Posted on 2008 under Maine, Uncategorized, humor |
23
Jul
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One of the wonderful things about living in this hellhole lovely state of Maine is that we hardly ever get the extreme weather so prevalent in the rest of the US. Hurricanes we got, but they give us plenty of warning and by the time they’ve navigated the whole length of the Eastern seaboard they’re usually pretty pooped out. Even if they aren’t, we’ve had time to board up the windows, take in the chickens and buy every roll of toilet paper and loaf of bread on the shelves of every convenience store in the state. (Why do people do that when a storm is predicted? Do they think they’ll need more toilet paper? I don’t get the connection, myself.)
Anyhow, outside of the occasional hurricane and a blizzard or two in the winter, extreme weather leaves us alone and concentrates on the population centers of the midwest and south where it can really get itself on CNN and the Weather Channel. The only time we see Jim Cantore is when he’s standing in front of Maine on the weather map and pointing to California or New York. All of the weather mavens seem to be just tall enough to obscure Maine with their heads. Why is this?
I guess I should say that extreme weather HAS left us alone in the past, because apparently it’s just realized that we’re here and is starting to flex its muscles with a few preliminary mini-tornadoes. (We had one a while ago that tipped over a bike and damaged our neighbor’s garden shed. True, the shed was one of those cheap metal ones that shakes when you blow on your soup to cool it off, but still.) No doubt, it’ll find out that working up to a real tornado isn’t as easy in mountainous Maine as it is on the plains of Kansas, but it’s giving it a shot.
Yesterday’s Bangor Daily News reported on one such incident up in Aroostook County. I read it and knew that I had a blog post. It seems that there was a sudden windstorm, with hail, that blew in a straight line through the Happy Corner Rd community. Residents there said that the storm emerged from Baxter State Park via the north side of Mount Katahdin. Unlike most Baxter Park tourists, it didn’t just toss a beer can in the ditch as it left, but instead let loose with a barrage of hail, thunder and lightning. Then the wind picked up. Literally.
It picked up two 150 lb pigs and a 50 lb Gordon Setter. The paper doesn’t say whether the pigs survived, but the dog managed to run back to its owner, after “swimming through the air” two-and-a-half feet off the ground for 50 to 60 ft. The dog’s name is Delaney, rather than Toto, by the way.
The dog owner, Sean Kelley, says it was “a tense 15 to 20 minutes” as the storm concentrated all of its energy on the small area of Happy Corner Rd (wonder if they’ll rename it?). “Delaney got blown through the air; plus, this was true – pigs could fly,” he said. Not content with juggling next fall’s bacon and hams, the storm also destroyed gardens and reduced Kelley’s pumpkin crop to green goo.
The forecast for our area today is for thunderstorms, possibly severe. I’m in the cellar, because that’s where my office is. The dog is lying on the couch and the cats are upstairs in varying postures of laziness after being out all night dodging the coyotes we heard howling in the backyard around midnight. Two of them are suspiciously rounder than usual which leads me to think that a couple of rabbits don’t have to worry about tornadoes picking them up anymore.
We don’t have a pig to our name or any other livestock, so the only thing we have to remember to bring in before long is the deck furniture. Our garden doesn’t include pumpkins, but we do have some small tomatoes that wouldn’t survive a hailstorm, so I hope we don’t have a “Happy Corner Rd” experience. I’ll keep you posted.
Oh, and if there was anything you said you’d do “when pigs fly”, you’d better do it.
Posted on 2008 under Uncategorized |
16
Jul
I believe I’ve mentioned before that Geekdaddy works at a mental health institution. He has a very nice, sunny office in the basement where he keeps the phones and computers humming. He also has a small farm of tomato plants, flowers and greenery that he tends with loving care. He’s the go-to guy for Mainers who want a fresh cherry tomato in January and you don’t have to worry about salmonella either. Glasses cleaner, maybe, but no germs.
Geekdaddy subscribes to the theory that if one pair of glasses is good, two or three are better. This is why you sometimes see him with one pair on his nose and another pair pushed up onto his head and a third pair hanging around his neck. I don’t believe I’m letting any cats out of the bag here when I tell you that, sometimes, he even puts one pair over the other pair to read. This is all because of less than successful laser cataract surgery and a tiny little buckle inserted into his eye.
And, no, before you ask, there’s no tiny little belt. Just the buckle. It holds the cornea or lens in place or something like that. I’m a little hazy on the details, but I know that it makes seeing anything farther away than the end of his nose a less than optimal experience. Hence the glasses in triplicate.
So, the other day, there he was in his office, examining his favorite tomato plant and thinking that it looked a little peaked. There was that certain something lacking in the luster of its leaves and its flowers were drooping. The geek decided that what the tomato needed was a change of scene. Maybe, he thought, a walk out through the parking lot onto the lawn would perk it up. He could even leave it there for a while.
True, one of the clients who wander the grounds might trip over it or maybe try to roll up a few leaves and smoke them, but odds are that it would be safe. So, off he went with the tomato plant held in front of him – did I mention that it’s a good-sized patio tomato plant? As he walked, he tried to cheer it up by talking to it, something that’s a good idea or so he’d heard on one of his talk radio shows.
He was nattering away to it, describing the scenery they were passing when he realized that he wasn’t alone. One of the psychiatrists who are so useful when Client A is hearing those voices in his head again and Client B is talking to the voices in her head was walking beside him and peering at him through the tomato plant’s foliage.
Geekdaddy is always cordial, so even though he’d never met the man before, he greeted him with a smile and walked on, out into the parking lot and onto the lawn where he gently settled the tomato plant in the dappled shade of one of the huge maples that dot the grounds. It was about then that he realized that the doctor had almost certainly mistaken him for a client, and then he realized that he was over-endowed with 3 pairs of glasses – one each on his nose, his head and on a cord around his neck.
When he got home, he mentioned the incident to me and asked me if I thought the doctor had gotten the wrong impression. I assured him that the doctor almost certainly hadn’t gotten the wrong impression and I think I eased his mind. What I’d really like to see though, is what happens when he comes in and starts tweaking the doctor’s phone or computer the next time one of them breaks down. I just hope he leaves the tomato plant in his office.
Posted on 2008 under Uncategorized |
9
Jul
I’m not in THE doldrums, yet. That would be an area of calm, boring water north of the equator where the tradewinds don’t blow. The word probably comes from “dold”, think dolt, for stupid and “drum” which is akin to the “trum” of tantrum. Put it together and it spells stupid state or something similar. At any rate, even with one small doldrum perched on my doorstep, I’m bored.
The weather is hot, hazy and humid. Daughter has a rash and is on antibiotics and being remarkably cheerful about the whole thing, but still. We’re besieged by gnats that get through the screens as soon as it gets dark, but we can’t shut the windows or we’d suffocate or maybe, just melt. Did I mention that it’s in the 90′s in the daytime and only in the 70′s at night?
No global warming here, folks. Maine is always steamy. Famous for it. “Hey, let’s go down to Maine,” the Inuit say in July, “Remember, the place where it’s so hot that you have to take off your sealskin coat at the border.” Well, maybe they don’t really say that, but I remember when I first came to Maine 20 years ago, almost no one had air conditioners, because there were only about two days a year that you needed them.
Now, as soon as the June monsoon stops, the heat and humidity waft up from New Jersey, along with a few million of those stripey mosquitoes they have in the Garden State. I’m not good with heat. I wilt. I get irritable. I snap and snarl and start wishing I could just go stay at a motel for a week, with my laptop and a supply of Wodehouse books. They’re the only reading I can get interested in when the weather is like this. Anything else isn’t funny enough and is too hard to concentrate on.
Since that doesn’t seem to be in the cards, I’ll share with you some of the places I’ve been in a somewhat successful attempt to distract myself from the weather. My favorite is first, but they’re all good if you’re completely surrounded by nothing to do. Have at it.
