Mint Julep

Sometimes it feels like I’m in a sitcom. Or on a Candid Camera joke-type show. I find myself in a moment so ridiculous that I think, “Surely this cannot be real.” I expect to hear the laugh-track. I look around for the cameras. One of these moments happened over the weekend, on the porch of my house.

The house is a lovely 1925 Craftsman. What it lacks in modern amenities like up-to-date electrical, sliver-free floors and non-cracking plaster, it makes up for in charm. For the most part, the house is in great shape – it just needs some modernizing, attending to the finishes, and fixing of bizarre decisions made by previous residents. One such decision resides on our porch – I would say it “darkens” our porch, but since it is the light fixture that wouldn’t really be accurate. Our full-width porch is truly a feature of the house – it gives the home that beautiful, quintessential, Craftsman street presence that I love. It is warm and welcoming – offering a friendly transition from the outside world to the inside space. Unfortunately, someone, at some point, saw fit to install a ceiling fan as the light fixture.

You read right, we have a ceiling fan as our front porch light. A ceiling fan. Take just a moment to really let that sink in… A ceiling fan. Outside. On a porch. In Seattle. We do not live in the Deep South. We do not have 90-degree days with humidity so thick the air feels like you could sculpt with it. No, this is Seattle. Summer temperatures are in the 70s and there is almost always cool air coming off the Puget Sound. The chances of needing to relax on a shaded, fan-cooled front porch with a mint julep in hand are slim to none. Outdoor heaters, blankets, and hot toddies are more appropriate Seattle porch accessories. And yet, each time I emerge onto my porch or arrive home, the ridiculous ceiling fan suggests that I should ask somebody to fetch me my evening cocktail so I can cool off while surveying the plantation until dusk when the fireflies come out.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that we didn’t just move into this house; we’ve lived in it for almost 12 years. One could easily argue that we’ve had plenty of time to make some changes – if not a full remodel, certainly such small problems as taking care of a particularly hideous lighting fixture. One would be right, but one should also recall that I am married to an architect and we have always had big plans for doing a major overhaul on the house. Why nickel and dime ourselves on small fixes that will just get swept away when the larger remodel finally happens?  Why not wait and do it all in one fell swoop? This is our reasoning. But there is never enough money and never enough time and so, 12 years later, we still have a decrepit, old, white ceiling fan on our front porch.

I’ve never stopped hating the ceiling fan. Occasionally I notice it and it makes me simultaneously giggle and cringe when I consider how ridiculously out of place it is. Most of the time, though,  I just ignore it, as you do those things you’ve lived with so long that you’ve trained your brain to simply not see anymore.

Sunday night I had occasion to notice. For one thing, daylight savings time kicked in. Or off. Or whichever it is. I wish somebody would just pick a time and stick with it, but that’s another topic for another time. So Chester and I were coming home from running errands in the dark. We hauled our packages onto the porch and, as I dug around in my purse for the house keys (which are always, always, always at the bottom, no matter what – yet another topic), I noticed a strange, strong breeze. It had been windy the day before and for just a moment, I thought the wind must be picking back up for another round of gusts, but that wasn’t right. The trees and plants weren’t moving; the neighbor’s wind chimes weren’t clanging. It was only windy on the porch – a strange, swirling kind of windy. Then I looked up.

The porch fan was going! I had never, not in 12 years, seen the fan actually going. For more than a decade, it sat still and geographically incongruent, white paint peeling sadly off the blades that did nothing more than frame a light bulb. Now it was going with a vengeance, as if making up for lost time or attempting to launch itself to a more appropriate locale. It was spinning so fast, the whole thing was wobbling precariously.

At first I was afraid. What could have caused the ancient fan to start spinning if not some sort of angry fan spirit? Then I remembered I had taken down Halloween decorations the day before, including replacing the black-light with a regular light-bulb. All I did was un-screw one bulb and replace it with another, but I must have confused or otherwise angered the fan. (Never mind the logical explanation that an electrical short occurred. Matt pointed this out later and it is much too boring an explanation.) Finally I climbed on a rickety old IKEA porch chair to get a closer look at the whirling, wobbling fan. (Hey, why invest in nice, teak, well-crafted, outdoor furniture when you’re just going to remodel in 20 years, right?)

Upon taking a closer look, I could see three little pull-chains hanging down from the fan. I reached up cautiously, while ducking to avoid having my head taken off, and pulled the first. It simply turned the light off. I pulled the second; nothing happened as it was rusted in place. I pulled the third and the fan began to slow down. Hallelujah! I thought it was stopping, but no such luck – it continued to spin, just at a slower pace. I pulled the string again – no change. At this point I climbed down from the chair, both because I wasn’t sure what else to do and because Chester was pestering me for some goldfish crackers. (Apparently, standing on a chair, in the dark, cursing at and struggling with a possessed ceiling fan, does not indicate to a hungry seven-year-old that you are busy.)

With Chester all settled in with a video and some crackers, and the fan still spinning away, albeit somewhat more lazily, I decided to call Matt who, naturally, is in China for this and pretty much every other domestic debacle I’ve ever dealt with.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I began. “Uh, OK, what’s going on there?” Matt asked, sounding concerned and skeptical of my casual tone.

“Well, you know the porch fan?”

“Yeah…”

“It’s going.”

“Going.”

“Yes, going. Spinning. Operating. Circulating the frigid air.”

“That’s weird,” Matt accurately summarized.  “Did you try pulling the chains?”

In this manner, we walked through the pull-chain options and results: One pull (slower), two pulls (no change) and three pulls (back to jet-propulsion fast). Matt decided it must be an electrical short and that I, therefore, needed to turn the whole thing off and keep it off. While I certainly don’t want to burn the house down, the thought of no porch light for almost a week of these new, dark, daylight-savings days didn’t thrill me. “Let me just pull it one more time,” I said, teetering half-balanced on the chair. I reached up and gave it a final yank and the whole chain came off in my hand.

Picture the scene: I’m standing on a chair, in the dark, on my porch in Seattle, under a seriously malfunctioning ceiling fan, with a cordless phone between my shoulder and ear and a broken-off chain in my hand, trying to get help from a person in China. It was at this point that I listened closely for the laugh-track…  I scanned the perimeter for a hidden camera…  

“Are you there?” Matt said. “It broke off,” I replied. “The whole chain broke off.” There was a moment of silence before I said the only thing I could think to say…  “Can you bring me a mint julep?”

Nothing says fall like a raccoon penis

Fall is here. All the telltale signs confirm it – leaves are turning, a slight chill is in the air, the days are getting shorter, Starbucks is pushing pumpkin spice lattes (a little too early if you ask me) and, probably most definitively, the kids are back to school. At my house, that meant jumping, with full enthusiasm, into 2^nd grade. The first couple of weeks were all about who is in whose class and who has which teacher and all the cool new backpacks. Now we are into week 3, otherwise known as: The Week That Homework Begins.

Chester’s teacher sends homework in weekly packets on Mondays, which is great because I can plan our week around the inevitable soccer practices, music lessons, evening work commitments, and the nights I really just need to sit, semi-catatonic, drinking wine and watching my child “practice ninja skills” – which entails spreading Lego pieces across my bed and bouncing on it vigorously while simultaneously attempting to kick and light-saber the bouncing Lego bits into some other dimension.

This week’s homework packet included several math worksheets, a list of spelling words to learn, and, the most exciting part, an assignment to choose and research a nocturnal animal for an on-going project. Chester started strong with the math portion, completing it on Monday night. He was excited to move straight into nocturnal creature research, but, seeing as we are not nocturnal, we didn’t have time. I promised him we would be ALL OVER IT on Tuesday. Excitement was high. We talked at length about which creature he would choose. He was leaning towards the gliding gecko. I was lobbying hard for the raccoon. Why raccoon? I’m a sucker for several reasons:

1)      They are adorable. (Yes, I realize they are a pain in the ass, and can be mean, and are essentially like big, huge rats, but those little black masks! And the ringed, bushy tails!)

2)      They are fierce. (I love a critter that you just don’t mess with.)

3)      They are smart. (They can get into pretty much anything.)

4)      When my dad was a kid, he had a pet raccoon named Chucky. Chucky was orphaned and my dad bottled fed him and raised him to adulthood. My whole life, I heard stories about the bond between Chucky and my dad; the raccoon followed him around like a dog and even slept with him. It all ended tragically when my dad’s step-father decided Chucky had to be killed after biting a friend of my grandmother’s severely on the leg. (It should be noted that she stepped on him while he was sleeping on the front steps of the house. If you ask me, she had it coming.)

So there’s the family lore thing, but mostly it’s the adorable/fierce combo that draws me to raccoons. They are bad-asses and they look fantastic. Who doesn’t love that?

"I'm adorable and you don't want to mess with me."

We rushed home on Tuesday evening, quickly ate dinner, finished all our chores and got down to business. The first task was choosing the critter. This was harder than expected, as there are simply so many from which to choose. I thought Chester was pretty locked in on the gliding gecko of Southeast Asia, but by the time we got down to it, he felt he had already learned quite a bit about that creature and wanted to pick something different because “I like to learn new things, Mommy.” I couldn’t argue with that, so we pulled up a list. He was not interested in bats or cats of any type. After considering the aye-aye, bush rat, great gray slug, binturong, dwarf crocodile, Eastern woolly lemur, Panamian night monkey, and many others, we settled on . . . RACCOON! I did a silent, internal, happy-dance.

We learned a lot about raccoons as we searched for answers to the prompt questions posed by Chester’s teacher . . .

Where do raccoons live?

They are, as we expected, very adaptable and live pretty much everywhere. Forests are their original habitat, but now they also live in mountains, coastal marshes and urban areas.

How do they make their homes?

Turns out raccoons don’t so much make their own homes, as they simply commandeer existing places to hunker down, sleep, and have babies. They use places like tree hollows, rock crevices, and pre-owned burrows. (Raccoons are not only cute and tough, they are also efficient.)

What do they eat?

Raccoons aren’t picky eaters; they dine on pretty much everything. In fact, they are considered one of the most omnivorous animals in the world. Their diet consists of fruits, nuts, fish, eggs, insects, worms, and, as Chester accurately noted, “stuff they find when they knock over the trash.”

How do they protect themselves?

Raccoons are excellent runners and climbers, but, when worse comes to worse, they protect themselves with super sharp claws and teeth. (Remember, bad-asses.)

What are three interesting facts about your animal?

It was tough to choose, but these were Chester’s top picks:

1)      They have black fur around their eyes that looks like a robber’s mask. In Chester's words, "Don't ever take a raccoon to a bank. Ever." Probably good advice.

2)      Their best sense is touch - they have very sensitive paws. (Adorable, tough, AND sensitive! They just keep getting better.)

3)      They are extremely smart and able to understand abstract concepts. For example, in studies, they have been able to figure out not only how to undo a variety of locks and latches, but how to undo them quickly again, even after those locks and latches were reversed or flipped. (I’ve met PEOPLE who are unable to do this.)

And the most AWESOME fact of all in Chester’s opinion . . . Raccoons have an approximately 4 inch penis bone that is “strongly bent at the front end.” Anyone who has a boy, is a boy, or has spent any amount of time around boys, can attest to how fascinating, hilarious and utterly glee-inducing this fact is. A penis bone! That’s curved! It’s 4 inches! Good stuff.

 Chester desperately wanted to use the 4-inch, strongly-curved penis bone as one of his three interesting facts. I oscillated wildly about what to do . . . On one hand, I figured, “Hey, it’s a scientific fact and it’s interesting to him, so what the heck?” On the other hand, I imagined Chester presenting his research and the entire class melting down in chaos – boys in laughing fits blurting “penis, penis, penis!” over and over again, girls shrieking “Eeeew, gross!” I imagined Teacher Richard not appreciating this scene (even though, since he is a boy, he’d probably be laughing hysterically inside.) I ultimately decided it was probably better to keep the baculum (that’s fancy science talk for penis bone) off the actual written research. I assured Chester he could tell his friends about it though – perhaps on the playground. (Note to parents of Chester’s friends: You’re welcome.)

Baculum or “penis bone” – It is hilarious.

So, the first week of homework was a success, for the most part. Chester was proud to turn his assignments in early on Wednesday, which was a good thing because it made up for the crying meltdown over spelling words on the drive to school. Now I know that when my second grader is trying to learn how to spell “knight” and “night,” and remember which is which, homework veers less toward interesting and hilarious, and more toward stress-inducing. 

I’m just glad we’ll always have the raccoon penis bone to lighten the mood and cheer us up during times of homework stress. The baculum is now officially on my list of seasonal delights – fiery-colored leaves, cozy sweater weather, new clothes and shoes, and the raccoon penis. Don’t you just love fall?