Along Came Molly

Named for the patron saint of field artillery, Molly Pitcher came to us in May of 2004, a few months after I found gainful employment – or at least the next best thing – at a glass and door company in Tacoma, WA.  Well, technically in Tacoma, being an international company, they were located in the Port of Tacoma, which was five minutes from my house, the commute being the best thing about the job. 

    Working customer service for a less-than-excellent wage while being screamed at by end-users and home store employees due to company policies that involved not having a quality product, not having that product on time and lying about why we didn’t have that product on time was not the best time of my life or a terrific use of my Master’s Degree in Folklore.  I happen to think teaching or researching or doing museum or archival work or any number of other things would be a great use of my MA, but the trick with a Folklore degree is convincing other people of that.  And there is where I suck.

    And did I mention the number of liberal arts degrees per square foot in WA?  Only once?  Well, there are many.  So, despite the fact that I can actually entrance a classroom, make the middle ages interesting by telling the Legend of the Wandering Jew, the Wild Hunt, and Pope Joan and tying those to present events, actually convincing people who don’t know me that I’d be good it is something else entirely.  I saw on the net today that someone’s started submitting his resume as giant candy bar wrappers.  Maybe I should have done mine on vellum. 

    Not that I could afford vellum.  Or parchment.  Or groceries, because I kept putting things like car repairs, medical bills, books, books, books, DVDs, food, knick knacks and other necessities on credit cards.  Ok, I bought a lot of crap that I couldn’t really justify and am still paying for and will be paying for into my next life on credit cards because all of my income was going to pay off the credit cards because I kept having jobs that didn’t pay and didn’t have health insurance and putting medical bills and car repairs – the advantage to driving an ’89 Toyota is that nobody wants to steal it, the disadvantage is that it’s an ’89 Toyota – on my credit cards.[1]

    Anywho, the point of the crappy job was that it did offer health insurance and a modicum of paid vacation and holidays and meant that I could devote myself to finding a job I wanted rather than just finding any job, which is what my time since arriving in WA had been spent doing.  Well, that and fixing holes in the fence, making sure Loki didn’t caryr the dead squirrel she found in the yard into the house and with Laurel trying to learn the ins and outs of our new locale. 

    We also got a name for ourselves with the neighbours.  We walked Loki most nights and she retained her obstreperous habits around other dogs in the land of cul-de-sacs[2] but they got used to that.  What led to the smiling and waving from neighbours and random drivers was Ichabod.  Who generally insisted on walking with us.  Either a little ahead or a little behind, but noticeably with.  Mallory often came too.  I guess there are worse things to be known for. 

    Like not actually being able to keep the dogs behind the six-foot wooden fence.

Laurel has always been much better at people and work than I.  Skill, native talent, whatever, she was settling in and on the fast-track to running half of Western State Hospital.  Not on the fast-track to making anywhere close to the money she should be for what she does and how well she does it, but you can’t have everything. 

    One of the things she’s good at is making friends.  One of the friends is the kind of person I hate:  Taking a Ph.D. while working full time and doing well at both as in addition keeping her marriage to an active-duty serviceman going.  The longest relationship I’ve ever had with a person of the opposite sex has only lasted about six months and, willingly or not, I shed friendships like reptiles do skin.  People who can manage all of these things make me sick.

    The one thing this friend couldn’t handle while doing everything she was doing and having a husband who was only around part-time was the dog he got at the pound to keep her company. 

    Unfortunately for my self-image, this speaks more to her being sane than it does to a lack of ability. She’s probably part Italian Greyhound, part blonde Labrador.  With all the energy of both.  Or several. 

    Laurel’s friend had what amounted to two full-time jobs and an unfenced yard.  She was going to have to take the dog back to the pound.  We couldn’t stand that.

    When we met Molly she was six months old.  I honestly can’t remember if I came home to the sight of a savaged couch and cat bed with stuffing in three dimensions before she knocked me down the stairs, and then repeated the action running up to see why I was cursing and crying – 9 years later my coccyx still hurts at times -- or after.  I think we got a note from Mallory threatening to move out if we brought anything else home.

    Molly came into our lives knowing how to sit, lie down, shake and ask to go outside.  She rapidly learned how, in addition to eating the couch, to open the sliding glass door in from the back yard, track mud across the dining room, living room, up the stairs, into a bedroom, leap on top of whomever she was stalking and run back the way she’d come, cleaning off the last of the mud as she went.

    Laurel rapidly learned that it was cheaper to buy a carpet shampooer than to keep renting one.  And the effect was only temporary regardless.

    We also learned that a six-foot high fence didn’t actually pose a challenge.  And that Loki was perfectly capable of clawing her way through a fence she couldn’t go over. 

    We came home one night to discover that our next door neighbour had not only broken into our backyard to get the dogs back in – Molly could not be caught, but would follow Loki who knew a friendly guy when she saw one – but had fixed the board Loki had “removed” to allow them egress.  She never did this kind of thing before Molly came along.

    The really fun night was the one that had me kneeling in the dark nailing a stop-gap with scrap wood over a big hole next to the garage[3] and Laurel driving around the area where she ran the dogs – I will try to comment on her insanity as little as possible – calling for them.  Molly reappeared while I was nailing and swearing and Laurel found Loki en route so all ended well. 

    And I had time on my ½ hour lunch break to come home and make sure the dogs were still in the yard.  Or discover that we had to buy more lattice to nail up in yet another place Molly had found to get over the fence. 

    We usually found out she’d gone over because she’d meet me in the driveway when I got home, so she wasn’t running off.  She just seemed to enjoy having control over her environment. 

    Or giving us heartattacks.

    By the time I moved out of the house in 2011, better than ¾ of the ½ acre of fencing was topped up by lattice.  Including the section that went into the neighbour’s yard.  The nice man who repaired our fence died and another nice man moved into.  How nice I learned when he told me a story. 

    Dennis had no pets, but was very friendly to all of ours.  Including not getting upset at Ichabod’s fondness for his flower garden.  It was apparently balanced by watching a cat do the standard cat thing of walking a few feet and falling over.  Then rolling around on his back in the wet grass after a rain.  However, the story was not about my cat and went something like this:

    “I kept finding dog crap in my yard.”  Which was fenced on all sides, so this was kind of a surprise.  “I’d had my daughter’s dog over so I thought maybe I just hadn’t got everything cleaned up, but it kept showing up.  Then one day I looked out my back door and there was Molly trotting across my yard.  She saw me, gave me this look like ‘What are you doing here?’ and jumped over the fence back into your yard.”

    That’s not the kind of thing you notice happening unless you see it.  I just thought we were having really efficient walks.  When I left her in the house while I went to buy more lattice, she jumped into the kitchen sink and took down the blinds at that window.  By this time she was five and we’d thought she would be settling down.

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[1] Did I mention that almost everyone I know who’s bought a new house has had the heater go out the first time they turned it on in the winter?  At least once one of the repair guys showed us how to work the gas fireplace we could get the house into the low 60s (and Mallory discovered the altar at which she worshipped).

[2] The best way to describe the area of Spanaway, WA that we lived in was as a descending spiral of cul-de-sacs.  Which is even more confusing than it sounds: To get there from one direction you turned right off a mainish street.  And turned right.  And turned right.  And turned right.  And, if memory serves, turned right once or twice more.  You had to turn right on the 2^nd 192^nd, not the first.  And there were people just down the road from us who shared fences with people that they would have actually had to go a mile around to knock on their front door.  Our yard backed on a private road that was infested with teenagers who rode up and down and up and down and up and down and up and.... in later years it went on so much that dogs actually stopped barking.  Lovely house though, big yard if you want to make an offer. 

[3] Speaking from long experience, this is probably the hardest place to nail up boards.  Especially in the dark.  Beneath the outside light that refused to stay on for any length of time no matter the age of the bulb.

Everything Is Temporary

Everything Is Temporary

The drive itself took two days.  My father, much to my unending relief – seriously, the idea still panics me – drove the moving truck.  I had my faithful, ’89 Toyota Corolla station wagon, my suitcase, a laundry basket full of plants, a cooler of soda and snacks, my backpack, a tape player,[1] tapes, microcassette recorder, Loki’s bed, Loki, Ichabod, Mallory and catbox– Dad may have had it easier with the 27 foot van. 

Loki, being a dog enjoys car travel, but was still a little stressed over the whole business, not to mention seriously cramped and a little warm.  She did her best. 

Ichabod is a pretty good traveler for a cat.  As long as he could sit in the plant he nearly killed several times in Billings – he didn’t pee in it, but he startles easily and would occasionally go flying out of it, leaving dirt and plant pieces around – or on Loki’s bed, he was fine. 

Mallory hates to travel.  She roams around the car crying, trying to sit on the dashboard, steering wheel, under the accelerator, my head, etc.  She also seemed to resent that Ichabod was not upset and would periodically pick fights with him, in which Loki would feel the need to intervene.  At least there was no chance whatsoever of me falling asleep at the wheel and as the parental units were in the lead, freeing me from having to pay attention to exits; I was generally able to stay in the correct lane.  On the second morning, Mom suggested catnip.  Aside from a brief fight over who got it first, Mallory was (and is) a much more pleasant traveler while stoned.

Hotels were also fun. For some value of the word fun.  This was actually an ongoing issue.  When we’d hit rest stops, it was necessary to get Loki out for a walk.  Somewhere in Washington State, Mallory fortunately decided to go up a tree when she got free, rather than across the highway.  That was the scariest moment of my life until she got loose at a hotel in Tacoma.  Ichabod only escaped once, but ultimately we all made it to the new house in Spanaway. 

Where Loki promptly claimed the master bedroom for Laurel.  I liked the view in mine better anyway, so I was able to be amused when she walked in that room and peed on the floor. 

Things moved fairly normally after that.  Loki found a dead squirrel in the yard.  I found and patched some holes in the fence and eventually found a part-time job and then some temp jobs, none of which thrilled me, but sort of paid the bills.  Much to my surprise, was even harder to get any kind of teaching job (or any kind of job at all) with a Master’s degree in Folklore in Washington State than in Montana.  Thinking about it logically, that shouldn’t have come as a surprise, there are, after all, probably more liberal arts majors per square foot here than anywhere outside an actual liberal arts college.  But it did.  And a crushing disappointment.

I eventually settled into a soul-sucking customer service job that provided health insurance after six months and not much else.  I was almost able to keep my head above water financially and to hide the times I couldn’t.  And most mornings I was able to get up and go in.

The problem wasn’t really that the company was pretty crappy to work for.  Or that one rapidly learned that once in customer service, always in customer service as the very obviously least valued members of the greater whole.  It wasn’t that the pay was not excellent or that I’m pretty sure my manager was trying to get me to quit.

It was all of these things.  And I would have left at the drop of a hat had I somewhere else to go.  It was that I put nearly all my energy into hating the job and everything tied to it – including myself, my lack of accomplishment in my life and my unfinishable Ph.D. thesis.  Because of this focus, the energy and effort I thought I was putting into the areas of my life I considered important – thesis, job-hunting, writing, family – tended to be half-assed at best, though I didn’t realize it at the time. 

Not that it was all bad.  I made a couple of really good friends there and learned some skills regarding home repair and various product types that are still treating me well.  I had a fairly set schedule and it was better than living in a cardboard box.

Laurel and I explored a bit, went to movies, ate out, became better at our own relationship.  Walked Loki and got a name in the neighbourhood for Ichabod, who ran when he saw people coming, but otherwise would faithfully join us on our walks.  We hope the people who would point and wave as they drove past thought this was a good thing.

The job also had one major advantage.  It was less than ten-minutes from the house.  In Wyoming this was a long distance, in Montana around average.  In Washington it’s a miracle.  And shortly after I took the job in February of 2004 it became a necessity.  Because in May of that year…

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[1] I’m a broke luddite with an aging car, I do what I do.

III

Once Upon a Time

Which recalls to mind another time in that same place.  For a town in the middle of Wyoming, bounded by mountains on all sides, with a canyon running out in one direction where the Big Horn River becomes the Wind, Thermopolis has one very lovely river running through.  Especially in the areas far enough from the Hot Springs not to be littered with sulfur foam.  Because its more or less in the middle of nowhere, the water is still reasonably pristine and fishing is a common sport, though both banks in the Canyon are First Nation’s land, so one must be careful where one fishes or partakes in water sports.

Nonetheless, a favourite summer pastime, remembered fondly even by me, who generally has to be dragged out of the house by my hair, was canoeing.  We would take the canoes down to the mouth of the canyon having first parked another car at the point where we planned to stop[1].  From there we’d set out, following the course of the river through sights I can barely remember now, but am increasingly nostalgic for.  Maybe someday when Laurel has children we can all go back there and repeat the journeys.

What writing this has called to mind is our dog Ebony.  The sweet, dachapoo with the low IQ and total failure to understand that poodles were originally bred as water dogs.  The Germans would send them into lakes and ponds after game.[2]  I was elsewhere when the first incident happened, but while Ebony loved to canoe, loved to go anywhere with anyone of us at any time really, evidently on her first trip she leapt with abandon into the river[3], and while a perfectly capable swimmer, promptly freaked out at its resemblance to a cold bath and had to be rescued.

There was another time I recall when we got out to eat lunch[4] and after about five minutes heard her barking frantically.  When she’d jumped out of the canoe, she’d come out about three feet from where she could easily climb to shore and while perfectly capable of swimming those three feet, wouldn’t stop clinging to the side of the canoe to make it to shore.

However, the most memorable moment was the time we were out with our very close family friends from Colorado, who have the distinct characteristic of being quite tall.  “Big” Jon tops 6’ 5” and Little Jon is not far behind.  One day the eight of us plus Ebony were out when, while maneuvering between bridge pylons, one canoe capsized. At 5’ 8”, the water wasn’t quite up to my chest, so there was no actual danger.  It was very wet.

Ebony disproved all my comments about her intelligence by promptly swimming over to Big Jon and climbing up to the top of his head, thus rapidly achieving the highest and safest point.  As many of the canoe trips have devolved into pouring rain and other things that left us soaking wet, this event, as part of the general fun and games for my high school graduation was just par for the course and has become part of our family lore. 

However, it deserves noting here ‘cause it’s also wicked funny.

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[1] Although there were days when this didn’t work out as planned.  But fortunately it’s a very small town and no one ever made me walk to get the car.

[2] I can’t remember where I saw or read it so am utterly failing in my duty to cite, but evidently the goofy haircut for which poodles are famous was to keep their joints and organs warm whilst diving into cold German waters after fallen birds.

[3] To chase some cows on the riverbank if I recall correctly.

[4] As fate would have it, disturbingly down wind from the last resting place of a riverbank cow.

Wyoming Interlude

Wyoming Interlude

The trick in following your sister to a new town for a new job[1] is all in the scheduling.  We had to be out of the duplex by the end of August, Laurel’s job started September 1^st but we couldn’t close on the house until September 15^th.  This meant that we cleared out the place, deposited it all in a storage unit except what she took with her to Seattle and what I needed for two weeks in Thermopolis, Wyoming[2] and then we went our separate ways.

This was especially hard on Loki, who watched her kennel go to Goodwill and her “mommy” drive off while I loaded her in the car and went a different way.  She’s usually a great traveler,[3] but this time she insisted I stop the car and let her out at the first possible turn out.  This is more interesting than it should be when you have two cats in the car who aren’t exactly thrilled to be there.  And then just walked around refusing to “do” anything.

Shortly after that, she knocked Mallory down from where she was perched, letting me know in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want to be driving.  Aside from chasing Mally when Ichabod’s picking on her, Loki was quite protective of this cat[4], so that’s a real sign of her upset.  Until the moment she saw Laurel again[5], Loki did her best not to let me out of her sight.  I’m not as good as Laurel is, but I am at least a fair second best and more familiar than anyone else.

Due to the set up of my parents’ house, which was, ironically for the ease of the pets we grew up with, and incorporated a pet flap into the back of the house, the cats had to be locked in the basement pretty much all the time, unless watched very closely, and all four of us wound up sleeping there at night.

I alternated between trying to figure out some way to get myself set up for finding work when I got to Washington State, without yet effectively being aware of my inability to present myself well on paper[6] and revisiting Thermopolis itself. 

Growing up there wasn’t always fun.  I was too smart for my own good and too uncomfortable with myself for anyone else’s.  I was one of those girls who looks in the mirror and sees someone who appears to be reasonably attractive, but because guys only notice her as someone to help with their English homework, assumed she must be ugly.  This led to some unfortunate relationship decisions that will not be discussed here, or with luck, anywhere else.

It was and is, a small town[7] which is not always the easiest place to grow up.  But at the same time it was safe and secure.  I faced far more danger from the risk of falling off the boulders, hills and trees I spent the days playing than I did from people.  This is not to say those problems are absent in Thermopolis, but, as is typical of towns that size, aside from petty theft and drinking, most of the violence is domestic.  This doesn’t make it any less sad, but when you grow up in a happy family, it does make is safer.

The name Thermopolis comes from the Greek; Thermo = Hot, Polis = City.  It’s not entirely accurate, but I suspect whatever is Greek for “small town” is probably less poetic. This is because it lies on the same fault line as Yellowstone and therefore has what is billed as “the world’s largest mineral hot springs.”  This is not technically a misnomer, as among the mineral hot springs that make up a significant portion of Hot Springs State Park http://www.thermopolis.com/WebPage33.aspx is a structure built up of mineral deposits to a height several stories above the ground.  This was one of my favourite places as a child and teenager.  Far from the maddening crowd as it were, I could be alone without being lonely and wander through the various formations that have formed as a result of all the minerals floating around.

              The town has a Buffalo pasture[8] with real bison – hint, the fences are to keep people out, not the bison in – with a “Devil’s Punchbowl”[9] and several other nifty sights.  All the swimming pools in town are warm, mineral springs, which makes for the fun of being able to swim outside in the winter.  It also meant that our high school swim team prodded buttock in meets.

              This is all relevant because one of the things I did while I was there was walk Hoagie and Loki down by the Wind/Big Horn River, which flows through town.  Because it flows in close proximity to the mineral hot springs, there are numerous areas where the banks have all the usual stuff as well as some mineral run off.  As much as I can get nostalgic about the smell of sulfur, when two dogs frolic in the same water, it leads to two previously very happy dogs under the hose in the backyard before they’re allowed back in the house.  Still, they don’t make the connection.

              The town also has a wonderful little history museum, which is unusually good and well-put=together for its size, http://hschistory.org/.  I really like to visit in when I get the chance.

              In other words, it’s a great place to be from, even if I can’t really imagine going back there to live after having lived in Albuquerque, Billings, Glacier Park, Crater Lake, St. John’s, Newfoundland and now Washington state – variety seems to make the beauty more alluring, but the fact that almost everything there closes by 8p.m. harder to bear.  Still, it was very welcoming and warm while we waited until the time was right for us to go back to Billings and with the – utterly and completely invaluable assistance of Laurel’s friend Jerry and her brother whose name I can’t remember – load up the truck and head out the next day for the adventures waiting in Spanaway, WA.

         Before we left, many funny things happened.  One moreso than most.

              Because this was an unfamiliar area, any time the cats were outside, it had to be under close supervision.  Loki was ok, because Mom built a fence for Hoagie so that he could play in the whole yard.[10]  A fence is nothing to a cat, so there were steps that needed to be taken.  Mally was fairly easy as she would

very

slowly

explore

the

yard

and be out for about half an hour before you could see her getting ready to go over the wall.  So, she’d get about half an hour outside every couple of days.  Not enough for her, but sufficient to keep the crying down to a minimum.

              Ichabod, as in all things, is another story entirely.  His first move upon being let outside was to run for the fence and go over before he could be caught.  This was a lesson learned the hard way the first time I brought him to Thermopolis.  Obviously, he came back, but there were some worrying moments.  Ever since then, the process has been thusly:

              I have one of Hoagie’s old harnesses, which I also use when taking Ichabod to the vet.  The harness itself scares him and therefore keeps him a little more sedate than usual.  Then I would hook up a 100-ft leash I got for Hoagie before Mom finished the fence to my parents drying line. There was another rope lead I could hook onto either end, giving him about two hundred feet.  The other advantage of this set up was that he’d slink around for quite a while before he got used to the umbilicus, meaning that I didn’t have to watch him every second and could read, do laundry or make dinner.

              One night while making dinner, I realized I needed to watch him a little more closely than I was.  Hoagie and Ichabod were both out in the back hanging out.  I was looking out the kitchen window every couple of minutes just be sure.  I don’t know whether I heard or saw something, but suddenly I went very quickly to the back door. 

              Where I found both animals, looking a little frazzled.  Ichabod sans harness.  Which was hanging from one of the trees. 

              I don’t know.  I wish I did.  They’re not talking.

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[1] Ok, when you’re doing it for her job with no idea what you’re going to do once you get there, it’s a little strange, but my ability to sort out my life is strange at best.

[2] Which, while a little unexciting to live in as a person growing up, is really a fairly nifty little town.  Especially if you’re visiting. 

[3] She’s a dog.  It’s a car. 

[4] I mean, actually coming and getting people and letting them know that Mally is crying at the door to be let in and no-one has noticed. 

[5] At which point she promptly forgot I existed.

[6] The realization of this has come as something of a surprise to me, as I have always blindly assumed that I am good at writing due to some awards won as a child and teenager, although one would think that the lack of accolades as I’ve aged would have taught me that I needed to make some changes.  This applies to both fictional writing and my CV/resumes.  Too much telling, not enough showing.  Still working on that.  As you can see.

[7] One of the standing jokes about Wyoming towns is that the population is always lower than the elevation.  This is true for Thermop:  Pop somewhere around 3000, elev close to 5000.  Probably only about 10 towns break this rule.  One of which is Casper, which, contrary to popular belief is NOT the capital of WY.  Cheyenne is.

[8] Ok, technically Bison, but the name has been in place too long for accuracy to outweigh truth.

[9] Wicked deep mineral formation where the limestone has sort of swirled down into a deep pit.

[10] This is what I meant about him being her favourite.