Vignettes

The long grass

/ sweetsaraline / 1 Comment

I’m eleven and we’ve recently moved to a new house. It’s a farmhouse, but we don’t own the farm, just the house.

I wander and explore until I wander off our property. I pass a barn and some other buildings, and then I see it: a big patch of long grass.

The grass reminds me of the opening theme of Little House on the Prairie where the girls are running through a meadow, their wholesome sun bonnets bouncing lazily behind them. I can hear the theme song as I look at it. I want to run through that grass.

I suppose that this is a good place in the story to tell you that I’m wearing flip-flops.

After checking to make sure that nobody is watching, I dive into the grass and run through it while bringing my knees up high. My arms are out to the sides, palms dancing forward. The theme song from Little House on the Prairie plays through my head blissfully and clearly.

My joyfulness is cut short when I feel a thick, long, legless body covered in scales brush roughly and quickly against my ankle and out of my way. I know exactly what it is, and neither of us is happy in that moment.

The Ingalls girls probably never felt the snakes rubbing against their ankles when they ran through the meadow. They were wearing leather boots and thick woollen stockings. (The girls, I mean. Not the snakes.)

It’s a dumpster thing

/ sweetsaraline / 2 Comments

If you ever rent a dumpster for a home renovation or a big clean up project, then you need to know about what will inevitably happen. Dumpsters are notorious for getting filled with random junk from anonymous neighbours overnight. When people see a dumpster in front of someone else’s house, they just have to throw all their garbage into it. They just can’t help it. It’s a thing. It will happen and you can’t stop it.

“That won’t be a problem for me,” you scoff. “The dumpster that I’m going to rent has a lid with a lock.” I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it won’t help. People will still come with their bug infested mattresses and failed pallet-furniture projects sometime between midnight and 5 am, and when they find that the dumpster is lidded and locked, they’ll just lean these items against the dumpster for you to find in the morning. That is to say, they’ll lean their things against the dumpster if they’re in a charitable mood. It is more likely that they’ll toss their heavy garbage items on top of the lid, making it impossible for you to open it without moving them first.

The layperson who rents a dumpster is typically shocked and upset to find the dumpster that arrived the day before already filled in the morning. After all, they paid money to get this dumpster into their driveway because they had a specific use for it, and now they can’t put their specific rubbish in the dumpster because there is no longer enough room. Construction workers, on the other hand, are never surprised. It is well known in the construction industry that this is a thing. Usually construction companies allow for extra dumpsters in their budget when they have a project.

And how do I know about the dumpster thing? My husband works in demolition. One day he returned to a job downtown early in the morning and the dumpster was full of mannequins. Their neutral faces stared at him and past him and towards the bottom of the dumpster. Toeless feet pointed towards the sky, and thin, hard arms and legs jutted out everywhere like sticks in a broken bird’s nest.

My mother and the snake

/ sweetsaraline

It is always windy at my mother’s house because there are no trees or buildings to block the wind. Her house rises stubbornly out of the flat ground like a small mountain.

My mother is outside ripping weeds out of her garden. It is satisfying when the roots emerge. She shakes the dirt out of them and lays the unwelcome plants on the ground, but then she hears another sound under the sound of the wind.

Knock knock knock.

It kind of sounds like a woodpecker, but less rhythmic and more hollow.

She follows the sound. She walks around the house and sees a snake. Its scales are rough and dry and dark grey. It has a large snail stuck to the side of its head. It is banging the snail against the steps leading up to the deck, trying to knock it off.

My mother wants to help. She looks around for something that she can use to get the snail off of the snake’s head. She sees a hockey stick and picks it up.

The snake doesn’t know what my mother’s intentions are. It just sees a lady coming towards it with a hockey stick, and, because the snake has dealt with enough bullshit today, it swiftly darts under the deck and out of reach.

Dinner

/ sweetsaraline

The stew slides out of the can with a schlurrrrrrrrp. It retains a cylindrical shape until I smash it up with a wooden spoon. Beige, orange, and brown cubes with rounded corners swim in a brown puddle. That’s the potatoes, carrots, and meat. The beef is made of highly processed hamburger meat, ground up again and again before being pressed into a shape.

I know that it is ready when the stew sizzles and spits.

I take the French fries out of the oven. I scoop some onto a plate and I dump the stew on top of the French fries. I set the plate down in front of my surprised son.

“My dad used to make this for me when I was a kid,” I tell him.

“Oh.” He pauses to take a hesitant bite, and then he says, “Did you like this when you were a kid?”

Cat tree

/ sweetsaraline

The most practical spot for a cat tree is in front of a window. Ours is in front of the big window in the living room. One of our cats predictably likes to sit on it to get a good view of the front yard. He watches the birds, the squirrels, the rabbits, the neighbourhood cats who come to sit on the railway ties bordering our garden bed. He watches the people walking by as they stroll down to look at the lake. Some of the people have dogs. If he’s lucky, he’ll get to see a duck, a wild turkey, or a fox. This is exactly what we envisioned when we put the cat tree in front of the window.

Our other cat likes to sit on it too, but he faces the living room so he can watch us.

Garden Star of the week: Roses

/ sweetsaraline

Roses are popular with gardeners in several localities, and also with people who like the idea of gardening but don’t actually want to do it. Having them in bloom allows you to immerse yourself in an aromatory experience every time you venture out your front door, and yes, I did just make that word up, because what’s in a name, am I right? They’re beautiful, they’re edible, they’re world famous and have even been referenced by a little old playwright called William Shakespeare. And the best part about roses? Because of their famous sharp thorns, they’re completely squirrel-proof! And that is why the rose is our Garden Star 🌟 of the week. Congrats, roses!

The decorations

/ sweetsaraline

Picture a cemetery on a cold and sunny day in October. The sky is blue, the leaves are orange, and the headstones are sticking out of the ground like big, somber, grey popsicles. Now zoom in on my identical twin aunts. You can tell them apart when you see them, but not when you hear them both laughing at the same time. Today they are visiting my grandparents and they have supplies.

They decorate my grandparents’ headstone. The decorations are placed meticulously and thoughtfully. They stand back to admire the lavish display that they’ve created. My grandparents would love it. My aunts’ voices fade as they walk back to their cars. The sun puts on a show with dark reds, oranges, and yellows stretching through the sky, and then it fades, too.

The cemetery is quiet and dark. The wind keeps the headstones company. The sun returns and the sky turns blue again. The first mourners of the day come to the cemetery with flowers. They are startled when they see the plastic skeleton guarding my grandparents’ stone. As they take in the scene more, they also notice the rubber bats, the fake spider webs, the autumn flowers, and the pumpkins.

My grandparents really liked Halloween.

Cloud

/ sweetsaraline

My husband sits in the backyard after a long day at work. The sun is hot. He shifts his chair into the shade. A light breeze swishes through the tree canopy overhead. A blue jay hops on the fence and twists its head to look at him before flying away again. A chipmunk ventures out and then dives into a hole behind a rock.

After forty-five minutes of peacefulness, the door slides open. I step outside. My husband watches as I walk across the yard, a thick and growing cloud following closely behind me. I sit in a chair next to him and the mosquitoes descend on both of us.