1/31/2012 The Thrill of Frog Catching on Cougar Mountain

Around 1962, my auntie Jean decided
my cousin Carolyn and I were mature
enough to take my cousin Elizabeth
around on our walks.
We were six that year.
I think my visits with my same age cousin Care
had something to do with my mom and auntie Jean's
Toni home-perm schedule.
The spring break visit was a doozy.
Early in the morning mom would load my older sisters,
Strawberry and Pam and me
into her baby-poop colored '57 Chevy
and away from Holly Park housing project
we would go.
Over that exciting floating bridge
and up Cougar Mountain.
Mom's car Brownie could just barely
get to the top where they lived.
After their beagle Moochie
was done chewing up my small corduroy
Reddy bear, and I was done crying,
and the Toni perm care kits were started,
the fun would begin.
Mom and my sisters would eventually take off
after dinner, leaving me for the week.
Spring in Seattle is cold and wet.
Too cold for the snakes to be out
and too wet to dig clam shell
fossils from the hillsides,
but perfect for frog catching!
That was more fun than climbing trees
because of the element of
MYSTERY.
Yogi Bear was a huge star that year so
Care and I decided that Boo Boo was a better name
for Elizabeth and she was such an agreeable child
that she didn't mind us shortening her name to Boo.
So, Care, Boo and I, would pull on our goulashes,
ditch Moochie and Ricky dog in the house,
and head out for some serious frog catching.
If my auntie Jean knew how far we went,
she would have had a heart attack.
We were not allowed to go past the top
of the long gravel driveway,
but Care had a great excuse for everything,
and, I was always up for anything.
So we marched our tiny six year old selves
with four year old Boo in tow,
past the top of the driveway
and a mile down the road,
almost to Mrs. Porter's shack.
The farm there had a low spot
along the property next to the road
that only filled up during the spring rains.
With nearly a quarter acre of swamp,
filled with reeds,
we were ready for our daily thrill.
The best technique for frog catching,
in my opinion,
was to set your bucket down close by
and yank up the leaning reeds over with your left hand
and grab the frog with your right hand.
We were champion frog catchers
and frogs are fast.
I loved the mystery of not knowing
where they were.
Unlike snakes that boldly sun-bathe in summer,
frogs are always hiding.
The thrill of never knowing where they were
or who would be faster,
you or the frog,
just added to our excitement.
We could usually catch a dozen apiece
in about an hour.
That gave us enough time to get back
down the long driveway,
and into their pasture and down to the smaller
swamp below their house.
For some reason there were never frogs
right there on the property.
We were always on a mission to right that wrong
and be up at the house
before auntie Jean noticed us missing.
Thank goodness she had mountains of laundry
keeping her busy
and trusted us.

1/30/2012 The Bright Side of Job Rejections

There is a bright side to job rejection.
I oughta know!
I was passed over dozens of times
for five years when applying for a
flight attendant job.
I overheard a postal worker
whisper to another one
while I was sorting mail one day.
"Gretchen is so stupid,
She never knows when to give up."
That may be true,
maybe I am too stupid to know when to give up.
The point is,
I didn't give up.
I'd get my rejection letters
and cry a few hours
and go back to carrying mail.
Then one day,
I was one of five in a cattle call of fifty
that had "A problem with my application."
I knew that was recruiter code talk
for being one of the lucky few to get hired.
It was in San Fransisco at the airport Hilton hotel.
Usually, when I made it past the cattle call,
I'd get a letter sending me to a second interview.
I had even made it to third, or final interviews, twice.
This time the five of us sat in a room
and got called out to smaller rooms right then!
Oh how I wished I hadn't gone through the
buffet trough like the pig I am.
When I stepped on the scale she asked
if I could lose my extra five pounds in three weeks.
I was 5'6" and one hundred and thirty pounds!
Seems tiny to me twenty-five years later.
But the important thing to remember
when applying for jobs,
is that you might be rejected.
I paid careful attention those five years to the people
that got picked from the crowd.
I noticed they had college degrees.
I got one.
I noticed they did lots of volunteer work.
I did that too.
And...my day came.
I got picked and had the most fun job in the world
for almost a decade.
Now I have been passed over for nearly
one thousand full time teaching jobs
by five school districts
over the last nine years.
Am I stupid?
Maybe.
The bright side of job rejections
is that they make you strong,
give you tough skin.
Most people don't get their dream job
first interview around.
When this happens to you,
don't give up,
you'll grow a tough skin
that will help you cope
with other problems during your lifetime.
Hang in there baby!
My skin is so tough you
can bounce a quarter off me!

1/25/2012 I'm Not Laughing At Those Ads Now

Last week, after a month with a sore throat,
I went to the clinic.
The doctor pressed the tongue depressor down
and asked me to say, "Ahhh"
and looked down my throat.
Then she said, "Looks like a problem caused by acid reflux,
very common for someone your age."
My age! Ha!
For years I'd laughed at all the old choker ads
on TV for acid reflux and other embarrassing products.
Ten years ago I saw the print ad in the back
of the Sunday Seattle Times for foam fannys
and nearly fell off my chair laughing.
Now I want one!
My butt is as flat as the clipboard I pack for subbing.
So, I'm officially a leaky old lady.
They have medicine for that.
Could be worse.
I could be an old man and have to
take the, "little blue pill"
and end up with a problem solved
that doesn't go down for four hours!

12/24/2012 Singing Songs With Toddlers on the MS Jewel

"How do you like working with the two to five year old group?"
I could see the handwriting on the wall
as my supervisor Martine asked me the question.
The group I feared the most.
Sticky, germy, cough in your face constantly:
THE TODDLERS.
Feared above all others
and ready to infect me with global bacterias.
"I hate that age group."
I answered honestly.
"Oh well, that is what you are scheduled for"
she answered with a smile.
Turns out it I never stopped laughing those
first two weeks until the infections
robbed me of my laughter and
replaced it with gut-wrenching coughs.
But, before I got sick
I had the time of my life!
I went to the MS Jewel to meet
people from all over the world
and I did!
Turns out that since most of the kids
out of New York City were American,
the toddler room curriculum
was in English.
Now, here is what cracked me up:
All the American nursery rhymes
have traditional melodies that I expected,
BUT when sung by someone from Peru or the Philippines,
the melody was often different.
I would be helping a two year old
putting on his shoes and hear all the
songs I grew up with sung
completely differently!
It was like being in a audio-fun house
where all the songs were off kilter.
Mary Had a Little Lamb, Wheels on the Bus...
Even the song "Dis is My Tinkerbonker"
when sung by the Canadian, Dexter,
had an entirely different melody.
As a former cub scout leader,
I was trained to sing loud
so the dozens of boys around a campfire
could hear and join in.
So here I was in the MS Jewel toddler room,
and Dexter and I are standing shoulder-to-shoulder
singing the Tinkerbonker song,
at the top of our lungs,
to two different melodies!
The cute little kids were mimicking
our movements and didn't even notice.

Lunch With Brenda in Hilo Hawaii

There's nothing I like better
than going out to lunch at
Pesto's Cafe in downtown Hilo
on the waterfront with my
best friend, Brenda.
We usually wait for a window table
so we can people watch out the picture window.
Today, we were too hungry to wait
and took a table in the middle of
the room.
People were staring at us.
Well, not me, Brenda.
She had taken some of the jade colored,
C-shaped jade blossoms from her tree
and hung them from the tops of her ears.
They looked like green, inverted Mr. Spock ears.
Mrs. Spock was what I was thinking.
I looked over at her and said,
"Has any ever said, 'You're so crazy!' to you?"
She told me she had heard that
all time her whole life.
I pondered her answer for awhile
and wondered why people
had said that to me so frequently too.
We left the cafe
and stood on the sidewalk out front.
She needed to go to the health food store
but I wanted to hang out in the sun
and warmth.
The woman street musician
was playing Hawaiian songs
and strumming her ukelele and singing.
She nodded at me to join her.
I stepped behind her to read the words
and joined in.
I'm not much of a singer but
it was one of those blissful moments
in a person's lifetime
when your heart and voice
meet and you wish you could
just bottle up the sensation.
Brenda stepped out from the store
and my song ended
and I fell in step with her to cross
the street to the beach.
She turned to me and said,
"You're so crazy."

1/10/2012 The Dearness of First Graders

I usually substitute in the upper grades
so it is always fun to pick up
a job in kindergarten or first grade.
I feel like a giant when I walk in since
the desks and counters are at knee level.
The thing I like about first graders
is how cute they look with no teeth.
Not one child had front teeth today
and I like being called Mithus Nixthon.
The teacher had left a basket of
snow picture books and when I held up
The Biggest Best Snowman, a little girl
exclaimed, "That looks like my dad! He's
at eight feet tall you know!"
I knew I had a few dad volunteers
coming in and I kept watching for him.
Maybe another day.
I always forget how affectionate little kids
are. Teachers are not allowed to touch kids
so it always startles me when they rush
up out of nowhere and hug me.
I make sure to turn sideways for the
side hug that is allowed.
It is so hard not to laugh when they ask
me how old I am and I tell them to guess.
The guesses always range from thirty to one hundred.
Maybe I should change my goal from
trying to get a full time teaching job to
subbing the longest in recorded history.
I'm already at nine years of subbing now.
I love to read, mostly fiction,
and to write short stories but there
is one more thing I like better than that.
Reading "essays" by first graders.
Today's reflective essay about the
bears hibernating for winter really cracked me up.
"Baers r slepe an r hangry and et
ulot of fesh and haneey."
It's so nice
to be in a world of complete innocence,
even if it is just for one day.
A place where getting a sticker for your work
makes you jump up and down with joy.
A place where you learn to tie your shoes
and watch out for that
dangerous zipper on your puffy coat.

1/5/2012 Ice Cream Bow Tie Stroganoff

Ice Cream Bow Tie Stroganoff:
Start at 10:00AM or you'll have tough meat
1. Find a pot-roast in the freezer
and feel guilty for hating to cook.
after thirty years.
Remember your mom saying,
"Guilt, the gift that keeps on giving."
2. Toss frozen meat in microwave for five
minutes so you can wrestle off that black tray thing.
3. Pour some canola oil in your really big
pan with vertical sides and a fancy lid.
4. Heat oil to medium high
and salt and pepper the meat and toss it in
salt and pepper side down.
5. Salt and pepper the top
and put the lid on and cook five minutes.
6. Flip it over carefully so you don't have to go
to the emergency room like you did in 2002.
7. Cook five minutes and carefully lift a corner
of the meat and pour one cup of coffee into the grease.
8. Make more coffee since that coffee looked really good.
9. Remember that your mother-in-law told you the
secret to really tender pot-roast is to,
"Cook the s--- out of it."
Smile because that is the only time you ever
heard her say a naughty word in twenty-five years.
10. Flip meat every half hour for a long time
11. When the meat gets tender, realize you hate
to peel potatoes and decide to make something new.
12. When Troy comes home from school at two,
bribe him with a ten dollar bill you found in
your address book to walk across the highway
to Grocery Outlet for mushrooms,
telling him he can keep the change.
13. Decide you better check your Joy of Cooking
cookbook just in case you don't know what you are doing.
14. Notice the main ingredient after meat is cream
and that your kid is long gone and you really screwed up.
15. Toss hunks of meat on a plate for another day.
16. Use your kitchen scissors to cut up the meat in
the pan into chunks and wish you hadn't let your
husband cut the rolled roofing with them
because now one side of the handle is loose.
17. Shove the meat to the sides of the pan
and have your kid cook the mushrooms in the middle.
Call it sauteing even though you are not sure
what that means.
18. When the mushrooms are brown tell
Troy to go shoot zombies with his brother.
19. Find some cute bow tie pasta in the cupboard
that your mother-in-law gave you when she left
to snowbird in Arizona and cook that.
20. Decide vanilla ice cream is related to cream
and add two cups of that to the meat.
21. Drain and add the bow tie noodles.
22. Make some stewed tomatoes even though your
kids say they don't like them and Teddy
does not believe they are
supposed to have bread in them.
23. Find your Joy of Cooking and pray that the
recipe calls for bread to shut him up.
24. Think about how much you miss your mom
and grandma and how much they loved stewed tomatoes.
25. Show Teddy the recipe and look at his astonished expression.
26. Wait for your cranky mailman husband to
get home from work and put food out.
27. Ask Terry and Troy to try to guess the secret
ingredient and think Terry's guess of eggnog
was not that far off.
28. Watch Terry and the kids scarf every speck of food
INCLUDING the stewed tomatoes.