Fugitives on the run

I often say that raising a kid is a lot like training a dog.

Grossly oversimplified, but it's true.

Unfortunately, one of the kids is behaving a bit too much like the dog.

As I've chronicled before, Maisie's a constant flight risk, requiring frequent retrieval from her romps down by the river.

Well, Hadley's been on the loose as well.

(And let me interject here that while he does not eat stink bugs or sift through cat litter, the Boy's no patron saint. He's blog fodder but there's no denying that the 2-year-old's been on the lamb.)

The first few episodes were pure parental misjudgment: Just because one kid sleeps late and is unwaveringly mesmerized by the idiot box, doesn't mean the other kid will follow. We assumed that it was safe to jump on morning chores while the rug-rats were sleeping. But we discovered that Hadley rises early, gives the TV a cursory nod, then buzzes out the door.

One winter morning I returned from a crack-of-dawn gym workout and noticed tiny footprints etched in the frost on the deck. They led down the stairs and disappeared in the grass. Glancing up the driveway I spotted Martin and the dog...and distantly trailing them, a pajama-clad kid -- with no shoes or jacket -- picking her way along the rocks and gravel.

After a few of these incidents, we've modified our stellar parenting skills -- we no longer leave sleeping kids unattended while we're out and about.

But last weekend a new challenge arose. My friend Linda and I were walking our horses to the nearby indoor ring while Martin ate breakfast with the kids. We had nearly reached the neighbor's barn when Linda's horse, Mingo, stopped in his tracks. He craned his head backwards to look at the small figure -- this time in boots, still no jacket -- sprinting in leg-flailing-toddler fashion toward us. Hadley had run out the door, across the yard, through the barn, out the open gate and through the pasture. She was breathless when she reached us.

What are you doing? I asked.
Looking for you, she said. I found you.
Where is your Dad?
In the house, she said casually.

So parental presence no longer discourages the roaming Barbarian.

Our short-term solution has been to secure the gate on the deck with a leadrope. And so far that's hampered her travels. But the other night Hadley deftly scaled what we thought was an unclimbable railing.

So the next step is to rethink our door locking mechanisms. And perhaps invest in an ankle tracking device.

For both the dog and the kid.

Barbarian newsflash

Hadley the Barbarian loves broccoli. Out of the blue, she demanded it at the store, wolfed it down at dinner and wanted more for breakfast.

FREAK.

Either that, or the stink bug-eating, kitty litter-consuming kid is growing up.

Veggie eating aside, she routinely douses her food in an avalanche of salt... which confirms that she's my flesh and blood after all.

Interloper

Maisie recently swapped her sheep-herding duties for a watch-dog assignment.

Whether she liked it or not.

Raccoons, possums and other wildlife occasionally amble in the barn to peruse the selection of edibles and truthfully, and we don't make it too hard for them. The cat food dishes are stacked on a couple of hayloft stairs, buffet style. And when the dishes are empty, it's relatively easy to pry open the cat food canister and plunder the stash.

When evidence of a nocturnal nosher appears, the solution's simple: weighing down the lids with bricks typically foils dexterous paws, though one creature (likely a raccoon) retaliated by scaling the feed stall door, rummaging through every horse supplement container and thoroughly trashing the place.

All of these sneak attacks occur in the middle night. Until a couple of days ago.

It was over the weekend, just after dark. I was splashing through the lake that was once our driveway, en-route to feed the horses, when a cat darted out of the barn, and nearly ran into me.

At least I thought it was a cat. Except that none of them have such thick, bushy tails. Nor do they more that fast.

But it was the musky scent that clinched it: some cheeky fox has come within a few feet of an up-close and personal meeting with me.

Since I had found the cat food container tipped over that morning, I knew that this guy was a repeat offender. And while it was unlikely that he'd nab one of our cats, I was worried about little Felix. So I assigned Maisie sentry duty, tethering her to the front of the barn...in the rain. She looked baleful when I left there, perched in the muddy flower bed, her ears drooping against the drizzle.

But in the morning all the cats were unaccounted for and their food in tact. Thanks to one filthy-muddy, rain-sodden dog.

Follow up: Maisie was later relieved of her duties and the cat food was securely. But a couple days later, we found the trash cans spilled out in the barn. Sorry Maisie, it's back to work for you.

Waterlogged

Walk outside and you hear it everywhere. The sound of water running. Burbling and percolating in the grass. Squishing out of the earth. Swallowing up your shoes.

We're past the sponge stage -- where the ground is thick and heavy with water-laden soil. Now the rainfall pools on every surface -- the driveway, beside the barn, in the fields.

The horses no longer amble over to their water trough for a drink. Now they just drop their heads and start slurping from where they stand.

The river near the farm has spread like lava across the woods and fields. In a marvelous muddy mass, it creeps silently toward the bridge. Another four feet and it'll swallow up the pavement. Double lines and all.

At sunset we drove down to the river to assess its progress and the massive log jams.

Here's a parking lot frequented by hunters, fishermen and civil war buffs.

In the end, we cut our river recon short when we ran out of road. Literally.
According to the NOAA website, the river hit historic flood levels three times in the 1930s (before the bridge was built), and four times in the 1970s... plus one odd-ball year: 1996.

So, are we looking at another series of epic storms and radical floods in the 2010's?

Living the fishbowl

I know how the fish in our aquarium feel at night. When the lights cast a purplish glow over the water and the kids have their faces plastered up against the tank, pointing and rapping on the sides of the glass.

In the evenings when Martin and I are vegging out, we become the fish in a tank. The barn cats abandon their mousing activities, they skulk out of the bushes and settle in for a session people watching. Perched on the deck railing or the table top, they peer at us through the picture windows. For hours.

I can't say that I feel their presence -- in the dark I wouldn't know that they're there. But when the deck lights are on, you can't miss them -- roosting on the rail, staring intently at us -- enraptured, as if they are watching TV. Or hamsters in a habitrail.

In my anthropomorphizing mind, I imagine the cats bantering back and forth:

Hey Mel, whacha doin?
Watching the humans interact in their natural habitat
Anything good going on?
Eh...the short one's pretty fidgety but the bald one hasn't moved from the couch.

I don't know why we're watch-worthy when all we're doing is warming the couch and puttering around the kitchen.

But maybe the fish think the same thing when we're watching them.

Insomnia

1:45 am

In the darkness I am tugging the tangles out of my hair, my thumb and fingers aimlessly threaded between the jumbled strands that smell of shampoo. That's when I realize that I'm awake. I try not to look. That's cheating. I should be able to tell what time it feels like.

Well it's not 5 am, not even close. There's no tell-tale "whoosh" of an early commuter racing an empty black road to an empty office. It's too quiet out there.

And I feel quasi-rested, not doped with exhaustion, which suggests that I've logged some decent hours. So I'll wager that it's 4 am....no, 4:30.

I roll over to stare down the blocky digits glowing against an unearthly green screen.

1:45. Only 1:45? Damn.

At this hour the house holds its breath. The radiators are satiated -- they don't spit and hiss for a couple of hours. The only sound is white. The source: a cheap, ceramic plug-in heater set to "fan." That heater salvages my sanity. It drowns out the soft breathing of normal people at rest.

But I'm past resentment, the pitiful wondering of why am I awake when everyone else can sleep? I know why. I've inherited a dominant "worry" gene and a faulty shut-off mechanism. My brain powers down and I fall asleep easily -- sometimes instantly -- but 90 minutes or 2 hours later, something forces me awake. It's not an obvious revelation -- there's no subconscious alarm that bleats: "hey wake up, it's time to worry about Dad!" The brain is more subtle. It's a gentle hand on my shoulder shaking me awake. And then it's gone but the damage is done. I'm up.

I've learned to ignore the litany of advice: stick to a good schedule; get lots of exercise; turn off the tv and computer an hour before bedtime; make sure your room is cool; take a warm bath; take a hot shower; drink a glass of warm milk; avoid food; avoid alcohol; have a glass of wine; read a boring book; practice deep breathing; meditate; count sheep; imagine a restful place.

It's like getting parenting advice from a person who doesn't have kids. What do they know?

I'll tell you what works. Prescription drugs. Ambien is my pill of choice. Yes it's just a band-aid and yes, it's psychologically addictive. But you try functioning in daylight hours on a couple hours of sleep... 3, 4, 5 days in a row (my standing insomniac record is 5 weeks). Trust me, you'll lose your mind. And you'll drink lighter fluid if you think it'll help.

There's no fighting Ambien -- it always trumps my brain. For kicks sometimes I'll down a pill and try to stay awake. But fighting it is fruitless. It's a current that drags you under water: you can try to swim to the surface but it's too strong. It'll hold you under. And with that, the relief of sleep. In the morning you bob back to the surface and gaze out over a pale sky and calm water. Ready for another day.

Of course magic pills come with cautionary tales. Like ambien's rule number one: do not swallow me after midnight or you'll over sleep and suffer through a foggy morning. So as it stands, I'm three hours late.

But that means three hours to go -- and I'm not discounting a last ditch return to sleep -- a taste of slumber before a squat body clad in flannel pjs deftly clambers over me, impressing a bony knee into my thigh. Then it's barn, dog, kids, breakfast, work, (insert caffeine here), traffic, dinner, laundry, barn, dog and then, I'll pop open the vial and wait for the current to take me.

Rambling Mouse

With all the barns, outbuildings and old farms around here, there's no need for our local rodent community to bother with new housing construction. There are oodles of servicable nesting spots, just a short scuttle away from plentiful food -- everything from spilled grain to brimming bowls of dog and cat food.

Yet one resourceful rodent decided that a house on wheels was the way to go. At least that's what my neighbor Liz discovered last week when noxious gas fumes permeated her car's interior.

The source of the smell: a hose beneath the hood was spurting gas in geiser fashion. In this case the vandal turned out to a be mouse, who left telltale chew marks in the hose and a cozy little nest in the air cleaner.

Perhaps this mouse had been outcast from the local colony and forced to make due with a mobile home. Maybe he was plagued with wanderlust and wanted an RV.

No matter, the mouse nest was razed and thanks to a $47 part, Liz's car is roadworthy again.