly successful.  Trucks drive up.  Drivers approach the door.  She gnashes and barks, throws herself against the double paned glass, and they flee.  She has familiarized herself with their uniforms, their vehicles, their logos.  Whether they’re on foot or driving a Jeep or a tractor-trailer, if they’re sporting an offending logo, she’s on to them. Fed Ex, DHL, UPS – she has her eye on all of them.  Thus far her perceived success rate is 100%, though trouble looms on the horizon. It seems the postal workers have had enough of her slights, and seem to be demanding some respect.  A few days ago a USPS truck pursued us doggedly for several blocks.  Ultimately, it chickened out, taking a quick right to hide in a sleepy neighborhood. We chalked it up to coincidence. Then yesterday, under the guise of starting their daily routes, three postal trucks expertly boxed us in:  one fore, on aft, one starboard, hedges to port.  They seem to be driving home a message.  Fortunately the creek is running a bit low, so any threat of sleeping with fishes is probably moot, at least until the rainy season. 

There are less frequent encounters with those who are evil incarnate. Maxie can sniff out bad energy like nobody’s business, and she’s not having it.  If you’re a shady, lying, cheating dirt bag, or just generally emit a creepy aura, she’s not cutting you any slack. She will endlessly bark at and encircle you until you get the message.  Stay away!  Stay away or I’ll…bark.

Outside the Fortress, she sticks to me like glue.  Though our radius is elastic, she makes sure I’m always in her line of sight.  Only an errant coyote or deer can drive her away.  She steps it into high gear, not to bring them down, but to eject them from our circle on safety.

She nurtured Pluto as a puppy, sharing her toys and leaving him food.  Once he was big enough to venture out, on every hike she considered herself on the job.  She constantly scanned the periphery for danger, refusing her treats or attempts at affection.  By now she understands he’s a bit of a hooligan, and it baffles her. Clearly he will never have a job of his own.  She still keeps a slightly less vigilant watch but rarely steps in for him.  You can almost hear her eye rolling and exasperated sighs. He’s Pinky to her Brain. 

Maxie is a hard working lady. I hope to retire her from her super hero duties soon, giving her more time to focus on her ankle nipping.  The folks at the Humane Society are helping her learn to relax, but she will probably require at least a part time job. I hope the Justice League doesn’t come calling.  We’d miss her terribly.

Clean Genes

My home is less than pristine.  It’s not that I don’t care.  I do.  It’s just that this whole cleanliness thing is beyond me.  I try -- it just won’t take.  I can maybe keep it together for 24 hours.  Maybe.  As far as I’m concerned, this is just another lost round of genetic roulette.

If DNA tests were run and evaluated, scientists would find the bulk of my family has a recessive clean gene.  As with all things genetic, it’s a bit of a crapshoot.  I was blessed with pasty skin and cankles, Steve, with skin that bronzes like a crust of Wonder bread and the delicate ankles of a gazelle. We run the gamut from Hoarder to spawn of Martha Stewart.  If you put us all on a scale, we’d tip decidedly Hoarder, though not pathologically so.

You might argue that cleaning is more about elbow grease than anything else but you would be wrong. Certainly I’m not lacking in experience or enthusiasm. We were trained from a tender age to spin the chore wheel and try our luck.  I’ve been cleaning toilets and polishing silver since I was tall enough to reach the kitchen faucet perched on a chair. Tiny hands are perfect for maneuvering SOS pads into the crusted crevices of a broiler pan and taming the shrew like inner workings of an industrial strength Hoover.  Some families filled their holidays with ski trips and shopping extravaganzas.  Ours were staunchly organized and charted around cleaning activities.

So I have the training. I have all the necessary cleaning implements and potions.  Yet somehow I seem incapable of wielding them in such a way as to gain satisfactory results.  Give two people a sponge – one leaves a sparkling clean counter without a hint of moisture, the other a slightly damp surface and a hair of questionable origin.  I’d be the one with the hair. I organize and reorganize the closet, the kitchen, the garage, to no avail. Within days I’m back where I started, piles of mail and receipts on the counter, clothes jammed haphazardly on their shelves. 

All that cleaning, you think.  Perhaps you are rebelling against the fastidious home you grew up in.  Nice try, but no.  If we’re going to be honest, the place was a hovel.  Despite the constant call to clean, all that wheel spinning and chore charting never quite came together. Though we were seemingly cleaning from dawn to dusk, there wasn’t a single day the garage door could be pried open.  In the laundry, clean clothes were heaped upon the dryer, coming within inches of the ceiling, often cascading down to floor, only to be trampled and restart their futile journey. Our failure to obtain cleanliness was so epic, we were trained in the modified art of the Duck and Cover Drill.  Neighbor or priest show up unannounced?  Mute!  Drop!  Slither away!

It’s all so very clear.  Short of hiring live-in help, I can fight the daily battles, but I will never win the war.  Nor, it seems, will many of my siblings.  Apparently Mother Nature has other plans for us.  Beautifully messy ones.

Sponge Cake

Fireworks, parades, beachside bonfires, hot dogs and sparklers: you can have your wholesome Fourth of July images.  For me it's all about two things:  dogs and sponges.

Back in the day, things were a lot different.  The public schools were flush.  So flush that without benefit of a partnership with a local organization, they could run a full summer school program, complete with bus service.  Summer school wasn't only for the morons on the verge of being held back a year, but for every kid whose parents could afford the paltry registration fees.  If you were on the verge of failing, there were the required math, language and reading classes.  But if you were average or better, it was a taste of the county club life.  Tennis! Badminton!  Chess!  Cribbage!  All the skills a young WASP needs.

Long before I was eligible for summer school, I selected my first class: cake decorating.  Not exactly a WASPy pursuit, but I had my reasons.  My goal wasn't to master the intricate art of piping, but to get my mitts on the ultimate little girl delight:  the princess cake.   A dress baked in a bowl with a Barbie-like bodice popped in the center.  There was nothing so spectacular. The long flowing hair. The elaborately laced dress. The only way I was going to possess one was to make it myself.

There were many skills to be mastered before the Princess could be attempted. We fashioned piping bags, then Monday through Thursday we toiled away, practicing technique on wax paper, scraping the icing back in to the bowl, then trying again.  When Friday rolled around, we parlayed all our know-how into an actual cake masterpiece.

The first project, the flag cake, required only minimal command of one decorating tip: the star.   It was like training for a future membership with the UAW, piping line after monotonous line of equally sized stars.  The only respite: the red, the white and the blue.  I was quite pleased with my work, and certain I would wow the crowd at the Fourth of July barbecue. 

As I mentioned, things were different then.  Dogs roamed the streets and schools untethered, left to their own devices. And so my tragedy unfolded - a hot dog, a cool classroom, an endless dessert buffet. The story was written.  The air gasping sobs.  The hysterical child.  Knowing there was no way out, the teacher threw it into MacGyver mode. She cut the bite out of the cake, inserted a sponge, and decorated over it.  Good as new.

And so I served my rabie and sponge filled box mix cake with shortening icing to rave Fourth of July reviews.  Was the sponge new?  Did the dog have any shots?  On both accounts, I would guess probably not.  No one died that day, so the bacteria count was probably low. 

The princess is now just a hazy blur.  I can't recall her hair or dress color, but every Fourth of July I remember a big black lab and hunk of sponge.  Best cake and Fourth of July ever.