My feet and I have been friends for a very long time. Oh sure, sure, occasionally they have gotten a mind of their own and tried to go to the right when the rest of me goes left. Causing quite a stir of the senses as you can imagine.
For the most part, however, the two of them and the one of me get along ending up at the same spot at the same time. There are those times, as I mentioned above, where things go awry.
I get why sometimes our feet are called our dogs. It’s like they are those little dogs that pay attention and do all that is asked of them. Until a squirrel scurries in the line of sight and everything changes. I hope you have heard or read the funny about a dog moving along happy and then? SQUIRREL. And you are off to the races. Yes that’s my feet to a “t.”
Now I don’t want to say I’m off center or off kilter or off my rocker. I just have one of those attention spans that always goes to the next shiny, quick, exciting thing that I encounter. Hopefully my feet and my brain are in sync and without incident, without a tumble, without pretzel-ing my legs like they belong hanging on a vendor’s cart on some New York City sidewalk, so we all go in one direction. At the same time. Ah, there’s the important part. At the same time.
There is a way to think of this in a good light. If I didn’t “squirrel” occasionally I might miss something amazing. But! Yes a squirrel scurrying “but.” Maybe it’s OK to miss some stuff. There’s always other stuff happening around us all. Like the other day.
Recently I had a new roof put on my house. It was such fun to watch the guys kibitz and work. It is metal and black. I wanted hunter green but, over time, my nose was pointed in the correct direction of black. Such another Trina pathway that my feet were herded along. Anyway.
So now I have this wonderful new roof. I was looking at it as it is now covered with a bright white layer of wonderful snow. And the icicles are growing quite nicely along the edges. My feet firmly planted in some snow I was just standing there enjoying the calm between snow storms.
I have a few cats who live outside of my home. Their main job besides amusing me is to keep the mice down. They can also get on the roof and have been doing so on what was the asphalt-shingled roof for years. Well, as I was out taking in the site of new metal roof and the long, cold icicles my eye caught sight of a cat on the snow on the new roof. Just then, in a snap of time this is what happened.
The cat started to slide as it went from snow cover to wet metal. No matter how he clawed and scratched the slide continued. I turned to look at the show with my head before my feet could catch up. Just then a bigger section of snow gave way and started to slide off the roof, along with the cat. As the nearly slow motion action took place I slowly sat down in a spiral because my eyes followed the action before my feet were ready. You could not have scripted that. Now that’s a real squirrel moment. From calm to wahoo all in one fell swoop.
I live for those moments. Oh and in life there are hundreds of them over the span of just days or weeks. I hope never to get hurt being caught up in them, but I wouldn’t want to miss one. Pretty sure there have been like a zillion that I have missed. It’s not the ones we miss because of inattention. It’s the ones we miss due to just not letting ourselves go into squirrel mode easily.
Oh the cat was fine. I don’t expect him to climb up the tree and jump to the roof anytime soon. I do however have more cats who haven’t met the new roof yet. It’s going to be an eventful few months ahead. I won’t see them all because – OH, OH, OH, SQUIRREL! I gotta go.
Trina Machacek lives in Eureka. Her book, “They Call Me Weener,” is available on Amazon.com or email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com to get a signed copy.
