Jesus, Take the Wheel

Used to be that when a kid turned 15, all he or she could think of was when the drivers' education classes would start and how fast could he or she could get through it and be licensed to drive. Not so much for a lot of kids these days, including Ali Reed.

It's our fault: we drive her every damn place she wants to go, and technology takes her everywhere else. But today, at long last, the little redhead -- 16 since May -- is credentialed to learn to drive. She's not so little anymore. She's 5'7' according to her BMV-issued card, but you know who who I mean.

The captain was planning to go into work for most of the day. Ali had chores, homework and the BVM test ahead of her. I was on grocery, recycling, yard work and Ali-transport duty.

Jeff usually drives our Subaru, which has an automatic transmission, and I would never willingly give my convertible up on a day as beautiful as today was to be. But my Mustang has a manual transmission -- not the car most kids start out on.

So, when Jeff and I woke up, I snuggled close, said good morning, and suggested we switch cars for the day. I was, I will remind you, on grocery and recycling duty.

"No way," he said, wise to my scheme. He is determined to be her driving instructor.

Bastard.

After Ali sailed through her test and had her paperwork, we walked out into the sunshine. I suggested we pop over to Glendale's extra parking lot where she learned to ride her bike. It's huge and empty: perfect for learners of all things with wheels.

"Umm...." she said.

She and Jeff agree that I'm unqualified to teach her how to drive. I strongly disagree.

"Come on! Let's just try in this car," I said, ignoring the alarm my clutch gave out and giving her a step-by-step description of what my feet were doing every time I switched gears. "You can totally get this."

"Uh..." she said.

I kept wheedling and giving her reasons why we should use the card she had just earned, but the brat wouldn't do it. I complained that I didn't want to miss out on teaching her to drive. Jeff and Grandpa were her how-to-ride-a-bike instructors. We have the pictures -- and memories -- to prove it.

"But you were there," she pointed out. "I remember Grandpa pushing me, and I was so scared. And when I burned white rubber with Dad. That was so cool. And when Dad made me ride in circles around you. I was terrified I was going to hit you."

She thought we should go straight home after the grocery store. She had chores and homework waiting. Learning to drive could wait. For Dad. (Bastard.)

I couldn't believe it. Here she was, fresh off a successful test and officially credentials. There was nothing to hold her back!

Actually, I could believe it. She's brainwashed. It'll be her dad next to her when she takes the wheel. But I'll be there. Someone has to take the pictures....

You're not supposed to take photos inside the BMV, so don't tell anyone I have these.

On the left is Ali giving her info to the in-take desk, and on the right, she's taking her vision test.

 In other news, Ali continues to be a smarty-pants and was this week inducted into Herron High School's National Honor Society class.

She got her grades from ISTEP, too, and they were stellar. She's still thinking she wants to do something chemistry-related when she gets to college, but I'm not rushing that decision in any way.

Right now, she's focused on getting through as many episodes of 30 Rock as she can before it disappears from Netflix, and she still cuddles with me on the couch. Who needs a kid who can drive, anyway?

Below is the bunny who wrecked my black-eyed-susan flower bed. He's a bastard, too.

 

In news about me, my book is finally looking like something you'd buy in a book store and I'm so close to sending my second book in to be beautified to the level of the (new) first one. So, if you haven't bought Book 1 yet, wait a bit, unless it's in e-book form. That one is good to go. The new paperback is one dollar cheaper and so much prettier. 

The reviews didn't transfer, so if you like it, please review again. (Sorry to be a pain.) You can see the new version here.  I think a quick cut-and-paste will work.

I was with some friends from my old workplace this week, and one of them remarked that I looked a whole lot happier than she'd ever seen me. She claimed that I glowed. 

Now, in the interest of being truthful, that may be menopause. But I am so happy to be writing. Truly.

Thank you for those of you who are supporting this little dream of mine. I'd be forever grateful if you can positively review the book. Book 2 is sooooooo close..... (!)

I can see clearly now

I've been fretting about the white/gray threads that have been stepping up their assault on my hair of late.

Alison -- she of the uncommonly beautiful locks -- keeps telling me to just let it go. "Go natural and see what happens."

The picture to the right is what happens. Due to a scheduling SNAFU, I'd failed to make another hair appointment back in July when I had last teamed with Julie Lett to disguise the Gray Creeper. I think she threw up a little in her mouth when I sent her my current state of, uh, hairs, as September rolled in.

Ali was 6-years-old when she noticed our hair wasn't perfectly matched and thought that it should be. She was 14 or so when she discovered that unlike my six siblings, I only inherited the skin color and temper of my red-headed tribe.

I didn't go red until shortly before I got married, but I've been a shade of red since 1996 or 7. It was about a decade ago that Julie worked some magic to get me closer to Alison's hair. (Ali's hair most closely resembles the locks of my sister, Debra Strahla, or my niece, Jaime Weir.)

When I advised Julie, by text and photo, that I was thinking of just giving up and going totally gray, she said, "You be thinking about that."

I used a fun app to see what different shades would look like, and when I shared the photos. Ali re-thought her suggestion. Julie, God bless her, had my regular goop on standby. We compromised by taking a baby step. "You won't match Ali anymore," Julie warned me.

The picture to the left is what we ended up. It's designed to slow walk the terrible march to full-on Barbara Bush.

In other news, and still speaking of hair, I had a conversation the other day with a plumber. Ali and I shed like mangy cats, and I was tired of it taking 15 minutes or more for my sink to drain.

The plumber, working on separate project, had noticed Jeff's stockpile of Drano-type chemicals. I told him that Jeff used it on my sink on a regular schedule. He said we were wasting our money.

"None of that stuff really works," he said. "You've just got to get in there and snake it out." he said

You notice his use of the pronoun. He didn't want to go in after whatever was living in my pipes any more than I did. I tested his theory over the past few weeks. I emptied every container of what looked like stuff that could eat away grossness. He was right: none of it worked.

Last week, frustrated with issues related to re-formatting my book, I took a break from it and went to the sink. I used a pliable, rubber covered wire to fish around below the sink plug.

You know how you wash your hands during the day and your face at night and don't really notice what's slipping off with the soap and water?

You really don't want to know happens below the stopper.

This photo to the right shows the partial results of more than a month of ignoring my slow drain. The photo does not do justice to the depths of its gross-ness. And that's not all of what I dragged out.

The hair had trapped other gunk, which must have multiplied like some primordial creature-in-the-making. I swear to you that I am not that dirty. I've been pouring bleach down there by the cup-full to kill whatever else may linger. Ali is fascinated by chemistry right now and would probably have kept the stuff in a Ball jar to see what happened next. I am both repulsed and afraid of whatever it already is and have no interest in what may come next. (Hence: the bleach.)

Here's a fun fact, though: none of the hair that lingered in my drain was gray. Those bastards are hanging tight.



I leave you with one of the more fun shots of our summer at Victory Field. I met Jeff after work for a play-off game. We won that night but lost later, so the season is over.

He was still in work clothes. The park wasn't full, and he stretched out at one point, glanced down and said: "I look like I would be in danger of shriveling up if a house fell on me."

Ha!

#RollTribe

Heavy is the head who wears the crown

It is with immeasurable sadness that I report the transference of the Crown of Dumbassery.

Not that I newly did anything stupid. Lately. Today. Yet.

The report on our Subaru Outback came back. Apparently there was an electrical issue involving two wires that conspired to disrupt the nerve center of the car. So we didn't run out of gas on the way to Labor Day at Donna's house.

It wasn't Jeff's fault. Sigh.

Dethroned: Long live the King of Dumbassery

We were a mile from the Monrovia exit off Interstate 70, headed to Aunt Donna's for a little Labor Day weekend fun with the family when the mantle of dumbassery that I'd been wearing for the past few weeks shifted about eight inches up and three feet over to my left.

Jeff was driving, beating on the steering wheel in apparent beat to some crazy music he was playing. Ali was in the back with her headphones on. I was scanning my phone when I heard the herald call of change.

Or rather, I heard Jeff exclaiming "Whoa! That's not good." And the car slowed rapidly from its 70+ mph speed. Our reliable, safe Subaru Outback was completely out of gas.

Do you know what happens when you run your Subaru out of gas? Even when you get a quick ride into town to get a gas can and gas and then luck into another ride back to your stranded car, the car won't start up.

Or at least ours didn't. Jeff was following instructions from the Interwebs to turn the key and prime the gas pump when an off-duty, Indiana State Trooper pulled up behind us. He was headed to a family gathering himself but took the time to give us an extra buffer from the holiday traffic and even called us a tow truck.

When we got to the nearest gas station, our friendly tow truck driver was prepared to get the car down to the pumps but he had Jeff try to start it first. The silence that followed the turn of the key indicated to the tow guy that there was more wrong with the car than no fuel.

Or maybe he liked the idea of a tow into the city. With no service station open until next week, and zero expertise in what to do to repair a car in the shape ours is in, we opted for the tow.

It's been a while since I was crammed into the cab of a truck and rode for miles without a seatbelt on but desperate times call for desperate measures. I was just happy that I didn't have a desperate need of a bathroom. We had further good luck that Becca, my latest niece to be a Butler Bulldog, was still in Indy and would come collect us from our downtown service shop.

It was a spectacular start to the holiday weekend.

It took Jeff more than an hour to stop with the self-flagellation. He was so unhappy with himself, I couldn't even comment. (Or take a fun picture.) He readily (but not cheerfully) agreed to accept his crown as the King of Dumbassery.

"If we're only counting today, then yes," he said. "I'm definitely the winner."

I'm going with that. In the Kingdom of Dumbassery, the ruler is the one who's committed the most recent stupid thing. Deciding the crown based on number of incidents or the cash cost to the household would just be dumb.

The towing bill for when I stuck my Mustang on the curb outside Zheng Garden was less that this one. I'm salvaging the pot I almost ruined when I boiled those eggs into charcoal. No one died and no fixtures were harmed when I accidentally brewed mustard gas when cleaning toilets. (twice.)


Among the several bright spots of our latest experience was remembering that we had an extra large snack back as we were going down to Donna's. Ali and I survived the wait for gas by eating the leftover pound cake we'd planned to share with my family. (It was really good.)

Jeff cracked a craft beer as we waited for Becca in the parking lot of All Star Tires, the service station we use that's closest to Jeff's downtown office.

So anyway, we're back home. Safe and sound. Thanks to all the good people who helped us get here.

Hope your weekend is better than the start to ours...

The Duke vs. Batman

I was driving Alison to school the other day and I wanted to quote one of my favorite John Wayne lines -- McClintock's "I ain't gonna hit you. I ain't gonna hit you. To hell I'm not!" 

I don't remember why, but it was perfectly contextual to the conversation. But to make it work, I had to be sure she knew who John Wayne was. (Sad, I know.) So I asked if she knew who John Wayne was. 
 
"Was he Batman?" she said. Seriously.

I almost wrecked the car. "No!" I said. "In what universe could the cowboy John Wayne be confused with Batman?"

I explained who The Duke was, giving her the rundown of his cowboy movie persona, not the real life one which I choose to ignore. My dad was a huge John Wayne fan. And yes, I know the quote is incorrect but it's how I remember it... Anyway, I gave her the scoop on the larger-than-life characters John Wayne brought to life.

"So," she said. "He was violent. He liked to shoot people. He killed people to protect women and kids. He's Batman." 

Then she tried to throw in John Wayne Gacy. "He killed people, too. Was John Wayne a serial killer?"

I told her to get out of the car. By then we were at school, so it was time for her to get out of the car. But really: she had to go.

In other news, another birthday has come and gone, and it was a pretty crazy day. We overspent our birthday budget with an amazing night of champagne and food at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse downtown. Kimberly Reed alerted us to the event and even though we spent more than we generally do on dinner, it was amazing. It was great catching up, meeting her friend and sipping champagne with Dom and Veuve on the label. 

I followed it up with a physical, so I'm looking at zero  point soup for every meal from now until Christmas, but it was worth it. That means I have to avoid 
Alison's creations, which may rival that of Ruth's Chris. She made coconut cream puffs this week. All from scratch. They're amazing.

Summer is winding down and were going to the last Indianapolis Indians game of the season today. And we had a fire last night. I'm not ready for summer to end.

Although, I do have a challenge ahead of me. My birthday dinner fell on the night of my fantasy football draft. My friend Tina Noel made my picks for my team, Squirrel Gravy, is so named because I'd just been gifted a tee-shirt that says "Squirrel: the other white meat," and I thought it was fun. Megan's boys think I'm weird.

The Squirrel actually won the league last year, and more than a few of my Showgirls FF League owners are bitter, bitter people. I think it was actually the commish -- Megan Garver -- who came up with this gem. I might have to get John Wayne "Batman" Gacy after them....

For those of you anxiously awaiting Book 2 of the Heartland Saga, I'm getting very close. I'm happy with most of what's going on down in Claymont. Things are heating up, but there's a new bad guy in the area and he's B.A.D...

A little more this; a little less that

It's pretty easy to get depressed these days. Nazis and the Klan out in the open like we've forgotten the definition of atrocity. Kids shot by police. Shootings and other acts of terror everywhere you look. Hate blowing in the wind like the dead, dry leaves of early fall.

It's awful. It's not my America, and I don't think it's yours. I bet yours (even you, my red-state, conservative friends) is more like mine.

See the photo below? It was taken around 9 a.m. today. That's 60 yards of mulch in front of our neighborhood park and a bunch of our neighbors who came with shovels and pitchforks and rakes and wheelbarrows to tackle it.

Some of them don't have kids. Some do. Some, like us, have kids who don't play at the park much anymore. We don't know everyone's name but we can usually match them to their kids or their dogs.

A lot of the people you see in that picture also help plant flowers and clean up in the spring or do other things to make our neighborhood a place where everyone is welcome. Your sexual orientation is your business. We welcome all colors, cultures, religions, and political persuasions. 

We just want you to be friendly, pick up after your pets and be kind to those you encounter.  You don't even have to help spread the mulch. Do the former and we'll still like you.

Here's what that pile looked like a couple hours, a few gallons of sweat and a few dozen blisters later.

Here's where some of it went.

Even as my back aches and my fingers are wrapped in Band-Aids, I like this America better than the one I see on TV or online lately. Maybe if we can spread a little more neighborhood park mulch and a little less hate, we'll all have more of this and less of the other.

As long as I'm on my soapbox, here's another one: I was in Louisville last weekend with my Book Club and we were sharing the hotel pool with a bachelorette party for two lovely young women whose wedding is a few weeks away; a couple who live states apart but are dating and met in the middle; and a family -- mom, dad, two kids. It was an amazing, happy, silly, wonderful afternoon.

I chatted a bit with the brides' moms. One of them was all-in for the relationship from Day 1. The other was worried. Her daughter had been in a relationship with a man prior to meeting the woman who she'd fallen hard for. That mom had sent her daughter to therapy -- even went with her. "I had to be sure," she said, adding that she was all-in now as well.

The whole wedding party, of course, knew the saga, and they were all sitting around with us. Some in the water, some on the deck. Some paying attention to the conversation, some not.

That second mom, the doubtful one, had to learn that her new daughter-in-law would make her daughter happy before she could support the marriage. Some might think that's a terrible thing. Why couldn't she just accept her daughter's wishes?

But moms aren't built that way. They need to know their kids are going to be happy; that they have partners and friends who'll support them, love them, be there for good times and bad.

It's too early to say if that marriage is going to be one for the ages, but I'm cheering for them. And for the moms. Both of them. I'm an unconditional kind of mom, but I also would go to the ends of the Earth (even therapy) if that's what it took to make Ali happy. I respect the hell out of both of those women -- and the entire bridal party.

Theirs was a situation that could have wrecked a family. I'm glad Mom 2 was open to evolving and trusting her daughter. It's easy to fall back on "that's how I was raised" when push comes to shove in the culture wars. It's harder to be open to understanding something new, whether that's sexual orientation or culture or something else.
 
Why do we have to keep learning that love is always better than hate?

If you need a reminder, go to a park where the kids are too young to separate by color or to know what hate is. (Unless we're talking beets. It's OK to hate beets.)

Soaring in a swing or zooming down a slide brings the same joy to a boy that it does to a girl; that it does to black kids, white kids, Hispanic, African-American or mixed race kids.

That's the America I love. Let's get more of that one.

And the prize for dumbassery goes to....

I may have to get a job that takes me outside my home. That, or start working at Starbucks or Panera where all the other freelancers apparently hang out.

It's not that I need companionship. I have WFMS for that. It's not that I need a bottomless coffee or ice tea cup. I can do that here. It's because I'm a dumbass. A focused dumbass. But a dumbass nontheless.

Jeff and Ali shot off to school this morning, much like every morning. He, urging her to get ready so they could leave only to come back in the house three times because he'd forgotten something while she was already in the car waiting on him. I'd said my goodbyes and set up my work station out on my back porch. I generally work there until the heat sends me inside.

Today I had a noon meeting and then dentist appointments so I knew I had only the morning to get some work done for my favorite client and check in on what's happening down in Claymont. (Turns out quite a lot is happening in Book 2. More steam; fewer batons.)

Anyway, I was deep into work when it occurred to me that I hadn't eaten. I'm on a diet kick so I four eggs in a pan of water, set the timer and went back to work. An hour or so later, I went back into the kitchen to refill my water glass.

That's when I remembered the eggs. The smoke, the beeping of the timer and the shriek of the smoke alarm were my clues. I had not just boiled the eggs dry; I'd calcified the little ovals. The smell was worse than the time I'd made mustard gas in Alison's toilet bowl, but the fumes weren't as deadly.

It's past 8 o'clock now and it still stinks in my house. In every room. I'm going to be scrubbing that All-Clad saucepan for the rest of my life. I'd warned Ali on the way home, but told her I'd been running fans and it might have dissipated.

"Nope," she said, walking into the house. Then she spied the pan. "You used my Ramen pot? Mom!"

I've promised to bring it back to its shiny silver. (If anyone wants to remember my birthday, this might be a good gift...)

"You know I love you, right?" my darling daughter said to me as I sprayed air freshener and dug out the scented candles.

"Yes," I said suspiciously.

"I love you more when you're not in the kitchen," she said. "There's a reason Dad cooks."

It's hard to argue when you can barely breathe.

As for the Captain's reaction, I'm kind of staying away from him. He has a box of beer to prepare and because the upstairs has all the doors and windows open (thus no a/c) he's mostly been in the always-chilly downstairs since he got home. I'm taking my punishment by staying upstairs and breathing though my mouth.