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2020 Nutshells, Houses, yards and projects

Doing battle with the evil hot water heater

July 8, 2020 No Comments

I battled you, hot water heater. I battled you because you took up arms against me. You chose to follow a path of darkness and evil. To dabble in the occult, and maybe even larceny (not sure what that is.) For many, many years you were loyal, hard-working, dependable and there for me. But something happened, and you turned vengeful and became flooded with spite.

You had been a king. I built you a castle. A house outside my home for your very own. No living in a pantry or an attic. I even put real cedar siding on for you and added insulation for the winter.

How did you repay me? By turning into a bubbling spring. A spouting fountain. A ruptured receptacle. Just like you ruptured my heart.

Imagine my shock when I bent down near your outdoor castle. (OK, it is more of a cabinet) and noticed the water streaming down the side of the walls.

“That’s odd,” I remember thinking. “This shed appears to be crying! Hot water heater sheds aren’t supposed to be crying … are they?”

Waterfalls: Yes. Portraits of the Virgin Mary: Yes. My face when another blasted appliance fails: Yes.

But hot water heater sheds: Unequivocally NO!

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Parenthood and Children, Travel

Getting away in a mountain stream

July 1, 2020 No Comments

Dang! Dogs sure do love mountain streams. The cool, bubbling, rambling ones. Strewn in river stones where they can run and bound and realize how their little wolf-like paws were meant to tear through the world like a brush fire or a blast of wind.

Free. Frantic. Frenzied.

Oh, to be a dang dog!

Same with kids. They like them, too, those streams. With the same gusto. Even at 14. Big splashes. Shoes soaking wet. Egging the dog on. No care in the world. “Come on, Lily, this way!” they yell, and the dog jerks about and tears down the other way.

Not a care in the world.

There we were. Out along little trails with no one else in sight. Somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina. Near to Blowing Rock, but not really near to anything. Anything civilized, it seemed.

Or anything that started with “c” and ended with “virus.”

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Travel

The over-the-top packing expedition

June 28, 2020 No Comments

Sometimes, the packing is the real expedition. Forget the trip. The trip isn’t the issue. The trip isn’t even the adventure. In fact, the trip is the vacation you need just because of all the packing and the planning and the getting it to fit in the car.

Especially in a pandemic. When, after several months of social distancing in your house – venturing out only to buy groceries and see if the sky is still blue – you decide to take the family away from home. To a rented house in the North Carolina mountains. Easy to get to. You can take everything you need. You know the area. And you can spend all your time socially-distanced on trails and out-of-the-way places where hopefully no coronavirus will show its face … because of bears.

But … sometimes, the packing is the real expedition. Sometimes, getting ready is so exhausting that you need an extra day just to recover from it all. Before you can go out and try to enjoy yourself. You need that time to recover from the planning. The loading. The fear that it would burst your car at the seams. Carrying it all in.

All so you can do it again a few days later … after you’ve used maybe 2 percent of everything you brought.

But I’m a planner. A worrier. A planning worrier. I’m so obsessive-compulsive that I keep detailed lists in order to manage my proliferation of detailed lists. That was certainly the case for this short, four-night trip designed to limit grocery store jaunts or anything that would take us out of the comfortable wilds and into the unknowns of civilization.

To achieve this feat was relatively easy. All I had to do was pack our entire house, plus our dog, into the back of our Toyota RAV4.

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Family

The dog-walk kitty shuffle

June 17, 2020 No Comments

“DON’T … EAT … THE … KITTY!”

I don’t know if you have ever had to utter these words. If you have, then you know how strange it sounds coming out of your mouth. Like you’re in the midst of some Grimms’ Fairy Tale. Having to warn about witches in candy houses or the dangers of poison apples or other gruesome dangers.

Like … EATING … THE … KITTY!

Because that would be bad.

But there I was. Trying to explain it to a dog. A dog who was maybe 1/3 of my weight. So, fairly big bugger. But looking at me, with her soft brown eyes, actually paying attention, she seemed to be taking it in. Trying to understand. “So … let me get this straight: Eating kitty … bad?”

Yes! Eating kitty bad!

It was my brother’s dog. He calls her Ella. I call her “Meat Chunk.” She is what you would get if a bored scientist crossed a dog with a bag of concrete.

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Florida, Weather

We have to hurricane plan in a pandemic? Ouch!

June 10, 2020 No Comments

OK, so hurricane season is here and we’ve already had three named storms. Forecasters are calling for an overly active season, and the tropics are spitting them out like a drunken shooting gallery. Add on top of that we’re still in the midst of a pandemic and it’s enough to make you go crazy … or move to Iowa.
Emergency officials always warn us to prepare early for the possibility of storms, but this year they’re also saying to take into consideration how coronavirus has thrown an extra wrench into the mix. Yeah, great! Because there wasn’t enough to think about before. So, as a certified “storm preparation artiste” and a year-round worry wart, I’m here to offer a few helpful tips on getting ready for this year’s season, which might just be a doozy:

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Coronavirus, Florida, Travel

Getting along with gators on a lazy Florida river

June 5, 2020 No Comments

Only in Florida do you float along next to one of nature’s most dangerous predators and think to yourself, “Hey, look at that … now, where did we put the pretzel chips?”

And it was upon that realization that I started to wonder if we’re alright. We Floridians.

There we were, kayaking along Silver Springs. Paddling through the turquoise waters and lazy river grass. My daughter had asked if I thought we would see any alligators. My wife had warned us both. She had a bit of a dream about it. Not a good one. More of a nightmarish premonition. I think it somehow involved us being devoured by a gator on some kind of fancy cracker.

She was nervous about the two of us going, in particular because earlier in the week a curator at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm had been bitten and pulled from a canoe while retrieving some photo equipment. Luckily, even while injured, he was able to get himself to safety. He was an expert and knew what to do. If something happened to us, though, what chance did we stand?

Our epitaph would read: Went out as an adornment atop a fancy cracker.

Did I think we would even see any alligators, my daughter asked as we cruised along. Nah! Probably too many people on the river. Or the spring water was too cold. Or too much shade when they could be out on some sun-drenched bank somewhere soaking it in and …

“Hey, look at that …”

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Getting old ... er ... older, Health

Taking the fitness challenge … thanks to Thor

May 27, 2020 No Comments

I don’t like challenges. You know, those Internet crazes? The dance challenges (can’t dance.) The eat-more-kale challenges (hate kale.) And the ever-annoying fitness challenges (don’t need it … hypnotized myself to believe I’m already fit.)

But I DO like cookies. And this love of mine seems to be taking a small toll on me recently. Maybe all of this working from home has made me slightly more sedentary. Or the stress of work combined with the pandemic has had an effect. Maybe I’m not running as much as I used to, or my age is catching up to me a little bit.

Add to that the fact that my kitchen looks like a grocery store cookie aisle.

One of the best parts about working from home is the readily available supply of cookies at my immediate disposal. In the middle of any video conference, no matter how important it is, I can say, “Oh, I’m so sorry … can you hold on one sec. Minor emergency,” and duck out to grab a cookie. It’s reason No. 1 most Americans don’t want to return to the office.

But it certainly comes with its downsides. Or should I say, EXPANDING-sides. That’s what I started noticing recently. First, when I dropped a notch in my belt. And second, when I ordered a new pair of running shorts in the size I’ve always worn, only to find them a little more “form-fitting.” You know … SNUG!

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Florida, Travel

The travel bug dashed by the corona bug

May 20, 2020 No Comments

What does a socially-distancing summer trip planning aficionado do without plans for a summer trip?

That’s what I’m wrestling with as we reach the doorstep of the summer travel season. It’s Memorial Day Weekend, and the biggest plans most of us have is a journey to the grocery store. At least we get to dress up … by wearing a mask.

I don’t mean to complain. My family and I are healthy. We have jobs. We have toilet paper. And remarkably, we’re all still talking to each other.

But like everyone, boy, do we long to be free. Back to the good, old healthy days when you could come and go as you please. No concern for where you went or who you talked to. And you could safely plot out summer treks that took you to far-off exotic lands filled with adventure and intrigue. Like Orlando!

Or somewhere even further, and more exotic. Where there are waterfalls. Or cotton candy machines. Or skyscrapers. Or travel scams by street hustlers who can spot you a mile away because your shirt screams, “Easiest money you’ll make all day!”

Man, what I wouldn’t give to be ripped off right now!

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Parenthood and Children

And then I guess we’re off to high school …

May 13, 2020 No Comments

Hold on! Let’s just hold on one minute!

Because I need to get this straight. I need to consult the calendar. I’m not sure it has totally sunk down into the recesses of my spongy brain, where actual working cells still live and breathe. I don’t think – as many times as my wife has told me … and she has told me a lot! – this fact has completely registered with me.

So, hold on … let’s work this out: We’re somewhere in the middle of May … haven’t fully figured out when, but somewhere. May is, if memory serves, traditionally the end of the school year. My daughter’s middle school has said this last week was it for new assignments in their online-learning environment. And this next week, which is when exams would have been if not canceled, is kind of the last week. At least, I think … scratching my chin … if I heard all this correctly.

Anyway, forget the details and complex calendar-ing. My point is this: The end of my daughter’s eighth grade year is upon us.

Which really means: The end of her middle school CAREER is just days away.

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus

Giving up on taming the un-tameable hair

May 6, 2020 No Comments

I’m coming to terms with … my hair.

I know there are bigger problems in the world. More important things to worry about. People out there really suffering. Physically. Financially. Mentally. I get that, and I feel petty about this.

But still, I’m coming to terms with this right now.

It’s been a life-long struggle … my hair. A reckoning even. At times, depending on the humidity, some might call it an existential crisis. I would.

Our hair, like it or not, helps to define us. That’s why we spend so much time obsessing over it. Cutting and coloring it. “Styling” it. Trying not to lose it. Making sure that when we go out, it represents who we are. Or, who we want to be. It projects and speaks and says, “Look here! This is me!”

For much of my life, I’ve been trying to tame mine. To control it. Some people comb or part their hair. I’ve always waged war. I see each morning as a running battle between good and evil. Two great (or at least slightly-above-mediocre) warriors facing off in the mirror, preparing for a battle of epic proportions.

Me? I am the good, and slightly ordinary, night who wants to instill peace and order – complete, inconspicuous flatness across the land atop my head. No unruliness. Nobody out of line. Nothing that draws any kind of unwanted attention. If my hair could speak, I would want it to say, “Nothing to see here. Please move along.”