The last of our pups will be going to her new home in Bethlehem, N.H., at the end of this week. Today is Kayti's first day of fourth grade. And Rex is finishing up his task of shortening the Quonset hut so we are in compliance with setback rules.
It's been kind of a busy summer here at my little farm. We hatched a bunch of chicks, birthed and nurtured five shih tzu puppies, grew a huge pumpkin vine and a dizzyingly tall group of electric blue morning glories, and watched much of our garden succumb to sogginess maintained by daily downpours.
More than once this summer I literally fled from the house at 10 p.m. or later to take a walk. I was starved for time alone. Much as I dreaded getting back into the routine of rousting Kayti for school, now that she's back, the six hours of silence is more than golden. It's platinum. It's uranium.
I've started volunteering for a free health clinic, mainly to keep myself in touch with how much I don't want to work for anyone else. We're having a little trouble with my training, though. For three consecutive Tuesdays, the training has been postponed because of car trouble, trainer's unavailability, and trainer's forgetting to come in.
I was there alone this last time, and not knowing what to do or how to do it, I passed the time discovering through an online questionnaire that physically, I am actually 2.5 years older than my chronological age.
This, believe it or not, was good news. I've been complaining for years that I feel like I'm 80 years old. So discovering that I'm more than 20 years younger than that gives me kind of a new lease on life.
As usual, it was tough answering questions about my life. One of the questions, for example, gave me the choice of "happily married" or "unhappily married." I checked off "happily married," only because I have a handy kind of guy at my beck and call. That makes me happy. So although Rex drives me insane much of the time, I'm glad I've got him.
But does that throw off the results? I don't know, and I won't know unless they add a third choice: "tolerably married."
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Gummint Work
A lot of people diss New Jersey, but I lived there for 9 months back in the '70s and found the place not only pretty in places but endlessly fascinating. This may have more to do with my age at the time. I was 21, a graduate of Foxcroft Academy in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, and a graduate of the University of Maine at Orono. I'd led a rather sheltered existence, although if you'd asked me at the time I would have disagreed.
New Jersey is where I was assigned my first full-time job, an ostensibly temporary position taking claims at the Social Security Administration. When the government called me in Dover-Foxcroft and asked me if I would be willing to go, I said yes, hung up, and hugged myself nervously, repeating to myself, "New Jersey! New Jersey!" in a mixture of disbelief and horror.
Not only was I headed for New Jersey, a land of crime and scary people with unexplained scars and rude drivers and bad air, but for Newark, N.J., which I was sure was the very worst New Jersey had to offer. In retrospect, I am amazed that my father let me go.
So it was that in late August, 1974, I packed my VW squareback with everything I thought I'd need (naively omitting the pepper spray) and tooled south. Uncle Sam put me up in the Mayflower Hotel in Jersey City for my two weeks of training. I can still remember the smell of carpet cleaner that permeated everything, including the elevator, in that hotel. A fellow trainee, a red-haired New York Irishman named John Regan, was quartered a couple floors up, and I recall visiting him in his room and being astonished when he broke out in song. I'd been raised to shut up. These non-Mainers were an odd bunch!
I was prepared to find myself among seedy, down-at-the-heels characters who were desperate for a job. Not that I thought of myself that way. I thought I was slumming, being from the clean, righteous state of Maine. My classmates included a firecracker named Liz; John the singing Irishman; Tim Hecht the funny Manhattanite who yearned for St. Petersburg; Rick Mills who at 35 seemed impossibly old; and a lady whose last name was Maldonado. I forget her first name. Our instructors were the impeccably dressed, worldy Ellen and some guy whose name I also forget.
Training was unbelievably boring. Filling out paperwork has never been my strong suit, and here I was embarking on a career of filling it out for other people. I was planning my escape almost as soon as I arrived. I rented a room in the upstairs of a private home in Belleville, N.J., but never had a phone installed because I wasn't expecting to stay. I ended up staying for five long, lonely months. A phone might have helped.
I worked in the Newark office for a few months, then somebody decided I was a great prospect for a permanent job. Since training would get me out of actual work, I jumped at the opportunity. Soon I was commuting to Jersey City, learning that unlike in Maine, in New Jersey, it doesn't take a big accident to back traffic up for miles. All it takes is a traffic light.
My next posting was Bridgeton, N.J. It was so much nicer than Newark. Spring was springing, I found an apartment to share, my workmates were fun and southern Jersey was bursting with tomatoes and confusingly numbered county roads. I went bicycling with some friends and out on a nearly deserted road a fat guy riding a bike in the opposite direction crashed into me head-on. He had the entire world to ride in, but chose to collide with me. Damn, that hurt. New Jersey! There are crazies everywhere you look!
One of my biking companions that day was a co-worker named Alan Cannizzaro.
Alan was my junior by a few months. He liked to say he was the baby of the office. A few adjectives I would apply to Alan: direct, smart, funny and loyal (to his girlfriend, darn it). He didn't seem to mind being employed by the Social Security Administration.
In fact, apparently he embraced it. Where I lasted three short months in Bridgeton before quitting in May of 1975, Alan Cannizzaro soldiered on. I did a search of his name online and found a court ruling involving Alan in his role as a union representative.
His shop, Local 2369 of the American Federation of Government Employees, filed suit against the Department of Human Services and the SSA, charging that "on or about May 1, 1983, respondent's Area V Director, Arne Tornquist, made a derogatory anti-union remark in a telephone conversation to a union representative (Alan) who was preparing to represent a grievant in a hearing before said Area Director."
Here's the story, according to the court documents:
On May 1, 1985, Alan H. Cannizzaro was employed as a claims representative at the Bridgeton, N.J., branch, of the SSA. He was the on-site representative for Bridgeton branch as well as second vice-president of the Union herein. His duties included handling grievances on behalf of employees, attendance at arbitration hearings, and filing unfair labor practice charges.
On May 1, 1985, Cannizzaro went to the Toms River, N.J., branch to investigate a charge brought against an employee there.
When he arrived at the Toms River office he was met by the operations supervisor, a man named Lynch, who asked why Cannizzaro was there. The latter explained his mission, and said that he was on official time signed by his supervisor. Lynch telephoned Tornquist, the area director, to see if he had OK'd Cannizzaro's trip. Tornquist told Lynch that he did not sanction official time for Cannizzaro's visit,
and then told Lynch to put Cannizzaro on the phone.
Alan told the director he had an approved SSA-75 form which was signed by his supervisor. Tornquist said the trip should have been sanctioned by the hearing official before the supervisor could approve it. Cannizzaro, who was upset at the confrontation, said he didn't give a sh--, he would do as he pleased. Tornquist asked Cannizzaro if he considered himself real big in the union now, then told Cannizzaro that he was just a little "union sh--."
Cannizzaro replied he didn't appreciate being called such a name, and he then called the area director a "fat f---."
Tornquist asked Cannizzaro if he intended to file an unfair labor practice against the director. Cannizzaro said he probably would, to which Tornquist replied that he should go ahead and do so, noting that Cannizzaro had not made one stick yet. Cannizzaro stated he could leave Toms River and return at a later date but it would just be a waste of time and money. Tornquist called Cannizzaro a waste to the agency and said he interfered with its mission. But he told Cannizzaro he should stay there and "do what you have to do -- meet with the employee and leave nice and early."
I don't know about you, but I wonder if I could ever call one of my supervisors (back when I had a job) a "fat f---" to his or her face? I think we'd all enjoy doing something like that.
There's gotta be more to this story, though. So Alan, if you googled yourself and are just finishing reading this, fill us in! Did you and Tornquist duke it out? Did you have his head on a platter? And what about Naomi?
New Jersey is where I was assigned my first full-time job, an ostensibly temporary position taking claims at the Social Security Administration. When the government called me in Dover-Foxcroft and asked me if I would be willing to go, I said yes, hung up, and hugged myself nervously, repeating to myself, "New Jersey! New Jersey!" in a mixture of disbelief and horror.
Not only was I headed for New Jersey, a land of crime and scary people with unexplained scars and rude drivers and bad air, but for Newark, N.J., which I was sure was the very worst New Jersey had to offer. In retrospect, I am amazed that my father let me go.
So it was that in late August, 1974, I packed my VW squareback with everything I thought I'd need (naively omitting the pepper spray) and tooled south. Uncle Sam put me up in the Mayflower Hotel in Jersey City for my two weeks of training. I can still remember the smell of carpet cleaner that permeated everything, including the elevator, in that hotel. A fellow trainee, a red-haired New York Irishman named John Regan, was quartered a couple floors up, and I recall visiting him in his room and being astonished when he broke out in song. I'd been raised to shut up. These non-Mainers were an odd bunch!
I was prepared to find myself among seedy, down-at-the-heels characters who were desperate for a job. Not that I thought of myself that way. I thought I was slumming, being from the clean, righteous state of Maine. My classmates included a firecracker named Liz; John the singing Irishman; Tim Hecht the funny Manhattanite who yearned for St. Petersburg; Rick Mills who at 35 seemed impossibly old; and a lady whose last name was Maldonado. I forget her first name. Our instructors were the impeccably dressed, worldy Ellen and some guy whose name I also forget.
Training was unbelievably boring. Filling out paperwork has never been my strong suit, and here I was embarking on a career of filling it out for other people. I was planning my escape almost as soon as I arrived. I rented a room in the upstairs of a private home in Belleville, N.J., but never had a phone installed because I wasn't expecting to stay. I ended up staying for five long, lonely months. A phone might have helped.
I worked in the Newark office for a few months, then somebody decided I was a great prospect for a permanent job. Since training would get me out of actual work, I jumped at the opportunity. Soon I was commuting to Jersey City, learning that unlike in Maine, in New Jersey, it doesn't take a big accident to back traffic up for miles. All it takes is a traffic light.
My next posting was Bridgeton, N.J. It was so much nicer than Newark. Spring was springing, I found an apartment to share, my workmates were fun and southern Jersey was bursting with tomatoes and confusingly numbered county roads. I went bicycling with some friends and out on a nearly deserted road a fat guy riding a bike in the opposite direction crashed into me head-on. He had the entire world to ride in, but chose to collide with me. Damn, that hurt. New Jersey! There are crazies everywhere you look!
One of my biking companions that day was a co-worker named Alan Cannizzaro.
Alan was my junior by a few months. He liked to say he was the baby of the office. A few adjectives I would apply to Alan: direct, smart, funny and loyal (to his girlfriend, darn it). He didn't seem to mind being employed by the Social Security Administration.
In fact, apparently he embraced it. Where I lasted three short months in Bridgeton before quitting in May of 1975, Alan Cannizzaro soldiered on. I did a search of his name online and found a court ruling involving Alan in his role as a union representative.
His shop, Local 2369 of the American Federation of Government Employees, filed suit against the Department of Human Services and the SSA, charging that "on or about May 1, 1983, respondent's Area V Director, Arne Tornquist, made a derogatory anti-union remark in a telephone conversation to a union representative (Alan) who was preparing to represent a grievant in a hearing before said Area Director."
Here's the story, according to the court documents:
On May 1, 1985, Alan H. Cannizzaro was employed as a claims representative at the Bridgeton, N.J., branch, of the SSA. He was the on-site representative for Bridgeton branch as well as second vice-president of the Union herein. His duties included handling grievances on behalf of employees, attendance at arbitration hearings, and filing unfair labor practice charges.
On May 1, 1985, Cannizzaro went to the Toms River, N.J., branch to investigate a charge brought against an employee there.
When he arrived at the Toms River office he was met by the operations supervisor, a man named Lynch, who asked why Cannizzaro was there. The latter explained his mission, and said that he was on official time signed by his supervisor. Lynch telephoned Tornquist, the area director, to see if he had OK'd Cannizzaro's trip. Tornquist told Lynch that he did not sanction official time for Cannizzaro's visit,
and then told Lynch to put Cannizzaro on the phone.
Alan told the director he had an approved SSA-75 form which was signed by his supervisor. Tornquist said the trip should have been sanctioned by the hearing official before the supervisor could approve it. Cannizzaro, who was upset at the confrontation, said he didn't give a sh--, he would do as he pleased. Tornquist asked Cannizzaro if he considered himself real big in the union now, then told Cannizzaro that he was just a little "union sh--."
Cannizzaro replied he didn't appreciate being called such a name, and he then called the area director a "fat f---."
Tornquist asked Cannizzaro if he intended to file an unfair labor practice against the director. Cannizzaro said he probably would, to which Tornquist replied that he should go ahead and do so, noting that Cannizzaro had not made one stick yet. Cannizzaro stated he could leave Toms River and return at a later date but it would just be a waste of time and money. Tornquist called Cannizzaro a waste to the agency and said he interfered with its mission. But he told Cannizzaro he should stay there and "do what you have to do -- meet with the employee and leave nice and early."
I don't know about you, but I wonder if I could ever call one of my supervisors (back when I had a job) a "fat f---" to his or her face? I think we'd all enjoy doing something like that.
There's gotta be more to this story, though. So Alan, if you googled yourself and are just finishing reading this, fill us in! Did you and Tornquist duke it out? Did you have his head on a platter? And what about Naomi?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Here We Go Again
I see I've written nothing since May 21. There's a good reason for that. Somewhere. I just can't think of it right now.
At last, the long-errant dog-walkers' questionnaire has been returned. Actually, I had to go pick it up, and even then, Mary was hiding in her cellar filling it out when I arrived. But who am I to complain? She walked my dogs twice while I was away. This woman can shred my stupid questionnaire and feed it to llamas, I'm that grateful to her.
Sadly, I've not yet had time to code the results and run them through my computer so as to obtain an analysis of significant deviations. Or insignificant ones. So I'm afraid the waiting must continue for those of you who give a you-know-what.
Our Stick Farm universe seems to have reached the outer limit of its expansion, in terms of number of creatures harbored, and is starting its shrink cycle. First to go was our buff cochin hen, whose body I discovered in the horse corral with her head squashed in. I can't say for sure, but it looks like a horse stepped on her.
The second casualty was one of our two guinea fowl. I found him lying in front of my wagon without a scratch on him, still warm, apparently with a broken neck. I surmise he flew into something -- possibly the wagon -- and killed himself, kamikaze style. His friend, also a boy, was hanging around the body. The friend was upset. He looked like he couldn't understand why his buddy didn't get up and run around like he used to.
I was sad about that until a few days later, when this remaining guinea apparently decided I had something to do with his friend's death and started stalking and attacking me. It only took one gash on the side of my leg and that guinea was posted in the "free" section of craigslist. He was gone a couple days later, which is how long it took me to catch him. I wonder how he's doing, but I'm thinking maybe I really don't want to know! Can somebody sue me for giving them a vicious guinea hen?
We're down to one horse -- Kimi -- on the farm. Mellie left to take up residence with nicer people, a nicer companion horse and much, much nicer fields. Socks is free-leased to a woman in Standish. I tried to talk her out of taking him, but she was quite sure he was the horse for her. I'm very curious to see how he does as an only horse. Kimi seems content to have our place all to herself. She's getting a lot more human attention and does not have to watch her back (literally) all the time. It's so peaceful around here, it's almost boring!
Meanwhile, I'm trying to sell one adult shih tzu and soon I'll be trying to sell our five new shih tzu puppies, born on the Fourth of July. Once that is accomplished, I am OUT of the dog breeding business.
NEXT POST: The Story of Alan Cannizzaro
See you then!
Debbi
(NOT Kayti)
At last, the long-errant dog-walkers' questionnaire has been returned. Actually, I had to go pick it up, and even then, Mary was hiding in her cellar filling it out when I arrived. But who am I to complain? She walked my dogs twice while I was away. This woman can shred my stupid questionnaire and feed it to llamas, I'm that grateful to her.
Sadly, I've not yet had time to code the results and run them through my computer so as to obtain an analysis of significant deviations. Or insignificant ones. So I'm afraid the waiting must continue for those of you who give a you-know-what.
Our Stick Farm universe seems to have reached the outer limit of its expansion, in terms of number of creatures harbored, and is starting its shrink cycle. First to go was our buff cochin hen, whose body I discovered in the horse corral with her head squashed in. I can't say for sure, but it looks like a horse stepped on her.
The second casualty was one of our two guinea fowl. I found him lying in front of my wagon without a scratch on him, still warm, apparently with a broken neck. I surmise he flew into something -- possibly the wagon -- and killed himself, kamikaze style. His friend, also a boy, was hanging around the body. The friend was upset. He looked like he couldn't understand why his buddy didn't get up and run around like he used to.
I was sad about that until a few days later, when this remaining guinea apparently decided I had something to do with his friend's death and started stalking and attacking me. It only took one gash on the side of my leg and that guinea was posted in the "free" section of craigslist. He was gone a couple days later, which is how long it took me to catch him. I wonder how he's doing, but I'm thinking maybe I really don't want to know! Can somebody sue me for giving them a vicious guinea hen?
We're down to one horse -- Kimi -- on the farm. Mellie left to take up residence with nicer people, a nicer companion horse and much, much nicer fields. Socks is free-leased to a woman in Standish. I tried to talk her out of taking him, but she was quite sure he was the horse for her. I'm very curious to see how he does as an only horse. Kimi seems content to have our place all to herself. She's getting a lot more human attention and does not have to watch her back (literally) all the time. It's so peaceful around here, it's almost boring!
Meanwhile, I'm trying to sell one adult shih tzu and soon I'll be trying to sell our five new shih tzu puppies, born on the Fourth of July. Once that is accomplished, I am OUT of the dog breeding business.
NEXT POST: The Story of Alan Cannizzaro
See you then!
Debbi
(NOT Kayti)
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
What You've All Been Waiting For. Not.
The good news is I'm finally going to fill you in on my vacation. The bad news is, a certain dog-walker has not returned her questionnaire so you won't be reading my analysis of the leaving-the-farm experiment.
Shortly before our day of departure, Kayti discovered that the weekend we'd be in Missouri was the annual Webkinz Extravaganza. (Webkinz are stuffed animals that are coded so you can register and play with them online. Kayti has about 20 of them.) The Extravaganza consists of a bunch of games and contests offered at half-hour intervals at stores that sell Webkinz.
Kayti searched online and concluded that the store she wanted to go to was in Little Rock, Ark. That's a mere six-hour drive, one-way, from where we planned to be that weekend. If I made the slightest noise suggesting I was about to question the wisdom of predicating our entire weekend on where to find the Wheel of Wow (i.e., "Kayti, don't you think ...") the girl would start gnashing her teeth, rending her garments and keening like a professional mourner.
It just wasn't worth the attempt at discussion, so I shut up and let it ride. Who's got the power here, anyway? Can Kayti drive? No. Can she whine and complain? Yes. So, the jury is still out.
The first leg of our flight was smooth and quiet. The second was extremely bumpy, plus I was sitting beside a man who stared straight ahead for almost the entire 2.5-hour flight. He was giving me the willies. Maybe he was praying, or maybe he was waiting for the bomb in his luggage to go off. At one point he raised his hand and scratched very, very slowly above one ear with one finger. I thought maybe that was how he detonated the explosive.
This was happening as we descended toward Kansas City, and soon I forgot about potential bomb blasts as the plane's wings tipped wildly from side to side and our pilot executed a bone-jarring one-point landing.
We stayed that night in a very nice extended-stay motel that I'd gotten for a song on Priceline. I wasn't sure when we arrived at midnight that it was the greatest place, because waiting with me for a clerk to open the office was a young man with a nasty gash on his forehead and blood streaming down his face.
"Whew, what happened to YOU?" I asked, all tact as usual. He didn't answer me, and he didn't answer the clerk when she exclaimed over it, either. She gave him a shrewd look and said, "Don't wanna talk about it, huh."
The next day we drove to Joplin. The first thing I noticed was that many roads are simply named for a letter. We took T over to J and crossed O, etc., etc. You get the picture.
The next four days were a mad whirl of swimming in the hotel pool, wrestling Kayti for the TV remote, not being able to watch Red Sox games (which was just as well, since they were on a losing streak), stuffing ourselves at the Great Wall Chinese buffet, and driving to and from a Hallmark Gift shop about 5 miles away that, thank heaven, was offering all the Webkinz activities for which Kayti yearned.
While K hung out at the gift shop Friday evening and all day Saturday, I amused myself by measuring how many times around the parking lot makes a mile (3), practicing pennywhistle on the sidewalk, and getting my eyebrows and lips waxed at the salon next-door to the Hallmark store.
I did steal some time away from my demanding daughter to jam with Rex's conference confederates. Friday night I played pennywhistle and a borrowed fiddle. Saturday night, I grabbed a guitar and did a couple songs. The guys were all surprised that I could play guitar, and said so. I said, "Well, I don't really play guitar, just a few chords." They all looked at each other, and, pretending to be insulted, said things like, "What's your point?" It was really funny, because basically that's all they do on guitar -- play a few chords.
Saturday night, pre-jam session, Kayti, Rex & I went out to dinner with a friend of Rex's named Jim Scott. He took us to a place called Under the Cliff, which is a restaurant built (duh) under a cliff. I actually had a beer (my annual) and some good laughs, especially while playing foosball. I felt like I was in college again.
I did worry some about the farm. Sunday morning, the first words out of my mouth were, "Rex, maybe our house burned down and no one has your cell phone number so they can't call us."
Rex said, "We left my cell phone number on the kitchen table."
"Yeah," I said. "But if the house burned down, so would your cell phone number."
Sometimes I wonder about that guy. He fails to make the simplest connections!
Once the conference was over, we wandered off to see a little of Oklahoma. We found a buffalo ranch, a coal-burning plant (I looked at the smoke and said, "Just think, we'll be breathing that in Maine in a few days") and not much else except little, nearly dead towns.
We crossed back into Missouri at the town of Noel, and few miles south of that we discovered the something-Bluff Caverns. We stopped there long enough to spend some money and for Rex to lose his camera, but not to see the cave, because it was too late in the day.
Our night in Arkansas deserves mention, if only because it was so bad. I allowed Rex to make some decisions, and we thus ended up having really bad food at a Cracker Barrel and paying way too much for a hotel whose pool was out of commission. In addition, Kayti was badgering us to find a place with a foosball table and, ideally, Jim Scott, too.
As I paid for our meal at the Cracker Barrel, the cashier said, "How was it?" I said, "Okay."
"Just okay?" she said. "What was wrong?"
I said, "Well, the biscuits were too salty."
"Is that it?" she said.
"And the soup was too thick. And it wasn't hot enough."
"Anything else?" she said.
"My husband says his barbecued-pork sandwich tasted like it was barbecued about two weeks ago."
"Is that it?" she asked.
"Oh, and the waiter didn't bring us any corn bread." I added quickly, "But don't blame the waiter. He was really cute and very polite."
Poor Rex got barely any sleep that night, thanks to his aged sandwich. I slept pretty well, but only because I forced myself not to think how much we were paying for a place with no pool.
The next day, I explored Noel, Missouri, on foot while Rex and Kayti visited the caverns, this time for a full-blown tour.
It was a gorgeous day, and as is my wont in new places, I immediately got directions for and headed to the town library. Dogs were running loose all over the place and the houses were just tiny little things. It was about a half-mile to the library, but the library was closed, so I walked back to the main street.
It now became my new mission to find a place with a bathroom. I remembered that coming into town, I'd seen an "H" sign and remarked that the hospital must be up that road. That's where I headed now.
A couple miles later, waddling along with a full bladder, I was fuming to myself, "Where is that damn hospital, anyway?"
People didn't seem terribly friendly. I stopped at one yard to admire a pack of shih tzus, and a fat woman and a fat girl appeared behind the screen door and frowned at me. They probably thought I was going to steal their stupid little yappy dogs.
Eventually, I concluded that the hospital was the figment of someone's imagination. I doubled back on a dirt road named Easy Street on the other side of the railroad tracks, where I found enough privacy to pee. Then I climbed onto the tracks and followed them back into town, passing only a couple of stinking piles of roadkill.
It was only after Rex and Kayti picked me up at the designated park bench and we'd headed out of town that I realized the "H" did not stand for hospital. It was the name of the road.
We did meet up with Jim Scott again, but we couldn't play foosball because Under the Cliff was closed on Tuesday. Instead we went to an arcade, where I racked up a lot of points playing Skeeball.
And that's pretty much the vacation, except I left out the visit to the museum and the hour of hot, steamy sex with a complete stranger I picked up in the hotel lounge.
Incidentally, I'm preparing a PowerPoint presentation about this year's visit for next year's conference in Joplin. Everyone else had a PowerPoint presentation, and I want one too! From what I could see, it didn't matter if the subject was boring.
Shortly before our day of departure, Kayti discovered that the weekend we'd be in Missouri was the annual Webkinz Extravaganza. (Webkinz are stuffed animals that are coded so you can register and play with them online. Kayti has about 20 of them.) The Extravaganza consists of a bunch of games and contests offered at half-hour intervals at stores that sell Webkinz.
Kayti searched online and concluded that the store she wanted to go to was in Little Rock, Ark. That's a mere six-hour drive, one-way, from where we planned to be that weekend. If I made the slightest noise suggesting I was about to question the wisdom of predicating our entire weekend on where to find the Wheel of Wow (i.e., "Kayti, don't you think ...") the girl would start gnashing her teeth, rending her garments and keening like a professional mourner.
It just wasn't worth the attempt at discussion, so I shut up and let it ride. Who's got the power here, anyway? Can Kayti drive? No. Can she whine and complain? Yes. So, the jury is still out.
The first leg of our flight was smooth and quiet. The second was extremely bumpy, plus I was sitting beside a man who stared straight ahead for almost the entire 2.5-hour flight. He was giving me the willies. Maybe he was praying, or maybe he was waiting for the bomb in his luggage to go off. At one point he raised his hand and scratched very, very slowly above one ear with one finger. I thought maybe that was how he detonated the explosive.
This was happening as we descended toward Kansas City, and soon I forgot about potential bomb blasts as the plane's wings tipped wildly from side to side and our pilot executed a bone-jarring one-point landing.
We stayed that night in a very nice extended-stay motel that I'd gotten for a song on Priceline. I wasn't sure when we arrived at midnight that it was the greatest place, because waiting with me for a clerk to open the office was a young man with a nasty gash on his forehead and blood streaming down his face.
"Whew, what happened to YOU?" I asked, all tact as usual. He didn't answer me, and he didn't answer the clerk when she exclaimed over it, either. She gave him a shrewd look and said, "Don't wanna talk about it, huh."
The next day we drove to Joplin. The first thing I noticed was that many roads are simply named for a letter. We took T over to J and crossed O, etc., etc. You get the picture.
The next four days were a mad whirl of swimming in the hotel pool, wrestling Kayti for the TV remote, not being able to watch Red Sox games (which was just as well, since they were on a losing streak), stuffing ourselves at the Great Wall Chinese buffet, and driving to and from a Hallmark Gift shop about 5 miles away that, thank heaven, was offering all the Webkinz activities for which Kayti yearned.
While K hung out at the gift shop Friday evening and all day Saturday, I amused myself by measuring how many times around the parking lot makes a mile (3), practicing pennywhistle on the sidewalk, and getting my eyebrows and lips waxed at the salon next-door to the Hallmark store.
I did steal some time away from my demanding daughter to jam with Rex's conference confederates. Friday night I played pennywhistle and a borrowed fiddle. Saturday night, I grabbed a guitar and did a couple songs. The guys were all surprised that I could play guitar, and said so. I said, "Well, I don't really play guitar, just a few chords." They all looked at each other, and, pretending to be insulted, said things like, "What's your point?" It was really funny, because basically that's all they do on guitar -- play a few chords.
Saturday night, pre-jam session, Kayti, Rex & I went out to dinner with a friend of Rex's named Jim Scott. He took us to a place called Under the Cliff, which is a restaurant built (duh) under a cliff. I actually had a beer (my annual) and some good laughs, especially while playing foosball. I felt like I was in college again.
I did worry some about the farm. Sunday morning, the first words out of my mouth were, "Rex, maybe our house burned down and no one has your cell phone number so they can't call us."
Rex said, "We left my cell phone number on the kitchen table."
"Yeah," I said. "But if the house burned down, so would your cell phone number."
Sometimes I wonder about that guy. He fails to make the simplest connections!
Once the conference was over, we wandered off to see a little of Oklahoma. We found a buffalo ranch, a coal-burning plant (I looked at the smoke and said, "Just think, we'll be breathing that in Maine in a few days") and not much else except little, nearly dead towns.
We crossed back into Missouri at the town of Noel, and few miles south of that we discovered the something-Bluff Caverns. We stopped there long enough to spend some money and for Rex to lose his camera, but not to see the cave, because it was too late in the day.
Our night in Arkansas deserves mention, if only because it was so bad. I allowed Rex to make some decisions, and we thus ended up having really bad food at a Cracker Barrel and paying way too much for a hotel whose pool was out of commission. In addition, Kayti was badgering us to find a place with a foosball table and, ideally, Jim Scott, too.
As I paid for our meal at the Cracker Barrel, the cashier said, "How was it?" I said, "Okay."
"Just okay?" she said. "What was wrong?"
I said, "Well, the biscuits were too salty."
"Is that it?" she said.
"And the soup was too thick. And it wasn't hot enough."
"Anything else?" she said.
"My husband says his barbecued-pork sandwich tasted like it was barbecued about two weeks ago."
"Is that it?" she asked.
"Oh, and the waiter didn't bring us any corn bread." I added quickly, "But don't blame the waiter. He was really cute and very polite."
Poor Rex got barely any sleep that night, thanks to his aged sandwich. I slept pretty well, but only because I forced myself not to think how much we were paying for a place with no pool.
The next day, I explored Noel, Missouri, on foot while Rex and Kayti visited the caverns, this time for a full-blown tour.
It was a gorgeous day, and as is my wont in new places, I immediately got directions for and headed to the town library. Dogs were running loose all over the place and the houses were just tiny little things. It was about a half-mile to the library, but the library was closed, so I walked back to the main street.
It now became my new mission to find a place with a bathroom. I remembered that coming into town, I'd seen an "H" sign and remarked that the hospital must be up that road. That's where I headed now.
A couple miles later, waddling along with a full bladder, I was fuming to myself, "Where is that damn hospital, anyway?"
People didn't seem terribly friendly. I stopped at one yard to admire a pack of shih tzus, and a fat woman and a fat girl appeared behind the screen door and frowned at me. They probably thought I was going to steal their stupid little yappy dogs.
Eventually, I concluded that the hospital was the figment of someone's imagination. I doubled back on a dirt road named Easy Street on the other side of the railroad tracks, where I found enough privacy to pee. Then I climbed onto the tracks and followed them back into town, passing only a couple of stinking piles of roadkill.
It was only after Rex and Kayti picked me up at the designated park bench and we'd headed out of town that I realized the "H" did not stand for hospital. It was the name of the road.
We did meet up with Jim Scott again, but we couldn't play foosball because Under the Cliff was closed on Tuesday. Instead we went to an arcade, where I racked up a lot of points playing Skeeball.
And that's pretty much the vacation, except I left out the visit to the museum and the hour of hot, steamy sex with a complete stranger I picked up in the hotel lounge.
Incidentally, I'm preparing a PowerPoint presentation about this year's visit for next year's conference in Joplin. Everyone else had a PowerPoint presentation, and I want one too! From what I could see, it didn't matter if the subject was boring.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Must Write Fast
I have 14 minutes left on this library machine. I wasted most of an hour playing ... well, you know what I was playing.
Scrabble has become kind of a curse word in my family. I'm afraid to say it.
Anyway, we are in Joplin, Mo., where Rex is a presenter at a conference. Kayti and I came out with him because I wanted to check out the area as a possible relocation spot.
So far, I am uninspired. In a gift shop today, where Kayti dragged me for some Webkinz event, I felt like I was speaking a foreign language when I tried to communicate with the clerks.
I'd love to recreate the whole conversation here, but now I have only 12 minutes left.
Suffice it to say, they don't have many people like me out here. This is white-bread country. It's the Midwest. People shine their sinks and clip their hedges and raise good, wholesome citizens. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Maybe I just haven't run into any pockets of kooks. Where I can feel at home.
OK, down to 10 minutes now.
I had the same problem at the Denny's last evening, where Kayti dragged us for supper. (I stuck with just coffee. The greasy smell alone was an entire buffet to my stomach.) Usually, we get along very well with waitstaff. But at this place, even Rex -- dear, sweet, inoffensive Rex -- put them off.
So, in the 7 minutes I have remaining, let me affirm that this is indeed the Show Me state, as in "Show me the door."
I'm outta here!
xxxoo, Debbi (never Kayti)
Scrabble has become kind of a curse word in my family. I'm afraid to say it.
Anyway, we are in Joplin, Mo., where Rex is a presenter at a conference. Kayti and I came out with him because I wanted to check out the area as a possible relocation spot.
So far, I am uninspired. In a gift shop today, where Kayti dragged me for some Webkinz event, I felt like I was speaking a foreign language when I tried to communicate with the clerks.
I'd love to recreate the whole conversation here, but now I have only 12 minutes left.
Suffice it to say, they don't have many people like me out here. This is white-bread country. It's the Midwest. People shine their sinks and clip their hedges and raise good, wholesome citizens. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Maybe I just haven't run into any pockets of kooks. Where I can feel at home.
OK, down to 10 minutes now.
I had the same problem at the Denny's last evening, where Kayti dragged us for supper. (I stuck with just coffee. The greasy smell alone was an entire buffet to my stomach.) Usually, we get along very well with waitstaff. But at this place, even Rex -- dear, sweet, inoffensive Rex -- put them off.
So, in the 7 minutes I have remaining, let me affirm that this is indeed the Show Me state, as in "Show me the door."
I'm outta here!
xxxoo, Debbi (never Kayti)
Saturday, April 19, 2008
8 seconds
The average time visitors spend at my blog is 8 seconds.
I guess I should be grateful for even that much. It could be worse, right? It's like if I ran for office. Any votes over 1 would give me a very warm, fuzzy feeling. Somebody likes me!
It's interesting to see who is being googled and directed to my blog. One person on my People I Have Knewn list was googled twice this month. And the second time, the search was for a photograph of him.
His name is Jay, he was in my high school class, and the last time I saw him was at our 25th class reunion. And I don't and would never have a photograph of him. Moreover, I can't imagine who would want one!
This is my first memory of him:
To my horror, I had just moved to Dover-Foxcroft. My freshman homeroom at Foxcroft Academy was in the school's cellar, right next to the cafeteria, which stunk to high heaven every day with the worst possible imaginable smells, like pea wiggle gone bad. It probably WAS pea wiggle gone bad. Or Welsh rarebit (is there any schoolchild on Earth who doesn't wonder where the rabbit meat was hidden under the melted cheese on Saltine crackers?).
My homeroom teacher, Mr. Arnold, was a scary, crotchety man who clearly loathed homeroom duties and made us carry giant wooden passes if we needed to go to the bathroom. He had also clearly given up caring what students did during study hall, at lunchtime, or during that murky end-of-day time waiting for the final klaxon to ring, as long as we didn't give him a headache.
So one day -- mind you, I was the very new girl -- I'm sitting at my desk, probably reading, and at the desk in front of me is Jay, an extremely tall, extremely unattractive boy, crude even by Dover-Foxcroft standards. Despite these handicaps, Jay gets a number of other boys to circle their desks around his, and they all proceed to play cards.
Suddenly, as if by some silent alarm only boys can hear, all the boys scoot their desks back and away from the center of their game, like planets spinning out of orbit, laughing and hooting and being totally stupid.
I keep reading, trying to ignore them, and while I'm fairly successful at that, I am not successful at missing the big reason they all scooted away. I'm left there at my desk, inhaling the biggest, smelliest fart I have ever encountered in a group situation.
What am I gonna do? I'm new, I'm a girl (and girls -- at least in that era -- did not act raucously in the face of a fart) and all these ugly hicks are chortling all around me, probably just waiting for me to wrinkle up my pert little nose and back away from what was presumably Jay's emission.
I couldn't give them the satisfaction, so I had to soldier on through the fumes, pretending I noticed nothing, while inside I was just dying from hatred of being in such a gross, rude place with such gross, rude people.
Naturally, Mr. Arnold took absolutely no notice of anything that was going on. He was undoubtedly too busy looking at porn magazines disguised as educational materials catalogs.
At our 25th high school reunion, Jay seemed to have forgotten that incident. I daresay that's because he cut so many huge, crony-pleasing farts in his high school career that he couldn't possibly remember them all. At the reunion he was quite pleasant, actually, although his looks hadn't improved.
I can't tell you why, in one month, two people have come looking for Jay at my blog, or anywhere, for that matter.
But there you go, people. I've given Jay a lot more of my time and thought than I ever thought I would. And next time you're here, if you're looking for Jay, you have a reason to stay longer than 8 seconds.
I guess I should be grateful for even that much. It could be worse, right? It's like if I ran for office. Any votes over 1 would give me a very warm, fuzzy feeling. Somebody likes me!
It's interesting to see who is being googled and directed to my blog. One person on my People I Have Knewn list was googled twice this month. And the second time, the search was for a photograph of him.
His name is Jay, he was in my high school class, and the last time I saw him was at our 25th class reunion. And I don't and would never have a photograph of him. Moreover, I can't imagine who would want one!
This is my first memory of him:
To my horror, I had just moved to Dover-Foxcroft. My freshman homeroom at Foxcroft Academy was in the school's cellar, right next to the cafeteria, which stunk to high heaven every day with the worst possible imaginable smells, like pea wiggle gone bad. It probably WAS pea wiggle gone bad. Or Welsh rarebit (is there any schoolchild on Earth who doesn't wonder where the rabbit meat was hidden under the melted cheese on Saltine crackers?).
My homeroom teacher, Mr. Arnold, was a scary, crotchety man who clearly loathed homeroom duties and made us carry giant wooden passes if we needed to go to the bathroom. He had also clearly given up caring what students did during study hall, at lunchtime, or during that murky end-of-day time waiting for the final klaxon to ring, as long as we didn't give him a headache.
So one day -- mind you, I was the very new girl -- I'm sitting at my desk, probably reading, and at the desk in front of me is Jay, an extremely tall, extremely unattractive boy, crude even by Dover-Foxcroft standards. Despite these handicaps, Jay gets a number of other boys to circle their desks around his, and they all proceed to play cards.
Suddenly, as if by some silent alarm only boys can hear, all the boys scoot their desks back and away from the center of their game, like planets spinning out of orbit, laughing and hooting and being totally stupid.
I keep reading, trying to ignore them, and while I'm fairly successful at that, I am not successful at missing the big reason they all scooted away. I'm left there at my desk, inhaling the biggest, smelliest fart I have ever encountered in a group situation.
What am I gonna do? I'm new, I'm a girl (and girls -- at least in that era -- did not act raucously in the face of a fart) and all these ugly hicks are chortling all around me, probably just waiting for me to wrinkle up my pert little nose and back away from what was presumably Jay's emission.
I couldn't give them the satisfaction, so I had to soldier on through the fumes, pretending I noticed nothing, while inside I was just dying from hatred of being in such a gross, rude place with such gross, rude people.
Naturally, Mr. Arnold took absolutely no notice of anything that was going on. He was undoubtedly too busy looking at porn magazines disguised as educational materials catalogs.
At our 25th high school reunion, Jay seemed to have forgotten that incident. I daresay that's because he cut so many huge, crony-pleasing farts in his high school career that he couldn't possibly remember them all. At the reunion he was quite pleasant, actually, although his looks hadn't improved.
I can't tell you why, in one month, two people have come looking for Jay at my blog, or anywhere, for that matter.
But there you go, people. I've given Jay a lot more of my time and thought than I ever thought I would. And next time you're here, if you're looking for Jay, you have a reason to stay longer than 8 seconds.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Clicking with the Spirits
I am consumed with guilt every time I go to Scrabulous.com. I think, if instead of going to Scrabulous.com, I wrote a few pages on a novel, I'd be selling the movie rights by now. If instead of going to Scrabulous.com, I got on the treadmill, I'd be wearing a size 6 by now. My daughter heaps on more guilt by telling me that I love Scrabble more than I love her.
Yes, I really love playing Scrabble online! It's literally a religion. Here's why I think so:
Once upon a time, I became interested in the Swedenborgians. The original Swedenborg -- I forget his first name -- was unbelievably learned. He was not only a scientist who made major contributions to human knowledge, but also a man of literary accomplishments. Apparently, he was not known by his immediate community as a nutcase.
He claimed to be in contact with spirits who told him what the "other side" was like. And he wrote it all down verbatim, in great detail.
His sources said that in the afterlife, spirits are grouped by a kind of attraction system. If you were a spirit, you'd have constant access to communication with like spirits -- people whom on Earth you'd think of as boon companions, or soul mates, or best friends forever. It's a meeting of passion, I gather; a merger of a deeper commonality.
But these spirits are not locked into our kind of space and time; they are free to travel, bodiless, and maybe even faceless.
As in most of my studies, I soon grew tired of facts (read: something somebody else wrote) and let my mind range free over the possibilities (read: daydreaming). So what I took away from Swedenborg's theories is basically what you just read in the preceding paragraphs.
But doesn't that much sound exactly like the Internet? Bodiless, faceless interaction with spirits with shared passions? Not moving from our desks, yet ranging all over the world, through many time zones (if not yet time periods, like the Mesozoic Era or the Stone Age). Finding souls with whom you literally click?
That's why I find myself ceaselessly gravitating to Scrabulous.com. Not everyone I play is a kindred spirit, but the chances of finding one there are better than, say, in a meeting of the Limerick Historical Society. (Believe me, I know -- I went to a singalong they sponsored, and they weren't singing protest songs.)
And it's faster to get to Scrabulous.com -- and to park there -- than to visit Harvard Square, where I also think kindred spirits are likely to abound.
I'm not a big believer in an afterlife. In fact, I deliberately try not to believe in one, because I think believing in an afterlife gives us license to rationalize treating people badly in this life.
So this meeting of the minds via Internet excites me. I don't have to wait till I die to cavort with all these other people!
So, I cavort on, fulfilling my spiritual needs on Scrabulous.com. It's just another aspect of my life, like music, or animals, or my family. Why shouldn't Scrabble get some time, too?
Well, whether it should or not, it does, and that is that. Guess where I'm going now?
Yes, I really love playing Scrabble online! It's literally a religion. Here's why I think so:
Once upon a time, I became interested in the Swedenborgians. The original Swedenborg -- I forget his first name -- was unbelievably learned. He was not only a scientist who made major contributions to human knowledge, but also a man of literary accomplishments. Apparently, he was not known by his immediate community as a nutcase.
He claimed to be in contact with spirits who told him what the "other side" was like. And he wrote it all down verbatim, in great detail.
His sources said that in the afterlife, spirits are grouped by a kind of attraction system. If you were a spirit, you'd have constant access to communication with like spirits -- people whom on Earth you'd think of as boon companions, or soul mates, or best friends forever. It's a meeting of passion, I gather; a merger of a deeper commonality.
But these spirits are not locked into our kind of space and time; they are free to travel, bodiless, and maybe even faceless.
As in most of my studies, I soon grew tired of facts (read: something somebody else wrote) and let my mind range free over the possibilities (read: daydreaming). So what I took away from Swedenborg's theories is basically what you just read in the preceding paragraphs.
But doesn't that much sound exactly like the Internet? Bodiless, faceless interaction with spirits with shared passions? Not moving from our desks, yet ranging all over the world, through many time zones (if not yet time periods, like the Mesozoic Era or the Stone Age). Finding souls with whom you literally click?
That's why I find myself ceaselessly gravitating to Scrabulous.com. Not everyone I play is a kindred spirit, but the chances of finding one there are better than, say, in a meeting of the Limerick Historical Society. (Believe me, I know -- I went to a singalong they sponsored, and they weren't singing protest songs.)
And it's faster to get to Scrabulous.com -- and to park there -- than to visit Harvard Square, where I also think kindred spirits are likely to abound.
I'm not a big believer in an afterlife. In fact, I deliberately try not to believe in one, because I think believing in an afterlife gives us license to rationalize treating people badly in this life.
So this meeting of the minds via Internet excites me. I don't have to wait till I die to cavort with all these other people!
So, I cavort on, fulfilling my spiritual needs on Scrabulous.com. It's just another aspect of my life, like music, or animals, or my family. Why shouldn't Scrabble get some time, too?
Well, whether it should or not, it does, and that is that. Guess where I'm going now?
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