An Ice Pick, A BB Gun, Fireflies & Reconstituted Alfalfa Cubes

Some people I know are so fully capable of

making a mountain out of a molehill that I am, at times, quite sure when listening to them that I live somewhere near the Colorado Rockies.

Especially near the Colorado Rockies is Ben’s brother who, I kid you not, declares immanent death every spring when his allergies kick in.  I used to become alarmed and think things such as,

That’s so funny!  But what if it’s true and he croaks and I feel like crap for making a joke?

or

That’s so bizarre!  But what if it’s true and he croaks and I feel like crap for doing some kind of strange analysis of why he would say such things?

My fears of being crappy for thinking he was funny or bizarre every time he said death was immanent due to allergies were all allayed one afternoon when he and his girlfriend were at our house and something along the lines of the following went down,

He walked up to his girlfriend, stuck his arm in front of her and said,

Oh my God!  One of the dogs jumped on me and scratched my arm and it’s bleeding a little bit and look at that and I think it’s swelling up and what does that mean and how infected can something like that get?

She gave his arm a little kiss and said,

That dog is obviously terribly violent and I think your arm is going to swell up to twice its size and then get an oozing infection and you are then going to die.  And I do mean completely fuckin’ die!

And he got this cute little smile on his face and started laughing and she did too and then we all did.

And now I’ve decided that next spring when he calls to inform me his death is imminent due to allergies that I’m going to assure him that his head is going to swell up and cause him to die.

I’ve started a new project of getting rid of poop in the internet by placing a ‘free stuff’ ad on Craigslist for horse manure.

Two days ago a man came to our house, we opened one of the pasture gates, he drove his truck out to our horse manure compost, hopped out of his truck, and shoveled away until he had a truck load full of shit.

And then gave us a little wave and left.

Yesterday morning a woman called and left a voice mail for us that said,

Gimme a call back.  I’d like to come by sometime and look at your manure.

And I called back to leave a voice mail for her that said,

We’re obviously playing phone tag.  You’re ‘It’.  I’ll be home all evening except for going out to feed the horses which, of course, is the wonderful source of the poop you want to see.

And when I told Ben I’d left that message he said,

Honey.  Seriously.  No one is going to come get our horse manure if you start leaving messages like that.  They’ll be afraid they’re going to have to deal with some crazy lady just to get some horse manure for their garden.

Later in the evening we were out on our veranda looking out into the woods that are already celebrating Independence Day because it is breeding season for fireflies and they so amazingly light up the trees that I always have a special feeling that they are putting on a show just for us.

I do however know that the only reason we are getting such a great show out of the fireflies right now is because it is their breeding season and all of that ‘lightening’ we are seeing is just a bunch of them flying around saying to one another,

Hubba hubba!

It also always makes me think of the time when my older brother and I were something like 5 and 7 and our mom had shown us how to make a little firefly catcher out of a mason jar by poking holes into the lid with an ice pick.

That was always great fun.

Except for the part where my brother and I decided to make a firefly catcher on our own one time and my brother poked the ice pick completely through his thumb and we went screaming all over the house looking for our mom and when we found her she…

ripped the ice pick out of my brother’s thumb, stripped him down naked, and then soaked him in a warm bath full of Epsom salt until we stopped claiming he was going to bleed to death.

This ‘thing’ our mother would do in the middle of drama was repeated throughout our lifetimes as my brother and I grew up and…

1. My brother chose to ’see what it would feel like’ to shoot himself in the finger with a BB pistol and then went screaming through the house looking for our mother who simply took him into the bathroom, squeezed his finger as hard as she could on either side of the BB until it went catapulting out of his finger, up into the air, and down the sink drain and then went back to folding freshly laundered bed sheets.
2. I had been jumping up and down in celebration of fire works on New Years Eve and broken my foot and our mom carried me into the house, plopped me down on the ottoman from the family room that had wheels, plopped a baggie full of ice onto my foot and told me I could just roll around the house on the ottoman until my foot healed up.
3. My brother was a teenager and giving her a rash of crap in the car and when he got out in our driveway stuck his foot in front of one of the tires on her car and dared her to run over it, which she did, and then pulled into the garage and went into the house as if nothing had happened.

And now I’m sitting here thinking I’m kind of glad my mom was raised on a dairy farm in what used to be a truly rural area of the Missouri county where she still lives because getting sick or injured or even quite mentally disturbed out there was not dramatized or traumatized and usually included something like soaking someone in Epsom salt or packing one of their body parts down in ice or just telling them to knock it off.

I’m glad because I really do have to be somewhere near the verge of death before I get too worked up over anything.

And I think that’s a pretty good thing.

Except for the part where I really did almost die from pancreatitus about 13 years ago and was in the ER insisting that I was fine and should be allowed to go home even though I had turned completely yellow and could not eat without barfing and my dad was crying and the entire staff of the ER was standing in my little room staring at me as if I was going to be the delivery person of one of the times they could go home and report to their wife or kids or cat or whomever that ‘We lost one today’.

But I still say I’m glad that I don’t get too worked up over things because I think it allows me to think it’s pretty funny to put an ad on Craigslist for free horse manure and then leave a voice mail for some lady who wants to see it that refers to our horses as…

…the wonderful source of the poop you want to see.

I’ve also been thinking about our Chihuahua and how she’s always wandering around the horse barn at feeding time and eating the alfalfa cubes the horses accidentally drop on the ground.  And, if she can’t find any fresh cubes is more than happy to eat horse poop which, in that case, I like to call…

…reconstituted alfalfa cubes.

Truth be told, I’m thinking we could put Chihuahua poop on Craigslist and have people calling to come by to see it to discover if they think it might be a good treatment for their gardens.  We could hype it as,

Specially blended and reconstituted manure for garden fertilization beyond your wildest dreams!