The Wild Kingdom

You remember my bunco club, the Dicey Housewives of West County, don’t you? Yes, the ten of us have been getting together for years on the second Monday of the month to play bunco. There used to be twelve of us, but the other two let sanity overtake them, and they dropped out. We ten survivors probably laugh too much to be tolerated on a regular basis. It’s better this way.


Anyway, over the years we have come to realize that in July and August we are too scattered (geographically, not mentally—that’s permanent) to gather enough members for our usually rousing evening of throwing dice and rotating among the tables. (If you don’t play bunco, just visualize a game of musical chairs punctuated by a gaggle of giggling grandmas asking each other what number we’re on.) So we do what otherwise normal women do—we go out to dinner instead.

Here I will pause to point out that alcohol is not, and has never been involved in our get-togethers. We’re all pretty sure we could be dangerous with a glass or two of chardonnay in us.

But back to our story…

At our August dinner, everyone was laughing, talking and sharing stories. We try to keep each other apprised of the comings and goings in our families, the travels, the remodeling, the moving, the medical issues, the not-to-be-missed recipes, and the ways in which our husbands drive us batty.

Suddenly Jan says, “Oh, Leah—I was thinking about you! The other night I was getting ready for bed, and last thing, I’m about to go to the bathroom. I lift the lid on the toilet and see that there’s something in there! I think, ‘Oh, the grandkids were over earlier, and one of them forgot to flush.’ Then, as I’m about to reach for the handle, I see this thing BLINK at me! Then I realize it’s a frog! I close the lid as fast as I can, and start yelling for Stu (her husband) to come in. My voice got so high-pitched, he thinks I’ve hurt myself or something.”

No, Jan did not take a picture.
Consider this a facsimile.

Jan went on to tell us how long it took for the two of them to get the frog flushed away. The next day, she called the Metropolitan Sewer District to report this, and to see what could be done to keep it from recurring. She was redirected to the water company. Jan thought she had a “you won’t believe this” tale to tell, but the customer service representative at Missouri American Water Company was unfazed. “You wouldn’t believe how common this is,” she said.

She also said that there was virtually nothing that could be done to prevent it from happening again.

Ruh-roh.

This led us all to speculating about what might have happened if it had been a snake or a rat. Yes, we all spoiled our appetites ‘going there’. But we all vowed to keep our toilet lids down at all times, just in case. Not that it would help much if a snake wanted to slither out.

But as the laughter died down and we were all grimacing at the possibilities, I had a thought.

“Jan,” I began. “I’ve never had a frog in my toilet before, so what made you start this story by saying that you thought of me the other night?”

“Well,” she began, “You did have squirrels in the attic, a chipmunk in the ceiling, and mice in the garage. You’ve had more in-house wildlife than anyone I know.”

“So I’m like a cross between Martha Stewart and Steve Irwin?” I asked.

She agreed. I went home and polished my squirrel traps.

Gemini Meets Scorpio

I’m not at all knowledgeable about astrological signs. I know people who are, and I think it’s kind of cool, but I never learned much about it. I’m a Gemini, and I do think that accounts for my split personality, but then again, so do I.


I used to work with a woman named Linda, who would always ask when someone’s birthday was, then she’d say, “Oh, you’re a Sagittarius!” or whatever sign was correct. Then she’d ask about the boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/whatever, and pronounce her assessment of whether the relationship had a chance at happiness or was doomed to go up in smoke. She knew this stuff cold, too. “Oh, no, he’s going to be selfish and isolating,” or “You don’t want to trust her with your kids or money—they’re (whatever the sign was) so irresponsible!” I don’t know how she knew this, but she was pretty sure that my hub, [the Center of the Universe, when he was still ‘the boyfriend’] and I would work out great. “Gemini and Scorpio—that’s a very strong combination,” she asserted.

Now, however, I find Linda was either learning from a different playbook, or fifteen years has changed the conventional wisdom. And, since fifteen years is nothing in the big scheme of things, I seriously doubt it’s the latter. Anyway, if you Google ‘Gemini and Scorpio compatibility’, you will find this view of things:

A Gemini and a Scorpio are like two ends of the same pole. They are totally opposite to one another in almost all the aspects of their personality, making this zodiac match a difficult one. The Scorpion is a highly emotional individual, who always forges deep, meaningful relationships. A Gemini, on the other hand, hardly becomes attached to people and most of his love relationships tend to be superficial ones. The frivolousness of a Gemini will not go down too well with a Scorpio and he is most likely to find the former as too childish, immature and irresponsible.

Now, frankly, not to give out too much personal information, but that particular description of the Scorpio couldn’t be further from the truth about CoTU. It describes me far better than it does him. In fact, a case could be made that they got us totally reversed, or at least partially so. So was Linda just nudging me along, hoping we’d self-destruct, or did she have special psychic insights?

This is a little like the Chinese restaurant placemat information on birth years… If you were born in the Year of the Rat, can you successfully marry someone born in the Year of the Monkey? Does it all depend upon the phase of the moon? Which system takes precedence? Do the Chinese birth years override the astrological signs, or is it the other way around?

Pig, rat, snake, monkey, ox—not too much to aspire to, if stereotypes hold. What does that leave?—rabbit, rooster, horse, dog, dragon, tiger… Hmmm… Maybe I was better off trying to grasp the signs of the zodiac. Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Libra—they just sound less judge-y…

So for all you readers out there who are into on-line dating, do any of these things become factors for you? Does anyone really take these things seriously when you meet someone you might want to date, or is the old ‘personal chemistry’ still the gold standard when it comes to choosing a significant other?

In either case, despite what they say online, this particular Gemini and CoTU, my Scorpio hubster, are doing just fine. So maybe Linda knew better than the websites, in the final analysis.

Perhaps the labels and the generalizations are just another way we try to cubbyhole each other. I guess it’s still best not to try to put a monkey and a rat in a Taurus. Somebody’s gonna get hurt. Especially if the monkey’s driving.