Category: NaBloPoMo

City Mouse

©2013 Beret Olsen
©2013 Beret Olsen

I like to boast a little about my rustic roots:

How I swept mouse poop out of the cupboards every June, painted the house, and picked rocks out of the yard.

How the power went out with every summer storm; how we heated the kitchen with a cast iron wood stove.

But one night last summer, I scratched my pajama’d leg and caught an unexpected handful of something.

Pants immediately at my ankles, I only briefly saw the great spider before it disappeared.

I lay awake long into the night, at last admitting I was more of a city girl.

Child Labor

From www.pro-finishes.com
From http://www.pro-finishes.com

During summer days we roasted on ladders, scraping and painting our little red house. My sister wore her impossibly orange bikini and basted with baby oil. I wore cutoffs and brought the radio. Never venturing beyond the first story, we must have dribbled half a gallon of stain on the driveway, but at $1 an hour, management wasn’t complaining.

At the end of our shifts, we would wrap the brushes in foil and tuck them in the freezer.

Dubbed “the eternally painted house” by the neighbors, it was perhaps only a marginal improvement over the salmon eyesore it had been.

 

Brother of Invention

Second oldest built a fruit dryer and a yogurt maker out of light bulbs and scrap wood.

He sprouted tofu and reused plastic bags years before anyone else I knew.

This was not a fad for him, merely a decision to live carefully and thoughtfully.

An early vegetarian, he helped me to attend parties without eating meat–in part by inventing Birthday cake sandwiches and Christmas cookie sloppy joes.

And, in an effort to conserve every last drop of water, plus whatever nutrients it might contain, he also invented pickle juice bread, which left a great deal to be desired.