I had a long talk on the phone last night with my cousin Jennifer. Jennifer’s four years younger than I am, and her mother was my mother’s older sister. Every time there was a crisis in our childhoods, and there were plenty, we were shipped off to our Aunt Lynn’s house, so in a lot of ways Jennifer and I were raised almost more like siblings than like cousins. I have a very clear memory of Patrick and I, having been dropped off one snowy night by someone who had agreed to drive us from where? Our Dad’s house? Our…
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Well, we found the bridge — it’s about 25 yards downstream in some weeds. It’s hard to tell whether some kids pulled it up and cast it aside, or whether it was swept up in the periodic flooding they’ve been doing to flush out the trout habitat. I’d actually been wondering why it seemed as stable as it was. From what I could tell it was a construction truss balanced on two logs, which formed the footings — the whole thing was about 18 inches wide, and probably ten to fifteen feet long. Turns out, there are two parts to…
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Off we went tonight on our fabulous walk — we got to the bluff at the end of Clark Street where we cross over the creek into the dog park, and I let the dogs off their leashes and they went bouncing down the hill and through the creek and I was all set to follow them BUT THERE WAS NO BRIDGE! The little bridge that someone had built out of a construction truss, and had balanced on two hunks of log set into the bank — IT WAS JUST GONE! GONE! I had to call the dogs back —…
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I went off for my annual doctor’s appointment about a month ago, and while all was well, that scale thing had crept up to a truly frightening figure. My clothes were still fitting pretty well, but shall we say, my face was a wee bit more full than I’d like — and of course, just as I was realizing that middle-aged spread was indeed happening to me, work got really busy, the bears got into their annual fall frenzy, the out-of-state hunters with their scary high-power rifles arrived, and somehow we just weren’t getting out for our afternoon walks in…
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For big dead animals. I drove up to Suce Creek this morning to run the dogs, and there were two guys standing looking into the bed of a pickup truck. Once of them was wearing camoflage, always a tip-off. So as the boys ran up the hill in search of grouse, I walked over and took a peek. “What’d you get?” I asked. “A moose,” the one guy said. “That’s not a moose!”I said looking at the big black dead animal, “The antlers are wrong.” It was a very beautiful, dark, almost black elk. He was nestled in the bed…
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So, when I was home in June for my cousin Jason’s wedding, my grandmother bestowed on me Mrs. Baggot’s Ring. Mrs. Baggot’s ring originally belonged to my great-great grandfather, Charles Ambrose Plamondon, who had a gear company in Chicago and who died, along with his wife Mary (they were celebrating their 37th wedding anniversary) on the Lusitania. Apparently, the story goes that Doctor Murphy, who invented a major gastrointestinal surgical procedure, and who I think was some sort of cousin, gave this ring to Charles Ambrose as a gift, probably sometime shortly before the turn of the 20th century. Then,…
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Yup. It’s snowing this morning. Not really sticking — but definitely snowing. The thermometer on the garage reads 33.8 degrees while the one under the plastic tents covering the tomatoes reads 41 degrees. And I have to go over to Billings today, so I’m not going to be able to do any garden salvage until tomorrow. Oh, the excitement of short season gardening!
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Yesterday was the second anniversary of that sad event Maryanne has named, “Patrick’s Very Bad Day”. Last year I was in Paris for this day, wandering around in a tres melodramatic haze, thinking to myself “Mais, il est mort. Mon frere. Il est mort.” Paris is, in general a good place to go when you are feeling sad, melancholy or blue, because the city lends itself to soulful lingering at cafes, gazing into the middle distance while every once in a while using that little tiny spoon to stir the sugar you have, so sacreligiously, put into your cafe. Luckily,…
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A guy came to my door today selling fish. More specifically, a ratty old blue mini-pickup pulled up in front of my house, a truck with a chest freezer in the bed, and a guy got out and came bounding up my steps with the false cheer of a true door-to-door salesman. I was on a conference call at the time, and I tried to get rid of him by telling him I was on a call, that I work at home. “What time do you get off work?” he said. “I don’t buy things from people who come to…
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Poor Owie — we came home from a very joyful morning walk today and Owen climbed into a corner of the couch and curled up. Then I noticed something sticking out of his eye! An eye that was sort of swollen and puffy. There was a piece of cheatgrass sticking out of his eye! Cheatgrass is this terrible stuff that grows everywhere around here — it’s a grass seed, with a long tail on it, but it’s barbed with gazillions of little barbs and it’s famous for worming its way into dogs skins, and infecting their blood. So, I pulled…