Blind Luck

Monday, Barley and I spent the better part of the morning in the offices of Penni Cooley, DVM who specializes in pet ophthalmology. She didn’t have an eye chart for him to read, but otherwise the lights and lenses that she used to examine his eyes were similar to what my eye doctor relies upon. After she finished examining him with her sophisticated equipment, she threw cotton balls in front of his face to test his response. Finally, she had her assistant create a maze between the examining room and her office out of a series of waste baskets and other plastic containers. I stood at the far end and called him. This exercise was repeated with the lights off. With the lights on, he was able to knock over the waste basket that was directly in front of him and wind his way to where I stood. In the dark, he didn’t even try.

No use beating around the bush. Barley is going blind. There – I have said it. His condition is known as “progressive retinal atrophy” or, PRA, and is a result of a defect in an enzyme in the photoreceptors of the retina that prevent damage from light. In case you don’t have an anatomy book in front of you, the retina is the cup like structure that forms the back of the eye. The photoreceptors die over time, with the rod cells that are responsible for dim light vision or night vision the first to go followed by the cone cells leading to complete blindness. The cells simply atrophy or shrink. It is classified as a recessive gene disorder for which there is no therapy or treatment.

I don’t know exactly when we first noticed that he didn’t seem to see as well as he should but I’d bet that it first became evident when someone threw a ball and he missed it. As in any condition that is finally ‘out of the closet’ and given a name, I have been thinking back to when the last time was that he could catch a ball on the fly. Did he ever do that? I think so but now I’m not so sure. Certainly, last summer he could be counted on to chase the ball to earth no matter how far down the driveway it was lobbed. From time to time, he would have to spend extra time running it to ground, but he always found it. When did the exception become the rule? Certainly, this summer no fly balls have made their way into his glove. He often runs in circles around the ball before locating it. “Silly dog – it’s right there!” we say, not comprehending his condition. When he does locate it, I suspect he has “sees” it first with his nose.

With shorter days, our first and last walk of the day is now in the dark and that has brought about several noticeable changes. For starters, he doesn’t charge down the driveway full bore as he does during day light hours; instead he stays close to me, proceeding with a tentative gate. Also, he bumps into or stumbles over structures that are well known to him. A couple of weeks ago, he walked right into the neighbor’s pile of beauty bark. Since it had only been delivered the day before I tried to dismiss it as something out of the ordinary. The next night, he collided with the curb by the garage that has been there forever. Denial was no longer an option.

Over the past five months, Kate and Micaiah’s dog Malbec, has stayed with us off and on, often for two to three weeks at a time. Initially, he wasn’t much interested in chasing a ball. After all, he considers himself primarily a guard dog and a lover. But once he saw that it was a fun game with the anticipated rewards of praise and petting, he threw himself into it. He is powerful runner, so at first he often overran the ball, necessitating doubling back to pick it up thereby giving Barley a second chance at getting the ball in his mouth first. Unfortunately, Barley was rarely able to take advantage of Malbec’s fumble. As the game wore on, Barley’s expression changed from eager anticipation to one of decided frustration – after all, he was the retriever! Didn’t he own this game? Malbec, the Boxer/Ridgeback meritage was an interloper of the first order!

Frequently once Malbec had the ball in his mouth, he dropped it, often right in front of Barley. One likely explanation of this behavior is that Malbec is either intimidated by Barley or that he simply lost interest in the ball once he had it in his mouth; however, I prefer to think that he dropped it intentionally to give Barley another chance. Malbec is smart and sensitive and fully capable of recognizing Barley’s limitations as well as his psychological need to be first. Despite the fact that Malbec could clean Barley’s clock if he were so inclined, he accepts Barley as the pack leader and defers to him. Besides, for better or worse they are family now and family looks out for one another.

So where do we go from here. For starters, I have to get over feeling sad about it. Barley is his same cheerful hardy self and doesn’t need a maudlin mistress for company. Invariably he “comes to play” with an enviable energetic focus at the mere hint of a ball game or the mention of the beach. Being congenitally inclined to live in the future rather than the present I can learn a lot from him about living in the moment. Heaven knows I will need a mentor to navigate the maze of compromised skills and abilities, which will require adaptation and acceptance.

I don’t consider myself a total control freak but in all honesty the hardest part of all of this is recognizing that there is nothing I can do about it. I can’t even justify a good guilty wallow. No “if only” or “why didn’t I?” in this scenario. I really have no option but to buck up, act like an adult and as AA teaches, accept what is, correct those things I can correct and accept those I cannot.

So there you have it. Blind luck. Not the unexpected good fortune often associated with that phrase but on the other hand, luck is just that - luck. This morning on our long walk, we talked about it and decided that all things considered, when it came right down to it, mainly we had good luck and we had it in abundance. After all, we did have each other!

Zucchini Season

Fall is upon us - the season known for longer nights, cooler mornings, and garden bounty. This time of year, if the motion light goes off in the wee hours it is more likely my neighbor, Peter, than a would be prowler. He dashes around at dawn in his striped bathrobe, leaving grocery bags of zucchini at the door, like May baskets. Our own garden history with zucchini is decidedly mixed. This year, we seem to have just about the right amount though I am reluctant to publish that information, because, well if the word gets out to Peter and he shows up in his bathrobe, I will have more than enough.

With the advent of my new planter boxes that run the along the back of the deck next to the house, I turned the raised bed over to Fred to grow dahlias, with the request that he plant squash around the perimeter. Winter squash seems to benefit from running out along the warm river rocks between the raised bed and the deck. Fred and I are not of one mind when it comes to squash – I love it, especially winter varieties, like Butternut and Delicata. He tolerates it but prefers the summer types, like spaghetti squash, which in past years has been the dominant crop. I have little patience with spaghetti squash, so most of it ends up in the compost pile.

This summer, only four squash plants made it into production mode – all of them zucchini. One produces the slim green variety routinely sold in the grocery store and the others are bulbous and variegated. They are extremely fast growers; what at first light is about the size of my fist morphs into garden clogs by dinner time.

I didn’t grow up with zucchini. My parents, particularly my father who was in charge of planting, didn’t believe in growing something that had to be “doctored up” in order to be “gotten down.” In later years, once they no longer had a garden of their own but relied on the bounty of their neighbors, they discovered that zucchini could be used to make “watermelon pickles,” and they preserved great quantities of the stuff despite the fact that the only time a jar made it off the shelf was at Thanksgiving.

I suspect that there are more recipes for what to do with zucchini than just about any other vegetable. For one thing, if you have any you generally have a lot. Further, no matter how dedicated one might be to eating their veggies, there is a limit to how much a family can consume in one sitting, raw or otherwise. A favorite recipe of mine, Pasticcio di Zucchini, was given to me by my friend, Diane, who is equally gifted in the kitchen and the garden. Thinly sliced squash and tomato are layered in a dish with mozzarella cheese, fresh herbs, and bread crumbs and then bound together with a few beaten eggs. One week in August, I prepared this a half a dozen times, for home consumption as well as sharing at neighborhood potlucks. It is versatile; equally good hot or cold, it can be served as the entry or as an hors’doeuvre.

Rainy days are often baking days for me and since we have had quite a bit of rain lately, the bread pans and muffin tins have been in constant use. In the past couple of weeks, I have produced several loaves of zucchini/carrot bread with whole wheat flour and bran, at least four dozen zucchini/pineapple muffins, and three loaves of zucchini/chocolate bread. I confess that I had to overcome some bias no doubt acquired in my childhood to try out that recipe. Chocolate is something to be found in cookies, pudding and cake but not in bread! Well, I am glad that I finally loosened up on this as the results are great. I confess that I am not all the way cured of my bias as the other day I served some to my neighbor and called it ‘cake.’

My all time favorite zucchini recipe, however, is for zucchini patties, found in Volume II of Joan Moody’s cookbook, Pantry Patter, published in 1978. For many years, Joan wrote a weekly column in the Daily Olympian called “Joan’s Pantry Patter.” The hallmark of most of her recipes is that they are easy to follow and rely upon ingredients that are readily available. If she did include something exotic, like “slivered almonds” she always suggested a low cost substitute or gave permission to leave it out entirely. Her cookie recipes routinely produce 8 – 10 dozen while her casseroles are hearty and flavorful, and come with an admonition to make two - one to bake now and one to freeze for later.

Joan died a few years ago, after what is often referred to in the obituaries to as a valiant battle with cancer. Certainly if cancer could be driven off by sheer force of will, Joan would be here today. As it was, she experienced many periods of remission during which time she seemingly bounced back to her characteristic high level of performance. When I contemplate the legacies that a person might leave for family and friends, a series of great recipes is pretty hard to beat.

Zucchini Patties

The following proportions make four patties about three inches in diameter. I generally cook these in a small electric frying pan, but any frying pan would work equally well.

Ingredients:

1 cup grated zucchini

1 cup coarsely crumbled crackers. (Use crumbled saltines, not prepared bread or cracker crumbs.)

2 tablespoons chopped onion

1 beaten egg

½ teas salt

Garlic to taste

½ cup parmesan cheese

Oil for skillet (2 tablespoons)

Directions: Heat skillet with oil on medium heat. Combine all ingredients in bowl. Spoon into the hot oil and pat out flat. After 2 -3 minutes, check to see if underside is brown. If so, turn patties and cook until brown. Sometimes I turn these a couple of times, particularly if I have the skillet at a lower temperature. We think these go well with just about anything. Last night I served them with pork medallions and mushrooms to rave reviews.

There you have it. Next time the motion light goes off, just relax and go back to sleep, knowing that you can fix Zucchini patties for supper!

A Scary Place

A couple of days ago, I went where no man has dared to go before, at least no man in this house. Well, to be honest, no woman either. I got behind the clothes dryer!

For several weeks, months actually, I had noticed that whenever I had the dryer on, the temperature in the room rose to levels required for an egg incubator. It occurred to me that I might do well to get some fertilized eggs and hatch out a clutch of chicks in on the washing machine. Well, it was a passing thought; off the table before it really got traction.

Of course, I had peered over the back of the dryer to see if it was venting to the outside and it looked okay. I even asked “Mr. Fixit” if he would check it out, explaining that sometimes it got so hot in the room that the smoke alarm came on. “Looks fine to me.” He pronounced following his inspection. With this cursory investigation behind me, I felt justified in mentioning it to an electrician who had come out to give me an estimate on a small rewiring project in the living room. He promised to thoroughly examine it when he came back in a few days and I began to fantasize about a new dryer.

Barley eats in the laundry room. A week ago, after I fed him, I turned the dryer on, shut the door, and then wandered outside where I became engaged in a conversation with my neighbor Kim. By the time I made it back into the house, Barley was barking frantically while the smoke alarm did its thing – emitting an insistent cacophony, at once irritating and frightening.

Having stressed out the dog, I was now galvanized to get serious with this dryer situation. I explored some more exotic explanations for what might be ailing my dryer – a faulty thermostat as an example. Finally, I concluded that the most obvious explanation was that the machine wasn’t properly venting. First I tackled cleaning out the vent from the outside and replaced the existing trap with a piece of panty hose. Then I moved inside. I pulled the dryer all the way out from the wall and discovered that the duct tape was not doing its job. Appearances are so unreliable.

What a scary place the backside of a clothes dryer is, particularly one that has been the final resting place for bleach bottle lids, clothes pins, gum wrappers and old tooth brushes, all cocooned in enough dryer lint to fill an ottoman. This odd collection of detritus can be understood only if one accepts that my laundry room/pantry is the place of last refuge for many items that originally lived someplace else in the house. We don’t brush our teeth in the laundry room but I never throw away a used tooth brush because they are the perfect tool for reaming out crud filled crevices. Of course, as long as they are hanging out under the dryer, the crud continues to accumulate. Regrettably, none of the mates to the solo socks that I am holding onto made an appearance.

Once I shimmied under the utility sink, cleaned off the floor and the back of the dryer, it was clear that there was a gaping wound in the duct tape, allowing heat and lint to escape into the room at large. I cleaned it out, found a wire spring loop to put over the pipe and the outside vent, and then wrapped new duct tape around the connection. I moved the dryer back in place, put in a load of towels, set the dial for “heavy duty/all cotton” and watched with some trepidation to see if my “fix” would hold.

Well it did and the accomplishment made me giddy! Buoyed by my success, the next day I moved the piano away from the wall in the living room. It was so dark back there that I needed a flash light to really appreciate the collective horror the move revealed. What kind of slob lives here, I asked myself as I probed with the vacuum cleaner, sucking up dead Christmas cactus blossoms, fly carcasses, tooth picks, and other stuff I didn’t bother to catalogue. Now I peek behind the piano whenever I go into the living room and, when I sit down to play, I am convinced that it even sounds better, though that may be the product of an over active imagination coupled with my “exceptional hearing.”

There are other scary places just waiting for my attack, I am on a roll now and plan to tackle a few more before the winter lethargy sets in and the motivation is lost. I have to watch myself, however, as cleaning behind the piano is the very sort of task I tend to take on when I know that guests are on the way and what I really should be doing is plumping up the sofa pillows and clearing off the coffee table. Still, I live by the motto to “do it now” because even though the mess will be there tomorrow, I know that the impetus is ephemeral.

Be advised. If you come to see me, don’t take offense if I entertain you in the pantry or seat you behind the piano. Right now, they just happen to be the most pristine places in the house. On the other hand, if you show up and can’t find me, try looking under the sink. It’s next on the list for reconnaissance.

Pulling weeds or pulling words - a summer conundrum

Summer is at last upon us and as a consequence, my writing has taken an unintended sabbatical. Every time I sit down at the computer, I can hear the weeds in my perennial bed snickering and chortling about getting the better of me. (I did tell you about my perfect hearing, didn’t I?) Of course, the matter of what gets done and what doesn’t is complicated by the fact that I want to do absolutely everything I love in the morning because, well I am a morning person and that is when morning people do their stuff!

Walking the dogs is high on the morning list and a chore that can easily eat up one to two hours. I confess to being compulsive about this as, well when I walk the dogs, I walk myself and we are all better off because of it. It also helps justify some of the other favorite morning tasks, such as sitting and reading the paper and drinking tea. Morning is the time of day I like to start any baking project as well as the best time for me to pay bills and scrub the floor. Obviously, bill paying and floor scrubbing are not “fun favorite” things to do, but the euphoric feeling that follows their completion keeps them vying for my attention, to say nothing of my energy, on a regular basis.

Finally and most importantly, morning is the time I like to write, but I somehow need to have the house to myself in order to do that. So, that enterprise must of necessity take place between the time that Fred leaves for work and before anyone else shows up. On any given day, the “anyone else” could be a gardener, carpenter, plumber, or heaven forbid, some friend who just wants to chat!

In the summer, this ever shrinking sacred time is also the best time to work in the garden. Even non morning people know that the early part of the day is the best time to be weeding and watering before things heat up and dry out. In our climate, our best summer weather is often characterized by cool overcast mornings that burn off sometime between eleven and two. In the two or three hours before the sun breaks through, I can generally get a lot of weeding and dead heading done, assuming I get out there and get after it.

Of course, since I am the one who “makes the rules” on how I spend my day, if I would just lighten up and decide to tackle some of these tasks in the afternoon, I might not feel so pressed for time. On the other hand, I am in the downhill slide by 3:00 and, my competency as well as my motivation responds to the gravitational pull downward. By this time of day, if I haven’t figured out dinner, I need to be thinking about that and there is just an outside possibility that in all my scooting around to deal with the morning, I have neglected to clean off the kitchen counters. You know, I have friends whose kitchen counters are always clean and I am baffled at how they manage that. Maybe they cook in the basement behind a locked door!

Yesterday someone asked me which season was my favorite. With the nearly perfect summer weather we have had of late, I was tempted to give summer two thumbs up. But then, when I thought about my “to do” list and the fact that before I even get around to checking something off, three or four “must do’s, asap” have elbowed their way on to the list, those long grey days of winter that cry out for a fire and a book and of course a pot of tea sounded pretty inviting. Of course, the long days of summer complicate the matter. Those days we yearn for around Thanksgiving when daylight is but a faint memory by the time the turkey is served.

Years ago I somehow internalized the maxim to “make hay while the sun shines.” Well, I can tell you – I am about ready for haying season to be over!

Barley and Malbec

“Barley and Malbec” sounds like the title of an article extolling the virtues of grains and grapes. Indeed, without much pushing, I could wax eloquent on the topic - well, if not eloquent at least effusive. When it comes to red wine – something that I come to most every evening, Malbec is near at the top. I didn’t know about it until I met Micaiah, my son in law, and now I don’t know how I ever lived without it. I feel much the same way about Micaiah.

Barley is hands down my favorite grain. I like it in soup, as a side dish sautéed with onions and herbs, or for breakfast with a little brown sugar. But the Malbec and Barley of this particular piece refers to the two dogs who are presently my constant companions. As I write, Barley is sharing the ottoman with my feet and Malbec is on a large pillow beside my chair. We have just returned from a couple hour slog in the rain and the boys will be out for a good hour before they rouse me for a round of “three ball.”

It would difficult to find two dogs more different in appearance and temperament. Malbec has short hair the color of buttered toast. His face is classic boxer – big sad eyes, wrinkled brow and black muzzle. He may look intimidating but in truth he is pretty much a scaredy cat until he gets to know you and then watch out for his tail – it can raise welts when he really gets excited. A formidable looking muscle dog, he has been Kate’s regular running companion in Albuquerque the past four years and anyone who might have considered doing her harm would have dropped the idea, once he got a good look at Malbec.

Barley is a golden retriever and small for his breed, with honey colored coat and lots of platinum feathers on his legs and tail. While one look at Malbec sitting on the front porch will keep most door to door salesmen at bay, Barley has the kind of sweet good looks that prompt folks to rush up, kneel down, and scratch his ear. I am not alone in thinking he is one of the cutest dogs around, one who could probably finance a post graduate degree by posing for calendars. When he and Fred travel together, he is a proven “chick magnet” inspiring attractive women to bend over, throw their arms around him, and mutter sweet nothings while he pokes his nose into their perfumed cleavage.

Both dogs are great people dogs which makes them easy to hang out with. They both like parties – both the socialization and the clean up. Nonetheless, as we all know, looks can be deceiving. For though Barley is well behaved with people of all ages and infirmities, when it comes to other dogs, his social skills are decidedly lacking. He can move from naughty to nice and back again in a tail wag. Though various professionals as well as other dog owners have told me that they don’t think he is truly aggressive, just a little full of himself, I am baffled. Maybe he has a split personality - Barley and Snarly.

Malbec is temporarily living with us until Kate and Micaiah finish their residencies in Albuquerque and move to Seattle. Selling a house with a dog in it poses challenges, not least of which is keeping the floor clean. I have known that Malbec would be moving in with us for the past couple of years and the prospect of how Barley would react to this has had me on the verge of cardiac arrest whenever I thought about it. I have devoured just about every book written on dog training, specifically those chapters devoted to “dog on dog aggression”; I have watched countless segments of “The Dog Whisper” and even engaged the services of a “dog shrink.” Together, Barley and I have participated in multiple training classes, with provocative titles like, “Reactive Rover” and “Just Cool It.” Finally, we worked with a trainer who specializes in training German shepherds as protection dogs. From him I learned two very important things – the value of the command “down” and the reality that I might be able to control Barley’s behavior but I probably wasn’t going to cure him.

When I started on this piece a couple of days ago I intended to tell you at this point that all of my sleepless nights and fretting had been for naught. After a rather tense initial 24 hours where Fred and I kept Barley on leash and under “strict surveillance” things had really mellowed out quite nicely. The dogs walked side by side every day on leash for an hour or more, they rode in the backseat of my car with their heads next to each other. They played ball, ran on the beach and took turns with treats. In general they co-existed without incident. Regrettably, as is often the case, my smugness settled in a little too soon. On Monday night, when Fred arrived home from a Tacoma Rainiers game, the two dogs ran to the door to great him, taking their toys to show him and diving between his legs for attention and pets. All seemed to be proceeding normally, when out of the blue, Barley nailed Malbec on the ear.

I put Barley in a down and proceeded to mete out punishment in the way that only a mother can do when she is both angry and humiliated by the behavior of her child. Then I turned my attention to Malbec, who had not really reacted to the fracas, at least not vocally. Much to my horror, I discovered that Malbec was missing part of his ear – a small part, a sliver along the bottom corner, but still, his left ear was no longer a match for the right.

I will skip ahead and spare you the details that might only be of interest to a forensic pathologist. Suffice it to say that the computer room where Malbec spent the night looked as if it had been decorated by Jackson Pollock during a temper tantrum. Finally, I succeeded in getting enough duct tape around his ear to stanch the bleeding. Anyone who remembers the movie, Cat Balou and recalls the hired gun slinger with the silver nose played by Lee Marvin will appreciate that we dubbed Malbec, “Silver Ear” while he sported the duct tape bandage. Fred insists on calling him Evander Holyfield and Barley Mike Tyson – an appropriate but rather disconcerting reference, as far as I am concerned. He has since been to the vet and now has a much more pedestrian looking bandage, along with antibiotics and pain pills.

The clean up occupied me for a good three hours and I continue to find dark spots in the most unexpected places. Malbec appears to be unfazed by the whole thing. He is a real trooper about taking his medicine particularly since he “takes” it in a hot dog. Barley has finally “forgiven” me for punishing him. You read that right. At first I thought his chastened behavior was prompted by remorse – what a nice idea. Alas, I am a wiser woman than I wish I were.

Tomorrow, we are loading up the truck with dog crates, kibbles and the chucker and heading down to Sun River for the annual meeting of Fred’s investment club. When I thought about how complicated it would be to explain all of my house rules for the dogs to a house sitter, taking them along was by far the easiest choice. Besides, what on earth would I do with my time otherwise – sit around and read books and drink wine? Fred has golf and tennis to occupy him, but when you are a woman who “walks with dogs” well, that is what you need to do. Besides, they seem to enjoy my company and in that respect, they are unique. There is an outside possibility that this enforced socialization will have a salutary effect on Barley; that he will trade in a curled lip for friendly nudge. But as I said – I am a wiser woman now and am not holding my breath. I encourage you to exhale as well. Surely, you will be the first to know if there is a miraculous conversion.

Paradise

We just got home from a week in Caracau, a desert island in the Caribbean, due north of Venezuela. In my grade school geography class, it was referred to as one of the Dutch Antilles. Aruba, Bon Aire, and Caracau are popular vacation spots with Bon Aire and Caracau being the favorites for scuba divers, in large part because the many magnificent coral reefs are easily accessible from the shore. The water temperature was around 80 degrees and the ambient temperature ranged from 80 to 95 most days, with a constant and welcome breeze. The food was fine, the beer was cold and abundant and the locals were friendly and spoke English along with Dutch and several other indigenous dialects. It is the sort of place that most people in the Pacific Northwest long for about this time of year – an azure fantasy realized. In a word, “paradise.”

Except, not for me. I am one of those odd ducks who believes I have left paradise behind whenever I leave home. Like a low grade infection, I experience a little “heart sickness” whenever I am away. I know - it’s pathetic! My very favorite day of vacation is the day I pack my bag for the return trip. When the cold damp air hits me at SeaTac as I head across the sky bridge to the parking garage, I feel like doing cartwheels.

Even the unseasonably cold temperatures which had recently dumped snow in the foothills did not dampen my enthusiasm for being home. In the spring, part of the joy of being home is returning to my garden with its daily surprises and discoveries. It’s like being around a new born – you need to check on things every half hour or so, because something new is bound to appear.

In the week that I had been gone, the lilies of the valley had poked up through last fall’s layer of top dressing. There they stood stolidly at attention among the airy leaves of the native bleeding hearts. By today, the leaves have begun to unfold and the blossom buds have loosened. Trilliums have appeared that I had forgotten about. That is the great gift of the spring garden – many of my favorites that take center stage this time of year retreat into obscurity as the summer approaches. The fawn or trout lilies which were just beginning to show off their dappled foliage are now in full bloom. Their delicate yellow and white petals turn up at the ends like a bonnet, fondly reminiscent of the cheerful milkmaids that cavorted through my childhood picture books.

Home is my dog, Barley, who flies out of the chair that he is not supposed to be in, rushing the door to greet me, hedge hog in his mouth, diving back and forth between my legs in a full body wag. Home is the place where flannel sheets can feel good from Labor Day until the 4th of July. It is a fire in the woodstove, a fresh pot of tea and a mystery in my favorite chair – the one recently vacated by the dog! And, it is the sublime quiet that comes with living at the end of the road. A garden, a dog, and a fire – lucky me to live in paradise all year round with the opportunity to leave just often enough that I don’t take it for granted.

Remembering Heloise

I’ve always enjoyed the articles that appear in magazines and newspapers giving directions on how to do things: remove stains, get rid of quack grass, or extend the life of a favorite garment. As a child the magazines on the coffee table that I could chose from included Harpers, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Saturday Review along with The Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens. If I had been more precocious, I am sure I would have found something edifying and entertaining in Harpers, or The Atlantic Monthly, but since I wasn’t even a little bit precocious, I bypassed them in favor of The Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens.

Both of them had glossy colored pictures and not a whole lot of words. My favorite articles were the “Heloise” types, though from time to time I did take a peek at such things as “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” My comprehension of these articles was thin, to say the least. Practically speaking, every adult I knew was married and had kids so of course, they were happy? Besides, everyone knew that ‘happy’ was the provenance of children not adults.

I did know two women who weren’t married – the “Liere girls” –Gertrude and Dorothea, spinster sisters who lived together. One of them directed the choir at church and the other played the organ and with extreme patience gave piano lessons to many of the “church children,” me included. Though no one ever talked about it in my presence, I was certain I knew why they weren’t married. They were both tall and Dorothea was really tall. They were also thin and none of the married woman I knew were either, which settled the matter in my mind.

No, the articles that captivated me were not the relationship “self help” but the “how to do things” articles that regularly appeared in both publications. Even though I wasn’t really a budding chemist, cleaning formulas that called for mixing baking soda and white vinegar together were always hard to resist. After all, anything that fizzes is worth a try. I generally gave the articles explaining how to get aspic out of the mold without breaking it a wide berth; in or out of the mold, aspic was pretty low on my interest list. But, in nearly every edition, you could count on some formula for removing stains from something or other – grease from white linen table cloths, furniture polish from clothing, or rings in the tub.

I remember one occasion in particular where I was desperate to find out how to get white shoe polish out of the carpet. The rocking chair that I had strategically placed over the spot was a temporary fix at best; sooner or later, someone was bound to move it back to its usual position at the end of the sofa, letting the proverbial cat out of the bag. Once mother ferreted out the source of the stain, it was only a matter of time before the blame would land squarely on me as no one else in the household wore white shoes.

The propensity of pets to jump and bump is often boon to children looking to “share the blame” for mishaps of this nature. I suspect that I contemplated bringing Blondie, my energetic cocker spaniel, into the mix as something of a co-conspirator. Still, that wouldn’t have addressed the underlying issue that mother was certain to zero in on. “What on earth were you doing polishing your shoes in the living room on the carpet in the first place?”

Sorry to say that only the angst of this incident is still with me. I no longer remember whether or not I was successful in removing the stain or what punishment, if any, was meted out. Clearly living as I did in one state of self induced emergency and crisis or another, did establish a lifelong affinity for Heloise and her ilk and the plethora of helpful hints they disburse.

It comes as no surprise then that my ears perked up recently when a friend suggested using Efferdent – the denture cleaner – for cleaning humming bird feeders. Anna's hummingbirds begin to show up around here as early as February so getting feeders filled and consequently keeping them clean is a regular task. In the past I have used bleach – name something I haven’t used bleach for often inappropriately– and then worried that I might not have rinsed it well enough and harm the birds as a consequence.

Efferdent seemed like a great idea; after all, if it can be used clean someone’s dentures which they put back into their mouth, then it certainly ought to be safe enough for the humming birds. I tried it and it works like a charm. Last week I attended a little birthday party for my 94 year old neighbor, who was given a beautiful colored glass humming bird feeder. My attempt to show off my Efferdent discovery fell flat when I learned that everyone else had been on to this trick for years and furthermore, one person said she also used denture cleaner on the toilet bowl! That did get my attention as I have been a regular user of bleach and Pine sol (not together) for years and was eager to try something a little less toxic.

From the toilet bowl, I moved on to my bone china tea cups. I am a self proclaimed tea snob – the preparation of the tea as well as the consumption. I have a nice collection of bone china mugs that I guard assiduously. They are kept in a cupboard separate from the morning coffee mugs and woe to the family member who inadvertently fills one with java! Nonetheless, my precious china mugs do get stained and look ugly and until I tried the denture cleanser, nothing cleaned them properly other than bleach.

So, that’s the Heloise report to date. I have a couple of other ideas I am working on for removing pitch from fingers and hard wood as well as stains in the carpet – not shoe polish this time, but sick pet. Once the techniques I am working with have been thoroughly tested, I will pass them on. In the meantime, I intend to stock up on Efferdent and hope that it doesn’t become a sought after ingredient for some illegal drug cooking operation so I have to ask for it like Sudafed. I wouldn’t want the word to get out that I no longer have my own teeth, tea stained though they may be!