Ms. Cranky just got back from her annual Writer’s Retreat in the splendiferous Adirondack Mountains. Cranky had known the Adirondack area from childhood and considers the mountains her sacred home, plus she wasn’t very cranky as a youngster. When she arrives in the Mountains, her life clicks into place and she pretends for a week or so to be an Adirondack Woods woman though she is very urban the rest of the year, as we all know.
Unfortunately the bugs, consider Ms. Cranky a ‘hot chick’ if you will, so if you should see someone walking down the street showing a small bit of skin between huge red-purple bites, that could be Ms. Cranky. Pass the ointment, if you will, though the doctor just told her most don’t work, so much for all the $ Cranky already handed over to CVS!
But, in the Adirondack Mountains, the air is so fresh, the smell of pine intoxicating, the lake brilliant and clear and cold, the skies bright blue with wondrous wisps of clouds and the trees make lilting noises from various winds. Ms. Cranky’s family lost their mountain camp many years ago and she recently found this new place and honors the whole area as a gift of huge proportions. It’s Cranky’s true spiritual home and, hey, it’s the bugs’ home too. Ya gotta respect ‘em.
But, even in the sacredness of the Adirondack Mountains, there can be problems though this one was minor:
Ms. Cranky woke up the second night in her cabin with noise from under another bed in her room. She got up, turned on the light and out popped the most beautiful chipmunk she had ever seen. She followed him into the living room of her cabin until he zipped under the back door and all she could see was his gorgeous multi-colored tail, striped of shiny rich black, white and orange.
And, over the next few days, a relationship built, or so Ms. Cranky thought. The gorgeous creature would be there when she returned from class with his cute little face and bright dark eyes. She would talk quietly to him until he eventually skittered off. The chipmunk was even more skittery than Ms. Cranky is accused of being, or maybe it’s just that they both have a ‘short attention span.’
Ms. Cranky quickly announced to anyone at the writer’s retreat who would listen that she had a ‘pet’ chipmunk; Cranky always was a bit too eager to announce things.
And, she was sure that the tiny chipmunk was a boy. “Pete,” Cranky named the gorgeous several ounce animal, a good old name but, then, Pete was so tiny that she changed his name to "Petey." Maybe changing his name was the problem --- who ever knows?
Petey was there several more times when Cranky got back to her cabin after class or swimming. Petey made so much noise chewing on crackers, you’d think he was chewing through steel. The crackers had fallen out of Ms. Cranky’s ‘cracker box’ one late night while she was reading on the porch. But, she feared that if she swept them up, she’d wake her cabin mates who were early-to-bed types.
Then, after a few days of being excited about Petey and talking about him and researching proper food Cranky should feed him, Petey was gone. The crackers were too.
Ms. Cranky thought that she had left those kind of guys behind many years ago but here it was happening again even in the hallowedness of the Adirondack Mountains, even with a being that probably didn’t weigh a pound.
She kept thinking Petey would come back but he never did. Cranky knew that human men acted that way sometimes but, for some reason, she thought the chipmunk population would be a notch up the evolutionary ladder. Okay, maybe Cranky should have named him “Arnold.”
Later in the week, her cabin mate, Jane, a lovely woman who wanted Ms. Cranky not to be sad, said “I saw Petey today --- he came back” but Ms. Cranky had seen that chipmunk. And, it wasn’t Petey --- the colors were all wrong; it was a perfectly fine chipmunk that stayed awhile and Cranky talked to her and, though she had no crackers to offer, the chipmunk hung around. Ms. Cranky speaks only English, a very few words in Italian but she knows nothing in “Chipmunkese.”
Oh, well, as they say in the movies --- ‘it was just a summer romance’ --- and, we all know how those end! But, it wasn’t even Labor Day, it was only late July and it was about running out of crackers.
Ms. Cranky thanks you for coming by --- more tomorrow. She’s totally back to urban life.
Have a wonderful day, evening, whenever you read this. I pray people have been polite and considerate to you of late. It makes life so much easier and sweeter and it’s so easy to do --- don’t you just love it when it happens???
Signing off,
Ms. C.
P. S. As Cranky was writing this about Petey, the little ingrate though handsome as hell, she had the radio on and the wonderful Tina Turner was singing --- “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” --- Perfect, Petey - -- you just go into the woods and under the door of another cabin and befriend a new push-over --- you little rascal. But, while you were around, you were a joy. Thanks for stopping by, Petey. May the wind forever be at your tiny little beautifully-striped back. It was fun while it lasted!
