Jack and Tenley at the zoo

 My friend, Geri, has developed an annoying new habit of volunteering for things while I'm standing RIGHT NEXT to her which limits my options to either (a) volunteering as well but looking like I'm ONLY volunteering because Geri did or (b) NOT volunteering and looking like a complete jerk. Which is how I ended up spending a Monday driving up to the zoo with a couple of pre-schoolers. Fortunately, I happen to adore this little set of pre-schoolers.

"Jack," Geri asked, smiling into the rear-view mirror, "what's your favorite song?" Four-year-old Jack immediately launched into that 70s classic "Convoy" while Geri and I sat up front in stunned silence.

"Ain't she a bee-u-tee-ful sight?
Come on and join our convoy
Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin' convoy
'cross the USA
Convoy!"

Fearing that Jack would get beat up when he started his half-day program in September because his negligent mother never bothered to teach him the pre-requisite children's songs that every pre-schooler MUST know, Geri and I spent hours singing "I'll be working on the railroad" to him and his two-year-old sister Tenley. That was in between bouts of Geri complaining about my insistence that we use my GPS. "Yeah, I know," I agreed, "nothing beats a good old-fashioned map." I glanced at her directions before sweetly inquiring, "I didn't know the Seneca Zoo was located in Brighton."

An hour-long drive with Jack and Tenley flies by. Tenley is content to just let me hand her one cracker at a time for the entire length of the ride. I was afraid that she was going to turn into a giant cracker. And that girl knows how to get comfortable...fast. She sheds clothes like a lizard sheds skin. As we neared the zoo, I began my usual shtick of dramatically sniffing and saying, "I think I smell an elephant." Worried that I might be delusional, Jack assured me that what I was smelling was only Tenley's feet.

Jack is quite the conversationalist. He identified every type of truck we passed and gently corrected
me if I got one wrong. "See the front-loader, Jack," I remarked. "That's an excavator," he said softly. "I hear your family is getting some beefers," Geri said to Jack before whispering over to me, "Does that mean they eventually have to be killed?" Jack, overhearing, was quick to reassure her. "Oh, we don't have a gun."

Speaking of death, Jack told us, "Last time we were here, a polar bear had died," prompting Geri and I to take a poignant pause before launching into a consoling "Circle of Life" conversation. Jack interrupted us before we had gotten too far. "Oh...he might have just been sleeping." Whew.

The zoo, of course, was magical. Tenley roars at everything. "Rhino-roar!" "Alligator-roar!" There was a minor zoo up-"roar" when the Snack Shack ran out of ketchup. "I just spent $65 on hot dogs and french fries," yelled one woman, shaking her fist in rage. She, understandably, could not be placated with an offer of store-bought generic barbecue sauce as a replacement. I was on her side. Fortunately, Jack had a "Batman"-shaped ice-cream novelty with gumball eyeballs so we were not caught up in the ketchup catastrophe.

Tenley and I had a long conversation about why elephants should wear diapers. Jack was happiest touring the safari bus that decorated the lion enclosure. Tenley refused to leave the Mama Lion and became the Seneca Park Zoo's youngest amateur docent as she showed everyone the Mama Lion's tail...the Mama Lion's whiskers...how the Mama Lion doesn't like bees...We clapped in excitement as the sea lions swept by the display window, "blowing kisses" to Jack and Tenley.

And then it was time to go. I thought I'd cleverly employ a little reverse psychology with the kids by playing the "Don't go to sleep" game. Shockingly, it didn't work. They'd "pretend" to sleep, adorably snoring, while I whispered, "Wake up, wake up wake up." Geri and I discovered, when it was my turn to pretend to sleep, that Kelly's kids are incapable of whispering. Anyone who knows their mother is now shaking their heads in complete understanding. We added a new dimension to the game by pretending to see something so magically fantastical that you just had to wake up. For example, "Tenley, wake up, there's a pink and purple polka-dotted unicorn!" Jack, of course, wanted to play. "Amy, wake up, there are trees by the road!" "No, Jack," we'd explain, "you have to make something up." He'd nod and try again. "Amy, wake up, there's a silo by the barn!" Jack is terrible at this game,

We got home and excitedly told Kelly all about our adventures. "Jack," Geri urged, "tell Mommy the song we taught you." Jack, already busy on his giant sand-pile, manning his front-loader/excavator mechanism, didn't even look up as he answered, "Life is a Highway." Oh boy...pre-school is going to be rough.

What lunar eclipse?

Over twenty years ago, my friend Bruce acquired a telescope and we excitedly trooped out, into the darkness, to unravel the mysteries of the universe. "Why is the moon so small," I asked, surprised. Yup...you guessed it. "Try looking in this end of the telescope, Amy," Bruce gently advised.

I want to love and appreciate nature. I really do. But I am SO bad at it. Brad and Sydney were gone during the latest period of the Pleiades meteor shower but I gamely interrupted my marathon-watching of "The Big Bang Theory" re-runs to try to spot at least one of the purportedly 200 meteors-per-hour. The result of that little sky-watching enterprise was a kink in my neck and the realization that there are a LOT of airplanes filling my night sky.

Despite my many failures, I refuse to give up. "What are you doing," Brad asked as I dragged lawn chairs into our backyard at 10 o'clock at night. "A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs in twenty minutes," I told him. "What does penumbral mean," he inquired, resigned to his inevitable fate of staring at the sky rather than watching the Royals play. At 10:20, we stared, unblinkingly at the moon.

At 10:25, Brad switched over to staring, unblinkingly, at his cellphone. "Penumbral is when the moon moves into the outer part of the Earth's shadow," he reported before sighing. "What?" I asked him, refusing to wrench my eyes away from what was sure to be a spectacularly celestial sight. "Well, according to this," he said, "a penumbral lunar eclipse is often mistaken for a normal full moon." WHAT?!? "Also," Brad added helpfully, "the penumbral eclipse started at 8:20, not 10:20."

I stopped looking at the moon and instead looked at my husband, bathed in the celestial glow of his phone. "Oh," he murmured, his thumb flipping from one helpful site to another, "this one says that the eclipse isn't even visible from Earth." "Then WHY even talk about it in the first place," I stormed, gathering up the lawn chairs. "This particular full moon is called the Green Corn Moon or the Sturgeon Moon,"  Brad shared as I stomped back into the house. "I don't care if it's called the Buffoon Moon," I yelled before settling in to watch Kansas City beat Detroit. I want to love and appreciate nature. I really do. But the universe is against me.

credit:  http://joyreactor.com/tag/eclipse

"Big" trucks at a city library and other lies parents tell their kids

"Come out for Truck Day," my friend, Sarah, urged over the phone. I sighed, looking out my window as no fewer than five different varieties of trucks drove by. A milk truck pulled in at the farm down the road and I rose to close the living-room window as I spotted the manure spreader headed my way. A skid-loader buzzed by like a little bee as I agreed to travel to a city library parking lot to see "big" trucks with Sarah and her kids. "You know," I told her, "all they're going to have is a fire truck, a school bus, a garbage truck and a tractor that I could fit in my pocket. Come to the country where the real trucks live. Plus...my neighbor just got a llama."

But Sarah was enthusiastically insistent so I headed to the city to see some "big" trucks. I idled patiently, at one point, stuck behind a two-lane blocking harvester that costs double the value of my house, and considered maybe I could be wrong. Not likely...but certainly possible. They do construction in the city so maybe there would be some awesome dump trucks, excavators, or maybe even a bulldozer (the triceratops of the construction truck world). I paused to let a frontloader back out onto a logging road (where logging trucks were waiting to be filled).

An hour later, I pulled (my truck) into Sarah's driveway, surprised to see three-year-old Will jumping up and down in front of his living-room window, excited to see me. This was a new development. In Will's world, I am the annoying person who arrives once-a-month and distracts his mother from her parental duties. "Why," Will will wonder, frowning, "does this tall, gawky lady get gourmet grilled cheese while I am stuck with my usual hum-drum peanut butter sandwich?" On the plus side, Sarah will usually relent and let the poor little guy watch two episodes of Daniel Tiger during my visits instead of his pre-requisite one episode per day. Sarah's bridal shower gift was a big screen TV group gift because we realized that her husband and future children would live a nomadically-barren existence, forced to flee to other homes to fulfill their television needs and escape the shadow-puppet entertainment that Sarah would use to supplement quality network programming.

"Amy...we see big trucks," Will shouted as I walked in. I sighed. I just couldn't do it to him. Let him have this day...and the next...before he discovers the truth. Let his friends in school be the first to expose the lie. No, William...there are NO big trucks at your city library. Every parent has to make that choice and if Sarah wants to indulge her kids in the fallacy that a school bus is a big truck...well, it is not my place to interfere. Sure...she'll have to deal with deep-rooted feelings of misplaced trust and betrayal later but for today, Will is happy thinking a school bus is a "big" truck.

"Amy has a big truck," Will shouted and I glanced out at my parked Titan. Could this be a matter of perspective? Had I somehow become jaded and apathetic? And as Will danced happily about the room, excited to go to his city library to see "big" trucks, my grizzled heart began to soften. As the story goes: And in Will's house they say, that Amy's small heart grew three sizes that day.

So we went to the city library. Saw the school bus, the firetruck, and the garbage truck. Will got stung by a bee. We went home. Watched two episodes of Daniel Tiger. Sarah made me a lunch of tuna salad with slivered almonds and grapes mixed in and poor Will had to eat his hum-drum peanut butter sandwich. That kid is never going to like me.

Savannah demonstrating what
real "big" trucks look like.

Finger Lakes Trail "Fun"

 So when the phone rang in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, my hopes soared. "We're bored," my friend Todd reported in my ear as I watched Brad diligently scrub our pellet stove IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST.  Thank goodness, I thought, I was going to get to play euchre instead of watching my husband insist on being industrious. "Do you guys want to go on a hike?" I almost dropped the phone. WHAT?!? "It's not like it's mountain-climbing," Todd was quick to reassure me, "It'll only be two or three miles." WHAT?!?

Fortunately, I had my mountain-climbing shorts on..."Didn't you wear those to church this morning?" Sydney asked, fixing her hair for our hike. "They're very versatile," I replied.

A half an hour later, five adults and three dogs headed out to tackle a section of the famed Finger Lakes Trail, located, ironically enough, no where near a Finger Lake. Brad and Todd's wife Jeanne immediately began that fun game of "Let's annoy Amy by naming every flower and plant we encounter along with their scientific classifications." Todd took selfies with every colorful conk, mushroom and morel to prove, as he put it, "What a fun-guy I am." Amy, meanwhile, was staring intently at her feet so as not to trip, and trying to keep her heart from exploding with the blistering pace set by her former friend, Jeanne. Fortunately, Jeanne kept spotting wild blackberries and would stop to forage like a little bear so I'd have a moment to catch my breath. Having indulged myself in the most sour wild grape in the world early on in our adventure, I refrained from further partaking of nature's bounty. And really...why bother? Todd had peanut M & Ms.

Taking note of the blue plastic roping that lined much of the trail, I had to admire the Finger Lakes Trail's commitment to ensure that ALL people, even those with limited sight, could "enjoy" the hike. "That isn't a guide rope for the blind, Amy," Todd said patiently, "It's a maple syrup tubing system." Turns out my idea wouldn't be so short-sighted as Todd, knowing that I was nearing the end of my rope, "spotted" my truck in the distance. It was as if we were Dorothy and her pals, prancing merrily towards the Emerald City when suddenly Todd realized that what he had first taken to be my truck was, in all actuality, a creek. Innocent mistake. Perfectly understandable. But truth be told, it was like taking a bucket of water to the heart.

We finally emerged from a hike fraught with hidden pastures, private patches of pumpkins, tree-lined trails, moss-carpeted forest floors, and crocheted fields filled with Queen Anne's Lace beneath a beautiful blue sky. It was...a nightmare. "Can we please go play euchre now," I asked. Now it was time to really have some fun.

Why would a bear mow the lawn on a hot, humid day?

 "Sydney...go get Chlo," I yelled to my daughter as our dachshund neared the bee tree. "Why couldn't you get her," Sydney asked, after dashing quickly in to rescue the dog. "I have dark clothes on," I explained, "they'll think I'm a bear."
"That's ridiculous," she snapped.

Or is it?

We have had some bee problems for awhile now. But yesterday was a perfect storm. Why does no one but me research anything? And why does no one believe me when I share the conclusive results of my research?

Mowing in the middle of the day? Bad idea. Mowing in the middle of a hot, humid day? Also a bad idea. Mowing in the middle of a hot, humid day wearing dark clothes? C'mon! I don't understand why bees would think a bear would be mowing in the middle of a hot, humid day...but they do. So combine sweat, vibration, and a bear threat and there you go. At one point, we couldn't see Brad through the cloud of bees as he raced for the house.

"I knew this was going to happen," I said, holding a frozen bag of fajita-style vegetables to my husband's ankle as he yelled for some tweezers. "You're suppose to use a credit card or an onion to remove the stinger," I told him but, as luck would have it, the stinger was removed as he peeled off his sock. "See...my sock is white. What does that do to your research? Did they think I was a polar bear," he grimaced. He was in pain...otherwise he would have never said such hurtful things to me.

"Take this," Brad said, trying to hand the expelled stinger to Sydney. "I'm not touching that," she said, backing away. "Oh...give it to me," I said in exasperation. Do I have to do everything?

What happened next was unreal. You know that scene in "Pirates of the Caribbean" where the skeletal hand is ripped off the arm of a pirate of the cursed Black Pearl yet continues to fight? That's what happened. The stinger, still attached to the a$$-end of the bee, rose up and plunged itself viciously into the palm of my hand. I howled. I tried to throw it in the garbage but it clung to me like some sort of sick saran-wrap. I finally freed myself from this venomous barb and raced back into the living room but received neither pity nor a frozen bag of fajita-style vegetables to soothe my pain.

Up to this point, we've had a bee problem. Let's just say that now...the bees have a people problem.

I'm going to kick Sydney in the can...

It's not like I haven't written about this subject before...

With the bulk of Sydney's salary heading toward her fall tuition, I generously handed over the reins of returning the redeemables. I considered a 60/40 split but, for goodness sake, I am her mother, after all. Like to spoil that girl, once in awhile. "Thank you," she said, uncertainly, when I delivered the good news. "Think of it as a once-a-week free fancy iced coffee treat," I told her, "Our gift to you!" "Or," her father suggested, "you could save up the money and maybe buy a college textbook. Used, of course."

Sydney, naturally, was thrilled.

Imagine our surprise then..."Wait! I wasn't surprised," my husband interrupted, "I predicted this."...when Sydney decided to convert her car into a mobile redemption center. "I thought you told her to save up the money...not the cans," I sighed as she tried to reverse her way into her parking spot, her entire body twisted out the driver's side window because she couldn't see past the mountains of cans and bottles in her backseat. This was a nightmare. "The neighbors are judging us, you know," I yelled as cans bounced along the road and under her car. She swiftly picked them up with a practiced hand, flung them into the car, and threw herself bodily at the door to close it. It took her two times to accomplish the task. With a quick flip of her hair over the shoulder, she walked gracefully to us. Her lack of shame was shameful.

Her sister, home from Connecticut, peered into the vehicle and briefly entertained the thought of returning this backseat bottle booty herself. "There must for about twenty dollars of cans in there," she marveled.

And then it happened. Syd's car needed to be inspected. Thank you, New York State, for charging us a bottle return fee as well as making us pay annually for the privilege to ensure our vehicles are up to the standards of driving on your pristinely maintained roads. We LOVE it!  It was like a magic wand had been waved and before you could say, "Bibbity...bobbity...boo..." the bottles had disappeared. As she was working, Brad and I picked up the car. I marveled at the spacious interior. "Isn't this amazing! I knew she could do it," I said to my husband who was uncharacteristically quiet. "What?" I asked, dread entering my heart. "Have you seen her room," he said.

Oh no!

Oh yes.

The mobile redemption center was currently parked in my daughter's bedroom. She's twenty, folks. And that's about what I got when I returned the cans. And bought myself a fancy iced coffee treat. Extra-large. With whipped cream.

Kelly's wedding

 Getting dressed for Kelly's wedding, I stared, horrified into the mirror. Unfortunately, there was no one at home at the time to confirm my worst fears so I took a quick picture and sent off a frantic consultation text to Savannah. She was quick to reassure me. "You look fine. Just remember to smile. Frowning makes people look fat."

So I slapped a grin across my face to match the horizontal stripes of my dress and headed out.

Tucked between the scenic hills of Bristol, I gazed from the car window, keeping a keen eye out for the stereotypical single-story firehall.  I sighed longingly at the beautiful alpine lodges nestled into each knoll and finally pointed. "I want Kelly's reception to be there," I declared, shocked as we simultaneously turned onto a vertical dirt road heading straight towards it. Like a ray of blinding sunshine, Kelly came shooting out of the lodge, wearing the beautiful wedding dress that she had made herself. Of course she did. I have mentioned before that I despise Kelly, right?

We toured the house, the pool, the hot tub, the trailer housing restroom facilities that made my bathroom at home resemble a porta-potty at a Grateful Dead concert, admired the three different-flavored cakes, snagged some snacks..."What are these seeds on top of the guacamole," I asked around a large mouthful. "Are they pine nuts," I said, trying to look culinarily-astute. "They're roasted pumpkin seeds," said the same woman who would later have to tell me to unwrap the corn husk from around my tamale. I was WAY out of my league here.

The free margarita bar made everything better...until the guy with the instamatic camera took my picture and I realized I'd mistakenly put on a circus tent. No amount of smiling was going to fix this. "Here, stand in front of my hips," I slurred, moving my pretty and petite friend Rachel in front of me for every picture that followed. "You're just like Barney," I told her as we smiled for the next shot. "Wait...did I just hear you compare my wife to Barney from How I Met Your Mother?" Rachel's husband, Paul asked suddenly. I immediately apologized but...no worries...Paul's a fan and recognized it for the heartfelt compliment it was.

An hour later, we were still dissecting our favorite episodes when either my friend Geri or I crossed the magical margarita line from cheerfully oblivious to venomously argumentative. "That never happened...you imagined it," Geri hissed at my assertion that Barney had been working undercover at GNB the entire time, intent on bringing that evil empire to its knees. "Barney was the David to the bank's Goliath," I pointed out, sure of my facts and certain that Barney was the hero of my favorite show. I don't want to brag but I recently scored a 27/35 on a "Who Said It: How I Met Your Mother Quiz." Lawyered!

Okay...maybe it was me that crossed the magical margarita line because I also argued with the most pleasant man on the planet. "What do you mean that an amaretto sour is on the bottom rung of the ladder of liquor," I screeched. "I'll have you know, sir, that I was once accused of being an alcoholic and guess what the drink in my hand WAS at that time? Yeah! An amaretto sour!" Lawyered! In the face of my conclusive argument, Paul shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly, re-filled my margarita glass and then further fueled the flame by calling an amaretto sour a "gateway drink."

"Let's dance, " Rachel said, grabbing me before I could start REALLY creating a scene. Kelly, who had crossed the margarita line a bit before me had already been busy ripping up the dance floor. The song, at present, was "Shout" which has always been problematic for me but as I had had four sessions of yoga under my horizontally-striped belt, I thought I might be able to "get a little bit softer now..." Nope. Writer, Walt Hickey, contemporary to Ernest Hemingway and Judy Blume, presents a compelling essay that addresses the challenges of this song. It is accompanied by a helpful graph. According to Walt's calculations, I need to take my height in feet, divide it by three and then descend that many inches during each of the seventeen repetitions of "a little bit softer now" to successfully complete the move. Great. Two things that I excel at:  Rhythm and math.

Kelly was particularly proud of her chalkboard schedule of events. Her 7 o'clock speech (that was three pages long and delivered from the top deck as we gathered beneath her, hoping that she'd toss down cake, Marie-Antoinette-style) was presented at 8 o'clock. Husband Jon's speech was much more concise and it turns out that, while cake isn't thrown down, beer IS thrown up (into the air...to Jon). The unruly crowd then rushed the cakes. "They're beautiful," Geri commented as we waited. "What's THAT suppose to mean," I snapped, knowing that that was a crack about the shower cake for Kelly that I'd made her order. "Nothing," Geri replied, before murmuring to her husband, "Who gets a picture of a nickel painted on a shower cake?"

It was time to go. We hugged the bride and headed to the car. "Did you know that I told twenty-five bear jokes during Summer School," I asked Gregg as he drove Geri and I back. "How many margaritas did she have," Gregg whispered to his wife as I proceeded to tell him EVERY bear joke I could remember. Geri tried to distract me with her own joke. "A guy dressed as a pirate and was asked,  "Where are your buccaneers?" He said, "Under my buckenhat."" I laughed myself into a lethargic lull. And an hour later...I was home.

Summer School 2016

 Ahhh...summer school. Twenty-five days of students filing into the classroom with eager questions.

"Are we going outside now?"

 "What's to eat?"

 "Can we go to the computer lab?"

"Is that ALL there is to eat?"

 "Is it time to go home yet?"

"Didn't we do math yesterday?"

Twenty-five days of starting the day with a "Buster the Bear" joke and only having co-teacher, Cassie laugh.

"Why didn't the bear go to college?" "He didn't have the right koala-fications!"

"How did the bear stop the movie?" "By hitting pause!"

Twenty-five days of torturing Cassie with curriculum-based crafts. Hot glue burns, carpel-tunnel from squeezing "tacky" glue bottles, the mad hunt for orange beans and heated arguments with 2nd graders over the best positioning of "angry" eyebrows.

Twenty-five days of mature conversations.

Overheard during a journal writing brainstorming session:

Student:  (Responding to the prompt) "I like hard on."

Cassie (calmly): "What?" (The tf was implied)

Student: (clarifying) "I mean rock hard."

Me (curled in the fetal position under my desk at this point, listening as Cassie valiantly hung in there)

Cassie:  "Do you mean hard rock?"

Student (brightening happily): "Yeah."

It might have been helpful to mention that the day's writing prompt was to describe your favorite song.

Overheard during the morning welcome:

Student (looking at the agenda board sporting an animated gif of a cartoon bear) "Mrs. Mosiman? Why is that bear crapping?"

I whirled around to look. No...I was okay. The bear was clapping.

Twenty-five days leading to the much-anticipated end-of-Summer-School picnic. A veteran of this highly acclaimed event, I knew to try and contain my excitement as, every year, we wait twenty-five days to take eight-minutes to eat a hot dog and then wonder what else to do. Sometimes you have to make your own fun.

Faced with the choice of watered-down tepid powdered lemonade or stealing Pepsi from those more-prepared than I...well...I chose the path that led me straight to my friend Kim who looked at me, first in confusion and then fear as I loomed over her little picnic party and demanded Pepsi. Turns out that the three tablespoons that I stole from her resulted in a lack-of-Pepsi-produced panic that had Kim racing from one sold-out vending machine in the school to the next. I would have apologized but I, too, was desperate. My next victim was my friend Jen who had cherry Pepsi but hey, times are tough and one must made sacrifices when needed.

In a year of firsts, our Summer School administrator put a lock-down on desserts until we had eaten the actual meal (of healthy hot dogs and salt-laden chips). I looked longingly at my friend Amanda's soft sour cream cookies and vowed to somehow break them out. I brightened as our superintendent joined the line of our picnic buffet. I quietly and respectfully explained the sad situation to her, concluding with an inspirational plea to "set our cookies free!" Without hesitation, she strode forth and lifted the lids on our captive cookies and proclaimed them emancipated.  We cheered. "Free at last...free at last!"

After eight minutes, the picnic was done. We returned to our room to construct owl smores. Cassie was delighted. As she shuttled students, two by two, to the microwave, the rest watched "Yogi Bear" on my computer monitor. A small voice suddenly said, "I think I'm going to touch a button." I responded immediately (and too late), "You absolutely WILL NOT touch a button." Without warning (wait...I guess there was a warning), Yogi demonstrated his multi-lingual abilities and began to speak French, proving, once again, that he is more than just your average bear. In the face of my anger, my button-pushing protege suddenly claimed to have no knowledge of how this could have happened. I offered that there were only two possible explanations for this French-speaking phenomena.

(a) A little boy, sitting in close proximity to the button determining language selection, and who had voiced a sudden need to TOUCH a button...actually did

 or

(b) The Lord willed it so.

And finally, after twenty-five days, our precious students boarded the bus as we gathered to witness their departure (and make sure they really left). We heaved a sigh of relief as the buses began to inch forward when one suddenly stopped and one of MY students came barreling back up the sidewalk. "No! No!," we shouted, turning to flee but there was no escape. What could he want, I wondered. Oh, maybe he forgot to give me a heartfelt thank you or to share how I, in twenty-five short days, altered his academic route, re-directing him from the Freeway of Failure to the Highway of Higher Learning and Success. He stood before me, breathless. I've waited  my whole life for this moment:

"Mrs. Mosiman, I forgot my candy."

The Adirondacks-Part Five: Going Down (the mountain)

"Seriously...there's no other way of getting off this mountain," I grumbled as it took three members of my family to successfully lift me to a teetering standing position. My moaning muscles promised that we'd go SUPER-slow on the way down. Until..."expect...sudden weather changes even on a fair summer day," advised Lisa Densmore of the book Hiking the Adirondacks. "Seriously?" I screamed up into the heavens towards my trail spirit guide, Lisa Densmore who was probably lounging on her couch in New Hampshire watching "The Real Housewives of Bangor, Maine" as my fair summer day turned gray.

Turns out rain was the least of my worries as, at 5' 10", I was one of the tallest objects on the summit. It's been said (by Brad when I woke him once by standing over the bed with a sledge hammer) that I have an electrifying personality but I was not eager to test that assertion out...no matter how loving or voluntary the observation seemed to be (Side note: A chain saw encouraged him to admit that I was pretty).

There's a saying that you're only as fast as your slowest member. "There's another saying," said Sydney, speeding by me as we were pelted by rain, "that those who fall behind, are left behind." The hordes of people passing us like lemmings looked at her with horror that she could be so heartless. Brad proceeded before me (presumably to break my inevitable fall) and Savannah hovered behind me to coach, coax, and occasionally cackle. I was stuck on a large rock at one point, immobile with fear as my choices were to (a) commit to turning into a human fungus on my new boulder friend, (b) leap to a neighboring boulder, or (c) take a large ham-string snapping step down. "It's wet there," I shouted, momentarily forgetting that I was trapped in a downpour. I pointed to the puddle beneath me that was threatening to envelope my blue memory foam sneakers. I decided on option (b) and lifted off of my precarious perch to land directly into the puddle while Savannah roared.

It was a laborious descent. My calves quivered. My ankles shook. Sydney scurried ahead like a squirrel scouting out resting areas. "Here's a dry spot," she'd shout and wait happily there until the rest of her drenched group caught up. Terrified of slipping on the slick stones, I apparently developed a ritualistic dance. I thought it looked like a professional tennis player awaiting a lob. Savannah thought it looked like a barefoot toddler trying to cross hot sand. Either way...it did the trick.

On the way down, I'd given up on my spirit trail guide, Lisa Densmore and had begun channeling my inner Stevie Nicks, singing "Landslide" under my breath, mantra-style. As we neared the end, the girls grabbed the car keys and raced back to be able to pick me up as I emerged from the wilderness. Exhausted and resolved to NEVER climb a mountain EVER again...I climbed gratefully into the passenger seat.

And when you climb a mountain and you turn around

and you see your reflection in the rear-view mirror

well...the downpour ruined your hair.

And stones shouldn't be described as stairs

And Lisa Densmore is a terrible spirit trail guide

And climbing a mountain was a ridiculous idea.

Take me to Perkins.

The Adirondacks: Part 4-The Summit

 "You know what would be great," asked my husband, eyeing up the rotting fruit on my kitchen counter. Perfect, I thought, another ridiculous lecture about how we'd reduce the number of fruit flies clouding our kitchen if we either (a) consumed our expensive purchases of perishables BEFORE they perished or (b) threw them away in a timely fashion.  Yawn. To get his mind off the swarm, I attempted a re-direct. "Two flies are in the kitchen," I say, "Which one is the cowboy?" "There are a LOT more than two flies in our kitchen," Brad answered, batting them away. He noticed my frown. "Okay, tell me. Which one is the cowboy?" "The one on the range," I yukked.

"You know what would be great," Brad asked again. I rolled my eyes before answering. "What?" "If you baked up a loaf of banana bread for us to enjoy when we reach the summit." He's such a positive person. Notice that he said when, not if, we reach the summit. I am NOT that positive. "We're one banana short," I explained, paving the way for my NOT having to make bread to be lugged up a mountain. "I'm sure you'll figure out something," he answered, mimicking my patented assurance to him for every time I break anything around the house.

So with a sub-par loaf of banana bread nestled in Brad's backpack along with a thousand pats of hotel butter...

FLASHBACK:  "Okay team...we're going to go Ocean's Eleven on this thing. As you pass the pats of butter, each member of our party is to palm a minimum of six pats of butter. Leave no butter behind. Do you understand?" Each member of my family nodded solemnly and then proceeded to pass the butter like I'd asked them to steal one of the holy relics. It was up to me...and I was on that butter like a raccoon on a MRE. "What happened," I yelled later. When I was reminded of the eighth commandment, I reminded them about how, just that morning, I had to wrestle a hotel millipede the size of a small kitten in their questionably clean bathroom. And how this very liberal hotel with their non-gender specific bathroom traumatized Sydney and I as a man stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us-him peeing in the urinal as we tried to fill up our hydration pack at the sink. The irony was NOT lost on me. I had no problem taking the butter. I'd do it again.

So we FINALLY made it to the summit. I fell, exhausted to the ground and gazed out at the view, soaking it in. After about ten minutes, I heard a whisper behind me."When do we tell her there's another half a mile to go to actually get to the real summit?" There was a lengthy debate regarding the pros and cons of lying to me before I finally staggered to my feet to press on.

So we FINALLY made it to the summit. "Are you sure," I asked Brad before sinking to the ground again, this time falling promptly to sleep. He tucked me into a little rocky alcove where I sat in a delirious "I've just been hit by a truck" state for about thirty minutes while he and the girls explored. When my brain was again able to function (my muscles would take DAYS to catch up), I could hear the voice of Brian the Mountain Steward welcoming visitors to the mountain and inviting questions about the local flora and fauna. Brad and the girls made their way back to me and we unpacked our one-banana short of a full loaf banana bread and slathered on the burglarized butter. Cue up the approach of Brian the Mountain Steward. Sydney shielded the butter from sight as Brian seemed to be the law in these parts. Apparently Brian the Mountain Steward's main job was to educate visitors about the plight of the endangered alpine tundra grass. He explained repeatedly how important it was to stay off the endangered alpine tundra grass. The endangered alpine tundra grass is in peril. It was then noticed that I was apparently nesting in a healthy spattering of endangered alpine tundra grass. And guess what? I WASN'T moving. "Would you like some banana bread," I sweetly asked Brian the Mountain Steward. Admiring my face, glistening in the glow of spread butter, my husband nodded fondly, "Nature suits you."

The Adirondacks: Part Three-The Chipmunk

The last time that I went on a grueling hike, I had been woefully unprepared. You know those cartoons featuring desert survival where the poor guy is crawling along panting, "Water...water..."? That was me except I had sunk so low that I had seriously considered the consumption of a discarded orange Skittle that was undergoing the fossilization process where it was being pressed into a dried puddle of mud. So as I prepared to climb Cascade Mountain (the most unmountainous of all the 4,000 foot tall Adirondack mountains), I promised myself that I would not be so ill-equipped that, at one point, I would look at my husband but instead see a giant turkey leg.

"Wait," I yelled, remembering as we drove to this unmountainous mountain, "pull over!" I ran into the gas station and quick bought a small bag of protein-rich cashews. Now I was ready. (I ate the York Peppermint Patty well before we reached the parking lot).

Many of you have already experienced the way up Cascade Mountain with me. But what you didn't know, besides that epic struggle for survival, was an incident that renewed my hope and connected me to nature in the most sublime way possible. The single incident that might be the most poignant, self-defining, soul-piercingly amazing moment of my entire life.

Death loomed near as the air thinned and the trail grew ever more perilous, littered with the skeletal remains of those who had trekked before me. "The only bone you might have glimpsed," Brad groused, "was maybe a fried chicken bone from someone's picnic basket." My life flashed before my eyes. Why had I ever limited myself to enjoying Pepsi only on Fridays? And why had I allowed myself to feel guilt on those days when I had indulged in two (or three or four) Snickers Bars at a time? And think of all the TV shows I missed because I let Brad talk me into going for a walk...outside? Think of all those times where I did fifteen sit-ups once a month. Oh...the waste.

And then, suddenly, we heard a squeak. "Excuse me," I said automatically, a modest blush camouflaged perfectly upon my beet-red sweaty face. "That wasn't you," Sydney assured me as our gazes swept the forest floor. "It's a chipmunk," I shouted in response to Brad's subtle pointed indication. Leaving behind the blurred tracks affiliated with the rapid movements of all cartoon creatures, our little friend sped to us via fallen log, beneath boulders, and around trunks. Pulling out my protein pack of nuts, Brad knelt and waited for the cautious approach of this shy woodland critter. The shy woodland critter then threw itself into my husband's arms, enthusiastically bowled him over and unceremoniously plucked the nut from Brad's hand with barely a hi-dee-do.

I, of course, was furious. "How could you be so selfish," I hissed at my husband. Thinking that I was concerned about the dangerous ecological effect of "humanizing" wild animals, Brad immediately apologized. "No," I snapped, grabbing his nuts...uh, I mean...the cashews, "I wanted to feed it."

We fed each other actually. I fed the chipmunk and the chipmunk fed my soul. You haven't lived until a chipmunk has sat on the palm of your hand...the chipmunk trusting me not to harm it...me trusting the chipmunk not to take a potty in my hand. And in the end...we both felt renewed and replenished. I went on to climb a mountain and the chipmunk went on to wash the windshields of cars trapped in traffic while hawking five dollar "I heart Chipmunks" t-shirts. Inspirational.