Turkey Tales

Turkeys deserve to be eaten.  Forget for the moment that they are delicious; they also lack pleasing personalities to make up for their clear lack of physical attractiveness.  They are also aggressive brutes and my encounter with a pack of them when I was about 13 has been providing my sons with gleeful amusement at my expense.

When I was a kid, I often went to the beach with my friend RH and her dad.  Mr. H. had relatives who owned a prawn farm and we visited several times.  Besides the prawn pond, the family also owned a large tract of land that was cultivated near the house but wild and scrubby on the outer reaches.  To us city kids, it was a wonderful place to ramble.

One of our visits coincided with prawn harvest.  We spent much longer at the farm then on previous occasions, watching in fascination as RH's cousins pulled in the nets and shot at birds that swooped from the skies in search of an easy meal.  RH, another friend FT, and I returned to the house to find RH's aunt feeding 5 large, gray birds.  At the time, I did not know they were turkeys as I had never seen juveniles before.  Young or no, these birds were big specimens; husky and tall!  I was about 5'5" at the time and these birds easily reached to my waist. 

We received a few slices of bread and continued to scatter bites for the birds to eat.  They were placid enough...until all the bread was gone.  They didn't seem to believe that we had nothing left to give them and decided the situation warranted a closer look.  There was something menacing in their slow advance and the suspicious intelligence reflected in those beady black eyes.  When they were several feet away, they suddenly seemed taller; their wings began to move away from their sides, feathers around the neck began to mantle.

I don't remember who broke first.  All I know is suddenly the three of us were screaming and running down the hill as fast as we could with five shrieking, flapping turkeys in hot pursuit.  Mr. H's truck was parked at the bottom of the hill and we all leaped into the back as one.  The turkeys (fortunately) did not leap into the bed but continued to circle the vehicle, wings out, squawking in triumph.  RH's aunt, dad, and cousins could not stop laughing.  And ever since I told them the story, neither can my sons.

That was a long time ago but interestingly enough, Thanksgiving has become my favorite cooking/eating holiday.  I guess the saying is true:  Revenge is sweet...Happy Thanksgiving!  Gobble, gobble! ;-)

Won't you be my neighbor?

The N family (house to our left) was there when we moved in 13 years ago.  We barely saw them.  We know there was a married couple with two teen-aged children and judging by the tortured sounds of a violin and then a trumpet, the said children were band/orchestra members.  The music improved in the next couple of years but their visibility did not; unless we heard the music or an occasional slamming of a car door, our neighbors could just as well have been ghosts.  I can count on one hand the number of times I had any kind of conversation longer than "hello" with either husband or wife.

The children grew up and presumably moved out.  The house began to fall into a serious state of disrepair; the external staircase rotted and crumbled, the roof began to sag and exterior light fixtures rusted and fell off.  The only reason we knew someone still lived there were the cars in the garage.  Then one day, the house was sold!  Our neighbors on the opposite side of the N family purchased it as a, well, fixer-upper; only they didn't realize how much fixing upping needed to be done until the house was actually theirs.  Instead of just fixing here and there, they decided to knock the whole structure down and start from scratch.  This past May they did just that; they started when we were leaving for work and the whole thing was down and almost completely carted off by the time we came home.  Judging by the house's condition, it was definitely a mercy killing.

Then the noise began.  Our "new" neighbors are early risers and pay absolutely no attention to the laws/neighborly consideration that restrict construction before 9 AM in a residential area.  Backhoes, cement mixers, power saws, loud contractors speaking in several different languages, louder radios set to a number of different stations have been the norm since May--and not just on weekdays.  This has been a daily occurrence for months.  Unfortunately the kids' bedrooms are on that side of the house and their reactions have been mixed:  C rants and fumes (his bedroom is closest) and cusses them out on Facebook; T shrugs rather philosophically and A took C's ranting one step farther; she actually went out there and yelled at the workers that, "There are laws" and they should "turn off their damn mariachi music!"  That particular group of workers were Spanish and definitely wanted to share their culture with the entire neighborhood.

Though I personally don't appreciate their discourtesy, they are going to be our neighbors and they are basically nice people.  I was willing to put up with it...until yesterday.  Yesterday started at 7 AM with the presence of a cement mixer.  The noise was one thing but the workers decided in order to lay the cement properly they needed to come into our yard.  Since the sidewalk extends from their house right up to our fence line, I could see why; they had no footspace in which to work.  Still, they did not ask first and if they had, I could have informed them that the pens they were working around, and in, hold live turtles.

Now, my neighbors know I have turtles there.  I informed them first thing when they knocked the original house down so they would know not to spray any poisons or pesticides in that area.  I don't know if the owner and his brother were present when the cement workers started doing their thing but the older brother TN definitely was when I went out into the yard and saw what they had done.

First off, someone had removed one of the corner cinder blocks of Chestnut's pen to use as a step stool to reach over the fence...then didn't bother to put it back.  As Chestnut has recently become very interested in knowing what is on the outside of his pen and has developed some serious climbing ability, this was an act of potentially horrific consequences.  Fortunately, Chestnut had not discovered the gap.  But that was not the worst of it.  Someone had sloshed some wet cement in Minka's enclosure and splattered her and her food in the process.  She had splatters on her back, her legs and even on her face.  Fortunately it had missed her eyes, nostrils and mouth.

Now I have a strong personality but I rarely get truly angry.  I don't like the way it feels and I usually feel I can resort to other methods to resolve conflict. This wasn't one of the times.  I did not yell at TN and his workers but I know I was loud and forceful.  If I wasn't so furious, it would have been funny; you never saw 5 grown men leap up and scramble in different directions at once so quickly.  They just didn't know what to do; maybe they didn't speak much English and all they knew was there was suddenly a very angry woman brandishing a cement-spattered turtle in their direction.

TN apologized profusely and cleaned up Minka's enclosure while I washed the cement off of her.  He actually got off easy; it wasn't till later in the afternoon that I discovered she was missing a small chip off the back edge of her carapace and the edge must have dug into her back leg because she had a red mark scored into her skin.  I think one of the idiots stepped on her which caused her injury and which caused him to lose his balance and slop the cement into her enclosure.  I will always be grateful that I went out when I did.  If the cement had dried on her, she might not have survived.

Minka is using her leg okay and ate a big meal of mixed veggies.  I am glad she doesn't seem to be suffering from any lingering effects and I know a bunch of construction workers who will think twice before they cross our fence again.  Screw being neighborly.  Even Mr. Rogers would have approved.

An idiot by any other name...is still an idiot

E tells me I need to stop reading the pet ads on craigslist.  Maybe he's right; more often than not, reading the ads on this site exasperates me and in some cases, drives me berserk.  Last summer I read an ad for a guy looking for a male box turtle to mate with his female.  Imagine my shock when the picture he posted to display his turtle was actually a picture of my Molly!  After I contacted him and ripped him a new one, he apologized and immediately took the ad down. It was a positive outcome but it was the beginning of my increasingly negative attitude toward craigslist posters.

I originally thought it was a great concept:  taking advantage of a large internet audience to find animals new homes.  Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of the people offering animals for "rehoming" (the Craigslist euphemism for "selling") are not people I would personally choose to get an animal from.  For a number of reasons.

Person type #1 is basically ignorant--they are offering "purebread" dogs for reasonable prices.  Forgive me for being a snob but I refuse to take a dog from any breeder who incorrectly spells their breed's name.  I have seen just about every possible combination of letters for chihuahua, not to mention the ever-popular "german shepphard" and "shit zoo".  Person type #1 often finds terms associated with responsible breeding confusing as well; male dogs have been "spade" and female dogs are often "nuttered."  Sometimes these types offer hybrid dogs (a blending of 2 pure, but different breeds) and say these pups will even come with papers!  Yeah, newspapers!

Person type #2 is a blatant backyard breeder.  This person slyly tries to hide the fact that it is the 2nd time this year that he offered pups for sale by posting his ads under different aliases. Maybe you should also change your contact information and the contact person's name.  And yes, we recognize the pictures you posted of the parents from the last time.

Person type #3 is a heartless idiot; the worst kind.  As you can imagine, this is the biggest group.  These people range from those who buy a puppy and a week later offer it for rehoming because "I didn't realize how much work a young puppy is" to those who rehome established pets because they suddenly find out they are pregnant, moving, losing a job, getting a divorce, allergic, or dumber than their pets.  I understand that sometimes there are true, unforeseen emergencies (like a pregnant woman being put on bed rest) but the odds just don't seem to match the proportion of ads of this nature.  In fact, in the year and a half that I have been reading craigslist, this group seems to have grown exponentially; an unwelcome sign of the growing idiot population. Why do so many people consider animals to be disposable?

Normally, I hate to call people by derogatory names but when it comes to the mistreatment of animals, I will make an exception.  Just call a spayed a spade.

Lip service

So I was 'net surfing last night about reconstructive surgeries and came across a procedure known as labiaplasty.  As in, vaginal labia "lift" surgery.  At first I thought it was a procedure for women with certain gynecological health issues but it turns out that it's actually an increasingly popular elective procedure for women who are dissatisfied with the appearance of their vaginas.  I thought I'd heard everything.

Perhaps it is not surprising; the pressure to fit a certain societal standard of beauty is not a new one, but I guess I'm just surprised, amazed and saddened by how far some people will go.  One of the doctors quoted in the article mentioned that it is an inevitable result of the media and the easy access to pornography; men and women view these images and find that their own bodies fall by the wayside.  Many women, this doctor states, bring in pictures of porn stars, point and say, "Make me look like her."  You know how some hair stylists have folders of celebrity hairstyles for customers to choose from?  Imagine the samples in a plastic surgeon's office:  "I'd like the Janet Jackson Special, please."  Yikes.

I think the worst part of this trend is the middle-aged women who requested the surgery, not because they wanted it themselves but, because their husbands or boyfriends did not like their sagging labia.  Their partners' remarks made them so self-conscious they elected to have a surgery that can have fairly serious risks, including scarring, infection and nerve damage.  One woman went even farther; before the surgery, this woman states, her marriage was on the rocks and her husband told her after giving birth to their four children, "she was looser and he didn't want her anymore."  She had the labiaplasty along with a procedure called "vaginal rejuvenation" to tighten her vulva.  She reports:  "He's become my sweetheart again," she said. "He bought me a house and he wants me all the time."  
 
But why the hell do you want him?

What's YOUR Guilty Pleasure?

Nearly every year for the past 10 years or so, I have emailed a question for my good friends to answer.  Their responses help me to select their Christmas gifts.  Questions in the past have ranged from "What's your favorite animal?" to "What one quality best describes you?"  The answers are always interesting and more often than not, I learn a little bit more about people I thought I already knew well.  The best response to the "What's your favorite animal?" query came from TC who fired back, "To eat or to keep as a pet?"  Guess who got coal in his stocking that year?

This year the question is, you guessed it, "What's your guilty pleasure?"  Since I knew this particular phrasing was going to open a whole can of worms with some of my smart-alecky friends, I did give them a few guidelines:  keep it clean, make sure it was something few people would know or guess and of course, make sure you are comfortable sharing it. 

One friend, SK, always provides long and detailed responses to my annual question which he cc's to his wife--in case she also needs gift-giving ideas.  He went pretty far out on a limb with some of his GPs; a few of them definitely fall into the category of, "I would never have guessed that of you" (he did follow the guidelines and kept it clean, but still).  After his response, I expected more stunners from my other friends; instead I was amused by how many of the responses were food-related:  chocolate, candy, chili hot dogs from Zippy's, Dairy Queen butterscotch-dipped cones and McDonald's milkshakes were prominent contenders and the overall reason for their selection seemed to be a combination of flavor, childhood nostalgia or as a reward for "good behavior" (like exercising!).

That's when I realized that nearly all of my own GPs also revolve around food.  Except for being, I admit it, a fan of Barry Manilow and a player of a game that shall remain nameless, my GPs are pretty much foods I like to eat, often while I am enjoying a good book. And that's where the guilty part of the pleasure comes in.  Normally, one of the things I like best about food is the social aspect; sitting around a table of good food with good conversation is one of my absolute favorite things and yet my GP foods are those I would much rather enjoy alone. The reason for that is obvious; if I feel guilty while I'm eating it, it's probably bad for me and if I am eating things that are bad for me, well, the fewer witnesses, the better!

Popcorn sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese is a favorite I have enjoyed for years--it's cheesy, salty, crispy goodness and each bite tastes better than the one before it.  I HAVE to eat it by myself;  E doesn't like popcorn and I find that eating a dish in front of someone who refuses to see the point tempers the "mmmm" factor.  I also can't eat it in front of the kids--that's a dangerous proposition; sometimes, they expect me to share it.  The nerve.

So I continue to enjoy my Parmesan topped popcorn in total solitude. Because when it comes to guilty pleasures, that's just the way it should be.

Epilogue: What's wrong with this picture?

So I've been back at work for 3 whole days now.  I have taught my classes, answered some email correspondence, attended a faculty meeting, and started correcting 3rd drafts of senior project papers while the laundry has slowly begun to stack up and errant balls of "Rust bunnies" collect under the furniture threatening to mutate into more dogs.  Today I dropped T off at home after band practice (which ran late) while simultaneously picking C up to take him to play at a UH basketball game, fought traffic coming and going from UH in the pouring rain and ended up picking up Popeye's Chicken for dinner.

At 6:45, I was silently lamenting the loss of the time that allowed me to leisurely grocery shop, plan and cook homemade meals for my family and even help the boys keep up with their laundry.  E wasn't home yet and T was perfectly content to sit in the quiet happily munching on take-out fried chicken with all the fixings, blissfully oblivious to the time demands that were forcing, forcing him to eat this food prepared by hands other than his mother's! 


At 7:15, as T lugged a full laundry basket of his clothes down to the garage, his thoughts finally paralleled mine.  Dreamy eyes came into focus as he gazed wistfully from his full basket to me:  "It used to be nice when you were being a housewife."

What's wrong with this picture?

Though it may sound that way to some, this is not a pity party post (how's that for alliteration!).  Rather, it is a slightly mournful commentary on a phenomena that I don't feel is unique to me; that is the constant choosing between the needs of job, family, and self.  For me, at least, when it comes to a battle between these three superpowers, self always loses.  Some of the demands on me naturally come with the territory; I am a parent, so I am obligated to fulfill the needs of my children.  My children may be older and more self-sufficient than they've ever been but their needs didn't necessarily lessen as the children aged.  They just got...different.  I have a job which gives me even more obligations to fulfill.  But what about the time that is not taken up by my family and career?  How do I get to spend that?

Today I went back to work after having surgery that required a 6-week recuperation period.  One of these days I'll get around to blogging about that interlude in my life but at the moment, what is foremost on my mind is the ironic realization that it took surgery and a forced break from my normal life to allow me to reconnect with some of the enjoyable aspects of my life; aspects that often get shunted to the background simply because other things are of a higher priority.

During my recuperation I read several books that were sitting around collecting dust for years, I watched several DVDs that I'd been meaning to get to for months, I got totally hooked on the TV series Criminal Minds, I did tons of cross-stitch, updated my student organization's website, read through a number of cookbooks and recipes, tried out many of the said recipes, remodeled Minka's enclosure, established a weekly grocery shopping schedule (a huge feat!), and started this blog.  I picked up C from school on Thursday (his short school day) and had a weekly lunch and good conversation with him.  It makes sense that I was able to do all of these things.  I wasn't working.  I had all this unoccupied time!  But even more than that, I had an excuse.   

My surgery gave me a built-in, universally acceptable reason for not fulfilling any of my normal responsibilities; though I still corrected senior project papers and did lesson plans, I did not have to go into the classroom and execute them, I didn't have to correct homework, do grades or attendance, I did not have to attend conferences, I did not have to attend committee meetings, oversee club events, pick up and drop off the kids, cook, grocery shop, or clean the house!  For a few days after coming home from the hospital, I didn't even have to take care of my pets!  Everyone knew why I wasn't doing what I normally did so I did not have to feel guilty!

I am far from being a self-sacrificing martyr but it is still a shock to realize that somewhere along the road, I have allowed myself to so consistently allow responsibility and obligation to take over my free time that I felt I needed to justify to MYSELF that an activity I was engaging in, strictly for enjoyment sake, was not a selfish, waste of time. How incredibly sad.  Even worse, I know I can't promise myself that, despite my new-found awareness, it won't happen again.

The most repeated question my students asked today was this:  "Did you miss us while you were gone?"  Of course I did.  But I suspect I will miss my excuse to play even more.