What Makes Me Laugh

I’m multitasking, which means that I’m writing this blog at the same time that I’m trying to cook at the same time that I’m chuckling about Doug’s crossword clues so I hope it comes out right.

Last night Doug was doing the crossword puzzle from the Valierian, my hometown newspaper. I asked my parents for a subscription because it just might be (unintentionally) the world’s funniest newspaper. A few weeks ago they featured a long article on the new crosswalk in town. You get the picture.

So, Doug’s doing the crossword and he says, “These are the worst crossword clues I’ve ever seen.”

“Really? What are they?”

He looks over at me with the glasses slightly tilted down his nose.

“Do you know a four letter word for a dwarf buffalo?”

“No. Can’t say I know of any dwarf buffalos.”

“How ’bout a seven letter word for reused mouthwash?”

“Reused mouthwash? Seriously?”

I couldn’t stop laughing thinking about it. The correct answer was “gurgled” in case it ever comes your way. We still don’t know the answer for the dwarf buffalo.

On our refrigerator is a New Yorker cartoon with a woman sitting on a couch, talking to a man standing in the corner of a living room. The caption says, “After your tomato plants, you have nothing left over for me.”

We laugh about this cartoon but there is a grain of truth there. Doug spent hours this summer growing the perfect tomatoes. Obsessed with soil acidity, organic material, drip watering systems, growing seasons, planting depth, systems for tying the tomato up above the ground, he’s now completed the final harvest. Tonight he gathered the last of them because it’s supposed to snow in the mountains two to five inches, and that means a frost too deep for any plastic-covered tomatoes to bear. So, in honor of Doug’s hard work, and his beautiful harvest, I’m showcasing his photography. Wish you all could taste our luscious, home grown tomatoes too.

We’re watching television, and a commercial for the cartoon Snow White comes on.

Doug says, completely deadpan, “I had the hots for Snow White.”

“You did?” I laugh. “I never knew this! How old were you?”

“Four or five,” he says.

And I laugh some more.

Got a flu shot today (the regular kind) so had to post this photo my sister e-mailed me. It’s Swine Flu paranoia gone too far. And I had to laugh.

Frankly, I would rather have a root canal than take my cats to the vet. My cats would rather I have a root canal then go to the vet. They are not like my friend Leah’s dog who acts as if the vet’s office is the best doggy cocktail party he’s ever been to.

Pant pant pant, “Hi! Hi! Hey, what are you here for? Hi! Hi!” Lick, nuzzle, lick, “Oh yeah? Wow, radical cut dude. Were you in the backcountry when you got that injury? Good luck with that. I’m just here for the shots. Nothing epic. Hi! Hi! Slobber. Slobber. Slobber. Woof!”

Whereas, cats really focus their attention on the pain and displeasure. It starts in the car on the trip over.

Most pitiful meow. “Take me back, please? Please? Please?”

Pause for effect.

“You said you loved me this morning. You said I was a good cat. Meow. Then you pushed me into a tiny box and now you’re letting a stranger drag me out to squeeze my bladder. How would you like to have your bladder squeezed?  Meow. Maybe I’ll walk on you in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping and put a front paw on your bladder. Then you’ll know how I feel. Meow.”

By the time I arrive at the vet’s office, I usually look like a sweaty hairball who feels almost as tortured as my cat from having to run around the house with a towel, grab a squirming animal, and then stuffing it into a carrier without hurting it.

I don’t think it’s just me, one time I overheard a woman explain,

“I’m sorry I’m late. My husband had to vaccuum underneath the bed to get her out.”

This morning Doug had vet duty, and I was quite relieved. I can weep at the vet’s office at the first sign of a diagnosis.

“It’s herpes?” I sob. “Really? My cats aren’t even sexually active!”

Then I bawl the entire way home. “I’m so sorry you have allergies Cocoa. So sorry!”

Who knows why, but I am always so close to complete emotional breakdown at the veterinary clinic that I now insist that Doug goes with me.

I was nervous when he called with an update this morning.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“She has a urinary tract infection,” he said. “The vet said her bladder was small and she wasn’t constipated. I can’t believe he can tell all that just by feel. I told him I wish I could tell that by feel, and he said that when he first learned how to do it in vet school he thought it was so cool that he’d walk around just feeling cat’s bladders.”

And that made me laugh.

The bus drops me off in front of the Montana State University student union every morning, and I walk the mile downtown to work. For some reason they don’t have the downtown bus timed to pick up the Livingston commuters, but no matter, I could use the walk.

The walk through campus in the morning makes me feel like I’m in college again —students streaming toward me,  the nip of fall in the air, odd statuary. And as I walk through the off campus housing, a few signs that wild times are still alive and well.

This morning I passed by the following items on the sidewalk of 7th Street:

• Five empty Busch Light beer cans
• A splotch of sticky red liquid (wine or paint?)
• One pair of women’s cotton underwear

And I had to laugh.

On Tuesday I was waiting for the bus to take me home, reading a book, and checking my watch every few minutes.

My fellow commuters were stretched out on the university’s lawn, plugged into ipods or blackberries or books. The bus was late, but they didn’t seem too concerned.

I, on the other hand, had just walked like an Olympic speed walker for a little over a mile to get to the bus stop on time and my heart rate wasn’t down to a normal level. I watched my fellow travelers for cues as to whether to be alarmed, but they seemed relaxed. Finally, fifteen minutes after the scheduled departure time another bus pulled up to pick up passengers and a woman approached the driver.

“Did you ask her about the Livingston bus?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “The driver got lost. He’ll be here soon.”

“He got lost?” I repeated back to her. “Lost?”

This might be possible in Seattle, or Los Angeles, or somewhere a hell of a lot more urban than Bozeman, but if you’ve been in Bozeman, Montana for more than a day you’ve probably seen the whole town, or at least the main routes.

We all stood around chuckling at the thought of someone lost in Bozeman and legitimately worried about our trip home. When the bus arrived a woman immediately said to the pushing-sixty-year-old driver, “We’re going to Livingston. Exit 330.”

“I’ve only been there once,” he said. “Last year, so you may have to give me directions.”

Directions? In a town where you can make approximately two right turns and get to the Interstate that will take you directly to Livingston? I couldn’t help myself. I had to laugh. We all did.

Once he picked up speed on the Interstate I thought our worries were over, but I was wrong. He hit the tight curves in the canyon too fast and we all swung back and forth across the leather seats like we were on a carnival ride. For some reason, this sparked another round of giggles among us, and we laughed for a good ten minutes about our driver’s initiation to the Livingston commute.

Montana isn’t a state known for its public transportation system. People live in hundreds, not tens, of miles from each other, and most places aren’t served by either Greyhound or Amtrak. I shouldn’t complain about the bus – it is after all an incredible free perk for commuters who travel to work the 25 miles between Bozeman and Livingston.

And it’s also a remedy for people who are driving impaired. I joke to Doug that you can tell who in town has had his license jerked for a DUI. He’s riding a bike past our house, in a 30 mph wind, gripping his cowboy hat in one hand, and pedalling fast with his faded cowboy boots. He’s clearly not a recreational mountain biker. He’s in need of a bus.

All I can figure is sometimes we all need to be slowed down a little bit, or maybe even lost.

The other morning I stuck my head out of the back door to call in the cats before I left for work and got a whiff of eau de skunk. Uh. Oh.

I scanned the yard and since it was daylight I figured the skunk had just left us a little scent tag to say hi.

After work we discussed the eau de skunk with our neighbor who confirmed the odor had made it past our fence onto her property. Doug said, “Huh. I wonder if it’s our compost? It has been kind of ripe lately.”

Sure enough. At 10 p.m. that night I opened the back door to call the cats in again and there was the skunk, sniffing and pawing its way through the compost pile, its huge tail straight in the air and its rearend facing toward me about 10 feet away. I quickly closed the door.

‘Um,” I said to Doug. “Skunk. Backyard. Compost.”

“Are the cats in?”

“Nope,” I said, now faced with a different problem looming. How do I get the cats to come in without them encountering Mr. Pepé and getting his eau de skunk all over them and me?

I cautiously opened the door again and made a throaty whispered sound, “Peaches! Cocoa!” The skunk didn’t seem to mind my whisper and kept on rooting around in leftover potato peels. Fortunately, when Peaches rounded the corner she didn’t even notice him and popped right through the door. Phew! I thought. One down, one more to go.

I walked to the front door to call Cocoa when I heard Doug at the back door scream, “Cocoa, no! NO! GET AWAY FROM THERE COCOA!”

I ran to the back door afraid of what I was going to find when I got there.

Doug looked a little pale. “I chased her off,” he said. “But she was heading right for him.”

“How close did she get?”

“Five feet – she just missed him. You better get her in!”

This is actually no easy task, which is why it is left up to me. Cocoa pretends to have a hearing problem when she hears me calling her. In other words, outside she’s deaf. Inside she jumps when a pin drops. So, I went to the front door to call for her again and got out the big guns. The can of wet cat food. A few taps with the fingernails and the  ripping sound of the tin can opening at a novel time of day did it. Bingo! She slipped inside.

Now that the cats were safely away from the skunk, we tried to decide what to do with the skunk. We love animals (Doug even takes out spiders in a jar to release them outside) so no trapping or killing for this pretty little skunk, but we didn’t want him to hang out in our backyard. It was our fault for not covering up the compost, but that would have to wait for morning. Right then we didn’t want him to stay snuffing around all night around the tomatoes.

I suggested a faint mist of bear spray. Doug was concerned that it would kill him. He suggested clapping and yelling. I concurred. So there we were, at 10 p.m. yelling at a skunk in the backyard, who promptly runs to the front porch and sticks his head in the hole under the porch (where are cats go to find shelter). At this point it’s lucky that the neighbors didn’t call the cops because Doug is loudly jumping up and down on the porch to try and discourage the skunk from hiding underneath it.

Doug yells to me to go inside and peek out the window to see if the skunk is headed for other cover. So I do, and soon I see the bushy tail trot off to the lilac bush where he stayed while Doug tried to cover up the hole in the porch and the compost.

He was a nice little fella, really. He could have sprayed all of us if he had felt like it. Plus, I’d never seen a skunk up close. They are quite beautiful. Doug said he heard they made good pets. I said you’d probably have to remove the scent glands. He said he’d hold the skunk while I removed the scent glands. I said that’s ok.

It’s been a few nights since we covered the compost and the skunk seems to have found more fertile feeding grounds. To tell you the truth, I kind of miss the smelly bugger and I think the cats might too.

It just might eat you! My mom sent me this photo. It makes me laugh every time I look at it. It’s of a Maine Coon, the same breed as my cats, but obviously has a larger frame. My first thought when I saw it was, “This cat needs its own bed. No sharing.”

If I were to describe our life in August  in one word it would be: Mania.

It’s the time of year when you arrive home from work to 20 pounds of scrubbed cucumbers, and stand bleary-eyed past midnight, stuffing the last of the cukes in jars with garlic and dill to bathe them with boiling vinegar. About that time you reach a point of tired where you’re not sure you did everything right. “Did I do my math?” you ask. “Is 4/8ths into 5/6ths two tablespoons?”

It’s a time of great abundance, when the berries have finally ripened, and you have to use all of your digits to count the tomatoes on the vine. For a gardener, it’s bliss, but for the cook, it’s sheer panic. Nothing can be wasted. None of this goodness can be lost. Because if you have to look at a sad, mealy Albertson’s tomato in January instead of popping open a can of the most fragrant tomato sauce from your garden, you may really have to be committed to Warm Springs, Montana’s mental health hospital (aka insane asylum)- terrible name, isn’t it? It just says sedatives to me in an evil voice — “not hot, not cold, just the way you like it … yes.”

The weather, finally warm enough to be painful, gives you the energy to move mountains. Run a 5k race in the morning and make huckleberry jam all afternoon? No problem! Organize an entire room full of sheet music and musical equipment in a few hours? Pshaw! Stay up until the wee hours of the morning finishing a good book and then work a full eight hours? Peanuts!

You might do all of this and feel a wee bit of tiredness setting in, so beware of the second wind. That’s when you start to get stupid and buy a full box of peaches, ripen them immediately and then call your mother in a panic to find out how she cans them. “You do the medium syrup?” you ask, trying to sound like you know what that is, “And then what? Rub a spatula around the side to get the bubbles out? That’s important?”

She tried to warn you. She bought a case of canned tomatoes from the store for you — just to keep you from going through this every August. But you wouldn’t listen, and then you were hooked. Hooked on the taste of homemade jam and syrup and salsa, and you weren’t going back — not to Heinz, not to Smuckers, not to Old El Paso, not even to Vlasic.

But you can take it too far. Now you’ve graduated to sourkraut and sweet and sour cabbage and pickled beets. Things you wouldn’t touch as a child. You discuss buying a pressure canner with your spouse, so you can do beans too. What’s next? Making your own yogurt? How far can this go?

As you look at the pile of peaches on your kitchen counter, ready to be washed and bathed in boiling water, you think maybe just maybe you’ve hit your limit, gone too far, done too much, and then you realize it’s August, and you’re Super Woman, and no one will stop you until you’ve made enough jam to feed an army. An army of two.