How It Went

We moved Alyssa to College Town the last weekend in July. It took three vehicles to carry all her stuff. I mean, she might have been able to condense it had it been absolutely necessary but since we had N’s truck (mostly for the desk and chair), my car and Alyssa’s car, we made the most of the room we had.

We started packing up the vehicles around 1:00 and were on the road by 2:00. It takes us about an hour and twenty minutes from driveway to driveway. So, yeah, not that big a deal.

We got all her boxes, the desk, the new air fryer, and, most importantly, her backpack in which Bubby, her stuffed dog, was zipped with just his head out for show, moved into the living room of N’s sister’s house. Poor L and T (L is N’s sister, T is the sister’s husband.)

We didn’t take it all upstairs, which is where A and N will be living (two bedrooms and a bathroom) because N wanted clean the rooms before filling them up with Lyss’s stuff. I get that but the piles of boxes in the living room made me feel bad for L and T.

Anyway! We offered to take A and N out to eat before we headed west for home. We ended up at Denny’s.

**Note to self: Do not order Denny’s patty melt…ever again. Remember those last twenty minutes in the car before the next gas station came into sight…just saying.**

Ahem. Lunch/dinner was fine, we headed back to the house to get my car and go home. We hugged in the house and then again in the driveway. Tom gave an exaggerated wail and the three of us, Tom, Olivia and I, got in my car.

We were fine even as Lyss waved from the front porch.

As we drove away, all was well. We were maybe twenty minutes away when Tom said something about Alyssa’s room.

For what it’s worth, we’d had this conversation before, with him insisting that it’s silly to keep it as it is because it’s SPACE and we need (read: HE needs that space.) He does not need that space. He has a barn (it’s a small barn but it’s still a BARN.), a detached garage with a loft (so, two stories) the entire basement, through which I walk a path between his rows upon rows of STUFF to the laundry room. He also has the family room and about a quarter of the living room.

All of that space mentioned in the paragraph above? It’s dedicated to eBay storage. Yes. Let that sink in.

So when I made some kind of noise when he mentioned taking of Lyss’s room all of three hours after she moved out for her freshman year of college, he asked defensively, “Well, what do you want to do with her room?”

I said simply, “I want to let it be her room.”

He wanted to know why. According to him, she’ll NEVER live in our house again.

Dude, never say never. And wait, what the actual hell? She’s eighteen years old. She’s going to come home for holidays, he has no idea if she’ll ever be home to live again. Instead of saying all that, I started crying.

Because why not?

He was shocked. Why was I crying? He said, “I thought you were over it.”

I sniffled. “I’m not crying because she’s moved away to school. I just want to let her keep her room in our house for at least this first year. We don’t know what’s going to come. She needs to be able to always come home.”

He made some kind of noise and I sniffled some more. My nose got all stuffed up from the crying and then the patty melt from Denny’s kicked in.

Just before we reached the gas station that brought me great relief, Tom agreed, “We can keep it her room for awhile.”

That’s big of him, right? But honestly, it’s the right thing to do, for her and for me.

The next morning, I woke up with a head cold. Late that day, as I walked around sniffing and coughing, Olivia asked me how I caught a cold.

I told her that Dad made me cry the day before and that made my nose stuffy and it just never got unstuffy.

She declared, “So it’s Dad’s fault you have a cold?”

Sure, let’s go with that.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Tom is VERY good to me. I fully admit that and am ever so grateful. I’m mean, the dude drove 18 miles on way recently to put air in my tire after my car alerted me that one of my tires was low. So there that.

But if that man does not stop putting two cuties a day in my lunch bag, I’m going to start throwing said cuties at his head.

Ahem.

Sorry.

Remember way back when I was pregnant with Alyssa and was diagnosed with gestational diabetes? No? Well, it happened.

And once I got that diagnosis, I saw a dietitian who gave me a bunch of charts and colorful diagrams of things I should be eating.

Tom took those charts and ran with them. He packed my lunch every day for almost twelve weeks. It was very sweet of him.

But he sent me way too much food. Every single day, I would open my lunch and be overwhelmed by how much food was there. It was all very healthy food (the bananas were a nice touch since he KNEW I wouldn’t touch those things if they were the last food on earth) but there was too much of it.

So, after being gently scolded the first couple of days for not eating all my food, I simply started chucking food (all biodegradable, I’m not a litterer) out the car window as I drove home each evening.

Uneaten peach? Out the window. (For what it’s worth, I do not eat peaches as one might eat an apple. The fuzz is a no-go for me.) A huge hoagie bun? Chucked out that window so fast. Hey, it would be a nice treat for some wild animal. You’re welcome, Bambi.

I just couldn’t deal with the food and I also didn’t want to deal with the mild looks of disappointment thrown my way when my loving husband took in what I’d eaten, and more importantly, what I hadn’t eaten that day.

So…it’s a long-running issue for us. He wants to take care of me and ‘feeding’ me is one of his love languages. I get that. I am also a grown-ass adult who can figure out my own food, thank you very much. So these days, I’m taking those stupid cuties to work and offering them to anyone and everyone who walks past my desk. And when they start to get a little wrinkled, into the trash they go.

Is it a waste? Yes. But it’s also not worth the ‘discussion’ we would have to have it I went home and said, as gently as possible, “I love you. And I love that you take such good care of me but enough with the cuties!”

Okay, I could probably word it differently but you know what? I hate confrontation so, so much. I hate confrontation almost as much as I hate bananas and milk. Over those things, I will confront the hell out of you. But cuties aren’t worth the stress and so…I’m drowning in cuties over here.

Impersonator

Tom’s been looking for a used car to purchase for his and Alyssa’s use. The one she currently drives to school and work is fine as long as it starts but that’s the iffy part, so he wants something a bit more reliable. He’s been perusing FB marketplace for vehicles. But see, the thing is, he doesn’t actually have a FB account. He doesn’t seem to think it’s necessary for him to have an account because I have one and I can keep in touch with his sisters and extended family for him. Huh. Of course this means that he’s using my account to look at vehicles and message the owners. I don’t actually care that he’s doing this. What’s the big deal? Well, the big deal comes along when he messages these people and pretends to be me talking to them, saying things like, “My husband is the one who will be coming to look at the car. I’ll hurry him along.” Yeah. I have never ‘hurried him along’ in all the years of our marriage. But this isn’t even that big a deal. It’s kind of funny to read the messages he sends out in which he’s impersonating me. But then he was communicating with a woman who is selling her vehicle and she mentioned that her son would be the one to show my husband the car because she is in the hospital receiving chemo or leukemia. Tom, pretending to be me, said to her, something along the lines of: Sorry to hear about the chemo. I went through that for breast cancer a few years ago. Just keep the faith and everything will be fine. You guys, please tell me that you KNOW I wouldn’t say that? Okay, so no, I didn’t actually say it but she thinks I did and it’s just so trite. No one who has been through cancer treatments would say that! We’d say something like, “Oh, I’m so sorry you’re going through chemo. That sucks so much. I’m wishing you the best.” We would not tell her to ‘keep the faith’ and ‘everything will turn out okay.’ It doesn’t always turn out okay, damn it! And those of us who have faced serious health issues know this. We don’t say that to each other. We just don’t. It’s kind of like those of us who’ve had a child in the NICU or suffered a loss. We don’t say things like, “Well, at least you know you can get pregnant” to a woman who’s recently suffered a miscarriage. We don’t say things like, “Hey, at least you have one baby” to someone who’s lost one of their twins. We know the odds aren’t always in our favor. We know that things can go bad from one heartbeat to the next. Keep the faith? Are you fucking kidding me? I ought to slap him for that. I know he meant well. I know that; which is why I’m taking deep breaths and thinking before I speak. I just…I don’t know how to explain to him why what he wrote was wrong. I don’t think he’d get it and it would probably hurt his feelings. So…I’m letting it all out here and reminding any readers who haven’t been through sucky times to maybe think about this stuff and how they might want someone to respond to them if they were to suffer something horrific. Just think about it.

A Long Drive

Alyssa’s car has been acting up lately. Tom thinks it might be the fuel pump. Sometimes, it just won’t start. The battery is fine, it has a spark, it just…won’t start. After a couple of tries, it usually fires up but it can be very frustrating when you’re somewhere that is not home and your car isn’t starting.

I supposed it’s a rite of passage to have to deal with an unreliable car. We’ve all been there, right?

My first car, a 1975 Gran Torino Elite was a wild ride. By the time I finally retired that thing (around 1990) I had to have a bottle of gasoline in the backseat of the car so I could prime the carburetor each time I wanted to start it. I couldn’t fill it up with gas because there was a hole in the top of the gas tank and every couple of days I had to top off the power steering fluid.

Yeah. Those were fun days.

But…because we can, we’re looking for a different car for Lyss. She has a lot going on and we want her to be safe while doing all the things.

Tom started searching on FB marketplace. He found a car with 90,000 miles that was for sale for a decent price. It was in Huntington. He contacted the seller, who told him there were no issues with the car. He gathered some cash and away we went.

Okay, that sounds simple enough. It wasn’t quite so simple. We left at about 5:15 on a Tuesday. Olivia and I had already done her social studies homework and her spelling homework at home. But we took her math worksheet with us so she could finish it in the car. We had a 73 mile trip ahead of us.

I sat in the backseat with Olivia so I could help her with her homework. For what it’s worth, she did it mostly by herself. Go Liv!

Alyssa sat up front with Tom, who drove. Even though he’s very familiar with Huntington, Tom had Lyss use the GPS on her phone; which was the first mistake.

Wait, the GPS was the second mistake. The first mistake was even bothering with this car, though maybe that’s not fair, the pictures posted on FB marketplace were excellent pictures, they just didn’t tell the whole story.

Anyway! We drove, Olivia did homework, Alyssa studied for two exams (physics and anatomy) and I sat back and enjoyed not having to drive.

We followed the directions given by Alyssa’s phone…sort of. Tom did make poor Siri recalculate the directions a couple of times. But whatever.

We finally made it after driving for an hour and fifteen minutes. Tom pulled into the driveway of an out of the way farm. There were about a thousand chickens running around along with at least fifty cats and kittens.

There was only one dog loping around with a woman and two men. One of the men was in filthy shorts than hung to below his knees, socks that came up to mid-calf and a greasy T-shirt.

Tom got out of the car to go talk to the dudes about the Fort Taurus they had for sale.

The girls and I watched the chickens. At one point, a rooster attempted to accost one of the hens. Olivia saw the action and said with glee, “They’re going to do it!”

Let’s remember, she’s 13 and so is surrounded by 13 year old boys. Yikes.

The hen did not consent and so nothing untoward happened beyond the rooster making overtures that were firmly turned down.

After about twenty minutes Tom and one of the dudes got in the car that was for sale and went for a drive.

It was at this point that I realized that Tom had taken the keys to my car with him.

Let that sink in. He drove away with a stranger (neither of them wearing a mask!) with MY keys. The girls and I were left in my car with no way to leave if the need to leave happened to arise.

I told the girls to lock their doors. We continued to watch the chickens and the kittens. One chicken hobbled toward the car and we realized she was missing most of her right foot. It was so weird and creepy.

The dude in the filthy shorts stalked around the farmyard. The woman and her dog went about their evening business.

The car continues to get hotter and hotter. It wasn’t exactly hot outside but with three of us in that enclosed vehicle, breathing our hot breath and occasionally laughing because of the insanity of the situation, the windows steamed and the interior temperature rose.

Tom and Dude 1 came back. They talked a little more. The girls and I cracked our doors open, scaring some chickens and getting fresh air.

Tom came to the car and told Alyssa she should drive it.

Then Tom and Alyssa got in that sketchy car and drove away, WITH MY KEYS AGAIN. This time, they left just me and Liv in my car, in that farmyard with BOTH of the creepy dudes hovering.

I felt like we were writing the first few pages of a horror story.

We locked the doors again and waited.

And waited.

And I got antsier and antsier. Olivia announced that she had to pee but she was going to wait until we got home to do so. Smart girl. (Spoiler: we took her to a grocery store in Huntington; she didn’t have to wait another two hours to relieve herself.)

Tom and Alyssa FINALLY got back from their little drive. Alyssa returned to the car, where she declared, “It’s a no.”

Tom continued to talk to the dudes, who tried to convince him that this car was totally a most excellent buy for our teenage daughter. It had a WOOFER in the trunk.

Tom told them Alyssa wasn’t quite the woofer type.

Then he told them that the pictures they’d posted did not show dents in the hood, the broken cruise control or the weird cobbled dash.

They argued that the cruise control being broken didn’t make the car undrivable.

Okay. I mean, that’s technically true but when you’re thinking about spending money in the four digits, you want something better. Or, if nothing else, you don’t want to feel like you’d been taken by some well-angled pictures.

Tom finally pulled himself away from the owner (though, apparently, the guy selling the car was actually the grandson of the owner…which…okay…that’s sketchy as hell) and his mechanic friend (that was the dude in the filthy clothes) and made his way back to the car.

We left as quickly as we could and made our way to town where we all used the facilities in the local grocery store and then went through the drive-thru at McD’s.

Tom drove into the McD’s parking lot and started to hand Alyssa a pad of paper, telling her to write down exactly what she wanted.

I offered, “You want me to do the ordering?”

He took me up on that offer so fast you’d think he was shy. Nah, dude just really hates ordering at the drive-thru.

So he took my place in the backseat, I took the driver’s seat and ordered food for my family without a single word being written down.

Tom was stunned by the low, low price of the food but then realized I hadn’t ordered anything for myself. My jaw had ached all evening and I just couldn’t bring myself to eat anything. I offered to drive us home so he could eat.

We made it home safely and were in bed a half hour later. It was an exhausting trip, is what I’m saying.

One Headlight

We keep a running list of items needed. You empty the box of Cheezits? Put it on the list that’s always on the microwave with seven pens, six of which don’t write. If you’re me, you will always have to try all seven pens to fine the ONE the works. But you won’t bother to throw away the six that don’t work. I mean, who do you think you are?

One recent Saturday, I went to get the grocery list and found Tom’s debit card on top of it with an item (or two?) listed. A stop at Auto Zone was going to be necessary to pick up this particular item.

He’d written “headlight bulbs, set of two, for 2012 Chevy Equinox.”

I was immediately disgruntled.

Wait. I know. Let me acknowledge right here that I KNOW I’m a brat. I also know that I’m spoiled.

But seriously, what the hell is the point of having a HUSBAND if said husband won’t go and fetch these sorts of things himself? So what if these particular bulbs were for MY car? Also so what if I didn’t even know I had a headlight out. I rarely drive after dark, so I had no idea how long I’d been driving with one headlight. Sue me.

So yes, since Tom was at the post office (as he is often on Saturday mornings) I had a mini tantrum over having to stop at Auto Zone and get bulbs for my car.

By the time he got home, which was right before the girls and I were leaving to go buy groceries…and stop at Auto Zone, I thought I’d gotten my little snit out of the way. I blandly said I’d seen the addition to the list and he joked that at least he wasn’t expecting me to go to Walmart and try and find the right bulbs myself, that at Auto Zone you just tell them what you need and they go get them for you. I may have rolled my eyes like a big old baby. I can’t be sure, I wasn’t looking in a mirror.

Apparently my ambivalence toward purchasing those bulbs came through, though, because we’d been on the road for maybe three miles (not long enough to cross the state line into Indiana) when Tom called.

Alyssa answered my phone because, hello, I was driving. She spoke briefly with her father.

When she hung up she said, “Dad said you don’t have to go to Auto Zone. He’s going to go to an antique store later today or tomorrow so he can stop and get the bulbs himself.”

Huh.

Well.

Never let it be said that I’m not contrary as hell.

Now that he’d said I didn’t need to stop at Auto Zone, guess who was going to Auto Zone.

My mom laughed at my bratty behavior and said that I was lucky to have Tom.

Yes, Mother, I know.

I really do know that. But I also STILL wish he’d just gotten the stupid bulbs, changed them and told me about it after. Sure, the trip into Auto Zone took less than five minutes but now I have to spend about five more minutes feeling bad for being a spoiled brat.

AND! And I had to go home and apologize to my husband for it. That’s just annoying.

Debunked

For the better part of 2020, Alyssa has been asking that we take down the bunkbeds in her room.

They stood in a corner of her room, taking up space and just being used as storage for her plethora of stuffed animals.

She’d had a full-sized bed in there for three years, so the room was pretty cramped.

Each time she’d mentioned taking the bunkbeds down, Tom would tell her that he needed to take pictures of the beds put together so he could list them for sale. He also listed not having anywhere to store the frame and mattresses once we took them down.

She recently asked again, saying that I’d said she could store everything in my room for the time being. He told her that once she got the bed cleaned off, he’d take pictures and we’d go from there.

When she got home from work on a Sunday, I told her to go take everything off the beds and let her dad take the pictures.

He went up, took the pictures, came back down and said something snippy about having to move crap from under the bed.

Sigh.

Then he said he’d go find an Allen wrench so we could start dissembling the bed frame.

Well.

Guess who else in this house has Allen wrenches!?!

I scurried up those stairs and fetched tool box. No, it’s not pink.

Alyssa and I were well on our way to finding the correct wrench when Sir Thomas made his way back up the stairs with his own Allen wrench set.

As he and Lyss worked to loosen the bolts I asked if I should get a baggie for the hardware.

The response I got was a VERY short, “Are you asking her?”

Alyssa and I shared a look. That response was so out of proportion to the question I’d just asked that I simply said, “Okay then. I’ll go get a baggie.”

I returned shortly with a baggie in which we put the bolts as they came out of the bed.

Sir Snips-a-lot was all giggles by this time. Apparently, the mood had passed.

I mildly mentioned that maybe he hadn’t needed to be quite so irritable with me. He apologized and we moved on.

The bed came down and the room has been rearranged to the teenager’s liking.

The next morning, I received another apology for the biting remark said during the takedown of the bunkbeds.

I knew we were pushing him to do something he didn’t really want to do but in the end, it took about a half hour of his time. So…I accepted his apology and all’s well in the Ordinary household.

Cooking Fail

I arrived home one recent Thursday afternoon.

The minute I walked in the door, I smelled garlic. Huh, I thought. Someone made Olivia what we fondly call ‘white noodles.’ It’s the Knorr brand ‘creamy garlic shells.’ The sauce is white, hence the name ‘white noodles’.

Once I’d put my purse down and taken my lunch dishes out of my bag and put them in the sink to be washed, Olivia ran to tattle on her dad and sister.

She declared, almost triumphantly, “Both Dad and Lyss failed at making me food today.”

“Oh?” I inquired, prompting her to continue her soliloquy.

“Dad burned the white noodles and Lyss made macaroni and cheese that was too dry.”

Then, she informed me, “I think you should just take me to McDonald’s for dinner since no one in this house can cook.”

Well, then..

Tom insisted that the white noodles were fine.

I took a bite of a single shell and asked him what he wanted from McD’s.

He said he’d eat the noodles. I shrugged and said okay but we were going to McDonald’s because those noodles were gross.

Olivia snarfed down her two cheese burgers and two thirds of an order of large fries. Tom had the last of the fries with his grody old white noodles.

Court TV

My husband loves watching the trials that are televised and commenting on them as they happen.

These days, it’s the Harvey Weinstein trial.

Recently, Tom, an old white dude, said something about not understanding why a woman who’d been raped would maintain a relationship with the man who raped her; which led to his hesitant belief that maybe some of the accusers were lying.

*Sigh*

I tried to explain it to him. I told him that some of the victims (most? All?) were aspiring actresses. They wanted to make it in a highly competitive industry. HW was a very influential man in that industry. These women, these VICTIMS, knew that to cut off all interactions with HW could detrimentally affect their careers.

Tom didn’t understand how a career could be more important than distancing yourself from your rapist.

Again, I tried to explain that sometimes, the least confrontation path is the best.

I told him that at some point in their lives, most women have had to make the decision to acquiesce rather than fight because fighting might make a bad situation worse. I told him that there are women who are afraid to say no to something because saying no is more dangerous than just going through with what’s happening to them. Sometimes, we women just hope to survive whatever is happening so that we can pick up the pieces after it’s over.

I know he didn’t get it.

I don’t think, even with my explanations, he CAN get. He’s never been afraid to walk alone at night.

He’s never been afraid to go walk to his car in a parking garage.

He’s never hesitated about getting into an elevator because it’s already occupied by a man or even scarier, by men.

He’s never felt like he had to glance over his shoulder as he’s leaving the mall, fearing for his safety on the walk to his car.

He’s white. He’s a man. He’s in the majority and he feels the safety of that. He can’t possibly understand how those who are not white men feel.

I think he tries…a little.

But I could feel the doubt in his mind where those women were concerned even after I’d explained how it was very possible for a woman who’d been raped to maintain a relationship with the man who’d raped her.

I kind of wanted to tell him to read the room. Remember who was speaking to him. Perhaps, for one moment, think about the fact that I, a woman, will absolutely understand another woman’s mind, her fears, her motivations, better than he ever possibly could. Hell, I might be wrong but I’m more likely to be right than he is.

And hey, maybe…just maybe, he should consider the fact that I know what I’m talking about when I talk about ‘rhetorical’ fears. Perhaps I even know from experience. I don’t think he’s EVER considered that possibility.

Broken

So I’ve mentioned that Tom spent most of 2019 broken.

It occurred to me recently that maybe it was his way of getting back at me for having cancer and having to go through treatments.

Oh come on, we all know it wasn’t a conscious revenge plot on his part but let’s admit I was a lot of work back in late 2017 and most of 2018.

So…maybe breaking bones was his way of slowing down, taking a minute and letting others do for him.

Sure, it seems like a pretty painful way to get a break but this guy works hard. He doesn’t stop on his own so I guess God, the universe, whatever you believe, decided to slow him down in the only way possible.

Not that he let us do much for him but he definitely slowed down.

He’s still limping a bit from that fall from the tree that broke his foot.

But he’s back at work (Ebaying) and getting out of the house (to go to antique stores, but still!) and he’s planning on going back up that damned tree and finishing the job he started the day he broke his foot. He says he’s going to use scaffolding next time, which he swears is safer than that he was using (a ladder? The tree itself? Who knows.) the day he fell.

Sigh.

I just pray that 2020 is a better, healthier, safer year for us all. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

That One Monday When I Was Cranky

One Monday night as we were heading to bed, Olivia asked me AGAIN, why I was always so tired and cranky.

First…it was a Monday.

Second, she asked me this at 9:30pm. I’d been awake since 5:30.

But to give a rundown of all the things that cumulated to make me cranky that night here’s the list:

I got home twenty minutes later than usual because I had to stop at Walmart before going home to buy packing tape. Do I use packing tape? No. I do not. But hell, since I am in town every single fucking day of the week, (you know, since I GO TO WORK) it’s no big deal to run into Walmart, is it? It’s way more convenient for me to do so than for the person who actually uses the damn tape to make a special trip to town to buy the tape. I mean, he never has to leave the house but we wouldn’t want to put him out and make him GO TO TOWN to purchase the items that help his business thrive. No, he has an assistant for that, right?

Ahem.

So, I walked in the door at 5:20. I’m informed that one of my children is on the toilet pooping. I’ll let you, dear reader, figure out which one. I mean, one of them wants help after she poops and one of them would rather die than require help from her mother after she moves her bowels. Again, I’ll let you decide which is which.

I leave the tape on the table, put the cash that was requested with the purchase of the tape on the counter. I look through Olivia’s folder and find her homework packet.

The pooping child announces, “I’m dooooone!” as I’m heading down the basement stairs. I suggest none-too-gently that perhaps she should wipe herself since I was BUSY.

Tom declared he was doing the dishes and couldn’t assist in the butt wiping.

The other child in the household said she was too busy doing her ab workout and couldn’t help either.

I transferred the clean, dry sheets from the drier to a basket. I put the clean, wet towels in the drier. I started the drier.

I paused and started watching HULU on my phone, a moment of peace in a world of chaos.

I finally headed back upstairs.

Guess who is STILL sitting on the toilet, waiting for someone, ANYONE other than herself to come and attend to her butt.

I stalked into the bathroom, told her to GET UP from the toilet. I gave her a wet wipe and told her to wipe her butt. She did and then she tried to hand me the used wipe! I told her to throw it away!

You guys.

I am so tired of dealing with anyone but my own bathroom issues I can’t even tell you.

I KNOW we’re lucky. I KNOW she’s doing great. I KNOW THIS. But I’m tired of it. SO TIRED.

Finally, we sat down to do homework. Sigh.

Through all this, there are sounds being made by several people in our house, (all of them except me) about us going to my mom’s house that evening.

I didn’t want to. I was tired. I just wanted to be home.

When homework was finally done at 6:05, I called my mom to let her know that we were JUST finishing up and she shouldn’t expect us.

She said that if we were hungry, we could come on over because she had food ready.

Fine.

At least I hadn’t taken my shoes off.

We drove to my mom’s. We ate. Olivia told stories and Alyssa amused my mom and Lloyd with her antics.

We got home at 7:15.

I went up to see if I needed to change the sheets on anyone’s bed. What does that entail? It requires me to SNIFF the sheets to see if they’re stinky. Yes. Let that sink in. I have to SMELL the sheets to see if they smell like urine.

It’s as gross as it sounds.

And she wonders why I’m cranky.

For what it’s worth, on this night, those sheets were not stinky. I repeat, NOT STINKY. So no beds needed to be stripped and remade. A small spark of joy in an otherwise long drudge of a night.

I just…I don’t even know. I don’t hate my life. Really I don’t. I know how good I’ve got it, relatively speaking.

I do realize that I don’t do more than any other mother and/or wife out there. It’s just that at the end of the day, I would like to be done. I’m tired, just like every other overworked parent in this world.

I would like my family to know that I’m sorry for my crankiness, though. They don’t deserve that. When I get like that, I need to just go find a quiet corner of our house and settle myself down.

As we settled in that night, Olivia said in the dark to no one in particular (I was the only other person in the room but whatever), "At least Dad's not tired and cranky all the time."

Yeah. At least she can count on Dad.

Scribbles

Olivia’s tendency to scribble on her school work is known far and wide. When she’s bored or doesn’t understand what’s expected of her, she’ll spend her time doodling on the paper she’s supposed to be working on.

Math is one of those things she’s most likely to scribble all over. She hates math.

I get it.

But I’m also frustrated by her scribbling because it means she brings home notes to which Tom wants me to reply.

Why that man can’t just sit down and write a reply himself is beyond me. Oh yeah, that’s right, teachers only want to hear from the parent called Mom.

Whatever.

Recently, O brought home one such note.

When I got home, she raced to greet me, starting in one some Miraculous Lady Bug story or something like that.

I read the note and Tom called from where he was reclining on the couch with his foot propped up (can you hear the eye-rolling that’s going on over here?) that I needed to reply to the scribble note that Olivia was losing screen time due to her scribbling at school.

Guess when her screen time ban was starting?

After dinner, that’s when.

She’d been on her table from 3:15 until I got home at 5:00 but once dinner was over, NO MORE TABLET.

Can you guess why that was the case?

I’ll give you a minute.

That’s right. The timeframe for lost tablet time was set so that I would be home during her time away from the tablet.

That way, I would have to deal with her all evening, finding things for her to do.

“Go read a book.”

“Get the colored (collared?) pencils and draw something.”

“Get out of my face and find some Barbies to play with!”

Those were just a few of the things I said to her during the three hours during which she was not allowed to be on her tablet.

Did she bother her dad?

Not much because a much more fun target was home.

I do know that we have to set parameters for her. I know that we have to find ways to make the scribbling stop but damn it, why can’t at least SOME of that time happen when I’m not there to have to actively parent?

Amazon Can Bite Me

A recent Monday afternoon I got home from work and was asked by Tom, “What music did you buy on Saturday?”

I didn’t buy music on Saturday.

He informed me that someone had purchased some music on Saturday and used his debit card to do it.

Huh. Weird. I texted Alyssa and asked her if she’d bought music from Amazon on Saturday.

She did not.

We went to my Amazon account and there was no record of music having been purchased on Saturday.

Tom went to his paypal account and there it was, a pending charge of $10.47 for Amazon music.

I suggested his card had been hacked.

But no. It hadn’t.

He did a little more digging and found ANOTHER charge to his card for an ‘unlimited Kindle’ account.

Olivia had gotten a Kindle the previous Christmas but hadn’t used it in at least five months because she dropped the damned thing.

As we all know, Kindle is an Amazon device.

Apparently, when you register a Kindle, you are automatically signed up for an unlimited account. You aren’t asked if you want this account, you are just signed up and you are then charged monthly for this service you don’t even know you have. Tom started getting charged in July for this because that’s when we almost bought a brace for his broken clavicle but we’d cancelled the purchase. Sadly for him, we didn’t delete his card from my Amazon account and Amazon made his card the default payment card.

This is lucky for me, though because I’d probably been paying that stupid Kindle charge since December and would have probably paid is FOR FREAKING EVER if Tom hadn’t caught it.

Cancelling that charge was not hard but it wasn’t easy either. It wasn’t just right there, asking you if you wanted it. I had to go into my account settings, my devices, my services and finally found it and was able to cancel it.

But wait, Amazon said. Are you SURE you want to cancel this service?

I’m sure as shit I want to cancel a service for a device that doesn’t even work anymore, you assholes!

Then, we found that we were paying another $40 for some kind of Amazon music service.

We cancelled that fucker too.

I have no idea how or when my account got signed up for that service either. But I’m pissed that Amazon can get away with this kind of thing.

We went ahead and cancelled all the cards associated with my Amazon account. From this point, I’ll just do what I do for Netflix and Hulu and buy gift cards if I want to purchase something off Amazon. Which honestly right now I don’t really want to give Amazon any more of my money.

Amazon can go screw itself.

Argumentative

This just in: Tom is wearing T-shirts!!

Why is this big news? Well, let me tell you! Back when he broke himself, he started wearing button up shirts because he couldn’t lift his arm high enough to put T-shirts on. He declared the day after he was broken that we’d know he was feeling better when he started wearing T-shirts again.

For the record, it only took nine weeks for him to start wearing T-shirts.

This morning, he was awake before I was, which, again, is a sign that he’s feeling better. For the past nine weeks he’s woken up as I’m walking out the door to go to work.

Anyway! He was awake because he needed to pack a 50 pound item that had sold on his eBay page. While he was broken, he had put his page on ‘vacation’. So having to pack means he’s back in business. Whew!

I asked him if he’d started packing even though there was no sign of packing.

He said that once I’d left, he’d sweep the kitchen floor and start packing.

See, apparently, he doesn’t like to pack on a dirty floor. Okay. Whatever. I’m just glad the floor gets swept by someone other than me once in a while.

While he was talking about the filth in which we life, he said that he doesn’t like to pack his items on the carpeted floor of the family room because of the hair.

I laughed and said something about our long-haired daughters.

He said that sometimes he found hairs about six inches long too.

I told him that even those couldn’t be mine because, hello, my hair is maybe four inches long.

He proceeded to argue with me about how long my hair is. He pulled up a few strands and used his hand to measure them.

Whatever. My hair is not six inches long yet. I wish it was that long. I can’t wait until it is; but it’s not there yet.

He finally let it go, realizing I wasn’t going to agree that my hair is as long as he was insisting it was.

A few minutes later, he suggested that something that had happened with Olivia the day before might mean that she was about to start her period.

I said it could be but it seemed like she’d just had it a couple of weeks before.

He was sure it had been at least three weeks, perhaps four.

I shrugged, muttering something about how since I took care of her during these times I might know a little better than he did about when it happened.

He laughed and declared that I was being really argumentative.

“No, I’m not.” I argued, “I’m just explaining to you how I’m right and you’re wrong.”

Then I kissed him and left for work because that’s just how we do things around here.

Huh...

Olivia had an orthodontist appointment recently.

Because Tom hates (HATES!!!) appointments that are not near the end of the day, I specifically asked for a later appointment, even though it’s summer.

To be fair to him, he’s less loathing of early appointments in the summer but when school is in session, he can be kind of a jerk about having to go to the school, pick up either (both?) child(ren?) and then bring her/them to her/heir appointments.

He acts like I’ve committed one of the seven deadly sins if this happens. Which sin would that be? Probably sloth, I feel like I'm all over that one.

But anyway, this time her appointment was for 3:10 (pm, obviously, why on earth would I set up an appointment for 3:10am? I don't even know.) And since she (and he…for what it’s worth) are both home all day, bringing her to town for the appointment is not really a hardship.

And what’s more, I get leave work EARLY so that I can meet them at whatever appointment is happening so he doesn’t even have to STAY for the appointment.

Yeah, he’s got a really hard life.

So the morning of the appointment, as I was leaving for work at 6:30 so I could get my full 8 hours of work in and still leave at 3:00 for the appointment, he followed me around the kitchen (for the record, our kitchen is not that big) asking me to remind him of what needed to be done before he and Liv left for her appointment.

I ended up writing him a note with the time of the appointment and all the things I’d like him to do for Livie, such as brush her teeth (it WAS an orthodontist appointment, duh) and brush her hair because, well, she needs her hair brushed before going out in public lest she look like she lives in a van with her delinquent parents.

I’d already laid out her clothes for the day. I’d washed her hair the night before. I’d started even started a load of sheets in the washer that I will put in the drier when I get home.

I mentioned to him the things Liv and I were going to do after the appointment and that was when he said, “So you’re not going back to work?”

Wait, what? Why in the world would I go back to work? First of all, her appointment wouldn’t be done until at least 4:00, and hello, I’ll have the child with me, should I take her to work with me and let her watch me work for twenty minutes? The whole freaking point of making the late appointments (for ME) is that I get to leave work and NOT GO BACK.

He shrugged and said, “Well, they’d probably let you work until 5:00, which would give you almost another hour.”

Yes…he was sort of joking; but not completely.

And see, here's the thing, I wouldn’t have to leave work early to begin with if HE would stick around with her for the appointment, then schedule the next appointment and after that run to the bank and deposit Alyssa’s most recent paycheck and then go to Walmart and buy me a data card for my phone and then take Olivia to dinner because, hello, she ALWAYS gets to eat out after an orthodontist/dentist/eye doctor/regular doctor appointment. That’s just the way it is.

But that doesn’t happen and so…I go to work early to get my hours in so I can leave early.

Then I run around taking care of LIFE things while he goes home and rests on the couch because driving Liv to town and then driving himself home is EXHAUSTING.

Which, okay, it probably was very tiring what with him being BROKEN and all. But still!

When he made the suggestion of me working until 5, I just blinked at him because, seriously? You want to talk about who is working what hours these days?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Waking Up

Tom loves Court TV, a new addition to the plethora of channels that he gets through his antenna.

He watched the trial of the man being tried for the murder of his wife (she apparently strangled, or was strangled, while drunk one evening while he sat in his car, also drunk/high.) He very much enjoyed the trail of the dude in Florida who kidnapped and killed the nanny.

He just finished up watching the trial of the caretaker in a retirement home who was being tried for the murder/neglect of a 91 year old man.

In the caretaker case, the defendant is a young(ish) black man. I only mention race because Tom thinks this guy is innocent and that he’s only on trial because of his race.

Let that sink in.

The man who used the word ‘colored’ when we met over seventeen years ago is waking up. This old white dude is starting to see how unfair the world is to everyone except those exactly like him.

I can’t even find the words to explain how amazing this is.

I’ve been in a shitty mood since the last presidential election. I know, that’s a long time to be angry but unless you’re another old white dude, you get what I’m saying.

I can’t be in the same room if Tom has 45 on the television because just the sound of his voice, let along the horrible things he actually says makes me want to scream.

So to have my husband, a man I tell daily that he’s an old white dude so please don’t think I’m talking behind his back, to finally SEE the world for what it really is, is just so gratifying.

It doesn’t fix anything that’s going on in the world, but it soothes my soul when I’m in my own home.

I just had to put that out there.

He’s waking up and it’s glorious! If this old white dude can wake up at 59 years old, there’s hope for other old white dudes to wake up and stop eating the bullshit that 45 is feeding them.

And please, I know that it’s not only old white dudes who support that idiot. I know that. Hell, I have several (many?) FB ‘friends’ who are 45 supporters and some of them are women, so even having a uterus doesn’t stop people from being stupid or blind.

It’s sad.

But wait, back to the happy news. There’s an old white dude in northwestern Ohio who is waking up!! There’s hope for our world.

Insurance and Physical Therapy

My insurance very kindly (insert heavy sarcasm) approved me for four whole physical therapy sessions.

Isn’t that grand? (Yes, Alyssa, I STILL hate that word, I’m being snarky here and so…it fits.)

If you’ve done any sort of research on lymphedema (obviously, at this point, I HAVE done just a little research) you know that it’s not something that is cured. Once you have it, you’ll always have it.

Joy.

So, four whole PT sessions are probably not going to make a huge dent in my potentially gigantic left arm.

Okay. Yes, four sessions are better than none.

I will learn as much from these sessions as I can and try to control the lymphedema at home with exercise (Ha! Hahahahaha.) and gentle massage.

Please believe me when I say that I will be administering said gentle massage myself. I will not be asking my husband to massage my stupid arm. My arms are gross. I don’t want him to touch them.

It was bad enough when the poor fellow had to cram gauze into my boob incision. Imma pass on him massaging my flabby, fish-belly white arms.

I do realize how vain I sound. Whatever. I own it. I’m vain. I haven’t worn a tank top in public since 1995 because I hate my arms. Yes. That’s true, not even a little bit of exaggeration.

I may be the queen of hyperbole, but this time, it’s not needed. It has literally been 24 years since I wore a tank top in public. A swim suit at the pool or lake does not count because honestly, wearing a stupid T-shirt over your swimsuit just emphasizes your fatness. No offense to anyone who does wear a T=shirt, just sharing how I feel about it when it comes to MY body. So...yeah.

I just don’t want to be that woman at Walmart waltzing around with my giant blubbery arms hanging from my grody shoulders without some sort of sleeve covering the dimpled flesh.

So.

Four sessions of PT.

What the hell is wrong with our health care system?

I know. So many things, right?

Why do insurance companies get to decide what kind of and how much treatment a person gets? Shouldn’t that be up to the doctors, the patient, the therapists?

I’m preaching to the choir here, I get that. But it just makes me crazy to think that some bureaucrat out there is deciding that my arm (my stupid, stupid arm) needs four therapy sessions.

Yeah…we’ll see.

Picking Strawberries

So, Tom hurt himself (shhhhh, he doesn’t want me to tell anyone) and so he’s been kind of down for the count for about a week. He slammed his shoulder into the corner of an archway and yeah, he’s broken.

The day before he hurt himself, my mom invited us over to pick strawberries. She’s got a bad knee and so picking berries or any kind of gardening is kind out for her right now. She, because she’s smart, been to the doctor and is doing the things necessary to hopefully get better.

Tom…because he’s a stubborn dude, hasn’t seen a doctor but I made him start wearing a sling about three days after his injury. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway. We picked strawberries on a Saturday. The following Tuesday afternoon I got home from work and the first thing Olivia asks me if if we can go to Gram’s.

I kind of shrug and say I don’t really want to.

But Tom pipes up with the suggestion that we do go to Gram’s because those strawberries aren’t going to pick themselves.

Sigh.

I hate picking strawberries.

I hate gardens in general because they’re so much work. There’s the planting, the weeding, the harvesting, the preserving of the harvest.

Ugh. So much work.

Alas, I am currently the only able-bodied adult in our immediate family and so the strawberry picking falls to me.

Tom instructed Alyssa to help…and she did, to a point.

But she’s a teenager, she doesn’t have a lot of gardening experience. She wandered around the strawberry patch, picking the occasional berry that caught her eye. She didn’t stop and bend and move the leaves of the plants and find all the berries that hide beneath the plants. And it’s fine. I didn’t tell her to do any of that.

About a half hour into our picking spree, she declared she was done. I think she might have swallowed a bug or touched a spider or something but she was completely over being outside in a strawberry patch. I made her trade bowls with me since mine was three-quarters full and hers was…not.

And to be fair to her, she’d been outside all day at high jump camp. She was tired too.

I picked for another twenty minutes or so, through my mom coming out onto her deck to yell that I could be done if I wanted to.

Yeah, except too bad for me, there were still berries to be picked.

All I could think about when I thought about quitting was that if Tom or my mom were out there and able to pick those stupid berries, neither of them would stop picking until there wasn’t a single ripe berry left to be picked.

Those two put the rest of us schlumps to shame. Their work ethic makes me feel like a lazy schmuck who never puts in a full day of work.

Which…isn’t necessarily wrong, but I don’t like to be made to feel like that. I mean, I fully admit to being lazy but it’s awful to be reminded of it on a regular basis.

But hey, to end on a positive note, since I sweated my ass off in a strawberry patch for over 45 minutes, bending and stretching and kneeling and wheezing, I didn’t have to drag my big, lazy butt out and walk that evening. Look at me, always looking for the bright side.

Okay, Fine

In an effort to be transparent (because when am I not?), let me confess that I’ve continued to walk for a half hour each day after work and while the actual walking part is still miserable and unpleasant, the aftermath hasn’t been nearly as awful as it was those first few days.

Please don’t take this to mean that I’ve finally found my endorphins.

No. Not even close.

But I’m not nearly as sad and miserable as I was those first few days.

I’m not happy by any means but I can smile and find things to enjoy in the evening hours after my walk.

I don’t sit there and bask in pleasure at having actually walked but as long as I don’t have to get up and walk around on my sore, tired feet, I can laugh at the stupidity of ANTM Cycle 20 and enjoy my time with my lovelies.

I can be amused by Tom’s never-ending optimism when he leaves out half a tomato and half a green pepper, thinking that if they’re on the counter, I might actually eat them.

Ha.

No.

If I’m going to drag my carcass out into the yard to walk for 30 minutes, I probably am not going to be ingesting any calories afterward.

Please be reassured that I am not starving myself. I eat plenty during the day to cover the caloric deficit of the evening hours.

I’m just at an age where I know that if I eat after a certain hour, I will be miserable in the night. So no matter how light the meal is, if it’s eaten after 8pm, it will cause heartburn.

Damn. I’m middle aged, aren’t I?

How sad.

Though…the alternative is even sadder. So hey, let’s spin it another way. Yay, bring on middle age!!!

The aches, the pains, the occasional insomnia, the checking the clock to see if I should skip the caffeine, the heartburn, the covering the gray roots, the thin, sagging skin…the list goes on but again, the alternative is worse than anything on this list.

Bring it, middle age!

No...with a Side of PSTD

think I have post-traumatic stress syndrome left over from the twelve years of sleep deprivation I suffered at the hands of my wonderful, loving, adorable, EVIL children.

Why do I think this, you ask?

Let me tell you!!

First, background (because I can’t just jump into a story, I have to give background and make it that much longer, right? Right.) Mother’s day was lovely. Tom and the girls were very kind to me and I got some wonderful things and loving words. I slept in, Tom made breakfast, Alyssa got me a bamboo plant that I took to my desk at work. All great things.

Alas, laundry does not care that it was Mother’s day. Laundry sat in the basement in great piles and taunted me. It reminded me that I better not spent too much time at my mom’s celebrating HER because that laundry was not going to do itself.

So I did laundry all afternoon on Sunday, as it my curse. (Let me stop here and say that I don’t actually mind doing laundry. In all actuality, in this day and age, it kind of actually does do itself. One simply loads the washer and then the washer does the actual work. The dryer is the same. I don’t even mind folding and putting away all that laundry. I feel like it’s a labor of love for my family. Yes, seriously.)

Anyway! The laundry was taking FOREVER because I chose to also wash all the sheets that day.

Tom offered to ‘help.’ As in, he’d load and unload the machines but he’s not one for folding or putting away.

He also always overloads the washer which means it take two cycles in the dryer to finish a load. Ahem.

So…I ended up leaving only a load of towels unlaundered Sunday night.

When I got home from work in the Monday after Mother’s day, Tom had washed and dried the last load of towels.

He’d also done a bit of research on bedwetting. He’d done this FOR ME, don’t you know?

More backstory, I wet the bed until I was eight years old. My mom was so great about never making me feel bad about this. It was just something I couldn’t help doing.

Our house is a house of bedwetters. We can’t help it. One of us stopped at nine years old. The other…well, let’s remember that the freaking cards are stacked against her. Not only did she get the bedwetting gene from her mother but also probably from her father (not going there, not this time) but she also, unluck of the draw, was born with a syndrome that causes problems with potty training and all that entails.

I don’t mind washing sheets several times a week. I don’t mind that she sometimes needs a shower firs thing in the morning. She sleeps through it all and that means, YAY, I sleep through it too.

Have I ever mentioned that Alyssa, that darling girl whom I treasure with every cell in my body, didn’t sleep through the night until she was two years old?

I have? Oh, okay, well, there it again, written out for all to see.

And, just for the record, let’s remember that my sweet Olivia, light of my life, didn’t sleep through the night until she was EIGHT (8) YEARS old. Yes. YEARS. As in, she woke up every single night, at least twice, sometimes four or five times for more than TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND TWENTY (2920) nights. That’s not even adding in leap years or that last month of nights from when she turned eight in late November and then, FINALLY, in December started sleeping through the night. Sit on that and ponder how I came out even semi-sane.

Ahem.

So.

That Monday afternoon, my better half had done some research on bedwetting and alarms one can purchase that will go off at the first sign of dampness.

He was thrilled to find that he could purchase one such alarm for the low, low price of $23.95.

Wouldn’t it be great, he thought, if the child who still wets the bed (for what it’s worth, she wears Pull-Ups and they don’t leak all that often) were to learn to wake up when she felt the need to pee?

Sure. It would be awesome if she did that. Not just for us but mostly for her. We want her to have that freedom, that sense of maturity and maybe even, someday, spend the night at a friend’s house without having to worry about the stress of Pull Ups and/or wetting the bed.

And yet…when he showed me the picture of the kid on the website wearing that alarm, I had to hold back tears.

Look at this picture:

Doesn't everyone feel panicky at the sight of that peaceful imp, just sleeping so soundly, alarm ready to BLAST him and the entire population in the tri-state area awake at the first hint of moisture?

The very thought of being woken up several times a night by a screeching alarm for, what weeks, or oh please dear Heaven, no, months?

I can’t go back to that.

We’ve been sleeping well for four years. But those four years haven’t erased the twelve years prior to that when I was woken up no fewer than two, most nights four times every single night for YEARS.

Is it selfish of me?

Probably.

Should I get over myself and do what’s best for my kid?

Obviously.

And I probably will but I had to put this out there, that sense of doom and depression that sets in at the thought of going back to being woken up over and over and over again each night for who knows how long.

I dread it. I feel panicky at the thought of it. It makes me sick to my stomach just considering the possibility of starting those nights of being pulled from a deep sleep, stumbling around, helping her to the bathroom, finding dry undies, resetting the alarm and then doing it again and again and again.

Tom could tell that I was not into his idea. (Yet another parenthetical: He always gets a little pissy when I don’t immediately embrace and applaud his ideas. He’s a little princess about that kind of thing…sigh.)

I tried to explain to him that he didn’t understand my panic because he wasn’t the one who got up with those two demons angels every night for years.

He offered to set up a cot in the family room and sleep down there with our darling until the alarm did its job and trained her brain to wake up when she needs to pee.

Ha. Hahaha.

Right.

He’s a funny, funny guy.

We all know who will be responding to that stupid alarm if we go that route. And it won’t be Not-The-Mama.

I’ll grin and bear it and I’ll come here and bitch and moan about it, because it’s what I do. But I can’t promise to be sane when this is all over. That, my dears, is simply asking too much.

Foul Ball

The last track meet of the season (not counting the BBC meet – aka Buckeye Border Conference) was the first Monday in May. It was a make-up invitational meet that had to be rescheduled due to ridiculously cold temps and monsoon-like rains. This spring, I tell you, has been the wettest in forever.

There are ponds where there hadn’t been before, rivers are overflowing and there’s mud everywhere. It’s as if we moved to the wetlands of Florida without the warm temperatures. I’m over it.

Lucky for us, the weather on that Monday was quite lovely. The sun shone intermittently and the wind, while brisk, was not blustery. Did I mention that the wind at these freaking meets has been horrible? Yes, it really has.

Back to the meet.

It was held in Hicksville, a small town (though bigger than our town) about twenty minutes south of us. The track in this town is not at the school. It’s across town, actually. It’s in what they call the ‘athletic fields’. The football field is there as well as several baseball diamonds. #foreshadowing

Parking was awful that day. There were at least two baseball games going on. The track meet was an invitational, so there were at least six teams there along with all the attending parents and grandparents. There was also a soccer game being played somewhere among the fields.

And what the actual hell, Ohio drivers? Why must you all park like you’re driving a $100,000 car? You can’t be bothered to actually park close enough to the car next to you so as to NOT take up two space each?

Lucky for me (ha!) I work at a place with the narrowest parking spots in the tri-state area. So too bad for you, but I’ve become an excellent parker. Not to brag, but I can wedge my Chevy Equinox into the tightest space imaginable and do it in one try.

So my mom and I arrived at the meet, we found the last parking spot left by the obnoxious Ohio drivers and their horrendous parking abilities.

We paid our $5 to get in and made our way to the high jump, which, wheee, was close to the port-o-pots I needed to use because I have a bladder of a field mouse. Port-o-Pots are NASTY.

While I was in there, I heard them announce the results of the girls’ high jump?

What? We were maybe ten minutes late, who were the girls already done with the high jump?

Apparently, they’d started a half hour earlier than I’d thought they were starting. Huh.

Alyssa tied for second place, by the way. Go her!! Wish I’d seen it.

We left the high jump and headed to the bleachers beneath which Alyssa and her teammates had placed their bags. Why they feel the need to hunker down beneath the bleachers like a bunch of hoodlums at every single meet is beyond me. I do not claim to understand the minds of today’s teenagers. Let’s face it, I’m old.

Alyssa came out and told us she’d cleared 4’6” again, which was awesome. It’s her current record for this year. She was quite proud of herself, as she should have been. I was proud of her too.

She didn’t end up running in any races, so, my mom and I paid $5 each to watch her sit on a grassy knoll across the track from us. That was great fun.

We finally decided we’d had enough of the brisk wind, the shouts of other parents nearby and the non-visits from our favorite high school athlete, so my mom and I headed back to my car to go home.

As we approached my car, the lady in the car next to mine asked me if my car was mine.

Uh-oh, I thought. Did she think that since I’d had to park a little close to her vehicle that I’d dinged her door? I hadn’t but I didn’t know if she knew that.

I told her that it was indeed my car.

She pointed to it and said, “It was hit by a baseball.” Then she pointed to a dude and his dog. The dude was holding a baseball. He said he was getting it for is dog.

Oh.

Okay, then.

Apparently the ball the dude was holding was the ball that had hit my car. I glanced at my car from the front and didn’t see any damage. I moved toward the driver’s side door and still didn’t see any dents. Thankfully, I didn’t see any broken windows.

The lady in the neighboring car pointed to my drivers’ sideview mirror.



Ahh, there it was. The fixture itself wasn’t broken but the mirror that sits in the fixture was shattered.

That was a hell of a hit from the baseball diamond. Alas, poor kid, it was definitely a foul ball.

By this point, the dude with the dog had absconded with the baseball that had hit my car. I wondered why he’d want a ball that probably had glass shards in it for his dog. Weirdo.

I called Tom to see if I needed something from the baseball people in case we had to make an insurance claim. He said they’d probably believe us that a ball hit the mirror.

I place the mirror, which was hanging on by a couple of wires, gently back into the fixture and started for home.



I crawled over speedbumps and it held all the way through town.

Alas, the first time a truck passed me going the other direction, the blast of wind caused the mirror to fall out of the casing, it dangled at a lovely angle that allowed me to see myself in profile the rest of the way home. That was a special kind of torture.

By the time I got home, Tom had already ordered a replacement mirror off eBay for $37.90. He’s pretty sure he can change it out himself.

I do know that it could have been so much worse. It could have been the back window or even the sun roof. So…while it sucks, I’m not losing any sleep over a broken side view mirror.