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 |  Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? |
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Fair Warning: I've upped the rating on this blog. It is now set at GC. |
| My Administrator is very big on the concept of "team building." Not the sort of team building that occurs when a group of people with common goals, come together day in and day out to work through problems and accomplish meaningful tasks. Oh no! Let's not have any of that. Team building should involve dragging everyone out to a park (complete with reeky port-a-potties) for a day of wacky games. And FUN! Mandatory FUN! Having worked at the agency for 11 years, I've had many frighteningly close calls with the inner working of our Administrator's well-meaning mind. It comes with the territory of having served on several Team Building Committees. The thing is, I'm not of those super-energetic, detail oriented, coordinator-types. Oh, that's probably a terrible stereo-type, but truth is, I prefer to work behind the scenes . . . where snarky remarks are appreciated . . . even celebrated. Truth is, I live to mock this kind of crap. Using me in an organizational capacity is like leaving the fox to guard the hen house. Except, in this version of the old saw, the fox doesn't eat the hens, she just makes them wear silly hats and perform skits. The title of this entry refers to one of the classic ice-breaker / getting-to-know-you games that our team building days have come to be known for. I must admit, I like it better than the human scavenger hunt. Have you done the human scavenger hunt? That's when you have a list of items like "has met someone famous," or "is an only child" or "comes from another planet," and you must try to find a person for each item. One year the the list had the item "has two different colored eyes." That was some great team building there. People would walk up and without ever taking their own eyes off the list, they'd ask "do you have two different colored eyes." "Um I don't know. I can't see them. Maybe you could check for me."  Anyway, in "two truths and a lie," you introduce yourself to the group by stating three things about yourself. Two of them are true, but one is a lie. The group then guesses which is the lie. I have a standard answer for this game. It never fails to stump the crowd, unless the crowd is stacked with repeat players. 1. I taught confirmation classes at a Lutheran Church. 2. I almost didn't graduate from High School because I missed too many days of school my Senior year. 3. Since getting my driver's license, I've never been pulled over by the police. I've gotten so far away from what I was originally planning to write about today that I'm ending with, what I thought would be, my lead in. Since it seems to be a loss cause, I'll just leave you clever folks to see if you can guess the lie. Predictably, there's a story behind this. |
| This summer, the ice cream man added our neighborhood to his route. The kids can hear that music from a mile away! Yesterday the kids heard the familiar tune just after lunch time. Two sets of eyes lit up in excitement. Katie took charge of the situation. She took her brother's order while Tony counted out a couple bucks for the kids. He is a sucker. Katie flew out of the house and Zack went to the window to cheer her along. "Run Katie! Run! Hurry up! Get the ice cream!" Zack was still in the boxer and t-shirts he'd slept in. He isn't real big into the concept of getting dressed when he doesn't have somewhere to go. Whatever. I believe in picking my battles. So, Tony looked at Zack and said pointedly "if you were dressed you could have gone outside too." Zack shot back, "I didn't want to go outside Daddy. I'm just being supportive of Katie!"  In other news, my mother was persuaded by my oldest brother to contact an attorney to fight the reckless driving charge against her. Seems my brother knows a few things about reckless driving. My mother contacted an Attorney who told her that for $750 he could make it all go away.  So Mom was rear-ended, hassled, and charged with reckless driving, and now she'll have to pay $750 in legal fees to make it go away. Don't get me wrong, I'll be happy if my Mom can get the charges dismissed, but it does make me question the justice of our judicial system. Apparently the attorney will have the case moved over to traffic court, and the docket for traffic court is obscene in Delaware. Given the very full docket, he thinks they will very gladly drop the charges against the 63 year old Grandma with a clean driving record. At the very least, he'll get the charge reduced to careless driving. My mother figures that $750 will be a lot cheaper than a 25 - 40% increase in her insurance rates. |
| The dog wanted to go out to pee, and I realized that I'd left his leash outside. So I went out poorly lit back way and managed to get the dog down a flight of stairs holding on to his collar. I snapped the leash on and he went about the business of watering my flowers. We were on the way back UP the stairs when it happened. I tripped. I fell hard banging my left wrist and hip and skinning my left knee. Somehow I also managed to skin the top of my right ankle and bang the ankle bone against the railing. I was quite impressed by the sheer number of points of impact. So I was laying on the deck, dazed and bleeding while the dog tangled his leash around me, and I realized that this was the high point of my day. |
| Anyone out there remember my friend Bonnie and her budding romance? That was over a year ago! Well, the relationship has continued to blossom, and the happy couple bought a house together. While I was away on vacation, they moved in and began officially shacking up together. I'm trying to think of a housewarming present for Bonnie and Marc. I've not so subtly suggested that if they'd get married we'd throw them a shower and people would give them stuff for the new house. Bonnie has never been married, but she lived with the father of her children for about 10 years. Now she really wants to get married, and I'm just not sure she's on the right track to making that happen. So, what do you think of giving them a new doormat that says: Free Milk! inquire within Okay, I think that is out of my system now. For the record, I'm not against cohabitation as a rule, I'm just against Bonnie settling for a living arrangement when she wants a marriage. |
That seems to be the order of the day, but since it takes the washer a scant 30 minutes to complete a cycle, and it takes the dryer somewhere nearer to 50, I have twenty guilt-free minutes to spend with you.  I told you yesterday that we made the trip home yesterday without incident. By "we," I was speaking only of the occupants of MY vehicle. My son rode back from the beach with his Grandma, and his return trip was considerably more of an event. One that might end up listed in the local police log. As a bit of background, my mother has a long and colorful history of over-reacting. I came to know the meaning of the word "catastrophic" at quite a young age, and was the only child in my third grade class to regularly employ the word to both the horror and delight of my teacher. I was precocious - another word I liked. My mother has a streak of defiance in her - which I sadly inherited - that transcends the bounds of logic. Utterly. She can also confabulate with the best of them. So, Zack wanted to ride back from the beach with Grandma. They got stuck in the expected crush of traffic heading north after a holiday weekend at the shore. Except my mother gets rear-ended by a young man. There isn't a lot of damage, and no one is injured. He admits that he was on his cell phone at the time and is initially very apologetic, but keeps insisting that there was no damage to either vehicle. As Mom argues the significance of the damage (which was pretty minimal), the young man became increasingly agitated. They go about the exchanging of information, but the young man (soon to become the "lil' asshole" in Mom's telling of the story) sees that her proof of insurance is out of date. He will not return the card to my mother for her to see for herself. My mother calls her insurance company on her cell phone and verifies her policy is current. She offers the phone to the young man so that he can be hear that she is NOT an uninsured motorist. He refuses. At this point he becomes entirely focused on the fact that she is driving without valid proof and insurance and therefore is breaking the law, which is entirely correct. As an aside, I learned that my mother did not know she received a new proof of insurance card every six months. She thought they came once a year and could not figure out how the "current" cards kept disappearing out of her vehicle. Hmmm . . . they don't disappear Mom, they expire. So the young man became insistent that Mom give him her driver's license. For what purpose, I'm not sure. But, this is where my mother dug her heels in. The young man was still refusing to return the insurance card, so she decided there was no way on God's green earth that she is going to give him her license. Mom made another call to the insurance company and they told her that she had collected and shared all the information that was required of her, BUT things seem to be getting ugly and she should call the police. Mom got off the phone, disregarded that last bit of advise, and decided to leave. She was not going to take any more crap from the lil' asshole who'd rear-ended her. This was still HIS fault, after all. The young man stood in front of her car to block her from leaving. Ha! He couldn't keep her from leaving! Mom simply backed up and attempted to go around him. ATTEMPTED because this was the point at which my mother may or may not have hit the young man with her car. As she put it "can he prove I hit him? I didn't feel a bump or anything." He said he'd been hit. She told the police she hit him. I don't know if it matters at that point whether she actually hit him or not. She says he jumped in front of the car to block her from leaving. Unfortunately for my mother, it was the young man who ended up calling the police, and they were not particularly sympathetic to her side of the story. She was sited for driving without proof of insurance, and for reckless driving. She was livid, but personally, I was grateful that I did not have to drive back to Delaware to retrieve Zack and arrange bail because my mother had been arrested for assault with a motor vehicle. The responding police officer clearly thought she was some hormonal granny gripped by road rage. He didn't want to hear her explanation and told her to "tell it to the judge." And by God, she plans to!!! |
| Today was our last day on the beach. We'll spend tomorrow packing, driving home, retrieving the dog, and unpacking. I'm not very excited about going back, but on the bright side, I took Monday off work. As I was saying, we spent our last day on the beach, and driving back from the beach, my nephew, Jason, was in the backseat with Zack. Jason was yammering on about something when he suddenly noticed that Zack was looking rather distracted. Jason: Zack, are you listening to me? Zack: No, I stopped listening awhile ago. Jason: Oh, well . . . don't you want to hear my story? Zack: No, not really. Jason: Okay. If only it worked that way for grown-ups. Zack and tact might sound a lot alike, but they don't exactly hang. My mother made some remark about soaking her fat butt in the hot tub. Zack looked her over and said "I don't think you're butt is fat Grandma. (he'd have been fine if he'd stopped here) It's just a regular sized butt, (another good place to stop) except for the two parts on the sides." Our fireworks were rained out last night. They are schedule for 10 tonight, but it looks like they could get rained out again. |
| I made it down to Chincoteague late yesterday. The trip was eventful. As we were approaching the toll plaza to exit the Northeast Extension of the PA turnpike, we had a flat. It was the dramatic sort of flat in which you can hear the air escaping the tire in big dramatic sighs. We weren't driving one of our cars either. We were driving my mother's pick-up truck, and it was loaded up with bikes, and suitcases and assorted beach gear. We pulled safely off the interstate onto a very wide shoulder and Tony walked back to the toll plaza where they phoned for road-side assistance. The advantages were that we had a safe place to stop, we were close to the toll plaza, and it had stopped raining. As disasters go, it could have been much worse. The guy who responded used the hydrolics on his flat bed to lift the truck so we were spared the necessity of unloading it as well. Since the truck has a full size spare, we were able to drive the rest of the way down on it without problems. And now we are here. The house we rented for the week is lovely and easily large enough for all our families. I'm here with my brood plus my daughter's best friend. My two brothers are here with spouses and children, and my mother is here also. My daughter and her friend had to settle for a pull out sofa bed, but they aren't too put out. The room closes off, has a bathroom near-by, a TV and a minibar. It is nice that Katie has a friend with her, and that they are old enough to venture off on their own. They are off riding around town on their bikes now. The boys are in the hot tub, and the women are scattered among the various decks reading, relaxing, and blogging. I think I'm ready to hit the beach though, so I'm going to cut this short. |
| I awoke to persistent thuds this morning . . . awoke before my alarm even had a chance to disturb my slumber . . . awoke to my husband doing down-right UNTHINKABLE things in the backyard. You might think I'm exaggerating, and maybe I am a bit, but I sure as hell never would have thought I'd wake up one Monday morning to the sight of my husband wailing on a tractor tire with a twenty pound sledgehammer. I staggered over to the window wondering what the hell I'd done to deserve thudding on a Monday morning. I pushed aside the curtain and took in the ridiculous scene. Tony was dressed in work-out gear slamming the sledge onto the 300lb tractor tire over and over again. Now, you might be wondering what the hell I'm doing with a thee hundred pound tractor tire in my backyard and I've gotta confess that I'm wondering the same damn thing! Do you have any idea how big a 300lb tractor tire is? Here is a visual to help with the size concept. I went out and took a picture of the tire where he parked it next to the shed. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** So the questions were just racing through my head . . . What's with the tire? What is he trying to do to it? How long would it take the ambulance to arrive if I decided to call the Mental Health crisis line and petition to have him committed for being a danger to himself or tires? That's when he tossed the sledge aside and began flipping the tire end for end across the width of our yard. I started to get the idea that maybe he was trying to make it difficult. I mean, most people would roll the 300lb tire across the yard. On each flip the tire hit the ground with a resounding thud. When he reached the far end of the yard, he began jumping in and out of the tire. OOOOH! . . . realization slowly washed over me. This is some kind of new work-out. Did I mention that my husband is a bit of a fitness freak? If so, pardon the omission. So the 300lb tire is a giant piece of exercise equipment. It's Big Bob all over again! Big Bob is a boxing thingie that came home with Tony a few years ago . . . (As an aside, I was at a loss for how to explain Big Bob so I Googled "Big Bob," and got many, many interesting hits, but nothing I could use. So, I reasoned that Tony purchased Big Bob at Dicks Sporting Goods, so I Googled "Dicks." That didn't work either. I did come up with yet another picture to show what Bob is. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Now Bob is 6 ft tall and lives in our basement where he routinely scares the bejesus out of me by impersonating a menacing, legless, shirt-less, flesh-toned intruder. Bob hasn't really been getting much action lately so I threw a pink blanket over his head. Thus emasculated, he now has the somewhat less frightening appearance of a 6 ft. pink ghost.) Okay, back on topic . . . Tony said he was going to be taking the tire to the gym where he teaches, but now he thinks it might be too big for them to house. I'm dismayed, but thankfully it is too big for him to take on vacation with us. I suggested that he didn't need the tire at all. I mean, we just had a tree removed an have a big ass stump in the backyard. I hear chopping, and digging down to remove a stump is an excellent total body work-out. Much more organic than pounding on a freakin' tire. It's what Rocky would do. Yes, I said Rocky! Rocky didn't need a Big Bob. No! Rocky went to a meat locker and pounded on a side of beef. And later, when he goes to the Soviet Union in Rocky IV. . . whilst the Soviet is doing all the high-tech training and injecting 'roids, Rocky was keeping it real. Because Rocky has heart and grit. And do you know what Rocky did then? Anyone remember? Yeah, that's right! He chopped wood! http://youtube.com/watch?v=AGP4BB4519o&feature=related And I say if it's good enough for Rocky then it sure as hell oughta be good enough for Tony! . . . |
| A week from today I will be on an island watching the gulls swoop low over the bay in search of dinner. I will be working my way through a pitcher of margaritas with a full week of vacation stretching out before me. I will be in my happy place. The whole fan damily will be making the pilgrimage back to Chincoteague island, Virginia. A younger me might have scoffed at the idea of returning to the same vacation spot year after year. How boring! Wouldn't it be nice to see more of the world, or at least more of the country? It would, and I'd love to vacation somewhere else, but not instead of Chincoteague. I have been spending summers in Chincoteague since I was all of 10 years old . . . possibly younger. In the transient life of a military family, Chincoteague was the constant. And when we hang a left off Route 13 at T's Corner and turn onto the causeway, I feel the real world falling away. When we cross over mosquito creek I roll down the window to breathe in the scent of salt marsh. White egrets dot the marshes as we approach the island, and when I see the familiar buildings and docks of town stretching along the far side of the Chincoteague channel, I feel the word "home" resonate through every synapse of my brain. Though I've never been a resident of the island, this will always feel like coming home. Even when they raze the old draw bridge and re-route the beach traffic coming onto the island. Even when the hurricanes sweep through and reshape the coastline. Even when luxury condos and chain hotels begin to dot the channel. It will always be home. |
| My brother and his wife and kids are visiting my Mother this weekend, so tonight all of us went out to the Japanese Tea Room, for dinner. It was, simply put, an experience. Because we were a rather large party, we would put in a small room in the back . . . and largely forgotten. The adults carefully planned out the entire order before the waiter appeared. Believe me, we had lots of time to think it over, and we didn't want to waste anymore time with drink orders. No, we had every detail of the order carefully orchestrated down to the last detail. Or so we thought. So when the waiter finally arrived we were ready to rattle off the order with machine gun precision except that he looked to my sister-in-law first. "Could you tell me about your specials?" she asked. <groan> The orders were placed and we waited patiently . . . well, not so much with the patience, but we did wait. The appetizers eventually started arriving. One item at a time. My sister-in-law was dipping her chopsticks into her water glass and licking them off in an attempt to stave off hunger. My mother was trying to pretend her tea was soup. After finishing a California roll for an appetizer, my sister-in-law complained, "Now I'm even more hungry." "That's what appetizers are supposed to do," Tony explained. "They stimulate your appetite." "Well I'm SOOOOO stimulated," she replied. My poor nephew go up to use the restroom, and on his way out, he ran into a waitress with a tray full of water glasses. He ended up drenched, but really, we were just glad it wasn't our dinners that were spilled. The kid had to set through the rest of the meal in wet clothes though, and it was already chilly from the AC. One hour and twenty minutes later we were about ready to fold our napkins into origami chickens, dip them into the soy sauce left over from the appetizers and chow down. Finally the food arrived. It wasn't exactly what we'd ordered, but no one wanted to complain at that point. Fortunately, the food was excellent. |
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