Liver Let Live

There was a story in the paper (hmmm, what will newspapers be called when there are no paper newspapers to be had?) the other day about a son who had donated his liver to his father. Then the son's liver grew back, and they both are healthy and happy.

I was thinking about this story as I drove to my new job at Current Publishing, which puts out six weekly papers -- and they still ARE papers -- in southern Maine. One thought led to another, meandering around stem-cell organ growth and hip replacements and cosmetic surgery and cloning, until they crystallized into the realization that eventually, if the human race doesn't wipe itself out, brain transplants are actually going to happen.

Why not? It will be as simple as, say, putting a new engine in your car. Just place brain in sawed-off skull, match up the dangling vesicles to their proper counterparts (optic nerve, brain stem, spinal cord), tighten up a few clamps and away we go!

Where will the bodies come from, you ask? Well, of course, cloning will advance to the point where it can be selective, so you can clone bodies that have no brains. Picking a new body will be like walking into Target and buying a dress off the rack. The only size you have to worry about is brain-pan size. You could even clone your own body when you're young and lithe, put it on ice, and get back into it when you feel your losing your looks.

Taken to an extreme, this could mean a lot of people choose a clone of the same person to "re-brain" in, so the people you meet on the street could look exactly like you. Bizarre! You could be in an orchestra where everyone looks exactly the same, but you all have different brains and different personalities.

It would certainly solve the dilemma of people who feel they're a different sex beneath their bodily trappings. Just put your brain into a clone of the opposite sex! No hormone treatments, no operations (except the brain transplant), no new "women" still looking like the men they once were!

I'm not trying to be funny here. I can see this is really going to happen, given enough time. You should trust me on this, too. I blogged before computers were invented. I drove beaters all my life, before used cars became fashionable. I'm a visionary. I am the great and powerful Debbi Hardy. Don't forget it.

Tromboning

I made the mistake of saying to my husband today that maybe I should just quit trying to regain my trombone-playing prowess.

"Give it up!" he exploded. "Take up something else that doesn't require an embouchure! Because you don't have one!"

I have to admit, I was a little taken aback by his vehemence. Mulling his reaction, I played something resembling a song. When I was done, I said, "That sounded OK, didn't it?"

He said, "Yes, but it gives me a headache."

His comments were closely followed this evening by a conversation with my sister Midge (or Margaret, as she likes to be called since she "grew up") in which she said, "You don't have the right kind of lips for trombone."

I was kind of taking these people seriously until I realized that a) my husband can't get a decent sound out of a PIANO, for heaven's sake! and b) Midge is a flute player. What the hell do THEY know about playing trombone?

If there is one thing I have an abundance of, it is determination. When I was breast-feeding my daughter and got that sore-nipple condition (I forget the name of it, but it was REALLY PAINFUL every time she latched on), I didn't give up! When my VW bus blew its engine out in New Mexico and I had to quit school and go to work to put food on the table (oatmeal for Thanksgiving!), I didn't give up!

And amazingly enough, it appears that I'm not going to give up on trombone. I kind of wish I could, but I have a feeling I'm still going to be trying even when I'm sitting in a wheelchair at the nursing home. I'll play "Joy to the World" at the nursing home Christmas talent show. And all the other residents, even the deaf ones, will be plugging their ears and shouting, "Give it up! Give it up!"

I've thought a lot about when things started going downhill. It was when I was in music school at USM, after I came back from my exchange experience in New Mexico (where, incidentally, I developed a post-nasal drip). As the school year progressed, I got worse and worse. At one point, my teacher told me to take a week off from practicing. He apparently thought I was doing too much.

Taking a week off didn't help. But talk about determiniation: I think it was sheer will that got me through my senior recital.

Over the years, I've tried to get back in shape. At one point, I was doing pretty well. Then one night, I had to play the solo in "Marie" several times. My lips just weren't ready for that high C. The next day, they were like sails flapping in the wind. I had no control whatsoever.

The big question is: Can that control be regained? If it's possible, then I'm not wasting my time. If it isn't possible, how do I find out?

I can say this: If I succeed, the world is going to know about it! I'll be the Obama of frustrated trombonists, shouting, "Yes we can!"

Giving Thanks

Last night we watched a DVD of a History Channel show about the Pilgrims -- their persecution by King James I, their flight to Holland, their crossing of the Atlantic on the Mayflower, and their battles with sickness and cruel winter once they arrived in New England. It was really good.

This morning, as I played Scrabble online in my relatively warm house on our own seven acres, with the smell of pumpkin pie baking in the oven and the prospect of a plump turkey breast in the afternoon, I thought about how totally plush our lives are in comparison to thei Pilgrims' at this time of year almost four centuries ago.

I personally have absolutely nothing to complain about, and everything to be thankful for. For starters, Earth is fabulous! Can you think of any other planet you'd want to inhabit? Other good things: I was born to wonderful parents and they lived to be 79 and 84. Music and animals and friends have been a great source of delight and fun all my life. And now I have my own family -- wow, who'da thunk it?

So the economy stinks and the U.S. is mired in Bush mistakes. Obama is about to become president, and while we can't expect miracles, we can once again dare to hope for them.

I've had sorrow in my life, but can having your college roommate steal your boyfriend compare to half the Pilgrim company dying either on their journey or that first winter in Plymouth? I think not.

Good news abounds. The sun is shining, no one has kidnapped my child and I still think it's funny when I can't remember why I walked into the next room. When we look at the big picture, most of us have it pretty damn good.

Photo: That's me at age 5. I seem to have a twinkle in my eye!

I Give UP

I was definitely not cut out to raise my own meat. We now have eight roosters turned into cookable products sitting in our freezer, and I cannot even look at them without feeling sad and guilty. There's no way I'm going to EAT them! They were our friends! I'd be wondering all through dinner which one I was forking into my mouth -- was it the one with the green tailfeathers who buried his little head in a corner of the coop to "hide" from the other roosters? Was it the one who always woke up and crowed when I went out to the barn by flashlight late at night to check on the horses? Was it the one who was the first to come running to me for food?

My plan now is to sell the bodies (what would you pay for a fresh, organic 5-pound chicken?) and remember never to get into this situation again. No more incubating for me!

I still have seven roosters, too. What am I going to do with the three I don't want? Would you like a free rooster? Let me know. Operators are standing by.

Roosters and the Secret to Catching Them

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Now, if this doesn't make it to Google's Page 1, I want to know why!

How to Make a Million Dollars Writing for the Web

Wouldn't it be great to get paid to write the kind of stuff I put on this blog? I think so, so I took a trial membership in "FreelanceHomeWriters.com," or a title to that effect. It's a site that helps you enter the world of bidding for freelance writing jobs.

AN INTRODUCTION TO MAKING A MILLION DOLLARS WRITING FOR THE WEB

The first thing you have to do on the FreelanceHomeWriters site is read the introduction. If you're like me, and you want the bottom line without a lot of jibber-jabber, this introduction will really try your patience. I skipped the personal testimonials, mainly because I think they're all made-up anyway. And who cares how the site founders got started or what they personally struggled with? Just tell me how to make a million dollars tossing out blog entries!

That came next, in the form of an ebook on how to write for the Web. Now, that was an eye-opener! In fact, there were so many eye-openers in this section, I hardly know where to start!

AMAZING TRICKS FOR MAKING A MILLION DOLLARS WRITING FOR THE WEB

It's amazing how many tricks people employ to entice readers to their Web sites, to wit:

1. Liberal use of keywords. If you're hired to write an article, an employer will in most cases give you a set of keywords to sprinkle throughout the copy. That's because the more you mention a keyword, the better your article's chances of popping up on Page 1 of a Google search. Most people who Google something never even bother going to Page 2 and beyond, so being on Page 1 is a definite plus.

2. Formulaic headlines. This site actually lists fill-in-the-blank headlines you should use for any Web articles you write, because they've been shown to reel in readers. Some examples: *

The Secret of… (your subject here)
Little Known Ways to… (your subject here)
Get Rid of (problem) Once and For All…
Here’s a Quick Way to (solve a problem)…
Now You Can Have (something desirable) (great circumstance)
(Do Something) Like (A Professional Example)…
What Everyone Ought to Know about (blank)…
Give Me (amount of time) and I’ll Give You (blank)…
The Lazy (person’s) Way to (blank)…
See How Easily You Can (desirable result)…
You Don’t Have to be (something challenging) to be (desired result)…


These work very well, although you may feel using them stifles your creativity. Say your subject is Having Sex with Pandas. Just plug that into each one of the above, and pick the one that works best for you. How about, "Now You Can Have Sex with Pandas and Still Be the Respected CEO of a String of Daycares!" Or, "Give Me 5 Minutes and I'll Give You the Best Sex You've Ever Had with a Panda."

3. Liberal use of subheads. The more the better, and, of course, each subhead should have the keyword in it. "Why Sex With Pandas?" "Sex With Pandas Has Long History" and "How to Find a Panda Sex Partner" would all be viable subheads in this hypothetical (we hope) article.

4. Then there's the tried-and-true bullets tactic. Readers love bulleted lists, which are so easy to compile and help you to quickly reach your 500-word quota.

Well, you get the gist.

YOU'LL BE SURPRISED HOW YOU CAN MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS WRITING FOR THE WEB

The next eye-openers came in the site's job bank. It will astound you to see what people are willing to pay for. "Blog commenter" looks like pretty easy money. A person who gets paid to blog needs to justify the pay, and so will pay others to comment on his or her blog.

Another job that strikes me as rather sleazy if not downright dishonest is "Expert craigslist poster." Craigslist doesn't like you to post the same ad in lots of places, so these people will pay you to disguise their ads and plaster them all over the craigslist world. Now there's a noble use of my writing skills!

On the plus side, people do need content for their Web sites and blogs, and it's not difficult to write the articles. It might be difficult for me, though, to stick to facts. Rather than jump in and bid on a job, I assigned myself a blog entry to see if I could suppress my wild individualism and yoke myself to writing to specs. Hence my Nov. 13 article on catching roosters.

CAN I REALLY MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS WRITING FOR THE WEB?

Despite my really long headline on my rooster article (readers are supposed to like long headlines better than short ones) and my use of practically every suggested headline strategy, and the use of the keyword "roosters" in just about every sentence, I saw absolutely no uptick in readership in the first 24 hours.

Oh my god, I forgot to put in subheads! (Smack myself on the forehead!) No wonder readers haven't been falling over themselves to read my rooster advice.

HOW TO MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS ON THE WEB WITHOUT WRITING A WORD

FreelanceHomeWriters.com says an 8-year-old child could write these content articles. I'll put my 9-year-old to work on it right away. In fact, maybe I'll pay her, and then resell the articles. What a brilliant idea! I could have an entire stable of local children churning out Web content.

Thank you, FreelanceHomeWriters.com!

Ten Steps to Understanding How to Unearth the Secret to Catching Free-Range Roosters: A Feat You Will Be Proud Of

You've always wanted to catch those roosters running wild in your backyard, right? I know I have. I look out my window and see those plump, juicy roosters and it make my mouth water like Niagara Falls. If I could just get my hands on them and take them to the slaugh... ... uh ... rooster heaven.

Now I can -- and so can you! Because I am about to reveal to you my incredible 10-step method to get those roosters into a pen and then pluck them like ripe berries from their perches. I know it sounds impossible -- and if you've ever chased a rooster, you know what I mean! But there's really no reason you too can't be successful using my tried-and-true tips to move your roosters from yard to oven with little fuss and no muss!

First you need to know something about roosters. Roosters may not seem very smart, but then, they don't have to be. All roosters have to be is WARY. And they are plenty wary. Roosters love their freedom more than they love their hens. A rooster will spend hours at a coop door putting one foot in, and one foot out, doing the hokey pokey and turning himself about without ever really committing himself to entering. You'd think you could sneak up behind him and pressure him to go in. Think again.

Secondly, roosters get hungry when they haven't had food for a long time. This may seem self-evident, but most people don't think about the time factor. Most people think a rooster is always hungry, that all you have to do is put down some corn any hour of the day and a rooster will hop right to it. That is just not the way roosters are.

OK, those are the basics. And now (drum roll, please), the way to catch those roosters:

1. Do not feed roosters any breakfast until about 11 a.m.

2. Open the coop's people-size door. If the coop's chicken-size door leads to a secure pen, leave it open. If it does not, then make sure it is firmly shut and that a rooster can't push it open from the inside.

3. Fill food pans and place them as far inside the coop as you can.

4. Get a long stick and position yourself about 15 feet from the coop, on the side from which you will be closing the door.

5. Stand for what earlier in the day would have been an infinite amount of time waiting for a rooster to go in, but which now, because you waited so long to feed them, will be just a minute or two.

6. As soon as a rooster has disappeared inside the door, move quickly and quietly closer to the door and use your long stick to slam the door shut. Voila! You have your first rooster! And as they say, a rooster in hand is worth two in the yard.

7. Enter the coop and, shutting the people door behind you, pressure the rooster to go out the chicken-size door into the pen. If you don't have a pen, corral your captive somehow so that when you repeat the process, he doesn't escape out the people door. You could erect a temporary wall with a small, blockable entrance, or put up a strong, fine-mesh net. Or you could pop your prisoner into a crate of some sort.

8. Repeat the previous 7 steps with your remaining free-range roosters.

9. Once all roosters are captured and accounted for, release them from their in-coop restraints and don't let them out.

10. The night before the Big Day, enter the coop after the roosters have all gone to sleep, remove the slumbering future Sunday roasts from their perches and deposit them in the cages you'll transport them in.

Don't be discouraged if a few roosters seem to have a sixth sense about when you are approaching the door to shut it. They'll come back, eventually. They'll hear their buddies crowing and scuffling inside and their flocking instinct will kick in. You must exercise patience, which can be difficult, but the rewards are well worth it!

One caveat: You'd think that once all the roosters are contained, you're home free. I thought I was, with seven roosters in the pen as the sun began to set the night before their final journey. Alas, despite my impassioned gestures to shut up, my husband mentioned at the dinner table about our plans for the morrow. Our 9-year-old daughter jumped up, shouting, "What? You're taking the roosters to be killed?"

Before we could catch HER, she ran outside, threw open a door and my day's work literally flew the coop.

So, perhaps an 11th step is needed: Add padlock to coop door. Or, add duct tape to husband's mouth.

Now, get out there and round up those roosters! You can do it! And think of the pride you'll experience when your family gathers for Thanksgiving, and someone asks, as he's licking his fingers clean from the fried chicken, "Who caught this delicious bird?" You can righteously puff out your chest and crow, "That would be me!"

Let's Try This Again

I gave my first piano lesson today. It was a challenge. My 5-year-old student was very nervous and wouldn't even sit in front of the piano. I had to dredge up my psychology training and take her through a hierarchy of fears before she edged close enough to touch the keys. By the time she left, she'd thawed out considerably (probably from a massive dose of relief that it was over) and was showing me her gymnastics moves and speaking at a normal volume.

It's a beautiful day outside, if a bit chilly. November is bearable when sunny. It's the overcast days that make me want to just RUN AWAY.

Today's picture is my first experiment with the scanner, which my husband was kind enough to connect to and install on this computer. Actually, it's my fourth experiment. The first three scans wouldn't upload, I guess because they were saved as the wrong kinds of files.

This is a photo that appeared in 1971 in the Piscataquis Observer. Somehow I made it into the National Honor Society. Some society! We never had any meetings or did anything fun. The only thing we had in common was an ability to get good grades.

See if you can tell which one is me!

A Little Housekeeping

Some of you are wondering why you haven't made my list of "People I Have Knewn." There's a simple answer. One, I'm adding names in bunches according to segments of my life. So far, I'm barely through high school. Some people have been added because they complained, even though it wasn't their turn to be added. So if I met you at UMO or USM or in New Jersey or New Mexico or New Hampshire or Alaska and/or just about anytime after I graduated from high school, it's not that I've forgotten you. You'll get on the list one of these days.

You can actually be of help. When you prod me to put you on the list, remind me of other people you think we both knew. (OK, maybe it IS that I've forgotten some people.) I won't add any names that I don't actually remember.

P.S. Kayti did not write this.

The Hills Are Alive

These are exciting times here on the Stick Farm. For starters, Rex was out of the house for two days in a row, and I was totally ALONE!

I do love being alone. I think it stems from growing up with sisters who just made fun of me all the time, leaving me unwilling to do much of anything in their presence. For example, at a Bible camp we went to for a week one summer, my sister Janet and I were put in the same dorm room. The room was actually an attic, and a damned hot and stuffy one at that, and about 10 girls were housed there. I think I was 10. I was very lonely. I had no idea how to make friends. In contrast, Janet made friends easily and hung around with a large group. One day I was lying on my bed between classes, having a conversation with my stuffed bear. Janet came in with some other kids from some activity outside. She strode over to me and ripped my bear out of my hands, and told me to stop playing with a stuffed animal. It was embarrassing her.

At home in Falmouth, it was only when I would strike out on a walk "down back" with my nonjudgmental dog that I felt free to be. Maybe that's why the word and concept of freedom resonate so deeply with me. Freedom! Ain't that a gorgeous word?

Liking to have Rex out of the house has nothing to do with Rex, really. He tolerates whatever I do here, including, notably, my wretched attempts to rebuild my trombone embouchure. Still, I'd rather not have him in listening distance. It makes a difference in how I practice.

Also exciting is the response I've had to my search for music students. It's exhilarating (is that spelled right? I don't think so ...) yet scary to be opening myself up to sharing music. I'm not saying I have a lot of students -- just that I'm talking to people about music and seeing some enthusiasm and also seeing more possibilities. I'm discovering, too, that I hate the money aspect of teaching lessons. I just want people to come play with me. What I'd really like to do is charge people on the basis of how much they practice -- the more they practice, the less I charge, because the quicker they learn, the more fun they'll be to play with! Maybe Rex can come up with a practice-o-meter that we could imbed in students' instruments.

Last but not least, I have finally successfully papier-mache'd something. It's Kayti's mask for her parrot costume for Halloween (her best friend is going to be a pirate). I'm quite delighted with the result.

Now it's on to my own costume -- appropriately, a treasure chest!

At last, a picture

At last, a picture on my blog. This is my daughter, Kayti, age 9, and her friend Finn, age 5, on that trampoline it took us six years to put up. Soon we'll have to take it down, because we live in the frozen North and outdoor equipment doesn't fare well in winter weather.
Well, it looks like this coming weekend will be the Time of the Great Rooster Slaughter. I'll kind of miss hearing 11 roosters crowing in chorus between 4 and 7 a.m. I did record them, and will try to upload it, but please, I just put up my first picture! Bear with me!
Why is it I think of a million things to say on my blog when I'm out walking, and then when I sit in front of the computer my head is completely devoid of anything resembling ideas? Must be all the Scrabble playing.

The Deb Zone: A Separate Reality

Rex, my husband, made up the title for this blog entry. He said he wanted to write something on the subject, but he'll never get around to it, so I borrowed it.

You may have heard my dulcet voice last Sunday on NPR's Weekend Edition. The show's producers called me after I posted on their Soapbox blog about what kind of life I'll be facing in a couple of weeks when my severance pay from the newspaper runs out. In short order, they had me a) scheduled for a phone interview with Sunday host Liane Hansen and b) losing sleep thanks to my fear of sounding like a nincompoop on national radio.

After the interview, which took place at MPBN's studios in Portland, I was so horrified at the things I'd said that I didn't sleep for ANOTHER two nights, thinking about the clever responses I failed to make. For example, Ms. Hansen asked me if I had ever thought that at age 55 I'd be in this position, i.e., jobless, reduced to living in the cellar to keep warm and serving meals concocted from a pet or two. My on-air answer meandered around how Rex and I are unconventional and I've done a lot of jobs and blah blah blah ... the point being, I'm no stranger to belt-tightening. Which is an okay answer, but what I should have said was: "No way! I never thought I'd be lucky enough to have a farm, a husband, a daughter, and lots of animals! I expected to be living on income from bottle returns and picking my lunch out of a dumpster!" Which some people may take as facetious but it is the absolute truth!

Before I go, a funny observation by Kayti:

She'd picked up my trombone and tried to blow a note. I showed her how, and said, "It's kind of hard." She said, "I can't understand why you'd work so hard to play something that doesn't sound that good anyway."

Maybe it's time to play her some J.J. Johnson.

My very best to all of you,

LOVE, Debbi

The Hits Parade

So much posting, so little interest.

One of the things I hated about my former employer, the Portland Press Herald, turning Web-crazy was that the editors who switched to online journalism became so hooked on hit numbers. Every day my email would contain self-congratulatory messages about how many hits the damn site was getting. Half the hits (or possibly more) probably involved people either posting mean comments or people checking for mean comments and hotly protesting them.

You want a reason to especially dislike the human race, check what people say in reaction to political blogs. I've stumbled across a few, purely by naive accident, thinking someone might have something intelligent to say, and I've been blown away by the vituperation.

So do I care if my blog gets hits? Well, first of all, it appears that I have no way of checking. I used to have a tool called "Analytics" that let me track the number of hits, what search engines sent them, and what keywords were used. That seems to have disappeared in the most recent round of site "improvements." Second of all, I find myself not really caring. It's fun to write. And I've never really cared about being popular.

Good thing, huh?????

Options Narrowing

In a way, it's great to age. There's so much stuff you can't do anymore, the upside being that you can't berate yourself for not doing them. One of my sisters finds herself unable to vacuum because of the arthritis in her back. Do you think that bothers her? No, indeed! She lounges around eating bonbons while dust kitties collect under her counters. I myself can no longer bend to empty the cat litterbox. Bummer!

Some things, however, are tough to bid goodbye to. Trampoline jumping, for example.

We bought this trampoline at a yard sale five years ago, and every summer I'd say, THIS is the summer we're putting the trampoline up. Well, the years went by, the trampoline parts lay around in boxes or in less intelligent storage places, like the yard, and I got older and fatter and sorer.

It finally happened, though, and yesterday the trampoline rose like the phoenix as my husband and I dodged wasps and slapped mosquitoes and got really hot and sweaty, not in a good way.

At last, it was ready for the test. After five long years, so was I, and up I climbed.

Maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me, but the experience was not like I remembered from high school. When my feet left the trampoline surface, my skin and its underlying material (a.k.a. "blubber") seemed to leave a split second later. I could almost hear parts of my body faintly crying, "Hey, wait for me!" like a kid following her big brother. When I came down, my outsides -- two items of which in particular are quite substantial -- were still on the way up. It's like two of me were rising and falling in a slightly unsynchronized fashion.

As if this weren't enough, I think the bouncing affected my sinuses. Even 24 hours later, my face hurts and my eyeballs feel like they've been put in a blender on high.

So which comes first: getting in shape -- including strengthening my eye muscles and undergoing breast reduction surgery -- to be able to bounce on the trampoline, or bouncing on the trampoline to get in shape?

I don‘t really care, because frankly, it makes me ill now just to think about bouncing. I've got better things to do, anyway, like figuring out where to build the shuffleboard court.

Dog Days

The last of our pups will be going to her new home in Bethlehem, N.H., at the end of this week. Today is Kayti's first day of fourth grade. And Rex is finishing up his task of shortening the Quonset hut so we are in compliance with setback rules.

It's been kind of a busy summer here at my little farm. We hatched a bunch of chicks, birthed and nurtured five shih tzu puppies, grew a huge pumpkin vine and a dizzyingly tall group of electric blue morning glories, and watched much of our garden succumb to sogginess maintained by daily downpours.

More than once this summer I literally fled from the house at 10 p.m. or later to take a walk. I was starved for time alone. Much as I dreaded getting back into the routine of rousting Kayti for school, now that she's back, the six hours of silence is more than golden. It's platinum. It's uranium.

I've started volunteering for a free health clinic, mainly to keep myself in touch with how much I don't want to work for anyone else. We're having a little trouble with my training, though. For three consecutive Tuesdays, the training has been postponed because of car trouble, trainer's unavailability, and trainer's forgetting to come in.

I was there alone this last time, and not knowing what to do or how to do it, I passed the time discovering through an online questionnaire that physically, I am actually 2.5 years older than my chronological age.

This, believe it or not, was good news. I've been complaining for years that I feel like I'm 80 years old. So discovering that I'm more than 20 years younger than that gives me kind of a new lease on life.

As usual, it was tough answering questions about my life. One of the questions, for example, gave me the choice of "happily married" or "unhappily married." I checked off "happily married," only because I have a handy kind of guy at my beck and call. That makes me happy. So although Rex drives me insane much of the time, I'm glad I've got him.

But does that throw off the results? I don't know, and I won't know unless they add a third choice: "tolerably married."

Gummint Work

A lot of people diss New Jersey, but I lived there for 9 months back in the '70s and found the place not only pretty in places but endlessly fascinating. This may have more to do with my age at the time. I was 21, a graduate of Foxcroft Academy in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, and a graduate of the University of Maine at Orono. I'd led a rather sheltered existence, although if you'd asked me at the time I would have disagreed.

New Jersey is where I was assigned my first full-time job, an ostensibly temporary position taking claims at the Social Security Administration. When the government called me in Dover-Foxcroft and asked me if I would be willing to go, I said yes, hung up, and hugged myself nervously, repeating to myself, "New Jersey! New Jersey!" in a mixture of disbelief and horror.

Not only was I headed for New Jersey, a land of crime and scary people with unexplained scars and rude drivers and bad air, but for Newark, N.J., which I was sure was the very worst New Jersey had to offer. In retrospect, I am amazed that my father let me go.

So it was that in late August, 1974, I packed my VW squareback with everything I thought I'd need (naively omitting the pepper spray) and tooled south. Uncle Sam put me up in the Mayflower Hotel in Jersey City for my two weeks of training. I can still remember the smell of carpet cleaner that permeated everything, including the elevator, in that hotel. A fellow trainee, a red-haired New York Irishman named John Regan, was quartered a couple floors up, and I recall visiting him in his room and being astonished when he broke out in song. I'd been raised to shut up. These non-Mainers were an odd bunch!

I was prepared to find myself among seedy, down-at-the-heels characters who were desperate for a job. Not that I thought of myself that way. I thought I was slumming, being from the clean, righteous state of Maine. My classmates included a firecracker named Liz; John the singing Irishman; Tim Hecht the funny Manhattanite who yearned for St. Petersburg; Rick Mills who at 35 seemed impossibly old; and a lady whose last name was Maldonado. I forget her first name. Our instructors were the impeccably dressed, worldy Ellen and some guy whose name I also forget.

Training was unbelievably boring. Filling out paperwork has never been my strong suit, and here I was embarking on a career of filling it out for other people. I was planning my escape almost as soon as I arrived. I rented a room in the upstairs of a private home in Belleville, N.J., but never had a phone installed because I wasn't expecting to stay. I ended up staying for five long, lonely months. A phone might have helped.

I worked in the Newark office for a few months, then somebody decided I was a great prospect for a permanent job. Since training would get me out of actual work, I jumped at the opportunity. Soon I was commuting to Jersey City, learning that unlike in Maine, in New Jersey, it doesn't take a big accident to back traffic up for miles. All it takes is a traffic light.

My next posting was Bridgeton, N.J. It was so much nicer than Newark. Spring was springing, I found an apartment to share, my workmates were fun and southern Jersey was bursting with tomatoes and confusingly numbered county roads. I went bicycling with some friends and out on a nearly deserted road a fat guy riding a bike in the opposite direction crashed into me head-on. He had the entire world to ride in, but chose to collide with me. Damn, that hurt. New Jersey! There are crazies everywhere you look!

One of my biking companions that day was a co-worker named Alan Cannizzaro.

Alan was my junior by a few months. He liked to say he was the baby of the office. A few adjectives I would apply to Alan: direct, smart, funny and loyal (to his girlfriend, darn it). He didn't seem to mind being employed by the Social Security Administration.

In fact, apparently he embraced it. Where I lasted three short months in Bridgeton before quitting in May of 1975, Alan Cannizzaro soldiered on. I did a search of his name online and found a court ruling involving Alan in his role as a union representative.

His shop, Local 2369 of the American Federation of Government Employees, filed suit against the Department of Human Services and the SSA, charging that "on or about May 1, 1983, respondent's Area V Director, Arne Tornquist, made a derogatory anti-union remark in a telephone conversation to a union representative (Alan) who was preparing to represent a grievant in a hearing before said Area Director."

Here's the story, according to the court documents:

On May 1, 1985, Alan H. Cannizzaro was employed as a claims representative at the Bridgeton, N.J., branch, of the SSA. He was the on-site representative for Bridgeton branch as well as second vice-president of the Union herein. His duties included handling grievances on behalf of employees, attendance at arbitration hearings, and filing unfair labor practice charges.

On May 1, 1985, Cannizzaro went to the Toms River, N.J., branch to investigate a charge brought against an employee there.

When he arrived at the Toms River office he was met by the operations supervisor, a man named Lynch, who asked why Cannizzaro was there. The latter explained his mission, and said that he was on official time signed by his supervisor. Lynch telephoned Tornquist, the area director, to see if he had OK'd Cannizzaro's trip. Tornquist told Lynch that he did not sanction official time for Cannizzaro's visit,
and then told Lynch to put Cannizzaro on the phone.

Alan told the director he had an approved SSA-75 form which was signed by his supervisor. Tornquist said the trip should have been sanctioned by the hearing official before the supervisor could approve it. Cannizzaro, who was upset at the confrontation, said he didn't give a sh--, he would do as he pleased. Tornquist asked Cannizzaro if he considered himself real big in the union now, then told Cannizzaro that he was just a little "union sh--."

Cannizzaro replied he didn't appreciate being called such a name, and he then called the area director a "fat f---."

Tornquist asked Cannizzaro if he intended to file an unfair labor practice against the director. Cannizzaro said he probably would, to which Tornquist replied that he should go ahead and do so, noting that Cannizzaro had not made one stick yet. Cannizzaro stated he could leave Toms River and return at a later date but it would just be a waste of time and money. Tornquist called Cannizzaro a waste to the agency and said he interfered with its mission. But he told Cannizzaro he should stay there and "do what you have to do -- meet with the employee and leave nice and early."

I don't know about you, but I wonder if I could ever call one of my supervisors (back when I had a job) a "fat f---" to his or her face? I think we'd all enjoy doing something like that.

There's gotta be more to this story, though. So Alan, if you googled yourself and are just finishing reading this, fill us in! Did you and Tornquist duke it out? Did you have his head on a platter? And what about Naomi?

Here We Go Again

I see I've written nothing since May 21. There's a good reason for that. Somewhere. I just can't think of it right now.

At last, the long-errant dog-walkers' questionnaire has been returned. Actually, I had to go pick it up, and even then, Mary was hiding in her cellar filling it out when I arrived. But who am I to complain? She walked my dogs twice while I was away. This woman can shred my stupid questionnaire and feed it to llamas, I'm that grateful to her.

Sadly, I've not yet had time to code the results and run them through my computer so as to obtain an analysis of significant deviations. Or insignificant ones. So I'm afraid the waiting must continue for those of you who give a you-know-what.

Our Stick Farm universe seems to have reached the outer limit of its expansion, in terms of number of creatures harbored, and is starting its shrink cycle. First to go was our buff cochin hen, whose body I discovered in the horse corral with her head squashed in. I can't say for sure, but it looks like a horse stepped on her.

The second casualty was one of our two guinea fowl. I found him lying in front of my wagon without a scratch on him, still warm, apparently with a broken neck. I surmise he flew into something -- possibly the wagon -- and killed himself, kamikaze style. His friend, also a boy, was hanging around the body. The friend was upset. He looked like he couldn't understand why his buddy didn't get up and run around like he used to.

I was sad about that until a few days later, when this remaining guinea apparently decided I had something to do with his friend's death and started stalking and attacking me. It only took one gash on the side of my leg and that guinea was posted in the "free" section of craigslist. He was gone a couple days later, which is how long it took me to catch him. I wonder how he's doing, but I'm thinking maybe I really don't want to know! Can somebody sue me for giving them a vicious guinea hen?

We're down to one horse -- Kimi -- on the farm. Mellie left to take up residence with nicer people, a nicer companion horse and much, much nicer fields. Socks is free-leased to a woman in Standish. I tried to talk her out of taking him, but she was quite sure he was the horse for her. I'm very curious to see how he does as an only horse. Kimi seems content to have our place all to herself. She's getting a lot more human attention and does not have to watch her back (literally) all the time. It's so peaceful around here, it's almost boring!

Meanwhile, I'm trying to sell one adult shih tzu and soon I'll be trying to sell our five new shih tzu puppies, born on the Fourth of July. Once that is accomplished, I am OUT of the dog breeding business.

NEXT POST: The Story of Alan Cannizzaro

See you then!

Debbi
(NOT Kayti)

What You've All Been Waiting For. Not.

The good news is I'm finally going to fill you in on my vacation. The bad news is, a certain dog-walker has not returned her questionnaire so you won't be reading my analysis of the leaving-the-farm experiment.

Shortly before our day of departure, Kayti discovered that the weekend we'd be in Missouri was the annual Webkinz Extravaganza. (Webkinz are stuffed animals that are coded so you can register and play with them online. Kayti has about 20 of them.) The Extravaganza consists of a bunch of games and contests offered at half-hour intervals at stores that sell Webkinz.

Kayti searched online and concluded that the store she wanted to go to was in Little Rock, Ark. That's a mere six-hour drive, one-way, from where we planned to be that weekend. If I made the slightest noise suggesting I was about to question the wisdom of predicating our entire weekend on where to find the Wheel of Wow (i.e., "Kayti, don't you think ...") the girl would start gnashing her teeth, rending her garments and keening like a professional mourner.

It just wasn't worth the attempt at discussion, so I shut up and let it ride. Who's got the power here, anyway? Can Kayti drive? No. Can she whine and complain? Yes. So, the jury is still out.

The first leg of our flight was smooth and quiet. The second was extremely bumpy, plus I was sitting beside a man who stared straight ahead for almost the entire 2.5-hour flight. He was giving me the willies. Maybe he was praying, or maybe he was waiting for the bomb in his luggage to go off. At one point he raised his hand and scratched very, very slowly above one ear with one finger. I thought maybe that was how he detonated the explosive.

This was happening as we descended toward Kansas City, and soon I forgot about potential bomb blasts as the plane's wings tipped wildly from side to side and our pilot executed a bone-jarring one-point landing.

We stayed that night in a very nice extended-stay motel that I'd gotten for a song on Priceline. I wasn't sure when we arrived at midnight that it was the greatest place, because waiting with me for a clerk to open the office was a young man with a nasty gash on his forehead and blood streaming down his face.

"Whew, what happened to YOU?" I asked, all tact as usual. He didn't answer me, and he didn't answer the clerk when she exclaimed over it, either. She gave him a shrewd look and said, "Don't wanna talk about it, huh."

The next day we drove to Joplin. The first thing I noticed was that many roads are simply named for a letter. We took T over to J and crossed O, etc., etc. You get the picture.

The next four days were a mad whirl of swimming in the hotel pool, wrestling Kayti for the TV remote, not being able to watch Red Sox games (which was just as well, since they were on a losing streak), stuffing ourselves at the Great Wall Chinese buffet, and driving to and from a Hallmark Gift shop about 5 miles away that, thank heaven, was offering all the Webkinz activities for which Kayti yearned.

While K hung out at the gift shop Friday evening and all day Saturday, I amused myself by measuring how many times around the parking lot makes a mile (3), practicing pennywhistle on the sidewalk, and getting my eyebrows and lips waxed at the salon next-door to the Hallmark store.

I did steal some time away from my demanding daughter to jam with Rex's conference confederates. Friday night I played pennywhistle and a borrowed fiddle. Saturday night, I grabbed a guitar and did a couple songs. The guys were all surprised that I could play guitar, and said so. I said, "Well, I don't really play guitar, just a few chords." They all looked at each other, and, pretending to be insulted, said things like, "What's your point?" It was really funny, because basically that's all they do on guitar -- play a few chords.

Saturday night, pre-jam session, Kayti, Rex & I went out to dinner with a friend of Rex's named Jim Scott. He took us to a place called Under the Cliff, which is a restaurant built (duh) under a cliff. I actually had a beer (my annual) and some good laughs, especially while playing foosball. I felt like I was in college again.

I did worry some about the farm. Sunday morning, the first words out of my mouth were, "Rex, maybe our house burned down and no one has your cell phone number so they can't call us."

Rex said, "We left my cell phone number on the kitchen table."

"Yeah," I said. "But if the house burned down, so would your cell phone number."

Sometimes I wonder about that guy. He fails to make the simplest connections!

Once the conference was over, we wandered off to see a little of Oklahoma. We found a buffalo ranch, a coal-burning plant (I looked at the smoke and said, "Just think, we'll be breathing that in Maine in a few days") and not much else except little, nearly dead towns.

We crossed back into Missouri at the town of Noel, and few miles south of that we discovered the something-Bluff Caverns. We stopped there long enough to spend some money and for Rex to lose his camera, but not to see the cave, because it was too late in the day.

Our night in Arkansas deserves mention, if only because it was so bad. I allowed Rex to make some decisions, and we thus ended up having really bad food at a Cracker Barrel and paying way too much for a hotel whose pool was out of commission. In addition, Kayti was badgering us to find a place with a foosball table and, ideally, Jim Scott, too.

As I paid for our meal at the Cracker Barrel, the cashier said, "How was it?" I said, "Okay."

"Just okay?" she said. "What was wrong?"

I said, "Well, the biscuits were too salty."

"Is that it?" she said.

"And the soup was too thick. And it wasn't hot enough."

"Anything else?" she said.

"My husband says his barbecued-pork sandwich tasted like it was barbecued about two weeks ago."

"Is that it?" she asked.

"Oh, and the waiter didn't bring us any corn bread." I added quickly, "But don't blame the waiter. He was really cute and very polite."

Poor Rex got barely any sleep that night, thanks to his aged sandwich. I slept pretty well, but only because I forced myself not to think how much we were paying for a place with no pool.

The next day, I explored Noel, Missouri, on foot while Rex and Kayti visited the caverns, this time for a full-blown tour.

It was a gorgeous day, and as is my wont in new places, I immediately got directions for and headed to the town library. Dogs were running loose all over the place and the houses were just tiny little things. It was about a half-mile to the library, but the library was closed, so I walked back to the main street.

It now became my new mission to find a place with a bathroom. I remembered that coming into town, I'd seen an "H" sign and remarked that the hospital must be up that road. That's where I headed now.

A couple miles later, waddling along with a full bladder, I was fuming to myself, "Where is that damn hospital, anyway?"

People didn't seem terribly friendly. I stopped at one yard to admire a pack of shih tzus, and a fat woman and a fat girl appeared behind the screen door and frowned at me. They probably thought I was going to steal their stupid little yappy dogs.

Eventually, I concluded that the hospital was the figment of someone's imagination. I doubled back on a dirt road named Easy Street on the other side of the railroad tracks, where I found enough privacy to pee. Then I climbed onto the tracks and followed them back into town, passing only a couple of stinking piles of roadkill.

It was only after Rex and Kayti picked me up at the designated park bench and we'd headed out of town that I realized the "H" did not stand for hospital. It was the name of the road.

We did meet up with Jim Scott again, but we couldn't play foosball because Under the Cliff was closed on Tuesday. Instead we went to an arcade, where I racked up a lot of points playing Skeeball.

And that's pretty much the vacation, except I left out the visit to the museum and the hour of hot, steamy sex with a complete stranger I picked up in the hotel lounge.

Incidentally, I'm preparing a PowerPoint presentation about this year's visit for next year's conference in Joplin. Everyone else had a PowerPoint presentation, and I want one too! From what I could see, it didn't matter if the subject was boring.

Must Write Fast

I have 14 minutes left on this library machine. I wasted most of an hour playing ... well, you know what I was playing.

Scrabble has become kind of a curse word in my family. I'm afraid to say it.

Anyway, we are in Joplin, Mo., where Rex is a presenter at a conference. Kayti and I came out with him because I wanted to check out the area as a possible relocation spot.

So far, I am uninspired. In a gift shop today, where Kayti dragged me for some Webkinz event, I felt like I was speaking a foreign language when I tried to communicate with the clerks.

I'd love to recreate the whole conversation here, but now I have only 12 minutes left.

Suffice it to say, they don't have many people like me out here. This is white-bread country. It's the Midwest. People shine their sinks and clip their hedges and raise good, wholesome citizens. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Maybe I just haven't run into any pockets of kooks. Where I can feel at home.

OK, down to 10 minutes now.

I had the same problem at the Denny's last evening, where Kayti dragged us for supper. (I stuck with just coffee. The greasy smell alone was an entire buffet to my stomach.) Usually, we get along very well with waitstaff. But at this place, even Rex -- dear, sweet, inoffensive Rex -- put them off.

So, in the 7 minutes I have remaining, let me affirm that this is indeed the Show Me state, as in "Show me the door."

I'm outta here!


xxxoo, Debbi (never Kayti)

8 seconds

The average time visitors spend at my blog is 8 seconds.

I guess I should be grateful for even that much. It could be worse, right? It's like if I ran for office. Any votes over 1 would give me a very warm, fuzzy feeling. Somebody likes me!

It's interesting to see who is being googled and directed to my blog. One person on my People I Have Knewn list was googled twice this month. And the second time, the search was for a photograph of him.

His name is Jay, he was in my high school class, and the last time I saw him was at our 25th class reunion. And I don't and would never have a photograph of him. Moreover, I can't imagine who would want one!

This is my first memory of him:

To my horror, I had just moved to Dover-Foxcroft. My freshman homeroom at Foxcroft Academy was in the school's cellar, right next to the cafeteria, which stunk to high heaven every day with the worst possible imaginable smells, like pea wiggle gone bad. It probably WAS pea wiggle gone bad. Or Welsh rarebit (is there any schoolchild on Earth who doesn't wonder where the rabbit meat was hidden under the melted cheese on Saltine crackers?).

My homeroom teacher, Mr. Arnold, was a scary, crotchety man who clearly loathed homeroom duties and made us carry giant wooden passes if we needed to go to the bathroom. He had also clearly given up caring what students did during study hall, at lunchtime, or during that murky end-of-day time waiting for the final klaxon to ring, as long as we didn't give him a headache.

So one day -- mind you, I was the very new girl -- I'm sitting at my desk, probably reading, and at the desk in front of me is Jay, an extremely tall, extremely unattractive boy, crude even by Dover-Foxcroft standards. Despite these handicaps, Jay gets a number of other boys to circle their desks around his, and they all proceed to play cards.

Suddenly, as if by some silent alarm only boys can hear, all the boys scoot their desks back and away from the center of their game, like planets spinning out of orbit, laughing and hooting and being totally stupid.

I keep reading, trying to ignore them, and while I'm fairly successful at that, I am not successful at missing the big reason they all scooted away. I'm left there at my desk, inhaling the biggest, smelliest fart I have ever encountered in a group situation.

What am I gonna do? I'm new, I'm a girl (and girls -- at least in that era -- did not act raucously in the face of a fart) and all these ugly hicks are chortling all around me, probably just waiting for me to wrinkle up my pert little nose and back away from what was presumably Jay's emission.

I couldn't give them the satisfaction, so I had to soldier on through the fumes, pretending I noticed nothing, while inside I was just dying from hatred of being in such a gross, rude place with such gross, rude people.

Naturally, Mr. Arnold took absolutely no notice of anything that was going on. He was undoubtedly too busy looking at porn magazines disguised as educational materials catalogs.

At our 25th high school reunion, Jay seemed to have forgotten that incident. I daresay that's because he cut so many huge, crony-pleasing farts in his high school career that he couldn't possibly remember them all. At the reunion he was quite pleasant, actually, although his looks hadn't improved.

I can't tell you why, in one month, two people have come looking for Jay at my blog, or anywhere, for that matter.

But there you go, people. I've given Jay a lot more of my time and thought than I ever thought I would. And next time you're here, if you're looking for Jay, you have a reason to stay longer than 8 seconds.

Clicking with the Spirits

I am consumed with guilt every time I go to Scrabulous.com. I think, if instead of going to Scrabulous.com, I wrote a few pages on a novel, I'd be selling the movie rights by now. If instead of going to Scrabulous.com, I got on the treadmill, I'd be wearing a size 6 by now. My daughter heaps on more guilt by telling me that I love Scrabble more than I love her.

Yes, I really love playing Scrabble online! It's literally a religion. Here's why I think so:

Once upon a time, I became interested in the Swedenborgians. The original Swedenborg -- I forget his first name -- was unbelievably learned. He was not only a scientist who made major contributions to human knowledge, but also a man of literary accomplishments. Apparently, he was not known by his immediate community as a nutcase.

He claimed to be in contact with spirits who told him what the "other side" was like. And he wrote it all down verbatim, in great detail.

His sources said that in the afterlife, spirits are grouped by a kind of attraction system. If you were a spirit, you'd have constant access to communication with like spirits -- people whom on Earth you'd think of as boon companions, or soul mates, or best friends forever. It's a meeting of passion, I gather; a merger of a deeper commonality.

But these spirits are not locked into our kind of space and time; they are free to travel, bodiless, and maybe even faceless.

As in most of my studies, I soon grew tired of facts (read: something somebody else wrote) and let my mind range free over the possibilities (read: daydreaming). So what I took away from Swedenborg's theories is basically what you just read in the preceding paragraphs.

But doesn't that much sound exactly like the Internet? Bodiless, faceless interaction with spirits with shared passions? Not moving from our desks, yet ranging all over the world, through many time zones (if not yet time periods, like the Mesozoic Era or the Stone Age). Finding souls with whom you literally click?

That's why I find myself ceaselessly gravitating to Scrabulous.com. Not everyone I play is a kindred spirit, but the chances of finding one there are better than, say, in a meeting of the Limerick Historical Society. (Believe me, I know -- I went to a singalong they sponsored, and they weren't singing protest songs.)

And it's faster to get to Scrabulous.com -- and to park there -- than to visit Harvard Square, where I also think kindred spirits are likely to abound.

I'm not a big believer in an afterlife. In fact, I deliberately try not to believe in one, because I think believing in an afterlife gives us license to rationalize treating people badly in this life.

So this meeting of the minds via Internet excites me. I don't have to wait till I die to cavort with all these other people!

So, I cavort on, fulfilling my spiritual needs on Scrabulous.com. It's just another aspect of my life, like music, or animals, or my family. Why shouldn't Scrabble get some time, too?

Well, whether it should or not, it does, and that is that. Guess where I'm going now?

Lies, Lies, Lies

Having been an advocate for truth for most of my life, I amazed myself this morning by lying to an online Scrabble opponent. And, truth be told, wickedly enjoying it.

He asked me how old I am, and I said, "82." But wait -- that wasn't the good lie. He said, "Really?" and I said, "No. But I feel 82 sometimes." That wasn't the lie, either. In fact, that isn't a lie at all.

Eventually I told him I am 32.

That was the good lie.

Ah, 32. What an interesting age.

When I was 21, working in N.J., I had a brief fling with a man who was 35. I thought he was ANCIENT. He was very funny, and fairly smart, but he had a bit of a belly and lacked that kind of taut, golden body to which I was accustomed in men. At least, the men I slept with.

Of course, now 35 looks pretty young, and 32 is positively infanthood. Everything else that I told my Scrabble partner was true -- that I felt 82 due to too many horseback-riding accidents; that I'm married; that I have a daughter.

So far, so good. Then my friend told me he's 34, married, finds marriage & impending fatherhood "tough." He described himself as a "wild person" who craves freedom. When I commented, "Like Gaugin? You want to run off to Tahiti?" he responded, "Can't do it, so why talk about it?"

I almost shot back that I'd felt the same way at 34; in fact, that I had tried hard through therapy to accept my life as it was, and that I'd finally run off, maybe not to Tahiti, but to plenty of other places and adventures. However, if I was only 32, as I'd lied, he might have questioned how I'd done that at 34. So I zipped my lip in the nick of time, and let him believe that I'm a contented housewife and mother at the ripe old age of 32.

In our ensuing conversation, though, I was conscious of really missing my real life. To think of being married with child at age 32, and to imagine myself following that path, well, to be frank, it gives me the willies. It definitely would not have been me. I would have sublimated my whole self, and probably right about now, I'd be getting a divorce and going in the Peace Corps. Just like Mom!

As it is, I'm SO happy I've led the life, or more precisely, followed the path I have. If I couldn't be mature, secure and fulfilled at 32, I would have been very discontent pretending to be mature, secure and fulfilled at 32. Not, you understand, that I'm mature, secure, etc. at my current age, but it's a better time to be married and a parent -- better for me, for my husband, for my kid.

To me, Tahiti doesn't seem remotely enticing, except that it is warm year-round. Had I been able to offer that guy the wisdom of my experience, I would have said: Do everyone a favor. Go to Tahiti. Be who you are. Jump. Things will work out.

Speaking of jumping, guess what? I was given a choice at the newspaper of going full-time or being laid off. What do you think I chose?

Guidance

There's a guidance counselor at my daughter KaTTy's school and the classroom teachers drum up business for her by telling the kids that if there's anything they feel the need to talk about, they can sign up to talk to her.

Naturally, my daughter signed up. I say naturally, but it was a big surprise to me. I don't think of my daughter as "troubled." I think of her as "spoiled." (I was about to say that I, as much as anyone, know that one doesn't have to be "troubled" to see a counselor, but then I thought, "Hell, I was ALWAYS troubled.")

So KaTTy comes home and says, "I went to see Mrs. Dube today."

What did you talk about? I asked.

She told me one item that I thought was a pretty valid subject, regarding hers and my relationship. Then she said she talked about how "our house is messy" and "it's noisy and she can't find anyplace to read" and "my parents never take me shopping or anything."

Upon hearing this, my eyebrows shot into outer space and have not returned since. I know Rex and I view things from the perspective of aging but loving adults, and that KaTTy views things from the perspective of a 9-year-old, but I hadn't realized our points of view were on the first and last pages, respectively, at opposite ends of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Our house is messy? Yeah, because there are 8 million toys stuffed into every conceivable nook and cranny, onto every available surface (including my snare drum and piano) and piled approximately three feet deep onto every floor. It's noisy? Yes, when the four dogs (two of whom KaTTy begged for) are barking at the three cats (one of whom KaTTy begged for) or the three horses (two of whom KaTTy begged for).

As for the shopping, or the "anything" that we never do for her, picture Rex and I scurrying about the house doing permanent backbends from trying to meet her demands. We've also worn out myriad hoops that we've been jumping through -- sometimes several at one leap -- since our daughter was born. In fact, her visit to the guidance counselor came hot on the heels of a rather large clothes-shopping excursion that involved driving two cars a total of 110 miles. I shan't go into details, but I assure you that that was the day my backbone calcified into permanent bendship.

Despite this horrendous track record, I am determined not to become a helicopter parent. I think when KaTTy goes to college, or to whatever life she chooses away from home, I'm going to apply for the witness protection program and get a new identity. I'm a witness. I witnessed my own fall from dignity.

This week I told KaTTy that she's on her own, that Rex and I are not going to help her one little bit. We won't take her to the library, we won't feed her puppy, we won't muck her pony's stall, we won't prepare a special, separate supper for her when she gags at what we've prepared. "What?" she yells, stomping around. "Aren't you going to FEED me?"

You see why I'm reading up on elder-abuse prevention; quick, before she turns 13. I am not joking. Mrs. Dube, take notice.

Little League

I'm not Kayti. My name is Debbi. Kayti's only/9 years old. (Sung to the tune of an old pop tune called "I'm not Lisa.")

It has come to my attention that the name at the end of each blog entry is my daughter's. That's because she has a blog, too, on the same account. But I can attest to the fact that it is I, Debbi, who is writing this stuff. Please direct comments to me.

Kayti -- who, incidentally, has once again changed the spelling of her name, this time to "KaTTy," because she likes to make two capital T's together -- attended a Little League pitching clinic yesterday. She was the only girl among 15 or so boys.

One might think that the reason for this is that girls are not interested in playing baseball, or maybe pitching hardball. After yesterday's experience, I have another theory.

As I signed her up, the man in charge said, "Baseball? Not softball?" I said, "Baseball, right Kayti?" And Kayti nodded.

"Cause not many girls are signing up for Little League," the guy said in a cautionary tone. "They're signing up for softball."

I let that pass without comment.

Then, in the gym, a conversation with another man who apparently was somehow involved with the organization went something like this:

Him: Is your daughter sure she wants baseball, not softball?

Me: Yes.

Him: Most of the girls go out for softball by this age.

Me: Neat.

Him: It's really competitive. You'd be surprised.

Me: Well, Kayti wants to be in Little League.

Him: Just be prepared, because by the time she gets into junior high, she probably won't make the team. (This was IN FRONT of my child!)

Me: Why do you say that?

Him: Oh, there's a big difference in strength at that age.

Me: Well, maybe by the time she gets to junior high, there'll be a girls baseball team.

Him: Maybe!

I have to tell you, I found myself stewing over this conversation the whole hour of the clinic. I discussed it with another mother as we waited in the cafeteria. She said she thought this might be the first year there's a softball organization and that maybe girls were being steered to it, to get it off the ground.

Well, you know, maybe that's true, and maybe it's all done with girls' best interests at heart, but I really think it's no one else's business if my daughter chooses to play hardball. And maybe I'm just paranoid, but I also suspect there may be an undercurrent of "baseball is for boys" in the thinking here.

Hello! We're in the 21st century. We could see a woman president elected this year. Women are winning Nobel prizes in chemistry. Men are having sex changes. Beagles are winning the Westminster dog show! Anything can happen. Gee, by the year 2012, a girl could make the junior high baseball team!

Anyway, I really don't think the probability of making the junior high team has much to do with my 9-year-old daughter wanting to play in Little League. We are not basing today's decisions on how buff Kayti is in seventh grade, any more than we are not preventing third-grade boys from studying math because they probably won't be as smart as girls in junior high.

When I told my husband about the exchange at the pitching clinic, he laughed and said he'd gotten the same spiel from another Little League organizer. "I knew exactly how you'd react," he said. "I said to myself, 'Uh, oh. Debbi's going to get her panties in a twist over THIS one!' "

He's wrong, of course, as he almost always is. My panties, for the record, are not in a twist. A bunch, maybe. But not a twist.

Because if they were in a twist, I wouldn't be able to catch for Kayti as she practices her pitching. And we're going to be doing a lot of practicing. We were both pleased with what she learned in the clinic yesterday, even if she doesn't make the team in 2012.

Little Housekeeping On The Prairie

I got a comment! I got a comment! Thanks, whoever sent it!

I reviewed it, approved it and tried to publish it long ago, but it didn't appear in the blog because I didn't select it before hitting Publish. For heaven's sake, why should I have to select it? It was the only one there!

It has been forever since I wrote, and the reason is that I got a comment (a comment!) telling me I should write more often -- or else! It was the "or else" that affected my subconscious, which does not respond well to threats. It (my subconscious) gets all stubborn and huffy.

Of course, that's not the only reason I haven't written. The other reason is ONLINE SCRABBLE.

Why would I sit and laboriously pull thoughts out of my cobwebby brain and organize them in a blog entry that practically nobody reads, when I can sit and toss handfuls of well-arranged tiles onto a Scrabble board, 24/7 if I choose, playing opponents at whatever level of cleverness I choose, some of whom are actually standing in line for me to play them? If there is a heaven, this has got to be it!

Here's how it works. You go to scrabulous.com and register. Then you sign in, click on a room, invite someone to play with you. You can have a chat with your opponent while you play, or ignore him/her completely while you concentrate on not running out of time or on creating your third seven-letter word in a row.

So far, almost all my opponents have been very nice. That changed a couple days ago when I played this guy who kept beating me and asking me for rematches. Now, I have to say that I was not in my best form. I had the flu and was very groggy from working late the night before. So not only was I playing badly (and getting lousy letters, I might add), but I was extremely vulnerable emotionally.

You perhaps can imagine my surprise when, upon finishing our third game, this guy, whose user name is something like glennng2447 (not sure about the numbers), wrote, "You should take up tiddlywinks or hopscotch." I shrugged it off, thinking the guy had a somewhat mean sense of humor. But then he wrote, "You are a really bad Scrabble player." I couldn't believe it! What kind of person needs to dump on someone he's just beaten three times?

My first reaction was to feel crushed and hurt; my second was, in the Scrabulous tradition of using text message abbreviations for everything, fu and thycio. Can't use that kind of language on Scrabulous, though, so I resorted to a milder expletive and resolved to not get mad, get even.

So I'm formulating ways to sabotage this person, to humiliate him, to force him to his knees and beg for mercy. It's kind of fun.

Please come play with me. I'm stickfarmer, of course. You can generally find me in Bingo Boomers or The Lounge. But no tricks! Don't yank my chain! You'll be sorry!

Failure

Hello, faithful readers. I have bad news: I have forgotten how to access the editing tools for my Web site. Therefore, I am unable to write scathing exposes of the people I have knewn and link them to this blog.

It seems this computer defeats me at every turn.

But I'll do the Pollyanna thing and find the "glad" in it. The glad is that I can't write scathing exposes of the people I have knewn and link them to this blog. Glad for YOU, anyway.

It is the end of January and we have just a couple more months of winter. It has already gone on way too long. If I hadn't been raising seven puppies I don't know how I would have occupied myself thus far.

Some people are critical of those like myself who actually spawn puppies on purpose. This is the first time I've given in to the urge, and I've learned a lot.

(Pause)

I'm sure you thought I was going to launch a list of things I've learned. Fooled ya! Much as I'd like to do that, I shall refrain at the moment, because I have sat here long enough, playing Scrabulous, mostly. Plus, it's your Christmas present.

So enjoy. If any of you would like to know what I have to say about puppy raising, send a self-addressed email or SASE. Operators are standing by.

Christmas Card Hell

You cannot imagine how difficult it is for me to do Christmas cards. Many people breeze through the process; some even have a stamp made with their signatures on it -- "Thinking fondly of you. Deb and Rex" -- and simply assembly-line box after box. How can they do that?

This Christmas, I almost found out. I took two boxes of cards, retrieved a relatively new list of addresses, and forced myself to open each card and callously write, "Love, Debbi, Rex, Kayti and the other 28 animals here at the Stick Farm," with nary a thought as to who might be receiving it. Then I addressed envelope after envelope, callously going down the list of addressees and consciously willing myself to not think of the recipients lest I be moved to write a few extra lines with some fond or funny remembrance.

A smart person would have just (again, callously) stuffed the cards into the envelopes, added postage and put them in the mailbox. Had I done that, the cards would have been received well before the appointed holiday. Apparently, though, "smart" and "Phi Beta Kappa," "magna cum laude" and "summa cum laude" are not synonymous.

No, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I had to whip up a tiny little letter to accompany the cards, and, what's worse, aspire to include a tiny little picture. I knew it was a mistake, but I couldn't help myself.

Why was it a mistake, you ask? Several reasons:

A. My computer and its printer are not on speaking terms. They have crossed their respective arms and turned their respective backs to each other, and no amount of begging on my part can repair the relationship. So any documents, such as the aforementioned Christmas letter, must be emailed to someone who can print them out.

B. My husband, Rex, is the keeper of the digital camera, and he won't let me use it. I don't blame him; I've lost a number of digital cameras and/or the batteries that energize them. But it's quite inconvenient to have to set up a photo shoot.

C. My computer and Rex's digital camera are not on speaking terms, either. Rex is a very busy man, and uploading pictures and pasting them into my Christmas letters is not high on his priority list.

D. Once the letter is actually printed and copied, it's been so long that I have to spend a few days locating the cards and envelopes.

E. Finally, there is the folding and stuffing to do, and then one must acquire and apply postage, and dig up one of the 8,000 or so sheets of return-address stickers that I've received over the past year (never responding with a donation, of course) which have disappeared into some parallel universe, apparently.

F. Did I say "finally"? Silly me. The last, and possibly most crucial, step has arrived: dropping the envelopes into a mailbox.

By now it is past New Year's, and, as in most years, I'm tempted to say, the heck with it. Nobody wants to hear from me, anyway.

But I've come so far, and the effort has been so Herculean and has involved so much cooperation, however reluctantly given, and coordination, that I do eventually remember to stop at a post office. By now, of course, I have to comb the car for the envelopes, which were on the passenger front seat for the longest time, but migrated downward and backward in a poignant attempt to mail themselves.

If only I could have resisted writing the letter, how much happier we all would have been! Remind me next year.

Thinking fondly of you. Deb and Rex