My oldest son Jakob is in the 4th grade, and I’m desperately holding onto his childhood with both hands. Jakob was never an actual baby, he came out of the womb a little old man. The first few months of his life my husband, Erich, and I would jump around making goofy faces and singing silly songs to amuse him but he rarely cracked a smile. After awhile we realized he just didn’t think we were funny. At all.
Every parent tells you how fast it goes by, and none of them are lying. Jakob has already had braces on his teeth, which made him look so grown up that I had to grieve a bit. And not long ago it was time for him to get them off. We went to the orthodontist, who informed us that one last little baby tooth was loose and therefore they couldn’t remove the bracket without pulling the tooth. So they wrenched the final remnant of childhood out of his mouth and handed me a tiny white pearl with a shiny bracket still glued to it.
“You’re so lucky!” the orthodontist told him. “The teeth with brackets are worth a lot more to the tooth fairy.”
“They are?” my son asked in disbelief.
“Oh yeah, definitely. Because of the silver.” The doctor assured him.
That night when I went to tell him goodnight, Jakob let me know he had put the tooth under his pillow. But here’s the thing: His bed is up in a lofted bunk with a desk underneath. I began to panic. “Ummmm, aren’t you going to leave it down here on your desk like we always do? Just to make it easier…you know…for the tooth fairy?” I asked.
“Nah, I just put it under my pillow,” he said. “She can fly, it’s no big deal. Well, goodnight.”
Crap. Double crap! My son sleeps in this giant pillow/blanket nest on top of that loft and it’s too high to see into. Finding a tooth in there would be like the proverbial needle in the haystack. But I was determined. No way was the Tooth Fairy going to fail him tonight on our last hurrah!
Folks, it’s amazing how you can be alert and ready to sneak into your son’s room to root around for a lost tooth one minute and dead asleep the next. But that’s exactly what happened to me. I woke with a gasp at 3 a.m. The stupid tooth! What would my poor son do if he got up and the tooth fairy hadn’t come to get his last, super-valuable tooth?? I dragged myself out of bed and grabbed my fairy supplies: A stack of gold collector’s coins and a handful of fairy dust (glitter) and headed to his room. I sprinkled the dust on his windowsill and made cute fairy footprints in it. Voila! Authenticity.
Now the challenge. I held my breath. Slowly, slowly, slowly up the ladder to his bed. Who the heck’s idea was it to get a child a deathtrap like this to sleep in? Somebody (me) could die on this! It should be against the law; I made a mental note to write my Congressman. Yet I made it to the top without so much as a creak, all the while praising my agility and phat spy-master skills. However, what I saw at the top was a cluster of splayed limbs and bedding, six throw pillows and a head-shaped lump at a different end than it started at many hours ago. Triple crap! Where was the tooth? I felt around to no avail. It must be at the other end of the bed. The “NO ladder” end. *sigh*
Me and my nimble spy skills slunk back down the ladder. Now what? I spent five silent minutes decluttering his desk chair and carefully placed it at the other end of the loft. I crept up and hoisted my chin over the rail. Softly, carefully, I put my hand under the pillow. Suddenly my son sat bolt upright, his enormous pie-sized eyes six inches from mine in the dark. “AAAHHH!” He yelled. “AAAAHHH!” I yelled back, trying to control my heart attack and not fall off the chair.
“Jakob, it’s just me,” I whispered. “It’s Mommy.”
“Oh my gosh!” he stared, bewildered. “What are you doing?”
And just like the Grinch with Cindy-Lou Who, I thought up a lie, and I thought it up quick: “Oh, I heard you coughing up here, baby, and I came to check on you. Is everything all right?”
“I was coughing?” he mumbled. “Well…can I have a cough drop?”
Dang! Now I’d have to go all the way back downstairs for the stupid cough drop. “Of course sweetie,” I cooed. “I’ll be right back. You lay down and get all sleepy…” Bleary-eyed I trudged downstairs for the bleeping coughdrop and saw the kitchen clock 3:15. Soooo tired.
I gave him the cough drop and for the next 45 minutes I kept periodically trying to sneak back in for the tooth. And yet when my foot would hit the carpet he would sit straight up in bed, all wild-eyed and confused, looking around and then flop back down. CRAAAAP! I wondered why we go to all this bother for some ridiculous, elaborate prank on our children. I’m sure most sane people would have given up by now. He was going to find out the truth soon enough. But something made me want him to believe, even if it was just for a little longer.
So I played on the computer for 30 minutes, trying not to doze off the entire time, and then went up for a last attempt. At this point I was completely exhausted and I decided if he poked that melon-head up one more freaking time I was going to just toss the coins at him and say, “YEAH. I’M THE TOOTH FAIRY.” And get back to bed.
But that didn’t happen! I crept in like a ninja, climbed that chair, found the tooth laying in almost plain sight, left the coins and was out in 30 seconds. I couldn’t believe it. One more victory for mom! As I finally snuggled into bed I was warm with the thought of him waking up to the magic of the tooth fairy-- the wonder on his face at the glittery trail she had made and the treasure she’d left for him. Kids have to grow up so fast these days, and they have the rest of their lives to become cynics. But I had the joy of my baby being a baby for just one more night.
EPILOGUE
My husband came into the room yesterday and said, “Hey by the way, Jakob told me he knows you’re the tooth fairy. He said he caught you red-handed and you kept coming in his room waking him up all night. But he didn’t have the heart to tell you. So he finally pushed the tooth out on the bed where you’d find it and pretended to be asleep 'til you left. Just thought you should know.”
Friday, January 15, 2010
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
THE UN-BUCKET LIST
Recently a friend of mine and I were chatting and I said to her, “ I saw your sister limping. What happened?”
“Oh, she’s sore from running a half-marathon. She’s training for a whole one.”
“What? That’s crazy!” I gasped.
“I know. I’m soooo jealous,” my friend replied. “Running a marathon used to be on my Bucket List. But now I know it will never happen.”
Huh. Jealous. Jealousy was not remotely the emotion I was feeling. I only want to run a marathon if somone is chasing me with a very sharp object. And yet it’s on her Bucket List. I’ve heard the term ‘Bucket List’ a lot since that movie came out. It’s the list of things you’re supposed to accomplish before you ‘kick the bucket’. Running a marathon seems like one of the things that might actually cause me to kick the bucket. That’s why I developed my own UN-Bucket List-- the much more interesting and practical list of things I want to AVOID doing before I pass on. I immediately put “running a marathon” very close to the top. Right behind ‘Ending up in a Chinese Prison.’ That’s certainly number one.
It takes some real thought to decide what you want to avoid doing before you die. I am very ambitious, so my list of what not to do is quite extensive. There are the obvious things, like “Don’t get hit by a train,” and “Never attend a spin class.” Stuff like that. But recently I went on a campout with some friends and we did one of those drive-through safari things with the kids where you get to feed the animals out of the car window. Well, it was way fun. But there were all these signs: “Don’t feed the Zebras from your hand.” “Watch out for the Zebras.” “Seriously, don’t feed the Zebras, we’re talking to YOU.”
Dang, what did they have against the zebras? Zebras are preciously cute. And they kept coming up to the car and giving me sweet Zebra eyes and resting their chins on the window ledge. So I fed them from my hand. I rubbed them, I nuzzled my face against their cheeks. This freaked my son completely out. “Mom! It says don’t feed the zebras from your hand!”
I’m always pretty sure signs like that are not really talking to me. They mean other people who lack good judgement, and I happened to know how angelic and delightful this particular zebra was. So I told my son to relax, that it was no big deal.
My friend Paula was driving the car, I was in the seat behind her. She saw me repeatedly feeding the zebra from my hand. “Paula, you gotta try this, “I told her. “This guy is too cute!” So I give her some food and she gently lays her hand out to my little friend. CHOMP! The zebra bites down on her hand with a death grip and starts shaking his head furiously back and forth.
“Aaaaahhhh! He has my hand!” Paula screams and tries to pull it out. The zebra is not letting go. I can see the muscles in his jaw clenched. He wants that hand for dessert. I am yelling at him to let go and finally I resort to punching him in the head with as much force as I can muster. If you have never had the opportunity to punch a zebra skull, believe me they are really hard. Mr. Zebra rolls his eyes back to me with a confused, hurt look, like “Why the hell are you hitting me? I thought we had something special.” So did I, Mr. Zebra, so did I. But I punch him in the head again and he finally lets go. Paula has a full set of zebra dental records imprinted across her palm. My son is yelling, “That’s why you’re not supposed to feed them! It said so right on the sign!”
But I barely heard him (or my husband from the back row of seats telling me how I hadn’t hit the zebra hard enough the first time) because my heart was pounding loudly in my ears. I thought that stupid thing was going to rip her hand off. It conjured up the horrible image from that ‘Omen’ movie where the family’s car is attacked by a hoarde of demonic baboons. Eeek! I quickly added “Do not get savagely attacked by a wild animal” to my Un-Bucket list. (This also encompasses the popular “don’t get pecked apart by flock of posessed ravens” and “do not be eaten by a bear while camping”).
Let’s see, what else. Oh yes, there is “Don’t get dragged behind a horse”. I very much would like to avoid that. And “Do not be mistaken for a drug-trafficker and get body-cavity searched at the airport.” Yikes. I’m really going to strive for that one. I also want to accomplish “Don’t get left in shark-infested waters by a Scuba boat.” That’s definitely been a goal of mine since I was a little girl.
Recent events have made me add some more challenging items to my list, like the important, “Do not exploit my children to get a reality TV show,” because that seems to be pretty hard for many people to achieve these days. But I am going to try!
I will accomplish much in my lifetime that I am proud of, and leave behind a legacy of loving family and friends. But most importantly, with any luck, my tombstone will read “Here lies Paige Schlegel-- who did NOT catch a flesh-eating bacteria.”
“Oh, she’s sore from running a half-marathon. She’s training for a whole one.”
“What? That’s crazy!” I gasped.
“I know. I’m soooo jealous,” my friend replied. “Running a marathon used to be on my Bucket List. But now I know it will never happen.”
Huh. Jealous. Jealousy was not remotely the emotion I was feeling. I only want to run a marathon if somone is chasing me with a very sharp object. And yet it’s on her Bucket List. I’ve heard the term ‘Bucket List’ a lot since that movie came out. It’s the list of things you’re supposed to accomplish before you ‘kick the bucket’. Running a marathon seems like one of the things that might actually cause me to kick the bucket. That’s why I developed my own UN-Bucket List-- the much more interesting and practical list of things I want to AVOID doing before I pass on. I immediately put “running a marathon” very close to the top. Right behind ‘Ending up in a Chinese Prison.’ That’s certainly number one.
It takes some real thought to decide what you want to avoid doing before you die. I am very ambitious, so my list of what not to do is quite extensive. There are the obvious things, like “Don’t get hit by a train,” and “Never attend a spin class.” Stuff like that. But recently I went on a campout with some friends and we did one of those drive-through safari things with the kids where you get to feed the animals out of the car window. Well, it was way fun. But there were all these signs: “Don’t feed the Zebras from your hand.” “Watch out for the Zebras.” “Seriously, don’t feed the Zebras, we’re talking to YOU.”
Dang, what did they have against the zebras? Zebras are preciously cute. And they kept coming up to the car and giving me sweet Zebra eyes and resting their chins on the window ledge. So I fed them from my hand. I rubbed them, I nuzzled my face against their cheeks. This freaked my son completely out. “Mom! It says don’t feed the zebras from your hand!”
I’m always pretty sure signs like that are not really talking to me. They mean other people who lack good judgement, and I happened to know how angelic and delightful this particular zebra was. So I told my son to relax, that it was no big deal.
My friend Paula was driving the car, I was in the seat behind her. She saw me repeatedly feeding the zebra from my hand. “Paula, you gotta try this, “I told her. “This guy is too cute!” So I give her some food and she gently lays her hand out to my little friend. CHOMP! The zebra bites down on her hand with a death grip and starts shaking his head furiously back and forth.
“Aaaaahhhh! He has my hand!” Paula screams and tries to pull it out. The zebra is not letting go. I can see the muscles in his jaw clenched. He wants that hand for dessert. I am yelling at him to let go and finally I resort to punching him in the head with as much force as I can muster. If you have never had the opportunity to punch a zebra skull, believe me they are really hard. Mr. Zebra rolls his eyes back to me with a confused, hurt look, like “Why the hell are you hitting me? I thought we had something special.” So did I, Mr. Zebra, so did I. But I punch him in the head again and he finally lets go. Paula has a full set of zebra dental records imprinted across her palm. My son is yelling, “That’s why you’re not supposed to feed them! It said so right on the sign!”
But I barely heard him (or my husband from the back row of seats telling me how I hadn’t hit the zebra hard enough the first time) because my heart was pounding loudly in my ears. I thought that stupid thing was going to rip her hand off. It conjured up the horrible image from that ‘Omen’ movie where the family’s car is attacked by a hoarde of demonic baboons. Eeek! I quickly added “Do not get savagely attacked by a wild animal” to my Un-Bucket list. (This also encompasses the popular “don’t get pecked apart by flock of posessed ravens” and “do not be eaten by a bear while camping”).
Let’s see, what else. Oh yes, there is “Don’t get dragged behind a horse”. I very much would like to avoid that. And “Do not be mistaken for a drug-trafficker and get body-cavity searched at the airport.” Yikes. I’m really going to strive for that one. I also want to accomplish “Don’t get left in shark-infested waters by a Scuba boat.” That’s definitely been a goal of mine since I was a little girl.
Recent events have made me add some more challenging items to my list, like the important, “Do not exploit my children to get a reality TV show,” because that seems to be pretty hard for many people to achieve these days. But I am going to try!
I will accomplish much in my lifetime that I am proud of, and leave behind a legacy of loving family and friends. But most importantly, with any luck, my tombstone will read “Here lies Paige Schlegel-- who did NOT catch a flesh-eating bacteria.”
Friday, August 28, 2009
THE BEST LAID PLANS
Summer came to an end, like it always seems to do. But strangely enough I found myself on the last day of vacation having a weird, confused sensation of: “How can it be over-- didn’t we JUST finish school five minutes ago?” The irony being that I entered the summer with much trepidation, not knowing exactly what I was going to do with my three little attention hogs all day every day for three months. And as long as we’re being honest with each other here, I wasn’t looking forward to it. At all.
So in an effort to control my situation and take some of the guess work out of our months together, I PLANNED. I planned camps, and trips and playdates. I planned outings to everywhere, and we hit every VBS in town. Plus vacations. TONS of vacations. And even on these vacations, I planned: What we’d do, when we’d do it, what order to do it in, where we should break for lunch, who to see, what to wear. Now don’t get me wrong, I am indeed flexible and capable of “going with the flow” when needed. But I know if there’s at least an initial plan, you don’t find yourself inefficiently wandering around, backtracking, missing all the good stuff, with your kids whining, and driving way out of your way to get a decent meal when the kayaking place was 15 miles in the other direction. So there. And I was right, the summer went smoothly. And efficiently. According to plan.
On the last day of summer vacation, I sat at my computer, typing some of our experiences in my journal about the children. I’ve been keeping the journal for about seven years now. I call it “Kid Thoughts.’. I don’t write in it every day, but when we do something special, hit a new milestone or my kids to something really funny, I try to capture it. It is among the important things I have instructed my husband to do upon my untimely death—host a big, fun party in celebration of my life, print out my journal for the children so they will know how much I loved them, live a completely celibate life forever or I’ll haunt you. You know, the usual.
Sometimes I take time to peek back through the years at what I’ve written, and I never cease to be shocked at what I’ve forgotten. Things that seemed impossible to forget jump off the page as if they’d happened to someone else. Did he actually DO that? I can’t believe I forgot she said that! Were they really ever that little? What’s interesting is that my favorite memories are never the ones I planned for us. Yes, I love reading about Disneyworld, and our trips to the beach and the first visit from the Tooth Fairy. But my favorite entries are the ones I couldn’t possibly have controlled. And the funniest are often the ones that were least humorous at the time. Here are a few of my favorites:
April 15, 2003
Jakob pottied in the potty today!! (After 45 minutes of anguish, pleading and outlandish bribes: At one point I think I offered to buy him a chimpanzee and sign over the deed to my truck). But 15 minutes after the hoopla was over he went in his pants again. I don't think he's quite grasped the part about me wanting him to do this EVERY time.
Unfortunately he's a stealth pooper-- he doesn't strain or turn red or do anything tell-tale when he's going. I tried having him go naked one day and he was standing there doing a puzzle at the table and started pooping on the floor without even hesitating. It just fell out like a soft-serve yogurt machine. He and I were both shocked. He looked at me like, “What the heck was that?” I don't know where to go from here. Screw it. I don’t care if he's in elementary school still wearing diapers, I really don't. I quit. *sigh*. Mark my words, Jake will be an only child--No way I’m having any more kids!
November 25, 2003
Brooke is walking around now like she invented it. It’s weird, she still seems too small to be upright. I got about an hour of video of it—the kind of video that you watch later and go “yeah she’s walking, so the hell what?” But at the time it’s such a miracle. Like the three rolls of pictures I took of Jake first crawling. ‘My boy is crawling! CRAWLING! He’s a genius, and obviously the first baby in the history of the world to crawl!!’ Whatever. Only parents understand.
Sept 15, 2004
Brooke got her hand slapped today. You’d think the world had ended. She’s never needed all that much discipline, but today she grabbed a dish of little glass candies we got in Venice and smashed it. She knows she’s not supposed to touch it, we’ve discussed it before and had no problems. But today she decided to ‘go for it’. All my little blown-glass treasures are now shards. I slapped her hand and she looked at me like I was Satan himself. She threw this huge hissy, wailing and sobbing like I’d scalped her, and Jake started yelling, “Mommy! You made her cry! You can’t spank people’s hands because it hurts them! Look at Brooke! LOOK AT HER! You hurt her! She’s crying!!!” He went on and on and on. I told him she got in trouble for doing what she wasn’t supposed to, and to mind his own business, but he was SO upset. He told me, “You didn’t have to spank her hand! You could have just told her ‘No, No!’” Great. I’m getting schooled by my 4 year old in how to parent. Which is bizarre, because he’s had enough spankings to tame a wild stallion, and he’s never been this upset. But he loooooves his little sister.
November 11, 2004
Some days you have to just choose whether to cry or laugh. Usually I choose to laugh. This morning just as we were getting ready for school I smashed a giant glass jar of grape jelly on the kitchen floor. Of course my kids were prancing around barefoot and we were running late. Tee hee hee. ...Hee hee... When I got it mopped up, Jakob spilled a pasta bowl all down his front so I changed him and 5 minutes later Brooke had explosive diarrhea all in her footie PJs, so when I pulled them off it smeared all down her legs. Tee hee! HEE HEE HEE! Heh. It’s so funny I could kill myself. Ah, the joys of motherhood.
Wednesday, Feb 23rd, 2004
I woke up in the middle of the night after having a shocking dream—Bonnie was standing there holding a pregnancy test out to me and said, “See, I told you it was positive!” I woke with a jolt and immediate shook Erich, who was resistant to being disturbed at 4am. I told him I was pregnant. He said I was crazy. He was wrong. It’s amazing that my body knew waaaay before my mind, because I hadn’t given it a thought. Oh man, three kids. Things are about to get interesting.
October 10, 2005
Barely surviving. No sleep. Kill me. As expected, Jake LOVES his little brother. He came to the hospital every day and wanted to hold him, kiss him and sing to him. Brooke, on the other hand, is another story… For one thing she wouldn’t acknowledge the baby in the hospital. She never wants me to hold him, and is very jealous. When we brought him home she leaned over him and said, “Don’t worry baby, we’ll find your mommy!” As if to say, ‘don’t get too comfy kid, this is MY house.’ Even now she won’t call him by his name, but comes in every day and says, “Oh, there’s a baby” in a very bored voice, like ho-hum. She’s also thrown his paci in the trash and refuses to hold him. I hope it gets better.
May 15, 2006
Right before Mother’s Day Brooke came home and said “Mommy! There’s something in my backpack!” I pulled it out, it was obviously a gift they had made in class. “Shhh!” she whispered in my ear, “It’s a flower I made for you out of paper. But don’t tell-- because it’s a surprise!” Okay Brooke, I won’t tell a soul. :)
November 15, 2006
Connor gets into everything now. He finally started walking really good at the beginning of November so he’s all over the place. This morning he went into my closet and couldn’t get out. I heard him crying, so I opened the door and he looked up at me like “What do YOU want?” and slammed it on me. Then he started yelling again. So I opened it up again and he stopped crying but proceeded to slam it again. This went on about 10 times until I no longer could tell who was the stupid one—the baby who kept shutting himself in and pissing himself off, or the mom who kept letting him out. So I finally moved him to the living room and ended the madness.
June 6, 2007
A few weeks ago Erich was fixing Connor breakfast and put a few raisins on his tray to tide him over. Then Erich heard “Uh OH!” Connor was rubbing his nose kinda weird, so Erich looked up there and sure enough—raisin up the nose! We had to get it out with tweezers, which is an experience.
So you’d think he would learn from something like that. But last night I gave him some green beans while I was heating his chicken, and then I saw him rubbing his nose again. I looked waaaaaay up the nostril and saw what was either booger, brain or bean. I tried to get up there with tweezers but there was no way and he was freaking out. He finally sneezed and out it flew. So gross.
I thought that was the end of it, but then today we were swimming at a friends and he got a ton of water up his nose and sneezed again… and out came another bean! His nose is like a clown car-- how many beans are up there? What is wrong with this kid?
July 1, 2008
Conversation between Jakob and Brooke while riding in the back of my car:
Brooke: Jakob, what’s the tallest tree?
Jake: Redwoods.
Brooke: Oh…. (*giggling*) Well what’s the tallest banana?
Jake: (*completely serious*)…RedBananas.
July 31, 2008
Actual conversation overheard at my breakfast table this morning:
Jakob: Okay, what’s the fastest animal in the world?
Brooke: The cheetah. What’s the deepest trench in the ocean?
Jakob: Mariana’s trench. 12,000 meters. What’s the tallest mountain?
Brooke: Everest. And who’s the smartest baby in the world?
Brooke and Jakob in unison: Connor!!!!!
Connor: (*confused*) Heh heh….Poop!
Sept 16, 2008
Brooke is still jogging with me. I thought she might forget, after a few weeks but no. Last time I tried to ditch, she told me that laying in bed makes you chubby and lazy and wrote me a ticket for my impunity. So today we went, and this time when we got back she wanted a spa day. After our showers we put towels around our heads and guacamole masks on our faces. She was pretty put out that we didn’t have ‘pickles’ to put on our eyes like the picture on the mask package. But she made me set the timer and we laid in bed and she made sure I was “relaxing”. “Are you relaxing Mommy?”(her nose 3 inches from my face). “We’re supposed to relax, make sure you’re relaxing. I’m not sure we’re relaxing. We really need eye pickles…”
Sept 27th, 2008
Erich put up a ceiling fan in Connor’s room today. So Jake and Connor and I were “helping” (mainly watching while he did all the work.) Connor was up in my lap as usual, I was rocking him and singing little songs I made up for him: ‘I love Connors, because they are so sweet. Chocolate covered Connors are my favorite things to eat (chomping noises). Mommy puts them in my lunch, they’re such a special treat (kiss kiss kiss) I love Connors…”
Jake was watching us. “Hey Mommy, do you remember that song you made up for ME?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. He hummed a little of it. I was SHOCKED. “I haven’t sang that song since you were a tiny baby! I can’t believe you remember it.” He asked me to sing the rest so I did.
I told him I used to have other songs for him. That when he was born he was my only baby and I’d spend all day holding him and singing to him. And he’d look up at me with those giant blue eyes and just listen. “Can we do that now?” he asked. I was more than stunned. Jakob has never been the cuddliest kid, and he hasn’t let me hold him for a very, very long time. He crawled into my lap and I held my third grader like a baby. I sang him soft songs and he just stared up at me with those giant blue eyes. It was all I could do not to cry.
So there you have it. The moments I couldn’t possibly have made up, and the ones I never want to forget. Even though none of them were in my plan.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Everything I Needed to Learn About Fiscal Responsibility I Learned at the High School Dance
All right, so this has been a long time in coming. But I’m just stunned that financial responsibility in this country has dropped to an all-time low and we’ve gotten to the point where payment has just become optional. OPTIONAL. Seriously, you don’t have to pay for that. Take it. Put it on your card. Take two while you’re at it. Just run the bill right up, have two of everything for all it matters, and then just decide not to pay that credit card bill. Because payment is optional. In fact there’s nothing they can really do about it to make you pay, plus you can go to a counseling service who will nogotiate with the credit card company to have your principal lowered, and your interest rate slashed if not halted. So it’s all legal. You got away with it, you totally scored. Give yourself a high five while watching your two new plasma TVs. And people won’t even look down on you because you’re a VICTIM. Victim of greedy credit card companies trying to charge you interest rates on money you spent (that you didn’t have) and you didn’t bother to read the fine print on.
Now I wouldn’t generally call myself a stickler for the rules. Rules in my book are pretty much guidelines that are open for interpretation. I’m certainly a law-abiding citizen for the most part, but I may or may not choose to ‘Walk on the Grass’ if I need to, I park in the tow zone in a pinch, and I have been known to run with scissors. However, no matter what light you look at it in, if you take something as your own and don’t pay for it, that’s stealing. No getting around it. Even if you get a slick talker to have it negotiated away, you’ve taken something that wasn’t yours and didn’t pay the asking price. Why not just run into the store and grab it-- cut out the middle man?
I used to work with a friend of mine who owns a small business. He is a very good, hard-working and honest man. He put much of his family’s savings into building a nice little company. So I was disgusted when, time after time, people just decided not to pay for computer parts we supplied. Just not gonna pay. “We don’t have the money, we’re not going to pay.” And yet they kept their doors open, serving their own customers, buying more parts from other people, but no money came our way. We were small, not very powerful, and after all payment is optional. I was outraged and urged my friend to take them to small claims court. And we did. Months and months and months, and thousands of dollars in lawyers fees later we got a claim from a judge. Elation! We had won! Of course we had won, there was no disputing they took the parts and didn’t pay. So where was our money? Ah that was the bad news. Even with a court document, there was really no way to make them pay. After months of them not making their payment deadlines we had to take them BACK to court. More lawyer fees. Only to have them then declare operating bankruptcy, where they could keep their doors open but didn’t have to pay us. We never did get all the money back, especially not the lawyers fees.
I don’t understand how anyone can argue against the ideal that people should be responsible for their own purchases. People used to care about being deadbeats and felt bad about sticking others with their mess. Shirking your payments is like peeing in the pool. You know it’s disgusting, you know you shouldn’t do it and yet it happens all the time. And everyone around you suffers for it.
This reminds me of those high school dances we used to have; if you’ve forgotten, let me take you back: The girls are totally spruced up, spent all month picking out their dresses
, all day doing their hair and makeup. The guys look like they just woke up and shoved on a wadded up tux. We crossed our fingers that the white limo would pick us up (Cause that was the coolest!) to take us to some expensive restaurant we weren’t nearly mature enough to go to and where the waitstaff groaned and fought over who had to serve us. When the menus came, one girl (for anonymity’s sake, let’s call her “Saige”) nearly asphyxiates on an ice cube when she saw the entrée prices. Saige had three brothers in college and her mom had gone without anything new for herself all year so Saige could have an expensive dress and ride in the limo with everyone else. Saige had brought all the money she earned that month working at Mailboxes Etc to pay for dinner. Saige made the very, very astute snap judgement that calimari appetizers and grilled halibut were not remotely worth 16 hours of bubble-wrapping packages and decided to stick to free breadsticks and a side salad for dinner.
Now we all know where this is going don’t we? We’ve all been at that table. Five of the guys ordered the Surf N Turf special (so they could pick up the lobster and pretend to make it talk) and nine Cokes (at $2.80 each with no free refills). And when the bill comes, one of these charmers declares that it’s just ‘easiest’ to split it evenly ten ways. Half of the table looks delighted, the other half squirm uncomfortably. Saige chokes on the sugar packet she was eating for dessert. After a few awkwardly silent moments, she finally feels compelled to say, “Um…mine was only $7.95. Why should I pay $35?” And this, Ladies and Gentlemen is when all hell breaks loose.
“Dang, Saige, why do you have to be so freaking cheap! Just pay it so we can go.”
“Yeah, it’s too hard to break it all up. And you always have tons of money, Saige-- God, you’re greedy! By the way, I only have ten bucks on me, so everyone’s gonna have to put in an extra five for mine.” Saige eyes Lobster-boy’s wrist and sees what must be his 19th new Swatch Watch that month. She thinks she may have an idea why he’s always broke.
“Saige, let’s just not make a big thing about it. We might as well just pay it and go.”
This is the precise moment Saige paid $40 to learn a very valuable lesson—that the world is filled at least halfway with people who are perfectly willing to freeload and readily eager to call you cheap or greedy when you protest.
I wish the rest of us could get out of this mess for 40 bucks. But that’s not gonna happen. We’re forced to pay trillions to bail out companies that acted irresponsibly with their money, only to see the bailout money used to pay for private jets, luxury trips and probably more Swatch Watches. Soon, if things continue, we will lose the level of Health Care we’ve been diligently bubble-wrapping all those packages to pay for, in exchange for a lower standard of care for the masses.
Now I don’t want to hear everyone howling about how I don’t care about health care for the poor and what about the children and all that. Well I want children to have health care. I really do. And there should be government programs and governement funded hospitals that provide care for people who can’t afford it (Which there ARE!). But I don’t feel like we all need to chip in for health care for people who snuck into this country illegally and strategically had a child here and are now suing THIS country—where they’ve never legally applied for citizenship or paid taxes—for the right to stay here. Yes, they are suing us. Why do they even have access to our judicial system? And who do you think will be footing the bill for that court case? “Dang Paige, why do you have to be so freaking cheap! You always have money, don’t be so greedy! I need a new plasma TV and I’m a victim!”
Just for the record, I want to give you an update on our little friend Saige. I happen to have it on good authority that she grew up to be quite a generous person. She regularly gives money to charity and has a very tender heart for children whose parents are freaking morons and misspend their money away instead of providing for their kids. She wants everyone to have access to education and health care. But she noticed that people tend to give more when it is from the heart, instead of when it is pried unjustly from their hands. And the people who give the most are the rarely the ones with their palms out, screaming about how this country owes them something more. And Saige also still has a seething hatred for freeloaders.
Now I wouldn’t generally call myself a stickler for the rules. Rules in my book are pretty much guidelines that are open for interpretation. I’m certainly a law-abiding citizen for the most part, but I may or may not choose to ‘Walk on the Grass’ if I need to, I park in the tow zone in a pinch, and I have been known to run with scissors. However, no matter what light you look at it in, if you take something as your own and don’t pay for it, that’s stealing. No getting around it. Even if you get a slick talker to have it negotiated away, you’ve taken something that wasn’t yours and didn’t pay the asking price. Why not just run into the store and grab it-- cut out the middle man?
I used to work with a friend of mine who owns a small business. He is a very good, hard-working and honest man. He put much of his family’s savings into building a nice little company. So I was disgusted when, time after time, people just decided not to pay for computer parts we supplied. Just not gonna pay. “We don’t have the money, we’re not going to pay.” And yet they kept their doors open, serving their own customers, buying more parts from other people, but no money came our way. We were small, not very powerful, and after all payment is optional. I was outraged and urged my friend to take them to small claims court. And we did. Months and months and months, and thousands of dollars in lawyers fees later we got a claim from a judge. Elation! We had won! Of course we had won, there was no disputing they took the parts and didn’t pay. So where was our money? Ah that was the bad news. Even with a court document, there was really no way to make them pay. After months of them not making their payment deadlines we had to take them BACK to court. More lawyer fees. Only to have them then declare operating bankruptcy, where they could keep their doors open but didn’t have to pay us. We never did get all the money back, especially not the lawyers fees.
I don’t understand how anyone can argue against the ideal that people should be responsible for their own purchases. People used to care about being deadbeats and felt bad about sticking others with their mess. Shirking your payments is like peeing in the pool. You know it’s disgusting, you know you shouldn’t do it and yet it happens all the time. And everyone around you suffers for it.
This reminds me of those high school dances we used to have; if you’ve forgotten, let me take you back: The girls are totally spruced up, spent all month picking out their dresses
, all day doing their hair and makeup. The guys look like they just woke up and shoved on a wadded up tux. We crossed our fingers that the white limo would pick us up (Cause that was the coolest!) to take us to some expensive restaurant we weren’t nearly mature enough to go to and where the waitstaff groaned and fought over who had to serve us. When the menus came, one girl (for anonymity’s sake, let’s call her “Saige”) nearly asphyxiates on an ice cube when she saw the entrée prices. Saige had three brothers in college and her mom had gone without anything new for herself all year so Saige could have an expensive dress and ride in the limo with everyone else. Saige had brought all the money she earned that month working at Mailboxes Etc to pay for dinner. Saige made the very, very astute snap judgement that calimari appetizers and grilled halibut were not remotely worth 16 hours of bubble-wrapping packages and decided to stick to free breadsticks and a side salad for dinner.Now we all know where this is going don’t we? We’ve all been at that table. Five of the guys ordered the Surf N Turf special (so they could pick up the lobster and pretend to make it talk) and nine Cokes (at $2.80 each with no free refills). And when the bill comes, one of these charmers declares that it’s just ‘easiest’ to split it evenly ten ways. Half of the table looks delighted, the other half squirm uncomfortably. Saige chokes on the sugar packet she was eating for dessert. After a few awkwardly silent moments, she finally feels compelled to say, “Um…mine was only $7.95. Why should I pay $35?” And this, Ladies and Gentlemen is when all hell breaks loose.
“Dang, Saige, why do you have to be so freaking cheap! Just pay it so we can go.”
“Yeah, it’s too hard to break it all up. And you always have tons of money, Saige-- God, you’re greedy! By the way, I only have ten bucks on me, so everyone’s gonna have to put in an extra five for mine.” Saige eyes Lobster-boy’s wrist and sees what must be his 19th new Swatch Watch that month. She thinks she may have an idea why he’s always broke.
“Saige, let’s just not make a big thing about it. We might as well just pay it and go.”
This is the precise moment Saige paid $40 to learn a very valuable lesson—that the world is filled at least halfway with people who are perfectly willing to freeload and readily eager to call you cheap or greedy when you protest.
I wish the rest of us could get out of this mess for 40 bucks. But that’s not gonna happen. We’re forced to pay trillions to bail out companies that acted irresponsibly with their money, only to see the bailout money used to pay for private jets, luxury trips and probably more Swatch Watches. Soon, if things continue, we will lose the level of Health Care we’ve been diligently bubble-wrapping all those packages to pay for, in exchange for a lower standard of care for the masses.
Now I don’t want to hear everyone howling about how I don’t care about health care for the poor and what about the children and all that. Well I want children to have health care. I really do. And there should be government programs and governement funded hospitals that provide care for people who can’t afford it (Which there ARE!). But I don’t feel like we all need to chip in for health care for people who snuck into this country illegally and strategically had a child here and are now suing THIS country—where they’ve never legally applied for citizenship or paid taxes—for the right to stay here. Yes, they are suing us. Why do they even have access to our judicial system? And who do you think will be footing the bill for that court case? “Dang Paige, why do you have to be so freaking cheap! You always have money, don’t be so greedy! I need a new plasma TV and I’m a victim!”
Just for the record, I want to give you an update on our little friend Saige. I happen to have it on good authority that she grew up to be quite a generous person. She regularly gives money to charity and has a very tender heart for children whose parents are freaking morons and misspend their money away instead of providing for their kids. She wants everyone to have access to education and health care. But she noticed that people tend to give more when it is from the heart, instead of when it is pried unjustly from their hands. And the people who give the most are the rarely the ones with their palms out, screaming about how this country owes them something more. And Saige also still has a seething hatred for freeloaders.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
COSTA RICAN ADVENTURE
I do not consider myself super adventurous. However, I refuse to think of myself as in any way old, incapable or closed-minded. So when my husband approached me with his idea for an anniversary trip—an adventure tour in Costa Rica—I was all for it. The major selling point of course being that we would stay in an enchanting eco-lodge treehouse “As seen on the Travel Channel!” Sign me up.
Of course I had my reservations. Staying in the rain forest conjurs up many visions: blood-guzzling mosquitoes, man-eating snakes, oppressive heat, crazed, serial-killing cannibalistic jungle natives and, of course, rain. But the pictures of the treehouse were reeeally cute…so off we went.
In this case, getting there really was part of the fun. First we were driven into the mountains by two guys we didn’t know. As any normal, rational person would think, I was certain they were going to drive us into an alley, strangle us with our sunglasses safety-straps, and leave our bodies to decompose while they made off with 200 American dollars, our new LED flashlight and a pocket camera. But actually they didn’t. Instead they took us rafting through some of the most beautiful and pristine country I’ve ever seen. The river had nice, easy, class 2 rapids and the guide did most of the work while we soaked in the scenery.
We reached the lodge a couple hours later and it was more magnificent than the photos. All the cabins and main lodge were designed to compliment the forest and had a true, simple beauty. The main lodge where we would eat our meals overlooked the rushing river. Our room, the Honeymoon Suite, was about a 10-12 minute hike straight up the mountain. When we got to the stone enclave with double wooden doors leading to our room I noticed the trail continued up and disappeared into the jungle. Knowing that there were no higher cabins, I asked our guide what that trail led to. “It goes to the indian village about an hour away,” was the reply. “The indians will cross through here to get to the river and back.”
Huh. The indians pass right by my treehouse on their way to get water…and heads to shrink and chubby Americans to boil up for soup. “What’s to keep people out of my room?” I demanded. The guide looked confused. You can’t exactly lock up an open-air treehouse. “Well, you can close these wooden doors,” he answered. Ahhhhh, how silly of me. Close the doors, of course! That way if someone wants to get in and grab you, they’d have to go to all the effort of OPENING THE DOORS. I felt so much safer.
Once inside however, it was immediately apparent that if you’re going to die, you’d want it to be in this room. I can’t imagine anything deep in the jungle being more luxurious. We ran from room to room taking it all in. Most notable was the private pool-- In a treehouse. Amazing feat of engineering. Also a private bridge, about 100 feet long that connected to a huge tree, so you could walk out for a birds-eye view of the rain forest and river. Plus a solar-heated outdoor shower, big enough to host all the indians I figured would be stopping by. A waterfall ran from up in the mountains to our cabin, through an opening in the shower, into a stone trough that passed through our sitting room then under the deck (covered by glass flooring) and into the pool. Which overflowed and allowed the water to continue on its journey back down to the river far below. The sound of that trickling water, plus the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on, lead to wonderfully peaceful night sleeps. They don’t sell sound machines with rainforest noises for nothing. Even more drowsy was the incredible sound of rain hitting the hut roof every afternoon. Erich and I agreed that this was the only vacation we’ve ever been on when the rainy times were as enjoyable as the sunny. We would snuggle up with a good book and the pitter patter on the grass roof was like a drug. Zzzzzzzz….
When we managed to pry ourselves from the room, we did a lot of hiking. The rainforest was filled with pleasant surprises. For one thing, you would be hiking and then come upon a little waterfall and cove, just perfect for swimming. I was also amazed that the bugs, like the indians and serial-killers, kept completely to themselves. I came to Costa Rica armed with industrial-strength deep woods Off, but never used it once. Apparently there are a lot of bats in the rain forest that eat up the mosquitoes. We didn’t get a single bug bite the entire trip. Even the inch-long mega ants that are apparently quite painful if provoked went about their business and avoided us altogether.
Erich was fascinated with the tiny rainforest frogs. At one point he picked one up and was cuddling it. “Look how cute he is!” Erich proudly showed our guide.
“Yes. They are quite beautiful,” our guide agreed. “And now that you have gotten the oil from your hands on him, he will be outcast from his community and die.”
Huh. Sort of spoiled the moment. Erich tried to wipe the little guy off with his tshirt and placed him back in the bushes for his last few days on earth. He seemed really sorry about it at first, but for the rest of the trip if a frog jumped in our path Erich would threaten to touch him with an outstretched index finger while yelling, “I’m the Grim Reaper!!”
A favorite part of the trip was zip-lining over the tree canopy. They buckle you into a ha
rness and you travel through a series of cables connected through the trees. It was a spectacular sensation, flying through the forest hundreds of feet above the ground. I never wanted it to end.
I’d had a fantasy that there would be friendly little howler monkeys all over the place, wearing tiny bow-ties and bringing me trays of mango. But although I could hear the monkeys, they never came close enough to serve me fruit. Which was my only disappointment of the trip. At one point I commented to Erich at how I’d wished we would see more wildlife. It was right then that we found the snake in our room.
Now my husband is an over-exclaimer. He’ll scream “OH MY GOD!!!!” at home and I’ll come running in a panic only to find he’s located that last puzzle piece we were missing. So when he calmly said, “Hey. You gotta see this…” I was not prepared for the giant reptile slinking across the railing in my sitting room. I must say, I’ve seen snakes probably up to 15 feet in person. But without that khaki-shirted person holding them, they seem MUCH bigger. I’d like to pretend I acted really calm and cool, but in truth I was embarrassingly hysterical. After shrieking and hopping around and all that, I had Erich call down to the lodge to send up a khaki shirt to rescue us. They really didn’t seem at all surprised to hear Voldemort’s deadly sidekick was coming to kill us. “What color is it?” They asked.
“Brown and black,” Erich answered.
“Oh, it’s not poinsonous,” they responded.
“Well, it’s really big, though. About 6 feet.” Erich explained. They sighed and said someone would be up to remove it. They probably get calls from hysterical Americans about six inch garden snakes all the time.
When the guy came up he was holding a little twig. We pointed him to the snake. He turned the corner and did a comical double-take. “WHOA! That’s a big boa constrictor!” he yelled. No shit, Sherlock! Don’t you see my heart flopping around over there on the deck? He told us he would need a bigger stick. After 20 minutes of wrangling, Erich and khaki managed to get our visitor under control and haul him down the mountain. Our guide told us there was a snake reserve a few miles away where they would take her and care for her. I felt good about the experience. Then of course at dinner, the waiter was gushing about our beautiful find, telling us how much he loves snakes. “Where did they take it again?” I asked.
“Oh, we just took her back up and let her go in the jungle. It’s where she belongs,” he stated matter of factly.
“WHAT? I thought she went to a snake reserve!”
The blank look on his face told me he had no knowledge of such a place. I had obviously been given the ole “We’re taking your snake to a farm where he can run and you’ll feel safe” story. When in reality they probably just put her back on her giant nest of baby snakes to plot their revenge on humans. Seeing as the cabins have no electricity, it was a daunting task searching for vengeful reptiles in every pitch black corner with candlelight. But I certainly did it.
The next morning it was time to raft out. The guide told us that it would not be easy like coming in, that we would really have to work together this time. It felt like he was looking right at me. Now, I’ve been whitewater rafting in Austria and Colorado. But nobody would ever consider me a strong link on the rafting team chain. I’m usually the one pretending to paddle with one hand while winding my water camera with the other. But this time was class three and four rapids. Which meant they were much harder and needed more navigating. We had a safety kayaker riding alongside in case anyone flew out of the raft and was hurled against one of the sharp rocks. I prayed that in no way would it be me they had to fish out of the froth. For awhile we were doing well, I thought, winding our way expertly through the waves and rock. But then the guide explained that we would be heading for a giant hole. If we could steer all the way left we would make it fine, but if we went straight there was a large hole that we would dip into and most likely throw everyone out. He emphasized we would need more effort from the right side of the boat. I probably don’t need to tell you who was sitting on the right side. So off we went, paddling furiously, aiming for the left with all our might…and…we didn’t make it. “Everyone hold on!” the guide yelled. As promised, the boat dove nose first into a hole and bouyed out, covered by a giant wave. I willed myself to hang on as the guy in front of me was swept out. I did it! I stayed on! Eureka. It was a great feeling of accomplishment.
The end of the river marked the end of our adventure. We were incredibly sad to be leaving. At home, our room seems too quiet and it’s harder to sleep. So I’m getting one of those rainforest sounds machines. And even considering a new pet snake.
Of course I had my reservations. Staying in the rain forest conjurs up many visions: blood-guzzling mosquitoes, man-eating snakes, oppressive heat, crazed, serial-killing cannibalistic jungle natives and, of course, rain. But the pictures of the treehouse were reeeally cute…so off we went.In this case, getting there really was part of the fun. First we were driven into the mountains by two guys we didn’t know. As any normal, rational person would think, I was certain they were going to drive us into an alley, strangle us with our sunglasses safety-straps, and leave our bodies to decompose while they made off with 200 American dollars, our new LED flashlight and a pocket camera. But actually they didn’t. Instead they took us rafting through some of the most beautiful and pristine country I’ve ever seen. The river had nice, easy, class 2 rapids and the guide did most of the work while we soaked in the scenery.
We reached the lodge a couple hours later and it was more magnificent than the photos. All the cabins and main lodge were designed to compliment the forest and had a true, simple beauty. The main lodge where we would eat our meals overlooked the rushing river. Our room, the Honeymoon Suite, was about a 10-12 minute hike straight up the mountain. When we got to the stone enclave with double wooden doors leading to our room I noticed the trail continued up and disappeared into the jungle. Knowing that there were no higher cabins, I asked our guide what that trail led to. “It goes to the indian village about an hour away,” was the reply. “The indians will cross through here to get to the river and back.”
Huh. The indians pass right by my treehouse on their way to get water…and heads to shrink and chubby Americans to boil up for soup. “What’s to keep people out of my room?” I demanded. The guide looked confused. You can’t exactly lock up an open-air treehouse. “Well, you can close these wooden doors,” he answered. Ahhhhh, how silly of me. Close the doors, of course! That way if someone wants to get in and grab you, they’d have to go to all the effort of OPENING THE DOORS. I felt so much safer.
Once inside however, it was immediately apparent that if you’re going to die, you’d want it to be in this room. I can’t imagine anything deep in the jungle being more luxurious. We ran from room to room taking it all in. Most notable was the private pool-- In a treehouse. Amazing feat of engineering. Also a private bridge, about 100 feet long that connected to a huge tree, so you could walk out for a birds-eye view of the rain forest and river. Plus a solar-heated outdoor shower, big enough to host all the indians I figured would be stopping by. A waterfall ran from up in the mountains to our cabin, through an opening in the shower, into a stone trough that passed through our sitting room then under the deck (covered by glass flooring) and into the pool. Which overflowed and allowed the water to continue on its journey back down to the river far below. The sound of that trickling water, plus the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on, lead to wonderfully peaceful night sleeps. They don’t sell sound machines with rainforest noises for nothing. Even more drowsy was the incredible sound of rain hitting the hut roof every afternoon. Erich and I agreed that this was the only vacation we’ve ever been on when the rainy times were as enjoyable as the sunny. We would snuggle up with a good book and the pitter patter on the grass roof was like a drug. Zzzzzzzz….
When we managed to pry ourselves from the room, we did a lot of hiking. The rainforest was filled with pleasant surprises. For one thing, you would be hiking and then come upon a little waterfall and cove, just perfect for swimming. I was also amazed that the bugs, like the indians and serial-killers, kept completely to themselves. I came to Costa Rica armed with industrial-strength deep woods Off, but never used it once. Apparently there are a lot of bats in the rain forest that eat up the mosquitoes. We didn’t get a single bug bite the entire trip. Even the inch-long mega ants that are apparently quite painful if provoked went about their business and avoided us altogether.
Erich was fascinated with the tiny rainforest frogs. At one point he picked one up and was cuddling it. “Look how cute he is!” Erich proudly showed our guide.
“Yes. They are quite beautiful,” our guide agreed. “And now that you have gotten the oil from your hands on him, he will be outcast from his community and die.”
Huh. Sort of spoiled the moment. Erich tried to wipe the little guy off with his tshirt and placed him back in the bushes for his last few days on earth. He seemed really sorry about it at first, but for the rest of the trip if a frog jumped in our path Erich would threaten to touch him with an outstretched index finger while yelling, “I’m the Grim Reaper!!”
A favorite part of the trip was zip-lining over the tree canopy. They buckle you into a ha
rness and you travel through a series of cables connected through the trees. It was a spectacular sensation, flying through the forest hundreds of feet above the ground. I never wanted it to end.I’d had a fantasy that there would be friendly little howler monkeys all over the place, wearing tiny bow-ties and bringing me trays of mango. But although I could hear the monkeys, they never came close enough to serve me fruit. Which was my only disappointment of the trip. At one point I commented to Erich at how I’d wished we would see more wildlife. It was right then that we found the snake in our room.
Now my husband is an over-exclaimer. He’ll scream “OH MY GOD!!!!” at home and I’ll come running in a panic only to find he’s located that last puzzle piece we were missing. So when he calmly said, “Hey. You gotta see this…” I was not prepared for the giant reptile slinking across the railing in my sitting room. I must say, I’ve seen snakes probably up to 15 feet in person. But without that khaki-shirted person holding them, they seem MUCH bigger. I’d like to pretend I acted really calm and cool, but in truth I was embarrassingly hysterical. After shrieking and hopping around and all that, I had Erich call down to the lodge to send up a khaki shirt to rescue us. They really didn’t seem at all surprised to hear Voldemort’s deadly sidekick was coming to kill us. “What color is it?” They asked.
“Brown and black,” Erich answered.
“Oh, it’s not poinsonous,” they responded.
“Well, it’s really big, though. About 6 feet.” Erich explained. They sighed and said someone would be up to remove it. They probably get calls from hysterical Americans about six inch garden snakes all the time.
When the guy came up he was holding a little twig. We pointed him to the snake. He turned the corner and did a comical double-take. “WHOA! That’s a big boa constrictor!” he yelled. No shit, Sherlock! Don’t you see my heart flopping around over there on the deck? He told us he would need a bigger stick. After 20 minutes of wrangling, Erich and khaki managed to get our visitor under control and haul him down the mountain. Our guide told us there was a snake reserve a few miles away where they would take her and care for her. I felt good about the experience. Then of course at dinner, the waiter was gushing about our beautiful find, telling us how much he loves snakes. “Where did they take it again?” I asked.“Oh, we just took her back up and let her go in the jungle. It’s where she belongs,” he stated matter of factly.
“WHAT? I thought she went to a snake reserve!”
The blank look on his face told me he had no knowledge of such a place. I had obviously been given the ole “We’re taking your snake to a farm where he can run and you’ll feel safe” story. When in reality they probably just put her back on her giant nest of baby snakes to plot their revenge on humans. Seeing as the cabins have no electricity, it was a daunting task searching for vengeful reptiles in every pitch black corner with candlelight. But I certainly did it.
The next morning it was time to raft out. The guide told us that it would not be easy like coming in, that we would really have to work together this time. It felt like he was looking right at me. Now, I’ve been whitewater rafting in Austria and Colorado. But nobody would ever consider me a strong link on the rafting team chain. I’m usually the one pretending to paddle with one hand while winding my water camera with the other. But this time was class three and four rapids. Which meant they were much harder and needed more navigating. We had a safety kayaker riding alongside in case anyone flew out of the raft and was hurled against one of the sharp rocks. I prayed that in no way would it be me they had to fish out of the froth. For awhile we were doing well, I thought, winding our way expertly through the waves and rock. But then the guide explained that we would be heading for a giant hole. If we could steer all the way left we would make it fine, but if we went straight there was a large hole that we would dip into and most likely throw everyone out. He emphasized we would need more effort from the right side of the boat. I probably don’t need to tell you who was sitting on the right side. So off we went, paddling furiously, aiming for the left with all our might…and…we didn’t make it. “Everyone hold on!” the guide yelled. As promised, the boat dove nose first into a hole and bouyed out, covered by a giant wave. I willed myself to hang on as the guy in front of me was swept out. I did it! I stayed on! Eureka. It was a great feeling of accomplishment.
The end of the river marked the end of our adventure. We were incredibly sad to be leaving. At home, our room seems too quiet and it’s harder to sleep. So I’m getting one of those rainforest sounds machines. And even considering a new pet snake.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
ARE WE THERE YET?
Whoever said “Getting there is half the fun” was a giant, pie-faced moron. In 98% of cases “being there” is way better by at least double. Pretty much the only enjoyable mode of transport for me is oversized cruise ship, because I’m mildly claustrophobic, hate to be constrained and am easily motion sick. Only on a cruise ship can I rock climb and play putt putt golf while moving. But unfortunately for me, there was no cruise line sailing direct from Philadelphia to Dallas, so I was stuck with the airlines.
Now, I’m no Platinum traveler, but I’ve done my fair share. There are certain rules that everyone should follow to be happier. First off, make sure you’re in one of the earliest boarding groups so there’s room for your stuff in the overhead bins. Plus you’re up first for drink and snack service, which will take your mind off the fact you’re hurtling through the air in a metal tube without a net. I picked a nice window seat up front so I could see outside (the claustrophobia), and lean against it pretending to be asleep if I got a ‘talker’ next to me.
I was already starving, because due to weather issues my original flight had been delayed several hours. I spent that time standing in line to get rerouted on a flight that left immediately, but had no connection. So I had to run to the gate to catch it and now I wouldn’t have that mid-flight stop to grab a sandwich as I’d hoped. I was looking at a solid 4 more hours on an empty stomach. I planned to fake a seizure so they’d give me 27 bags of those complimentary peanuts.
I optimistically hoped the flight would be partially empty so there’d be no one in the middle seat. My optimism, as usual, bit me right on the floatation device. SECONDS after sitting down, a mom with a toddler slid right next to me in the middle seat. Nobody in the history of air travel has ever chosen the middle seat on purpose. Especially with a baby. I looked at her like the complete nutbag she was. “Uh, is your husband with you?” I asked, clearly in a voice that meant ‘move over and respect my personal 2-seat space’.
“Oh no,” she replied, all chipper, “I figured we’d have to move over anyway if someone came, so I thought I’d just do it now.” This must have been her first time flying with children because she had it all wrong. Children should be used as a deterrent, keeping anyone from sitting within two rows of you if possible. If I’d had a baby with me, I would have stood at the entrance of the aisle holding the kid out in front of me like Gandalf wielding his staff: “NONE SHALL PASS!” I’ve even been known to loudly say things to the baby so everyone can hear, like “Aww sweetums, does boo boo feewl like he’s gonna throw up ALLLL over the place again?”
But this lady just didn’t get it. She held her baby neatly on her lap and he was being adorable and quiet of course. I gave him the once-over. His name was Keegan. I could tell because it was embroidered in 3 inch letters across his outfit. It was one of those linen sailor suits with the knickers and knee socks my husband would never allow our boys to wear because he was certain it would turn them homosexual. Keegan had a giant mouth full of rice puffs. He grinned to show me. My growling stomach fantasized about prying the cup from his chubby hand and gulping down the rest of them.
The plane was filling up. “Look, could you just pinch him or something?” I pleaded. “If he sits there all normal like that, someone’s gonna come sit with us and we’ll be crammed in here the whole time.” His mother looked at me wide-eyed, and hugged Keegan a little closer. I was hoping she was rethinking her seating choice, when suddenly a hulking business traveler plopped down next to her, sealing us in. His name was Wade, and he was, of course, a talker. So all through the take-off they chatted up a storm, insisiting on including me in the conversation even though I was fake-snoring against the window like a cartoon character. Keegan rhythmically kicked me with his hard, white baby shoes the entire time. My stomach was turning inside out. His fat, knee-socked leg looked like a delicious Cajun sausage. Where the heck are those snacks, I grumbled. Finally, I saw the flight-attendant with her order pad.
Just then, over the speakers came a voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, the flight attendants will be coming around shortly to take your drink orders. Unfortunately, due to an on-board peanut allergy, we will not be passing out snacks…” The message replayed in my head in that garbled Charlie-Brown-teacher voice: Noooooooo snaaaaaaacks.
“WHAT?” I yelped, dropping my fake-sleeping act. “Can they DO that? Who the hell has a freaking peanut allergy on Southwest, the airline known for its delectable PEANUT SNACKS!!!!” Keegan’s mother shrank down a little in her seat and did not make eye contact. She suddenly seemed very interested in the emergency card in the seat-back pocket. Realization swept over me. KEEGAN! I turned to look at this menace. He was chewing on his finger and drooling. I scowled at him. Giggling, he wiped a fingerful of slobbery puffs on my arm. I was so hungry I thought about licking it off.
I pulled out my portable DVD player. Wade and Newbie Mom were very excited. “Cool, got anything we’d all like?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Keegan, have you seen the final season of the Soprano’s? I hear a stripper gets whacked in this one.” I turned the volume way up, “ I hope your 4-word vocabularly is up to snuff -- he’s not saying ‘truck’ by the way…”
Soiling Keegan’s virtue only brought me momentary happiness, as big Wade ended up with a bout of stomach flu halfway through the flight. Thanks to my early boarding rule, I was right by the bathroom to hear and smell everything. Not a lot of ventilation on a plane. I stared at the ceiling, willing that yellow oxygen mask to fall and give me relief. It never did. When we finally touched down I was suicidal and knocked over several old ladies to get out into open air. Boy, I thought, if getting here was only half the fun, this is gonna be one sweet trip!
Now, I’m no Platinum traveler, but I’ve done my fair share. There are certain rules that everyone should follow to be happier. First off, make sure you’re in one of the earliest boarding groups so there’s room for your stuff in the overhead bins. Plus you’re up first for drink and snack service, which will take your mind off the fact you’re hurtling through the air in a metal tube without a net. I picked a nice window seat up front so I could see outside (the claustrophobia), and lean against it pretending to be asleep if I got a ‘talker’ next to me.
I was already starving, because due to weather issues my original flight had been delayed several hours. I spent that time standing in line to get rerouted on a flight that left immediately, but had no connection. So I had to run to the gate to catch it and now I wouldn’t have that mid-flight stop to grab a sandwich as I’d hoped. I was looking at a solid 4 more hours on an empty stomach. I planned to fake a seizure so they’d give me 27 bags of those complimentary peanuts.
I optimistically hoped the flight would be partially empty so there’d be no one in the middle seat. My optimism, as usual, bit me right on the floatation device. SECONDS after sitting down, a mom with a toddler slid right next to me in the middle seat. Nobody in the history of air travel has ever chosen the middle seat on purpose. Especially with a baby. I looked at her like the complete nutbag she was. “Uh, is your husband with you?” I asked, clearly in a voice that meant ‘move over and respect my personal 2-seat space’.
“Oh no,” she replied, all chipper, “I figured we’d have to move over anyway if someone came, so I thought I’d just do it now.” This must have been her first time flying with children because she had it all wrong. Children should be used as a deterrent, keeping anyone from sitting within two rows of you if possible. If I’d had a baby with me, I would have stood at the entrance of the aisle holding the kid out in front of me like Gandalf wielding his staff: “NONE SHALL PASS!” I’ve even been known to loudly say things to the baby so everyone can hear, like “Aww sweetums, does boo boo feewl like he’s gonna throw up ALLLL over the place again?”
But this lady just didn’t get it. She held her baby neatly on her lap and he was being adorable and quiet of course. I gave him the once-over. His name was Keegan. I could tell because it was embroidered in 3 inch letters across his outfit. It was one of those linen sailor suits with the knickers and knee socks my husband would never allow our boys to wear because he was certain it would turn them homosexual. Keegan had a giant mouth full of rice puffs. He grinned to show me. My growling stomach fantasized about prying the cup from his chubby hand and gulping down the rest of them.
The plane was filling up. “Look, could you just pinch him or something?” I pleaded. “If he sits there all normal like that, someone’s gonna come sit with us and we’ll be crammed in here the whole time.” His mother looked at me wide-eyed, and hugged Keegan a little closer. I was hoping she was rethinking her seating choice, when suddenly a hulking business traveler plopped down next to her, sealing us in. His name was Wade, and he was, of course, a talker. So all through the take-off they chatted up a storm, insisiting on including me in the conversation even though I was fake-snoring against the window like a cartoon character. Keegan rhythmically kicked me with his hard, white baby shoes the entire time. My stomach was turning inside out. His fat, knee-socked leg looked like a delicious Cajun sausage. Where the heck are those snacks, I grumbled. Finally, I saw the flight-attendant with her order pad.
Just then, over the speakers came a voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, the flight attendants will be coming around shortly to take your drink orders. Unfortunately, due to an on-board peanut allergy, we will not be passing out snacks…” The message replayed in my head in that garbled Charlie-Brown-teacher voice: Noooooooo snaaaaaaacks.
“WHAT?” I yelped, dropping my fake-sleeping act. “Can they DO that? Who the hell has a freaking peanut allergy on Southwest, the airline known for its delectable PEANUT SNACKS!!!!” Keegan’s mother shrank down a little in her seat and did not make eye contact. She suddenly seemed very interested in the emergency card in the seat-back pocket. Realization swept over me. KEEGAN! I turned to look at this menace. He was chewing on his finger and drooling. I scowled at him. Giggling, he wiped a fingerful of slobbery puffs on my arm. I was so hungry I thought about licking it off.
I pulled out my portable DVD player. Wade and Newbie Mom were very excited. “Cool, got anything we’d all like?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Keegan, have you seen the final season of the Soprano’s? I hear a stripper gets whacked in this one.” I turned the volume way up, “ I hope your 4-word vocabularly is up to snuff -- he’s not saying ‘truck’ by the way…”
Soiling Keegan’s virtue only brought me momentary happiness, as big Wade ended up with a bout of stomach flu halfway through the flight. Thanks to my early boarding rule, I was right by the bathroom to hear and smell everything. Not a lot of ventilation on a plane. I stared at the ceiling, willing that yellow oxygen mask to fall and give me relief. It never did. When we finally touched down I was suicidal and knocked over several old ladies to get out into open air. Boy, I thought, if getting here was only half the fun, this is gonna be one sweet trip!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
A Hard Lesson Learned
Like everyone else in the country it seems, I made a New Year’s Resolution to start working out and get in shape. So now it’s March and I have been faithfully sticking to my regime; sweating, bouncing and shimmying with 100 other girls several times a week at the local gym. And yet, after two whole months of this I am STILL not built like a supermodel. Which is, of course, discouraging. So, looking for some sympathy (or permission to quit altogether) I said to my darling husband, “I’ve been working and working so hard for all these weeks and I haven’t lost an ounce of weight.” And HE says…wait for it…wait for it…(drumroll please)… “Yeah… but your butt looks less saggy.”
Your. Butt. Looks. LESS. Saggy. He said it with this happy, bright-eyed and generous look on his face like a child handing you a bunch of freshly-picked wildflowers. Imagine the awkward scene: I stare back at him in stunned silence. He’s still smiling. My upper lip begins to curl over my teeth. Confused, his smile fades just a little. A bit of saliva drips off one of my fangs. He takes an unsure step backwards and begins to stammer, “But…I said it looks…LESS saggy…”. BAM! I fly across the room at him, horizontal in the air like a ninja, my “less saggy” (and obviously stronger) glutes propelling me forward like a bullet. I wrap my hands around his neck and apply a sleeper hold until he is unconscious in a puddle.
Now, my husband it not new in town. This is certainly not his first rodeo. He has spent the last 11 years attending the Paige Schlegel “Watch every word you say because it will be dissected, twisted around and then held against you” seminar, and truthfully he rarely slips up anymore. If you would have asked me yesterday, I would have said he was an expert on what not to say. He never falls into the “do these make me look fat” trap, always passes the “is she prettier than me” test, and knows exactly when to say, “You’re like that Benjamin Button guy—I think you might be getting YOUNGER every day.”
So imagine my surprise at this über flub that he should have learned to avoid in his Dealing with Females 101 class. LESS saggy! Finally I am able to respond, “So what you’re saying is, my butt was REALLY saggy before. Even though you always tell me how great I look, and how my butt looks exactly like that Russian girl’s on Dancing With the Stars.” I take a deep breath and begin to rant, “So that must mean you were lying, and if you’d lie about this, then you’ll lie about anything and now I can’t trust you, so what else are you lying about, you probably have another family living somewhere that you just didn’t feel like you needed to tell me about because you’re a big liar and you think I’m a saggy cow and our whole marriage is a sham!”
He knows he’s trapped. He knows there is very little chance to escape. His eyes nervously shift back and forth-- I can see he’s deciding between trying to dig his way out of this mess and just falling on his sword in the noble tradition of the Samurai. Like a fool, he opts to dig. “I’m saying…that your hard work….is really paying off…” (He pauses to see how the rest of the sentence sounds in his head) “…and that…your butt…is like a nice round…” (In all honesty I am sort of eager to hear how this ends. A nice round WHAT? Watermelon? Cheese wheel? Planetoid?) Unfortunately, he could not come up with anything and ended up bolting out of the house, leaving a body-shaped hole in the door. Coward.
But the moral of the story here is that you think you’ve brought them up right: you’ve gotten rid of all their Def Leppard Tshirts, showed them that a hairstyle should NOT be ‘party in the back, business in the front’, and taught them to wash their underwear after each use instead of relying on the ‘sniff test’. And yet, when you least expect it, they forget crucial elements of their training and you realize how far you still have to go. Apparently, like working out, bringing up a civilized husband is a journey, and not a destination.
Your. Butt. Looks. LESS. Saggy. He said it with this happy, bright-eyed and generous look on his face like a child handing you a bunch of freshly-picked wildflowers. Imagine the awkward scene: I stare back at him in stunned silence. He’s still smiling. My upper lip begins to curl over my teeth. Confused, his smile fades just a little. A bit of saliva drips off one of my fangs. He takes an unsure step backwards and begins to stammer, “But…I said it looks…LESS saggy…”. BAM! I fly across the room at him, horizontal in the air like a ninja, my “less saggy” (and obviously stronger) glutes propelling me forward like a bullet. I wrap my hands around his neck and apply a sleeper hold until he is unconscious in a puddle.
Now, my husband it not new in town. This is certainly not his first rodeo. He has spent the last 11 years attending the Paige Schlegel “Watch every word you say because it will be dissected, twisted around and then held against you” seminar, and truthfully he rarely slips up anymore. If you would have asked me yesterday, I would have said he was an expert on what not to say. He never falls into the “do these make me look fat” trap, always passes the “is she prettier than me” test, and knows exactly when to say, “You’re like that Benjamin Button guy—I think you might be getting YOUNGER every day.”
So imagine my surprise at this über flub that he should have learned to avoid in his Dealing with Females 101 class. LESS saggy! Finally I am able to respond, “So what you’re saying is, my butt was REALLY saggy before. Even though you always tell me how great I look, and how my butt looks exactly like that Russian girl’s on Dancing With the Stars.” I take a deep breath and begin to rant, “So that must mean you were lying, and if you’d lie about this, then you’ll lie about anything and now I can’t trust you, so what else are you lying about, you probably have another family living somewhere that you just didn’t feel like you needed to tell me about because you’re a big liar and you think I’m a saggy cow and our whole marriage is a sham!”
He knows he’s trapped. He knows there is very little chance to escape. His eyes nervously shift back and forth-- I can see he’s deciding between trying to dig his way out of this mess and just falling on his sword in the noble tradition of the Samurai. Like a fool, he opts to dig. “I’m saying…that your hard work….is really paying off…” (He pauses to see how the rest of the sentence sounds in his head) “…and that…your butt…is like a nice round…” (In all honesty I am sort of eager to hear how this ends. A nice round WHAT? Watermelon? Cheese wheel? Planetoid?) Unfortunately, he could not come up with anything and ended up bolting out of the house, leaving a body-shaped hole in the door. Coward.
But the moral of the story here is that you think you’ve brought them up right: you’ve gotten rid of all their Def Leppard Tshirts, showed them that a hairstyle should NOT be ‘party in the back, business in the front’, and taught them to wash their underwear after each use instead of relying on the ‘sniff test’. And yet, when you least expect it, they forget crucial elements of their training and you realize how far you still have to go. Apparently, like working out, bringing up a civilized husband is a journey, and not a destination.
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