Climate and Environment

Why expose yourself to the elements when you can easily train your dog to run out the front door to retrieve your morning newspaper? I was halfway home from not having to run out in the rain or snow in my PJs anymore as I already had a 100-pound chocolate Labrador Retriever.  All I had to do was train him to fetch the paper.  This would be a snap! The first morning of training, I held onto his collar, told him “fetch,” and walked him calmly right outside to the paper, about 30 feet from the front door. (We repeatedly asked the paper carrier that it be delivered right to the porch but in seven years, it hasn’t made it there once.)  I picked up the paper, stuffed it in Buddy’s mouth, said, “good dog!” and took him back into the house, where he was given a biscuit as a treat.  He was starting to get a clue. The next morning, I repeated the process and did the same again, on the third day. By now he was showing keen interest, especially in the biscuit part, and seemed to be putting two and two together.  Even though a veterinarian had told me chocolate Labs were the “blonds of the dog world,” I was optimistic that this could work. Come Day Four, I opened the door and said “fetch.” He bolted out the front door, all on his own, and headed in the opposite direction of the paper, where he proceeded to poop on my front lawn. I fetched the paper myself and cleaned up the poop. This was not part of the plan. On Day Five, I let him out the door on the side of the house into the dog run for his early morning constitution before I had him fetch the paper.  While still in my PJs, I confidently took him to the front door, said the magic word and let him loose. He ran directly to the paper, picked it up and ran around to the right, back between the houses into our unfenced backyard. I ran back through the house, to the side door by the dog run and into the backyard yelling “biscuit! biscuit!”  He dropped the paper in the middle of the backyard and came running for his treat. There was no reward for this kind of behavior.  I retrieved the paper myself from the middle of my back yard.  I should have eaten the biscuit. The next day, I decided to tie a 30′ rope to his collar so that he could not escape again. He had previously chewed the rope in two, so a knot was in place to keep it the full length. I again let him go in the dog run first to avoid the pooping problem.  When we arrived at the front door, I tied the rope to his collar and thought everything was now in place for a successful retrieve.  As it was early morning, I had on my favorite old chenille robe, my hair was doing the Phyllis Diller-Einstein thing, and I called my seven-year-old son to come downstairs to watch what was surely going to be a proud moment.  I opened the door, yelled ‘fetch’ and off he ran, causing the rope to burn through my hands so fast and painfully that I dropped the rope, which landed on my right ankle and immediately burned the skin around my ankle bone. Before I could jump aside, that darn knot caught under back of the wooden front door which then slammed shut, smacked my backside in the process and propelled me in all my morning beauty out on the front porch in the middle of the cul-de-sac. The dog was about four inches from the newspaper, lunging and stretching to reach it so he could trade it for a biscuit.  He could not go any further because of the knot under the closed front door and I couldn’t push the front door open to get back in the house with all this leaping and jumping toward the paper going on. I finally grabbed the rope and pulled him in, without the paper, pushed on the door and stumbled back into my foyer, where my wide-eyed son was still sitting on the steps. We looked at each other and he said, “Wow! That had to hurt!”      It certainly did. Another day dawned and with great trepidation and no witnesses, I got fully dressed and tried it again with nothing but hope and a biscuit.  Somehow that crazy dog grabbed the paper and ran right back to me.  I was stunned.  I exchanged the paper for a biscuit and we were both happy.  It was a resounding hard-fought success after too many failures.  Buddy actually fetched the paper flawlessly from then on, and sometimes I didn’t even have to give him a biscuit!  Getting the paper was treat enough for him.   However, getting the paper from him became difficult.  He discovered that if he shook his head, the inside parts of the paper would fly out and he could get a better grip on the roll.  Unfortunately, I wanted the entire paper, not just the adverts.   Occasionally, I had to wrestle the newspaper out of his mouth because he didn’t want to give it up, biscuit or no biscuit, which resulted in the front page or two being ripped to pieces and slobbered on.  But I felt that was a small price to pay for such glorious success!

My mother’s ashes sat in a plastic bag, in a plastic box, on a closet shelf in her brother’s townhouse for a couple years.  Not exactly the dignified end she anticipated when she passed away in 2001.   We had to return the rented urn after the funeral and plastic is what they gave us in its place.  My aunt, who meant well, never did get a chance to spread them on one of her business trips to Minnesota, where my mom was born, so it didn’t look like mom was going to get back there in the end after all.   With my aunt now creeped out about hanging on to the ashes so long, I said I would take them and dispose of them, not having a clue what to do with them.  I figured I’d just wing it.  I reassured my aunt and uncle that I had some sense of decorum, even though everybody in church panicked when I got up to do the eulogy at her funeral years ago.              The fourth of July found my husband, young son and I camping next to the pristine Au Sable River in northern Michigan at PaddleBrave Campground.  We had packed in a hurry to rush up north in bumper-to-bumper traffic, at 70 miles an hour, so we could relax.  We set up camp (28’ travel trailer, electricity, A/C, shower, microwave – just the basics) and drove a little over a mile to my in-law’s cottage to go out on the family pontoon boat.   The plan was to go out for the day, relax, get some sun (in my case, shade) and then later that night, go back out on the boat for the fireworks, when we would cast my mother’s ashes overboard, ceremoniously and solemnly of course, into Higgins Lake.   Fireworks, the glow of the moon, my husband’s family all around – it would be perfect.  Everyone was onboard with the idea.             After having spent all day on the boat and in the water, we headed back to the family cottage for a steak BBQ after which lethargy quickly set in.  We were all near comatose.  Viewing the fireworks from the boat no longer sounded interesting to the group, so the plan for my mother’s ashes went down the drain.   I was going to have to think of something else.             Our son, Patrick, who was only five at the time, was still breaking in my husband and I at this parenting gig as it changes all the time.  Neither one of us realized that last year’s bathing suit and swimming shoes wouldn’t even come close to fitting him this summer.   Once it dawned on us that he either wouldn’t be able to swim (John’s suggestion) or he had to swim naked (my suggestion but Patrick vehemently objected to both), John ran into town with him to get a new suit.   I decided to wait for them in my hammock that was roped between two trees on our campsite and practice relaxing. As I gently swung and read in the shade, it suddenly dawned on me that I could dispose of my mother’s ashes in the Au Sable River, which was about 50 feet away across the small camp dirt road next to our campsite.  I grabbed my mom and walked over to the small boardwalk that ran parallel to the river.  The current was rather swift that day, and went from left to right rapidly.  I figured I better walk as far to the right as the boardwalk went so the ashes would not spread all over the front of the property where people were getting in and out of canoes, tubes, and kayaks.   I knelt down at the far end of the boardwalk during a lull in the people traffic and said a prayer for my mom and an apology for not getting her back to Minnesota.  I opened up the plastic bag, took off the twisty and dumped a little bit of her into the river, as a test pour.   She clouded up the river quickly in a two-foot area and I panicked, figuring I better do this all at once and very quick, or it’s going to be a pretty big mess, so I upended the plastic bag.  All the ashes heavily plopped into the river with a splash, which shot some river water straight back up in the air ending up on my face and arms.   The river immediately clouded up again but luckily the swift flowing current took the cloud downstream.  When the cloud cleared, I saw a miniature mountain of ashes on the riverbed.  There was my mother.  Stuck in a pile on the floor of the Au Sable River.  I wasn’t sure what to do at this point, so I took the bag back to the campsite and sat back down in the hammock to think.              While I was wondering about my next brilliant move, my son and husband came back from the store.  Patrick ran into the trailer to get dressed for swimming, and I let my born/raised Catholic husband in on my little dilemma.  His eyes bugged out of his head and he sputtered incoherently but I understood his drift.  However, at that time, Patrick came out of the trailer looking like a tiny clown from the rodeo.   Now my eyes bugged out of my head.  He had on a white short-sleeved tee-shirt with a cowboy-hat happy face saying “Howdy, Pardner!” with navy blue swimming trunks four sizes too big decorated with chartreuse daisies all over them.  On his feet were swimming shoes, also four sizes too big.   I looked at my husband as if to say, “What the . . .?”   John responded that he was prepared for the next couple of years now.              Patrick was so excited to get into the water that I let the wardrobe issue go for now, but I had to spot him crossing the small camp road so he

This was a pretty interesting weekend. John and I joined some friends (both named Cathy/Kathy!) to take in the last day of the Sherlock Holmes play at the Purple Rose Theater in Chelsea. If you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan, it was excellent. John is not, but caught plenty of zzzzz’s especially after a round of migraine medicine that knocked him out. We had dinner afterwards at the Smokehouse 52 BBQ where he rallied enough to drive us home as I was enjoying my Pinot Noirs! Today, I caught the last day of the ‘Hello Bookstore’ documentary at the Detroit Film Theater with my mother-in-law, who caught plenty of zzzz’s during the movie. Must be a genetic thing!

I’m making progress!!!! Holy smokes!