College Bound

Son #2, who generally packs for a trip by shoving a video game in the pocket of his camo jacket, was putting a few things in the car to take to college.

He tossed a box of Pop Tarts in the glove compartment and scored a Yoo Hoo out of the fridge. There is nothing at college that cannot be improved with proper nutrition. Unfortunately, artificial flavoring is his favorite building block on the food pyramid.

I couldn’t help thinking a little motherly advice would get him off to a better start. The Boy Scouts don’t pledge to Be Prepared because they hope to get lost in the wilderness, but somewhere in time there must have been a Scout Mother who preached the “you can never be sure” sermon effectively.

“Why don’t you take some extra paper and pencils?”

“No thanks, Mom. Could you hand me that slice of pizza off the bottom shelf?”

I handed him a slice of double cheese swathed in aluminum foil. If he made his bed the way he packaged pizza, we’d never find his pillow.

“How about your books? Change for the drink machine?”

“I’m good.”

“You never know what you need til you get there. How about a change of clothes?”

“Mom.”

I paused, trying to stuff the toy lamb he brought home from the hospital when he was born into his backpack.

“Yes, dear?”

I’m going across town to the city college. I’ll be home before supper.”

I popped Lambie in his backpack, tossed in a handful of change, and closed the zipper with a flourish.

He may be college-bound, but some truths never grow old.

You can never be sure what emergency will come your way. But Mom will pack something embarrassing in your backpack just in case.

Desperately Seeking Something

Because I don’t spend enough time looking for things in my daily life, I bought a word search puzzle book. The idea is to find and circle words that are hidden inside a box with a bunch of unalphabetized letters, which is good because finding the other kind would be too much like filing. Word Search is like a scavenger hunt only you don’t have to go next door to your spooky neighbor’s house asking for a kitchen knife or a set of hot curlers.

My first search was for a pencil. Ever the optimist, I looked in the cup on my desk. I found four broken blue crayons, two fountain pens with no ink, and a petrified Milkbone. I briefly thought about trying to use the Milkbone, but the Dachshund is possessive and I’m pretty sure she can take me in a fight. She is not known for fair play.

I looked under the sofa cushions, in the glove compartment of the car, and in my jewelry box, where I found the safety pin I needed last week for an unbecoming wardrobe malfunction. Later that afternoon while doing the laundry, I found a pencil stub in the lint trap of the dryer. The eraser was melted, but if we wait for all our blessings to come at once there will be nothing left for the Rapture, so I forged ahead.

I sat down with my puzzle book and my pencil stub. Immediately I found several words. None of them were in the word list and I’m not sure that all of them were English. At least one of them made the dog blush. Perhaps I needed an eraser after all. I scratched out my ineligible answers with the safety pin and circled a likely looking word using all the letters on one side of the puzzle. If this were Scrabble, I could clinch the victory with a Q and an unabridged dictionary.

About that time the Dachshund tackled me in an announced Milkbone raid and broke the point of my pencil stub. So now I’m off to search for the pencil sharpener. But that’s okay. I haven’t found any more words to circle anyway. I think I’ll write to Vanna and ask to buy a vowel.

Wonder where I can find her address?

From Polar Caps to Cold Feet

As a woman who can no longer figure her age without the aid of a scientific calculator, a sheaf of graph paper, and a Number Two pencil, I completely understand the concept of global warming. I haven’t even hit the half century mark and I don’t break out the sweaters and scarves unless ice is forming under my fingernails. Mother Earth has got me beat by a few decades, give or take a period of conquering hordes, a roving band of dinosaurs, and a Crusade or two. I figure tornado-force winds come from her fanning herself to keep cool.
In my younger years I was the first in the neighborhood to break out the faux fur and firewood, but these days my polar cap is melting at a rapid rate, which is the only explanation I can find for my humid hairstyle and damp T-Shirt. If I had to hold the heat of all the people on Earth, there would be a spike in the number of new oceans, not to mention some even greater lakes, and not a small increase in tributaries. All of these new bodies of water would spring to life in the wee hours of the morning accompanied by a good bit of tossing and turning and 37 trips to the bathroom. It's odd, though, how the temperature of the whole is greater than the degrees of the parts. My behind is the permanent victim of Chinook winds and my feet are wedged firmly in an Antarctic ice floe. But I wear the Equator like a halo above my sweatsoaked brow.
I don’t mind the aging process. The popping of my joints makes for a lively rhythmic beat to keep me from napping at my desk in the afternoons, and I’ve become accustomed to wandering from room to room searching for a clue as to what I was looking for in the first place. But if Mother Earth is ahead of me in menopause years, I can understand why history repeats itself. She lost her place and had to start over.