If it smells like a duck . . .

Most women would take it as an insult if they’re husband told them, “go take a shower, you stink.”
I just laughed, stripped, and got in the shower.
He was right.
I’d just spent an hour playing in a big ol’ barn with a herd of dairy cows.
Granted it was one of the cleanest barns I had ever seen – and as a western Sullivan native, I’ve seen my fair share.
That’s precisely why I took the not-so-gentle bit of advice in stride.
Barns smell.
So what.
If you’ve ever had a toilet-training toddler, you know – “everybody poops.” Cows just have to have someone clean up behind them when they do it.
And no matter how good the farmer is at cleaning, it’s impossible to keep up with every bovine bowel movement while you’re busy milking.
Never mind this is an enclosed space (kind of like the unisex bathroom on the top floor of the Democrat), and it’s heated just as well as you would any other place you’d keep your pets.
I can’t say I really smell “barn.”
For 17 years, I didn’t smell cigarette smoke either – it was part of the daily assault on my nostrils.
So when newbies – whether they’re visitors from out of the area or just across the county – start whining about the stink of manure as they drive past a farm, I’m usually confounded.
Sure, I smell liquid manure if the clouds are laying low – who doesn’t? And let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like the eau de chicken poop I’ve gotten a whiff of a time or two.
But when it’s confined to the barn, the coop and the fields, when the place is otherwise immaculate and the folks who live there clean up after a trip to the barn the way a mechanic washes up after he leaves his garage or a newspaper reporter takes a shower after tromping through muddy floodwaters . . . sooooooo what?
Frankly, I left the Weissmann farm up the road from me in Callicoon Center a few weeks ago planning to go back as soon as possible.
Next time, I’ll have Jillian in tow, and I have a feeling she’ll want to spend her time there exactly as I spent my evening visit.
I was the proverbial kid in a candy store.
I picked up handfuls of hay and let the cows literally lick it from my fingers.
I got those delicious shivers down my back as the bumps on the big pink tongue ran over my knuckles.
Kind of makes you think twice about buying tongue from the corner deli, huh?
I scratched furry ears and ran my fingertips over smooth noses.
And when I had to go home, I climbed into my car gleeful . . . albeit stinky.
I’ll just keep it in mind next time Jonathan heads into the basement to change out the cats’ litter boxes.
“Wow, honey, you stink!”

And Then There Was 2

Everybody warns you about the sleepless nights.

When you’re eight months pregnant and spending most of the a.m. hours waddling into a bathroom, you’ve got this voice in the back of your head telling you, “better get that sleep now honey, because once the baby comes . . .”

The first night they sleep all the way through, you don’t.

You’re just on the edge, waiting to jump to your feet at the first hint of a whimper.

The second night, you consider rigging a mirror in the crib to test if they’re still breathing.

By the third, you’re a seasoned pro.

You sleep, with one ear wide open for the faintest cry.

From that night on, nothing can faze you.

You laugh in the face of teething.

You tell the common cold to kiss your toes.

Then it all comes tumbling down.

Keep Reading AFTER the Jump

Cell phone reception not welcome

The screen flashed with a warning as we waited for the feature presentation: “please turn off your cell phones.”
I giggled, whispered to Jonathan, “Why? It’s not like they’re going to ring.”
But across the aisle, the tell-tale blue of a LED screen cast a glow on the face of its owner who had whipped it out of his pocket intent on fulfilling the order.
Jonathan and I shared one of those conspiratorial glances – feeling quite alone in this technological world.
Don’t get me wrong; we are both Gen X to the core – and with that comes a desire to grab onto new technology and ride it until the next wave comes crashing in.
I remember a college friend downloading Napster onto the computer on my dorm room desk in the early days of file sharing, the thrill as I input the name of any song that popped into my head to be answered by dozens upon dozens of people with the same song bouncing around their brains.
When I finally made the jump to digital photography, it was like stepping through the cupboard into Narnia, with a world of alternate colors and strange new approaches to an everyday science.
But living in western Sullivan County, I’ve been well insulated from the cellular world.
I have one, yes, but it sits in my purse most days.
When I venture out to the eastern side of the county, and find myself needing to check in at the office or update Jonathan on my whereabouts, I turn it on to find a small mailbox blinking in the bottom corner.
“You have… six… new… messages,” the mechanical voice tells me.
Six, huh? Whoops.
Constantly on the computer, I expect my friends to slip me an e-mail when they need to reach me.
It’s up-to-date, it’s technological.
It’s easy, even, and my preferred method for getting real work done without the time wasted on small talk while I’m on a tight newspaper deadline.
But the rest of the world seems to rely on their wireless phones the way I grasp for the bottle of soda in the morning, desperate for caffeine to get me going again.
They can’t live just one day without.
I was shocked at the hundreds of people walking around Sesame Place last summer when we took Jillian on a trip, talking to the air, a small piece of plastic clipped to their ears.
“Hang up!” I wanted to yell. “You’re at a water park… with your kids! Are you really going to seal the big deal on your way down the slip and slide?”
I had to wonder the same thing about the man who’d turned his cell phone on for the ride to the Callicoon Theater.
Was he hoping to get in a last-minute conversation as he made the dip out of the Beechwoods into Hortonville?
I could have had one too – if I’d remembered to turn the darn thing on.

Snow reason to like the season

Rumor has it I used to have a much fonder outlook on our current season.
The tip of my nose would take on a bluish tint – pressed as it was against the glass of the picture window.
A few flakes would fly, and I’d go into a whirlwind.
“No school tomorrow! It’s snowing! It’s snowing!”
The dreaded homework long forgotten, I’d start tallying a long list of the what-to-dos for my day of freedom.
I must have been nuts.
Today’s list is even longer - “sleep late” replaced by “rise early” and “make snow-cream cones” with “avoid being creamed by oncoming drivers.”
I’m not a total grinch.
I’m all for a white Christmas.
Snow-capped mountains – at a distance – are a sight to behold.
And there’s nothing like watching little kids bundled up in their puffiest clothes bounding around in a white wonderland . . . provided I do the watching from inside.
Anything else and I’m afraid I retreat to the living room.
Curtains tightly shut, a good book in my lap and the thermostat cranked, I can almost pretend it’s any other time of the year.
There’s just one problem – I hate the cold.
My fingertips ache at the hint from the weatherman that the mercury’s headed down, and my toes curl up from the ends of my flip flops into nervous little balls.
Winter’s coming, they very nearly shout at me, it’s time to run!
Go south, young lady, they demand.
The thing is, I don’t ski or snowboard.
I don’t snowmobile or ice skate.
I could try, I guess, but my toes would rather walk the picket line.
My hobbies were fashioned for a friendlier climate.
No one writes romantic poetry about reading on the front porch on a frosty winter’s eve.
And the batteries of my camera go on strike as the nickel hydride inside turns to slush.
Worst of all, those glorious snow day cancellations have been replaced by white knuckled trips to and fro, with a toddler strapped in the back seat.
There she sits, her eyes fixed on the road ahead, shouting out from her carseat as the snow plow passes with its yellow lights flashing.
“Snow truck, Mommy! It’s snowing! It’s snowing!”

As plain as the nose on my face

The first thing I noticed was the giant schnozzola in the upper right quadrant of the screen.
That’s the worst part of having a picture of yourself slipped into an e-mail and sent via the World Wide Web right to your home PC.
To retain quality, the picture must be colossal, and this one certainly fit the bill.
It was me, in full color, with Jillian at a holiday event in Callicoon.
According to my mother, I was supposed to notice the way I was watching Jillian as she smeared glue across a foam Santa hat.
She’d been struck by the purity in the glance, pride oozing from beneath my lashes the way the mountain of Elmer’s was dripping across Jillian’s masterpiece.
The goo has long since dried, and the hat had pride of place on our tree this year.
So I confess I took little notice of my munchkin trying her hand at Christmas crafts at the Delaware Youth Center.
Instead I’d zoned in on the honker in the behemoth picture across my computer screen.
I suppose there are benefits to prodigious proboscis.
Air, for one, is free.
And to have a nose for news is – putting it mildly – good for business.
But staring at one’s self on a computer screen?
People are going to start thinking Carly Simon was singing about me.
So my New Year’s resolutions are easy this year.
Forget about the small . . . and not-so-small . . . stuff.
Remember, even the Titanic sunk.
People have conquered Everest.
And lest we forget, Britney Spears was once America’s sweetheart.
Mountains can become molehills just as quickly.
Bathroom scales – like pots – prefer to remain unnoticed.
Treat them right, and they’ll respond in kind.
As for debts, they have a full year to dwindle before the spirit runs away with you again.
And, by the way, Photoshop works with wonders with the shadows that enhance the bulbous qualities of a sizable snoot.