sometimes its a problem

Ting's partner Dave finds 4-leaf clovers all the time. It's ridiculous. They stick out, he says. They look different, he says. He sees them, without looking for them, while we are walking anywhere.

Recently we were telling some friends about Dave's quirk/talent as we all drove to one of those fabulous farm dinners Connecticut has in late summer. We pulled the car into the makeshift parking lot -- a clover field adjacent to a hill of clover, overlooking another rolling field of clover. Dave hopped out of the minivan and said, "here's one," and plucked a four-leaf clover out of the clovery ground. He can't help it.

I'm like that with typos. They stick out. I can be reading a wonderful book written by a wonderful and knowledgeable nutritionist, say, and then...and then, he or she says "if the body has inadequate nutrients, it will produce odd carvings..." and suddenly everything is in doubt. Oh, I know what they meant. Of course! Of course. But it's like finding a gnat in your soup. You know there's no harm done, but all you can think about is the gnat, and you begin to doubt the whole enterprise of your lunch.

Maybe we all have something like this. For Dave, it's 4-leaf clovers. For Laura, it's the tiniest editing glitch in a movie, like the door was open at a different angle just a moment ago. We have spent many hours rewinding and replaying videos so she can show us that the mug was in fact full a second ago and now it's empty.

For me (and for Ting -- likely a matter of both nature and nurture), it's typos. Seeing them while not looking for them is distracting, and sometimes I wish I didn't notice them. I see gnats.

Tonight I'm trying to find a restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, where my mother-in-law might take her friends that are driving through. She's not one to google things herself, but has learned that it is possible. Asking me to google something is like asking a bloodhound to follow the scent on the old shirt. Go find her, girl. Go find Emmy Lou. Awooooo! I'm off.

But it's a tough call. Do I really want to send my mother-in-law to the place with the "chick atmosphere"? Or how about the one that says patrons can "Thrill to memorizing music all night long." That sounds absolutely exhausting to me, no matter how good the music might actually be.

In our town there is a dog grooming place called "Bow's and Bandana's," and I still wince as I drive by. We take 16-year-old Bear there every so often so someone else can shave around his bumpy little body. I knew it might not be the right thing to do to say anything, but when you have an Issue with correctness in language, you think people might want to know, because you would. When I've made a typo in this blog, Ting catches it immediately and I'm always immensely grateful. I would like to know when there is toilet paper stuck to my blog's shoe. But the people at Bow's and Bandana's? Really not an issue for them.

I am torn between admiring that quality and thinking that the sky is falling. Do you know how painful it is for me to leave the title of this post as it is?

actually....

There have been times in the life of this humble blog-ini that I've felt I should take something back. But it's out there, and to make a fuss over something makes it bigger; makes it oni instead of ini.

For example, my first posted version of the last entry ended with "like tossing a salad. A corn salad." Well, I had to get up and out of bed to go change that one. Hair is not like corn salad, however tempting it was to revisit the cornfield at that point. Hair that is like corn salad has worse problems than crop circles.

See, now I've made a fuss.

I try to be impeccable with my word, though, except for the froth of metaphors that my brain generates. (I am picturing a thought brewery, with large metal containers of thought; metaphors form as a frothy by-product of the thoughts and need to be skimmed off every now and then.) (I cannot help it. These pictures form.)

Anyway, when I've apparently been unclear, or if I leave a misconception out there, I feel a need to clear it up. I got several replies and emails, for example, from people who assured me that they haven't seen crop circles on my head. I know that. And now I feel like I was speaking metaphorically, but everyone thought the metaphor was the liquid, when it was actually just froth. I don't actually have crop circles on my head. There are no bald spots; just really thin hair. I am susceptible to hat head, let's say, whether or not I wear a hat. That's all.

So that's cleared up.

Then, too, there is the garden issue. This is less a matter of being unclear as a matter of being flat-out wrong and leading you to believe our mistake.

We were so excited to see the bounty that had sprung forth after the poisoning incident, and it looked like there would be a great variety. Though we were heavy on the large-leafed vines, we were expecting at least cucumber, at least cantaloupe, of course zucchini. I blogged about the wonder of it all.

As it turns out, they are all butternut squash plants. Sure, there are some tomatoes in there, which we are happy for, but the marvel of a volunteer tomato plant doesn't count. Tomatoes are unflagging volunteers; they're like the kid who raises her hand whenever the teacher asks anything.

But a dozen butternut squash plants? Having a dozen butternut squash plants is like owning a dozen ironing boards. It's just...silly.

Come and get one, or two, or three (butternut squash - we only have one ironing board) in a few weeks. Or maybe months. There a lots and lots of them, but they turn out to be the slowest things in the world to mature. They're like humans, for god's sake.

grooming lessons

Most of my life I had crazy thick hair. These two shots, taken over 30 years apart, I submit as evidence.

I would brush out enough to stuff a pillow every other day, and the loss was never visible. But during chemo, all my follicles closed up shop, as you may recall, and I got an answer to that question that comes up when you are brushing your teeth and checking yourself out in the mirror, about what your scalp looks like under that lush mane. Might you have a birthmark up there, maybe in the shape of a heart? Or Block Island. Or, god forbid, Florida.

Turns out there's nothing at all up there, except that little scar from the tin can Kevie threw at me by accident. The suspense about the scalp unveiling was over very quickly, and I was eager for a 6-month shadow to appear.

Some hair came back, staggering across the smoky battleground waving a tattered flag; white of course. But lots of follicles just couldn't handle all that poison, and they up and died on that battleground. My hair is so thin now.

Yesterday Laura and I got caught in the rain while walking our loop. I felt the cool rain on my head, felt it slide down my forehead, then into my eyes. I said, "Close your eyes, La, and just feel the sensation of the rain hitting your scalp." I expected her to be feeling the same kind of gratitude for the heaven-sent coolness on an insanely hot day. But she said, "Um, it hasn't gotten through to my scalp yet, hon." Suddenly the sensation wasn't as soothing.

Ever since chemo, Laura has been my groomer, just like these guys. If she doesn't do a little fluff here and there every few hours, little crop circles have formed and there are vast swaths of corn plowed under. You could for sure see that Florida birthmark if it were there. There just isn't enough hair to cover the whole scalp. It's like twin sheets on a queen-sized bed. What those sheets are doing out in the cornfield, I just can't explain. I guess that's part of the mystery of crop circles.

There is an old saying: "Give a man an ear of corn and he eats for a day. Teach him how to plow a field, and he can eat for life."* Actually, I think it's something about teaching someone how to fish, but I simply cannot and will not bring fish into the queen-sized bed out in the cornfield. Regardless, now that Laura is away so much of the time, she is worried that I am showing up in counseling sessions with crop circles on my head. She has decided I need to learn to cover my baldish spots on my own, and has been teaching me how my hands should move along the back of my scalp in order to hide the thinner spots. Fluff, fluff. I can't see it, but she points out where the crop circles tend to appear. Fluff, fluff. It's a lot like tossing a salad. On the back of my head.

*AND make crop circles