road-alalie

Preperations for my roadtrip underway... things packed: travel connect four, special artfeatured playing cards, $5 in change, and a hat.

Places i'm not going: Yellowstone, GrandCanyon, New Orleans. Expected places we'll stop: Hastings Nebraska- they have a great koolaid and natural history museum. Search for: the biggest ball of stamps. Hope to: go waterrafting in Colorado. Eat at the taste of chicago. Buy high-grade fireworks.

Yes, Just Then I Had Nothing To Blog About, But Now...

So I'm driving home and on the phone (handsfree) with my roadtrip partner in crime to be. It's a sunny warm day and traffic is moving at a good clip, 5 miles from home. Coming home early in fact. The fast lane. Lately avoiding the slower lanes because the trucks crush the pave and make it like a 3rdworld roadhazard from one huge crack and dip to the next.

The fast lane though, the fast lane is smooth sailing. Until suddenly there's some rapid breaking and dodges to the left shoulder. Real fast. In tandem. And me, left with pie on my face. Except the pie is a 3ft long 7in" tall and just as thick, hunk of metal. And i think, well, fuck i'm going to hit it, and oh shit, no, it's not going to clear my car. In one immobile mocking swoop it cracked my bumper, took out my radiator, ripped the coolant line, gashed my oil pan, punctured the transmission pan and sent my OH FUCK! button blinking. But just initially i said, Oh, my gosh, i just hit something. Yes, yes, i am going to pull over- as the impact sent dust into my air vents... I watched it spiral to the side and less harmfully parrelled the oncoming traffic and i saw a truck pulling over to the shoulder and wondered if he'd maybe lost a carthrashingdevice. For a few blissful seconds the car seemed okay. i made it to the 2nd lane when ! "ohshit" light came on and then to the slow lane where the check engine light aka "you're fucked" also signaled my steady decline from okay to not.

I thankfully, speedily made it off the freeway, not interrupted by one car, and had enough time to pull under the overpass as my car began to sputter and die. I remained on the phone with my friend, watching the life of my car ooze down the cement, floods of green and black oily death. She expressed her concern that I'd also just lately gotten a ticket and then i mentioned to her that a car hurtled at her just a few weeks ago as she stood by some guys parked car, and he crashed. I began to immediately worry for our safety on the trip. Then: how am i getting to work? And: Oh, yah, this is my parents car and dad saying, well it's only worth $4,000 and now we've got $2,500 worth of damages and blah blah blah.... I'm not quite ready to buy a car I thought. And shouldn't I call someone about the carthrashingdevice? Has someone already called? Has someone else already hit it? Who lost it? Who for fucksake put it there and left it for me to hit? But I should probably call someone shouldn't I??

In instant replay i continue to hit the object deadon. I think about swerving and if i do it punctures my tire, blowing it, and i spin out and get thrashed by oncoming traffic. In instant replay i swerve and miss it and the next guy hits it. In instant replay the other cars honk and warn me in time, but I still hit it. I still hit it. Still. And my car is still not okay.

she said, "cheeeeese!"

dear God,

It's me, penelope. This letter serves as my formal request: please don't ever let me become Angry Mom. You know who I mean. Every mom gets mad, annoyed, and/or frustrated at her kids now and then, or feels just angry in general, about whatever. But some moms walk around as Angry Mom, with perpetual Angry Chips on their perpetually Angry Shoulders, and they are no picnic to be around. They scowl and snarl, they never comb their hair. They snipe at their kids constantly, nothing the little ones ever do is right. They seem to hate their husband, their lot in life, the whole world in general. They complain, they scowl some more, they never ever laugh. And I know, it's true, I don't know their plight, so who am I to judge.

But I do know that these women radiate Deathly Hostility Rays onto the world, out at the store or wherever, particularly drawing a bead on any fellow mother who seems at all less dissatisfied with her own life. Women who enjoy their children, say. Or, let me be more specific: women who are clearly oblivious to how annoying children are or, if they aren't now, surely will be one day. (And you're having another? they ask with their eyes. Huh, good luck with that.)

Then, possibly even more grating, is Angry Mom who feels you couldn't possibly appreciate your children enough. The one who might keep her hair neat, but the smile remains just as pinched. This one says, with an air of sullenness about her, Be grateful for what you have. It's like, in supposedly saying something nice about your child, i.e. You really were blessed with a wonderful little girl, she is also insinuating, but you couldn't possibly understand that, could you. Since you (I) only have one kid and all. And because her own cute, polite, and well-behaved children are clearly so horrible and not up to snuff. She resents you from the start.

This latter Angry Mom then grows into Angry Regret-Projector Mom, and older mom who accosts you, traps you into a corner, and falls just short of grabbing your arm and twisting a little bit. She gets in your face and says, No really, you must enjoy your children now, I insist.

***

Dear Angry Moms,

I've got it covered, back the eff off. Though, I am sorry for your plight.

xo,
penelo-hag


***

Dear God,

Me again. So, do we have a deal? I would be eternally grateful, thanks.

xo,
penelope

interlude

For now i will give you my thoughts on the following:

-Waiting to transfer your CC$ till after a low intro APR offer lapses is a bad idea. It's just going to cost you more money all around.
-Make sure your tank is full and your tires are properly inflated before a roadtrip. It helps to save gas. and keeps you from almost running out 5 miles before the starbucks you're trying to get to so you don't have to call your friend who is ahead of you and ask how many miles before the next gas station.
- Wd-40 can solve almost anything. like that squeak in the back right corner of my car that was driving me crazy. totally gone!
-When trying to fly a kite at the beach make sure there is actually a breeze and that whoever you bring with you isn't allergic to the sun or paranoid about her purse getting stolen.
-Taking magazines from the reception areas IS fun.
- Make friends with the tech guys. They can install wonderful things. Like the "watchnow" feature on netflix. Which by the way, so awesome- recently watched: Who the (#*$@( is Jackson Pollock. Lovely documentary, good commentary on the game of art and why what is worth so $$much.

drama at the yard sale!

Yard sales are funny. Just like an airport, they're a fabulous place to people-watch. Shoppers will haggle over a quarter, women will tell you to your face that your prices are too high and that the clothes you're selling (and that they're buying) are ratty. Old men look through your old VHS movies and tell perverted, out-of-context jokes that you don't know what to do with. Mexican families who speak about 10 words of English between them show up by the van-load and peruse items with a very specific sort of frugality and intensity. Usually at yard sales, I don't sell a lot. You put in a lot of work the week or two before, compiling items, pricing them out, making and hanging signs, placing an ad, and crossing your fingers that sacrificing a perfectly good Saturday morning typically spent sleeping in and lounging around in your pj pants will be worth it.

Yesterday's sale was actually worth it. I was fortunate this time to do the yard sale at a neighbor's house with a great setup. I didn't even have to go in on the ad (I wasn't allowed), or hang signs. My neighbor had a lot more things to sell and made a boatload more money, but for me, who didn't have one item over $2, I did pretty good, raking in about $60. We had a regular stream of traffic from about 45 minutes before the sale officially started, through til noon. The better part of the morning was also cloudy, which means it wasn't as brutal a heat as it could have been, for a North Carolina morning in June.

Drama pulled up in an SUV midway through the sale in the form a mother (early 30s) and daughter (about 7), with their little chihuahua/Boston-mix puppy. They lived just around the corner. The mom was friendly enough, loquacious with both us and the other yard salers, and seemingly down to earth. She picked out several Brat Pack movies from the VHS box, so you know she had to be all right. The interesting thing about her shopping method, though, was the level of indiscrimination. Yard salers tend to be quite picky; most know what they're looking for, and if it's not there, sayonara. And people want a bargain, yes, but if they're on the fence at all about something, regardless of how cheap, it seems like more often than not, they walk away. This lady did not walk away from much of anything. If she or her daughter liked the item even a little bit, onto the pile it went. Armloads of clothes, kid crafts, videos, my entire stack of CDs. She barely looked at stuff before deciding yes, I totally want that toothbrush holder/tissue box cover/soap dispenser set for my bathroom. She didn't care if it was cracked, or if the clothes had holes. A few items my neighbor even tried to talk her down from, and she dismissed it. Not a problem, she said. Some yard salers, too, are in the resale business, like for flea markets and eBay, but this women acted as though she intended to use each and every item. And no special occasion, either. She didn't seem like a career yard saler, it just seemed like they were out for a random Saturday jaunt to sales around the neighborhood.

Under an hour later, all the lawn chairs we had been sitting on and the surrounding patch of driveway were filled with piles of the To Be Bought. Something in my brain told me not to get too excited about the biggest sale of the day before I actually had cash in hand, but I added up the items anyway, and gave her a loose estimate of $17, which was quite a markdown. My neighbor also intended to give her a break, but while she was deciding the price, the woman sunk down into one of the chairs. All the color drained from her face, neck and shoulders, and her eyes closed. Shopped until she literally dropped. Clearly she was having some sort of moment, and my initial guess was that she became dehydrated and overheated in the now-present sun. She had trouble forming sentences, giving out her husband's phone number so we could call him for help. She couldn't manage to drink any water. The daughter, while helpful, remained interestingly unphased. If the girl was really worried, she didn't show it.

The cynical, skeptical asshole side of me starts to think that either a) this woman realized how much she was about to spend and was embarassed she didn't have the cash with her, b) she is a yard-sale scammer, and would somehow walk away with all this stuff for a ridiculously low price, or c) that this is something she does for attention. The nice, sympathetic, non-asshole side of me also considered that it could be d) a legitimate health issue, which would surely be both scary and embarassing for the woman and her daughter.

Actually, after all was said and done, it was not quite clear what the deal was. I just kind of watched the whole thing unfold without any conclusive judgment or alarm. My neighbor and her mother walked the woman into the house to use the bathroom, which she never made it to. She kind of slumped to the floor instead and drifted in and out of coherency. She managed to relay her mother's phone number, and her mother confirmed that this happens quite a bit to her daughter. Doctors apparently aren't sure what or why it happens, but she's been undergoing tests for some sort of diagnosis. Her husband finally picked up his phone later, after the ambulance crew arrived, and said he would be right over to get their daughter.

Meanwhile, K.Lo and I are out on the lawn, keeping tabs on the sale and trying not to crowd the scene. No one's really there at the moment other than an older Greek woman who is talking our ears off about Scorpio babies and I can't really understand what else. I nod and smile and say "yeah" a lot, and kind of hope she shuts up soon. She knows my neighbor and wants to say hello, and though it's more than obvious that there's a scene happening and that my neighbor's on the phone just behind the glass front door, she walks up and rings the doorbell anyway. It's the oddest thing.

The rescue squad wheels up a stretcher to the house, but the woman doesn't end up using it. She stumbles out of the house, still faint and mumbling that she's all right, while the EMTs walk alongside her, briskly informing her that yes, she's saying she's all right, but in actuality, she's still faint and mumbling. They do one more test on the lawn, and then she loads herself up into the ambulance. Meanwhile, we've got piles of unpaid-for clothes and things all over our lawn chairs, and a now-hopping crowd at the sale. I'm a little ticked because someone else could be buying the stuff, yet I'm also distracted with the ambulance still there. Fascinatingly, not one of the current shoppers seem particularly phased by the ambulance and the hub-bub, no one even asks what's going on and/or if everything's okay. They just want to know if I'll cut them a deal if they buy more than one item. And, distracted, I cave. Maybe it's an elaborate neighborhood plot to shave a few more quarters off our profits, and the fainting lady is at the head of the operation.

Moments after I return heaps of the woman's unbought clothes and CDs and movies to my own piles (she wouldn't remember what she wanted anyway, right?), her husband shows up to take the family home. The puppy has been barking from the car, the daughter is freaked because she misplaced her wallet, and another dog, apparently the puppy's mother, jumps out the window and into the street. It's a total circus. And then the woman suddenly becomes lucid enough to remember that she needs to pay for all her crap. She remembers that I said $17. My neighbor and I quickly start stuffing all the purchases into boxes and trash bags, muttering here and there, Um, did she pay you, yet? It's completely tacky of us, but on the other hand, between the two of us, she owes us almost 50 bucks. Right?

The woman's husband stands by, plainly rattled that whatever issue is going on with his wife has happened again. I feel the most sorry for him, somehow. All the boxes and bags make it to the car, and he pays us without flinching at the cost or the sheer quantity of things they'll be riding away with. I have to wonder, what does their house look like inside?

And so it goes, the most dramatic yard sale I've ever been to. The rest of the morning passes without incident, though the ambulance fiasco brought us nearly to the end of it all, anyway. As K.Lo and I packed up to go home, my neighbor asked, So you're coming again next year, right? Um, yeah... about that.

another week in review

road trips taken: 1, to RDU

baby clothes received, purchased: so many! tres exciting, can't stop sorting through

endured: 3 colds (K.Lo, J.Lo, pen), molar teething, diaper rash

miraculous bout of luck?: overdrew funds just prior to deposit, was not charged

w/ dinner: green beans, all from garden

on porch: tiny eggplant!



in garden: mondo cucumbers, appalling number of little green tomatoes







fav show of summer: Top Chef 3

never gets old: reruns of The Office

what K.Lo's been up to: figuring out the fridge dispensers

health scares: 1, J.Lo, current

pondering of mortality: ongoing

distractions: crochet..., romance movies on Hallmark

baby: kicking, growing

yard sale: all items compiled, priced, organized, ready to go

me: sciatica, craving ice cream, worried..., yet a bit of a space cadet

heartbeats

When I say I have an overactive imagination, I mean that I tend to imagine the very specifics of a hypothetical situation. It's not all bad, not all excessive worrywarting; in many ways it keeps me from trouble, keeps me appreciative of the moment. When my mind really gets into it, though, really goes there, it can be quite arresting. If I were less inclined to think of this worrying as one of those "prayers in advance" we've talked about in Blogland, and more inclined to convince myself that these imaginings will be reality, I might just panic. Like, really panic.

Last night we (J.Lo, me) were up for an hour or two pondering heart palpitations. Instead of beating regularly and unnoticeably like it should, J.Lo's heart was racing for several moments, then coming back down again. He was a little dizzy, but no pain. A knocking sort of arrythmia, very scary and weird. With a family history of heart attacks, this is not an appealing symtpom, and if one thinks about it too much, it could just make your heart behave even wackier.

Then there is me, the wife. My job is to be supportive, helpful the best way I can. Calming. Remaining calm. Not minding a bit that we'll both be more tired tomorrow for the added stress of these moments and the missing sleep time. Not worried when we use the phone to call the ER that K.Lo will wake, because frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing her now. She doesn't wake. The ER phone operator, after running through a list of questions, says to wait it out, see the doctor in the morning. Call again or come in if this XYZ list of symptoms occurs. We both try to put it out of our heads as much as humanly possible, and go back to sleep.


I've talked about choices before, and here again I know I have them. Choices. How to be, how to act, what to think. Except that I don't know what to think. And then there are a lot of thoughts I'm having that I'd very much like to press the "pause/rewind" buttons on, but the buttons are apparently broken. I know we both just need to take one step at a time. Just, heart palpitations: isn't that serious? Worrisome? It feels serious, worrisome.

Later today, he goes to the ER anyway, as the doctor does not have specialized equipment to diagnose heart issues. The end result is that it was just heart palpitations, nothing more, possibly due to: stress, cold medicine, high blood pressure medicine, migraine medicine, caffeine in general, or some random combination of any of these things. I'm skeptical, still, because we're talking about a heart here. And hearts are not supposed to beat like that. But what other choice is there than to accept the diagnosis, forgo the histrionics, and move on. Obviously be vigilant if it happens again (and hope to hell that it doesn't).

I feel like I'm pretty laid-back as a person these days, including as a parent and spouse, and I like being that way. And again, choices--I am cognizant that pretty much the only thing you can control in this world is your own behavior, but that fact is so hard to truly swallow, over and over again. I think we must all struggle with it, on some level, every single day. Is that just a human instinct, to try and control one's environment and make it go our way? Here is what I want: to live a long, healthy life, and for all of my family and friends to live a long and healthy life as well. It's not too much to ask, is it? I think about any slip-up in that perfect little formula, particularly with my husband and children, and it's an easy way to quickly spiral. To start imagining horrible little details about The Way it Would All Go. I don't like visiting that mental space.

So I make the choice not to, at least not very often. I don't think it's healthy to deny its existence, either, but you cannot live there. As magnetic as its pull might be.

...All this is to say that really we're fine. J.Lo, me, Bug. I didn't mean for this post to be overly dramatic, more just reflective on a particularly stressful set of hours. Hearts are a serious business, to me.

almost wednesday summer (yard) extraveganza

Uh, Hmph.

Hello Good Blog readers! I remember a time when I used to be curious about things. Events struck me as funny or tragic, people were intriguing- there were stories to tell, quandaries to puzzle… But now it all seems rather routine. Work while busy is mainly uneventful. No one eccentric to blog about besides the editor, the cute boys in the office and maybe how many different color post-it notes we can get or how much petty cash we can spend on starbucks and pastries before we get cut off. And of course the great aluminum foil incident of June ’07…

I lost my ATM card and it seems no matter how much money I get at the bank to hold me off till the new card comes is never enough. I still need to get mulch, work on my quilt, complete the teardrop stone pathway started 2 years ago and start working out 4/5 times a week. Exercise my foot because my heel aches and go kite flying. Everything seems to be in a “pending stage”… or anything I accomplish just sort of klunks over to the next thing. Am I bored? Is that it? Are pictures of my yard and the new “miss bossy” t-shirt I’m ironon’ing not enough? Where ever I’m going seems to be going at a very slow rate whatever it is. And yet somehow it’s already summer and the solstice will demand I celebrate with beer and cheese and a prayer to dead relatives and then maybe a road trip and a camping trip and hmph…who knows. French and the job and well surely there must be something.