The Key of D

You know Global Warming? Local warming is about all I can handle right now, although I’m a staunch advocate for the environment. No arguments, please! My blog, my point of view. You can write a blog if you want, right?

OK, now that that’s out of the way, this local warming thing cropped up yesterday. It was a warm and strangely, for Northern California anyway, muggy afternoon. I had a big plastic cup of ice water on my desk to keep body and soul together. And I was working.

I was on the phone, nothing unusual, and trying to explain the next step in a process.

Mom used to tell me that if she needed me to be quiet, all she had to do was ask me to sit on my hands. Sad to say, I resemble this remark. As much as my feet and my brain seem to have no relationship with each other whatsoever, rendering me hopeless as a dancer and probably leading to my many unscheduled flights down stairs all over the USA, my hands apparently are directly connected to my mouth.

This flailing about has gotten me into some small trouble all my life. I was always first to tip over my orange juice on the kitchen table in the morning at breakfast. My one satisfaction about this is that the “flail gene” seems to have come from my father’s side of the family. One time my half-sister was visiting our Dad while I was there too and she tipped over her orange juice at the table.

“Hey!” I shouted, shocked, jumping up to grab the paper towels. “Hey, that’s MY line!”

“You, too?” She asked in dismay and realization that what might have been dismissed as sheer coincidence was now confirmed to be a familial curse.

Well, you can probably see where this is leading. As I was in animated discussion with a co-worker about the workings or non-workings of a particular aspect of the system, it happened. I hit that cup of ice water and “thar’ she blows.”

I’m still on the phone, ever the professional if not completely coordinated, grabbing my brand new work laptop up from the storm surge of ice water. I unplugged it immediately, turned it upside down on my chair to let gravity be my friend—for a change—and completed my phone call.

Then dashing to action like the Knight of Swords, I grabbed the electronic brain in soggy distress and headed to the bathroom.

I know this is counter-intuitive. Just bear with me.

From past experience, since sadly this isn’t the first time that electronics and liquid have met under my wild gestures, I have learned that speed is essential in rescuing the drowning laptop.

I grabbed my hairdryer, tilted my victim on its side and applied heat and air until the drips stopped and no evidence of moisture gleamed.

Back at my desk I plugged that baby back in and was pleased there was no smoke and all the keys…well, there was the issue, you see.

That D key felt funny. It wobbled. It slipped off its moorings and into my hand, leaving the stump of the tooth exposed like a raw nerve.

Since denial is the first stage of mourning, I tried to fit the D back in place, then inspected it more closely. It had melted, a case of “friendly fire” during the drying out process and was now too deformed to sit securely in place, let alone be usable to type the letter D. Salvaging what I could of the situation, I was happy to learn that in spite of the button being ruined, the stump of the key will produce the letter D reliably. I hadn’t actually ruined the computer, only that one letter.

Well, now, how to remedy this?

I called the Help Desk. You know Help Desks. They are populated with eager people from other countries whose accents or volume are such that a deranged technology victim cannot understand them. This leads to the victim often being rude to the poor Help Desk person. I work hard not to be rude to the people who are trying to help me.

“You want deekee?” the earnest young woman in Costa Rica asked me. “What application on your laptop is deekee?”

Many answers spring to mind, none helpful.

“No, I need the chicklet that says D.”

“You need chickee deekee? I do not know that application,” she says, uncertainly.

“No. Sweetie. Look at your own keyboard that you have under your hands right now. Find the letter D. See the little plastic thing with the D on it? I need that, just that.”

“When you will in Irvine be? Technician will give you deekee.”

“No, that won’t do. I’m an 8 hour drive from Irvine. It’s like two whole countries away. I need you to send me a D key. I’ll put it on myself.”

“Oh, I can only have technician fix your deekee,” she says, and I wonder how on earth I can keep a straight face with this conversation. “You have to order deekee yourself to do yourself.”

I’m silent for a moment. At least my hands are still and there is no ice water nearby. I consider finding what’s left of it and pouring it over my head for relief.

“I close your ticket now, ok?”

“Sure. Thanks for your help.”

I go to the self-service application and find that I could order the D key or a whole keyboard at any rate but they will not ship it to my home. It has to go to one of my company’s offices. That’s the 8 hour drive. I reminisce on how technology was going to make people’s lives easier.

I send an email to my co-worker Alicia in North Carolina, begging her to send me a replacement D key. She refers it to her local Technician who good-naturedly offers to mail me the necessary item. I thank him profusely, noting that he would not believe the hilarious conversation I had with the Help Desk.

I now await delivery so I can fix my D key myself. I think I need a break.

Best wishes.

Saint George and the Lizard

You know that telephone call that you dread? It comes when you least expect it. It came the night before last. Our friend Saint George (not his real name) called with an emergency. I immediately put the television on mute, sensing the urgent nature of the call to The Hubs’ cell phone. OK, I was nosy too.

It’s just that emergency phone calls from Saint George’s house might be anything from an invitation to dinner to his youngest son’s latest stand-up comedy routine. You can’t beat comedy from an 11-year-old.

But, no. This was a different kind of emergency.

It seems Saint George had thought to treat his oldest son’s pet lizard to a bit of afternoon sunshine, something that doesn’t always happen in San Francisco in July. After the lizard spent the afternoon in what appeared to be spa-like luxury, it ate a hearty meal of a jumbo cricket, went to sleep and, well, you guessed it. The lizard shuffled off its mortal coil.

After some nudging and prompting, Saint George had to admit he probably had slain the dragon, even if it was a 6-inch Western Fence Lizard. Wracked with shame as any father might be at the accidental demise of a child’s pet, even if the child is 17 and probably knows everything (just ask), Saint George called my husband.

Naturally, you’d think of my husband when you have a dead lizard emergency. He’s that kind of guy. The surprise was that the call wasn’t about what to do with the lizard. Mrs. Saint (actually that has to be her real name because that adorable woman has three sons and Saint George to deal with day in, day out) and I would probably agree on a simple trashcan-over the cliff into the hedges-flush it down the toilet disposal arrangement. A moment of silence might be warranted.

No, the emergency was that Saint George needed parenting advice from my husband, a man who has raised no children through no fault of his own or want of trying. The Hubs of course does have a heart as big as all outdoors and an easily shared font of suggestions. This is why he’s the guy you call with your lizard emergency.

I had some sympathy. After all, where in the parenting magazines or websites, where in the psychology books, in the instruction manual that comes with every child, where, I ask you, does it say how to break the news of the death of a pet lizard to a creative, sensitive, cranky, hair-triggered 17-year-old?

Saint George had a moral dilemma. Should he confess his reptile negligence and insensitivity and admit up front that he probably killed the lizard, mysterious as the death was? Or was a cover-up called for?

I voted for cover-up, especially after I did a quick internet search on the proposed lifespan of a Western Fence Lizard in captivity. First, let’s get the legalities out of the way. It’s not an endangered species, well, not in general. I’m not sure I’d let Saint George lizard-sit for me. Then again, I don’t have a lizard.

As it turns out, if Fluffy—I call it Fluffy because I don’t know the lizard’s real name and there are probably HIPAA laws about releasing a specific lizard’s health issues to the general public—if Fluffy were a boy lizard, he would have rather an intense blue underbelly. If Fluffy were a girl, she would make more subtle fashion choices. There are several sub-species of the Fence Lizard, which turned out to be too much information for me, but one of the things they like doing is hanging out on fences and rocks in the sun.

This characteristic seemed to point to the innocence of my client, Saint George, who was still inconsolable or at least still in a quandary about the right way to handle the dead lizard thing. Fluffy probably enjoyed its moments in the sun.

“Seriously,” I called to The Hubs across the living room, “the prisoner exercised in the yard, ate a hearty meal, and, if you’ll excuse the expression, croaked.”

The Hubs waved me away, trying to keep from crying and laughing at the same time. We did, however, have the same idea on next steps. Put Fluffy and his habitat back in Number One Son’s room and wait for the disappointing discovery.

“Are you sure it’s dead?”

I read further in Wikipedia.

“They hibernate! Maybe Fluffy had the big warm up, ate the big cricket and is taking a big snooze instead of the Big Sleep.”

Saint George assured us that the lizard was pretty darned dead. I wasn’t sure we were giving the box-seats coaching advice we had been called for.

The call was over. I had missed something.

“Hey, what happened? Is he going to just put Fluffy back in the kid’s room or what?”

“No,” The Hubs harrumphed. “He’s going to call him and tell him!”

We rolled our eyes. It was asking to be berated by a 17-year-old. I mean really, how close can a kid and his Western Fence Lizard be, anyway? Did it fetch? Did it photobomb with the family? Did they have matching leather jackets? Did it whistle or tap-dance?

“WAIT!” we both said at the same time.

“Who’s the patron saint of lizards?” The Hubs asked me. I know stuff like this.

“Saint George, of course. You know, Saint George and the dragon?” After all, like all patron saints, perhaps a small donation to a worthy charity might bring about a Lazarus-like lizard miracle.

“Right,” he said, dialing our distraught daddy-friend back. “SAINT GEORGE!”

It was, of course, too late. Our friend just happens to be the nicest guy besides my husband and felt morally compelled. He had immediately called Number One Son and told him The Awful Truth, just like the Knight of Swords riding off to vanquish evil and stand for truth, justice and the American Way.

“Well, shoot,” I pouted after The Hubs got off the phone the second time. I was waiting for the surprise Facebook postings upon the awful discovery, the hunt for the perpetrator, the whole drama.

Coincidentally, one of our tarot community members, tarot creator Ciro Marchetti, however, did provide the best little ever-so-slightly Photoshopped snap of an iguana who had wandered into the open back door of his Florida home. I sent it to Saint George’s Number Two Son who had stood by quietly in all the drama and snickered the way the middle child can at such events. Perhaps this will cheer the crepe-draped halls while they heal from the loss.

I hear they are thinking of getting a snake now.

Best wishes.

***^^^***

My deepest sympathies to the community of Aurora, Colorado, and all affected by the recent horror there. To all the responders who helped, shielded and comforted those who were there, and to Christian Bale for visiting hospitalized victims of the shooting, thank you.

Last Minute Christmas Gifts

“Goon!” I bellered. I call him Goon but he’s actually my husband, Prince Third-Time’s-a-Charming.

“Goon! Come quickly! I broke the toilet!”

You have to realize that I took an awfully big chance marrying this guy. For one thing, Versions 1.0 and 2.0 were not successful releases, if you get my drift. I don’t like the blame game so I feel it’s important to note my own flaws in those previous and unsuccessful financial relationships. For one thing, I failed to see how wrong a choice I was making at the time. These are expensive mistakes and so, counter to conventional wisdom, traditional religious beliefs and what your mama said, I recommend at least a thorough beta testing of the model prior to purchase. However, I also have to admit that the enthusiasm of the sales force prior to purchase can diminish to near-zero after the sale.

If you didn’t follow that, you shouldn’t get married. I’m just sayin’.

Another part of taking a big chance had to do with the parties involved, namely The Goon and me. He’s a Capricorn and I’m an Aries and for me to say that he “grounds” me is something like saying that helium is holding down hydrogen. I’m flammable; he’s not. And there's more to it than just your Sun Sign. There were some who were concerned about the lack of adult supervision in our relationship but we have the dog now.

Quincy will bark at us until we are all seated and being nice to each other, preferably across the room. There is no hugging or kissing in dog, as John explains, so we have to sneak in PDA when the dog’s back is turned. This is one of the secrets of keeping our romance spontaneous.

“Quick!” I’ll hiss to the Goon in the middle of the kitchen.

“While he’s outside in the back yard!”

We’ll sneak in a smooch or dance to some tune in our heads, usually sung with made-up lyrics, something like this that was never meant to be in Oklahoma,

“Don’t cross your eyes like that.

They’ll just get stuck that way.

They look so cute stuck that way!

People will say we’re in love!”

We started calling Quincy “The Duenna” and just settled for calling him Dwayne when he starts supervising during the good stuff. We didn’t realize we had a Cocker Spaniel in law enforcement, his Day Job being the Knight of Swords. What’s funny is that he (the dog) tends to work only one shift. After about 10 pm or so, he just looks at us, snorts and goes back to sleep. My sense is that he figures if what we’re doing is fighting, it’s someone else’s problem until he’s back on duty the next day.
 

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

 
John figures his marriage vows were to love, honor and say Yes, Dear to just about anything I came up with. In fact, I did make him promise me one thing.

“Promise me…” I struggled with the exact wording.

“Yes, dear?”

He felt it wise to get practice in before the ceremony.

“Promise me you will not be handy.”

“What?”

See, the thing about guys is that they always want to fix stuff for you. That’s so Knight of Swords too. That’s so cute. Well, it’s cute unless he doesn’t really have a knack for it. It’s not that John hasn’t a knack for fixing things. It’s that he is so creative with alternative solutions and wants me to participate in the process of selection. My imagination runs wild with visions of burst pipes and John reviewing the choices of duct tape versus replacement pipes and whether copper is better than PVC. My promise extracted from him means that when the pipes burst, we call a plumber, period. He is free to speculate and even annoy the Hired Professional all he wants as long as he stands back far enough to let the expert do his work.

Sometimes John does do some handiwork but I always cringe at the descriptions prior to actually viewing the body, so to speak.

“Come out here and see this lash-up I rigged for watering your roses,” he will announce. I suppress all my fears and reason that as long as the “lash-up” doesn’t actually undermine the foundation of the house causing it to settle even more than it has already, it can’t be all bad. If necessary I could always purchase new roses for the yard.

Most of the time I think it’s a language barrier. John speaks Butte-en-ese (byoo-tuhn-EEZ), the native tongue of those from Butte, Montana, usually Irish in origin but with the occasional Finlander and Italian phrase thrown in. It’s almost like English and perhaps just a tad more cosmopolitan than the language spoken in the movie Fargo. Like so many things about John, I used to think he was joking because it sounded so funny. Then we went on our honeymoon to his family’s reunion in Butte and I realized he was telling the truth after all. By the end of the week, I was saying, “Yah, sure, you betcha’” with the best of them. At least full immersion in Butte-en-ese gave me a way to translate, but occasionally a term like “lash-up” is something I take entirely too visually.

How can you lash up water, I muse as I’m reluctantly trudging down the stairs to view whatever he’s done to my roses now. The project reveals itself to be merely a complex series of tiny hoses, valves and sprinklers threaded through my flower beds for zone watering. The materials he used were those actually intended for flower bed watering. He called it a “lash-up” because he was not sure, even after the success of his project, that he’d done the right thing.

Back to more recent times and the broken toilet, John rushes into our 1930’s era pink, violet and black tiled bathroom which I call Mary Engelbreit’s Bad Dream. Don’t get me wrong. I love the color scheme, but I recognize it’s not that California sea glass and sand thing that people associate with luxury bathing nowadays.

Tony Sincerely Concerned With the
Status of Things in the
Pink, Violet and Black Bathroom



I had reluctantly agreed to replace the 1930’s toilet a few years ago due to wear and tear. Little leaks become big leaks and replacement seemed like the right thing. You could sink the Glomar Explorer in that baby with the water capacity, so the new one is more eco-friendly and low-volume. It feels responsible to have the new one, even though I miss the old one. But if I’m saddled with the new one, I expect it to last at least 50 years like the old one did. Flipping the little flush handle on the new convenience and having it swing limply in response was, well, horrifying. I had to yell for help. My Goon came running. OK, it wasn’t running because of the replaced knee, but he hurried after he figured out I was hollering for him.

After all, I have to give him these little opportunities to rescue me, right? He threatened to use language that Mother would not have approved and eventually wrestled the chain back onto the hook, restoring order to the Universe.

“My Hero!” The big ones like praise like this so I like to make sure he gets it whenever possible.

“Dollie,” he calls me Dollie, “Dollie, if I’m a Hear-O, what would a See-O or a Smell-O be?”

My eyes close and my mind shuts down momentarily. I breathe deeply.

“Quincy, bite the Bad Man.”

It’s not very effective giving verbal orders to a dog who can’t hear so Quincy, picking up the scent of our breath, wags his tail, pretty sure he was just told he was a good dog. Bad jokes, however, are a small price to pay for getting the toilet working again especially since I’ll be cooking Christmas dinner for a motley crew of guests this year.

Sometimes those last-minute Christmas gifts can be the best thing. If I can find that nice bow the cats hid under the couch, I might put it on the toilet tank as a reminder that we still don’t have to go out under a tree like the dog does!

Best wishes for a bright holiday season, no matter what your faith!

***

There's a last-minute gift you can give any time of the year and that's your registration to be a bone marrow donor. Our little Tatiana's happy recovery was short-lived and we lost her. That bright little star twinkles down upon us from heaven. But you can make the gift of life to someone else. Be The Match.

While you're at it, please say a prayer for my friend Johnny Leadfoot who has been battling cancer this year. He's been trying to dress up as Santa for the folks at the cancer hospital in Houston with a sign that says, Does this make me look fat? Prayers for him and for his family would be appreciated!

Turn the Page

Summer time gives me a chance to have my tarot classes in my backyard, hence the name “Marcia’s Backyard Tarot Classes.” I was trying to avoid being overly clever with the naming so that the purpose and perhaps even the location would be clear. Even the best of efforts, of course, can fail.

“I teach Tarot. In my backyard.” It seems simple enough but I do get questions. This year instead of dragging my tent to all kinds of festivals to read Tarot, I’ve limited that to just a fun few and set the ol’ tent up in the backyard. My husband had been threatening to trim the privet tree (you can’t call something that big a bush when it’s as tall as the house) and one of my Cecile Brunner roses (same height, old rose) which are intertwined so that the fence would stay up and the branches wouldn’t open a living room window, suddenly. And he did. It was such a good job that my shady patio wasn’t that shady. The sparrows pouted about their reduced real estate and the cats were fascinated about the improved view. But I still need my shade for the patio.

California is different from other places I’ve lived. Places like Illinois and Missouri don’t cool off on summer nights when the sun goes down. But California is delightful in its weather-etiquette. If you are in the shade, you are likely to be comfortable even on the hottest days. It’s just that California also has these desert sections that seldom provide shade for those over two feet tall so it can still be hot here. That, and the “Santa Anas” come when the wind patterns shift and suddenly the hot valleys empty their furnace-blast towards the ocean and everyone complains, with good reason, about the high fire danger. That time doesn’t usually last that long, thank goodness.

I don’t like to gloat but while lots of people have been having the sticky-gummy-runny-can’t-take-your-skin-off kind of summer, we’ve had another fairly cool one this year. Still, if you sit in the sun long enough, you’ll scorch, no matter how cool the breezes are. So, tent it is but with the side panels off so the breeze can blow through.

My last class focused on the Tarot Court Cards. Those are the page, knight, queen and king of the four suits, wands, swords, cups and pentacles. There are 16 court cards in all and they are sometimes thought of as the “personalities” of the deck.

So, not to bore you non-Tarot folks with too deep a dive into the class, my students are a fun bunch of gentle people with varying experience. This is just the kind of classroom diversity I like: extraverts, introverts, novices, experienced folks. Of course, since I’m an extravert…ok, raise your hand if you couldn’t tell. I like to say that I’m the quiet one in our family since John is an extravert also, maybe pegging a bit higher on the E scale than I do. This amazes my long-term friends who were used to my let us say “breathless” charm and banter.

There’s a cute post on Facebook right now that talks about the TLC needed by introverts. If you don’t read too carefully, you get the idea that introverts are people who are tired of listening to extraverts. Ha-rumph! I need my space too, you know. And I don’t always talk in my sleep.

Furthermore, there’s some assumption that introverts understand extraverts because they hear them talking. Who says we E people say everything we’re thinking? While I’m chatting you up about how much your hair doesn’t make you look like Justin Bieber really, I’m also remembering my dental appointment on the 16th, fighting off some song in my head that intruded when I smelled your cologne, about to get the appetizers out of the oven, noting the utterly divine red shoes across the room and about to change the topic to the piece of the tragic Columbia shuttle they just found in Texas because you are obviously uncomfortable with any further reassurance about your hair. In short, I’m trying to be nice to you but you have no idea of all the things I’m thinking from just what I’m saying. That would be like saying that all introverts have a one-track mind, certainly unfair too.

Actually, this is all good-natured banter. About 50% of the population of the world is classified in the Jungian-based MBTI as introvert while the rest of us Chatty Cathies are extravert. And interestingly, here we are back at the Tarot Court Cards. So one of the fun exercises we did in my class was to randomly pull a couple of court cards and have them talk to each other. What do they agree about? Where do they differ?

Our first pair was the King of Swords and Queen of Swords, whose pillow talk ranged from complaining to each other how stupid the rest of the world is and that they have to do everything themselves, despairing in the dull wits especially of their child who must be the result of an error in the maternity ward. The King groused away without a thought for her feelings, while the Queen sniped that his problems were, after all, all his fault. It was starting to get fun. Then we had the Page of Pentacles, who must be the dullard child of the K and Q of Swords, being asked to the prom by the Knight of Swords, a sort of irresistible force meets the immoveable object kind of thing. And the class was getting the hang of the energies of the personalities of the Courts.

So, I thought today, what if we got the four Pages in a room together, mostly because Mercury is going retrograde today and Pages are all about communication. They’d be something like students at Hogwarts without those cool wands or brooms. Maybe the Page of Wands would have the wand, OK. So what do they say to each other?

“C’mon, guys, let’s DO something! Wanna toss around the ol’ pigskin or go through a bucket of balls?” gushed the Page of Wands, always first to voice his not-too-well-thought-out impulses, raw energy apparent without too many specifics.

“Wow, hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings or anything, but I was going to watch that new Chick Flick. They say it’s a whole box of tissues. I just feel so connected when everything looks like it’s going to be the worst and then turns out happy for everyone,” smiled the Page of Cups, staring dreamily into his green tea, looking for leaves clinging to the cup. “I’ll bet you’ll have a great time, Wands-y.”

“Naw, I’m getting a pizza and watching the Dirty Jobs marathon. Me and my remote. After all, we’ve already paid for the cable,” said the Page of Pentacles, patting his solid “table muscle” and sinking solidly into the couch to ready himself for some serious downtime. “I gotta save my energy.”

“You guys are all idiots,” muttered the Page of Swords into his iPhone as he texted some smart people he really liked and put his earbuds in to block out the din of others’ voices. He had heard enough but wasn’t about to tell them anything more than that. He thought about taking the skateboard out but was drawn deeper into the mental gymnastics of the multiple games he played simultaneously in his electronic world, oblivious to his fellow Pages.

All of these Pages are going to grow up to be Big Courts someday, just like we did. When they’re older, they can afford their own places and not have to be bothered with each other. At least the Page of Pentacles can.



Best wishes!

***

All of today's Pages are part of the Tea Tarot, (c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord.  The Tea Tarot is available for sale on the Tarot Decks page of this blog.  Reproduction of images from this deck and others copyrighted by me is forbidden without my prior consent.

My next Backyard Tarot class is Saturday, August 13, 2011, starting at 1 pm Pacific Time in Vallejo, California.  Cost per person is $30. Contact me via the email link on the right for more information.

And don't forget there is still time to sneak in a reservation to SF BATS, the Bay Area Tarot Symposium August 27-28, 2011.  If you like Tarot, you will love BATS!  Can't go both days?  You can go one!  Check it out!

They’re Here … Again

“Oh, good grief!”

I opened Kaye’s passenger side car door, mumbled, “Just a minute!” and huffed and puffed up my front stairs again. I was so much in need of this getaway and yet so unready. Just one more thing it was that I had to bring with me on our Spring Goddess Weekend. Good thing my head was sewn on tight. I apologized to the cats and the dog again for leaving them with my husband for the weekend, not a sad prospect by any means. Mr. Softie is very fond of the furry ones and they often come to snuggle up against, on or around him. But he was away at the San Francisco Giant Opening Day at the Ballpark baseball game, a tradition he is unlikely to break for any reason. I was taking off for the Russian River to meet my friends. Well, I was after I found just one more thing.

Finally in the car, house locked, cats and dog fed and consoled, dressed, packed, repacked and in a dither, we made our way slowly towards the edge of town.

“Wait!”

Kaye, so patient with me, asked, “Do want me to turn back?”

“No, just pull into the high school parking lot. No one is here now. Just pop the trunk.” I did not have that visual memory of putting my toothbrush in my overnight bag. I rummaged through the trunk (that’s “boot” to you folks who speak alternative English) and realized that the reason I didn’t have a visual sense of putting it in my overnight bag was that I had put it in a different bag, one that was, at least, also in the trunk. I sighed with relief and a pang of guilt.

We drove a few blocks further and Kaye’s phone rang. You can’t talk on the phone and drive in California any more, not without risking a fine and of course much more importantly your safety. Kaye pulled over again into another strange parking lot and spoke on the phone a while. Then she shook in sobs of what I was soon to find out was relief; her sister’s diagnosis was so much better than they feared. I offered to drive. Kaye declined. We were both good now, Kaye I think much better than I was, having been so recently much worse.

We made it as far as the Sonoma Market, a wonderland of good grocery shopping worth every penny of the slightly higher prices. The deli, the bakery, the cheeses, the fish counter! We zoomed around the store to pick up provisions for the weekend, all the while sure that we would have too much food. We always have too much food. It’s what we do. It’s who we are.

“I forget, Kaye,” I called to her, my grocery cart behind hers as we headed in search of hummus. “Do we still drink wine?”

“Yes,” she laughed over her shoulder. “And we eat meat, too.”

A young man passing us in the aisle snickered. Kaye is younger than I am. I knew she would remember. The Giants won their home opener in extra innings while we were at the checkout counter and I breathed another sigh of relief. My husband would be elated at the win.

“Do you like Pete Seeger?” Kaye asked when we were back in the car, “Or Art Garfunkle?” Both, of course, and we listened to Angel Claire and then sang along with Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie.

     “Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
     Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
     You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
     All they will call you will be "deportees."

As we sang, I watched the vineyards, the oak and laurel woods and coastal hills green with the heavy winter rain.  The crumbling with little landslides had not completely collapsed onto the two-lane winding roads. I began to let go of technology in the specific, letting automotive and MP3 technology lull me to our favorite spring getaway spot with our friends of 20 years or more.

We had just hauled our bags and groceries into the house at the river when Julie arrived, then Ronda, then BG and we all sat at the round oak table, not my new one, but the one in the river house owned by my friends Al and Alice. We snacked on all the forbidden things, the wine, the brie, the chips, the salsa and a couple of token pears to ease our collective conscience. We traded our stories. I cooked the pasta in pesto with shrimp and it turned out all wrong but it tasted all right. We watched Tangled on the DVD player and howled and cried. I squirmed recognizing so much of my mother in Rapunzel’s “adoptive” mother who never, ever, ever wanted Rapunzel to leave the tower. It was midnight all of a sudden and I went to bed. The girls stayed up and talked more. I didn’t mind. I love these free-form weekends we get together, slumber parties for the older who have more insurance.

Ah, I settled into bed with my book A Discovery of Witches. Al and Alice must have gotten a “memory foam” topper for the bed. It was like sinking into comfort. I didn’t read. I turned off the light.

Bounce. What now, I thought. Someone had sat down hard at the bottom of the bed. "I’m sleeping," I mumbled. Two more bounces on that lower left side. Seriously. Another bounce on the end of the bed on the right side, then the bound of someone reclining on the right side next to me. Fine. Whatever. They all know I snore so enter at your own risk, I thought. And then I realized that these weren’t my friends. Well, they weren’t the friends I had intended to spend the weekend with. There were 8 or 10 of them. One of them looked a little like Bella Abzug without her hat. She seemed to be in charge of the “tour.” Another pushed a stroller. And they were upstairs and wanted to talk.

“No. Seriously, people, I’m sleeping. I’m off duty,” I grumbled. I would have put my foot down if I had not been lying down already. “You all have to go away. You’ll scare my friends. They think ghosts are scary, not just annoying or needy or whatever you are. Just go. Make an appointment next time.” I thought I recognized one of the departed members of the Football Pool where I met Al and Alice. They were confused a bit but Bella or whoever she was led them back downstairs. And out. Good grief.

I slept in a bit the next morning, showered, dressed and padded downstairs.

“You’re dressed,” my friends said, suddenly aware that they weren’t ready for the day. They kvetched and cooed and kitchened and changed into casual day clothes.

BG asked around the breakfast table, “Did any of you have a weird night?” She recounted being awakened by someone she didn’t know and kicking the wall beside her bed. I wasn’t going to say anything about the Tour Group but since BG had been disturbed I confirmed it.

“They’re gone now.” Kaye made me check for sure. Suddenly, I was the Knight of Swords, banishing evil, well, not exactly evil, more like uninvited guests. There was no evil there.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
Now in its 2nd Edition
(c) copyright 2010
Marcia McCord

“Did you look under the beds?”

“No,” I said. “Everyone knows there are monsters under the beds and I don’t want to look at them.” We all laughed.

We discussed going to Armstrong Grove and visiting a friend of BG’s who had a table out at Duncans Mills. Duncans Mills won and the drive there and out to Jenner satisfied our outdoor needs; we stopped a few times for the stunning vistas. We shopped in Jenner and I found a couple of sweaters to take to Readers Studio. I asked the antique dealers if they had old tarot cards; no luck.

We returned to the river house and Ronda cooked her pasta, much better than mine, squash ravioli with walnut cream sauce and another salad. We were stuffed. And then we had Julie’s cupcakes. Oh. My. Goodness. Was chocolate like this even legal?

All the while we chattered at dinner, BG never suspected that some of our scurrying around was that we were getting ready to celebrate her recent milestone birthday with a croning ceremony. We welcomed her to wisdom, pretty sure she had brought some of her own with her, and told BG stories. BG had named the Cecile Brunner rose I had given her “Marcia Cecile.” I had never expected to have a rose namesake, so sweet of her! We made plans for the morning and retreated to bed, this time uninterrupted by visitors.

After our French toast and bacon breakfast a la Julie, we decorated our backpacks for our emergency kits. Japan’s earthquake and tsunami had inspired us to be mindful of preparations for The Big One. We had a long list of good ideas for things you will wish you had in an emergency, even a small one, and had exchanged gifts the night before. But that morning it was all about the bling: the fabric paint, the sequins and the personalized stickers. Fabulous, dah-ling!

I read everyone’s cards, even my own with Kaye giving her learner’s permit interpretations (and not too shabby, either) using my Art Postcard Tarot. We zoomed through the house like five tornadoes, dishes, laundry, trash, packing, closing, latching, settings, double-checking. And we left for home, humming the songs we had listened to and shrieked at the tops of our lungs in the woods, happy to be blessed with yet another spring of friendship.

*** *** ***

And guess what else is here? The Tea Tarot, the 2nd Edition of the Picture Postcard Tarot and the 2nd Edition of the Victorian Trade Card Tarot. Available now! Click on the link on the right just under that yellow bird, easy to find; it’s the one called Tarot Decks.

Best wishes!