Fever

Last weekend I developed an advanced case of cabin fever. It hit like a shock wave as my car was sliding down the driveway into a snow bank on the opposite side from the garage door.

Our driveway goes straight down from the road and currently resembles a shimmering Alaskan ice field. Even a polar bear with its five inch claws and fur covered pigeon toed feet couldn't get traction here.

It is high time that spring put a tentative toe in the door. Walking up the driveway to the roadside mailbox or filling the bird feeders have become limb threatening activities.

And then there's the morning issue. I find no incentive to get out of bed when my nose is as cold as a popsicle. For the last week the AM temperatures have been single digits (above and below zero) and the wind Arctic blasts. The only sensible response to this situation is pulling the quilt over the head and going back to sleep; i.e., hibernation.

The snow hasn't been a stranger, either. I took three trips to the carwash last week in a valiant attempt to remove the patina of salt and slush that permanently envelopes my car.

Try as I might, I've only found one glimmer of hope. A few days ago I spotted a huge Sandhill Crane, an early returnee from its winter home in Florida. It was gliding down from the gray skies for a perfect landing in a nearby wetland.

If the thermometer ever hits fifty, expect to see us dancing naked in the melting snow banks.

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Owls

Obviously, I am having an owl year, and I'm delighted.

Scientifically, an "owl year" occurs when the huge tundra loving snowy owls are short on prey (lemmings and snowshoe hares) in their far northern habitats. These ghost-like owls come south in search of munchies, causing bird watchers in the northern tier of America much joy.

I spotted my first snowy sitting on a telephone pole a few weeks ago just as dawn was breaking. I'm always on the lookout for raptors but was shocked when this one turned out to be white with black flecks and a big facial disc.

My second owl in a month was much more minute, in fact, only three inches tall and the world's smallest owl. The elf owl was ensconced in a natural habitat at Tucson's remarkable Sonoran Desert Museum, which, despite its name, is one of the top zoos in America.

Elf owls hang out in holes in saguaro cactuses. The openings are made by Gila Woodpeckers who build their nests in the cavities and abandon them when their young fledge.

Elf owls dine entirely on arthropods which are captured in flight. Moths are a special treat. When water is scarce, these little owls can get needed moisture from eating juicy beetles and other buggy prey. Scorpions and centipedes are also on their menu, and they remove the stinger before feeding scorpions to their young.

I'm grateful I never had to say to my kids, "Eat up all your scorpion, dears, so you will grow up to be strong and healthy."

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Pajamas

"Don't ever send your children to a school where the kids call teachers by their first names."

This nugget of wisdom was the chalkboard "thought for the day" at my favorite French bakery. I heartily concur. If a teacher has no more status that a playground buddy, scant education will result.

I would like to add two school selection criteria of my own.

First, never send your child to any school that has the word "academy" in its name. If you doubt me, just try the following simple test. Walk into any classroom in an "academy" school and ask the students to write one short, grammatically correct, coherent paragraph in their native language. The results may shock you.

Second, don't send your child to any school that has more than one "crazy" day per school year. Crazy days are rampant... crazy hair day, mismatched clothes day, backwards day, crazy hat day, pajama day, stuffed animal day and on and on.

I truly believe it is harder to teach a bunch of hyper kids who have green faces, mismatched socks, flannel PJ's, purple hair and gigantic pandas in their arms, than a normally attired class.

Conversely, I find students hindered by a teacher in her chenille robe and bunny slippers.

I've never been a fan of school uniforms, but I might have to change my mind. Our school administrators seem to have lost theirs.

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Ampersand

I am a fan of ampersands (&), those flamboyant little symbols that fill in for the word "and".

Shunning secretarial classes in high school, I was not formally introduced to the ampersand until I started doing graphic design. I was smitten. Even the word is fun to say.

Ampersands have been around since Roman times; however, the name is more recent. After perusing numerous web sites, the following history is the clearest. Be a bit patient, the explanation is convoluted.

 The name "ampersand" certainly sounds as if it should mean something terribly exotic, coined in the misty yesteryear of typography, but its roots are actually quite humble, and we have the long-suffering schoolchild to thank for the word.  It comes from the practice once common in schools of reciting all 26 letters of the alphabet plus the "&" sign, pronounced "and," which was considered part of the alphabet, at least for learning purposes.

Any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A," "I," "&" and, at one point, "O") was preceded in the recitation by the Latin phrase "per se" ("by itself") to draw the students' attention to that fact.  Thus the end of this daily ritual would go: "X, Y, Z and per se and."  This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" by children rightly bored to tears, and the term crept into common English usage by around 1837.  Courtesy of The Word Detective May 2003

When choosing a typeface, I always check out the ampersand first. That symbol is often a wee showcase for font designer's creativity.

A small gallery of ampersands with a decidedly romantic bent follows. Happy Valentines Day!

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Breezy

The other day it sounded as if the Acheson, Topeka and Santa Fe was roaring through the house. Wind gusts were up to 45 mph, and the cats were all hiding in the rafters. I wanted to join them.

I have friends who find wind invigorating and exciting. I, however, view a windy day with unease. Aren't those big wind gusts just a practice run for sinking an ore boat in Lake Superior or blowing away some poor little Wisconsin town? And it's historical fact that many pioneer women who lived in sod houses out in the plains went mad from the constant howling of the wind.

Wind was a foe even when we lived in the city. Our yard was graced with a magnificent, mature willow tree. We all treasured it. But, don't believe all that gentle wind in the willows nonsense. After every storm, we could be found in our yard raking up willow tree debris for hours.

The phenomenal power of wind was fully revealed to us when we moved into our current country home. We are on a seventy foot bluff with open fields around us. When a nor’easter gets whipping, the noise in our upstairs bedroom is deafening. The whole house, including the bed, literally shakes and groans.

I think the wolf got miscast in The Three Little Pigs. The wind should have been the character that said, "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down."

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Speech

Sousa doesn’t talk. It’s odd to live with a creature that drifts silently through the house like an ebony ghost.

We know that the girl possesses a voice. In two years she has emitted four small “meows.” 

Sousa is a beautiful black tortoiseshell cat who started life as a stray. She was run over by a car and left for dead at the side of a road. When a nearby farm family went to bury her, she stirred. Our local no-kill shelter took her in, paid the vet bills and tried to find her a “forever” home.

Every weekend she was tucked into a cat carrier and taken to a “mobile.” In other words, she was driven to a Wal-Mart parking lot with other foster cats in need of permanent homes.

Sousa apparently figured out that hiding silently in the back of her cat carrier was the fastest ticket home to her foster mom. For a year and a half, people passed her over for more vocal, charismatic cats.

But then she had a mobile showing at our house. We both knew this brave girl was right for us. After all, the other Tooley cats can talk up a storm. Neko even says the best cat swear words I’ve ever heard when I refuse to open the treat cupboard.

Silence is fine with us.

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Potatoes

"There is no such thing as an Idaho potato. But there are potato varieties that are grown in Idaho."

This was one of the first things my future mother-in-law said to me. She came from one of the largest potato-growing families in the state of Wisconsin and wanted to make sure that any future daughter-in-law of hers wasn't a potato illiterate.

Fortunately, I was a fast learner. And it didn't hurt that I'd sell my soul for homemade mashed potatoes.

My husband and a good friend are still laughing about my order at a famous Chicago restaurant. "I'll have the whitefish, but hold the rice pilaf. Just bring two ala carte orders of mashed potatoes, please."

One night in Berlin I came as close to potato nirvana as I'll ever get. We were wandering around looking for a quaint and inexpensive cafe when I spotted a restaurant named "Kartoffel". My high school German kicked in, and I recalled that this was the word for "potato". Sure enough, every item on the menu featured potatoes in some glorious form.

However, my love of potatoes will never eclipse my mother-in-law's devotion to these tubers. Every summer she drove from her home in Tucson to visit us in Wisconsin, and she invariably arrived unannounced. One summer afternoon she walked in our door just before dinner.

"I'll have to go to the store," I said, "I don't have enough potatoes."

"Don't bother," she said and went out to her car. She came right back with a sack of potatoes. I've never known any other woman who traveled with emergency potatoes in her trunk.

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