Early Morning Advice

As I have mentioned in a previous blog or two, giving unsolicited advice is not a practice I often undertake. Today, however, I feel the need to do so as a public service.

This is pretty straightforward advice: Don’t attempt to change the battery in your car’s key fob at 5:00 in the morning. I did just that yesterday morning, with rather alarming results—literally.

My fob, like many, snaps together. This sounds pretty simple but is, in practice, something akin to trying to open a child-proof pill bottle while wearing mittens. First off, you need to pry apart the outer shell and then pry apart the electronics board inside to access and replace a pair of batteries. Once that is accomplished, the pieces must be snapped together again—the equivalent of assembling furniture with one hand.

After finally managing to get the fob mostly snapped together, I grabbed a pair of channel-lock pliers and leveraged them to clamp down on the edge of the fob.

Big mistake.

The fob did snap together but also initiated the honk alarm on my car in the garage. When I tried to press the button to stop the horn, the fob was totally unresponsive, and the horn continued to blare at regular intervals. In a panic, I swept into my den to retrieve the spare fob, which had to be fished from inside a glass vase that holds a multitude of keys and fobs. Eventually, I found the fob and stopped the racket.

Did I mention Desiree was sleeping at the time? Well, after two minutes of horn honking, I had cured that.

Fobs

—Mitchell Hegman

Winter Tulips

Richard Brautigan said it best in his simple phrasing: “The tulips are too excitable; it is winter here.”

Not long ago, Desiree brought home two sets of tulips. Her intent was to plant them outside for early spring color. Now, they are spent on a bottom shelf in our sunroom, with only a six-inch wall separating them from a persistent snowbank snuggling against my house.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Hole in the Earth

In the almost-spring weather, Desiree and I walked our road, seemingly stirred without forethought, through the swell of hills near our house. With sunlight threading through the widely scattered bull pine and unruly collections of juniper, the snow had receded to shadowed lees and earthen cuttles.

The sun somewhat oversells itself in Montana this time of year, and with warming faces, Desiree and I found ourselves chatting about planting an apple tree. “Don’t forget,” I reminded Desiree, “we live on a literal pile of rocks. We will need to dig a big hole first.”

Desiree merely smiled in response.

I mark spring by the sight of my first returned bluebird. This typically occurs somewhere in the middle of March. This year, sometime after seeing my first bluebird, I shall dig a hole in the earth.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Actor

By day he fancies himself a rooster strutting in the henyard. He’s always dressed in flares, upright, and crowing his proclamations. But at night he’s bumping into walls and peeing on his own foot in the darkness, just like any other man.

—Mitchell Hegman

Proof That Anything is Possible

I’m of the mind that the mere fact someone figured out a way to make people pay to watch others golf is solid proof that anything is possible.

—Mitchell Hegman