I’m half Italian, which means I’m genetically programmed to grow tomatoes. And peppers. Or not (I’m not even that crazy about peppers, yet I am compelled to plant them year after year). And beans. And other stuff. But mostly and always tomatoes. Once or twice a year (three times, if we’re lucky), I bring in a huge haul of tomatoes from the garden, pull out the tomato press, and go to town squishing those little juicy little buggers into puree. The puree goes into the freezer where it will magically become spaghetti sauce or salsa over the winter.
Thus this:

turns these (actual tomatoes from my garden in my actual kitchen sink):

into puree (of which I do not have a photo. Please use your imagination.)

I was driving down a main road today and, at a stop light, glanced at the car next to me that held a woman driving (but deeply engaged in a cellphone conversation) and a dog. The dog looked to be some kind of Labrador mix, and at first I couldn’t figure out what it was doing. The rear window was half-way down and liberally dusted with dried snoot juice (if your dog rides in your car, you know what I mean). As I looked, I realized the dog was licking the back of the headrest of the front passenger seat. This was a relatively new-looking car. A sedan, maybe a Toyota of some sort, and the outside was clean. I couldn’t figure out what could be on the back of the headrest, but this dog was going to town on it. The light turned green, so I went. The other car was going painfully slowly, so I figured I’d eventually lose it. But lo and behold, two stop lights later, it pulls up behind me. I Looked in the rear view mirror and saw the driver still chatting away on the phone, oblivious to the dog in the backseat giving a tongue bath to the headrest.

I just put my kid on the school bus for the first time, so I guess summer is more or less over. It’s cool this morning and kind of damp–feels frighteningly like autumn. However, I’m pleased to say that I didn’t waste my time this and actually made a couple new discoveries that make me feel as though I had been wasting some time prior to this summer.

First, I discovered the novels of Philip K. Dick. Seriously, how come no one told how awesome his writing is? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is darkly marvelous. He created the world of the novel within the first paragraph and then delighted me as I continued to read and learned more about that world. Great dystopian sci-fi with genuine character development. Why I never read his stuff before, I have no idea.

My other joyous discovery (or perhaps rediscovery) this summer was swimming outside. I’m an on-again, off-again swimmer. I never took swimming lessons as a kid and, in fact, was told by the ear, nose, and throat doctor not to put my head under water as a little kid due to recurring ear infections. So I never learned how to swim properly. I’ve kind of figured it out myself over the years. I used the indoor pool at college to do laps and in recent years have done laps at the YMCA pool. I’ll occasionally swim in Lake Erie, and when I lived in the Netherlands in the early 1990s, I would bike out to the beach and swim in the North Sea. Open water swimming brings with it an element of fun fear, because it does make you feel as though you are competing against the elements in a visceral way. In the North Sea, I would deliberately swim out to where my feet could no longer touch the bottom and would just hang out and tread water for a while. It helped me get rid of some of the panic that used to set in when I couldn’t touch bottom.

This summer, the kid and I bought pool passes and being a thrifty family, went often to get our money’s worth. I’ve taught her how to swim and, at five and a half, she’s old enough to make new friends at the pool, leaving me to either sit around like the other pool moms, working on my tan and doling out snacks, or I could swim laps. I’m so glad I chose the latter.

What makes swimming laps outdoors so joyous? I think it’s a combination of the clear, almost crisp quality to the water, feeling the sun on your back or doing a backstroke and feeling that you’re opening yourself to the sun and the sky, gazing at the blue above as your arms chop through the water. I love swimming the length of the pool and looking down as I go over the drop between shallow and the deep, deep end. It looks as though you’re swimming out beyond the edge of the world.

Where have these things been all my life? What other delights have I been missing? It boggles the mind.

The husband, kid, and I just came back from a mini-vacation at a nearby state park. We stayed in the lodge and just spent a few days playing in the pool, hiking in the woods, putzing around Amish country, playing games, and generally having a good time. Families are a funny thing, even small families like ours. Each person wants to do his or her own thing. The kid would have been content to spend the entire time in the water, with occasional jaunts online to forage for food or play a few hands of UNO. The husband just likes poking around podunky little towns. I’m there for the trees. Put me in the middle of the woods and let me hike my way out and I’m the happiest of beings. Finding a balance of all three of these things was challenging. By the end of the day, we were dog tired.

The lodge room had two double beds. One was dubbed the Stinky Boy Bed, which is where the husband slept. The other was the Girls Bed (Girls Rule, Boys Drool), which is where the kid and I slept. My child rotates approximately 720 degrees during the course of one night. It’s always a challenge to share a bed with her because I consistently end up with a hand/arm/knee/foot/head lodge in my back/face/stomach. After an hour or two of lying there and trying to predict which combination will come next, I considered braving the boy cooties and moving over to the husband’s bed. Then he started snoring.

We’ve been together 13 years. I know the guy snores. But before any journey away from home, I seem to get this selective memory that his snoring isn’t so bad or that I’ll be tired enough or (perhaps) drunk enough that I’ll fall right to sleep and not to notice. It never happens. The Scylla kicks, Charybdis snores.

I’m currently reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and brought it along on our trip. At 3:00 a.m., the idea of being a writer-about-town in Paris and leaving the spouse at home to fend for her/himself seemed unfairly attractive. I put the book down and rooted around in the old leather shaving kit that belonged to my grandfather and which I’ve used for traveling for the past twenty years. I managed to find one earplug. It helped a bit with the snoring, except I had to transfer it between ears every time I wanted to roll over. I supposed if you’re able to make the effort to move an earplug from one ear to another as you roll over then you aren’t actually unconscious. As I contorted myself to avoid the kicks from the kid and listened to the buzzsaw across the way, I begged most of the night to be unconscious.

This is what I get for breaking my cardinal rule of travel with my family: Always stay somewhere with two rooms.

The Beekeeper of Monticello Boulevard lives around the corner from us. On the same block, actually. You could walk about half a mile to his house on the other side of the block or walk through our backyard, through our woods, through some other neighbors’ woods, through his woods, into his backyard, past the 20 or so white bee hive boxes, and up to his front door. He has a “Bee Wax for Sale” sign in front of his house year-around. I’ve never bought wax from him–don’t know what I’d use it for. The sign I wait for shows up in late summer and reads “Honey for Sale.”

The first time we bought honey from him was when the kid was maybe a two and a half. I chatted with the Beekeeper for a bit, and he let us wander into the backyard and get as close as we dared to the hives. He was born in Russia and has been keeping bees for more than 30 years. The first year, we bought one jar, which came home in the bottom of the kid’s red wagon. Her job was to hold on to the jar whenever we went over a bump.

I was never big on honey, but I had read that a good way to combat seasonal allergies is to take a teaspoonful of local honey each day. The idea being that since the bees are getting pollen from the very things making you sneeze, you can slowly vaccinate. I figured I couldn’t get any more local than bees who had been hanging around my own backyard. What I learned is that I was never a big honey fan because the only honey I had ever encountered was mass-produced stuff sold in the grocery store. This local honey was a revelation. It wasn’t as thick as the grocery store stuff and had a rich flavor, not just sweetness. (Kind of like the difference between salsa that that has flavor and salsa that just has heat.)

The first jar ran out long before the following summer. But now we were spoiled. Even pricey organic honey from the grocery store didn’t cut it. Oh, I’d put it in my chamomile tea, but it wasn’t the same as the local stuff. Now we wait for the Beekeeper of Monticello Boulevard to put out the “Honey for Sale” sign. Yesterday, when the kid and I were talking a walk, we saw it and cheered. We immediately rang the doorbell even though we had a bicycle, two dogs on a leash, and no money. We asked him to save three jars–two for us and one for my sister, who has also become addicted.

When we got the honey home yesterday, the kid, my husband and I all fell upon the first jar like crazed, ravenous Winnie-the-Poohs. It was exquisite. The kid just kept asking for another spoonful “all by itself.” All night long, my husband toasted sourdough bread and dribbled the honey on it. For breakfast, all my child has asked for is a banana cut up with honey on it. I just enjoyed an endless cup of chamomile tea with more honey than anyone in their right mind would add. Except I’m not in my right mind. I’m in the last throes of summer. The kid starts school in a week. Already, the mornings have the cool, damp feel of fall. I have two jars of summer to get me through the winter.

The puppy is almost eight months. He is still growing and shows no signs of stopping. Unfortunately, his brain is not growing at the same rate as his body. He has figured out that he’s tall enough to eat things off of the kitchen counter. Thus far, he’s gotten half a loaf of banana bread, some cookies, brownies, and an 8-count bag of little Hershey’s Special Dark. So now we realize that we can’t leave any food on the counter, even if it’s pushed all the way to the back. Although he looks like a black Lab mix, a friend noted that he must be part chocolate Lab.

I just got back from taking the dogs for a walk. When I opened the garage, Juno waited for it to get high enough so she could walk under. Mason tried to follow, bumped his head (because he’s several inches taller than she is), and then stood there watching the garage door go up, wondering why he couldn’t get in.

The bag of Puppy Chow reads that it contains DHA for healthy brain development. I sure hope that stuff works fast.

Sometimes it’s difficult to say what we really like. We don’t want to hurt another person’s feelings or don’t want to seem rude or incite an argument, so often we hesitate to say what it is we really want. As an exercise in honesty, below is a short list of likes and dislikes. Feel free to make fun of me in the comments section.

I Prefer:
crunchy to creamy
dogs to cats
bicycles to cars
Wilco to Radiohead
Dandy Warhols to Brian Jonestone Massacre
The Beatles to the Stones
baseball to football
Socialism to unrestrained capitalism
Fiction to non-fiction
Forest to desert
Kurt Vonnegut

I think:
Comedy is more difficult than drama.
Billy Wilder was a genius.
Disco sucks.
Jim Carrey is not funny.
Giving a poodle the show dog haircut embarrasses the dog.
Human beings don’t need to eat animal flesh.
Electronica is frequently unlistenable.
The New York Dolls never got the credit they deserve.

I’m youngest in a large family. My sister N., the oldest, is an artist. Sometimes she dresses animals in hats and sunglasses for children’s books. (Yeah, I know it sounds weird but they’re really cute and funny.) She’s also an incredibly kind and gentle spirit. People and animals in need just sort of find her. When there was a stray dog that half the neighborhood had fed and tried to catch at one time or another, he chose her front gate to sleep in front of. He’s now a happy member of the family. That’s just who she is.

Earlier this summer, she was walking the dogs near a park and found a chicken. A live chicken. Just hanging around, waiting for some kind vegetarian soul like my sister to take her home. I was insanely jealous, as I’d love to keep a few chickens around for fresh eggs, but my husband has nixed that idea more than once. There were tornados in southern Ohio earlier this summer, and some had reportedly hit some chicken farms. Perhaps that’s how the chicken came to end up in the park. At any rate, my sister took the chicken home and named it Dorothy. (Dorothy, twister–give it a second) With two dogs, she couldn’t keep it, but found a good home for Dorothy with a friend whose husband is open to urban chickens. N. will chicken sit when necessary.

Dorothy is a lovely chicken. When the kid and I went over to meet it, she was lying in my brother-in-law’s lap, stretched out nice and comfy like a cat while he petted her. Who knew chickens could make such a great pet?

Here’s me meeting Dorothy.

I took the dogs for a very long walk in the woods this morning because I had to take my husband to a doctor’s appointment for a procedure. (More like I needed to be there to drive him home.) He was tired so I figured I’d get the dogs out of the house and tucker them out so he could have a restful day. We went down into the ravine by the creek and were walking along when both of the dogs took off for the trees to my right, near one of the sheer cliffs that were formed hundreds of years ago when the creek was much deeper and wilder. There were two young guys standing over there, and the dogs were prancing back and forth, as though they were unable to make up their minds whether or not these were people were safe.

I walked over to get the dogs but kept somewhat of a safe distance. I love nature but I’m enough of an urbanite to know that any wild animals I might encounter in these woods aren’t as potentially dangerous to me as two random young males might be. The dogs seemed to like them okay, which was a good sign. Then I noticed that the shorter of the two, the one with the thick silver ring and spikey hipster hair was crouched down, taking pictures with his camera phone. The taller, bulkier guy looked like he could be a reformed frat boy, but seemed friendly enough. It turns out they had been on the park side of the creek and waded across because they saw a duckling separated from its parents and wanted to find it. And they were genuinely geeking out about the woods in which we were standing. It is an unexpected bit of wilderness in the middle of a couple of inner-ring suburbs. They walked with me and the dogs along the deer path that goes by the creek. As they tried to figure out where they had seen the duckling and spotted the parent ducks, I stopped worrying that they were walking behind me or that I was about to be the victim of random violence and enjoyed talking to them about how much all three of us loved nature and walking in the woods.

I told them they had to go to the top of the cliff, which looks out over the tops of the trees on the other side of
>the creek and is a view worth climbing for. They were stunned. More camera phone pictures, more geeking out over the beauty of it all. They ended up walking halfway home with me because they wanted to see the neighborhood that pretty much has all this in its backyard. We only parted because they realized they had a long long walk back to their car and I had to get home to get cleaned up and take the husband to his appointment.

It was delightful to meet a couple other nature lovers. I know you aren’t supposed to talk to strangers, but I also think you need to trust your instincts. And your dogs.

I took the two young dogs out for a romp in the woods late this afternoon, around 3:30, when it was still about 86 degrees and humid and no one was out but me and the two canines. There is a stretch of woods about two blocks from our house, maybe 90 acres adjacent to but not part of the local metropark. Occasionally we see other neighbors and their dogs in there, but mainly it’s just the three of us, running, jumping, laughing simply because we feel too good to not run or jump or laugh.

We wandered down into the ravine that runs along the creek, down a steep, rocky path that’s been worn by deer hooves, dog paws, and human feet. It was so humid you could almost feel the air, see it, although in the shade of the woods it was considerably cooler than on the street. I’m always struck by how real the woods look as we descend into the ravine, when I can see the tops of some trees, the middle of others. It all just looks hyper-real, as though up to that point I’ve been walking through a black and white Flatland and have suddenly been confronted by a world of color in three dimensions. The dogs were in constant motion, running back and forth, chasing each other, play fighting, then trotting off to sniff something new, now coming over for a quick pat and a “good dog” from me. On the other side of the creek, on the other side of the trees, we could hear the sounds of kids playing and screaming, guys shouting to each other on the basketball court. They couldn’t see us, couldn’t hear us, didn’t know we were there.

Coming back out of the ravine, there was a fallen tree on the path. The dogs whizzed by me. First was Mason, the gangly seven-month-old black lab mix who is all legs and tail and goofy gawkiness. He’s a little bigger than the log and cleared it easily. Almost neck and neck with him was Juno, a two-year-old furry bundle of energy and canine neuroses who is the most clever dog I’ve ever known. She weighs a shade under 40 pounds. The tree was probably about as tall as her head if she were standing on all fours. Juno looks like a medium brown dog who had dark chocolate syrup dripped all over her back. Her rear haunches sport fluffy pantaloon-like puffs of fur, topped by a tail that curves onto her back a full 360 degrees.

It was the haunches and tail that I saw as she launched herself into the air, over the dead tree. For one heartbeat, Juno was suspended in mid-air over the tree like the figures on Keats’ Grecian urn, always young, always vital, never moving or aging. There. That moment, that’s the one I’ll remember decades from now, when these dogs are dead and gone, when climbing out of the ravine is a chore or maybe even a memory for me. I’ll remember a dog flying through the air, levitated by pure joy.