I did my first solo road trip in 1980 over Labor Day. I was 21. I had a brand new 1980 Mustang, a few dollars, and was itching to drive. My friends, who couldn’t go with me, were appalled. Alone! What about serial killers? My parents didn’t blink an eye. I grew up doing 3000-mile road trips. Of course, I would want to take the car out and about.
I had a few dollars but not a lot of dollars. I plotted the trip carefully. Milwaukee to Huntington WV where I could stay with my best friend from high school.
Oh, what a glorious drive it was. I was young. I was single. I had a gleaming new car. I had 8-tracks of my favorite music and I had no particular time I was expected to be anywhere.
Her hair was a miracle, a wonder, a symphony of wild and beautiful. You could get lost in hair like that.
Let it wrap you in golden strands the color of wheat just before harvest like a blanket and a fire on a cold winter night. Her hair was a mystery, an enigma, a talisman.
Her hair beckoned you to magical forests, castles, charmed cottages.
Her hair.
I was in love with her immediately. Entranced. Intrigued. Infatuated. I knew deep down it would not end well, but I hung around waiting for her to either find a table or leave. I intended to follow her out the door if need be. Determined to talk to her.
The Snerd loved candy. Oh, yes he did. Now it’s true that all Snerds love candy, but this Snerd, was the snerdiest of them all and loved candy so much that he hoarded it depriving other Snerds of their opportunities to acquire candy. This Snerd would cackle with glee at his bounty all stored in his cottage.
Now Snerds don’t eat candy. Oh no. They use it as bait for unsuspecting children. If you study Snerd lore, you already know that a Snerd would never harm a child. But they are big and scary looking and find it hard to make friends with the little beings they are so enchanted by. Your average Snerd looks just like the monsters you think you see under your bed and are sometimes drawn in books. They have big eyes and big teeth and lots of hair and fur.
They don’t mean to frighten children, but they do. And so for years and years, the Snerds have been studying ways to befriend children because Snerds like children the way we like puppies – with abounding love and lots of giggles
Our Snerd, the hoarder, would race to the store after payday every week and spend his earnings on candy to entice children. He was frugal in all other areas of his life, so he sometimes bought all the candy which made the other Snerds mad for it hadn’t yet occurred to any of the Snerds that there might be another way to get a child’s attention. Throughout the history of Snerds, candy was used. Snerds experimented with different kinds and different ways of getting it to the children, but it was always candy.
I have written before about my dislike of vacuuming. It’s not just dislike, it’s a visceral hatred that suffuses all of me and makes my hair stand on end. Inevitably, the machine will clog, the belt will break, and I will end up cursing. Every time. Every single time. For now, and always and forever. This is true. I no longer fight it. I try to roll with the flow.
I am also not fond of putting laundry away. I don’t mind doing laundry so much, but right outside my laundry room door is an 11-foot old oak church pew. Fresh from the dryer clothes seem to end up there. And even if I do fold them, they tend to stay there. I often dress from the church pew in the hallway that is right in front of my windowed kitchen door. This is flirting with disaster. I am someday going to flash somebody.
Dusting also annoys me. I live on a dirt road. I have 3 dogs. I have laundry sitting on the church pew. I have dust. And it accumulates at warp speed. I often say I’m running a retirement for dust. Just as soon as I carry some of it out to the bin, a new crop arrives to take its place. It’s maddening. I can wield a can of Pledge for hours and admire my sparkling furniture and shelves, but by the next morning, it looks as if weeks have passed since anything has seen a dust rag.
Suffice it to say there is not much I like in the vein of housecleaning aside from making up a bed with clean linen sheets and a freshly aired duvet.