Simply charming

Yesterday on my ride home from work, I blew not one but TWO holes in my front bike tire. The first hit came from a wire lawn flag. The tip must have been bent juuuussst right so it lodged in my tire and went flarp, flarp, flarp spinning wildly with the tire until I was able to reign in my speed as well as my potty mouth. Thankfully, I wasn't in a school zone. This is You-tah so there's probably a fine for that.
Well, my bike has slime tires which are supposed to be self-healing so I hopefully yanked out the wire and the tire oozed a wee bit of green stuff and a few bubbles before sealing itself just as promised. I rode for another mile or more before I hit another something which brought me immediately down to the rim. Yikes! The new hole looked more like a vomiting little pac man who was obviously not going to get well on his own.
I pulled over and parked my butt next to the irrigation canal and considered using the phone-a-friend option, specifically a 'friend' that I gave life to. The one who had 'my' car. But that seemed like more trouble than I needed, so I took off the tire, put a couple patches on it and off I went; later and dirtier but feeling good because no fossil fuels were burned on my behalf.
So big deal, right? Well, it is actually, because the day before that, I rode home with no patch kit, no air pump and no cell phone (also no helmet - bad morning that one) illustrating once again just what a charmed life I lead.
I really believe that.
I also believe that one of these days, everything is going to go to $hit in a monumental way. And I want you to remind me of things like this when I am whining with intense agony over losing my million dollar lottery ticket.
I want you to say "Suck it up, Jane. Remember back in 2008 when fate postponed your flat tire by one day? This here is just payback."

Just for Shanna, I took a picture of my 'toolkit', with my cellphone joining the party just to show how big everything is. It all takes less space and is much lighter than my water bottle... now on the other hand, Homer's toolkit is quite a bit more complicated, because he has to abide by the rules of the man club which state that you must be able to rebuild the engine of a '52 Chevy with just the tools within reach.

Yay, rah, rah

March 20

I have (mostly) recovered from yesterday and the weekend. It was a crazy up and down roller coaster of a weekend when put to the standards of my oatmeal-flavored life.
Since it was an unseasonably gorgeous weekend I opted to spend Saturday and much of Sunday shaping up the outside of the house. I cleaned out some more flower beds, swept the patio and pulled out, and dusted off, the patio furniture. I tidied the yard and trimmed vines and got things looking downright spiffy. I thought ‘spring has sprung’! Woo, hoo! Color me READY! This would be going up the roller coaster.
But all this came, of course, at a price. Inside the house, the weekly damage control was left undone. Well, too bad, there would be rainy days to put toward that mess. I applied my policy of ‘never do today what you can put off ‘til tomorrow’ – going down here.
By Sunday afternoon I was feeling pretty, darn self-satisfied. I was ready to sit back, put up my feet and admire my work. Outside, of course, where it was tidy.
Then the phone rang. It was a very perky high school cheerleader calling to ask if they could kidnap Junie early the next morning and take her to a breakfast for the new cheer team. Very cool, this is the absolute top; Junie has been working her little 14-year-old heart out toward this ultimate goal – being christened a high school cheerleader. It is her sport of choice. And if you do not think cheerleading is a sport then you have never tried a round-off/back-handspring/full or a scorpion with a double down. They are the kind of skills that make cheer moms wish their daughters had chosen to play football.
So, here I am thinking OH! OH!, she will be SO excited and I can’t say a word……. and I am SO not good at keeping secrets.

“But go on, Perky....You will be here at 4:15? AM? Ohhhh…kaaay…… I should just open the door for you and you’ll go get her out of bed? And blindfold her. Uh huh. No, I won’t tell her. Oh, NO problem. What could possibly be a problem?”

I’ll tell you what the problem would be; the house is a mess and there is virtually no path from front door to Junie’s room. Or worse yet, what if they come in the side door? That would lead them through the kitchen which….okay, I am screwed - this is the bottom part. Could I put Junie to bed on the patio and just send them back there? No, it’s definitely not warm enough yet. Well, forget the leisurely Sunday rest; I guess I will be cleaning the house because, yes, darn it, I am still afraid of what high school cheerleaders think of me.
For SIX freakin’ hours I clean the house – motivated by the fear of being judged a crappy housekeeper by silly 18-year-olds in short skirts. Okay, it was a safety issue, too. If strange people are going to be stumbling around my house in the middle of the night then it is probably my responsibility to clear the way. The intense labor also helps me keep my mouth shut with ‘the secret’ firmly inside. God does work in mysterious ways.

Ten o’clock pm – the house looks good, the kid is in bed, I am exhausted and headed there. Yay me, I didn’t spill the beans. I set the alarm for 4am and get 5 hours of sleep. Wake up, turn on front lights and wait. Cheer ambassadors arrive as promised – one girl and one boy, by the way, neither of which seem to give my housework a second look. Well fine. Just remember I had YOUR wellbeing in mind.

It really was fun to watch. Imagine you are not quite 15 and sound asleep in your own bed when two faces, you know only as senior-class critics at 2 weeks of grueling tryouts, now appear over your bed. Lights on! Wake up! Put on the blindfold, you’re coming with us! Personally, I would have wet my pants, thus securing my place on the school bedwetting team. Little Miss Unflappable took it all in stride.

I hope she isn’t always that compliant with kidnappers but I do have to give the kid credit: she demanded a bathroom break before leaving the house which she used instead to brush her hair and apply mascara. As she pointed out “There’s never a good excuse to look bad.”
Yep, I bet her more insecure classmates will still be in therapy 30 years from now. Myself, I need 3 more hours of sleep…. And the therapy. Of course. But, dang, is my house clean!

I have fallen

Maybe I told you that I gave up sugar-based products for Lent. That was the idea, anyway, but I'm pretty sure that when God said "Jane, go forth and live with Catholics who scowl at you until your little Protestant heart makes you relent and offer up some type of Lenten sacrifice" he had NO IDEA that some bound-for-sainthood individual would ever invent something like the CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN! And that he would be aided and abetted by the person who thought to put small cream puffs upon the skewers which lie next to the CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN or the teenage girls, with zero thigh-fat, who voted this to be the official dessert at the annual team banquet. Lord, weak doesn't begin to cover it. I was outnumbered, outsouled and in WAY over my head. In my defense I will say that I think the 2 pretzels and 2 strawberries that I dipped SHOULD, in fact, cancel out the four little creampuffs. Which leaves just the chocolate. The only excuse I have for the chocolate is that it was all warm and meltey and chocolatey and flowing in THREE, count 'em THREE TIERS! The pretzel was strong but the flesh was weak.

Swimming in the Dough

YES! The wardrobe changeover is starting to pay off – this morning I found $4.03 in the pocket of a pair of khakis that I haven’t worn since last fall. It doesn’t sound like much but it was $4 that I found AFTER the girls had left for school, so it is $4 that I still have in my possession! Woohoo. I am a simple woman, easily entertained with spring clothes and $4. Escalating the excitement: the weatherman says it is going to be SEVENTY degrees today. SEVENTY!!! Our weatherman has not said SEVENTY since last November.

All that talk of tropical weather has perhaps messed with my head. Last night I dreamed we set up the swimming pool. Don’t get excited and start planning parties at my house. It’s just one of those 15 foot above-ground metal-frame contraptions that the girls bought 4 years ago. Homer and I thought it was the dumbest thing ever but since we believe in letting life’s lessons, which include buyer’s remorse, take their course, we stood back and let it happen. We did steer them away from the inflatable-ring, tub-o-jello kind of pool, since we live on the side of a hill, and we were foresighted enough to imagine what 9000 gallons of water would look like running through our neighbors yards. ALL the way DOWN.

Anyway, ahem, cou*we were wrong*gh! I think we might have actually used it more than the kids. Which is only fair because you can imagine who gets to set it up and fill it and change the filters and buy the chemicals and test the water and clean the darn thing and then take it down. If you said Homer, you would be terribly wrong and not my friend. But my hard work does entitle me to bring a date so; again Homer slides in on my coattails.

But, alas, a $300 pool does not last forever. After four summers (very full, bake in the high-altitude, hot sun and dry air summers) of heavy use we now have a dilemma. The plastic liner is showing its age and I don’t think the filter pump will pump us through another year - it was starting to sound like a feral cat might be caught in there. I realize that replacing parts could quickly send you down that ‘I could have bought a whole new pool’ road. Which is also an option, but this summer the girls will be 15 and 17. Maybe they will be MUCH more interested in going to the neighborhood pool, where they can hang with their friends and toss back their hair in that carefree manner and giggle and do all those teenage things that make laying in the hot, torrid sun, eating Banana Boat tainted Doritos with warm pop seem like what life is really all about.

The rec pool doesn’t hold the same appeal for us parental units. Homer swears that a pre-bedtime dip makes him sleep like a baby in the summer – the public pool closes at 8 or 9 and they like you to wear trunks. As for me, there is something that soothes my soul about laying on my water lounger in the pool with my tankini pulled up to expose my fish-belly stomach so it can catch a few rays – because darker looks smaller, you know. Well, the public pool doesn’t like water lounges or fish bellies and, can you even believe this? They serve NO MARGARITAS and they even have this rule against bringing your own! Mexico is SO much more evolved in some respects.

So last fall as I was dismantling the ol’ watering hole, with mounting despair over its condition, I decided that it was the time to plant a seed. I made my report and cautioned the girls: “sorry, kids, you know the pool is getting quite old and, well, nothing lasts forever but it had a good life and we can remember the good times we had with it and know that we will always have it in our hearts”. Okay, that might be the dying-pet talk but I love anything with more than one use.

Anyhoodle, I was thinking….and that is often where I go wrong.… if they had all winter to save up their hard earned money we could perhaps be financially ready for the spring pool sales!

Well, in my excitement about SEVENTY degrees and my pool dream, I threw the matter out for discussion at the breakfast table this morning. Surely they must be as excited as I am? Have they thought at all about a new pool? I bet Target will be getting pools in any day (oh, who am I kidding, they’ve probably had them out since they took down the Christmas displays). What do you girls think? Huh? I was all smiling and excited and, I remind you this was before 7 am - before 7 am Daylight Savings Time! Yes, happy I was, no ecstatic and hopeful and then they put the knives through my heart.

Lola: “Remember, 1) I'm saving my money for my dream Jeep and 2) I will be working or training or out of town most of the summer. What would I get out of a backyard pool?”

Junie(again with the numbers): “1) I plan to spend most of MY time at my friends’ who have REAL pools and 2) You are pitiful to be trying to squeeze money for your filthy pool habit out of your children.”

Me: “Are you serious? C’mon guys! Didn’t we have fun? What about our whirlpool games and the lazy river? Wasn’t it fun to swirl the water round and round and then watch your dad try not to chum in his little innertube because he can’t handle any spinning motion? And, and…I can’t do my Shamu imitation without a pool! Shamu out of water is just…..pitiful… and NOT very....fun…..or alive.

Homer: “Honey? Honey! It’s okay.
Me: Is it?
Homer: We can still get a new pool.
Me: We can?
Homer: We don’t need those fickle children. The dream isn’t dead……….it’s just coming out of your pocket.


Of course it is.
There goes my $4.

Not your average JaneFay

1 - I can jiggle my eyeballs really fast. I have only known one other person whose talent equaled mine and he died. I miss freaking people out with our tandem jiggle.
2 - When I do laundry, I sing ‘Camptown Races’ in my head, but instead of the words, I substitute numbers. I can’t help this.
3 - I cannot stand to touch (or wear) pantyhose. I have made career choices based on this aversion.
4 - I purposely avoid stepping on cracks whenever possible. I am very ground-focused when I walk or run. I don’t think it is an esteem thing, it is an OCD thing. Also probably a self-preservation issue – I lean toward the clumsy side.
5 - I do not buckle my seatbelt until I put the car in DRIVE. Backing down our driveway at 30mph, I am a brain-injury waiting to happen.
6 - Family legend has it that I used to eat onions right out of the garden as one would eat an apple. Although I still like the flavor of cooked onions in food, I am repulsed by chunks of onion or the smell of raw onion. The odor of potato salad makes me dry heave.
7 - Not so weird but, I am very claustrophobic. If I'm driving alone I need my car window open just a little – rain, freeze or shine. I can’t breathe in thick crowds. I will scuba dive but only with open water above me – and I must be able to see it. Just hearing about cave diving makes me panicky. I cannot consider myself or my loved ones being buried in boxes. This has probably helped me stay a law abiding citizen – a prison cell is beyond comprehension. I’m getting all freaky just writing about this.
8 - I will not eat dried or baked fruit products of any kind – jelly, jam, fruit pies, filled donuts, raisins. Or anything in the goop family - mayo, mustard, salad dressing . Make mine PLAIN, please.
9 - Growing up, I played the bassoon. It’s still my favorite instrument because it is quite odd and very sassy. Wish I had one.
10 - I am oddly enchanted by things I think I can’t do. I like to get close, examine them, and let myself get sucked in. When my husband tells me I should do something I haven’t done before (he has endless faith in me), my immediate response is that “I can’t”. That sets off an inner challenge. It usually turns out well, but I am hella pissed that I still can’t wakeboard. Maybe next summer

Payback?

Yesterday at noon my mother called me at work (she and my father are visiting for a couple weeks). The phone rings. I check the caller ID.
Me: Hello (Trying to keep the ‘now what?’ out of my voice).
Usually she calls to ask where I keep something. But it doesn’t come off like a simple inquiry. It sounds more like an accusation that I don’t have said item and when I am able to direct her to the item, I get the sense that if I kept it in the logical place (ie. where SHE keeps it) she would not have had to waste our time with this call.
She: Hi. pause, sigh. You’re probably not going to want to hear this.
OH…FRICKIN...NO….. She has flooded the basement/killed my father/dumped out the liquor/invited missionaries in/what else? Think, OMG, what has she done? Wait…..she called on her cell phone. Maybe that’s because I have no house….. That’s it. She has put hot ashes in the garbage and burned down our house. Never mind that we don’t have a fireplace, you don’t know this woman.
But…..waitjustadarnminute…… Isn’t that the phrase I used to use when I called her at work to impart some bad news? As in: ‘Mom, you probably don’t want to hear this but your son is skateboarding down Broadway in your wedding dress.’ Could this be a joke? That’s it. She’s messing with me.
Me: Hear whaaat?
Come on, tell me you’re kidding.
She: I have CatTwo locked in your bedroom.
Me: WHY? ;-)
She: She has a rat in there.
Okay, she’s been drinking the liquor. On the other hand, CatTwo is pretty good about bringing home her share of the bacon. Our neighbors down the hill have a bad, nasty woodpile where I have seen some ‘big mice’ on occasion.
Me: Can’t you pick it up with a shovel.
She: pause It’s still alive.
Me: Alive. Not a question.
She: Yes, I don’t think it’s even wounded. It moves really fast.
Me: Any idea how she got it in there?
She: I let CatTwo in the house. I guess it was in her mouth.
Me: (yeah, I know I shouldn’t have said it) And you didn’t notice a big ole RAT hanging from her mouth???????
She: I’m sorry, I was making the frosting for your bars. Of course, my fault, Alpha has a team potluck tonight and Mom volunteered to take the brownie baking off my hands.
Let me think, I’m only about 3 days behind at work. I have two reports due the next morning. One half-finished, one not started. Homer would be no help. Even if he could get away from work, I don’t think he could hop fast enough to catch a rat – being injured and all.
Me: sigh I’ll be home in half an hour.
I pack up my reports and other work, brief my boss and head out. I’m driving home, trying to plot a strategy. I take mental inventory of my bedroom: 67 pairs of shoes on my closet floor, multiple boxes of stuff jammed under the bed, the dressers have great hidey holes underneath, the man-closet has backpacks, hiking gear and half his wardrobe on the floor. I start to feel defeated. This is going to be an all day project.
Arrive home. Status update: Cat and, presumably, Rat are still in bedroom. Mom has armed herself with a hammer, traded her Crocs for boots and has tucked her pants into her socks. I deem the sock idea a good one. I grab the mop and a huge plastic container. I’m thinking if the cat would just catch the rat again, I’ll pick up the cat and put them both in the container, put on the lid and escort them outside. That was a bit optimistic.
My dad announces that he’s going to take a shower – DOWNSTAIRS. This is so totally NOT his problem. Thanks, Dad.
So we head to battle. A rat SWAT team of two. It takes about an hour of picking stuff off the floor and carefully poking things out from under the bed. We gradually get braver. At last the rat is exposed! Much excitement! Cat pounces, rat runs, Mom jumps, hammer flies, hits my knee! Before I blacked out from the pain, I see blur of gray run towards the bathroom door. From that point, it didn’t go so well for the rat. I will spare you the grisly details but let’s just say the rat is no longer in the house. CatTwo is rather confused and a bit slighted. Mom goes round blaming the woodpile owners (she’s going to call the health department), blaming the cat, and blaming herself for letting the cat in, although she swears if the rat had been in her mouth, she would have noticed. What! You think she had it in her pocket, Mom?
Anyway, I am left with a room in total disaster. What the heck, might as well make lemonade. I trip off to Bed, Bath and Beyond to pick up the bed jacks that I have been planning to install. No, Jane, no browsing. I LOVE that place - the coolest stuff. Wow, the vacuum fits under the bed now. Well, I guess I better clean under there before I put all the stuff back. Hmm, who put all this crap under there? Sort, fill large garbage bag and reorganize. One thing leads to another and hours later my room is immaculate. And organized. Woo hoo.
I finished off with sniffy clean sheets and totally washed bedding (to banish the rat cooties) just in time for bed. I say good night to parentals and head to the bedroom. A thought hits me. An evil thought. She wouldn’t. She WOULD. Would she? She’s used some pretty drastic tactics before – but it’s been a long time.
Me: Uh, Mom?
She: Yes.
Me: You didn’t coax the cat and rat into my room just to get me to clean it. Did you??