Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Prophet of Doom

Growing up with my dad, or the "prophet of doom", as we affectionately call him, no activity was ever considered safe.

Horseback riding. Before the words even finished my mouth, he would produce a newspaper article about some Olympic caliber rider who had been sitting on a horse since before she was born and then, one day...Bam! Her horse threw her, stepped on her head and dragged her for sixteen miles back to the barn over cactus strewn terrain.

Bike riding. Did I hear about the kid who was hit from behind by a semi and it took twenty surgeons forty-eight hours to separate him and his bike from the front grill of the truck?

Swimming. Hadn't I seen Jaws ? They didn't just pull that idea from thin air. You know, that was based on fact. Why just the week before, a swimmer was eaten by a shark in New Jersey and spit back out somewhere off the coast of Maine.

Driving. The man could find stories about car accidents that would make those drivers ed scare tactic films look like cheery little feel-good Disney movies.

Nothing was off limits. No activity no matter how big or small was ever safe. The man must have had a disaster file the size of the Matterhorn tucked away somewhere that was alphabetized, cross-referenced and indexed to provide horror stories at the drop of a hat.

It was bad enough when he was an insurance adjuster, but when he became a forensic photographer, things really went from bad to worse.

Danger, death and destruction even lurked in a seemingly harmless everyday activity like mailing a letter. Did I see the story about the woman who got a paper cut on her tongue from licking a stamp and ended up dead because of the infection that set in from the glue that they used? That, of course was after she had had both legs and one arm amputated to try and save her. See? He had pictures.

Not that this stopped anyone in our family, including him. He was the one who first put us up on the the back of a horse and taught us to ride bikes. He even taught us to drive (but that's a whole other repressed memory blog). He just couldn't help himself from sharing grisly stories. It was sort of like an involuntary reaction on his part, like a doctor tapping you on the knee and having your leg kick out.

Announce you were getting out of bed in the morning and he couldn't stop himself from pointing out all the pitfalls associated with letting your feet touch the floor. He just wanted to make sure you understood the risks and possible damage involved in, oh, everything.

During the years that my mother, brother, sister and I all took up skiing, he almost lost his mind. I'm pretty sure he had to work overtime scouring the newspapers and radio and TV news shows looking for deadly ski accidents.

Thank God there was no satellite TV back then. I'm pretty sure he would have been willing to learn Korean just to apprise us of some poor schlub on the other side of the world who had been foolish enough to strap two sticks of wood to his feet and plunge down the side of a mountain taking out dozens of other skiers, shrubs and trees before stopping when he became embedded in the side of a barn.

My sister is still trying to push him over the edge with her hobbies of motorcycle riding and collecting tattoos. He can wax poetic for a good hour or more on either subject without breaking a sweat. The History Channel could come to him if they ever decide to produce a show on the greatest motorcycle crashes ever. He has so many examples, he scoffs at the idea of using Evil Knievel as taking the easy way out.

As for the tattoos...we're waiting for her skin to shrivel up and fall off or for her brain to start seeping blue and green ink, whichever comes first.

Pat just smiles, ignores his predictions of gloom and doom, and moves on to her next hair-raising adventure.

I, on the other hand, still have nightmares of disfigured zombies lurching after me chanting, "see what happens when you wear sneakers with ties instead of velcro?" as I frantically seek the shelter of a padded room.

The only ray of sunshine here though is that I live 250 miles away, so fortunately I don't have to hear those grim tales too often. Or you would think.

Now, Tim has apparently decided to pick up the banner.

Recently, we were on a small plane with only one other passenger and, even knowing of my fear of flying (part my father, part a really, really bad flight 25 years ago, and part watching all the airplane disaster movies in the 70's), Tim turned into my father.

As we prepared to take off from a small airport in Colorado, Tim and the other gentleman proceeded to discuss, in detail, how, just a few months earlier, at that same airport, on that same runway, in a plane that same size, three pelicans had, er, merged with the plane on take-off and taken out one engine, half the cockpit and one third of the cabin.

Unable to revert to my usual method of dealing with this kind of unwanted information (clapping my hands over my ears, shutting my eyes and babbling, "I can't hear you.Lalalalalala.") in polite company, I simply glared at Tim and asked if maybe the two of them would like to go swimming after the plane landed and maybe discuss the recent spate of shark attacks along the coast.

Some things you can't escape no matter how hard you try.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Fool Me Twice

In laboratories all over the world, rats are trained to do things like run through mazes based on a system of reward and punishment. Ring the bell, get the cheese. Do the wrong thing, get zapped. Their furry little brains soon tell them how to avoid getting zapped.

Tim and I, on the other hand, are apparently not as bright as those lab rats.

After the whole winter coat shopping debacle last fall, you would think we would have learned our lesson. But noooooo.

When Tom and Beth told us they were taking the kids back-to-school shoe shopping, what did we do? Did we say, "Sorry, we're busy"? Noooo. Did we plead illness or a sudden trip? Noooo. Did we at least tell them to start without us? Nooo.

Instead, we drove out to the mall on Labor Day weekend, along with every parent with school age children, teenagers with their friends, retired people with their grandchildren, and visiting tourists with their cameras. In short, pretty much the entire population of the DC Metro area. And they all needed school shoes. (Didn't these people know they were supposed to be home barbecuing?)

I had the feeling that as lab rats, we'd have been demoted to testing sleep medications for ending up in another painful shopping situation. Again.

And if fighting the crowds wasn't bad enough, we had to deal with three different shoe departments: men's and women's for the two older kids and children's for the two "littles".

Somehow, Tim contrived to head off to the relatively sane world of men's and women's with the two "bigs", and Beth and I (and later Tom, who I suspect tried to escape it altogether) got the fun-filled task of trying to find appropriate shoes that met with the "littles" approval. (As parents, Tom and Beth really had to do this, but I'm pretty sure that by not sneaking off to the restroom for an extended "visit",I had slipped even lower on the lab rat job scale and would probably be lucky if I was even considered smart enough to be a crash test dummy rat.)

Our niece, with me in tow, quickly headed for the ugliest, tackiest, Vegas-showgirl style shoes to be had. With their neon sparkles and multi-colored spangles, they looked like they had been designed by a drunken monkey with a bedazzler and a bad attitude.

Firmly placing the blame on the fashion challenged heathens at the school and their silly "appropriate school shoe" policy (that I totally made up), I commiserated with her even as I steered her away from a pair of satin polka-dot open-toed shoes with two-inch heels.

"If it was up to me," I sighed, shaking my head, "I'd let you have them, but the school wouldn't let you into class with shoes like that." Hehehe.

Wistfully petting all the shiny, cool shoes, she eventually settled for a pain of black Juicy Couture ballet flats(the Jimmy Choo of kid's world)....and pink and blue plaid flats...and brown loafers...and silver and pink sneakers, all courtesy of the very "helpful" saleslady who was clearly working on commission.

Seeing her eyes drift toward the $400 Prada boots (wow, something even more expensive than Juicy!), Beth and I fixed her with a glare that threatened death if she even leaned in their direction, and we moved on to finding shoes for our nephew.

Unlike his sister, the Imelda Marcos of first grade, he had more interest in climbing the shoe racks than actually trying on the shoes. There followed fifteen minutes of, "No, you may not swing from that bar, this is not a playground." and, "I said walk around to make sure the shoes fit, not race around like your pants are on fire and someone is chasing you with a can of gasoline" and, "Hanging upside down from the chair while singing Disney songs is not helping get the shoes on your feet."

Finally though, six hours later (okay, it was really only about an hour, but it felt like six), he had a pair of brown loafers and, not to be outdone by his sister, a pair of gold sneakers (do all children have such appalling taste?).

By this time, Tim and the "bigs" were back with their purchases, looking a lot better for the wear than we were (I'll bet he didn't once have to pull either one of them out from under the display tables.).

As we headed off with enough shoes to open our own shop, I wondered if this fulfilled our obligation for the year, or if winter coats were again in our future. Somehow I have the feeling we will be getting zapped again.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

More Merry Airport Misadventures

Despite nearly being attacked by a barracuda (although I'm sure he went back to his little barracuda friends and claimed I attacked him) , we had a wonderful time in Grand Cayman. And since we had an early evening flight, we even got to spend the entire last day there, soaking up the island and buying a few souvenirs (gotta get that magnet!)

The return trip, however...

Get there two hours early, they told us. Check-in, security lines, these things take time, even at smaller airports, they told us. There could be traffic, they told us. "They" were wrong.

No traffic, no lines, actual people to check you in and take your bags (imagine that!), it was a dream come true. Until we got into the terminal with one hour and forty-five minutes to kill. Then it was a nightmare.

First of all, there were about 100 seats and 200 people. Everytime a flight was called, a new round of musical chairs began. As one set of people raced for the tarmac, another raced for the empty seats, leaving in their wake a path of squashed toes, bruised shins and banged heads. Wow. Fun and games.

Those poor unfortunate souls who were too slow to get a seat were condemned to wander until the next announcement, mentally assessing the lucky winners and trying to figure out which ones were headed to New York vs. Georgia (okay, that one was a no-brainer, but some were tougher, like Missouri vs. Iowa).

Although we were among the lucky ones to have seats, Rose and I chose to join the crowds wandering in and out of the shops in the terminal, which took all of five minutes. There were a grand total of two tacky souvenir shops (I know. Tacky and souvenir are redundant), two over-priced watch and jewelry shops (in case you absolutely, positively could not leave the island without that Rolex), one shop which sold nothing but rum cakes (thirty different flavors. It was sort of like Baskins and Robbins for adults.), and a bar that boasted a line of people that stretched from one end of the terminal to the other (I believe the ratio is two rum cakes equal one drink, although some people were trying to speed things along by eating rum cake while they stood in line for a drink. Hmm, not a bad idea.)

While we joined the fray and purchased those last-minute, must-have T-shirts and baseball caps(it was either that or eat rum cakes until we went up a size), Tim plugged in his ipod, closed his eyes and tried his best to pretend he was back on the beach. Every few minutes, he would open one eye and glare at someone for inching a bit too close to our empty seats, then resume singing along with Billy or Bruce (which is probably what had people keeping their distance more than the glaring).

At last our flight was called and we boarded our plane for Miami and another two hour layover...only this time without the pizza and hot dogs.

Turns out that in order to make up for not opening the food stands early in the mornings, they close them early in the evenings, which really cuts down on your options. Oh, and the flight was delayed, so we actually had a three hour layover (yea us!).

But we knew none of this as we deplaned, went through immigration, collected our bags (the last ones off the plane, naturally), stood in line at customs, schlepped our bags over to another terminal, stood in line for security and then finally found our gate where there were 200 people and only 100 seats (wait. This seemed familiar. Where had I seen this before?)

At this point though, we didn't care about the seats as much as we cared about our stomachs (the rum cakes were looking pretttty good right about now). From our trip down, we knew our food choices were limited, but we were okay with pizza and hot dogs for dinner.

Except that as we (and thirty other people) approached the stand, one of the employees closed the security gate and announced that the restaurant was closed.

Sparing a longing glance at the fortunate people on the other side of the bars (Wow. I couldn't believe I was actually envious of someone about to choke down airport pizza), we all turned and headed for the hot dog place... which was also closed.

Now in a panic, we all surged toward the final choice before raiding the newsstand for Snickers and M&M's, Chinese. I was beginning to feel like I was caught in a cattle stampede, only I was one of the cattle! Food. Must get food.

Fortunatley (or unfortunately since the only thing worse than airport pizza is airport Chinese food) we made it through the gate just in time. In retrospect, we might have been better off on the other side.

Surly employees slopped bottom-of-the-barrel, over-steamed Chinese leftovers onto styrofoam plates with all the culinary style of a prison chow line.

"Next," they snapped. "What do you want?"

Well, let's see. My choices are chicken and mushrooms without the chicken, beef and peppers without the peppers, or steamed veggies that look like they've been scraped off the bottom of someone's shoe. Tough choice, it all looks so good. Ah, but I can have all the steamed white rice I want with water, I mean broth, over it? Today is my lucky day. Load me up. Them's eats!

Needless to say, we were a bit hungry and cranky by the time we finally got home, along with being on a sugar buzz from too many Twizzlers.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Vacation Fun

I have always been pretty lucky when it comes to travel.

On our Alaskan cruise when things got really rough and people were hanging over the side of the ship, I was bellying up to the midnight buffet. In Morocco when others were popping immodium like candy, I was actually eating candy. At the Great Barrier Reef when the crocodile showed up on the beach for a little luncheon snack, I was on the other side of the beach snacking on lunch.

Last month though, my luck started to run out.

On vacation in Grand Cayman, I was the only one who wanted to go to Stingray City. Every time I tried to bring it up, Tim and Rose would hold up their hands and say,"Steve Irwin." (crocodile hunter guy)

Okay, how about snorkeling at the lagoon? "Steve Irwin"

Glass bottom boat? Even they couldn't use Steve Irwin as an excuse there. "Three hours sucked out of our day to watch fish? Have fun. Be sure to take lots of pictures." Party poopers.

And so we spent our days lounging on the beach and lolling in the surf (not that I'm complaining, mind you.).

Until day two, that is, when the fish showed up.

At first, there were one or two white fish (about six inches long) swimming past us in the crystal clear water. Okay, not the most comfortable feeling when you don't know a trout from a great white, but no one else seemed to be panicking so...

And then, suddenly, there were more. Like three dozen. All surrounding us. Well, mostly me. Just hovering and staring and making little fish bubbles. I think they thought I was one of them, only bigger. Maybe a giant albino white fish goddess and they had come to worship.

Now we were feeling very uncomfortable. In a heartbeat, Rose threw Tim in front of her like a living shield and quickly backed away toward the shore leaving me to the mercy of the swarm. Thanks. (Actually, the only reason I didn't do the same thing was because she beat me to it.)

As their leader, I was fortunately able to command them to disperse peacefully, but anytime I stood still for longer than a minute the rest of the week, there they were again (and me without my self-tanner) staring and bubbling.

But at least they were harmless. Unlike the stingray who showed up days three through seven. If Mohammed won't got to the mountain...

This fellow decided that he needed to bond with us too.

"Watch out!" one of the other beachgoeers warned us that first afternoon. "There's a ray headed toward you!" Huh?

We zigged, he zagged. We ended up a lot closer than we wanted to be. He glided and twitched his tail.

Suddenly, I was not so anxious to visit with a stingray. Eventually, he settled down and buried himself in the sand, so that all you could see were his eyes and the tip of his very long, very barbed tail. Not reassuring.

I spent the rest of the week jumping at every rock or piece of driftwood on the ocean floor, waiting for his daily glide-by and tail twitch.

Sea life if sooo much cuter in a Disney movie when they are all singing and playing seashells like drums.

And them came the piece de resistance.

Bobbing about happily in six feet or so of water (I was not going to step on Mr. Ray.), I kicked Tim accidentally.

Even as I apologized, my brain was registering the fact that he was on my right, but I had definitely kicked something on my left. Hmmm. Before I could figure out how this was possible, Rose shrieked, "Hey, a really big fish just came toward me."

And as Tim scoffed at her and chided me for not knowing the difference between flesh and blood and a rock (yeah, like they feel the same. Puh-leeze. How dumb does he think I am?), a guy a few feet away yelled, "Barracuda!" and pointed towards us (Hah! I knew it wasn't a rock!).

As we hastened toward shore in a recreation of the fourth of July shark scene in Jaws, we looked and, sure enough, there it was. A nice, big, three-foot long barracuda. Staring and chomping some wicked-looking teeth.

Like Mr. Ray, Barry visited us daily, staring and chomping, and like with the white fish, Tim once again became a human shield (this time it was me, and I not only got in back of him, I climbed him like a tree - I did not want to become lunch!). Although Barry didn't seem to hold a grudge against me for kicking him, I wasn't taking any chances. When he showed up for his daily visit, I got out.

Eventually, our fun in the sun ended and we came back home to the states and headed for Denver.

Ahh. Good old Denver. 5,280 feet above sea level. 5,280 feet above stingrays and barracudas. 5,280 minutes (four days) of altitude sickness.

Headache, nausea, upset stomach, dizziness, sleepiness. The first two days there, all I saw were the four walls of our hotel room. Good thing I brought my camera and bought a guide book and map. I got misty-eyed just thinking of Barry and Mr. Ray.

Drink lots of water, the room service waiter told me. Drink lots of water the housekeeping staff told me. Drink lots of water Tim told me. Drink lots of water everyone told me. So I did. And it helped. Then, I only had headache, dizziness and 5,280 trips a day to the restroom. Not fun.

Eventually, I got the symptoms down to a few hours of dizziness a day and only 3,000 trips to the bathroom. And then it was time to go home.

Thank God. This travel stuff was killing me.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Getting There Is Not Half the Fun

Over the last few weeks, I've logged a lot of air miles. About 15,000 to be exact (sort of). First up, our trip to the Bahamas via Miami.

I'm pretty sure the pioneers crossed the plains in their covered wagons in less time and with less aggravation. Couple hundred Dakota warriors coming at you with bows and arrows? Punishing heat, choking dust, having to hunt for what little food there is? Don't make me laugh.

At least they didn't have to get up before 3am to be at the airport by 4am for a 6am flight to sit for three hours at another airport in Miami to then fly another two hours to stand in a customs line for one hour only to finally, finally get to the hotel to be told that the room wouldn't be ready for another three hours. Hey, no problem, we'll just hang around the pool in our grungy, travel-rumpled clothes and sweat. No, really. It'll be a fun way to kick off the vacation.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I forgot to mention the absolute ball we had checking in and boarding our flight.

Because it was an international flight, we couldn't do curbside check-in where there were only a dozen people in line. Oh no, we had to go inside with the rest of the four thousand half-asleep people and jostle for position in the line, er lines, at the counters.

American Airlines apparently decided it would be a real hoot to watch everyone try to form lines for the machines with no roped-off maze, no arrows, no signs, not even a measly trail of breadcrumbs for help. It was like trying to find a parking space at the mall two days before Christmas with a final "everything-must-go" blowout sale in progress. It can be done, but it isn't pretty.

Then, you had to drag your bags over to a separate counter for tags which necessitated joining yet another unruly line with even more unruly people. One woman finally appointed herself crossing guard and tried to direct the flow. "This side is baggage check-in, that side is for ticketing. There are three windows open, but only one line." Yeah. She was real popular. It's never wise to tick off a sleep-deprived mob.

But, we finally did make it to the third and final line-- the baggage drop-off line (well, the final line in the checking-in process, not the final, final line. We still had two more lines to go through before that happy event.) We added our bags to the mountain of luggage that continued to grow at an alarming rate since there was only one person putting it on the conveyor belt (Gee-- a Friday in August. Perhaps the airline could have looked into their crystal ball and foreseen that there might have been just a few people going on vacation?), and sprinted for the security line.

By some miracle, we made it to the gate as the plane was boarding and even managed to grab a cup of coffee from one of the stands (no actual food, it was apparently too early to be selling food. Wouldn't want to interrupt anyone's beauty sleep by having them actually be at the airport early when only ninety-seven flights were leaving with no food aboard).

The flight crew evidently didn't realize (or care) that they were dealing with sleep-deprived, hungry, teensy bit cranky people and greeted us with a twenty minute diatribe on the do's and don't's of air travel.

"You must sit down quickly. Do not try to put things into the overhead and hold up the line. Step out of the aisle and wait until their is a break in the line to do so. You must slide your bag in wheels first. If you have two bags, you must put one under the seat in front of you. If you are in a bulkhead seat, you may not have a bag, a purse, a briefcase, a newspaper, a drink, etc. at your seat. It must all be stowed in the bins above. You must fasten your seat belts and leave them fastened even when the captain has turned off the sign. You may not use the lavatory up front if you are in coach. You must use the ones in the rear of the plane."

Well, good morning to you too. Does anyone else remember the days when they actually welcomed you aboard and tried to make you forget that you'd just been herded like cattle and crammed into your six square inches of space like a sardine?

By the time they finished this speech, plus the required, "we'll be flying at an altitude of..." and "Join our sky miles credit card program..." (yeah, like that'll happen), we were getting ready to land. So much for the in-flight entertainment.

Getting off the plane, we made a beeline for the two food places open in the terminal where we had a choice of pizza or hot dogs. Ahhh. Breakfast of champions.

I couldn't wait for the flight back.