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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Lobsters and Turkeys and Rattlesnakes, oh my!
For the past week or so, it has looked like Animal Planet around here, only significantly less cute. No rescued chihuahuas finding a new home with their very own boy, no baby raccoons being rehabilitated and then released, and no bear cubs being raised in somebody's kitchen.
It all started when I let my nephew and niece choose the restaurant for dinner last weekend, and I seriously need to stop letting them do that. In the past ten days, they've dragged me to Red Lobster AND Old Country Buffet. Those are the two absolute worst restaurant chains among all the bad restaurant chains in existence, are they not? I was sort of excited when our seafood expert, a.k.a. waiter, told me about the wood fire grill they'd installed. That would probably cook up some yummy seafood if they didn't insist on coating everything in a layer of grease and sprinkling on an inch of powdery Dorito seasoning first. Before we could sit down and eat that deliciosity, though, we waited for a table for a few minutes, which turned out to be most pleasant, because a very friendly seafood expert came out and introduced us to a lobster! A lobster who can do tricks!
Please notice the distance at which Sophie has located herself from the lobster. That's as close as her folded-arms, stompy-foot self would get, no matter that it was a perfectly trained lobster that can do sit ups! There was no bribe I could offer that would get her an inch closer. The seafood expert put the lobster on its back, rubbed its tummy, and commanded it to sit up, at which point it did! Then, he stood it on its head, using its claws for support, like a tripod, and rubbed its tail until it went to sleep. So odd. And don't worry, it's not inhumane. Well, not compared to being plunged into boiling water and steamed alive, anyway.
A few days later, Kelly and I went out to run some errands, which included going to the grocery store. Kelly decided that she was craving a hamburger in the worst way, and since it was windy and cold and too late to fire up the grill, I agreed to drive over to Wendy's. We turned into the parking lot, which is actually the parking lot of the Honeybaked Ham Store on County Road 42, and were greeted by a FLOCK OF TURKEYS. FLOCK OF TURKEYS has to be capitalized because FLOCK OF TURKEYS! In the suburbs!
What you can't see from the photos is just how aggressive a flock of wild turkeys in a suburban parking lot can be! Geez! There were times when I thought they were going to try and flap their way into the car. And also, "gobble gobble gobble" is exactly what turkeys say.
Question: do turkeys fly? Oh, sure. I could google, but what fun is that? The reason I ask is that we did not see them flying. Instead, when they were finished rejecting our mushrooms and toasts, they moseyed across the street. We've seen turkeys on the side of Highway 13, along the river on the way to Valleyfair, and I'm just wondering if this is that same clan of turkeys, having been out for their constitutional. Or more like a Turkey Breast Cancer 3-Day. It's short fly, but a looooong mosey.
In any event, Kelly's burger craving went away, and she opted for a turkey sandwich at Jimmy John's instead.
Next on Animal Planet, Grandpa sees a rattlesnake and makes Cousin Bob pose for a photo with it:
Bob could take a lesson from Sophie and fold his arms, stomp his foot, lower his cheek to his shoulder and flat out refuse to get down on the ground with that snake, but he didn't. He's lucky he isn't now sporting two fang marks in his neck.
I guess there is one more Animal Planet show, and that is the story of a little girl who named her sweet hamster Xelia. Xelia Elizabeth Lee. If you want to see the little girl get really upset, you can refer to Xelia as "Fudge," a moniker coined by a fella named Braxton, who, by the little girl's account, is a really super-annoying boy who happens to be a friend of her brother's and eats all the ice cream when he comes over.
Tune in next week and see if Fudge gets eaten by a rattlesnake while on a visit to Arizona with the children to see their grandparents!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Twitter ate my blog
Remember when I used to blog every day, sometimes even multiple times? Remember when that was the normal and expected frequency? Ha! Those days are gone, I'm afraid. Twitter satisfies my need to blurt so nicely that I forget to check in over here sometimes!
We are back from vacation, and have been for quite some time. It's rough, I tell you! Back-to-back vacations is really the way to live.
Yesterday, my stats showed somebody arriving here by searching for "zip line death," so I went googling. I found that somebody did, in fact, DIE on a zip line in Honduras in 2008. Even more interesting than that newsy little item, though, is that it turns out that there are message boards devoted to cruises, and people who post on these things have signatures that are 8 miles long, because they list all the cruises they've ever been on. Some of them take 6 or 8 in a year! That's how I want to be, only I want to stay on land, thank you.
I have some photos and interesting stories to tell over here one of these days, so keep checking back. Oh, and start using Twitter, if you're not already. I know you'll love it. I'll even refund your money if you don't, since it's free!
March 15, 2009
M.Y.O.B.
Kelly and I are still in Fort Lauderdale, vacationing away and having a marvelous time, except for a little while this afternoon when a really frustrated mother gave me a stomach ache.
We're at the pool lying in the sun with our Number 45 slathered head to toe, because I have just discovered that when you reach a certain age, there is definitely such thing as "too tan." I have reached that age, and I look like an old leather boot. So Kelly is having her second or third nap of the day, and I am happily reading along, trying to get into a book I'm not loving, and suddenly, right in front of me, a little boy falls down and starts to cry. He was about five, and had been holding the hand of a young teenage girl, maybe 13 or 14. I hopped up, but immediately this hysterical mother came running over, yelling OH SHIT OH SHIT!. She scooped up the little boy, and started to berate the poor girl.
HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN? I KNEW HE WAS GOING TO FALL! WHY DIDN'T YOU WARN HIM ABOUT THAT (what? I didn't see anything like a raised tile or curb)? HE COULDN'T SEE WHERE HE WAS WALKING BECAUSE HE WAS CARRYING THAT STUPID BASKET OF TOYS! WHY WEREN'T YOU CARRYING IT? CARELESS!
She went on and on, and I was trying to catch her eye just so I could give her a look that might calm her down, you know? I mean, when your child is physically hurting, let me tell you, it can turn you momentarily batshit, apecrap crazy. If I could have just given her a mom-to-mom understanding look, I thought maybe she'd snap out of the nuttiness. I couldn't catch her eye, though, so I finally had to speak up. I just said, "Hey, now! It was an accident! It's not her fault!" She gave me that high-class Jerry Springer talk-to-the-hand and yelled "MYOB!" at me. She continued to yell at the girl, and since the mom wasn't willing to listen to me, I spoke to the girl instead and just kept saying, "it's not your fault, sweetie. It was an accident, and he's okay. Look, he's not even bleeding. It's NOT your fault!"
The mom told the girl to go upstairs to their room, then she took her little boy back to where her husband and littler boy were sitting, about twenty feet away. Her completely useless turd of a husband just sat there like the doughy brown lump of turd that he is, saying nothing, offering no help in either comforting the little boy or in trying to smooth out the situation with the girl or calm his maniacal wife. The little boy stopped crying right away, and they sat there for what felt like ninety hours while I fretted about what to do.
I know that when you witness somebody being frustrated with their kids, the best thing to do is to make an empathetic comment like, "It's really hard when they throw tantrums in Target isn't it? I've been there! I can tell you that it does get better! Hang in there!" Calling out an abuser is likely to just result in more anger for the abuser and more abuse for the kid.
I wanted to go over and talk to her again, to say something like, "Hey, I know how it is when you're kid gets hurt. There is nothing worse! I know you just love that little boy like mad, and I'm sorry I interfered." I'm not sorry at all, of course, but I'm worried about her taking it out on the girl later.
In the end, though, I said no more. I was torn, because I wasn't sure I'd be able to get her to be calm, and I worried about making matters even worse. And then I sat there second-guessing myself about saying what I did in the first place. But I had to say something! Right?
I HAD to say something. I couldn't let this girl (is she their daughter? Their nanny?) go undefended. That poor child was hurt much more deeply than the kid with the skinned, not-even-bad-enough-to-bleed, knee.
I do wish I'd have told the girl our room number, though.
Gah. I hate this. I hope she's the nanny, and that she has a really nice mama, and that the mama has sent a cab for her and she's flying home right now, and will never see that mean lady again.
Of course, while I was fretting over what to do, I posted a photo of the mean lady on facebook. Didn't do anything to help the poor girl, but it made me feel better.
So, what would you have done in this situation? I'm sure most of you have a similar story of your own. Spill it!
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Visual observation
So, more vacation has gone down since I last blogged.
Sunburn blah blah blah shopping blah blah blah long walk blah blah blah mushroom pasta blah blah blah bad Jimmy Buffet imitators blah blah blah and these guys, taken from the cab today:
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Sometimes your kids grow up and make you laugh til you can't stop
As you probably know, I'm on vacation with my daughters who are all growed up, and we are having very fun. Here's our day: sleep in blah blah blah sunny blah blah beach blah blah blah pool blah blah blah shopping blah blah blah running blah blah blah food blah blah blah more food.
We just had dinner at a fun little outdoor restaurant where all the tables are those swingy glider picnic tables:
When we got back to the hotel, we hopped on the elevator, and a large lady talking on a cell phone hopped on with us. As the doors closed, it became apparent that there was something amiss with the cell phone lady. She was emitting an odor, an odor on the order of poop.
Being mature individuals, we started to snicker, and finally Rose goes, "Kelly, it's your turn to change Mom's diaper."
And I will never stop laughing.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Two days of real life, now back to vacation
I'm on an airplane again!
The girls and I are on our way to Miami for a week. You might think that I don't work hard, but I was home for two whole days between vacations. That was hard! And it snowed! And I had to do some laundry!
 A little celebration is in order, because Kelly officially finished high school last Thursday, and she did it a trimester early, and she did it on the honor roll. She deserves a treat for that, don't you think? Oh, don't worry; we'll still get to see her walk across the stage in her cap and gown in June, and we'll still have the Very Fun Graduation open house, but for now, we're going to celebrate with a little sun and sand. Rose is taking her first ever vacation from her real life grownup job, too. She'll be with us for a couple days before she moseys on up to Orlando to meet her friend Kim for a birthday celebration.
And by the way, that photo of my Kelly? That's one of her graduation photos. She is so lovely, no? And I was SOOOO ticked off at her that day, because she DID NOT SHOWER before her appointment! Well, she did, but she didn't wash her hair, saying that she likes it better with 24 hours of teenager grease in it. Grrr. Still, though. She's lovely, even with yikky hair. Oh, and I had to pay extra to have her roots Photoshopped out!
 The Referee is going to LA today, and his flight was scheduled to leave within an hour or so of ours, so he dropped us at the airport and went to park the car. By the time we were through security, he was already at our gate, because he gets to go in the cool first class line. Imagine our complete shock and dismay when we approached the gate, and saw The Referee sitting up on the shoe shine chair, while a guy buffed and polished away. Such a dork.
So, the three of us are split up on the airplane. A few minutes ago, Kelly came up to my seat in a panic, asking if I'd trade with her, because it appeared that a vomit event was imminent. The kid in the seat next to her was not feeling well. If there is one thing Kelly cannot deal with, it is vomit. Blood? No problem. Wiping a kid's nose or changing a diaper? She can do it with a smile. Anytime there is even the mere thought of vomit, though, she is outta there. She was correct, too. By the time I made it back to her seat, the poor kid was hurling into a blue paper bag.
Kelly is not scott free, though. She is now sitting next to the World's Most Talkative Lady, viewing teeny photos of the lady's kid's on the lady's teeeeeny camera. She's learning all about them, and all about the lady's trip so far this morning (flight from Hartford to Fort Lauderdale canceled, so she is flying Hartford-Minneapolis-Fort Lauderdale), and about how the spark has gone out of her marriage.
I'm happy to be back here with Pukey Van Vomit, thank you very much.
And Papa Van Vomit is now chowing down a can of Pringles, while Pukey Van Vomit rests his head on his shoulder. Seriously. What a thoughtless idiot.
Update: It's now hours and hours later. As we were landing, another kid, across the aisle, freaked out about his plugged-up ears thoroughly enough that he finally hurled all over the place. I mean, ALL over himself, both parents, the seat in front, the floor, the ceiling, all into his shoes, over to the window. Papa Van Vomit responded with a nice, loud JEEEEEZUS! Once we landed, an announcement came on, and it started with the word "Folks." Announcements that begin with "folks" are never good news, and we ended up sitting on the tarmac for thirty minutes while we waited for a gate to become available.
Now though? Now we are having walks on the beach, dinner at outdoor restaurants, and planning whether we want to lie on the beach, sit by the pool, or parasail tomorrow. Pretty stressful decisions to be made. And the patio door is wide open, so we can hear the very most relaxing sound in the world: Ocean.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Murphy's Law, as applied to dentistry
As our plane taxied down the runway to take off last Thursday, I chomped mightily on a blob of sugarless spearmint gum. Gum chewing has been all but eliminated from my List of Activities, since I decided last summer that I don't want to eat chemicals when I can help it. Since I also don't want to grind sugar into the enamel of my teeth, that pretty much means no gum.
Except when flying. On account of the ears and the popping.
So, just as the plane is lifting its nose to the sky, I feel one of my molars come loose. Well, not the actual molar, of course, but the crown that covers the stumpy remains of what was once one of my molars. I moved the gum to the other side of my mouth, and bit down on my finger with the crowned tooth, to pop the crown back in.
While this was happening, I had a flashback of a conversation with my dentist that I had had some years ago. I was in the chair, leaned back, with the light shining into the cavern that is my yap. She was explaining that, although I was there to have this crown permanently cemented, she was having trouble removing it, despite the fact that she'd put it in with "temporary" cement the week before. She suggested some options: keep trying, and risk damaging the pretty, shiny new crown; leave it alone, and wait for it to come loose on its own "someday," at which time she'd put it back in with permanent cement.
"But," sez my dentist, "if you ever leave the country, let's take care of it before you go."
This is what I'm remembering as I watch the ground move further and further away as the plane takes off. To another country.
I chose option b, leave it alone (had I known the story of Poop Tooth, and just what kind of risk I was taking, I might have decided differently). But I forgot about the leaving-the-country clause.
I made a real effort all weekend to chew on the other side of my mouth. It really wasn't difficult, and most of what I ate was soft, delicious stuff like beans and fresh fish. A piece of papaya gave me a scare once, as did a teeny cube of white cheese. Both times, though, I was able to push the crown back into place before it came completely out. Oh, and that bus ride to the zip line on the bumpy road had me biting down on my index finger the entire way. I am certain that ride loosened all of my teeth, not just that one.
Success! We landed last night, and I still had all my teeth. Well, all the ones I started out with. I'm actually missing one of my molars, but that's another story that involves neither a punch in the face nor residence in a trailer park. So this morning, my dentist agreed to fit me into his schedule. My new dentist is my old dentist's partner, but he's the one who takes our insurance now, you see.
It was absolutely painless, and no big deal. Once it was my turn to jump into the chair, I pulled the crown out of my mouth with my own fingers. It was really just sort of lying there, not held in by anything by the proximity of the teeth on either side of it.
Checking the chart, they told me that I'd had that crown since 2000! That sucker had been temporarily cemented in my mouth for NINE YEARS! That's longer than most marriages last!
Anybody ever had "temporary" dental work last longer than that?
Sunday, March 8, 2009
30,000
That's how many feet I am above the earth right now.
The Referee and I are flying back from Puerto Vallarta. Let me just tell you how much I love The Referee. The Referee and I don't get to spend a lot of time together, especially for a married couple, because he travels so much for work. I have just spent the past four days with the man, though, and am reminded why the hell I married him in the first place, twenty-five years ago, and that is because he is completely awesome. We have had such a good time together, lounging by the pool, walking on the beach, going for a nice, long run together, making the exact same snarky comment at exactly the same time, socializing with some extremely enjoyable people. Ahhhhh. I wish I could keep doing this for another thirty days. Or maybe every day for the rest of my life.
If you have traveled to touristy areas of Mexico, you are aware that there are always several options for day tours, right? Swimming with dolphins. Snorkeling. Deep sea fishing. ATV riding (cringe). Well. This year there was an option that I hadn't encountered before. I remember somebody telling me about it (Jenni?), but it was only vaguely familiar when I opened the brochure to the page that said, "Canopy Tour."
OMG, as the kids say.
I knew immediately that I was going to do it.
I found The Guy in the Yellow Shirt Who Takes Care of Us, and scheduled it. The Referee and I had discussed it, like responsible married couples do. He though it would be relatively safe, and cost about $40. I thought it would be "safe" only by Mexico standards, and cost about $100. Whatever. I was in. I scheduled the tour, and TGiYSWTCoU wrote down the name of the destination where I was suppose to meet the tour operator the next morning at 8. He said I'd have to take a cab, and that a "bus" would pick me up there, and take me into the mountains.
I got up at 7:15 in order to get there by 8. Of course, I'd spent the previous evening asking people in our group if they wanted to go with me, but all of them, including The Referee, objected to either A) the fear factor, B) the earliness, or C) all of the above. Buncha wimps.
So I headed on out by myself. At the bus stop, I met some fine cheeseheads, and a couple from Colorado. We all stood around waiting for the bus for twenty minutes or so (that would be five minutes in Mexico time). And then this showed up:
Okay, so I wasn't expecting open-faced-sandwich bus. I might have even changed my mind about coming, had I known I'd be riding in that sucker on the highway, and THEN up a winding, narrow, mountain road where we were within two inches of certain death. Again with the OMG.
By the time we finally got to the top of the mountain, I knew that flying in the tree tops was going to be mild by comparison.
Still, I had imagined something different that what was. I thought there would be one line clipped in front, and another clipped in back. I assumed that there would be safely-catches for heavy-duty pulley clips that held my body to the cable. I thought there would be all sorts of redundancy when it came to safety.
Uhhhh, no.
They clipped me to the half-inch cable using what looked like something from aisle #1 at Hardware Hank. I'd expect to pay about ninety-nine cents. So a ninety-nine-cent piece of metal was what was between me and the jungle, 100 feet below. Or more.
People, you have to go to Mexico and do this. They started us out with a short, low zip. The subsequent lines increased in distance and speed, until some were so long that you couldn't see the end from where you began. They zipped through the jungle, putting you within inches of a tree or fifty. Some of them suspend you a hundred feet or more above the jungle, and the views are spectacular. I also enjoyed how the wind filled up my shirt and gave me a midair hunchback.
There are several different canopy tours, but the one I participated in was called La Vista. The guides were hilarious. And evidently it's safe, because nobody died. As far as I know.
Here are some more photos:
Oh, and afterward, we had lunch at the little outdoor restaurant, where I ate some delicious rice and beans, with some guacamole that had cucumber in it. That is genius right there, putting the cuke in the guac.
After that, we were given a lesson about tequila, which was really interesting. The dude said that anything less that 100 agave is NOT tequila. Who knew? Then he gave us samples of 6 different tequilas, teaching us that the blanco kind (or silver) is the best kind for shots. I forgot the names of the other two kinds, but one is good for mixing cocktails, and the other for sipping (who sips tequila? That's just odd). In Mexico, nobody is too young for tequila:
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Rough day, if by rough, you mean excellent
This morning I had the Fujiyama Tray of bloody marys. Actually, I had half of it, because there is no way anybody could drink the whole thing, as it was a monster. The mix itself was delectable, with just the right amount of peppery spiciness, and it didn't taste boozy in the least. Here is what I remember of what garnished that bad boy: A pickle. A spicy green bean. A celery stonk. A teeny sausage. A honk of cheese. A shrimp. A teeny ongyun. A black olive. A pepper. And some other things I forgot.
This delicious beverage was part of a pre-theater brunch with Lisa at Ike's. I'd link to Ike's, but they have no website. Odd, in this day and age, no? Anyway, it's on Sixth Street just north (I think that's north, anyway) of the Nicollet Mall, next to Murray's.
****Oh, look. A blog post I started last weekend, and never finished. Here, I shall finish it now. Let's see if I can remember that far back.*****
From there, we zipped over the The Orpheum to see Fiddler on the Roof, starring that real actual Topol guy. It was really good, but not nearly as good as the production of Fiddler staged by The Perry Community Center a year or so ago. Now THAT was Fiddler. We got to see The Cool Lady. She is a lady who has one season theater ticket. She doesn't know anybody else who likes it, so she goes by herself, and her seat happens to be near ours at all the theaters.
We shopped around a bit, finding absolutely nothing, despite our intention of stimulating the economy. There was no stimulating, because Lisa and I, as it happens, are at an age where it impossible to dress. We are in this fashionless limbo between hip teenager and tasteful grandma. It's hard to be in your forties, let me tell you.
We wrapped up the evening with a Timberwolves game, leaving after halftime because Lisa had to get up for stooopid dumb work in the morning.
I can see why I didn't finish this. Whoo. Boring.
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