Families:  We bond and birth and grow and sometimes sadly diminish.  We tip over and right ourselves again.  We’re generations old and still we’re fresh and new.  We operate with the code that it’s okay to treat each other in ways that we would NEVER allow an outsider.  (I can call my sister ugly, but boy, you’d better not!)  We argue and make up and then do it all again.  We love.  We disappoint.  We make green jell-o with little marshmallows because that’s what our mothers always made.  We metaphorically light the bar-b-que and then walk away for someone else to cook the meal.  We hug our children endlessly and place them in tearful time outs.  We do our best.  We always do our best.

Still, sometimes little families fail in spite of everyone’s best efforts.

Because of that simple truth — that sometimes things just don’t work out — our little bloggybirdery here at the DancingBirds.com place is about to swell and grow and most assuredly become very, very noisy.  We’ve already incorporated one cat.  In just a few days we’ll be adding one very large Boxer, one grown daughter and two teeny tiny little boys into the mix.  Somewhere down the line, we might think about turtles, fish, hamsters and gerbils.

For a season of indeterminate length, we get to have some grand and maybe even some poignant family moments.  For however long it takes for my daughter to regain her legs and heal and find her wind again, we’re going to get to spend countless precious hours reading Dr. Seuss and watching Mickey’s Clubhouse with doggies all around and certainly a cat on someone’s lap.  We’re going to laugh and cry and, with all the noise and hugs we can deliver, we’re going make the best of it all.

So to recap, we now have One Labradoodle, One Golden Retriever, Two Lizards that skitter back and forth on the patio, Two Dead Scorpions … and now One Cat (that Wilson insists would taste like chicken if I’d just give him a chance).  Within a few days, we shall add One Huge Boxer, One Daughter and Two Teeny Tiny Little Boys.  Hoo boy!

This is called Family with a Capital OMG … and I believe that this is certainly how the first glass of lemonade was made and now how GrandMommy Blogs get started.

There’s not a chance in the world that anyone can stay in a stormy mood while watching this. I hope it makes you smile as it did me. Enjoy!

It all started with a scorpion.

It was early morning and I’d walked, sleepy-headed, back and forth from the great room into the kitchen several times.  Barefoot.  Several times.  Pouring coffee, grabbing another section of the newspaper to take back to my soft spot on the couch, peering into the refrigerator to think about what I’d fix for breakfast, heading back to my coffee and newspaper.  Back and forth.  I’d just walked once more — barefoot — into the kitchen to pour a second cup of coffee when I heard Dan thwacking the floor with his shoe.  Thwack!  Thwack!  THWACK!

Shoe thawacking means only one thing in Arizona — another annoying bug on the floor.

What’d you kill? I asked, casually figuring it was probably a summer cricket who had found refuge inside the house from the previous night’s monsoon rain.

Scorpion, he said.

I spun around.  WHAT?  SCORPION?  There, on the dark wood floor of the great room was a now thoroughly thwacked scorpion, the same walnut color as the floor.  Right where I had walked across several times over.  In that moment, I discovered there is nothing like a giant brown scorpion to set one’s bare feet dancing up and down while the mouth is screaming in a siren pitch only heard by dogs and other women afraid of scorpions.

I slept that night wearing socks, with a pair of easily-inspected sandals on top of the nightstand and a coaster covering my bedside water glass — just in case.  Remembering that scorpions crawl up walls and ceilings, only to drop onto the beds of unsuspecting sleepers, it took a while to relax and fall asleep.  I considered wearing long pajamas duct taped to my ankles and wrists, a hat and rubber gloves, but, alas,  Phoenix is a bit hot for that sort of sleeping gear.

The following morning — this time sensibly wearing shoes in the house and scanning for any little skittering movement across the floor — I slowly began to regain my confidence that yesterday’s scorpion kill was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.  I poured my coffee and then wiped the counter and stove top just to tidy up.  I started toward the couch with my coffee when — again — I heard a now-familiar sound.  Thwack!  Thwack!  THWACK!

What now?

Scorpion.  On top of the stove.

On the STOVE?

A bit smaller than the first one, but still … on the stove top?  Where I had just two seconds earlier had my hand?  My precious, delicate, scorpion-fearing hand?  On the stove top?

Scorpion number two in two days was too much!

I packed my gear and decided to stay at my daughter’s house until the pest control people could come with their masks and their thick rubber gloves and their fog of death guaranteed to ALMOST kill any scorpion around.

My daughter picked me up after her shift as an ER nurse.  It was post midnight, which meant I was at least two hours into my own fog of seizure medication and lack of sleep.  Not wanting to wake up sleeping babies, we left the lights off and whispered our way into her house.  Carrying my purse and a heavy overnight bag, I headed up the pitch black stairs to the second floor.

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?  Yep.  You guessed it.  Halfway up, I made a misstep and fell UP the stairs.  Who in the world falls UP … except maybe Alice in Wonderland — and now me.  Without that handsome Johnny Depp to catch me mid-fall, I landed with a cracking thud.

Long story short, the good news is I’m about a week and a half now into the healing of a minimally displaced greater tuberosity fracture — the place where the top of the humerus bone rounds into the ball that fits into the shoulder socket.  Only 2% of arm fractures occur in the greater tuberosity, which makes me quite pleased that I’m in the upper 2% of SOMETHING.  The even better news is that the rotator cuff was not torn in the process, meaning I don’t require surgery and a lengthy process of painful healing.  No.  My particular fracture only requires a slightly less-than-lengthy process of painful healing — three weeks of restricted use and then two or three months of physical therapy, starting with carefully designed range of motion exercises before moving on to any lifting, pushing, or otherwise engaging my arm in the normal business of the day.

Good news, huh?

The best news is that the scorpions seem to have moved on elsewhere and I’ll have a perfectly good arm once again — perhaps I’ll have two arms even stronger than before once I’m able to work on strength training.

In the meantime, I’m now able to type more than one sentence without tears rolling down my face and I’ve developed the sensible habit of wearing shoes all the time.

Yay! … I think.

I’ve been saving my words to tell you things. Tomorrow we’ll talk. Tomorrow, or the next day. I’m still saving and collecting and sorting through all the words I’d like to say, those things to blurt out like a kid who has an entire school day of events to relate between bites of chocolate chip cookies and gulps of milk.

In the meantime, my friend sent this video to me this morning with a note to encourage me during what is now an interesting time of unexpected circumstances and what we are now calling The Daily Crazies. This beautiful video is titled, Victoria’s story. It made me cry. If you’re sensitive, you might want a box of tissues nearby.

We’ll talk soon.

I once had a collection of journals that covered years of thoughts, ideas and notions.  One day, in a blurt of cleanliness and ridiculous orderliness, I threw them all away.  Every one of them.  Those thrown-away pages contained a history of magical, albeit banal days, each one recorded in my rather messy and spider-like handwriting.  It was only after the garbage truck hauled them away that I realized the horror of what I had done!  Years of scrawling out Life According to Auburn was about to be poured out and covered over by tons of coffee grounds, banana peels and plastic diapers.

Now I’m thinking of starting over with a new collection of journals.  Here is My List of Journal Ideas:

• Dreams I actually remember in the morning
• Foods that taste better than should be allowed
• People I love
• People I don’t love
• People I don’t know that I love
• Voice mail messages of particular note
• Sounds that don’t make me cringe
• Cloudy days
• Round or square or other shaped things
• Blue things
• Sad things (see also, Blue Things)
• Generosities noticed
• Coincidences and serendipitous occasions, as in, No Such Thing
• Things that go bump in the night
• Things I plan to organize
• Phone numbers I’ll never memorize
• Plentiful things
• Soft things
• Dangers
• Comforts
• Elaborations on mysterious and confounding things
• Lamentations
• YouTube sensations
• Things that sneak up behind me
• Books I want to read
• Books I’m not smart enough to read
• Books I know I’ll never read
• Things to count
• Things that don’t count
• Truthful myths
• Flowers that bloom in spite of it all
• Birds that pull light into their wings
• Elegant moments while dressed in jeans
• Enumerations of peace

While I decide where to start, perhaps I’ll take a moment to make a list of poem or book titles that I hope to get around to writing.  If you have any thoughts for your own topical journals, I’d love to steal your ideas hear about them, so please feel free to share.

When I was a kid, school PE was not exactly my favorite time of day.  I was the skinny, geeky girl with stringy hair and wienie arms.  I was never anyone’s first choice when it came time to divvying up for teams — especially when we played Dodgeball.  Not only was I slow-footed, those skimpy muscles of mine left opponents falling-down laughing as my best throw was nothing more than a dribbly attempt to make it past the center line.  I don’t believe in all my Dodgeball years I ever hit ANYONE with the ball, yet I carried the pox of ball bruises during all my grade school years.

While other kids had nicknames like Boom Boom or Thunder Arms, I was simply referred to as Oh Yuck!  Still, there was something cathartic in being the last one chosen to play.  During those agonizing moments waiting for MY name to be called, I discovered the concept of optimism.  I found no shame in being last, but rather constantly hopeful that the next name called would be mine.  It didn’t seem to matter that I was the last child chosen and the first one back on the bench.

I’m a slow learner.

But it seems that Dodgeball is still going on.  We may not still be in a sweaty gymnasium smacking each other with hard rubber balls, but we’re still divvying up into teams.  We’re still calling each other names and deciding who should be first and who should be last, based on how our bodies look or how mean and tough we act.  We’re still finding fault with those who are small or weak or those we perceive to be lesser in some way and not helpful to the “team.”  We’re still dividing ourselves into groups and troops and factions and clans.

Maybe we’re all slow learners.

The thing is this:  We could stop.  We could each stand on a dark summer night and look up into the sky, admiring the same moon, at the same time.  We could stop laughing at each other and turn instead toward a sky that has done nothing but love us.  We could dip our hand into cool stream water and feel the way it pulls us with it on its journey to wherever it’s headed.  We could taste rain on our tongue, the same rain that may have come from the land of someone we consider an enemy but now that rain nourishes our land.

We could stop dodging and throwing and humiliating each other and, instead, allow different thoughts and ideas and religions and countries to color our minds with possibilities.  With optimism.  With knowledge.  With wonder.

We could.  Really, we could.  We could be nice to each other.

All this came up because yesterday (while I was preoccupied with something so important I don’t even remember now what it was) a woman held a door leading into a store half-way open for me.  I opened it the rest of the way and started to enter.  You’re welcome! she said with a tone of annoyance.  I quickly apologized and thanked her, but she’d already turned her back and was huffing toward her car, most likely forevermore mad at the rude woman at the door going into Borders Books.  I’ve felt miserable ever since.  I should have thanked her immediately.  Yes, I should have!  Preoccupation is no excuse for not thanking someone for a kind act.

But then again, her half-open door kindness contained a stipulation that she be immediately recognized for her sort-of gesture to be nice to a stranger.  When she didn’t feel acknowledged, when I only woke up from my mind-stupor after she snapped at me, when our exchange wasn’t all that it could have or even should have been, I know I could have done better.  We both could have done better.

I hope when the moon comes out tonight, that the woman from the store and I will both happen to look up together.  I hope she’ll find a moment of peace and I hope we’ll each think kindly of one another.  Especially, I hope our game of psychic Dodgeball will turn out to be a Win-Win for us and that the next time I get chosen to play, I’ll at least have the presence of mind to say, Thank You! for choosing me to join the game.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Cut on Dotted Line

At last!  From the World RPS Society, a comprehensive strategery and guide to champion-level Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Memorize these few simple steps and you’ll be sure to win at RPS with every throw-down.  With this handy guide, people will think you’re a Rock, Paper, Scissors savant.  You’ll want to immediately cut out this guide to study at great length.

Just think!  You’ll be able to best your three-year old and leave him crying, No Fair!, especially when you mix it up with the very clever and confounding Spock & Roll.  Of course, you’ll be disqualified, but at least you’ll go out fighting.

If this is your first RPS game, you’ll want to remember these easy tactics:  (1) If you’re playing with a guy, they usually throw out a rock on the first toss because guys always go for the heavy lift, so counter them with a delicate paper, which serves to madden and confuse them right off the bat;  (2) Paper is thrown least often, so use it as a surprise weapon; (3) Inexperienced RPS players subconsciously tend to repeat the item that previously won; and (4) A double rock is rare and should not be feared … especially after the first unsuccessful attempt by your opponent.

Obviously, there is some psychology that can be used to foresee predictable moves.  But that would seem to work only at the most basic level. Once it gets beyond that — a situation in which both competitors fully understand the basic psychology and predictability — it seems it would get pretty random again. Once both players are that deep into the logic chain (i.e., He would do X here, so I’ll do Y, but of course he knows that I know that, so he’ll instead do Z), then basically it’s just back to a matter of chance.

Just to be clear on what I mean by “it gets back to being a matter of chance” … when the logic chain on a given play is so lengthy (indeed infinite), then it’s really just a matter of which step in the chain each player chooses to stop.  One happens to stop at step 6 (“he knows that I know that he knows that I know that he knows”), the other at step 4 (“he knows that I know that he knows”), and thus, the outcome becomes random.

Finally, if you see that your opponent is gaining the upper “hand” (so to speak),  simply throw down a surprise “Dynamite” which is even more illegal than the Spock & Roll and sure to move the competition into a grim and fearsome match of Thumb Wars.

Good luck and good playing!

When every moving part in your Arizona home is crumbling, leaking, falling, crashing and/or otherwise breaking, this is what you do:  You fly to Montana!  You walk off the airplane, grinning like a monkey because you see your girlfriend you haven’t seen since high school.  In the short time it takes to wrap your arms around each other in a generous hug, you are once again sixteen and your only care is how far it is to the nearest hamburger joint.

And …

When your youngest child has just deployed to Afghanistan, leaving you wondering if you’ll ever, ever breathe again … and when you’ve also just placed your 102-year old mother in an assisted living facility after many years of being her caregiver, crushing you with guilt and concern, this is what you do:  You invite a woman you haven’t seen in four decades to spend a week in your home.   Within moments of that first hug, you are both chattering like magpies, shining and brilliant with past memories and future possibilities.

In spite of extra pounds and lined faces and streaks of gray hair added over the years, you each swear that the other hasn’t changed a bit.  It’s nearly true!  If we look away for a moment, we are magically transported into giggly teenagers still talking about our studies and our teachers and … Oh, those boys!

For seven whirlwind days, my friend and I serve as diversion for one another.  She keeps me grounded as I receive a phone call informing me that the new bank-busting air conditioning unit was incorrectly installed, causing a massive leak into the living room ceiling, down onto the carpet where it becomes a large, dark stain.  She sits quietly as call after call from home relays worsening news about the state of all things ruining our poor little home.

In turn, I keep her occupied to the point of distraction while she works through the grief of a mother of a young soldier sent off to a terrifying war and the guilt of a daughter unable to continue the 24-hour care of an elderly mother.

We’re good for each other.

We take a tour boat six miles down the Missouri River at the Gates of the Mountains where we see big horn sheep clinging to the side of a steep mountain.  The thought that we are also clinging to our own respective mountains of life isn’t lost on us.   The following day we drive to Yellowstone and laugh that we’re now the Goldilocks Sisters because we see not just one, but THREE bears — a very uncommon occurrence these days.  We photograph elk, bison, deer, a way off-course pelican, more big horn sheep, a raven with odd white-wings and one very twitchy ground squirrel.

We drive then to Chico Hot Springs and sit in a pool of bone-melting warmth piped up from ancient ground waters.  There’s no cell service, so dinner over wine becomes a lingering conversation about where we’ve been over the past forty years and how we hope we’ll both be lucky enough to carry on for another forty.  We introduce our long-ago teenage selves to the women we’ve become and, for the moment, we’re delighted with our outcomes.

We go to church outdoors in the mountains above Helena where we commune over coffee and pot luck breakfast casseroles.  The Pastor wears jeans and a baseball cap and talks about how we might consider giving up things.  A silly kids’ camp song is offered up as the Doxology.  Why not?  It makes us laugh and clap and not feel so bad about the uncomfortable message of giving up our things, should it ever be necessary.  On another day, we tour through St. Helena Cathedral in downtown Helena where I light a candle and pray for my friend’s son, called to war in Afghanistan.  I pray for his body, his mind and his soul.  I hate that such a prayer is even necessary, but I don’t mention that part to God.

One evening, we head to the park and cheer at her grandsons’ baseball games.  Then we go to another park where we sit beneath the shadow of a band shell, eating Subway sandwiches and listening to Helena’s town band play the Sousa Palooza, a Beethoven selection and a medley of Andrew Lloyd Webber pieces.  A Big Sky sunset spreads across the sky and I’ve never been so in love with a place than I was in that moment.  We close the concert by standing and singing the Montana state song.  The melody is at once familiar to me and I hum it in my head for days.

We enjoy the company of my friend’s dear mother.  A constant thought rumbles through my mind that, should I live to be 102, I might be allowed to be as lively and as gracious as she continues to be.  She is the very meaning of amazing, wrapped in a tiny, smiling and feisty-as-ever form.

On my last day, it was hard to leave Montana.  It was hard to return to Arizona with its scorpions and lizards and blast furnace weather, to things that are still leaking and breaking and flopping and dying, to a political climate that is splitting this country apart.  It was especially hard to say goodbye to my friend.

And so I’ll go back to Montana — next summer.  I’ll plan to be there in time to attend Helena’s Symphony Under the Stars on the third Saturday in July.  It will be like going home.  In the meantime, I’ll send packages to my friend’s son on the other side of the world and I’ll think about the magic of finding three bears while reconnecting with my Goldilocks Sister.

Have you missed me?  I’ve missed you.  I’m sorry for my unannounced absence, but this has been a very wild and crazy last couple of weeks.  Apparently, it’s the McCanta’s Annual Season for Breakage.  I’m thinking of submitting this seasonal phenomenon as a suggestion to Those-Who-Make-Such-Decisions as a proposed National Holiday.

May I enumerate?  I may?  Oh, yes.  Let’s do that!  Let’s tick off all the dirty, rotten broken things that died forever and ever, or caused a forever and ever death, making said attenuation of further dead things to be doubly noted over the past two weeks, or were, perhaps, just mildly broken and still fixable things.  The list starts with:

• One tea kettle
• Three sink faucets
• One shower (Oh, yes … showers can die)
• One 5-ton air conditioner on the hottest day so far this summer (this is Phoenix, folks.)
• One irrigation system (please read earlier note about this being Phoenix.)
• One-half of all yard plants (Irrigation System v. McCanta, Id.) See how this is building?
• One Golden Retriever with a double ear infection and very, very painful hips
• One daughter’s broken, thus operated-on and now very painful nose
• One frazzled, dirty, harried, run-to-ragged husband
• One hot, hot, hot (no, not that way) wife, also harried and run-to-ragged

But, witness the new Tea Kettle.  She is a beauty, no?  She is YELLOW!  She is nestled next to a Picasso Pour Roby etching I bought at a yard sale for $5.00 and always keep behind my stove for some ridiculous, unknown reason other than that’s where I keep it.  Don’t get excited.  The Picasso is not really worth anything except that it looks FABULOUS next to my new yellow Le Crusset tea kettle.  That dear kettle was the last one at the store and they won’t get any more.  Ever.  Its predecessor was white and nondescript … and electric, pulled out from the dark of the cupboard to perform its duty, then emptied and stored away again.  New YELLOW Tea Kettle gets to live out in the open.  Next to Pour Roby!

Of course, things break.  Things are finite.  Things are just things.  They click and clunk and clank and chug.  They bink and bong and annoy us to no end with their intrusive  noise and endless thing-ness.  They  give us pleasure when they work and they give us angst when they break.  They are things, after all.

As a writer, I have a tendency, of course, to anthropomorphize EVERYTHING!  Air Conditioners are living, breathing entities to be given honor for their hard work in a desert summer and, as such, they deserve our proper respect when they die their much-unexpected deaths (which always occurs during a heat wave in Phoenix — why is that?).  Faucets are Beings with constant gastric upsets, causing them to spit or burp or stream out the last of their living waters at the most unexpected moments.  Tea kettles die sad and unforgettable deaths; they are grievously mourned, especially when they have spent years building a really good dark and loamy interior.  Daughters have regrettable nasal upsets.

But then our things are replaced.  With new things.  Better, more modern things.  5-ton things.  Underground, life-giving things.  Gurgling, whistling, watery things.  Bridging, cartlidging, nasally things.  New and better things.

Have I mentioned that I love things?

When I broke my leg nearly two years ago in a tragic shopping mall incident, I was stuck flat out on the couch for four months.  Four months of healing and eating and eating and healing.  Okay, well, maybe more eating than healing.  There is something about a third of a year, flat on one’s back, with a spoon in one hand and a bowl of ice cream in the other that changes the landscape of one’s body.

I made a booty!  A J. Lo.  I formed various wiggly, jiggly, jell-o parts.  I made  a higgledy-piggledy place that used to be that tight little backside of my arms, wumpledy-bumpledy places that make people in the grocery line turn their heads and kind of cough with embarrassment for me.  I’ve recently been forced to plan and expedite grand shopping expeditions because all of my clothing unexpectedly got smaller.

I meant to work on that bit of extra weight right away.  Honestly!  I meant to get to the gym and pound it out until those few extra pounds fell away.

Now, I don’t want to get all technical here, but it seems that pounds don’t melt off like they used to.   There was a day when I could just skip a meal and five pounds would disappear.  I skip a meal now and GAIN five pounds.  Working out is difficult with a bum leg and a now-ample body.

This is getting complicated.

For the first time in my life, I’m on the diet/exercise wagon.   May I impress upon you my displeasure?  Diet?  Exercise?  This is just SO unfair!  I was ALWAYS the skinny girl.  Now I’m the overweight, limping woman with the J. Lo booty and the jiggly upper arms.  Did I mention that this is unfair?

Nevertheless, let the purging of the fat commence!

I’m announcing here and now that I’m  stepping away from the Fruit Loops and stepping onto the treadmill.  And honestly, I can’t think of a better way to spend my extra time — helping myself find an extra day or two of quality life.

Stay tuned for my excellent news as I work toward my pre-broken leg weight and maybe even beyond.  Of course, the gesture is toward healthy, rather than skinny.  I’ll never be high-school skinny again and that isn’t my goal.  At my age, the reach is toward an excellent cholesterol count, good blood sugar readings and enough energy to keep up with my teeny tiny little grandsons.

That’s the goal — wish me luck!

What’s your goal?  What do you need to do that will help improve your life?