Baggage

We are deep into the packing process right now.  

Empty boxes of things.

I have lists.  I have lists of lists.  No, seriously.  I literally have a list detailing all of the lists that I need to make.  Lucy, Riley, Don, Toiletries, Kitchen, Medicine, Entertainment, School, Packing here, Grocery store in Port-au-Prince, to order online, to buy at the store, to do before we go, etc, etc.  Lists and lists and lists.

I have boxes and boxes of things.  I bought all of the things.  All of them.  Then I took them out of their boxes, and put them into gallon ziplock bags.  A lot of ziplock bags.

I sat on the guest bed last night surrounded by empty cardboard boxes and full ziplock baggies.  And then I had a panic attack.

Full ziplock baggies of cashew and clorox and dried fruit, oh my.

Oh my God.  I bought all of this stuff?  Do we need all of this stuff?  Do we really need to bring granola bars and apple sauce pouches and swim floats and 3 canisters of bug spray and 42 bottles of children’s tylenol and peanut butter new bottles of toiletries?  Why do we need all of this stuff?  We are going to a populated country!  There are people who live there, people who eat and love and get sick and take showers.  We can live for a month without Nutella for Christ’s sake!

I bought CVS.

I looked around again and my panic attack did not abate.  It intensified.  Because I tallied the cost and the weight of everything around in, in dollars and pounds and expectations, and I felt even less prepared than before I began.  I would forget something.  I had forgotten something.  I knew it.  I had made lists and lists of lists.  I had purchased ALL of the things.  And we would go to Haiti and pay extra baggage fees for our six pounds of peanut butter and we would get to our apartment (our own apartment!  amazing!) and we would unpack and someone would ask “Mom, where did you put the X, Y and Z?” and then my head would explode.

The best part about this panic attack was that it occurred while I was on the phone with American Airlines trying to get Riley added as a lap infant to our reservation.  I was on hold for 23 minutes, using that time to put more things from boxes into ziplock bags.  Riley, for her part, was communicating to us from her crib that she would not be taking a nap this afternoon, thank you very much, and the fact that we were trying to force her to do so was killing her.  Don walked into the room with a train of suitcases in which to pack the ziplock bags full of things from cardboard boxes.  A live human being finally came on and asked me how she could help.  And then the phone cut out.  

I put the phone down on the bed, gentler than I have ever handled anything in my life.  I took a deep breath.  I looked around at the sea of boxes and bags on the bed again.  A rising sound filled my ears.  My chest got tight.  I breathed in slowly again, but couldn’t seem to get any air.  I felt like a tea kettle left on the stove too long.  I wasn’t just going to boil, I was going to crack.

And then I looked up at Don.  He got it.  He knew exactly what was going on.  Because he had that look on his face.  He was Robert Redford in the Horse Whisperer.  He was in full de-escalation mode.  And I don’t even get mad at this anymore.  I love it.  I need it.  I was about to get totally crazy.  I was going to burrow into a cave of Cliff Bars and Crystal Light powder and diapers and sob.  I was about to cancel the trip.

But he knows.  After being together over ten years he knows.  I am on board for the adventure.  I am all in — but there is a caveat.  Every so often, I am going to totally lose my shit.  I am going to cancel the holiday/trip/dinner, pick the worst fight for no reason, get emotional and cry and make everything about me.  The best part about Don is that he knows this, and he knows exactly how to deal with it.  He wraps me in a mantle of patience and logic and a calm voice and he waits out my crazy.  

The best part about Don is that he knows my crazy, and he loves me.  Not in spite of it.  Not even because of it.  He just loves me.

Unpacked bags :(

Packed bags!

More bags...

Just too cute not to add in.

Noodles, Part One

And so it begins...the two day noodle extravaganza inspired by David Chang. Today is dashi day, or stock/broth day. Here is my exciting list of ingredients:

Kombi (dried seafood)

Pork neck bones (now added to butchers list for our next whole hog)

Dried shiitake mushrooms

Good thing I thought a little bit ahead and ordered a giant box of these...

I'll let you know how it goes!

To Believe or Not To Believe?

“Mom, why don’t you ever believe in me?!”

I stood motionless, holding my 16 month old daughter while staring at my almost 5 year old daughter, mouth agape.  I couldn’t think of a single way to respond, because I had an entire lecture series of parenting articles, blog posts, and advice warring with a simple fact in my brain.  It went a little something like this:    

If I don’t believe in her now, if I don’t trust her to make her own mistakes and learn her own lessons (when safe) then she will never learn to believe in and trust herself.  If I always run in and fix the zipper or put the lunch in the backpack or set up the train set because it is taking too long, it is too hard, we are too late, then what?  I will make her insecure.  I will make her doubt herself.  I will make her dependent on her father and me and then friends and then boyfriends and then somebody else but never herself.

I will fail her.

I am failing her already!  She thinks I don’t believe in her!

How could I not believe this face?

But…but….her tennis shoes are not in her backpack!!!  Because they are on the floor in the pantry.  Where I can see them.  Right.  Now.  So I literally CANNOT believe in her.  Because she is just wrong!

<insert silent, primal, maternal scream of despair here>

So there I stood, mouth agape, paralyzed by this parenting crisis.  Do I just lay it out logically?

“Lucy, sweetheart, my strong, smart, brave darling.  I am so sorry that you feel that I do not believe in you.  However, the fact remains that I can see your tennis shoes on the floor in the pantry right now.  Ergo, if they are on the floor of the pantry, they cannot be in your backpack, as they cannot occupy two separate spaces at the same time.  Correct?”

Or do I just let it go (HAH!  Sing it all day now!) and allow her to make the inevitable discovery when she gets to school, and wear her snow boots in class all day?

“Lucy, sweetheart, my strong, smart, brave darling.  I am so sorry that you feel that I do not believe in you.  If you think that your shoes are already in your backpack, then I trust you.  You have an excellent memory, as I have often said.  Let’s just get your backpack and get to the car, ok?”

Well, as it happens, both of my imagined scenarios were off.  Here is how it played out.

Such innocence?

<Lucy enters the dining room walking toward the garage door, head thrown back, groaning in agony.  She has her backpack on, and is carrying her school folder, which I have asked her approximately 83 times to place in her backpack this morning.>

L: Ugghhhh…this backpack is SO heavy!

Me: I can see that it looks quite full.  What do you have in there?

L: I don’t knooooooow.  I didn’t look.  

M: Can you take it off so we can put your folder inside?

L: Fine.

M: <I open the backpack.  Inside are Lucy’s rain boots, which she wore to school yesterday instead of her snow boots>  I see that your rain boots are in your backpack Lucy.  Do you want to take these to wear at school today?  Or would you rather get some other shoes to take?

L: <laughs> Oh yeah!  I forgot I put those in there and wore my tennis shoes home yesterday!  I want other shoes.

M: <silently closing my eyes in victory, which is usually the same thing as defeat when it comes to these parenting moments> OK.

What would you have done?

Word Storm

L is in her second year of preschool now, and her savage little mind is literally exploding with words.  Every day she learns a new song and reads a new book, and when she gets home from school often skips around the house calling out phrases or words in sing song that have never before passed her lips.  She has also recently crossed the Rubicon of reading.  Don and I have always loved reading to her, and read several times a day.  We have been working with her, pretty casually (well, pretty casually on my part, more seriously on Don’s part) for a while on letter sounds and stringing those sounds together to make words.  Then, while Riley and I were in California a few weeks ago, L and Don started working a lot more and something in her brain clicked and letters and sounds became words and now she is reading. 

In essence, we have a perfect storm of words in our house right now, which has resulted in some pretty humorous conversations.  For instance, today at lunch Lucy decided that she was going to start using the phrase “pretty much.”  This colloquial expression can be laid entirely at my own door.  I don’t know where it came from or why I say it, but I do.  Too often.  How do I know that I use it too often?  Because it is now being used in my presence and it is pretty much super annoying.  But this is what happens when she encounters something new that she likes.  It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t know what it means, it just sounds nice.  She uses it often.  Too often.  She word storms it.

This is a new phrase I have recently invented to describe her relationship with words.  She hears a word or phrase in conversation, or reads it in a book.  She tries it on, like a new pair of high heeled, glow in the dark, flashing light Ariel dress up shoes.  Then, all of the sudden….word storm.  She is prancing around the living room in pajamas at 12:37pm, blowing a plastic flute and chanting “Cue the magic!  Cue the sparkles!!” at the top of her lungs.  R staggers after her like a tiny, drunken Igor.  I believe I have the PBS series Super Why! to thank for that particular gem.

This lends itself to a certain air of…total chaos…when it comes to everyday life at the Zimmer home lately.  But, not all the time.  Because now, there is the calm.  The calm after the word storm.  This is when Lucy uses her newfound relationship, her intimacy, if you will, to do something really special.  She changes its meaning.  So now, after the mad capering about the room has ceased, we have conversations like this:

L.     Mom, did I have a Vitamin yet today?

Me.  No, you did not.

L.     OK, can I have an Eight Stories High then?

Me.  <<blank look>>

L.     Eight Stories High is what I call my Vitamins now.  Because they are up on the high shelf.  So can I have one?  An Eight Stories High?

Me.  Yeah….yes.  Yes you may.  Have an…eight stories high.  Vitamin.

L.     Just Eight Stories High.

It is a rare moment with L when I am not being told that some word she is going to say, action she is about to perform, thing she is about to draw is not something else entirely.  Maybe this is the price we are paying for introducing her to science fiction and fantasy – the lines between realities are entirely blurred.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.  That is the way I grew up, and I turned out just fine.  Almost entirely not insane.  I mean, I believed in the Greek Pantheon of Gods roughly through High School….but whatever.  Lucy won’t read the Greek myths with me yet, so I think we are pretty safe from catching her burning offerings in the back yard.  My concerns now are probably entirely superficial.  Like, how am I going to keep anything straight?

The Vitamins are “Eight Stories Tall”

The shrimp in her sushi tonight was “Wazizi” and the avocado was “Grozz”

When she says “beeeeeeeeep” that means it is time for me to brush her hair, but if she says “nayno nay” then I need to stop.

Pretty Much.

Hindsight and Tomato Jam

Here is a list of decisions I made, just today, that resulted in epic failures.

1.  Teaching L how to affect a Yorkshire accent while reading The Secret Garden with her.
Now, I have nothing against a nice, broad Yorkshire accent.  What I do take issue with, now that it has. Been brought to my attention, is L's interpretation of a Yorkshire accent.  Having recently finished several other stories that featured Mexican, Indian, and Scottish accents, addition of Yorkshire appears to have overloaded her savage little mind.  Now whenever L mimics Ben Weatherstaff or Martha, she does so in a hellish patois of accents that is roughly the vocal equivalent of a knitting needle to your ear drum.

2. Adding rice cereal to R's soup to make it easier for her to eat.
R was doing pretty well slurping up the last of the crab chowder broth.  Foolishly, I thought that thickening it with some rice cereal would have the two pronged effect of making it even easier for her to swallow and giving her some added nutrition.  Well, I am sure the latter would have been true had she ever deigned to comply with the experiment and swallow any. Instead, she decided to perform several experiments of her own, and violently spat the nicely thickened broth right into my eyes.  Several times.  That's right.  I tried to feed it to her several more times, even after being blinded by the first attempt.

3. Wearing my nose ring while R is developing her pincer grasp.
While trying to put her down for a nap today R and I had one of those precious and intimate moments that are exclusive to someone feeding a baby.  She looked up from nursing, smiled at me with her sweet, two toothed, milky little smile, and then viciously plucked out my nose stud with the fine motor precision of a ninja. It was like a scene from Kill Bill.  And then I looked up from R, in a haze of pain, eyes running, to find L watching me from the doorway and shaking her head.  "You should have said 'Oh dirt' Mom."

Yup.  Thanks for that tip, L.

4. Telling Lucy what I was doing when she asked, just now.
"What are you doing, Mom?" <<watching me from doorway to the playroom>>
"Um...writing."
"What are you writing, Mom?"  <<steps into the room to lean against the chair I am occupying>>
"A story.  Kind of."
"Can I write a story now?" <<grabs for iPad>>
"Not right now on the iPad L, but you can write on some paper if you'd like."
"What is the story about, Mom?" <<climbs onto the arm of the chair>>
"Um...its about...you.  Kind of."
"Me?  Can you read it to me?  Can I tell you a story about me?  Can I write it?" <<slides down into my lap, directly between me and the iPad, which is now situated in L's lap>>
"Not yet, L.  It isn't finished yet."
"When will it be finished?"
"Well, I don't know."
"When will you know when it will be finished."  <<R, drawn into the room by this conversation, now attempting to climb into the chair.  She is encouraging my help in this endeavor by making noises roughly resembling a Pteranodon speaking Klingon.>>
"I.  Don't.  Know.  It's like one of your paintings or crafts.  You don't know that it is done until its done."
"Oh."  <<L tried to be helpful by tickling R with her foot.  Instead knocks her over, sending her into a baby rage.>>
"Why don't you go back into your play room?"  <If you hadn't already guessed, there is probably a hint of panic in my voice right now.  The panic of one who senses their patience rapidly dwindling>>
"No, that's OK.  I want to snuggle."

And now here is a recipe that is really good.

Tomato Jam with Caramelized Onions
Inspiration for this recipe came from Food In Jars, a great blog with really specific instructions and some really beautiful recipes.  For planning purposes, this is an all day recipe.  I roast the tomatoes slowly, caramelize the onions slowly, and then slow cook the jam to avoid any scorching.  The last time I made it, I put the onions on the burner and the tomatoes in the oven around 11:30am and finished canning the jam at 9:40pm.  In between I did many nap times and bed times and cooked dinner and ran an errand while everything was on low, but it does take a while.

10 lbs tomatoes (Romas have less water and will cook faster, but anything will do)
4 large onions
2 heads of garlic
1 cup bottled lemon juice
1 cup balsamic vinegar
1 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup honey
several sprigs of thyme, rosemary, and oregano (or whatever herbs you like and can get your hands on)
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

1.  Caramelize the onions: slice all four onions into whatever size you wish.  They will cook down.  Put in a large bottomed pan, at least 12", with 1/4 stick of salted butter and 1/4 cup of olive oil.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Saute the onions on med high until they brown slightly, then turn down to low and cover.  Forget for several hours.

2. Roast the tomatoes: preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Core your tomatoes, cut them in half, and have your trusty assistant place them on an oiled sheet pan cut side up.  Or down.  Or whatever way she wants to.  Sprinkle them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and have your assistant rub this mixture around every tomato with a brush.  Or her hands.  It's OK, they are going to be roasted.  (If you want to get fancy about the tomatoes, then you really need to peel them first by blanching them in boiling water and peeling off the skins.  I don't really care if there are papery shreds of tomato skin in my sauces and jams, but some people do!)  Peel the two heads of garlic as well, and throw the cloves on the sheet pan in between the tomatoes.  Roast at 350 for about two hours, or until the tomatoes cook down and the edges get browned.

3.  Add the tomatoes, garlic and onions to a large pot.  At this point you have a choice.  You can just dump the sheet pans directly into the pot, tomatoes, tomato juice and all.  Or you can lift out the tomatoes and garlic cloves and leave the pan juices.  Thus far, I have chosen the dumping methods, which I am sure results in several more hours of cooking time for the water to evaporate.  However, for some reason, I think there is a lot of flavor in that juice that is getting concentrated as it cooks down.  If you are in a hurry, just lift the tomatoes and garlic off the pan and dump the juices down the drain.  Or save them for veggie broth.  Or something.

Papery tomato skins and watery juices.  We have a long road ahead.

4.  Add the lemon juice, maple syrup, balsamic, and herbs.  Bring the resulting mixture to a boil

5.  Reduce heat to a low simmer, and let it cook.  And cook.  And cook.  Stir it a lot.  If you have to go out turn it to low.  Leave it uncovered so the water can evaporate.

We are about two hours in at this point.  And we still have a long road ahead.

6.  When the jam is almost finished it will have almost no juice separating out from the mixture.  It will be thick and glossy.  If you stir it and it makes a sizzling sound, the turn off the heat and take it off the burner.  It is done.

7.  To can, ladle the jam into sanitized jars (I usually plan two hours ahead of when I know I will be canning, and use the sanitize setting on my dishwasher.  Or you can boil the jars in water for 10 minutes to sanitize them.), and process in a water bath for 15 minutes.  For more detailed information on water bath canning, please visit this excellent website.  Not only do they have resources on where to pick your own fruits and veggies in your area, but they have instructions on how to jam, jelly, can and pickle almost anything.  (Side note: I can pickle that!  Portlandia, anyone?  Anyone?)

There is nothing as satisfying as the sight of one's pantry full of these jars.
Unless it is the sight of several pallets full in one's basement.

At this point, you might be asking yourself what the hell the point is of making a really weird tomato onion jam that takes like ten hours.  I understand, I really do.  I get it.  But I also love delicious things.  Am I saying that this jam is delicious.....well, no.  Not by itself.  But here are a list of the things I have used it on in just the past week (since I made the first batch) that were nearly transcendent.

1.  Meatloaf stuffed with goat cheese and tomato jam.

2.  Patty melt with goat cheese and tomato jam

3.  Panini with rosemary ham, goat cheese and tomato jam

4.  Wrap with turkey, feta and tomato jam

5.  Sourdough toast with butter and tomato jam

If you are seeing a pattern here, good for you.  Yes the jam is good.  But pair it with a strong, slightly bitter flavor (goat cheese, feta cheese, sourdough), and it becomes insane.  Sweet, savory and complex, the garlic and onions just melt into the background.

You won't be sorry.

Or, at least, you won't be as sorry as I am right now for not having finished this post before nap time was over.

This is Water

When D was a little boy he had a babysitter who taught him that his manners lived in his pockets.  When he would forget to say please or thank you, or use a disrespectful tone, she would tell him “Get your manners out of your pocket!”  When we first introduced manners to Lucy I disagreed with teaching her this method.  I figured her manners should be with her at all times.  She shouldn't think they are something you can just put on and take off.  They are a part of who you are and how you act, how you treat people with respect and how you expect people to treat you.  But before I knew they were introduced and Lucy started pulling her manners out of her pocket.

Unbeknownst to me, other things live in your pockets as well.  Like patience.  I know this because one day Lucy offered me some patience from her own pocket, since I had just informed her I was out of my own.

Since then, the idea of pockets of patience has taken root deep in my psyche.  I don’t think of them as something like an object in my pocket that I can just reach in and take out.  I think of them as pockets of air, like oxygen canisters.  Sometimes the air around you has enough patience in it, and you are fine.  You can deal with the day to day, the minor setbacks to your carefully laid out plans (HAH!), the ten minutes late to preschool.  Again.

Sometimes a normal level of patience is not enough, at least for me.  I have bad days.  Days where everything seems to go wrong, where the universe seems aligned against me, where every decision seems to lead to a bad outcome.  The baby wakes up four or five times during the night, but still I manage to sleep through my alarm and wake up Lucy late for school.  We have an argument over what she is wearing,  breakfast spills all over the floor, and despite my best intentions she is late to school with breakfast on her clothes from being eaten in the car and her hair and teeth unbrushed.  Again.  And it is downhill from there.

            Some people can get through these days easily.  They have a family or friends to anchor them.  They have the sacrament of confession to unburden them.  They can run it off at the gym or talk it away.  Usually, this is fairly easy for me to do.  I take a deeper breathe, pull in some air from farther a field – backup pockets of patience – and say three words.  A mantra, if you will, a saying that I first heard in David Foster Wallace’s brilliantly perceptive commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005:

            This is water

            If you haven’t read this piece, I cannot recommend it enough.  I will try not to quote it anymore at present, because if I do I might just end up inserting the whole piece.  In fact, if you haven’t read it just forget about reading this crap essay, and read his instead.  Right here.  I’m basically saying the same thing, and he said it infinitely better than anything I am about to attempt.

            This is the phrase that not only gets me through the comedy of errors that is life, but enables me to choose my perspective when the universe seems to align against me. 

            Some days, though…some days not even this mantra is enough.  Some days, I don’t seem like enough.  I am not strong enough to look around me and decide that the universe is not aligned against me.  I am the center of the universe, and I am being shat upon.  Nothing I do is right.  The laundry is literally in a five foot high pile in the guest room.  No matter how much I exercise, I am still hungry all the time from nursing and am sweating around an extra 20 pounds of pregnancy weight.  My body doesn't look to my eyes like it should in my mind.  The clothes I want to wear don’t fit this traitorous body and the clothes that do fit aren't “me,” whatever that means anymore.  My hair is falling out so much that the shower drain clogs several times every time I shower.  Every time.  I am an awful teacher/mom.  I hate working with my daughter on letter and number workbooks, pre-reading and spelling.  I have no patience, and want to take the pencil out of her hand and throw it across the room every time she gets tired of trying to write a “J” and starts scribbling.  When she comes into our bedroom and night and asks if someone can snuggle her because she is lonely, I want to cry “I just finished nursing your sister, and I am trying to get back to sleep!  I don’t want anyone touching me!  I WANT to be alone!”

I am the worst.

Usually my husband takes these moments as opportunities to casually, yet somewhat inelegantly, discuss some patient he had the previous shift in an attempt to give me some perspective.  I will confess to him, tearfully, how awful I am or admit that I am struggling, and he will ask “Oh yeah, the worst?  Did you turn the house into a meth lab/lock her in the basement without food for a week/give her a brain injury from repetitive beatings or give yourself diabetes/a heroin addiction/a raging case of gonorrhea?”  This usually elicits one of the two following responses: complete rage or a total emotional meltdown.  Basically, I will either throw something, or dissolve into tears.

That is a bad day.  But it gets even better than that.  You see, I was born with a blend of brain chemistry, a special mix that sometimes enables me to reach truly astounding lows.  When I am having a bad day I can see myself spiraling downward, my thought patterns growing ever darker and more convoluted.  I look around me, and I am totally self aware.  I know my thinking is illogical.  I know my life is incredibly blessed.

I see the water.  I can’t breathe.  I feel like a frog trapped in a boiling pot. 

I have said yes to every decision in my life, and still I wonder how the hell I ended up in this place.  A Bachelors and Master’s degree from a top University, every family support imaginable, any life I wanted possible.  In my thirties, overweight, pasty winter skin in my pajamas at 5pm under a broken bathroom sink covered in filthy sink sludge looking for an earring that “I’m sorry to say might have gone down the drain” while both of my children cry in their respective rooms and my husband is in Haiti saving lives and being amazing and all I can think is “please, for the love of God, just STOP NEEDING ME!”

This is water, and it is killing me.  I am suffocating.

To some people, this may sound like the most hideous thing in the world.  I live in a beautiful house, I lack nothing, I have two healthy and happy daughters.  I must be a totally spoiled bitch!  Well…what can I say?  Maybe I am.  But I guess then you wouldn’t really be allowing me my own story, would you?

            As DFW points out, and as we all know, real perspective is hard.  It is work.  As human beings in control of our own intellect, we get to decide what is important in our own lives.  We get to decide what has power over us, and over what we have power.  We get to decide how we see situations, the perspective from which we view our own comedies of error.  I decide if the Mom in front of us at church with the 10 kids, flawless figure, chic outfit and membership on the most coveted committee was giving me the stink eye because I am wearing dirty jeans to church (again) and my daughter has unbrushed hair (again) and is loudly telling me that her vagina itches in the middle of the Our Father, or if she is just smiling at me in solidarity.  Or if she has a nervous twitch in her eye from dealing with her own issues.

The point is, I know, when it comes down to it, that I have an amazing life.  And even though he doesn’t always have to point it out, it is way better than the patient D saw the other day who is addicted to crack and has lost custody of her three kids but cannot break out of the cycle she is in long enough to change her life.  It is way better than the millions of people in this world who do not have access to clean water on a daily basis.  It is way better than one of the almost 300 girls in Nigeria who was kidnapped just for trying to get an education (#bringbackourgirls).  It is better than one of the 1,000 children D is treating right now at a school in Port-au-Prince, 90% of which are just recovering from Chikungunya.  I know that my bad days are ridiculously entitled, first world “bad days.”  Most of the time I look around, thank God for my beautiful girls, my total badass husband, my family, my body that is healthy, and the amazing world in which I am privileged to live.

When I am boiling and drowning in this water, I guess what it comes down to is that I choose to stay here until the pot cools down.

These bad days that I have are sacred, because they are life.  They are MY life, the life that I give in service to my family and in doing so give in service to everyone that we touch.  The mundane life of a stay at home mother and wife, the everyday service to my family in an unending cycle of meals and cleaning and laundry and driving to and fro, is the kind of freedom that only comes from loving people and sacrificing for them day in and day out.  Sometimes it doesn't feel like freedom.  Sometimes it feels like a prison. 

This is water.

The Island of Misfit Animals

So…about this goat.  To quote one of the best movies of all time:

Let me ‘splain….no, there is too much.  Let me sum up.

A family from Angola called Matt and Susie (Don’s parents) at their veterinary clinic and said “We have this baby sheep that hurt its eye, can you look at it for us?”  Of course they said yes.  So the family brought in their animal, and the conversation went roughly like this….

            Matt: Well, first of all, that’s a goat.  Not a sheep.  Second of all, its eye has to come out because it’s infected and its body is rejecting it.  So it will be about $x to do the surgery and remove the eye.

            Goat Owners: Well, we can’t really swing that much money.  Let’s just put her down.

            Matt: Well…if it’s all the same to you, I’ve got a granddaughter that would love to play with her.  Can I have her and I will see what I can do about saving her?

            Goat Owners: OK!

So Matt did the surgery, removed the eye, and she was doing fine.  But Matt and Susie had plans to go on vacation for a few days, and didn’t have anyone to bottle feed a baby goat every few hours that just had surgery.  Luckily, we are always on the lookout for some extra chores and responsibilities for Lucy.  We call them Character Building Opportunities.  She already is responsible for feeding Boss twice a day, giving him water, helping empty the dishwasher and load the dryer and make her own bed.  But we were looking for something a little…weirder.  Stinkier, if you will.  So, bottle feeding a goat every three hours and cleaning out its crate three times a day?

Perfect.

You see both the Zimmers and the Prentices have a long history of animal rescue and rehabilitation.  In Don’s family this certainly makes a lot of sense.  After all, his dad is a veterinarian and although they moved around a lot, they usually had some land; enough to accommodate the odd horse, calf, goat, etc.  And I do mean odd. 

Because Don’s families rescue pet stories read like Tales from the Island of Misfit Animals.  Here is the starring cast: a three legged calf named Stew.  A goat with a brain tumor and disfigured horns named Dink.  A tree squirrel that used to bury their house keys in the planters around the house.  A dachshund born with no anus they called Annie.  You know, the normal stuff.

Our family had a pretty normal parade of childhood pets as well, especially in Southern California.  A tarantula named Mr. T.  An iguana named Flash.  A red tailed boa we called Oliver and with whom I used to nap.  Two ground squirrels named Sparky and King (who was, as it turned out, a lady) who later turned into five squirrels.  A parade of rabbits (once again, it started out as two rabbits, until my brother let them out together in the backyard to “see what would happen.”).  And we always had a few Rottweilers, which was super popular with the neighbors in our cookie cutter suburban neighborhood.

So Don and I both come from families with a history of embracing the unknown variables in life, especially of

the animal variety.  I mean, you are talking about the family that saved an infant flying squirrel from certain death last summer by feeding it with an eye dropper and keeping it warm with heated water bottles every few hours.  I caught worms and flies to hand feed it when it got older!  Side note: we miss you Cubs.  We hope you are doing well at the squirrel rehabilitation ladies house down in Southern Indiana.

One eyed baby goat?  Bring it on.  My only caveat was that I get to rename the goat from Molly to Polyphemus.  I mean, if we are going to illegally house a one eyed goat in our city garage, we are going to at least be educational.

So on a random Tuesday we loaded the kids in the car and headed East to Angola.  We had some lunch, we did some chores, we made some dinner, everyone except Riley and me rode horses, and then we loaded up all of the kids (hah) in the car and headed back to South Bend.  Literally thirty seconds into the drive I looked over at Don, panic stricken and sure I had just made a grave error.  He put his hand on my arm.

            Don: You know, it is possible she will make that noise the entire drive home.

            Me: Oh my God.  Yes.  I just realized that…..how long are we looking at here?

            Don: Oh you know, not very long.  Just a few months.

            Me: Excuse me?

            Don: Hahahaha, ahhhh….just kidding.  Like a few weeks.

            Me: OK.  That is more like it.

Eventually Polly settled down and stopped screaming (you know, when goats are upset they bleat.  When goats are really upset, they bleat really loudly.  And when goats are riding in crates in the back of your car and you forget and turn really fast and they go rocketing about the crate, they scream like babies.  It’s super fun).  And we got home and got her settled in her crate lined with newspaper in the garage.  We fed her one last bottle, and we went to bed.

Well that's adorable.

Our days settled into routine.  At night before bed I would mix up a huge OJ bottle of formula for Polly from the large bag of Calf Replacement Formula that we brought from Angola.  It smelled disturbingly like a vanilla milkshake, but did NOT taste that appealing.  As soon as one of us came down in the morning Polly would start bleating for her morning bottle.  The first few nights we kept her in the crate, but we soon started leaving her out in the garage at night to decrease the amount we had to change her crate paper.  You see, goat hooves are like sharp little stones.  As soon as we put Polly in her crate at any time she would immediately urinate on the paper.  And then, within an hour, she would have trampled all of the paper with her sharp little hooves and macerated it into newspaper/urine pulp.  And then Lucy would be unable to scrape it off the bottom of the crate, and I would have to change her paper.  Which did not accomplish any Character Development.  My character is developed enough – I don’t need this crap (pun intended)!

So everything went smoothly for the first week or so.  Lots of kids (human) came over to play with her and meet her.  We talked to them about her eye and how things heal and get better and Greek mythology.  We let them feed her a bottle.  She would chase them as they ran around the yard and everyone laughed when she jumped up in the air and frolicked.  She and Boss goat along very well.  Occasionally I gave her a bath in our kitchen sink, and had to wash the stitches in her eye off when she had some purulent oozing (google that, I dare you).

Mmmmmm....oooooze.

But then she started getting stronger.  Lucy had a harder time feeding her because when she is hungry she butts the bottle with her nose, an instinct that when nursing from a mother goat helps the milk let down.  But when nursing from a bottle, just sprays formula everywhere.  And she would pull on the nipple so hard the bottle would fly out of Lucy’s hands.  And then Lucy started getting lazy about it.  I would send her out to feed Polly a bottle and ten minutes later still hear her bleating.  Lucy would be in the yard riding her bike and the mostly full bottle would be sitting on the steps.

            Lucy: Well, um.  She wasn’t very hungry, so she took a break.

And then there was the poop.  Which was everywhere.  Not in the yard.  Not on the driveway.  It was everywhere in the garage.  Specifically on the steps into the house.  And her favorite place to pee was the welcome mat.  Morning when getting Lucy ready for school, I had mastered the ability to meet three needs in a timely manner.  I could feed and clothe Lucy for school, feed and clothe Riley, and make sure Boss was fed and let out before we left.  But I was unprepared for the fourth set of needs.  Perhaps it was just a matter of time before I mastered the juggling act, but in the morning when Riley was fussing to be nursed and Boss was dancing on my feet waiting to be fed and Lucy was writhing around her room begging that I not go downstairs and wait until she was dressed and then downstairs saying she didn’t want the eggs I had made her but only cereal and tomatoes the addition of the very loud bleating right outside the door into the garage was one need too many.

So tasty....

So, around the two week mark the cost: benefit ration began to turn, and not in Polly’s favor.  I think Don began to see the calculation in my eyes when I would look at her.  It was a look he recognized from the time we were in Africa together.  Every time I would see an antelope I would lick my lips a little bit, and try to calculate with my eyes how many delicious antelope chops and rolls of sausage it would make.  Especially the dik diks.  Tiny little walking chops.

That is the way I started looking at Polly.  Is she edible yet?  Is she worth the poop underfoot?  Is she worth the level of insanity I approach when hearing her bleat on top of all the other cacophony?  Is she really trying to hump my leg right now?  Did she really just head butt Boss?

He saw the crazy in my eye, and he knew it was time for Polly to seek greener pastures.  So, this past Sunday morning, Don loaded Polly back in the car and drove her back to the farm.  I assume she is now becoming accustomed to the life that other pygmy goats have enjoyed on the farm in Angola: limitless access to hay and grain stolen from the horses until their girth exceeds their height.

Good fortune to you, Polly.  Maybe you can come back one day, when Lucy's ability to follow through on her responsibilities exceeds my distaste for tracking your poop through my kitchen.  Until then, watch out for Duke.  You might really be a goat, but he is an Australian Shepherd, and I don't think your specific Genus matters to him.