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Just Being Objective . . . It Was the Best Ever

Anyone who thinks they can step back from judging a performance that included their kid needs to take a cold can of soda and place it directly on the back of the neck.

Sunday’s tractor parade was the best ever.

Yeowwwch, that was cold.

Yes, it is with complete bias that I pass judgement this year on my favorite of all of the country fairs and festivals of a Sullivan County summer.

My kid was in the parade this year, how could it not have been good?

True, she co-opted the lap already filled by her cousin, J-P. True, she was just one of hundreds of people sitting atop farm equipment new and old puttering down Main Street.

But with great-uncles Mike and Leo sharing the view from atop a tractor, my oil and dirt-covered daughter was living what brings thousands to Callicoon every year.

One part diesel fumes, two parts noise and an extra dash of heat that makes for a heady rush of pure excitement, it’s a parade that has sucked in the skeptics and spit out believers.

You don’t just go to one tractor parade.

You may not come for the same reason as your neighbor, but you come all the same.
To ride in a different kind of style.

To hear people cheer for you one day a year.

To cheer for something as patently ridiculous as a boy in a bathtub being pulled by a tractor.

To sniff the air and go back to being 5-years-old on grandpa’s knee on his tractor.

To laugh and carry on where the entertainment is free, and the company is good.

You don’t have to “get” the tractor parade.

You just have to let it happen.

And if someone offers you a ride, hop on. You might find it’s the best tractor parade . . . ever.

Well, until the one where your kid gets a ride.

The cat that drove me over the edge

I’m handing in my card. My days in the crazy cat lady society are over.

It’s been years in coming. Years of cats peeing in basements and throwing up on my daughter’s toys.
That was upsetting, sure, but never enough to put me over the edge. Until now.

Until I was forced to pull up first carpet, then old tile, then a layer of decades-old stick-um for old tile and finally the wooden slats that make up the floor of my daughter’s closet.

A sane person would blame themselves for this predicament, for the late night desperation that put two average, relatively even-keeled adults through the floorboards. It was me, after all, who decided the fight with the cat wasn’t worth it and left him alone in the attic.

Keep Reading AFTER the Jump

I've been mowed over

Who says you can’t learn something new about your spouse after eight and a half years of marriage?

How about learning that the granddaughter of one of the county’s best known and longest-operating lawnmower shops has never used a push mower?

It was humbling, to say the least, to lean over to my husband on Saturday and ask him if I could mow the lawn. I needed exercise, and I knew he was busy with other things.

That I’d never made the offer in six years of home ownership has nothing to do with a belief in some fifties-era, “that’s a man’s job” silliness. It’s simply how it’s happened. He’s mowed the lawn. I’ve cleaned the toilets. I’ve also fixed the toilets while he’s done the lion’s share of the laundry, so we’re even.

Some of you might have noticed all that rain last week, followed by a sunny Saturday – the makings of a lawn ripe for mowing.

And with a bit of winter weighing on my hind end, I was ready to move anywhere – even if it dyed my feet green and left my ears ringing.

But first I had to get it started.

Which is easier than it looks.

“You have to pull it hard,” my husband said of the ripcord.

“Uh huh,” I grunted back, yanking again and coming up short of that engine roar I needed to hear.
By the time I’d gotten it started, I was ready to be done. But I’d asked for this.

So I started off across the yard. Only to realize it wasn’t cutting much of anything.

“HOOOONEY!”

He dropped the blade – while I watched helplessly – and I was back in business. For awhile.

Because while I struggled to turn the thing around without tearing up sod, while I made zigzags across the yard trying to find my groove, he watched.

Give him credit – he was quiet. Or, at least, I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the mower.

But with every painful push (because let me tell you, “self-propelled” my jiggly in-need-of-exercise tuchas), I could feel his eyes on me.

Finally, I let go.

“I know. I know. I know!”

But as he leaned in to give me a few gentle pointers, I kept my eyes on my feet.

“You know,” I said, “I’ve never used a pushmower before. For my first time ever, this isn’t that bad, right?”

He looked at me, shocked. “You’ve NEVER used a pushmower? Never ever?”

There, I’d said it.

The country girl, from a lawnmower family, has lost all her street cred.
 
But at least I tried.


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