Poop Happens (The Ferry Line)

Waiting in the ferry line in Anacortes, I'm sitting propped up on pillows and blankets in the back seat of my car, knitting. It's a beautiful Spring day. I'm happy to say I don't have cancer or anything like that, but I did get some news from my doctor I did not like, ironically having to do with my hearing. I hate poetic justice when I deserve it. I knew I should have thought of something other than good hearing to use when writing about good signs in a prospective mate. 

A carload of teenage girls are laughing, yelling, generally carrying on at maximum volume one car back in line. Fortunately, I can't hear them quite as well as I thought I could. Getting annoyed, but with the sun turning the car into an oven, I roll the windows down a little to get some fresh air, trying my best not to be in a bad mood. What would Byron Katie say about how I'm thinking about my life right at this moment? Then, suddenly, I simultaneously hear and feel SPLAT! 

My window is down no more than two inches, I swear. And yet, somehow, a bird has managed to take direct aim right through the open window, hitting the blankets, the sleeve of my favorite shirt, and the inside of the car door. My reaction is instantaneous. An expletive erupts and shoots out the windows before I even notice who might be within earshot. 

Continuing to swear to myself, I strip, right there in the ferry line, desperate to get out of my shirt. I am not laughing, this is not funny. I pull my jacket around me, only half attempting to cover up while carefully removing my arms from my sleeves, trying not to make matters worse. But I can't help wondering, was it a seagull or a crow, and isn't bird poop white? 

After exiting my shirt, I don the jacket. I round up two unused paper napkins and do my best to clean up. A little gets on my hand which I carefully remove with the corner of a napkin. I'm squeamish about this kind of stuff anyway, but this is beyond gross. I make a pile of the soiled blankets and my shirt after using the sleeve to wipe up what I couldn't get with the napkins. My mood is the color of bird poop. 

At this point, realizing the bird might still be in the vicinity, I roll up the windows. I get out of the car, locking it, and make my way to the restroom to wash my hands and arms. The OCD part of me is sure a little of the mess has soaked through to my skin. Once inside, I take off my jacket, apologizing to the woman next to me who's washing her hands. I blurt out to her what just happened, half laughing at the absurdity of it all. She laughs, and then in spite of myself, I laugh too as I continue exclaiming how disgusting it is. The nice young woman is saying "Eeuuww!" right along with me. As we talk and laugh, my feeling of exasperation begins to dissolve. And suddenly, with one last belly laugh, it's gone. 

Chuckling and feeling much better, I go back to the car, relieved to see there's nothing to clean off the outside of it. That bird had good aim. Two lanes over, there's an elderly man who seems to have lost his way. Just as I move toward him, the woman who was sitting in the car next to mine gets out of hers, and she's already approaching him. She's touching his arm now, they exchange words, then she heads back, assured he can find his way. 

I pause a moment, watching the scene. Then, suddenly, the ferry line is moving. Racing around the car, I jump into the driver's seat. There's barely enough time to turn the key, put the car in drive, release the brake, and drive just fast enough to catch up. Inching onto the ferry, I follow directions, stop and set the brake. Upstairs the ferry is full but there's an empty seat near the teenage girls. They're having fun and I don't mind. I pull out my knitting and sit back for the ride, smiling, ready to go home. 

© M.E. Rollins

Open All Hours (Sleepless in San Juan)

A few years ago, I wrote a piece called Confessions of a Night Owl. It was a tantrum on paper written after being awoken at 6:00 am, which to me was an ungodly hour of the morning, since I often was doing my best writing from midnight to 2:00 am. Confessions of a Night Owl was more about the torture of lack of sleep than it was about my being a night owl. It rekindled a longtime question, "Is being a night owl inborn or habitual in nature?" 
 

Everyone I know has an opinion about that. Most of them say it's habitual, not coincidentally, the same most of them are morning larks. I've lived in both worlds, depending on what life demanded or allowed. The only real problem I've ever found with sleep patterns was when the prevailing pattern resulted in insufficient sleep. Like it or not, I need eight hours, darn it. With daylight savings time once again upon us, I remember that every Spring when we have to jump forward an hour, my usually late bedtime turns into ridiculously late, and I make yet another attempt to reform myself. 

Now that I've come to live in the land of "let's roll up the sidewalks at nine pm, nobody's up anyway", otherwise known as "only patrons of Herb's stay up past nine", the question has become, once again, pressing. There's just too much going on here during the morning hours to miss out. As with other types of reform, for me there has to be a good (selfish) incentive. Not missing out on fun stuff is a good one for me. 

Thankfully, this time my internet search brought up much more interesting results than my previous attempts to get scientific data, or at least some encouraging words on the subject. I found an excerpt from a book published by the Wesleyan Press called, Money, Sex, and Spiritual Power. 

Author Keith Drury ends his book with a chapter called Becoming a Morning Person. It's a funny account of how this minister retrained himself into being a morning lark. After his initial suggestion, "Determine if God wants you to do this", this surprisingly non preachy piece was full of easy to implement suggestions. He also says, "writers are notorious for being night owls." Yeah, I knew there was a connection. 

Then on Slate.com I found a nice little article called Can a Night Owl Become a Morning Person by Deepa Ranganathan. It's a fun ride along with someone after my own heart, a night owl looking to reform. 

I have to admit part of my quest to become part of the seeming majority known as morning larks has to do with the quest to pair up. Having spent much of my life living with extreme morning larks without significant reform on my part, I think being more realistic in the future is going to work much better than trying to be something clearly I am not. 

Maybe night owl reform is like so many other types of reform. Moderation in all things seems to apply here as well. Despite what my research has taught me so far, I think I'm going to have to keep fumbling around for a solution that works. 

Baby steps and incremental change is the only way I know to change any habit. Which is what Deepa Ranganathan decides in the end as well. And maybe, just maybe, I am yet to discover something about San Juan I don't know yet. Like where all the night owls are. 

© M.E. Rollins

Google Me

Now I'm getting a handle on how Google works, I realize anyone searching the internet for information can be directed to my articles. I don't know whether to be flattered or terrified. I remember the first time someone said to me, "Have you Googled yourself lately?" "Excuse me", I answered. "You know, have you Googled yourself?" they said. It had never occurred to me that I could Google myself, nor had I ever wanted to. I chose not to, stuck my head in the cyber-sand, and forgot about it.
 

Googling took on another light sometime later when I was on the phone with a customer service representative. I asked her to repeat information over the phone, and losing her patience, she said, "Oh just google it!" I'd never thought of Google as a swear word before. But apparently, it is one. I had more respect for Google after that. 

One day I got an email from a very nice man from across the country who was interested in something I'd mentioned in my column. "How did he know I'd written about that?" I thought. Then I remembered what my friend had asked me about Googling myself. "Oh, Google!", I thought. "It's happened."

So I decided to do a little experiment. I picked at random a word someone might use in a Google search, the word "urn" and Googled it. Knowing I've used that word in one of my columns, I wanted to see if a link to my column would come up. What I got were 23,000,000 results. Yes, twenty-three million. That was comforting. I was pretty sure my column about urns was buried (pardon the pun) at the bottom of the list.

Then the little kid in me thought, "Google something more specific." I opened my column titled The Yearling to look for key words to Google. The Google banner ad that runs on that page is for Netflix, and before I could start reading the column, the animated ad caught my eye. It was an ad for the movie The Hangover. Remembering I'd wanted to rent that movie, I went to my Netflix queue and added it, just as the Google ad had prompted me to do. Okay, now that was spooky. I'd been Googled by the ad on my own Google page.

Google is everywhere, I thought. That made me feel all Googley, but not in a good way. I pulled myself back out of that cyber-sidetrack to the task of Googling myself. I put " The Yearling" into my Google box and and hit search. Checking the first thirty entries, none were links to my column. Then I tried part of a title. I put " Five Stages of Dating" into my Google box and hit search. Jackpot. Number nineteen out of 1,490,000. Woohoo!

By this time, I was hooked and just had to see if I could get number one. I scanned the list of columns looking for something unique. I knew my next entry had to be " Sex and the Small town". How many of those could there be? Unbelievable. It came up number five. Four ahead of me. But when you consider it was number five out of 31,600,000, number five isn't bad. But still, not number one.

I needed something more unique. There it was. " IOSA-phile" . The total numbers might be small, but by this time, all I wanted was to be number one on the list. I put it in my Google search. Yes!!! Number one! Out of 7,490. The total number of results was small, but number one is number one. Yahoo! But you've got to wonder what the other 7,489 links were about.

Being a naturally competitive person, I was excited. And curious. What else can I do with this? There's got to be something to top being number one out of 7,490. I looked at the column list. What about " Fergie Speaks"? It's somewhat unique and contains the name of a celebrity (the singer, not my Fergie yet). Jackpot again! This time, number one out of 495,000! Much better. It was confetti time.

Once I calmed down from the rush of being number one in half a million, I had to wonder what all this means. And really, I don't know what all this means. Other than creating my own private fifteen minutes of fame, I don't think any of this means much of anything. Anyone can Google themselves, and in most cases something will come up. A scary thought, the reason I didn't Google myself when it was first suggested to me.

My experiment was fun and numbed me a bit more to the inevitability of losing every scrap of privacy I, and everyone else in America has. I don't know what that means either. But one thing I'm pretty sure of, when I Google the word " Google" , this column should show up. Either that, or my computer will explode, and some days, I'm not sure that would be such a bad thing.

Well, you know I couldn't just leave it there, I had to try it, I had to Google the word " Google". And guess what, my computer did not explode. But, and this is a big but, do you know how many results you get if you Google the word " Google" ? About 2,020,000,000 results (as of today). I think that's more than all the McDonald's hamburgers sold world wide so far. Or maybe not. Scary thought, either way.

© M.E. Rollins

Can You Drive a Fire Truck?

I came to San Juan Island because it felt more like home than any place I've ever been. Since coming here, I've had the chance to examine who I am and what I want. Living on an island also gives one the chance to sort out who one is not. It takes a lot of people, talented in lots of ways to make the islands tick.

Sometimes the little kid in me forgets my own talents and looks only at the accomplishments of others. If I'd known how many accomplished people live here, I might have been too intimidated to want to move here. As it has turned out, a little bit of ignorance on my part was a good thing.

Here are some potentially intimidating questions for a retired architect like me who likes to knit, read, write stories, and chat over a cup of tea: Are you a boater? Do you like to kayak? Do you ski? Mountain bike? Can you drive a fire truck? Fly a plane? Ride a motorcycle? Can you chop a cord of wood, throw it in the back of a pick up, and heat your house with it? And oddly, this one, can you write a grant proposal?

What I have to remember is that I have talents of my own, while at the same time acknowledging I admire and sometimes envy people who can and want to do all of the things mentioned above. Can I do those things? Yes. Maybe. And probably not. Depending on which things you're talking about. Do I want to do those things? Yes to a couple. Probably not to some. And definitely not to the rest.

When I was in high school, I babysat for a family who needed a nanny for their ski trips. Lucky me. I bought a pair of very stiff Head 180s off my hosts, and away I went. Being told I was a naturally good skier was encouraging. Nobody told me being a naturally good skier on those skis was practically a miracle. But I didn't know any better. I just kept taking lessons and making runs down the hill. Skiing gave me an exhilarating feeling of accomplishment and freedom, and I loved it.

Likewise boating. When I was an awkward adolescent, I spent many happy hours rowing a boat around the lake at the church camp where my family spent summer weeks together. Getting out in nature and camping helped my mother with her loneliness at having left England and her whole family behind when we immigrated to America. Meeting that need for my mom served to introduce me and my sisters to many fun outdoor activities, like hiking, boating, walking on the beach, sitting around a campfire, making Smores, and telling stories.

Most people are surprised to hear I rode a motorcycle for a time in my younger days. Not a moped or a scooter, an honest to goodness 250cc Suzuki. It took sheer adrenaline to pick it up when I laid it over one day in a dodgy neighborhood, but by jove, I did it. That chapter finally ended after my boyfriend was rear ended by a little old lady who didn't see him stopped to make a left hand turn, and then the bike was stolen from behind our less than upscale digs in a part of Portland where people should know better than to park their motor bikes out in the open. 

When Jim and I bought our run down old Victorian, I hung drywall and hauled concrete in wheelbarrows. I did those things until one day I stood up, lifting an eighty-pound bag of lime meant to sweeten the soil under our new do-it-yourself lawn. I fell to the ground, unable to walk, feeling like I’d had electric shock therapy to my lower back. Embarrassed, I dragged myself into the house where Jim couldn't see me, hoping it would wear off quickly. 

Surgery for a severely ruptured disk fixed that a few months later, but it shook me. Up until that time I'd felt invincible, and was confident I could do anything I wanted to do, including anything a man could do. Had I known about basic anatomy, body building, proper lifting techniques, and the importance of knowing one’s limits, I might not have had to learn in such a harsh manner the lesson of proper preparation and being smart about not lifting eighty pound bags of lime. 

However, having a ruptured disk did get me doing yoga, and learning proper back care. Because of yoga and common sense, in the intervening twenty-three years, I've had less back trouble than many people who haven't had surgery. Having a doctor tell me not to lift anything over twenty-five pounds for the rest of my life at age thirty-three was sobering. No, sobering isn't the right word. It was frigging depressing. But luckily, I have the gift of resilience and that phase didn’t last too long.

Since then, I've learned creative ways to get things done without brute force, and I've bent my doctor's rule many times since then as well. I knew calling myself a weakling could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've pushed myself physically, because I believed in "use it or lose it". Life teaches us lessons in many different ways, and adapting to my back injury was just another path to enlightenment, although I wouldn’t recommend it.

Now, back to the list of skills and talents I’ve encountered since moving to San Juan County. I can probably get by without learning to drive a fire truck or ride a mountain bike. I definitely prefer heating my house in a less labor intensive way than chopping down trees. I'll probably leave flying planes and kayaking to another lifetime. Rowing my way around Smith Lake and swooshing down the slopes of Mt Hood are memories I cherish and that’s just fine.

I was ignorant of all the ultra accomplished people I’d meet coming to San Juan, that’s true. But I think that was a good thing. Sometimes ignorance is, if not bliss, at least the thing that allows us to venture into places we wouldn't otherwise go. Ignorance on a conscious level that is. For I believe we humans have an inner knowing that when we listen to what’s inside us, can take us to just the right places. Maybe even places we can come to know as home.

© M.E. Rollins