Welcome to the Nuthouse

I have a "past" when it comes to squirrels.

First, there was the time that I awoke in the wee hours of the morning in my childhood home to a scratching noise in the attic. It was one of the last days that I was at home before heading back to college for my junior year, and I was miffed that my morning was getting disrupted. I went downstairs to find my dad, and he shrugged me off - he was getting ready for work and was positive that whatever was making that noise was on the outside of the house. Later that morning I returned from a doctor's appointment and was seated in the living room - ready for a few hours of soap operas, the new Glamour magazine and a diet Cherry 7-up. I had our front door open but the screened storm door was closed so that our older dog, Christie, could pretend she was looking out at the yard (she was pretty much blind by this point). As I sat on the couch, I saw something move VERY quickly out of the corner of my eye and catapult its small body over Christie and onto the screen - at that point, it started making some ungodly noises. I contributed to the chaos by screaming and spilling pink soda everywhere. I guess I scared the crap out of Squirrely McAcornpants, because he turned around and headed back into the kitchen. At that point, I grabbed Christie's collar and ran out the door onto the front lawn where I continued screaming. Neighbors opened their doors (including my best friend who lived two doors down), because clearly, someone was being murdered. My elderly next door neighbor came over, opened the front door and waited for the squirrel to exit our home on it's own. Crisis averted. (Also, my dad headed home early that day after a pissed off call from me to take me to a late lunch as an "I'm sorry I ignored your terror" gesture - we had a great time.)

My second experience was more harrowing. I had recently started dating my now-husband when he took me to the family farm in Louisiana for the opening of hunting season. I didn't care much about it - especially since they got up at the crack of dawn and all I needed to do was keep sleeping and ignore the noise as he donned his ridiculous camouflage outfit. I assumed they were going to hunt deer. I didn't necessarily agree with the activity, but given the overpopulation in the area and the family tradition involved, I kept my mouth shut - until he and his dad returned with their "prizes." The animals they hunted were small enough to hang from their belts. And they looked suspiciously like squirrels. A fact which was confirmed by me when I opened the refrigerator to grab a diet soda and I saw a pink fetus-like creature floating in a pot of water (it was a skinned squirrel). I grabbed the chardonnay instead. That night at dinner, my mother-in-law encouraged me to try some, because "it tastes like chicken." I declined and suggested that if it did indeed taste like chicken, perhaps our respective husbands would better spend their time HUNTING CHICKENS. (Which taste a lot like chicken as well).

Yesterday, was number three in the Great Timeline of Squirrel Events. I was talking to my mom and spied something weird hanging from a tree in our backyard. I went out to explore and saw this:

Crap - a squirrel had clearly wedged itself into the nook of the tree trunk and died. I felt bad for the poor guy. In fact, I went to check on his progress (and to make sure that we hadn't attracted any scavenger birds) about thirty minutes later and I saw this:


My "dead" squirrel had clearly moved. At this point, I called Manbug a/k/a the Squirrelanitor, and we stood in the yard (from a distance - we're not Grizzly Adams!) examining him. He seemed injured - or was just acting weird. We couldn't figure it out. Until a lovely neighbor walking her dog in the clearing next to our house enlightened us:

LNWHD: Is that my cat?

Manbug: What?

LNWHD: Is that my cat in your tree? I lost my cat.

Manbug: No - it's a squirrel who seems to be injured. He's just lying on the trunk of of tree.

LNWHD: Oh no - you wouldn't know it since you just moved here, but the squirrels in this neighborhood do that. When it's hot, they just lay on the tree to cool off.

Really? The squirrels in our neighborhood have a different method of dealing with triple digit temperatures than every other squirrel in Texas?

I'm not judging, but perhaps the residents in the area deal with the same heat by nipping at the cooking wine? But maybe she was right, because guess what I saw about an hour later?

Revised Date for "When Pills Are Not Enough"

Because of the vast interest in the anonymous posts, Miss A Little Left of Lost has decided to extend the dealine detailed below.

Email your posts to dlwinkler (at)msn (dot)com by Sunday, August 30th. She will disperse them on the Monday the 31st for posting on your respective blog on Tuesday, September 1st.

Hope you plan to join us!

The “When pills are not enough” Sessions

As taken from A Little Left of Lost:

On several occasions over the past few weeks, I have read or heard people complaining that they can't be absolutely and completely honest on their blogs, for a variety of reasons. Maybe your mom reads your blog. Or your grandmother. Or you have co-workers or clients who have found your blog. Maybe your spouse doesn't like you telling "strangers" about the concerns you may have in your marriage. Whatever it may be, I'm pretty sure at some point you have been afraid to post something. And who can blame you? Who wants your grandmother to know you are testing & reviewing a dildo? Who wants your co-worker or boss to read about how stabby you get in the office? Whatever it is, it would be nice to rant, bitch, complain, vent, get it out already, without the negative consequences. It would be great to get some feedback from other smart people out there, without worrying about losing readers (or your job). Thus, The "When pills aren't enough" Sessions! (As in, "I took a pill to calm my ass down, but I'm still stressing/pissed/panicking." And I can't take credit for the name; Holly is fabulous with stuff like that.)




Basically, this is how it works:

• You send me an email (at dlwinkler (at)msn (dot)com) telling me you want to participate. Go ahead and give me the link to your blog as well. Let me know if there is anything you do not want posted on your blog.
• Then you send me your post. It can be about ANYTHING. Nothing is off-limits here.
  I will send your post to another participating blogger to be posted on their blog next Friday, August 28th. We will all post the guest posts that day.
• If you wish to have an under-the-radar, sneaky pen name for your post, go right ahead. Just put it in the email. If you want your blog to be linked on your post, let me know.
• Here's the great part: It's a round-robin sorta thing, so if your guest post goes on Participant #1's blog, Participant #1's guest post will not go on your blog, but on Participant #2's blog. That way, no one that normally reads your blog (like your mother or your nosy secretary) will be able to find your guest post!
• Am I fabulously smart or what? (Don't everyone answer that all at once).
  So! Pretty please email me if you are interested in participating! I will need your guest post by Wednesday night, August 26th.

Now I just need to decide what I'm going to write about first!

**You may see this post on several people's blogs today. Just trying to spread the word.Feel free to do the same!!**

Cowboy Take Me Away

My mind associates very specific moments with the lyrics to one of my favorite Dixie Chicks song. It was my final semester of law school. I had a class schedule that offered me more free time than I had ever had as a working girl or student in the past few years. I had a new car with a great stereo system and a sun roof. I had accepted a job at a firm that I loved and I would be moving to Texas that following fall. I drove around listening to this song, feeling free and falling in love with the idea of my future.

Sure, as a somewhat naive New Yorker, I glamorized Texas in those dreams. At least I glamorized the Texas that I would come to know in the not-so-distant future. The one that I had allowed myself to dream of consisted of fields of blue bonnets, cowboy hats, creased Wranglers, pick-up trucks, hay, horses and sun. My "real" Texas, however, would consist of late nights at work, dinner out of Styrofoam boxes, amortizing law school debt, living by myself and responsibility. I knew there would be a huge disconnect between what I hoped and what came to be, but it was those dreams that would allow me to pick up and move across the country, to a state where I knew NO ONE - away from family and life-long friends.

And no, I didn't get a cowboy - I got a somewhat cocky IT consultant that worked for my firm but was about to start his own business. And he didn't wear Wranglers with a cowboy press or boots - he wore khakis and dress shirts and had designer shoes that cost more than the heels I wore on a daily basis. He didn't drive an F150, he drove a Lexus - a car that he freely admitted to me was chosen to attract females (and no, he doesn't own it anymore). But I fell in love and I abandoned my dreams of cowboys (although, through a promise of life-long love I did get a family farm and a father-in-law who wore cowboy-pressed Wranglers. No bad for a girl from New York City).

But Saturday night all of those old visions came rushing back to me. We were attending a birthday party for a business acquaintance and the party moved from the original location to an old Texas dance hall that dated back to 1876. As we stepped through the front doors, we walked through a sea of mean wearing cowboy hats and Wranglers and women donning sundresses and cowboy boots (Yes, I know these pictures are HORRIBLE, but please imagine me trying sneak photos with my Blackberry at such a locale!).

Many of them sashayed in a circle as they two-stepped to the live band singing about lost love and pick-up trucks.


The whole scene was overwhelming - in a good way. In a way that makes me appreciate the many facets of Texas and all it has to offer. That in fact, the Texas that I had dreamed of did exist - even if it was one that I didn't experience every day.

And that night I made a few promises to the person I was in my third year of law school - first, I was going to buy a pair of cowboy boots (and honestly that's a promise to the person I am today as well because hey, new shoes!) and second, I would learn to dance in them.

It's the least I could do to honor those crazy dreams.