Sometimes I joke about my life being Green Acres, because I grew up in the city, and now I live (almost) in the country. But the similarities with Green Acres end there. Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I am nothing like Eva Gabor. I don’t look like her, nor dress like her, nor wear makeup, nor get my hair styled, nor speak with a Hungarian accent. And if I did speak with a Hungarian accent, it wouldn’t sound sexy, it would just sound Hungarian.
Other times I joke about being June Cleaver, which is also not accurate, because I don’t wear dresses, and I don’t wear pearls when I clean the house. OK, technically I don’t clean the house, at least not very often, but when I do it’s not in pearls.
Growing up in the city, I was jealous of everything I saw on TV and in books. Dick, Jane and Sally lived in a house, and their parents owned a car – no, not just a car, a station wagon! The Cleavers lived in the suburbs, in one of those awesome houses with a big yard, and lots of neighbors, within walking distance of stores and lakes and whatever fit into this week’s episode. Meanwhile, our 1-bedroom fourth floor walkup apartment did not compare favorably with anything outside of my little world. But I had a dream. Someday, I would live in a house with steps.
Which brings me back around, sort of maybe, to garage mice. I don’t think we’d have nearly as bad a critter problem if I didn’t have 3 large cans of birdseed out there. But I love to feed the birds. And the turkeys (OK, technically birds), and the bunnies, and the deer, and the squirrels, and anything else that chooses to live or dine in our neighborhood.
I have been told not to feed the birds in the summer, but I do it anyway. I have been told not to feed the birds in the winter because it attracts bears, but I do it anyway. I dump gallons of cracked corn into the backyard daily, for the turkeys and deer. Then I sit and watch our woodland creatures. If we can get a bunny and a cardinal to sit on a deer’s head, we will make a Disney movie.
I think this is all because I was raised in the city, and city kids don’t see much wildlife right outside their windows. In fact, if a wild turkey had walked down my street in Brooklyn 50 years ago, it would have been so exciting that I would still be jumping up and down screaming “Look, Ma! A chicken!”
OK, maybe no longer jumping. Jumping hurts.
As for our ride, I think the city kid in me is going to love it. If someone had offered me this opportunity when I was 10 years old, I would have spent months packing and repacking my bags, buying (or at least dreaming of buying) cool new gadgets, and planning every bit of minutia. It would have been a dream come true. So I am going to attack this ride like a 10-year-old city kid. All I need now is to weigh what I did then. And could someone please get me some 10-year-old knees?
