I think we lived in rural North San Diego County for three years. Don’t quote me. It might have been two-and-a-half or twenty. We sometimes do that, don’t we? We seal up certain memories in concrete boxes the size of nuclear waste containers and kick them into the celestial oceans upon which we float, never more to be recalled. Imagine you’re standing upon the Good Ship Lollipop and there’s a red sheet lying on the deck before you. Now pile all the things you’d rather not think about on the sheet, tie the four corners, place the sack on a hook (because it’s probably going to be very heavy), swing it overboard, and let go. Once you’re certain the whole bale is headed for Davy Jones’ Locker, you can wipe your hands with deep satisfaction and head to the Captain’s table for a big gulp of grog. Isn’t that the nicest image? Now picture this: a shoddily built one story house lined up with others of its generation dotting the main thoroughfare, which is a two-way street that runs from sort of Somewhere and empties into the mountains of Nowhere. The front lawn is fenced high enough to keep a toddler from escaping, or so you think. There’s even a swing set on the front lawn. That’s a nice touch. The driveway ends not with a garage, but a wooden wall, behind which is a storage shed. That’s where you keep your horizontal freezer and jars of homemade pomegranate jelly and tomato sauce that no one is going to eat. Behind the house is a sloping hill. The previous owners built a guesthouse, complete with toilet and sink, halfway up the hill. That’s where your husband decides to live after he figures out his musical instrument repair shop, for which the guest house is perfect and the reason he wanted to buy the place, is a figment of his imagination. At the top of the hill is the orchard of pomegranate and plumb trees. It’s lovely and it hides the dead avocado trees lurking behind your chainlink fence. The area in front of your lushly productive fruit trees has been sectioned off into large, redwood-framed vegetable beds. Each one is so big it has its own water hose bib. Not much is growing at the moment but hope burns eternal. Behind the guesthouse is the chicken ranch. After the dog kills all the chickens it becomes a goose ranch. Your children’s plastic swimming pool has been turned into an algae-lined tiny pond. Back to the main house. The most important room is the “family” room. This was created by knocking off the back wall of the kitchen and pouring a slab of cement, then tacking up thin walls with a few windows and a door, and installing outdoor carpeting. Oh, and a wood burning Franklin stove is sitting on some bricks. Remember the stove. The builders of this room were the same ones who put in the guesthouse. However, they forgot to seal the walls to the cement slab. As a result, slugs are able to inch their way across the carpet every night in a never-ending journey from the south yard where the septic tank sits to the north side bricked patio. They might have made the long trek on the grass outside where they belong, but they prefer the shortcut across your floor so that every morning you must vacuum up trails of slug slime before your toddler decides to lick the carpet. Regarding the septic tank, due to high water tables, ground zero is always soggy and smelly. Playing in that area is strongly discouraged. That’s where your intrepid husband chooses to erect a doghouse which the pooches avoid except on the rainiest of days. I see now that it’s going to take many blogs before I can finish slinging my red sack of Boondocks memories into the river Styx. Setting the scene took longer than I anticipated but each nook and cranny is important in the tales that follow. Let’s start with the Vacuum Cleaner Wars. It was one of those hot summer days when our son was particularly inventive and I was foolish enough to think I could turn my back on him for sixty seconds. (Putting him on a leash seemed cruel so I used the “ever vigilant” system, which never worked.) Our morning began with the two of us pulling weeds in the vegetable garden when suddenly it was just the one of us. Dropping my hoe, I sped for the house in pursuit of the missing person. I found him in the kitchen with a huge chocolate See’s Easter egg in his right palm, sawing at it energetically with a very sharp knife in his left hand. (Right, he’s a Lefty.) “Stop!” I whispered. If I’d yelled, he might have missed the egg and slit his wrist. “What are you doing?” He just stared at me because it was so obvious what he was doing. “How did you find that egg?” “I crawled into the frigerator.” “Ah. Let’s put it back, shall we? It’s a gift from Grandma Beth. We’ll eat it on Easter.” He reluctantly surrendered the egg. Then I asked, “Um, where did find you this knife?” (I’d tried to child-proof my kitchen, really I had.) “Back there.” He pointed to the deep drawer where I’d placed the sharpest of my tools, way back where no one could see them but me. Silly woman. “Wait! What’s that smell?” “I’m making tea.” I turned around and saw a sauce pan sitting on an unlit stove burner and a flaming burner with nothing on it. Quickly turning the burner off and peering into the sauce pan, I saw an unwrapped chamomile tea cube. You should know that our teas were stashed high up in a shelf above the sink. During the few minutes between silently slipping away from Farmer Jane and being found in the kitchen, he’d discovered chocolate buried in the back of the refrigerator and the means of cutting off a piece, climbed up on the sink and grabbed a box of tea cubes, crawled under the cupboard and pulled out a sauce pan, inserted a tea cube in the pan, set it on the stove, and turned on the wrong knob. Five minutes max. He was three years old, people. Three. “You forgot to put water in the sauce pan. Next time put water in the saucepan if you’re making tea. And will you do me a favor? Will you wait until you’re tall enough to turn on the right burner?” “Okay.” With this pact in place, we returned to hoe more veggies. Then he was gone again. I noticed the latched door of the freezer shed was ajar. Looking inside, all I could see were two little legs sticking out from under the freezer lid. The rest of his body got stuck inside when he tried to reach some ice cream, only to have the lid fall on his back and trap him, half in/half out, like an octopus escaping an aquarium. Fortunately, I got to him before hypothermia set in. “How did you get into the freezer?” He pointed to an upturned trashcan. “How did you unlock the door?” Again, he pointed to the upturned trashcan, which he’d used as an ad hoc stepping stool. “Where did you get the trashcan?” He pointed toward the family room. My heart sank. He’d used the trashcan that held ashes from the Franklin stove. I wanted to cry. “What did you do with the ashes that were in the can?” He took my hand and led me inside to show me what a good job he’d done. On the floor in front of the Franklin stove was a large swath of ashes and a broom. He’d needed something to stand on and that can was perfect but full. Therefore he dumped its contents on the carpet and then realized I’d be annoyed, so he found a broom and swept the pile in every direction. What’s a mother to say when faced with such intrepid behavior? “How about you go play in your room for a little while and give Mommy a rest?” Once my breathing returned to its normal shallow, I took out my aged vacuum cleaner and started to suck up the ashes. The (insert bad word) beast decided this was the perfect day to explode and shoot fireplace soot all over the ceiling. Some of it fell off and landed on my face. All of this is G-d’s truth. As I keep repeating, you can’t make this stuff up. I waited until my husband came home and told him he had to watch the kids because I needed to make an errand right now, fast, before the vacuum cleaner repair store closed. Looking at my ashen face, he wisely made no objection. We had been given a stick vacuum as a wedding gift but I’d never used it. Grabbing it along with the busted beast, I leaped into my jalopy and raced to the repair shop. It was devoid of customers, which was fortunate, because as I stood in the doorway with a vacuum in each hand and a crazed look on my face, I held up the beast and said: “This vacuum is broken and I need it fixed right away but I have no money to pay you for the repair.” Holding up the stick vacuum, I added “This other vacuum is brand new. I will give it to you in payment for your work. You can sell it and recoup your costs. Also, If you do not agree to my request I am going to wrap this vacuum stick around your neck.” The repairman was silent for a few seconds as he stared at my face. Then he calmly said, “I think I can help you with that.” Once I got home, after the children were tucked safely into their beds, I dug up the remaining Valium pills I’d saved from ten years prior. They were so out of date I figured they’d lost half their effectiveness, so I took two. I was wrong, but it turned out to be a good thing. My day ended with me stretched out on the couch in the family room, deliriously relaxed, humming to myself and staring at the ceiling, where I was able to make out images of Dumbo the Clown flying through ash-colored clouds. Some memories are keepers.