Time again

The school year is over again for Emma.   It was a much better year than last year.  Well, at least SHE did much better.   I continue to be one of those hopelessly disorganized parents that runs the other way if a PTO member happens to catch sight of me.  It’s not that I don’t want to help out at school.  I’d love to.  It’s just that, if you remember, I can’t usually find my socks in the morning and never remember to pay the bills on time.   Give me something of major importance like being in charge of a book fair, fund-raiser, or games at family fun night and you’re asking for disaster.  I was talking to my cousin (and super mom), Kathleen, one day while she was organizing prizes for the fun fair at the parochial school that her children attend.  She had spent hours shopping, buying and organizing cute little prizes for the fun fair.  I on the other hand couldn’t seem to find time to buy groceries or stop at the gas station.  Digressing…I know.

Some of you who have read my blog before know that my daughter spends the summer with her father in northern Illinois.  Hell, I might as well say Wisconsin because if you threw a rock from his house it would land in Wisconsin.  I also like to say that he lives in Wisconsin because he hates the Green Bay Packers.  Before Emma could talk he taught her to say “BOO!” if she heard anyone utter “Packers”.  I think it’s sort of nice Karma that he lives next to the land of all things Packer and cheesy.

Emma leaves tonight to go and spend June and July with her father.  I, of course, have nothing packed.  My cousin Kathleen would not only have her child packed but would have packed things to do on the trip, snacks, a first aid kit that rivaled a small ER and several types, and SPF’s of sun screen.  At our house, Emma’s clothes are in the dryer and I’m not sure where any of her shoes are…I think she’s wearing shoes today…huh…I should check.   Okay…anyway…I should take lessons from Kathleen because I’m envious of her prioritizing skills, but I spend way too  much time on Facebook reading funny memes and making snarky comments.  Damn it, the digressing is bad today…Look a chicken!

This morning Tom and Emma and I all piled into our Equinox to go to work.  We would have gone in separate cars, but Tom’s is dead again and the driver’s side window is stuck in the DOWN position and so he covered it with a black trash bag and gaff tape.  It’s not even locked because the thieves drive by it and see that the window is covered with a trash bag and they think “There can’t be ANYTHING in that trash heap worth stealing!”  Back to the story…Emma was sulking in the back seat.

“What’s wrong Em?”

“I wanted to play with Kiley (ne’er-do-well neighbor’s kid) after we got home tonight but daddy is coming to pick me up”

“I thought you were excited??”

“I am.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Kiley got a new POOOOOOOL.”

(Sigh).  Alright.  I’ve written about the neighbors before.  The guy next door is sketchy.  I’m sure this pool is hot.  How does one steal a swimming pool?  I don’t want to know, but this guy will have entire dining room sets, still in their factory wrapping show up in his driveway and then they are gone the next day and they weren’t carried into his house either.  Let me paint you a picture…several DUI, doesn’t work because his “back hurts” although he still seems to be able to carry around dining room sets with no problem without assistance, this is the guy who had his electricity turned off for non-payment so he just hooked up a hot generator that was hidden in his shed with an orange electrical cord that was taped together in no less than 10 places and was approximately 5,647 miles long.  This is the same guy that doesn’t speak…he “hollers”.  Same guy who walks around his yard naked from the waist up with his pot belly hanging over the front of his pants and his butt crack showing in the back with a cigarette butt in his mouth.  We think he’s murdering people and then transferring the bloody bodies somewhere because he constantly is cleaning out his 1980 Toyota Sienna van, including hosing off his floor mats every day.

Still think he bought that pool?  Me, neither.

But they couldn’t wait ONE DAY til Emma had gone up north to put up that rotten, hot pool.  NO.  Last night, he was out schlepping around the back yard half-naked filling it up with water while the girls danced gleefully around it.  Emma came racing into the house, begged to put on her swimsuit and then raced out of the house again in spandex blur.  The only other time I’ve seen that child move that fast is when I’ve said “Wanna go get frozen yogurt?” and she breaks the sound barrier getting to the car.

So this morning she was grumpy because she is going to be leaving Redneck Shores (the pool next door) when she leaves tonight.  I reminded her that daddy and his fiance are really excited that she is coming and that her step-sister to be is having her sweet sixteen party tomorrow and is having a BOUNCE HOUSE.  I reminded her that daddy has arranged for the same fun day camp that she went to last year, swimming lessons, cheerleading camp and has a new trampoline!  I told her that his fiance had already gotten her some new summer clothes and that she was going to get to see Grandma Betty and swim in her pool and go to the beach.  I reminded her of all of the wonderful things that summer would hold.  New friends and adventures with daddy and the whole summer with her old dog Frosty-the-googly-eyed-Pomeranian-that-never-stop- barking.  I told her that it was just June and July and then she’d be back in the first part of August.  I reassured her….

Or did I try to reassure me.

I’ll be fine tonight as I pack her clothes and she’ll throw all her favorite videos in her travel bag and take Mr Weiner Dog, her favorite stuffed animal with her in the car.  She’ll run to her father when he gets out of the car and we’ll all pack up her things into the back of his SUV.  I’ll be fine and hug her and tell her we’ll talk on the phone even though I know when I call she’ll be too tired or too busy or just not really interested because she’s eight.  I’ll help her get strapped in the back with her VCR, her Nintendo DS and her pillow and assorted junk and give her a hug and kiss.

And then they’ll leave.

Tom and I will wave from the drive way and her dad will honk and they’ll wave back and then they’ll drive away.

I’ll stand on the sidewalk and look after them.  This is how it always goes.  I’ll stand and stare after them watching his white SUV get smaller as it drives away.  I know I’ll feel small and lost and I’ll remind myself over and over again how wonderful it is that her father loves her and wants to spend time with her and does so much with her and that he and I are on good terms.  I’ve waived child support for the summer so that he can spend it on her.  I’ll stand there with my shoulders slumped feeling as though my feet are glued to the ground and that my heart has stopped beating.

Finally, Tom will say…”Hey…Come here…”.  I’ll realize that he’s been standing behind me the whole time.  He’ll pull me into his arms and let me sob for a couple of minutes and then remind me that she needs her father as badly as she needs us and that this is good.  This summer is good.

We’ll go into the house and the Chihuahuas will dance around and our lab and mutt will wrestle happily in the dining room because we’re back in the house.  The house that suddenly seems to be achingly empty.

This summer is good.   I know it is.

Sometimes…the best things are also the most difficult.

Historic fail.

So, Tom tried to give me a political history lesson….

“Fascism was in Italy…Mussolini was their grand….”

“Poobah?”

“NO.”

Ka-ching.

I don’t like to grocery shop.  Not even a little bit.  It all goes back to the whole grocery trauma of my childhood when we bought necessary groceries instead of junk. See this post , to see how not buying Hostess SnoBalls as a child nearly ruined my adult life.  Anyway, back to the issue of grocery shopping.  It’s one of my LEAST favorite things to do.  It’s right up there with having my skin removed with a cheese grater.  To make things worse, Tom likes to shop at the Super Wal-Mart which, granted, has some low prices, but unfortunately is full of unseemly patrons which this video clip clearly displays:

 

O.M.G.

Yeah.  So, because Tom used to have a mullet, I figure that he’s a much better candidate to go to Wal-Mart than I am since I have always been the epitome of cool (Hi Honey!).   Thus, I have him do all the grocery shopping…it makes sense.  (Just agree with me, okay?)

Recently, a new store opened in town and I’m SMITTEN.  I actually will come up with EXCUSES to go to this place.  It’s…It’s…It’s…..FABULOUS.   First of all, I totally love a grocery store that doesn’t sell tires and firearms.  This store is called…THE FRESH MARKET.  This is totally not a commercial for them, but I’m tellin’ ya, if there is one in your town, put down whatever you’re doing and go there.  Seriously.  The fruit is perfectly stacked.  They carry more than green peppers, celery and cucumbers.  There is a fish counter (which I’ll overlook), and a butcher counter and all kinds of fancy pants salads at the deli and they make fresh sushi (yuck) and they have lots of BREADS and special snack items and a fancy dessert counter and barrels of coffee beans and all kinds of rotisserie meats and cool cheese that isn’t made by KRAFT and…and…and…special CANDY and….I could go on and on…there is beautiful classical music playing and everyone is happy and no one is screaming at their child to STOP IT!.  It’s food Nirvana and I want to LIVE there.  No one there has a MULLET.  No one there is wearing a t-shirt that says “World’s Greatest Pa-Paw!” while wearing plaid shorts and black socks with flip-flops and absolutely NO ONE has a cart with underwear, ammunition and Cheez-its in it.

That…in and of itself makes it worth paying $54 for a gallon of milk.

 

Camp Gripe-alot.

We didn’t have big plans for Labor Day this year.  Come to think of it, we never have big plans for Labor Day.  Anyway, Tom’s been a whirling dervish of cleaning this weekend.  He cleaned the carpet in the bedroom, did a ton of laundry, vacuumed the whole place and ate three-quarters of a pan of baked  mostaccioli.  I boiled the mostaccioli noodles and had OCD about uploading a video to Facebook and YouTube.  I finally decided that I needed to get out of the house, so today we piled into the car with the camera and went for a ride.

We filled the gas tank, got lunch for Emma, picked up two grande-coffee’s-in-venti-cups-with-two-Equals-in-each-and-topped-off-with-half-and-half from Starbucks and started driving.  When I have a full cup of Starbuck’s coffee and my camera, everything seems like a good idea and forgetting that the bipolar Evansville weather had dropped 40 degrees in 24 hours and that we were all wearing shorts and sandals, I said “Hey…what about Harmonie State Park?  I bet I could find good places for pictures out there…”.  Tom, being the long-suffering husband that he is (he made me type that), obligingly turned the car around and headed west.

On the way out to Harmonie State Park which is near New Harmony, Indiana, which is right next to the Middle of Nowhere, I noticed that the breeze, which I thought would cause Emma’s hair to blow softly, had risen to more of a HAIR WHIPPING AROUND YOUR HEAD status.  I decided that it might not be a great day for pictures, but what-the-hell, we were almost to the state park, so we just kept driving.

Emma was all excited about getting there because I told her that we were going to a FOREST by a RIVER.  As we pulled into the entrance of the state park she happily chirped “I have to PEE!!!”.  She always does this.  I swear.  The moment we go somewhere and are at the furthest point there is from a toilet her bladder kicks in.   I had my usual high-speed-come-apart while she bounced up and down in the backseat, talking non-stop about peeing.

Tom headed to one of the picnic areas that appeared to have restroom facilities.  He had barely stopped the car and he and Emma had vaulted out of their seats and were on their way down the trail to the “facilities”.  The wind coming of the Wabash river was FRIGID.  Emma instructed Tom to use the “MENS” side and she would use the “WOMENS” side.  Child is going to be president someday.  Anyway, Tom ducked into the “MENS” side while Emma, who was singing at this point, skipped to the “WOMENS” side and opened the door.

Singing stopped.  She stopped.  I nearly ran her over.

“MOM. IT. HAS. NO. FLUSHER.”

Yep.  Chemical toilet.  I told her that it was the only restroom in the area.  She spun around and said “THAT’S NOT A TOILET” and she turned around and stomped back down the trail.

“I thought you had to pee?”

“NOT THAT BAD”

“But…”

“FORGET IT MOM”

So we all got back in the car and started driving again.  Tom decided it would be funny to pretend that he was driving the car down the boat ramp into the river.  I decided it would be funny if I pounded the shit out of his right arm.  It seemed like we’d driven for DAYS (because Emma needed to “PEE!!!!”.  We finally found the campground and there, surrounded by cherubim and seraphim and a glowing light….REAL BATHROOMS.

Emma shot out of the car and toward the bathrooms.  When we got inside she opened the door and said “THANK GOD.  A FLUSHER.”

Back in the car, we drove further into the campground.  Tom told Emma about how he had camped one time and had to use a shovel and a branch to go to the bathroom.  Without going into many more details than that, let’s just say that Emma found the whole idea absolutely both horrifying and simultaneously hysterical.   It took us quite a while to get her calmed down.  Tom thought that maybe we should try camping.  We had to get Emma to stop laughing again.  As her giggling got under control, we drove into a section of cabins.  Cute….log…cabins…with electricity…and bathrooms and showers.  Tom made some comment about not having to find a “current bush” to plug my hairdryer into….so I shot him a wilting look.  He gave me a big cheesy grin.  I was mumbling about smuggling the chihuahua into the “NO PETS ALLOWED” cabins when Emma said “If they have electricity, I could watch TV!”

Silence.

“No TV’s in the cabins Em”

“Well then I’ll watch Netflix on the iPad”

“Em….no WiFi”

Silence.

“I DON’T WANT TO GO CAMPING”

We tried to reassure her that it might be fun…hiking, fishing, biking. Pretty soon she was in tears.

“There won’t be anything to DO!”

We finally got her calmed down and convinced that she wouldn’t die from camping when we passed a line of RV’s waiting at the dump station at the exit to the campgrounds. A guy with blue rubber gloves up to his elbows was inserting a thick hose into a hole in the ground.   I yelled “THEY’RE DUMPING POOP OUT OF THEIR CAMPERS!!!!”  and the mayhem in the backseat started all over again…only this time I joined in.

Tom stopped at the campground office and got information about renting a campsite or a cabin.  I tried to convince Emma that it wouldn’t be that bad (although I didn’t believe a WORD I was saying.  I happily pointed out to Tom that it was only TWENTY THREE DOLLARS a night!  And then quickly added that we would  need roughly THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of camping gear.  He finally gave up trying to convince both Emma and I that it would be fun.

We drove back to Evansville and by the time we got home we’d forgotten all about camping.  I hauled all my stuff in from the car including the camping information from Harmonie State Park.  I unceremoniously dumped it, along with my camera gear, my purse and other miscellanea from the car onto the dining room table.   I’m sure it will soon get buried under the weekly onslaught of papers from school and work.  In a couple of weeks when I’m trying to dig out the dining room table to avoid being the next subject of a “Hoarders” episode, I’ll probably run across it and put it in the “keep” pile….where it will stay until I unearth it six months later and throw it into the “What the hell is this?” pile.

I don’t think Emma has anything to worry about.

Thank God.

Realty reality

We’ve been looking for a different house for about a year.  I say “we” because that includes Tom.  I personally have been looking for a different house ever since I set eyes on this one.  It’s really not a horrible house (yes it is).  It has some character (no it doesn’t) and as my mother so delicately put it, “it has possibilities”…  which is a nice way of saying “I’m sorry you live in a hovel”.   Tom and his then girlfriend were looking for an apartment when a realtor, who had no idea that she was ruining MY life, said “You could rent a house for the same price” and showed them the house we’re in now.  They agreed and rented the house and then apparently daunted by living here (and a few other details I won’t go into), his girlfriend decided that maybe she WASN’T moving to Evansville after all.  By that time, Tom was already moved in and here we are today.  That’s the short version of the story.

Anyway, about a year ago Tom starting looking in earnest (he was faking it before) for another place to live for a couple of reasons.  First, his mother was moving to Evansville and honestly, she requires a little help now and then that we were willing to provide.  Second, I had a complete meltdown that included increasing the amount of antidepressants I take.  That seemed to kick him into high gear.  I wish I would have thought of it sooner…but nervous breakdowns are sort of on their own time table.   When we were looking for a place last year, we started looking at houses with related living quarters so that his mother could move in with us.  We looked at several houses with mind boggling prices.  We narrowed it down to two…and then one and then the stock market went through the floor and suffice it to say so did the down payment that we were going to be using.  We figured it was a sign from God or Warren Buffet or someone important like that and decided that maybe this was not the right time to buy a house with price containing more digits than a standard phone number.  So we tabled the whole thing.

Recently, the size of the house has become more and more of an issue.  We’d like our son to be able to move in with us while he attends college in town, but at this point we’d have to have a perpetually inflated air mattress in our living room or we’d have to construct a room in the basement which would entail cleaning the basement and I just can’t go there.  Listen, I’m one of those people who will throw a casserole dish away if there’s too much baked on cheese stuck to the edge because it’s too much work to scrub.  The basement is a lot like a casserole dish…cleaning it is too much work, so we just need to move.  That should put the whole thing into some sort of perspective for you.  Anyway, it turns out that the two houses that we narrowed it down to last YEAR are still on the market and have dropped about forty thousand dollars in price…and they are STILL at prices that make you gag when you say them.   Tom started talking with a local realtor and told him that we were still interested in the houses and that we would be interested in perhaps an executive lease (read as…leasing big homes with high rent) since they were having trouble selling the homes.  The one place (the one with the laundry room that I can actually get up enough speed to RUN in because it’s so ridiculously LARGE) said “NO”.  Crab asses.  The other place…which is actually my second choice said how about you give us a giant down payment and we sell it to you on contract?   So we’re going to look at that place (for the third time) today because they are having an open house (also known as a “WE’RE BEGGING YOU TO BUY THIS HOUSE” event).

This house is actually very nice…lots of wood…lots and lots of wood….the dog hair should fairly glide across it’s shiny surface as I madly chase it with a Swiffer if we should happen to live there.  It’s a nice colonial saltbox style.  It’s huge.  If we lived there, I might not see Tom for WEEKS.  I definitely don’t have enough furniture for the place.  There is a three car garage with a DOG DOOR.  I’m all about accessories and there are dog doors AND cat doors…which I would seal shut as soon as our cats went outside because then I wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore…but I digress.  The house sits on five wooded acres and is just minutes from the nearest Wal-mart.  That can either be seen as a bonus or a problem, depending on who you talk to.  There is beautiful landscaping and lots of flagstone walls around the beds of hosta and perennials which means there is just that much less lawn to mow…which is really Tom’s area because everyone knows that I don’t go outside unless it’s to dash to the car where I can turn the air conditioning on.  This house has an attached garage and if I play my cards right and park in the garage at work too, I might NEVER have to go outside which is just fine with me.   The back of the home has an enclosed and an open porch for those rare occasions that I freak out and think I need to go outdoors…OR…I can stand on the deck and scream for Tom if there’s a spider in the kitchen.  Perfect.  The house not only has seven bedrooms but it has five and a half bathrooms and two dressing rooms…his and hers.  I was all confused at first because I kept walking into bathrooms and would think “Oh I already saw the bathroom…” and then I’d realize it was a TOTALLY different bathroom.  The damn things are everywhere.  I made it quite clear to Tom that I was NOT cleaning all the bathrooms.  I can hardly clean the ONE that we have now.  There are actually his and hers bathrooms on the main floor that are connected to the his and hers dressing rooms.  HIS bathroom is also attached to the large laundry room which is really a smart move on the part of whoever designed the place because everyone knows that men can’t get their dirty clothes to the laundry if it’s not within ten feet of where they take off their clothes.  OH SETTLE DOWN…you know I’m right…of course I can’t seem to get my clothes to the laundry either, but that’s a totally different story…which we’ll talk about some other time…maybe.

Back to the house…so, yeah…it’s a pretty swanky place.  First floor , master bedroom, a kajillion bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room with fire place, enclosed porch, deck.   Lower level, two more bathrooms, pool table area, sitting room with another fireplace, a lower deck with a hot tub (which I might use since you can’t see the neighbors which means they can’t see ME), two bedrooms, a wet bar and the sauna room…didn’t I mention that sauna?  Tom reminded me that it was there and made a nasty face at me when I said I was going to store “stuff” in the sauna.  Hey.   Evansville is like living on MERCURY.  If I want to sweat, I’ll just go stand on the deck for a minute.   The third floor has TWO MORE BATHROOMS or was there one…shit I don’t know there were toilets everywhere, three bedrooms, a sitting room and a kitchenette…and a laundry chute that I plan on renaming “The Supersonic Chihuahua Transfer Tube”.  It’s a lot of house.  Is it too much for us?  Possibly….PROBABLY.  I try not to think about it too much.  I mean the whole thing might not work out, but I have to admit I’m already planning parties and holidays in my fevered imagination.  Shoot, we’d have room for everyone we know plus a few people that we don’t know.  I’m planning on having a house warming party first and I recommend that everyone brings us a piece of furniture…or a toilet brush for one of the kajillion bathrooms.

In the meantime, I’ll be here in the hovel.  I’m going to try not to think about how FIVE bathrooms could change my life and how much Soft Scrub is used annually  when one has that many sinks…I think that I’ve already come up with a way to defray the cost of the house payments though.  Ladies and gentlemen…get your tickets now for the Thompson Toilet Tour!  First 10 customers get a free sauna!  Buy the deluxe tour and I’ll let you use the hot tub too…if I can find you…just yell down the Supersonic Chihuahua Transfer Tube when you’re done with the tour and someone will try to find you.  Just make sure that there isn’t a chihuahua in the tube…INCOMING!!

The Birds

When I was growing up, we lived in a lovely Cape Cod style house on a hill on a quiet street in a small town.  It was a white house with black shutters and I remember thinking we must be very wealthy because we had shutters on the outside and a fireplace on the inside.  The backyard was surrounded by a white picket fence (I’m not kidding).  There was a two car detached garage with a basketball hoop and backboard mounted on the roof.  There was a long black asphalt driveway that Dad seal coated every other year or so and the bottom of the driveway near the street had such a ridiculous incline to it that it was impossible to get a car to climb if it was icy but you could REALLY get your bike going down it even if you took your feet off the pedals.  The trick was to get your Schwinn started up by the garage, pedal like mad and when you hit the top of the downgrade in the driveway you took your feet off the pedals and just FLEW into the street.   If you were lucky you didn’t wipe out in the assorted pebbles that always seemed to be at the base of the driveway.  If you were really lucky…you didn’t get creamed by a passing car.

Next to the driveway, in the elderly neighbors’ yard was a massive sugar maple tree.  The tree was a pear shaped monolith on our street, towering over the black walnuts and red maples around it.  It was thick with big green leaves that changed to brilliant orange and yellow in the fall.  Kids from all over the neighborhood came and raked the leaves into huge piles to jump into.  One day we completely lost my brother for an hour, only to have him pop up out of the middle of the pile of leaves laughing like a maniac.  He and his ne’er-do-well group of friends were frequently up IN the tree because the branches were perfect for climbing.  This gave the property owner a hefty dose of anxiety and pretty soon she’d be outside with her Pomeranian dog “Mister”, shooing the kids out of the tree.  The tree’s roots rose out of the soil and the neighborhood kids could often be found with tractors and Hotwheel cars playing in the dirt and dust around the roots.  The tree was a gathering place.  But not only for us.

During the day, scores of starlings fed on the fertile fields that surrounded the village.  In the early evening, they came to town to find a place to roost.  For some reason, they chose that maple tree next to our driveway.  By twilight, the tree was a squawking cacophony of bird joy.  There were THOUSANDS of starlings in the tree.  Ugly, blue-black, yellow beaked, beady eyed starlings. The noise was deafening.  Feathers floated through the air as the birds whooped it up in the tree. They swooped into the tree from all directions and with each arriving group, there was a new salvo of bird screams. It was a downright bird festival.  Every night they kept this up and by morning they were gone.  They left the lawn strewn with black feathers and the driveway PLASTERED with bird poop.  Not just a little bit of bird poop either…LOTS of bird poop.  The kind of bird poop that comes from a meeting of thousands of starlings.  It was poop on an epic level.

My Dad was always a little bit anxious about things and the birds definitely unnerved him.  He complained about them at first.  Then he became obsessed with them.  One night there was a particularly fierce midwestern thunderstorm and the next morning not only was the driveway SLICK with wet starling droppings that reeked like dead fish, but there were bird bodies all over the lawn of bird party goers that apparently didn’t fare well during the storm.  Mom mentioned “germs” and “disease” in the same sentence with the word “starlings” and Dad went one step further than obsessed.  He was, like most parents,  usually obsessed with the idea that my brother and I were going to be killed by something and this time, it was some bird borne disease.  He declared war on the starlings.

He started his mission by standing on the front porch and clapping his hands wildly.  The birds would respond by fluttering around in the tree and maybe two or three would relocate to the black walnut trees across the street.  Then they’d start squawking again…I swear they were laughing at him.  Pretty soon he enlisted my mother’s help and they would periodically go outside and start clapping wildly which seemed to only rev up the bird hoedown going on in the tree.  My brother and I clapped too.  It became a family past time.

My father would not be outdone by mere starlings.  His next attack came in the form of two-by-four pine boards.  Dad cut a couple of lengths of boards and discovered that by clapping THOSE together, he could really make some noise.  Every night after dinner he’d go outside and start slapping boards together.  The birds were slightly freaked out by this new onslaught of noise and actually vacated their party spot.  Dad would clap his boards a few dozen extra times and eventually go back in the house.  The birds apparently were waiting down the street for him to go in the house, because in less than ten minutes they were back pooping and screaming like crazy.  So Dad upped the ante.

BB guns.  Dad would wait until the birds got good and settled into the tree and had started to wind down their partying.  Then he’d start firing blindly into the tree. BB’s ripped through the leaves and leaves full of holes drifted through the summer air.  The birds were nonplussed.  Back to the drawing board.

Explosives.  He started with firecrackers.  Just the little ones. This totally had the buy-in of the neighborhood boys who whooped it up as Dad lobbed firecrackers into the tree.  A few birds would flutter off, but were soon back with 20 or 150 of their feathery friends.  Much to the delight of the boys, he moved to bottle rockets launched from empty glass Pepsi bottles.  The birds screamed in response, but by now were getting jaded about the constant explosions in their hang out.  Fine.  He brought out the big guns.  He had found a box of old fireworks in the garage.  M80′s.  After all the kids were corralled in one spot, the neighborhood men would stand watching with mild amusement as Dad starting lobbing the charges into the tree.

KA-BOOM!!!!!!!!  The explosion echoed through the neighborhood.  The birds, now convinced that Armageddon had arrived for their species, took off in a massive black cloud.  Kids screamed and covered their ears.  And then because fireworks and of course, explosives, are illegal in Illinois, the cops showed up.  I remember peering through the living room gold drapes as Dad talked to police while gesturing frantically at the tree and then the sky and then the poop slick driveway and the piles of feathers in the lawn that he was sure were laden with LICE.  The long-suffering police guy listened and shook his head a lot and then got in his car and left.  Dad came stomping in the house swearing under his breath and mumbling about the next village board meeting that he was going to attend.  In the meantime…the birds were back in the tree screaming happily.

At the village board meeting, which consisted of about 10 guys and was followed by beer at the legion post, Dad launched his ultimate plan.  FOG.  He wanted the village to FOG the birds.  Being a kid, I didn’t know what the hell could be in FOG that would scare a bird, but whatever.  It sounded scary and Dad was SURE this would solve the problem which he felt was now a nuisance and a danger to the entire village’s health.  The village board members listened, nodded wisely and said they’d think about it.  Dad came home raging and went back to boards,BB’s,  bottle rockets and bombs as he continued the war on his feathered foes.  Every once in a while, the cops showed up and Dad would chew them out about the birds and disease and stink and dead bird bodies.  They’d leave and Dad would go back to the battlefield.

This went on for YEARS.

One year the village decided they’d had enough of explosions and mushroom clouds from our side of town.  They agreed to fog the birds with some sort of peppery fog in an effort to drive them away.  I was slightly terrified.  Dad was euphoric.  The long-awaited night came and the fogger machine showed up.  The birds in the tree took off in a huge flapping black cloud and for several days, there was peace on the battlefield.  I seem to recall Dad having to scoop up a few casualties with a spade and disposing of them. But slowly…they came back…forgetting their night in the peppery fog because remember, birds aren’t very smart…and then it all started again.

Dad battled the birds the entire time they lived in the Cape Cod house on the hill on the quiet street.  They had the opportunity to buy a ranch style house at the end of the same street and they jumped at it and moved everything in the house, down to the end of the block.  This house was surrounded by huge mature oak trees.  The birds didn’t roost there though.  There were no episodes of wild clapping, no explosions, no BB gun fire.  They had a new enemy, however.  SQUIRRELS.  They emptied the bird feeders, ate my mother’s plants and destroyed pumpkins and flower beds.  Dad bought squirrel bafflers to protect the bird feeders, Mom bought fake pumpkins.  It was useless.  Mom muttered about “bastard squirrels” as she fixed her flower beds.  My brother an I laughed when the squirrels found the Easter eggs Dad had hidden for the kids and emptied them of their candy contents.  Squirrels were everywhere, hanging by their toes eating bird food, skittering madly up trees, balancing on electric wires strung high in the air between houses.

The next war had begun.

Really….I must have this

Look how cute…..look at it….LOOOOOK!!  I NEED this.

Birthday girl

So my birthday is in four days.  Birthdays started to officially depress me about 10 years ago…maybe longer ago than that, actually.  I really can’t see the point in celebrating birthdays anymore because it’s just like a count down til doomsday, ya know?  I mean when I was younger, each birthday felt like a step toward that magical time in your life when you’ve got it all figured out and life is pretty stellar.  I’ve come to the conclusion that either A.) There is no such stage where you have it all figured out or 2.) I DO have it all figured out and I’m not happy with the answer I’ve come up with…which is more likely.

The only thing that birthdays are any good for at this age are to eat ridiculous amounts of cake…(stop judging) and to petition for birthday gifts that I know I have no chance of getting.  I’ve come up with some pretty ridiculous lists in the past and this year’s list is no less stupidly unrealistic.   So while you read this, get on the phone with the local bakery and get that cake ordered.  I’ve got to have some way to soothe my aching heart when I don’t get what I want (shameless attempt to make you feel guilty).

Trip to Door County

About ten hours from here there is a lovely peninsula of land that sticks out in between Green Bay and Lake Michigan.  I love it there.  It’s the Cape Cod of the midwest.  Tiny towns dot the shores of the bay and the lake and are filled with shopping, marinas and terrific restaurants.  In between these towns is largely unpopulated rural area that is largely unpopulated because during the winter its abysmally cold up there.  A few years ago, I decided that I was moving to Door County.  I still live under this delusion today.  Never mind that there are no JOBS up there unless you like scaling fish or working in the hospitality industry as a maid named Guadalupe .  The rest of my delusion is that I’m going to live in a charming house on a bluff that overlooks Green Bay (the bay, not the town) where I can happily fly my Packers flag and have people who mow my lawn.  For my part, I will write books for which I’m paid a ridiculous amount of money while I’m not taking blindingly beautiful pictures of expensive weddings and rich families that visit the peninsula.  Tom will work in Green Bay at some university there and have his paycheck direct deposited so that I can pay our “people” to take care of our “business”.  I’ll lounge around in my pajamas all day, drink coffee, and pontificate in my blog about important issues like the unnecessary existence of guard geese.  If you choose to provide this fabulous gift for my birthday, don’t bother to put a bow on it.  Oh, and if you can’t swing the house on the bluff…then I’ll settle for a weekend trip and I like to stay at Newport Resort.  Just sayin.

Chihuahua puppy

I’ve written before about our small herd of dogs that consists of Sophie, Charlie and Zoey.   You would imagine that I have enough dogs and I would imagine so too if I would just pay attention to the unbelievable amount of dog hair that is covering everything and everyone in the house.  For some reason…I never think that I have enough animals and I’ve mentioned this before as well, I’m one set of whiskers away from being the next subject of an “Animal Hoarders” 2 hour special.  Nonetheless, I’ve been hinting (or harping) for the last several days about a new Chihuahua puppy that I would name Malcom.  I’ve surfed all the local Pets for Sale ads and Googled local breeders and even provided pictures and various price points for Chihuahua puppies and Tom ain’t buyin it….really…he isn’t buying one.  No matter how long I sit on the sofa with my bottom lip sticking out, he just shakes his head gloomily and says “NO”.  He’s a hater.  He obviously is not interested in making me happy OR participating in my and Zoey’s plan of Chihuahua world domination.  He seems to think that we have enough dogs. I offered to get rid of HIS dog, but he didn’t seem to go along with that idea either which just proves that he’s impossible to get along with.  I’m not giving up…and this gift would be REALLY cute with a bow on it…or a sparkly collar or at least a cute tiny t-shirt.  I’m not picky…

iPad 2

Do I even have to explain this one?  No gift wrapping required…you can have it shipped to me or what the hell, I’ll just pick it up if you pay for it and put it on hold somewhere.  Just text me and tell me where to pick it up.  I’ll call you and let you know how much I love it and how cool you are for giving it to me.  Tom will be very happy with this choice because there will be no additional yipping ankle biter in the house and he won’t have to put up with having a Packer’s flag on the front of his house.  Look at how much you’re helping him and probably his heart condition!

So there it is…the yearly list.  Feel free to add your own unrealistic ideas that you’d think I’d like…for example…a Lexus ES 300 or expensive jewelry or an overpriced handbag.   I’m not having a party this year, so you can just have it sent to me or I’ll come and pick it up or I’ll send Tom to get it if I’m in middle of eating a large piece of cake while holding the Chihuahua puppy I’ve purchased for myself and playing with my iPad.  If I’m in Door County…I’ll just pick it up when I get back or what the hell, I’m moving up there anyway you might as well have it just sent up there.

See.  Look how you’ve turned this gloomy birthday around for me!  Oh and I like any kind of cake…with buttercream frosting…and bring a gallon of milk.

The garden

When I was growing up, we lived on the same block as my cousin and his family and my grandmother.  Directly behind our house on the opposite side of the block, there was an old man named Ray who always wore farmer overalls.  He had a large plot of dirt turned over in his back yard that he allowed my mother and grandmother and my aunt and uncle to use as a vegetable garden.  He also was a big worm farmer and my cousin and I would often help him by scouring the earth, that had been freshly turned with his spade, for fat night crawlers.  We’d throw the worms into an old Hill’s Brothers coffee can which he in turn would dump into an old bathtub that he used as his worm containment system.  He covered the bathtub with an old wooden door and then locked it tight with a chain held together with a padlock.  Apparently worm theft was a big fear of his.

Every spring, we’d drag hoes, rakes, spades and other implements of destruction to the side of the garden plot that we cultivated.  My grandmother and my mother would hoe and hoe the soil until it was fine and weed free.  I dragged a hoe around and eventually ended up sitting in the shade because I couldn’t stand the sun and I was usually in the way and always in trouble for walking in the freshly hoed soil.   Sometimes I would sit and go through the shoe box full of seeds. There were beets and beans, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers and onion sets.  The onion sets were purchased at the local hardware store and came in a tiny crackly brown bag.  I remember there was always big excitement when “the onion sets came in!”  My mother would purchase tomato plants and a few green pepper plants from my uncle’s brother who owned the local greenhouse and was known to the locals as “Rudy Begonia”.  His real name was Bob.  Mom and my grandmother would try to decide what was best…Beefsteak or Early Girl or Better Boy…as far as tomato variety.  I could care less because I was a kid and tomatoes were just plain inedible in my opinion.  I always wanted to plant CARROTS and my mother never would because no one grew, can and froze CARROTS.  Every year, I’d launch the carrot campaign and every year I’d get shot down.  I don’t know why I was fixated on carrots, because I didn’t like them either.

Planting time was horribly exciting for me because I got to help.  My mother and grandmother would tie kite string to two paint stirring sticks and use them as row markers to ensure that their rows of vegetables were neat and tidy.  After they had placed and replaced the sticks about 132 times while they tried to decide if the row was perfectly straight, one of them would use a hoe to dig a shallow trench along the string for me to follow behind and drop the seeds into.  While I planted I would hear “Not too close!”  ”You’re putting them too far apart!!” and “DON’T STEP ON THE LETTUCE!!!”  I poked seeds into tiny trenches and helped to align onion sets along the string marking their row.  Mom or my grandmother would follow with the rake or hoe covering the seeds with a shallow layer of dirt.  We’d always work in the evenings and soon I’d be distracted by the lightning bugs that were beginning to flash in the darker places beneath the surrounding trees.  At the end of the planting evening, my dad would help to drag out about a mile of garden house that they would use to water the newly planted seeds.  There was a lot of yelling of “STAY OUT OF THE MUD” and when the garden hose was rolled up and put away, we’d head into the house.  I was full of mosquito bites and the bottoms of my feet and ankles were black with dirt.  I smelled like I’d been dipped in DEET due to the liberal spraying of OFF! that I’d received before gardening.  Mom ushered me right to the tub and when I was finished, the tub had a ring of grass clippings and dirt, but I was squeaky clean.

As the plants began to grow, my mother and grandmother would spend evenings weeding out the tiny weeds that would try to overtake the space needed by the baby plants.  I was enlisted to help weed, but usually found better things to do like picking red berries from a row of nearby bushes and dropping them into empty Awake! orange juice cans that we’d been given to play with.  My cousin, Ken, was my partner in crime and we spent loads of time scouring the bushes that rimmed his backyard for the elusive red berries.  We had been warned the berries were POISON and we’d better not EAT THEM.  So while our mothers and grandmother gardened, we collected berries and tried to feed them to the neighbor girl who lived in a fenced back yard because she was crazy.  One day someone opened the gate on the fenced back yard and she made a break for it and her family chased her all over the block before they caught her and dragged her back to the fenced yard by the scruff of her neck.  We would make big batches of POISON using berries and vicious looking leaves, some water that we snuck out of the spigot in the garage and grass clippings.  Then we’d try to convince her that it was soup.  Sometimes we’d roll ice cubes in dust and try to feed her those, telling her that they were “chocolate covered ice cubes”.  I’m surprise the kid is still alive and I know she is because I saw her on Facebook.  I didn’t friend her on Facebook because I was afraid she’d remember that I tried to kill her with poison berries and dirt covered ice cubes.

Soon the garden was mature and vegetables would begin to ripen.  First we’d have bunches of green onions lying on the counter next to the sink.  Soon they were followed by piles of green beans, big bowls of fresh lettuce, green peppers, fat purple beets, ruby-red and white radishes and tomatoes.  As far as I was concerned, my aunt and uncle who farmed the other end of the garden, grew all the cool produce.  They planted potatoes and corn and the much coveted CARROTS.  I remember watching my uncle unearth potatoes from the ground and watching with awe as he piled them into a bucket.  There was no WAY I’d eat a potato that was grown in the GROUND.  Looking back, I’m not sure where the hell I thought potatoes in the store came from. My uncle was a huge fan of kohlrabi…a strange green, round vegetable that I wouldn’t touch with a fifty foot pole.  He would cut a fresh kohlrabi from their garden and then sit on the back porch and peel it with a paring knife and then salt the slices and eat them.  My cousin Ken would dance around him eating slices of kohlrabi while I made faces and said YUCK a lot.  The only thing I ate from the garden was fresh green sweet peas and that was only because I could swallow them whole without tasting them.  Occasionally I would eat a radish that was liberally rolled in salt, but it was more salt than radish by the time I was done eating it since every bite of radish entailed about a teaspoon of salt to get it down.

Garden pests were a big problem and my mother and grandmother would walk up and down the rows of the garden dusting all the plants with white insecticide powder.  Our garage held huge red cans of ORTHO insect killer for the garden.  I’m sure the place could have been designated a chemical weapons depot.  Despite the liberal dusting of the plants, they still battled garden pests.   My mother would be cleaning a sink full of lettuce and I’d hear a scream and I knew that she’d found the dreaded green garden worm.  Each piece of lettuce would then be individually rewashed so that no one got a surprise in their salad.  The worst of the garden pests were the picnic beetles, tiny black beetles with even tinier yellow spots on their backs.  They would try to eat every tomato in the garden and in order to save them, my grandmother and mother would pick tomatoes as soon as they showed some red color and then line them up on the picnic table to ripen in the summer sun…and where the picnic beetles would continue to eat them.  I think they saved about half of their crop every year from the marauding little beetles.

At the end of the summer, the garden would be overgrown and ripe and rotting tomatoes would litter the ground around the tired plants.  The beans were too mature and had been picked 600 times and rows of bags of green beans lined our deep freeze in the basement.  Jars and jars of tomato juice to be used for soup stood next to jars of canned beets.  Braids of onions hung drying in the garage.  Jars and jars of cucumbers canned with pickling spice and onion filled the pantry.  Back in the garden, over mature beets, woody radishes and lettuce and onion gone to seed filled the tidy rows.  The garden had a sweet, rotting smell to it.  The tomatoes that were left were filled with picnic beetles and oozed juice from splits in their skins.  Soon school would be starting and I would run by the garden in the morning on the way to my cousin’s so that we could walk together.  The garden would be wilted and brown and sparkling with frost as I trotted past, my breath crystallizing in the September air.

Another summer over, a winter’s worth of produce waiting for recipes and dinners in freezer bags and boxes and Ball jars.  Hours of my mother’s and grandmother’s time and energy preserved…and I had helped…by planting, catching lightning bugs, making poison and staying out-of-the-way.

Rearview fourth

Summers seemed longer when I was a child.  It seemed like the fourth of July took forever to arrive and I was always anxiously eyeing the field corn to make sure that it was “knee-high by the fourth of July”.  I wasn’t sure what the ramifications would be if the corn was shorter, but I was sure that it spelled some sort of drought, famine, shortage or other farm type catastrophe.  We didn’t live on a farm, but our rural village was surrounded with fields of corn, beans and grain.  The whole summer was measured by the growth of the crops around us.  When the corn was about waist-high, it was close to July fourth.

Our village didn’t really celebrate July fourth too much when I was younger.  The holiday was usually marked by everyone having a day off.  It was one of the few days during the year when my father would put out the flag on the front of the house.  It was just a cheap flag on an aluminum pole that attached to a flag holder on the front of the house, but it didn’t go up very often.  So it always felt like a very big deal of a day when dad dragged it out of the foyer and stuck it on the front of the house.

The really big excitement surrounding the fourth of July were the firecrackers.  We never called them fireworks when I was young.  They were FIRECRACKERS and we thought they were fabulous.  You couldn’t get ANY kind of fireworks where we lived, but we would frequently visit my aunt in southern Illinois and she would take us to the Rexall Drug store where they sold SPARKLERS, SNAKES, and little bags of multi colored smoke bombs.  They also sold flat packages of Black Cat firecrackers but I was terrified of them and hated to even touch the crackly red paper wrapped packages.  My cousins bought them by the handful though and happily used them to blow up model cars, ping-pong balls and anything else they could find that they could stuff with firecrackers and then stuff into the culvert in front of my aunt and uncle’s house.  We would hoard our sparklers and snakes until the fourth and almost DIE with anticipation all day because we wanted to light them so badly.  We’d ask if we could light them a billion and a half times and my dad or uncle would always say “NO.  It’s not dark enough!” and we’d go off to sulk somewhere.  The only thing that would bring us out of our sparkler funk was to tell us that we were being taken to watch the village fireworks out by the high school.  THAT was REALLY big stuff!

We’d all pile into the car with the red comforter that mom used to keep us from sitting directly on the ground because God forbid that we might get DIRTY.  Sometimes we brought snacks or popcorn.  Occasionally we would wear our pajamas.  Dad would drive out to the high school and we’d find a place to park near the high school that looked toward the oval track at the fairgrounds.  Then we’d wait for it to get dark.  My brother and I would anxiously watch the sky expecting to see a flash at any second.  The fireworks or firecracker show was put on by the village and they were set up and launched by the local fire and police department.  There was a large field between the high school and fair grounds and the firecrackers were launched over the open field.  As dusk fell, the waiting cars that were parked all around the high school and surrounding streets would start to honk their horns. First one impatient honk and then another and then pretty soon everyone was honking encouraging the firecracker launchers to begin the show.  Finally we’d see a red flare being lit in the area near the launch site.  We’d nearly go insane with excitement until my mother told us to knock it off.  We’d see the flare bouncing along through the darkness and then there would be a flash and a trail of sparks as the first firecracker took off.

BOOM!!

The village didn’t have a huge budget for firecrackers and so MANY of them were the kind that went up and simply made a huge boom and a flash of light.  No sparks…no ooh and ahh factor.  Just BANG.  I’m convinced they got them 10 for a dollar and bought ten dollars worth.  The crowd cheered wildly when the show started.  This is when we were allowed to get out of the car and sit on the red comforter after we’d been nearly drowned in OFF.  We’d sit and eat Cheetos and popcorn with our DEET covered hands and OOOH and AHHH at each pathetic firecracker that was launched.  They weren’t the fireworks of today that fill the sky with color and sparkles.  These were little poofs of sparks that were usually red or green interspersed with the flash BANG 10 for a dollar firecrackers that the crowed seemed to love.  The whole show took ten minutes and was ended by a flag made out of red white and blue sparks that would be lit signaling the end of the show.  The comforter was folded up and we’d head for home where our sparklers waited.  The lines of cars to leave the high school area were LONG.   The excitement about “doing sparklers” was breathtaking.

My cousin lived across the yard from us and we usually did sparklers with him.  We would each be given a slim silver sparkler and one of them would be lit and then we’d all light ours off that lit sparkler.  Then we’d WALK around the yard because RUNNING was forbidden.  We had heard all the stories about being impaled on a sparkler wire and no one wanted to die that nasty death.  We would write our names in the air with our sparkler and make swooping shapes with sparkling light.  When the sparkler went out one of the adults would SCREECH that we were to WALK to the  bucket of water that had been set out in the driveway and carefully drop it in to quench it’s supposedly blinding heat.  They were SURE that we were going to be burned to death by that tiny bent wire from the sparkler.  We would “do sparklers” until they were all gone.  We’d be told “Last one!” and we’d try to make it last as long as we could, but it burned out as quickly as the others.  We’d light a few snakes making scorched black circles on the sidewalk and plumes of vile yellow smoke.  Finally the adults were tired of being eaten by mosquitoes and it was getting late and we’d all get hauled into our respective houses.  If it was really hot outside…we’d get to sleep DOWNSTAIRS ON THE FLOOR.  It was a kid’s dream.

Our upstairs had no air conditioning.  My father installed a huge fan in one of the windows that sucked air through the upstairs open windows.  My brother and I would moan and complain that we were DYING and quite possibly MELTING and there was no way we could possibly SLEEP.  My parents would finally get tired of listening to us bitch and we’d get to come down to the family room where there was a window air conditioning unit installed. The family room felt deliciously cool after being in the hot, humid upstairs and it was almost impossible to get us to settle down.   Mom would put a comforter on the floor and we’d haul down our pillows and make our camp on the floor.  Dad would shake out a big sheet and let it drift down on us which felt wonderful.  We slept happily on the floor on the comforter and when we’d wake up the air conditioner would be turned off because Dad was sure we were going to freeze to death.  If I slept on the floor on a comforter now I would need a crane, an orthopedic surgeon and a new hip to get up again.

The fourth has changed since I was little.  Now there are huge firework shows that cost towns tons of money and are engineered by professionals.  The fireworks available to purchase are higher grade than those our village purchased so many years ago.  There are parades and picnics and celebrations and street fairs.  I’ve seen firework shows that are astounding and are brilliantly choreographed to music.   We didn’t have that.  We only had that bouncing red flare and a volunteer fire department in a field.  We had Cheetos and sparklers and OFF and a window air conditioner.

It was fabulous.