The Bigger They Get

Fairy dust?

I wish.

Pine pollen.

It was too hot to close the windows the other night, so we didn’t.  Big mistake.  Apparently, the heat prompted our neighborhood pine trees to begin spewing pollen.  We have been pollinated, people!

Our house has been pollinated.  The dogs have been pollinated.  It’s everywhere, on everything, including in our ears, our eyelashes, between our toes.  Our deck is yellow.  The pollen seems to have formed a particular attachment to electronics, so I now have to take my computer with me to Philly this weekend when I pick daughter up for her short summer break to get it de-pollinated.

And I have to do an environmental cleaning of our house, but will have to wait until the trees are finished doing their tree-thing.

This is, like, the ULTIMATE test of my Zyrtec.

All is well here.  We’re fairly well settled in – a few more things to put away, a few more things to do to the house, but no rush.  It’s funny, semi-retirement: you work like crazy to get settled and then you sit there and stare at each other and say now what?

Since we both like to eat and since paying bills is always a good idea, the logical answer to now what? appears to be finding JOBS in this dismal economy.  Heh.

So Yes, Dear will be working as a delivery driver a few days a week starting in the next week or so and we have taken over the management a resort area franchise service business which I’ll explain in more detail soon.  We’ve also started working on putting together an Etsy shop.  Again, details to follow.

Finally, to the comment spammers who seem to think this middle aged mom has any interest in seeing Miley Cyrus n*a*k*e*d, well, that’s just WRONG.  And to the spammer who thinks I want to see Charles Grodin n*a*k*e*d?  Oh, come on!  Ewwwww.

Hope to be here more often in the near future. I have been keeping up as much as possible with my feed reader but haven’t had time to comment much.  I miss you guys.

So how the heck are YOU doing?

The LILACS!

Just Awesome.

Hope your Easter was happy!  Ours was great.  The boys came down for the weekend and my sister visited yesterday for our Annual Welcome Spring Easter Barbecue.  Yeah!  Why wait until it’s 75 degrees and sunny when you can warm yourself over the grill in 50 degree temperatures with the wind howling at 30 mph? And why eat HAM when you can have THIS:

Mmmmmmmmmmm

And this:

And these:

And CANDY.  Which I would have photographed except WHERE IS IT?  I can’t FIND IT!  OH MY GOD WE WERE ROBBED!

Wait.  What?

Oh.  I ate it all?

All of it?

Really?

Never mind.

By the way, you know what I think would make a REALLY, REALLY interesting TV show?  Just combine The Housewives of New York City with Wife Swap.  Send Bethanny to some redneck house in a holler somwhere and The Countess to a family farm or something.  Just don’t send Jill to my house.  I hate what she did with the apartment.  I LOVE this idea.  Who’s with me?  Show of hands…

We gathered our insurance cards, auto titles, two pieces of mail, etc., got in the car and headed to the DMV to get our new licenses and register our cars.  Halfway there, I turned to Yes,Dear and said:

Hmmm.  Don’t you think it might have been a good idea to bring both cars?

Yes,Dear:  Doh.

Me:  What a couple of knuckleheads.

Yes,Dear: And we call the dog stupid…

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Son One finally got two days off in a row and will be visiting next weekend! Yay!

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Daughter and I had a nice time at the Philadelphia Flower Show last week despite the show lacking a certain something-or-other this year that we couldn’t quite put our fingers on.  There was some interesting statuary, though.

She was such a lovely girl…too bad about those crossed eyes.

I thought the bride was crossing her fingers behind her back, but the woman standing next to me thought she was scratching her butt.  Either way, eww.

And just in case we forgot where we were…

But the flowers were spectacular!

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Son Two and a friend stopped by for dinner last night.  It was great to see him, even if he did receive another citation for defiant trespass earlier in the day.  Being the mother of an urban explorer there is just no end to the worry, people.  This boy needs to find a new hobby.

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Finally, GREAT NEWS!  The TWINS ARE BUDDING!  No, I don’t have human twins approaching puberty.  I have twin lilac bushes that were purchased when we lived in New Hampshire 21 years ago.  When we moved from NH to North Carolina a year later, we dug them up and put them on the moving van.  When the movers opened the van at our new home, the twins had bloomed on the truck.  Later that same year, we moved back to PA and brought them with us again.  They lived and grew in our yard there for nearly two years before being moved again to the house we just left.  Now, after spending the last 17 years in one spot, they are so massive we had to hire professionals to dig them up.

It wasn’t cheap. Yes,Dear wasn’t happy.  The landscaper was happy because it filled his pockets during a slow season in a bad year, but I did see him cast a sympathetic glance toward Yes,Dear, who I’m sure rolled his eyes behind my back.

Oh, well.

Needless to say, If the twins had died this time Yes,Dear would have been REALLY REALLY pissed and I would have been REALLY, REALLY sad.  But THEY HAVE BUDS ON THEM, so he is not as unhappy and I am wildly happy.  And a little smug.

The twins are the only two plants other than grass in our sparse new yard right now, but not for long.  I’ve already got a garden plan forming somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain.  Please don’t tell Yes,Dear.  He hates it when I think because it usually means work for him.  So we’ll keep him in the dark a little longer.  Okay?

I’ve always wondered what Heaven is like and now I know.  To those of you who know me, the fact that I LOOOOOOVE chocolate comes as no surprise.  It is my boyfriend, my one true love really.  Fortunately, Yes,Dear has accepted this and moved on.  Apparently a lot of you feel the same way about chocolate because I still get a lot of hits on an old post in which I talk about George Clooney wearing chocolate pants.

Anyway, yesterday I met Ruth.  She is lovely and sweet and has an adorable husband and a dog, Theo, who is really quite something.  I understand she has children too, but I didn’t meet them.  She had probably hidden them in the attic or somewhere because some strange chocolate-stalking blogger was OH MY GAWD AT THE DOOR and one never knows what THAT could lead to.

Ruth has started a new business in which she makes AMAZING CONFECTIONS and sells them to people who like to eat them.

Well, Bossy recently posted a photo of Ruth’s Mousse Cake.

Naturally, I had to have one.  So Ruth, sweetheart that she is, on way-to-short-notice this week (thank you!) made me one.  Visually, it is a work of art.  Or it was until I cut into it last night and SAVORED it.  This cake is SO good that even Yes,Dear, who claims not to give much of a hoot about chocolate unless it’s wrapped around peanut butter as in a Reese’s Cup, was making obscene-phone-call-type noises while eating it and then, licking the remains out of his mustache, said, “oh, my GOD, is this stuff even LEGAL?”

I kid you not.

I have decided that Heaven is living inside one of Ruth’s Mousse Cakes and having to spend eternity eating your way out.

And Ruth?  You’d better hide the kids again when I come back for more because I swear I’ll kidnap them and ransom them for a lifetime supply…

Wouldn’t you think we’d be all settled in by now?

Me too.

But not quite.

We have definitely made progress.  We’re down to about this many boxes:

The bookshelves that divide the living room from the office are finally put together so we have somewhere to unload those last boxes.  The fussy little guy who helped us at Ikea made it clear that their Billy bookcases are NOT meant to be used as ROOM DIVIDERS because they should be ANCHORED to a WALL to ensure they won’t TIP and HURT or MAIM someone.  So I assured him we’d anchor them, which we did.  To each other.  Now if they fall, they won’t HURT or MAIM anyone because anyone unlucky enough to be under them will be DEAD.

The guest room, which has served as an attic for the last five weeks actually has a bed in it now (Thank you, Craig’s List) and a path cleared to the bed.

The kitchen is about 1/3 painted (except for the cabinets, which is making me twitchy so that will happen soon…)  The cabinets pictured below were a lucky Craig’s List find.  And you can see where the wall painting stopped…

We don’t have the budget or the energy right now to drywall the ceilings in the kitchen, hallway, and master bedroom so we will find attractive ceiling tiles to replace the crappy looking old ceiling tile that’s up there now.  Crappy old ceiling tile is common in summer homes, as this place used to be.  Fluorescent lights?  Not so much.  They are SO OUT OF HERE.  But I have to find someone to put up new fixtures as Yes,Dear isn’t allowed to mess around with electrical stuff because of his defibrillator.

What a wuss.

Daughter will be visiting for a week over her Spring Break, starting this weekend.  We can’t wait.  Son One might make it down for a couple of days while she’s here.  Son Two was down recently for a weekend which was great.  We explored Cape Henlopen State Park.  All the years we’ve been going to CHSP, you’d think we’d have seen it all but, believe me, when you’re with an experienced urban explorer you find things you never expect to.  See?

It’s an old WWII bunker with several rooms.  It’s about the size of a small house.  Off the beaten path.  Off limits.  Under a dune.  I’m just glad we didn’t get caught because I don’t want to end up in the local paper’s police blotter before I’ve met all our neighbors.  Wouldn’t want to start off on the wrong foot.

Speaking of neighbors, here are a few we met on a walk one morning:

Nutmeg asked what body of water it is that we can see from our house.  The Delaware River?  No.  The Schuylkill River?  Nope.  The ocean?  We wish.  It’s actually Indian River Bay and it’s lovely and sparkly and soothing to watch.

We are so happy it should be illegal.

The dogs are happy too, except early in the mornings when the hunters are out in the marsh at the end of the street.  Sebastian will NOT go outside while they’re shooting.  I don’t blame him.

Yes,Dear is unhappy because his garage is packed full of stuff from end to end, but we’ll get around to clearing it out eventually.  I made the movers put the fishing rods and beach chairs in the outside shower because if they stuffed even one more thing in that garage Yes,Dear would have killed me dead.

I’m almost caught up in my reader, although there are a few of you who I refuse to “mark as read” and who post ALL THE DAMN TIME.  Slow down, okay?  Let me catch up.  And then there’s Jack who disappeared himself while I was away.  Jack, I MISS YOU.  Please reconsider…

So.  After setting up our neighborhood library branch tomorrow, I should be back to a fairly relaxed schedule and therefore a more regular posting schedule.  It’ll be so great to be back!  As I mentioned in my previous post, stay tuned for pix of The Little Bayside Bungalow furnished almost exclusively by Craig’s List of Philadelphia, Freecycle, and The Salvation Army!

P.S.  Ruth, please, please, PLEASE tell me which store will be carrying your goodies so I can get the MOUSSE CAKE you and Bossy posted pictures of.  I WANT it.  I MUST HAVE it.  I WILL have it.  I’ll be in town this coming weekend to pick Daughter up at PHL and the following weekend for the Flower Show and my hips and I want to support your new enterprise…

The last time we hired someone to clean our carpets the technicians left them so wet it took two days for them to dry.  It was a mess.  So in order to stimulate our flailing economy and clean my carpets – which I figure I couldn’t mess up any worse than the professionals had -  yesterday I bought a steam vac along with the manufacturer’s recommended cleaning solution.  The cleaning solution came with a free sample of this…

…along with yet another reason to despair the lack of common sense in the modern world:

“Do not use for personal cleansing or as an infant wipe“???

WTF???!!!  Did someone actually do that?

We’re doomed.  Doomed, I tell you!

Steam Vac:  $159.99

Manufacturer’s Recommended Cleaning Solution:  $14.99

Existential Angst:  Priceless

Knee Guy died last week.  He was 74.  His obituary, including a photo, appeared in our weekly paper this Wednesday.  It’s good they printed a photo or we wouldn’t have known Knee Guy had died or that his real name was George.

Knee Guy had lived in a tidy bungalow around the corner and a few houses down since before we moved to this neighborhood seventeen years ago.  He had a knee replacement several years ago and soon after, he began taking frequent doctor-ordered walks around the block.

We became acquainted with Knee Guy not long after his surgery.  At first when he’d pass our house during his walks, we’d wave to each other and call out how are you today? as he limped by.  He began stopping to chat whenever we were outside and before long we knew a lot about him.  He lived with his wife, a woman we’ve never met but whom he spoke of with pride and obvious affection.  The couple’s daughters and grandchildren were the bright, shiny apples of his eye. He was a truck driver before his first retirement and he worked as both a crossing guard and a church custodian before he retired a second time.  He loved the Jersey shore.  He worked hard to keep his house and yard up.  He enjoyed sitting on his front porch, and keeping up with local politics.

His chats grew longer and longer and it soon became apparent that more than anything, he loved to talk.  And talk.  And talk some more.  And keep talking.  But he was always pleasant and friendly.

And we are unfailingly polite, so we listened.  And listened.  And listened some more.  And kept listening.

Because our initial “wave and howdy” contacts had been casual and brief and because later conversations were long and hard-to-get-a-word-in-edgewise ones, we never learned Knee Guy’s name.  How, without looking like an idiot, do you ask someone who has shared so much of his life story with you what his name is?  It’s awkward.  And vaguely ridiculous.  So, when speaking of him among ourselves, we referred to him simply as Knee Guy.

As in, Here comes Knee Guy.  I’ll go inside and if he’s still talking in ten minutes, I’ll yell out that you’ve got a phone call.

Or,

Quick, get inside. No, leave the groceries in the car, Knee Guy is coming.

It’s sad and embarrassing to admit that eventually and more often than not, we began ducking Knee Guy.  We had discovered that it was much easier to make sure a conversation with him never began than it was to try to end one.  We speculated that he was still taking walks long after his limp disappeared because his wife demanded he keep taking walks to give her an hour of much needed peace.

And now Knee Guy’s gone and I realize I’m going to miss him.

So, Knee Guy?  George?

Rest in peace.

The neighborhood is going to be awfully quiet without you.

Since the election:

A 90 year old woman in Evanston, IL was found to be living with the dead bodies of her three siblings, one, apparently since 1980 or so, another since 2003, and a third which was relatively fresh having been seen as recently as March of this year…

…A woman in Brazil was killed on the way to a cemetery where her husband was to be buried when the vehicle she was riding in was involved in an accident which caused her husbands coffin, in the rear of the vehicle, to fly forward, apparently breaking her neck…

…The body of a man was found inside a bale of paper at a recycling plant in Twin Falls, Idaho today.

Does this kind of stuff happen all the time?

Have I been so wrapped up in election coverage that I simply failed to notice news stories like these for the last few months?

If so, for God’s sake people, let’s have another election!

Right now.

What do you say?

Who are we going to nominate and for what office?

I spent some time today enjoying the beautifl fall day and plucking bits of randomness from the blog I kept from 2005 until sometime last year.

Why? You ask.

The answer is procrastination. And avoidance.

I have other things I should be doing, but it’s Friday.  Nuff said, right?

Here goes:

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Son One called today to have me bring his medicine to school (a painkiller the dentist prescribed when his wisdom teeth were pulled last Friday).  I grabbed a pill bottle and met him in the school nurse’s office where, in front of the nurse and several students, I tried to give him one of the dog’s pills. Oops.

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Response (Jesus C.) – 12/27/2005 08:10 PM
Dear Christina,

We are contacting you regarding the credit request submitted for order number 3142409.

A credit of $11.99 has been applied to your credit card as a result of the incorrect and moldy items from your Acmemarkets.com order. This credit will appear on your next one to two credit card statements. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

If we can provide any information or be of service to you in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us by e-mail or by calling 1-877-932-7948.

Sincerely,

Jesus C.
Acmemarkets.com Customer Care Representative

So that’s where he’s been…

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Strange goings on – the spiky fish hanging from the shower curtain in the flamingo room is suddenly sporting a big pink bow on top of its head that I did not put there. I don’t know how long it has been there, but I can’t imagine it has been very long or I would have noticed it sooner.  Fish fairies? (Don’t ask…)

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I ran out of my cholesterol medicine about 3 days ago and I had a bacon cheeseburger and mozzarella sticks for dinner so if you can’t find me, call the local hospital and have them look in the cath lab.

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I’m reading a lovely novel set in a tiny village on the Atlantic coast of Ireland, full of pleasant people who spend all their free time in the pub.  I going to concentrate really hard and try to fold myself up small enough to squeeze myself into the story and ESCAPE THE MADNESS.  If you don’t see me around, you’ll know where I am.  Just leave a few quid between the pages of the book on my nightstand to fund my pub crawling.  I’ll miss you all, but I’ll be too drunk and happy to think much about it, so don’t worry.

*******

Daughter writes to Son Two:  “I’m officially putting you in charge of getting mom out of the house for at least an hour today (not running errands!).  When she goes over the edge, you’ll be directly in the line of fire, so I’d take this assignment seriously if I were you. love, me.”

Thank you for the thought but, jeez, do you really think getting me out of the house for an hour is going to solve my problems?  How naive.  Taking a fussy baby for a car ride might help get her to sleep, but I’m a little beyond that kind of coddling at this point.  Especially since I’d be the one driving.

*******

Freudian slip of the week:

Speaking with Miz Scarlett (aka MIL) today, she inadvertently referred to her fellow nursing home residents as “inmates”.

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Son One:  “Mom?”
Me:  “No.”
Son One:   “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
Me:  “Yes I do.”
Son One:  “Okay, what am I going to say?”
Me:  “You want money.  For bowling, or Wawa, or the pool hall.”
Son One:  “Am I that predictable?”
Me:  “Yes.  Especially after you’ve eaten.  Before then it’s anyone’s guess whether you’re looking for food or money.”

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(During a particularly difficult time…)  So far I’ve purchased only necessary items on my retail therapy trips like a rug and curtains for the kitchen and a new pillow and mattress pad and sheets and a few candles and a new window shade and a wicker flamingo and some potholders and dishtowels and trivets and dusting mitts and an Arby’s Beef and Cheddar, but now it’s starting to get out of hand. I am seriously thinking digital camera.

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Traditionally over the Thanksgiving holiday, Daughter, Uncle and I spend a day downtown visiting museums, etc.  Nobody else ever wants to go with us.  This year, we decided to do something different, so the day after Thanksgiving we are going to tour Eastern State Penitentiary.  All of a sudden, everybody wants to go.  I fear this says something deeply disturbing about my family.

*******

So, yes, I do get excited about amazing Dyson vacuums, washing driveways, finding radiator covers at yard sales, getting wheel sparkle at the carwash…

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We did indeed spend a lot of time in graveyards.  It didn’t occur to me just how strange others might consider that until I went to pick up the pictures at the drugstore yesterday and the girl at the One Hour booth gave me a really funny, slightly frightened look.  About 80% of the pictures were of headstones.

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So maybe I did say “daht coke” at the Sonic drive thru.  It was totally inadvertent.  However, Southerners do have a much more relaxed way of speaking that discourages the use of extraneous syllables.  Why waste time enunciating?  Their slushy manner of speech must save them a ridiculous amount of time every year.

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My desk looks worse than the boys’ room, I haven’t washed a dish in two days, the dog emptied the kitchen trash can onto the dining room floor sometime yesterday and I haven’t cleaned it up, I’ve eaten my last 6 meals sitting at this *&^*% computer and my stomach hurts.

*******

He kept standing there staring at me.  That’s when the negotiations began, because I couldn’t concentrate on my book with him hovering and staring.  I told him if he’d let me read in peace for 15 minutes, I’d go to Wawa and get milk and chocolate chips so he could make pancakes.  First he pulled a Miz Scarlett and told me I make pancakes much better than he does.  Nice try.  Not going to work.  Then he told me he’d let me read for a half hour instead of just 15 minutes if I’d make the pancakes.  I said no.  Then he said I could read for a half hour and he’d clean up the mess if I’d make the pancakes.

Now we were getting somewhere.  And I was getting hungry, so I agreed.

I went to Wawa, got the milk and the chips, came home and cooked up a pound of bacon that came out of the package like a Mobius strip and made the pancakes.

He’d just finished eating when he asked, What’s for dinner?

*******

Son Two borrowed my cell phone yesterday and promptly lost it.  A few minutes ago he came inside and handed me my cell phone, wet, but in working condition.  “I just remembered,” he says.  “Yesterday I decided to see what it would feel to fall backwards into the snow from the bench in the front yard.  It fell out of my pocket and landed in a drift.”  (The boy was 17.)