One Foot on a Banana Peel

I’m off to Erie today for a cousin’s baby shower.  I’ll be traveling with my mother (who, just to enhance her already miserable disposition, is not happy about going), my aunt (who is the so-excited-she’s-beside-herself great-grandma-to-be), Meg (who is also not happy about going, but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving her home all day when Tim and I would be far away), and finally, Meg’s best friend (who is a nice girl and has no idea what she’s getting into).  Ought to be interesting.

We are also stopping by the cemetery to change the flowers on my grandparents’ graves.  My aunt wanted to see the new house of one of her granddaughters but I got an "urgent" phone call last night begging me not to take her there.  The girl is stressed to the max over her sister’s shower and the house is a mess and she doesn’t want us to see it that way and she can’t deal with cleaning it right now (though from what her sister tells me, it’s always like that).  So, lucky me….I get to find a tactful way to tell my aunt her granddaughter doesn’t want her at her house when seeing the house was what she was looking the most forward to.

Sounds like a fun day.  Want to go for me?  I’d pay you.

I read a lot of blogs that originate in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and several of those writers visit here.  It’s just a fluke.  I don’t really know much about Michigan, let alone the Upper Peninsula, though it is one of the places I’d like to visit some day.  This morning I found something in common with my UP friends.  Seems Bigfoot likes to hangout there as well as here in my neck of SW Pennsylvania.  The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization has announced it’s on its way to the Upper Peninsula, eastern Marquette county in particular (because it has the most reported sightings), to look for proof of the big guy’s existance.  Other counties reporting encounters include: Ontonagon, Baraga, Dickinson, Luce, and Schoolcraft.  I don’t know about Michigan’s Bigfoot spotters, but here in PA they tend to look like they just got back from a swinging party on a UFO where they danced with Elvis.  Oh, and they smell like beer. 

Now that’s a big foot!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meg survived her first day of summer school, though not by much to hear her tell it.  She isn’t a happy camper (awwww….poor, poor baby).  She is trying to worm her way into changing things around to her liking, but she hasn’t gone totally Paris Hilton on me.  Maybe she can ingratiate herself to her teacher and get him to let her off for time served because it’s just too much emotional duress. **snort**  If ya can’t do the time, Chickie, don’t do the crime.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Got a call from Matt last night.  He wanted to know the geographical halfway point between his family and Ashlei’s.  Uh, why?  Because they’ve set a (tentative) date to get married.  August 6, 2008.  That’s only bumping the schedule up two years from what they originally said and neither one of them is through school (or even in it at the moment).  Nor will they be next summer.  So, why the big jump in the time frame?  Because they found out that if they’re married they can get more money for school.

Biting. My. Tongue.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tim finally called the doctor’s office yesterday to ask about his MRI.  He kept saying he didn’t need to call because if anything was wrong they’d call him.  Can you tell how seldom he deals with doctors?  Anyway, there wasn’t anything serious wrong, but oh, by the way, he has a pretty nasty sinus infection.  Who’d have thunk it?  He doesn’t have any symptoms you’d normally associate with a sinus infection, just the dizziness.  Since he called to ask, they’ve now phoned in a prescription for antibiotics, because it does look to be a pretty bad infection.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As for my health issues…… I was at the hospital bright and early Monday morning for the sonogram on my legs and bloodwork.  The bloodwork takes time to get results from and given that I go to the same doctor as Tim, it may be months before I hear anything.  The sonogram only took a few minutes and while they really can’t tell you what they see, the technician did tell me that if they saw anything abnormal they wouldn’t allow me to leave.  I took that to mean my veins are clear.

Courtesy of LilmsGlitter

For crying out loud, it’s three weeks into summer vacation and I very rarely see a kid outside.  Where the heck are they?  Tethered to the television?  The internet?  Video games?  Now I know my generation is really the first generation raised in front of the boobtube and I was in my teens when the world made the technological leap from American Bandstand and Solid Gold to MTV, but for the most part we were not glued to the thing all day and all night.  Saturday mornings were for cartoons (’cause there was no Cartoon Network running 24/7) and evenings were for families to gather and watch a couple of shows together.  Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Andy Griffith Show, Donnie & Marie, and later on Happy Days, All in the Family, Laverne & Shirley and the rest.  And for years every Sunday night began with Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom followed by The Wonderful World of Disney. 

I’m digressing here, so getting back to the point……there was life beyond television.  Kids still played outside, people knew their neighbors and the diet industry wasn’t one of the biggest in the country.  It didn’t need to be.  We still got enough exercise during the day to burn off the calories we consumed, but then, too, we didn’t live on junk and fastfood.  In fact, we rarely ate out.  Getting a pizza was a huge treat and there were only one or two places in town that even made them.  Now there are probably 25 even in my small town.

On sunny summer days we left our houses as soon as breakfast was over (none of this sleeping till noon business).  There was so much to do and always someone to do it with!  Having to come home for lunch was torture.  We had miles to ride on our bikes, forts and clubhouses to build, kickball games to play, fish to catch, tennis balls to whack and we USED OUR IMAGINATIONS.  Remember those?  Way too many kids don’t seem to have much of one these days.  They want the world to entertain them.  We spent hours with friends playing with Barbies, or forming clubs (where determining all the rules and whatnot took longer than the clubs lasted).  Many wars were fought across the backyards of every neighborhood, the pow-pow of the guns accompanied by the tortured moans of the "wounded."  Cowboys and Indians populated the land….those these days that’s more than a little politically incorrect.  Little girls perfected their homemaking skills playing house for hours on end.  Little boys learned mechanics working on their bikes and go carts.  Swimming was something you did in a lake or a pond (before you had to worry about bacterial contamination from all the duck and goose poop) or if you were really lucky and your parents felt like shelling out the money, at the community pool.  Otherwise, a sprinkler or a Slip ‘n’ Slide that had to be held down with rocks was as good as it got.  Nobody had a pool.  And if they did, every kid in the neighborhood was their best friend all summer long.  Every kid had chores, too.  What they were varied from family to family, but you can bet we all learned the value of honest work.

And let me mention the mothers and fathers.  In the life of a kid back then, any mom in the neighborhood would do.  Got a scraped knee?  Knock on the door of the closest mom.  She’d patch you up and give you a hug….and maybe a cookie, too.  The chain fell off your bike?  Stop and ask the first dad you saw.  He’d be only too happy to show off his mechanical prowess.  On the flip side, do something wrong and not a one of them would hesitate to yell at you and you could bet that by the time you got home, your own mom and dad would know what you did.

In the evenings, after supper, when all the chores were done (evening was prime gardening time) the neighborhood adults would gather on someone’s porch or in a backyard to shoot the breeze about everything and nothing.  Neighbors were like family back then.  Kids would drift through the yards playing freeze tag or hide and seek until the lightening bugs came out.  There was usually just enough time to catch a jar full to use as a nightlight.  You had to be careful to put grass in the jar and make the air holes just the right size.  Too little and you ended up with dead bugs.  Too big and you ended up with a room full of bugs and a really mad mother.

Slowly the moms and dads would drift into the houses for the night.  Lights would appear in the windows and a ballgame could be heard on the night air.  One by one the kids would be called in for a bath.  You could tell how late they were by how shrill the mother’s voice got and how many names she used.  When a kid heard their first-middle-confirmation-and last name they knew they’d better get home or start thinking about a life riding the rails.

So, where are all the kids?  I’m sure some of them are pursuing the electronic activities I mentioned earlier.  Some are surely sleeping in.  I’ve noticed a tendency to stay up late at night and sleep-in till lunchtime.  Older kids probably have a job to pay for the cool car or truck every teenager seems to be unable to live without.  Then there are the summer camps.  Not the let’s-wear-feather-headdresses-and-give-ourselves-ridiculous-Indian-names-while-making-bad-crafts-and-telling-ghost-stories-around-the campfire kind.  No, camp has to have a higher purpose these days.  There are drama camps, art camps, sports camps, science camps, math camps, even a state police boot camp….you name it and there is a camp for it.  A lot of kids go to more than one camp.  Much like they are in one activity after the other during the school year with barely any free time at all.

When is enough, enough?  When do kids get to be kids?  A neighborhood shouldn’t be quiet in the summer.

Ever wonder what your blog would sound like if you wrote the whole thing in "redneck" or if Elmer Fudd wrote it?  Those are just two of the choices at The Dialectizer.  All you have to do is go to the site and type in your site’s address and choose what dialect you want to see it in.  The Dialectizer does the rest.  Freakin’ hilarious!

Can’t tell you anything folks.  The doctor doesn’t know what my problem is.  I have to get a bunch of bloodwork done and have sonograms done on my legs to look for bloodclots and collapsed veins.  Once that’s done he’ll decide what comes next.  Yea.  At least my blood pressure was good, the best it’s ever been in my life, I think.  120/60.  Walking’s on hold till I find out what’s going on.

Meg’s report card came today.  Not good news.  I knew it was going to be bad, but it was really bad.  Really, really, really bad.  She failed algebra, english and speech.  She got incompletes in study skills and phys. ed.  At this moment in time she is still a freshman.  She didn’t earn enough credits to be classified as a sophomore.  I totally freaked.  I don’t think Meg really cared that much until I read her the little enclosed note about how not being classified as a sophomore could affect her ability to do things such as the prom, class trips and the like.  That upset her.  A lot.  But she still isn’t any where near as upset as I am.  These grades prove that she lied to me.  She just never made any effort at all.  I don’t know how on earth she thought she could do nothing and get away with it.

Well, there’s a solution and it’s been put in motion.  Beginning Tuesday Megan will be attending summer school for four hours a day, five days a week.  That’s just one class.  Algebra.  She’ll do that until July 16 at a cost of $80 (just one more thing I’m not happy about).  Then she will have to make up english in one of two ways.  Either I will have to drive her about 40 minutes away and sit for four hours every day while she is in class at the $80 price or for $180 I can order a "packet" that she can do at home within a 3-week time frame.  If she passes both of those, she will earn 2 credits and be classified a sophomore, but she will still have to make up the other three classes at some point between now and graduation if she wants to graduate.  Plus she needs to get on the ball and never do this again because there is no way she can blow 5 classes a year and expect to keep making it up and graduate on time.  All I can say about the whole mess is that I hope she learns a huge lesson from this.

This is so frustrating.  I am up and awake and raring to go walking, but here I sit.  It rained a ton last night so it’s cooled off considerably.  Perfect for walking, but it’s my damn legs that aren’t cooperating.  They are still aching something awful and in a new twist, as of last night, they are swelling.  Man, I am telling ya….once you pass 40 your body just starts falling apart left and right.  I’m going to give in and call the doctor’s office today to schedule an appointment.  I kept putting it off and walking hoping that the pain was just from being out of shape and would go away, but obviously there’s something else going on.

Today was the day we decided to take our pool from something resembling this:

To something resembling this:

It was a good plan, but somehow it went wrong.  Terribly, terribly wrong.  This is something like our tenth year of opening up the pool so you’d think we’d have the routine down and be able to whip through it blindfolded with one hand tied behind our backs.  You’d think, but if you do…..then you don’t know us very well.

First you have to start with one husband, who is, for an unknown reason the crankiest person on the planet today.  Which, if you are married, you will know leads to a wife who is the second crankiest person on the planet because she has to put up with number one.  Then throw in the little cranks, who because they are catching the fallout from one and two, are running a very close third.

Once the mood (bad) is set, the husband declares the only way to deal with the pool is draining it.  Fine.  Then the green water and sludge on the bottom must be worked toward the hose pumping it out with push brooms.  Fine.  Or it would be if Crank Two and the Little Cranks could manage to push a broom correctly….or at least well enough to suit Crank One.  They can’t.  Big surprise.  Raise the cranky level.

Anyway, it progressed (or rather deteriorated) rapidly until a bit ago when Crank One threw stuff down and told Crank Two and the Little Cranks to do it themselves and stormed into the airconditioned house.  Crank Two and the Little Cranks looked at themselves, argued amongst themselves and then got down to business and finished the job.  Everything is clean.  The steps are in.  Water is at this moment filling the pool.

Moral of the story?  From now on when it is time to close or open the pool hire one of these:

Ugh.  So, I’ve been being good since summer vacation started.  I’ve dragged my half awake butt out of bed and down to the walking trail where I walk 2 miles with a woman I work with.  I’m not drinking much pop.  I’ve switched almost completely to water and sugar-free iced tea.  I’m sneaking more veggies into our meals and cutting back fats and carbs where I can. 

So, why can’t walking be simple?  I am walking, but can I just admit and whine for a minute that it really hurts?  My ankles just ache something fierce after a short bit.  I’m really not sure if it’s the joints or the muscles.  I do stretch out a good bit before and after and I wear really good (read, expensive) shoes meant just for walking.  I think it’s from the impact of my foot on the pavement.  It’s not fair!  I once worked with someone else who complained of the same thing and said that an eliptical machine was a lifesaver for him.  He got an aerobic workout, but without the pounding on his legs.  He could do it pain free.  We tried out several machines at Sears the other day and found one we really liked.  I didn’t do a whole workout in the store (though maybe I could just go to a different store every day and pretend to be shopping for a machine…it’d be a lot cheaper), but I was amazed at how smooth it was and how different my legs felt compared to walking.  An eliptical machine is now number one on my wish list.

Last night, as Tim and I were innocently sitting around the fire pit with Megan and three of her girlfriends making s’mores, mountain pies and hotdogs and enjoying the silly banter and antics of the girls…..life blindsided us with the next stage in our baby’s growing up.  Her cell phone rang and it was a call from a couple of boys she (and the other girls) know from school.  Next thing you know I’m on the phone explaining how to find our house.  Tim, meanwhile, was having seizures on the lawn.  Not really.  He was actually in the house getting out his shotgun.  Oh okay, he didn’t do either of those things but he wasn’t smiling either.  He is so not ready for the young bucks to come sniffing around his baby girl.  Doesn’t help that I think they reminded him of himself at that age….farmer boys with big, loud pickup trucks.  And he knows what he was like.

We met the boys and they seemed nice enough.  I can’t comment too much on their looks.  The girls assure me that one was a hottie, but I personally thought it was too dark to get a good look.  The other poor kid they described as being 6′8" and looking like the character Flounder from The Little Mermaid.  It was dark, but I could tell he wasn’t suffering from giganticism or burdened with the body of a fish.  Anyway, since they seemed nice, I came inside to give them a bit of space.  I could see them perfectly fine from the kitchen window.  Tim kept saying I should stay out with them.  He probably thought I should take the shotgun with me.  After all, this is his baby we’re talking about and she isn’t allowed to date until she is either: a) 60, b) already married, or c) Tim is dead.

This is all kind of new territory for us.  Matt wasn’t really all that social and never had friends, let alone girlfriends, over much.  If there were guys and girls here they were the youth group kids.  I knew it would be a whole different ballgame with Megan as she has always been an extremely social creature.  Still, last night was unexpected.

Today they are off to the school picnic at the local amusement park.  We dropped them off this morning and they are meeting up with a lot of their friends.  Again, most of them are guys.

Sigh.  I feel old today.