Friday, March 30, 2007

Idaho

Barb, this one is for you. The ATV story.
About ten years ago, my friend Barbara invited me to go home with her to Idaho. Of course, I said yes. I am not my mother's daughter for nothing.....have bag, will travel.

We began our trip by visiting her sisters and their families in Boise. Starved after a long plane ride and inedible airline food, we went through the drive-thru at the local Taco Bell. So far, not really so different from being home. She showed me Paul Revere's house. More reminders of home. How much more east coast can you get? (Okay, so it was Paul Revere from the 1960's rock group, not the Paul Revere). We attended a Shakespearean play. Just like being at the Folger Theater in DC, except this was outdoors and you needed a sweater, jacket and blanket to keep from freezing to death before the final curtain call and it was the middle of July. Frostbite aside, I was beginning to feel that Dorothy was wrong. Maybe everyplace was like home.

Downtown business area? Check. Suburbs? Check. Charmingly Idahoan, but at the same time, not really so different from home. Her one sister even had a weekend house in the mountains, which we visited over the weekend. And here is where things started to go west.

Having grown up in the mountains of Northeastern PA, and vacationing in the Catskills, I thought I had seen mountains before. Not even close.

Our first day, we went four wheeling, careening wildly through the rugged hillside with a devil-may-care attitude. Okay, so we hit a top speed of five miles per hour with me on the back, hanging on for dear life, praying we wouldn't plunge over some precipice and be eaten by wolves. We did, however, sing "Born to be Wild" at the top of our lungs, which, in retrospect, probably scared away any hungry carnivores as well as any other humans.

Returning triumphantly to the cabin, I agreed to go off again with Barb's neice who was about ten. She wanted to show me where she and her cousins played. Since I was now an expert at the whole four-wheeling thing, I agreed, and we headed off into the wild. And this is where things started to go south.

Stephanie directed me some distance away to a large rock formation. She showed me how they pretended the crevices were rooms in their "house". She also showed me prints, and not the Andy Warhol, Ansel Adams kind. These were bear prints, elk prints, wolf prints. These were BIG prints.

Casually suggesting that we might want to return to the cabin since it was near dinnertime, I strolled to the ATV and fired up the engine. Okay, so I sprinted to the thing like an Olympic runner going for the gold, dragging Stephanie with me. I then proceeded to flood the engine, turning our only means of escape into a giant Ritz cracker with us being the cheese whiz for the hungry predators I was sure lurked in the bushes, drooling.

Being about as mechanically inclined as I am an avid outdoorsman, I pressed every button and pedal, I turned and twisted every knob, I got off and pushed it. I even kicked it. Nothing. We were doomed to be a two course dinner for some big, hairy animal with lots of teeth if the moose and elk didn't get us first. (I'm not sure what they would do to us, but I was certain it wouldn't be good).

Stephanie, on the other hand, seemed to be cheerfully unconcerned about our dire situation. As I scouted out trees with low-hanging branches for easier climbing, and worried about who would inherit my magnet collection, she chatted on blithly about camping and exploring and what fun there was to be had here in the Cascades. Didn't she know she was about to die?

Finally, after several more attempts, prayers, under-my-breath curses and full-blown panic attacks, the ATV engine sputtered to life, whisking us back to the safety of the cabin.

Definitely not like home.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Car Phone

A while back, my husband purchased a new car complete with a car phone. This is his third. Phone, not car. This rounds out his collection nicely.......car phone, cell phone and blackberry. Some people collect art, some rare books, my husband collects phones.
Ah, but this is different, even necessary, he claimed. This allows him to talk on the phone while driving, hands-free. It even has voice command, so he can dial without having to take his eyes off the road for a split second. It is easier, safer, and makes life better.
Easier? Faster than a speeding bullet, able to program any cell phone in a single instant......look, it's Tim. And this phone was kryptonite. First, a lesson from the salesman. Hit this button, pull this lever and talk. See? What could be simpler?
Several days, a trip or two back to the dealer and one shredded instruction book later, he had the names and numbers of family and friends installed, easy as pie. He also had the salesman's name and number installed whether he wanted it or not, since it was used as the test entry. We still call him occasionally. But not on purpose . Which brings us to safer.
Yes, he can make a call without having the distraction of holding a phone and pushing buttons. Just a flick of a lever, a simple command,"Dial name", and he is making the world a better place. A woman's voice calmly asks, "name please?". And then all hell breaks loose.
Tim says his brother's name. The phone calls his sister. He says his sister's name. It calls his cooworker. The names sound nothing alike, but it doesn't seem to matter to this phone. Willy-nilly, it randomly places calls. It's sort of like playing Wheel of Fortune. You never know whether you are getting the trip to Hawaii, or going bankrupt. Come to think of it, the voice does sound a little bit like Vanna......
Tim's response to this is to 1. push frantically at the end button twelve to thirteen times while shouting, "NO!!!!!" 2. jerk the lever abruptly and, loudly and with ennunciation that would make Henry Higgins weep for joy, repeat his request. 3. repeat steps one and two, changing the tone and pitch of his voice each time sounding like everyone from James Earl Jones to Tiny Tim.
When steps 1,2,and 3 fail to get results, he begins to add colorful words and phrases to his request, suggesting things that are not anatomically possible. Vanna, of course, remains calm throughout. She asks him, "Please repeat." It only goes downhill from there. So much for safer.
When he does hit the jackpot and is connected to the person he actually wanted to call, we invariably ride throuh a dead zone and watch in dismay as the signal bars click down to nothing. You do not want to know what happens then.
Yeah, easier, safer and better.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Travel With Dad

My father was in the navy and saw the world. Therefore, he doesn't need to ever leave home again. Pyramids still there? Seen 'em. Eiffel Tower? Check. Vesuvius still puffing away? Been there, done that.
Of course, this attitude drives my mother crazy. They have a new Starbucks in Berlin? Let's go. Target opened in Melbourne? Need to check it out. A new painting was hung in the Louvre? She's there.
And so, for the last several years, my mom has hopped on various planes, trains and automobiles and covered five out of the seven continents with various family and friends while my dad has contentedly sat home experiencing it all through the magic of TV and the Travel Channel.
Finally, two years ago, we figured out a way to get my dad to actually experience the joy of modern day travel first hand.......an anniversary gift. There was no way he could refuse if it was a gift, right? Wrong. He tried everything from claiming he couldn't take off from work (the man has not had a vacation since the Nixon administration) to the house not being there when he got back(okay, so this one almost really happened...a small brush fire in nearby woods that came a bit close....coincidence or ???? hmmmmm. No,no,no).
When his excuses fell on deaf ears, he changed tactics. He whined. The seats are too small and there is not enough leg room for a man of his height. The flights are too long and there is nothing to eat on them. The movies are lousy(he was really reaching with that one, but he was desperate by then). And then came the coup de gras. The airline would lose his luggage( of course they would...this is, after all, modern day travel).
A full month of phone calls detailing the luggage plight followed. One big bag, or two smaller ones? Definitely a carry-on, but how big could it be? His was twenty-two inches, but the airline only allowed a twenty inch bag. Did that mean they would take it away from him? If so, what was the point of taking a carry-on? How would he replace his posessions when his bags were sucked into the black hole of luggage hell? After all, our destination was the ends of the earth, a place where no civilized man had ever gone before...Vegas!
Fortunately, for all concerned (meaning me, my husband and my mother), the luggage made it to our destination. He got on with his grossly oversized carry-0n and those extra two inches of baggage didn't cause the plane to plummet to the earth over a corn field in Kansas. Although after the whole house-not-standing incident.... Hmmm. No, no,no.
Flushed with the success of our first venture, we struck out again last year for San Diego. After the requisite month of anguish and angst over luggage, flight schedules, seating, etc., we all enjoyed a few days of R&R in beautiful southern California. And then disaster struck. A cancelled flight, missed connection, a night in a Chicago airport hotel where the AC was not working and the windows didn't open. Eeekkkk!
Was this the end of family travel? Would my mother have to throw herself on the mercy of friends and family whenever she wanted to leave home? Was the very thread of civilization coming unraveled?
Boldly, we made plans again for this year. It is still two weeks out, but the calls have begun. We have a direct flight, so no missed connections. We have business class tickets (oddly enough, they were cheaper than coach...I think this is the cosmos way of saying we will be blown out by a freak hurricane when we arrive at out destination). So what is left to worry about?
Bedbugs. Apparently, there has been an outbreak of bedbugs at hotels here on the east coast, and due to the early morning departure time, my parents and sister(we finally suckered her into coming along) will have to spend the night at an airport hotel.
Did you know that you can't see the little devils and they will only come out at night, after you are asleep and then it's "party time"!!!! They belly up to the smorgasboard and feast until dawn, and you don't even know you've been the main course until it's too late.
So, he's thinking of spraying the sheets with Deet, except that if he puts it in his luggage it will get lost, or his carry-on will explode midway through the flight, or..........stay tuned for next year!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Home Remedies, St. Patrick's Day Style

This past Saturday, my husband and I went into the liquor store to pick up a few things for our annual St. Patrick's Day party. Coming from an Irish family, it was sort of like strolling through the local CVS. Diarhhea? Take a shot of blackberry brandy. Constipation? Guiness. No herbal supplements for us.....we go right for the 20 proof.
Unfortunately, my husband learned this the hard way.....
During the first year we were married, we went back home for a weekend visit. Poor Tim got the flu and spent the entire first day shivering, sweating and pretty much wishing he was dead. By Saturday night, he was so bad that my mother and I decided to help him out. We made him a hot toddy.
I sent him up to bed and we gathered around the cauldron...I mean kettle. Steaming hot, thick as mud tea (another Irish cure-all), a few tablespoons of honey ( sugar is for amatures), a big slice of lemon (okay, so this is more English..sorry Grandma) and a shot of whiskey. Here is where his hangover started.
We raided the liquor cabinet and found a bottle of Crown Royal...unopened. Flu? Whiskey! (Unlike CVS, we do not distinguish between brands...it's the thought that counts). And so we poured in a dose of the healing elixer...by eye. (Shotglass? we don't need no stinkin' shotglass.)
Up the stairs I went and administered the medicine to the patient, assuring him that he would sleep like a baby,sweat out the bug and be healed by morning. Quick and painless I assured him. Works every time.
I watched as he dutifully consumed the entire contents, encouraging him to drink up quickly. I waited with him for the miracle cure to begin its magic. Nothing happened. No sleeping, no sweating. Hmmmm. Maybe the dose was incorrect. Perhaps I hadn't correctly calculated his BMI. After consulting with my mother, we decided a second dose was in order.
Tea, lemon, honey and a wee bit of Crown Royal. Well, maybe a bit more with just an extra splash for good luck. Back up to the patient and...down the hatch. Success! Within minutes, he had drifted off into a peaceful, healing slumber. (Okay, so passed out, drooling. Same thing)
That night, I smugly drifted off to sleep thinking how grateful he would be in the morning. I pictured him bouncing out of bed, completely cured and taking me shopping as a thank you, patiently waiting while I tried on multiple outfits and assuring me my butt did not look big in any of them. I would magnanimously agree to go along, just to be gracious. Yeah right. Not even close.
Somewhere around tenish, he crawled out from under yellowed, sweat-stained sheets and groped his way to the bathroom. After shaving his tongue and draining the water heater of every last drop,he stumbled downstairs and begged for some asprin for his aching head.
Alarmed by the pallor of his skin and the dark circles under his eyes, I offered him another home remedy, perplexed as to why my first two attempts hadn't worked. This must be some weird new strain of flu if it didn't respond to the tried and true "medicine" I had already dispensed. Probably one of those labratory created bugs designed for military use only.
As I turned to peruse the family medicine chest, aka the liquor cabinet, he reached past me and grabbed the Crown Royal, demanding to know just how much" medicine" he had been given. In retrospect, I probably should have not admitted that the now half empty bottle had started out full the night before, at least not until he'd had an entire bottle of asprin and a nice, greasy hamburger.
Hey, I told him I would get rid of his flu, which I did. And I'm pretty sure we had a home remedy for the hangover too. I still can't understand why he didn't want to give it a try.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Another First

Until I was in high school, I had never cooked anything except in my Easy Bake Oven. As best I can remember, it had two settings: crack your teeth on it overdone or ooey gooey waiting for salmanila to strike underdone. My mom did all the cooking because, well, that's what mom's did. My job was to eat the food that magically appeared on the table each night and then try and skate out of doing the dishes because that's what kids did.
So it was with mingled fear and disbelief that I accepted the news one Saturday morning at work that my coworker and I ( think Lucy and Ehtel) would have to cook a hot lunch for eight people. (we were the cleaning ladies, by the way and I didn't even want that job....it's a long story).
After searching for the candid camera crew (this was before Punk'd), we decided that if our employers were desperate enough to turn us loose in the kitchen when there was a McDonald's right down the street, we would give it a try. How hard could it really be?
Naturally, we decided on hamburgers and fries. Okay, so we didn't so much decide on them as it seemed to be the consensus of everyone we called that that was probably the safest way to go for the people who would have to eat this meal. We had frozen hamburgers, an oven with a broiler and those fries that you put on a baking sheet and pop into the oven. Even we could handle that.
Or not. Upon opening the bag of fries, we discovered that there weren't enough for eight people. That is when the brainstorm hit......or the great kitchen disaster of '79 as it came to be known.
We had seen the weekday cook make homemade fries dozens of times. There was nothing to it...just peel the potatoes, slice them and drop them in oil until they are a beautiful golden brown. What a coup this would be! How amazed all our friends and family would be!
They were amazed all right. They were amazed that we didn't get fired.
The peeling and slicing went fine. It was the actual cooking that destroyed the kitchen. We had put a big pot of oil on the stove and turned it on high in order to bring it to a boil. We peeled the potatoes and checked the oil. It wasn't boiling. No problem. We sliced the potatoes and checked the oil. It still wasn't boiling. No problem. We slid the burgers under then broiler and checked the oil. It still wasn't boiling. Now we had a problem.
Lunch was supposed to be ready within the next few minutes and the oil was not even forming those little bubbles at the bottom of the pot. What were we to do? We couldn't mess up hamburgers and french fries! How pathetic did you have to be not to be able to make the easiest hot lunch in the world? After all, McDonald's did it billions of times. A day.
In desperation, we did the only thing we could do...we took off the lid, grabbed handfulls of sliced potatoes and threw them into the oil hoping for the best.
The stream of oil that shot up into the air made Old Faithful look like a defective squirtgun by contrast. Thick black smoke filled the air, and even as we rushed to open a window, someone came running up the stairs toward the kitchen yelling, "Fire! Fire!" We groped our way to the door, hastily assuring everyone that despite the thick coating of grease all over the ceiling, walls and floor, the gag-inducing smell, and dense smoke, all was well. It wasn't a fire. It was their lunch.
We began getting cooking lessons the following Monday.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

First post

Over the past few years, I've been doing a lot of traveling and have bored my friends and family with the details in longwinded e-mails. I can't help it, I am a giver. I have also remodeled various parts of my house (naturally, more sharing of the fascinating details occurred), and I have switched jobs (okay, I didn't so much share these details as whine about them, but mostly to my husband who is used to it after 19 years).
Finally, in self-defense, one of my friends suggested I keep a blog. That way, any and all of my victims, I mean friends, could just go to my blog and read (or not). So, a year later(perhaps she was too subtle in her suggestion the first dozen times)....here I am, probably just writing to entertain myslef.
Anyway...Step 1: go get a book about blogging. Step 2: read actual blogs. Suddenly, I was turning something most people are doing for fun into actual work!!! (Maybe this is why my husband says I'm OCD??!! Step 3: log on to blogger.com for the best and easiest way to create a blog. Couldn't be simpler. Yeah, right.
Step 1: drive to the bookstore and find out they really only have one book that will help me(unsurprisingly, it is for dummies) and the chapter on blogging basically says: go to blogger.com and follow the directions. I'm pretty sure I could have done that without the book, but I got the book anyway so I could obsess over each nuance of those few words.
Step2: Oh my God!!! did you know there are like 8 million blogs out there???
Step 3: I turn on my computer, go to blogger.com, read what they have to say about blogs, and,. feeling nervous but confident, I click on "create blog". And it won't download. So I try again. And it won't download. So I go back to my homepage and then try again. And it won't download. I repeat these steps 20 times (OCD again). I go into tools and get rid of all the cookies and the history and click on anything else that I think might help. ( I am so proud of myself at this point for not only thinking of doing this, but actually figuring out how to do it that I almost don't care if I can create my own blog anymore). Still no luck.
Five hours later, I get in but at this point I am so ticked off with the site, my computer my dinner, my life...that I am not really in a blogging frame of mind. (or at least not a frame of mind that wouldn't contain lots of four-letter words). So this morning, all rested and refreshed, I eagerly turned on my computer and..........no download, try again. Repeat. Same results. As I'm thinking maybe I'm really not meant to spare my friends and family every riveting detail of my life, I get a brainstorm...try the laptop! Success at last, for which I am sure I can hear a huge sigh of relief coming from lots of inboxes!