I worked in the woman’s home, seated at her dining room table. On my first day she said she wasn’t a micromanager, but she eavesdropped from the kitchen, standing just outside the door. I could tell because as soon as I hung up from making a sales call she’d pop her head in and tell me how I could do better.
     That didn’t make me quit.
     She also assured me, “We have plenty of time to make our quota on this project, so enjoy the calls. Talk to the people. Have fun.”
     I’m not a fan of receiving telemarketing calls, even less of making them, but I needed to keep the résumé current while I job shopped, so I took her advice. I asked people how they were, what the weather was like. I laughed at their jokes, all the while hoping I wasn’t wasting their time. Not interested in buying booth space at a security conference in Singapore, few of them stayed on longer than it took to say, “No thank you. Goodbye.” Still – turns out that was too long. By the end of day two she was telling me, “Shorten your greeting. – Shorten your conversation. – Shorten your notes.”
     I don’t know where all our relaxed, have-fun time went. Still, that didn’t make me quit.
     Her husband toted a gun for his job. He often came home early. He’d leave his gun on, pop a Fosters beer, sit on the porch, and smoke, watching me through the window.
That almost made me quit.
     The day he came home early, donned his swim trunks, and said, “You’ll have to leave now. I want to play in the pool with my wife” – THAT made me quit. She was offended that I left this eight-hour a week job without notice, so she didn’t pay me for my last six hours.
     Next I worked in a man’s home – actually, in his converted garage-to-an-office. He had hired me because his wife had refused to do the work for him any more – for free. From the garage he’d call his wife and tell her he was ready for his fried egg whites. She would deliver them with a scowl.
     The smell of his eggs and her sour disposition did not make me quit.
     I caught on quickly, improved his mortgage- and rent-payment collection process, and thought this would be a good transitional job until I found the fulfilling, meaningful position I’ve long yearned for.
     Despite my accomplishments – of which he was quite complimentary – he really was happier with his crabby, incompetent wife he didn’t have to pay, so I didn’t have to quit that job. He fired me.
     In the midst of these false starts I continued the job search. All told, I sent 120 tailored résumés with 120 bespoke cover letters over 12 months, from nonprofit to government, from two miles from home to far-flung Turkey, from doctors’ offices to Doctors without Borders. Bupkus. Rarely a reply, and never a positive one. Finally, feeling a little sick and a little desperate, I checked out the jobs listed for the world’s largest bank, and with a sigh of resignation I applied for the full-time position that last headed my résumé: administrative assistant to a mortgage department. To the date of my leaving that last full-time job, the phone rang.
     “Hello, Jane. I’m Peggy, a recruiter. We liked your résumé. Do you have a minute to talk?”
     “Sure, Peggy.”
     20 minutes later I hung up, hoping and dreading in equal measures that I’d answered appropriately, professionally, all of her questions.
     Thus began my path to employment with BankBig.
     As if I were joining the CIA, my friends were called, former coworkers, managers; my credit history, mortgage payment and bank status were inspected; my personality was grilled with hour-long multiple-choice computer testing, and finally I was fingerprinted and my passport was scanned.
     Peggy called to say, “You’re hired!”

This must be the morning to buy Christmas trees. I sit at the traffic light and watch car after car cross the intersection in front of me with a hair-netted Christmas tree strapped to each roof.

As I drive down the road I ask myself if I want to put up my tree today. It’s just a 4’-high twig tree, but perfect for showing off favorite ornaments, and easy to carry up the basement stairs by myself. Then there’s the boxes of ornaments and decorations, none too heavy, especially if friends come to visit and see the merry twinkle lights and let me tell them about the balsa wood angel with a fringe of feathers for a halo I bought in Rothenberg, Germany, or the handmade bells my gram crocheted in fine red yarn.

Out on the highway, in the lane ahead of me, I spot a Christmas tree moving at a right good clip. Its branches are facing point end into the wind, waving and bouncing like a fan dancer gone wild.

The van in front of me changes lanes and I finally see the car the unfettered tree is attached to. It’s smaller than the tree. I fear if they hit a pot hole they’ll all be airborne.

As I pass the car I glance at the occupants. They look happy and oblivious their Christmas tree is about to take off – and them with it.

In the spirit of the season, before setting it in its stand, maybe I’ll take my little tree for a ride.

It’s Monday Night before Christmas
And football is playing
The Packers and Bears
in the snow. I’m just saying.

The drunks who are shirtless
Are feeling no pain,
Yelling, “Hi, Mom” and “Da Bears.”
Oh where is the shame?

At halftime the game
Remains scoreless, it’s true.
The announcers are bored,
And their lips are blue through.

Icy spots on the field
Make an interesting game.
Otherwise, caliber: not
Hall of Fame.

The defense is awful,
The offense horrific,
But no one here cares
‘Cuz this eggnog’s terrific.

The only thing lower than the score
Is the temperature.
Come tomorrow the hangovers
Will be worse than this weather.

But some of us will happily
Skip the frostbite.
To hell with the game.
I bid you good night.

Every morning, headed to work, I drive south on Route 97, a winding, two-lane road through hilly central Maryland, passing pastures of horses, cows, goats, alpaca. I spot wildlife of deer and fox, now and then a hawk, maybe a cat staring down a field mouse. I call out to them to be careful, stay clear of the road, be safe. They don’t always listen.

After ten miles of a gradual descent, I slow down to rumble over the railroad ties and drive across the narrow bridge over the Patapsco River before accelerating to make the first steep grade out of the ravine, following the sharp “S” curves. Ahead I see brake lights and slow down, hoping the rock hauler behind me is doing the same. Peering around the cars in front of me, I spot a flock of wild turkeys. Three or four of them have ducked under the guardrail and scrambled onto the road.

They have taken the pedestrian route to this spot – an arduous climb, almost straight up, even a struggle to fly, if a bird were so inclined. Their heads bobble as they inspect their surroundings, surely wondering if they’ve arrived at their intended destination as vehicles creep by.

I lightly tap my horn, trying to shoo them out of the road without scaring them. They don’t even flinch. Another light tap and one turkey cocks its head, crooking its neck till one eye peers skyward.

God?

By now, two of the turkeys have turned away from the cars and are aiming back toward the railing, just when another turkey head, gray and smooth, pops up over the edge of the hill.

“Phew. That was a climb.” She spots her birds of a feather headed toward her. “Wait! We just came from there!”

As I drive slowly by I call out to the one listening heavenward. “What are you doing in the road, you silly goose?”

“We’re turkeys.”

Fingers thick, tendons corded,
knuckles popped and knobbly,
palms raised with translucent callus,
hands strong from heavy work.

Vast knowledge becomes art,
a deftness with lines and knots and sails.
An engine’s ping or hum or thrum,
each message understood in mechanic’s Morse code.

A growing breeze conveys a storm, a sea change,
whipping the gray-blue waves,
sensing to react, forewarned,
or to weather it without concern.

Regarding the look and feel of a mushroom grown
on a dense forest floor to the size of a summer cantaloupe.
Delight in painting the scene of a country woods –
Whistler’s Mother’s Son.

Hightailing it up a night-lit mountain trail at the helm
of a snowmobile, happiest manning a machine,
trailing as many tow ropes, skiers, sledders, tobogganists
as the heavy engine will haul. Pushing its limits.

Bright blue eyes twinkle like Santa’s
as his kids and the neighbors’ kids
scream down the hill in the bouncing,
jouncing beam of the headlight.

Chastising an old dog
– easily shamed, she runs away –
he’s left to search for her in the cold
and the still and the deep night.

Trapped behind the apron of a low-hanging fir,
belly deep in drifts of snow, her feathers
clumped with ice, she wriggles when
he finds her, and he carries her home.

To do the hard thing
because he is a man –
to bury the horse,
to watch his son cry,

A man is born and made,
by choice and circumstance,
by willed conscience and willful unconscious.
My father dances on the waves of the ocean.

I love bugs, their crunchy outsides and gooey middle. Ants are good for a snack. Tiny grease ants burn more calories than they’re worth, but two burly carpenters and I’m full for an hour. Ladybugs are good for lunch, or a beetle, but no stink bugs thank you very much. And any time’s good for a spider — the bigger and hairier the happier I am.

Were I to venture outdoors, I would be eaten by bugs or birds or other wild beasts bigger than me. I know this, because I just escaped from out there through a tiny chink in the basement wall. Not enough caulk in the ’verse can keep me out there. There — where they stalk you, quiet as breath.

I lost a hind leg — a left one, if you’re curious — to a stealthy barn cat. Never heard a thing until “Crunch.” Now the gang around the garbage can calls me “Stub.”

Inside, I still dodge cats, but they’ve lost the knack to hunt. I hear them, thumping across the floor or snoring in their noisy sleep, dreaming of the big kill. None of them dare to take me on; I’m as long as the shoe I like to hide in. In shades of brown I blend in, and my 100 — strike that — 99 legs move me fast under a counter where I can’t be seen, or behind the cat box just out of reach.

My biggest threat is that two-legged creature. She’s huge. And loud.

I was hiding in the folds of her face towel last night when she reached to dry her hands, and didn’t she scream! She threw the towel — and me — on the floor. I skittered into a crack behind the old door frame.

Now (goofy giggle) any time she reaches for that towel she gets nervous, like I’m still in it, but I’m long gone — or maybe I’m in the curtain just behind her head.

As size goes, I’m her biggest nightmare.

The power is out,
the house quiet
but for the storm.

Too early for bed,
at least while the
flashlight holds.

Then we’ll brush our teeth in the dark,
slip between icy sheets
and rest our eyes against the black.

I thought I might need a quilt,
but Fannie sought my lap,
a living, purring heating pad.

Anticipating, each time the
power snapped off and on,
stopping and starting my heart.

Is this it? The day, the week
without lamplight and gas heat?
Cold food best hot

and towels that won’t dry,
my skin chilled
and all of me less than fresh.

Is this – clink, blip –
in less than an hour
the power whirrs on.

Here and gone –
the ice cubes in my glass
on a hot summer day;
hot summer days,
their departure heralded
with fast-moving
thunderstorms
that shake free
the last tomatoes,
green and hard,
that ripen,
wrapped in twists
of newspaper,
to a ruddy red,
for the last, best
tomato sandwich
of the year,
exploding,
juicy, sweet and acidic
– here and gone.

When was “Bigger is Better” replaced by “the one who dies rich and thin wins”?
When was the beauty of Rubenesque bodies replaced by “only babies and Buddha get to be chubby”?

I’m not talking obese.
I’m talking robust.

I’m not talking “run lean.”
I’m talking “run anorexic.”

I think in terms of the messages women receive on TV, in magazines, from email spam. It’s all about the diet pills and the dieting and the Botox and my buttocks.

But men get them too.

When my boss was on vacation I checked his email, and if possible he receives more spam than I do: Viagra, hair plugs, midlife fantasies, midriff exercisers – and failing them male girdles.

I’m not saying I want to be a baby forever, though I have entertained having the wisdom of Buddha.

I can at least aspire to his big belly.

Wasn’t I just thinking we were enjoying a long break in the furball cycle? I mean, with four cats the lulls in throwing up and cleaning up are rare.

And didn’t I just put out the trash, say good night to their fuzzy faces, and climb into bed, only to hear HAUCK HAUCK LAUUUHT — not once, but twice?

Upon turning on all the lights in the living room, didn’t I see the hind end of Skinny Fannie heading behind the couch to throw up for a third time? The 10-pound cat notorious for throwing up 16 times in a single bout?

Facing the inevitable, didn’t I put on my glasses — because more than cleaning it I hate stepping in it — grab the paper towels and jug of Nature’s Miracle, and follow the trail?

Wasn’t it true I didn’t want to wait up to find out if she was finished? And wasn’t I loathe to go to bed, knowing I’d just be up again?

Wasn’t I just thinking it was nice to have a break in the whole cat-gak cycle?

Guess what I’m thinking now.