GPS, Where art thou?

Well, got a GPS for Christmas and will begin using it as soon as I can locate it. I have apparently "put it in a safe place" which, in my home, is liberally interpreted to mean, "don't have a frigging clue what I did with the thing, when I did it, why I did it or why I am now blaming you and/or the cat for moving it in a malicious manner."

Now, I believe I should have also asked for one of those clap-on, clap-off things. Would have been a good thing to attach to a bell and then to the GPS. Would make it a complete package for those of us who are, shall we say, a bit directionally challenged. Now, given that I often temporarily misplace full size cars in large parking lots, solely as a method of getting in my daily exercise I might add, this temporary confusion should not and does not come as a surprise to me, anyone who knows me or the cat.

The GPS does have this real cool feature called "Where am I?" that I believe I paid a bit more to get. I was quite jazzed about it, I recall. But, it's not like the device is going to phone its location in to me, now is it? Who cares if it knows where the heck it is?

Somewhere, there is an 18-year-old GPS engineer laughing his buttocks off because he invented the "Where am I" useless feature and probably got a royalty when I purchased the same. He's probably at MIT. I'd go visit the punk to ask him just what was he thinking but, of course, that would require an ability to find the place using something like, let's say for example, a GPS. I'm thinking the kid is safe.

Instructions May Change at any Time?

Just got a new computer monitor. I'm taking an educated guess that it wasn't made in the States. The give away is the fabulous instructions which address issues that American made producers apparently haven't thought of. For example, these helpful hints, clearly printed as a hard copy on real paper and in black and white, unequivocally state right at the beginning "Instructions may change at any time".

I'm sleep deprived right now but if I'm telling you - if those printed directions suddenly change into the Christmas story or a missive on the grazing habits of llamas vs. alpacas, I'm calling in the exorcist. It's just that simple.

These directions, sadly, do not address the question of how to use the product while sleeping like my "nearly flat screen" Broksonic television manual did. To wit, it instructed, "To watch television while sleeping, ......" Apparently, I am a bit deficient in television watching skills as I have, so far, only been able to manage the task while awake.

I do admire the marketing folks that determined that a conventional television could be sexed up by calling it a "nearly flat screen." They have my kudos and now I believe I will use this technique without further attribution as my own going forward. Awesome technique really. For example, bra size? "nearly Pamela Anderson" Yep, sounds like a winner.

I Dint Know He Could Write..

So, my darling son has learned to write. In sentences apparently. His spelling was a tad off but he wrote me the most heartwarming note yesterday. On his V-Tech Computer. Unfortunately, in the technical age, I couldn't file it away for posterity in a memory box although I sure wanted to. I did think about filing the entire V-Tech. For good.

We had been in the kitchen making cookies. The kind he likes - he's the first born son so of course I got him those little reindeer in a cookie things put out by Pillsbury that you throw on a cookie sheet, pop in the oven and then call them done. My kind of a togetherness project. But, as it is also the Christmas season, we set up shop and commenced baking our annual Peruvian Alphahores - a traditional Peruvian cookie. Now, Alphahores does not translate into "Peruvian cookie made in Alpharetta," No, it is actually an old Peruvian word for "you won't believe how much time and effort this is going to take ."

So, after the reindeer cookies had been done for an hour or so, I told the son he could not have a 4th or 5th cookie at that current time as he had not eaten anything else that day and, when his father got home, he would query him on how many cookies he had eaten. If he were to tell the truth, as is his fashion, I might be in the mix again. He appealed, using some pretty good logic but I still said no. So, he went into his play room.

A couple of minutes go by and he comes walking in with his V-Tech computer where he has written me a love note by typing it. I quickly shook off the powdered sugar I was wallowing in to excitedly read what he had written. As he has told me he wants to be a book writer, I knew this was his seminal moment and he needed my full attention and prideful support. Wow, this was apparently the beginning of his career and I would be instrumental in it.

He turned it around so I could see it and asked if I could read what he had written. I was so proud and I leaned in to see "I DINT LIVE MOM". Of course, the son was a tad concerned that he had spelled all of the words correctly. Could I please read it to him? I took a WAG at it and said, " I don't love mom?". Yes, he exclaims with excitement!! He told me he was proud I got it. Then, he asks, would I be so kind as to stop right in the middle of what I was doing to let him know if his spelling was all correct? Apparently, it was quite important to him at this stage to make sure that his writing is technically proficient. So, as the fabulous parent that I am and high on the sugar of at least 10 or so cookies and a whole lot of Diet Dr. Pepper, it seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time.

However, a little later in the evening as I sat in the middle of a powdered sugar pile and reflected on life, the batteries in the V-Tech somehow just ran out. Odd how that happens. Guess that's what they mean by reindeer games. Next year, I'm thinking it's a big no on the Pillsbury cookies. Geez.

Laundry Tip of the Day

So I decide to wash a pair of socks by hand to wear the next day. Two major reasons- first, they are extra special socks (which means I paid full price and they have a neat pattern) and second, I coulnd't find any others in the house that were simultaneously clean and also had a mate. This is a tall order in my home.

So, I get up in the morning, tired as heck, and the socks aren't quite dry. However, due to my very inventive nature, I know all I have to do is to stick them on the end of the hair dryer and turn the thing on. Hot air works every time. And, it worked fine for sock number one. For sock number two, I looked at the sock as it inflated and begin to wonder if there was any way possible to just shoot the thing off the hair dryer by pressing a bunch of buttons on the dryer.

Now, I can't figure out any reason why I would ever need to shoot socks, nor why it sounded like a good idea to invent a sock shooter at 6:30 a.m. but my conjecture is that since I had not yet had any caffeine it was a reasonable thought. Or, I should have been an engineer. So, I tried it for a while. The turbo button just didn't do the trick nor did turning it off and on which I'm sure my still sleeping family appreciated. It did, however, melt my sock onto the hair dryer as well as put a hole in the side.

Of course, I peeled it off to see if I could still wear it to work which would save me the effort of having to go on a household sock hunt to find a pair of socks that matched and were clean. Unfortuantely it was too crispy at the top and the hole just got bigger and bigger. Cost me about 15 minutes total.

About 220 Cats

So the son and I are riding in the car when we start talking about our new cat Cody, or as Aidan calls him, my BROTHER Cody with the emphasis on BROTHER. We weren't discussing Cody's apparent death wish at this point because the identification of this predilection wasn't made until his most recent attempt to choke himself by wrapping a balloon string around his neck repeatedly. Fortunately, he announced his act by banging the still attached balloon against any object he could find in a remotely taiko fashion. Apparently, he got rhythm versus any measurable intelligence which makes him all the more fun. After all, I do like Japanese taiko.

Now, this act followed Cody's attempt to put his head in the oven when I opened it to take some food out even while I yelled, Cody, hot, Cody, hot, CODY, I TOLD YOU IT WAS HOT!!! Little sore on the paws but otherwise intact. He sat there for a minute contemplating his paws and I suspect he was probably just comparing the pain in his paws to how he felt a couple of days earlier. That time, he went running with great gusto to launch himself in a flying arc right off the back of a chair and over the second floor guardrail landing on the hardwood floor below. But, not so gracefully. That one left him off for a bit as he worked to regain his ability to breathe and remember where he was.

So, in any event, the son wants to know if we should get Cody a brother to play with as Cody does quite a bit of chasing, catching and killing figments of his imagination, rounding corners on the hardwood floors approximately 5 mph faster than physics will allow which leads to Cody spin-outs, and springing out from under the couch repeatedly with great hopes that there will be something for him to attack despite any record of success. I do have to admire his perseverance or lack of short-term memory.

I explained to the son that I do think it would be a good idea but that I first would have to make sure that we had the adoption fee and the money for downstream veterinarian visits and all that jazz. Being the inquisitive child that he is, he wanted to know how much it was so I let him know that it was $100. He thought that was fair, especially since he didn't have to come up with the money. But then the obvious question came - How much did Mia cost?

Now, that is a question that I have long been prepared for, having been asked the same by a fishmonger yelling down the aisles at Walmart the second week I had been back. The answer - priceless. But, this is the son I am dealing with. Priceless isn't precise and precision is key. So, the next obvious question is asked - how much, exactly, is priceless? After futility trying to explain that it is an existential concept that he wouldn't understand now because he has not yet developed the ability to think in the abstract, I decided to give it a go.

I used the approved adoption speak to carefully explain to him that Mia didn't cost anything. Rather, mommy and daddy paid some money to some nice folks who could speak Chinese and who could help mommy and daddy fill out a lot of papers so that the people in China could see that we were a good family that would take good care of a little girl. And, of yeah, we paid some money to the US government to get permission to fill out another form later that we would also pay for, none of which was apparently paid for by the obscene amount of income tax we pay each year. So,that's great, he says but exactly how much is that? I throw the trump card and let him know that it was about the same as it would cost to have a baby in the hospital if you didn't have insurance, assuming that 1. they would admit you and 2. you had no complications and 3. the baby had no complications and 4. you didn't use any of their toilet paper which they most probably bar code so they can scan that cost into the total cost of supplies.

For some reason, this doesn't do it for him. He thinks for a moment and carefully crafts his next question to make sure he asks a very specific, closed question that can only have one, precise answer as he has apparently discovered that asking his mother an open question allows her to provide superfluous information merely for her own amusement.

After some deep thought, he asks did it cost more money to adopt Cody or Mia and instructs me to give him only one answer - Cody or Mia. He was indignant when he was told that we spent slightly more getting Mia even though I pointed out that he should consider travel costs and the dollar's slide againt the RMB over the last four years before making any judgements. He let me know, in no uncertain terms, that there was a problem. In his vernacular, that wasn't fair. Cody is his BROTHER and Mia is his SISTER, so what was up with that.

A couple of minutes later I get the follow up question - if we didn't get Mia, just how many cats could we get?

Told him it depended on what country they were coming from, the travel costs involved and the exchage rate of the euro, peso and ruble at the time of said adoptions. Seemed to do it for the time being.

I take ____ as my wife

So during the Redtop Celebration we hold a mass. This year was particularly special as the archbishop of Atlanta was coming up to say the mass for us. Not only was he going to say mass but he would be helping us renew our wedding vows. Except the wedding vow thing was a bit of a surprise to those of us who either were chasing screaming kids or did not read the program, which should not be taken to imply, even if it conceivably is 100% true, that one of us doesn't ever, for any reason, read the program or instructions provided to him for any reason. When the shelves fall off the wall or the grill blows up, it is one thing but when it is the marriage vow gig, quite another. Now, that is not to say the grill has blown up. Well, at least not this one. Yet.

So we wore our very best mud covered jeans for the big event. When we realized what was about to happen, we got so excited we could hardly contain ourselves as our efforts were going into containing Mia. After all, the archbishop has only two ranks between him and the ultimate CEO and our original priest had five so these vows had to have some real superpower and, in my estimate, were probably 50% better than the original so we were good to go.

Meanwhile, the very dignified archbishop had come in and began the mass. Against all Catholic tradition, we came to a part where there were actually some people singing along with the incredible music that was presented. Would have thought the place was full of Lutherans, Baptists and Methodists it sounded so good. Which, of course, gave me the perfect cover to tell the son that we had just noticed that very soon we were getting married again and wasn't that exciting? He, of course, wanted to know why. I let him know that since he hadn't been able to attend the first ceremony, we were going to do it again so he and Mia could be there and share in the momentous event. Which led the husband-to-be-again to state, "Uh, actually you were there in Mommy's tummy."

Of course, my not so darling husband-who-needed-to-sleep-with-one-eye-open-to-be was using his "talking over the music voice" for his statement when the music had stopped abruptly. I immediately knew that quiet but effective communication of my thoughts was most appropriate for the setting. Again, being very conscious of not wanting to cause any disruption of the services or causing any undue distraction to others, I used the well-known quiet communication method of gaining the husband-now-maybe-to-be's attention by wacking his upper arm with my fist thrown at a 90 degree angle while muttering "shut up" in my best whispering-pretty-loud-in church voice. Which, of course, caused the ever vigilent son to exclaim, "Mommy, you said a bad word!" in his best in-case-you-haven't noticed, heck-yeah-we-are-actually-in-a-barn voice. So, I'm praying for singing but nope, the only voices that are lifting are the archbishop's and, unfortunately, our little clan's.

We notice the couples-to-be rustling around while I am, ever the diligent positive role-modeling parent, stating, "Robert, I am sorry I said a bad word to you. I was wrong. I will give Aidan the quarter I owe him for using a bad word on our return home. Could you find it in your heart to forgive me?" And, as the folks began turning to one another, the son again asks, apparently for addiitional clarification purposes what we are doing and I tell him we are getting married again, isn't it exciting, and couldn't he just turn around, be quiet and go along with the glorious program for Pete's sake?"

We notice folks picking up programs and would have done so if the son hadn't continued with his line of inquiry about the situation. He first needed to make sure I, and anyone within a 20 foot range understood that "there is a problem. First, who and where is Pete? Second, where was my dress? How could I get married without a dress?" And, as the folks opened their programs and we grabbed ours to begin, I told him in my best-imitation-of-a-viper's-hiss voice, don't need it, just getting married again, apparently now, how about just being quiet, and Robert begins to solemly repeat after the archbishop, I ....take....as my wife, apparently having missed the instructions that were cleverly hidden in plain sight and bold type in the the program that stated he was to fill in our names so that that he, Robert, would take Joan as his wife and so on.

Meanwhile, the son had one more, very important question that needed answering before he would participate. He just needed to know just who we were marrying? I noticed him eyeing one of the very pretty and nice gals there who he is a bit sweet on. I could see the glint in his eye as he considered the fact that I was apparently being pawned off on Pete and he might get to spend some quality time with the other gal. Didn't have time to answer him before the archbishop asked the kids to get up and give their parents some applause. The son stood up and looked at us like we had grown alien heads while Mia just clapped along.

Retop Redux

Last year we joyfully signed up for a marriage encounter weekend reunion at Red Top Mountain which provided fun activities such as Mia screaming for three hours before bedtime two days in a row, spending several quality family hours together bonding through scream therapy on I-75 due to a road closure, having only a tub of tapioca to eat for dinner the first night with the end of a plastic knife and Aidan and I having to enter our hotel room boot camp style, bellies to the multi-colored carpeting that had begun its life as a solid beige but had morphed into an abstract pattern of different colors for reasons we thought best not to consider. Of course, the sneak attack was our attempt to not wake Mia and it worked well except for the part where we got stuck in the bathroom.

Having not learned our lesson from either last years' excursion to Red Top Mountain or my contracting Lyme disease there 1987, we again eagerly signed up to go again this year. We figured the third time would be the charm.

This time, we shared a cabin with a very patient and very understanding couple and their two children. We did not bring tapioca as that would be tempting the fates. Instead, we brought a bag of chips for the potluck figuring we could easily dole them out should we again get stuck on the road. Given the fact that the other attendees actually cooked family specialties, our contribution could have been considered a tad gauche as the chips were in their original bag, so we carefully snuck them onto the table. I considered finding a kid I didn't know and then giving him a quarter to put the lovely chips on the table but I didn't have a quarter and since his parents were also there, I figured I'd get nailed on this one. Next year, the chips will go into Tupperware and will be presented as the product of my slaving over hot grease to deliver the best kettle cooked chips anywhere in America.

Our first activity included decorating the cabin so all the kids there could trick or treat from cabin to cabin the next day. Because it was raining, an additional element of fun was added. It's not every day that you get to stomp around in mud while trying to not freeze. Now, for the trick or treating, some of the folks in other cabins apparently considered the decoration a matter of contest with huge inflatables, a fully decked out haunted house and more orange lights than you would need to light New York City and half of Sydney, Australia. We went for a post-modern, minimalist look which was clearly not understood and appreciated apprpriately as the words "pitiful" and "did you guys forget your decorations" just seemed to keep coming up. Clearly they were part of the miscreants that skipped school on art appreciation day and could not identify the minimalist genre. Heck, we had some yellow tape from the Dollar Store that clearly warned of the danger of not "turning back now", a 8" bat that made a "genuine bat laughing noise" if you clapped, and approximately three feet of purple lights. Given that purple seems to be the color for the year, we really thought that extra points should have been awarded for that and as our "turning back now" tape didn't quite run the length of the porch, we clearly "did more with less", an admirable accomplishment given the economy. We also provided proof that a "genuine bat laugh" sounds amazingly like Santa Claus which gave our display the educational component that the others sorely lacked.

The second big activity included the kids decorating "blood" cakes made from red velvet mix. The decorations generally included icing that was a bit over one pound for each cake and those gosh awful sprinkles which apparently contain some drug given the universal kid response to seeing them. As everyone knows, the screaming for sprinkles on ice cream, cakes, waffles, pancakes and the occassional meatloaf just cuts across all cultures and continents. The other decorations included some Hersey kisses that looked strikingly like nipples. Perhaps Hersey was going for orange and white but were economizing on their dye. In any event, after all the kids were done and the cakes were placed on one table, it looked like udders of cows staring back at you. Udders with spinkles, but udders nonetheless.

And then we moved on to the renewal of our wedding vows.....