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We had several dogs during my growing-up years.  Shandy Gaff was the springer spaniel who eventually went blind and deaf, and would stand in the lake up to his chest, barking at the minnows he could feel swimming past his legs.  Amos and Stu were two black labs we had who lived short, if noble lives.  And Molly was my soulmate dog - the dog that every angsty teenaged girl should be so lucky to have.  (For what it’s worth, she was also the dog who took to eating part of the drywall over and over and over again, until my mom put a plant in front of that particular piece of drywall.  Problem solved.  I didn’t say she was the smartest dog, just my soulmate dog.)

At any rate, Molly came to live with us when she was an 8-week-old pup, when we lived in the dome.  This being Minnesota, the weather the majority of the year was too cold for most amphibians.  But there were the summers, and this was lake country, so the frogs would show up eventually.  And show up they did!  Our house was on top of a hill, and at the bottom of the hill on one side was the lake, and on the other side was a swamp.  For whatever reason, the frogs would migrate up the hill from the lake into the lawn, and they’d hang out under the wooden walkway my dad made.  I suppose it was cool and shady and somewhat damp under there - ideal conditions for a frog.  

Molly wasn’t a real big fan of the frogs living in her yard.  She go out and they’d start jumping, and she’d get annoyed.  So I used to go stand on the walkway and egg her on - "Where are the frogs, Molly?  Go get the frogs!"  And she’d chase those jumping frogs like it was nobody’s business, until they were all hidden away under the walkway.  She would catch one every once in a while, but being the trained hunting dog that she way, she’d hold that writhing creature oh-so-gently in her mouth until I told her to drop it.  "Ptooey."  And the slightly damper, freaked out frog would hophophop away, grateful to live another day. 

The first time I was old enough to vote was in college.  It was 1990, and I suspect there was a congressional race going on in Minnesota.  The college I went to was run by the Order of St. Benedict - the women’s branch.

So imagine this: I know nothing about politics.  I’m rather apathetic that way.  I am 18 or 19, and really a lot more interested in trying to figure out how to get my hands on a fake ID so I can sneak into the local bars than knowing who’s running to represent me in the House of Representatives.  And there is this nun, trying to corral me into the basement of one of the dorms, SHAMING me into voting.

I didn’t vote again for years - the trauma of that nun, admonishing me, stayed with me until library school.  And then I took a course in government documents librarianship, and it clicked.  I’ve voted in nearly every election since that one.

Voting in Louisiana was great because of all the laws requiring everyone and their wacky pamphleteering aunt to stay at least 100 yards away from polling places.  No pressure, just me, the old folks running the polling machines, and my vote.  In Pennsylvania, however, I have to run a gauntlet of people shoving "literature" at me until I’m physically in the building.  I hate that - every time I vote here I feel less like I’m exercising my civic duty and mroe like I’ve been assaulted by the electioneering mafia. 

I grew up in a geodesic dome.  My parents decided to build the dome in the early 1970s, in Aitkin, MN.  It was one of the first dome homes in the state.  Needless to say, it was no uncommon for people to drive down our road to catch a glimpse of the house.

Living in a dome as a child affected my brother quite profoundly - he is now an architect.  But I too think about spaces and am very attuned to the spaces in which I find myself living.  When I started my search for a house 4 years ago, I insisted that any place my realtor showed me had to have a lot of natural light.  The dome has at least 44 windows on the second and third floors of the house, and through each of them, I could get at least a glimpse of the lake on which we lived.

It’s a beautiful home, and one I’ve very happy to have grown up in.  Sure, there were things about it the bothered me at the time (the fact that my bedroom had an opening into the living room below meant that I could hear everything that happened on the main floor, which was only problematic during the holiday parties my parents used to throw; the leaking windows, which necessitated the removal of the skylight in my bedroom) but for the most part, living there was heavenly.

When we moved to the Twin Cities in the mid-1980s, my grandparents purchased the Dome, so it has stayed in the family.  That whole side of the family now uses it as a cabin.  Fortunately it is a year-round home (it IS in northern MN, after all), so unlike many people who have cabins, we can use the Dome all winter long.  This year, my folks and Amy and I will spend a week there after Christmas, something I’m looking forward to very much.

I love animals. I have two dogs now, and would probably have cats too if it weren’t for my allergies. 

When I was a kid, though, our family did have two cats.  I named both of them.  The older one, a pure-white cat, was named Josie.  Thinking back on it now, I suspect I was influenced by "Josie and the Pussycats." 

The other cat was a little beast - a grey tabby.  I gave him the dubious name of Flower.  Flower was the big boy tabby cat who used to kill rodents, and sit on a stump across the road from the bus stop crunching on them.  "Crunch.  Crunch.  Crunch."  My memory is a little sketchy on this, but I’m sure I heard him belch now and again after eating some delectable morsel of vole/mole/mouse/chipmunk.

He was never the sort of cat who would make a kill and then bring it to you, placing it gently at your feet or on your pillow.  Oh no, he was the sort of cat would would make a kill and then EAT it, because that was the way of the natural world.  Cats kill things, then they eat them.

Flower ended up going to live at a farm somewhere a few years after we got him.  Josie, I still don’t know where she ended up.  The one thing I do know, though, is that my dad’s horrible asthma attacks stopped instantly once the cats moved out.

So a lot of folks have said, "What a great idea, to chronicle your life in an A to Z fashion!  Can I use that idea too, or would it be really lame to copy you?"

It’s not lame at all.  I copied it from someone else.  Remember, there are very few new ideas under the sun, and goodness knows that I didn’t come up with this one all on my own. 

So copy away, and I’ll be reading!