Yoga Rules!

One of the reasons I like yoga so much is that they don't suck all the fun out of it by demanding you conform to a whole series of very specific rules all at once. It is a work in progress.

Can't touch your toes? No problem. You can bend your legs, just concentrate on keeping your spine long and straight. Use a block...or four if you want to. Can't go from downward dog to plank to lunge? Pick one and stick with it as long as you like. Something hurts? Stop doing it. Back off . Listen to your body (mine is usually telling me to go across the street to Dunkin Donuts). This activity was made for me, since I can generally only get my body to do one thing at a time.

When I was seven, my father got me a set of golf clubs and tried to teach me how to become Tiger Woods (I know. What was he thinking?).

It was three days of hiking thousands of acres, fording the raging waters of angry, storm-tossed lakes, fending off ferocious attacks by starved, blood-sucking mosquitoes the size of a mini-bus (okay, so it was a sunny summer day and a few hours at a chip and putt course, but it felt like three days of pure torture.). And there were a lot of rules.

"Hold the club like this," my father demonstrated eight thousand times. "Keep your head down, eye on the ball. Keep your arms straight and follow through on the swing. No, no. Straight arms, not bent."

Whoa. Too. Many. Things. At. One. Time. How about I just try to actually get the ball closer to the hole any way I can? Also, I may have been only seven, but even I knew that when you swing your arms from side to side, unless you are Gumby, one of your arms has to bend. And what's with the whole keeping an eye on the ball? I was only hitting it two feet at a time. How could I not keep my eye on it?

I still have the picture my mom took at the end of our golf "game". I am clutching my driver like I am playing "Whack-a-Mole" and looking like I'd rather be pretty much anywhere else while my father is weeping in the background, clutching the few tufts of hair he had left.

Years later, I got suckered into a softball game at work. It took my fellow teammates about ten seconds to realize they were actually the suckers. And so, between innings, they pulled me aside and tried to teach me the rules. They showed me how to hold the bat, how to stand, and how to run (in the unlikely event I actually managed to hit the ball.)

"Keep your elbows up, bat held high, straighten out your arm as you follow through. Keep your eye on the ball. Try not to kill yourself or anyone else with the bat."

Rules, rules, rules. Couldn't I just choose one of them to follow and maybe modify the rest? Like maybe I could hold the bat high and the pitcher could throw the ball directly at it, and then I could stroll to first base without breaking a sweat or a nail? It was hard to tell who was more relieved that I never played on the team again.

Not wanting to repeat these two experiences which scarred my delicate psyche for life, I turned to yoga.

Oh, they may tell you to pick up your leg and wrap it around your neck three times while bending over and touching your toes, but they don't actually expect you to do it.

With a simple shake of my head (well, perhaps there is a snort and a guffaw involved also), my instructor will adapt a pose that I would need some serious, heavy-duty muscle relaxants to get into and sixteen paramedics to get out of to something I am able to do, like lie down and gently roll my head from side to side. The best part is, nobody wants to do bodily harm to anyone else five minutes after starting.

Until my regular teacher was absent and Attila the Yogini substituted for her. After about five seconds, I found myself wishing yoga involved a bat or a club or even just a really sturdy stick.

"Sit on the blanket folded into a square, not a rectangle," she barked.

Okay, and the shape of the blanket matters because...?

"Sit dead center, not near the edge, and make sure the blanket is parallel to the wall which should be precisely perpendicular to your mat six inches from its base."

Or what? My chakras will collide with my chi? Is it bad karma to be seven inches from the wall, or slightly diagonal instead of at prefect right angles? I was beginning to have flashbacks to my first and only golf game.

"No, no, no," she snapped. "You're doing the pose all wrong. How do you expect to do a headstand if you don't get this pose right?"

Um. I don't. Shocking though it may be to you, I actually have zero interest in balancing on my head. Most days, I'm just happy to be able to balance on both feet.

"You must get your legs straight in downward dog and your heels on the ground, then lift one leg in the air along with the opposite hand. This will be your resting pose."

Resting pose? Exactly what have you got planned if I am resting hanging upside down while my hamstrings snap like the cables on an elevator in a horror movie right before it crashes?

This was so not what I had signed up for. Where was the acceptance of the fact that I have absolutely no talent or coordination and the understanding that I will never be able to balance on my pinkie while simultaneously forming the first three letters of the alphabet with the rest of my body?

Attila was definitely not getting the concept that I could only manage to concentrate on one body part at a time, and right now, I was concentrating on my hands wrapping around her neck.

Happily, the class ended before either one of us had a nervous breakdown, or met with a horrible accident, although it was pretty close. As I crawled to my car and drove home, the thought occurred to me that if I ever ended up with Attila as my regular instructor, I would definitely have to look around for a less challenging activity. I wondered if there is anything out there that is easier than a class where they consider breathing deeply a challenging enough activity.

All Things Considered, We Should Have Stayed at Motel 6

Last Friday, we went to New York City. Just a quick trip up on Friday afternoon to attend an event on Friday night, and back on Saturday morning. Not quick enough as it turned out.

Despite the rain and traffic , we got there with enough time to spare so that Tim could work up a good aggravation before dinner.

First of all, when we asked if the room had a refrigerator, they apparently thought we asked if the room was a refrigerator. Now I'm all for air-conditioning when it's ninety degrees outside, but when it's sixty? Call me crazy, but somehow, I think that you should at least consider switching over to heat, or at the very least turning the air off. A good rule of thumb would be: if the guests' fingers and toes are turning blue and they are calling room service to request parkas and hot water bottles, the room is probably TOO COLD!!!!!

Thinking this was a problem easily solved, we chipped our way through the block of ice encasing the control panel, and bumped it up to ninety...and the air just blew colder. Great, now we could become honorary members of the polar bear club. Finding the blower control, we explored those options as well while we still had some feeling in our limbs and at least a smidgen of fine motor skills left...and, impossibly, the air blew even colder!!! On the bright side though, by morning, we would be cryogenically preserved, and for just a fraction of the price Walt Disney paid.

Before frostbite could set in, we just shut the system down altogether, and ordered flannel PJs, thermal sheets and blankets, a book of matches, some graham crackers, chocolate bars and marshmallows (why be cold and miserable? When life hands you a frozen lemon...make s'mores!).

Anxious to be warm again, or at least not colder than a block of ice, I went into the bathroom to change, so we could go downstairs to the event. Through the door, I could hear Tim muttering to himself, which is not usually a good sign. Sure enough, when I came out, he was squinting morosely at his computer.

"Bad news?" I enquired, then wanted to kick myself for opening that can of worms.

"The internet service isn't working, so I can't get online," he groused, "and, the light on the desk isn't working either, so I can't see a darn thing." (Okay, so he didn't actually say darn, but it was close, although there may have been one or two other four-letter words and colorful adjectives in there as well. I'm not sure because I was too busy trying to lock the room safe which kept beeping at me.

He interrupted his tirade when it became clear that something took precedence in my universe over him being able to get online.

"What are you trying to do?" he interrupted himself.

"Nothing. I can't get the safe to lock," I pressed the series of buttons once again as though it would make a difference, and got computerized groans and an error message in response.

"You're hopeless with mechanical things," he informed me with an air of superiority as he brushed me aside, "I'll do it."

Oh yeah, and you're so good at getting things to work. How's the whole online thing working out for you? Would you care for a flashlight to see it? I thought it, but I didn't say it.

"All you have to do is punch in four digits and hit 'lock'" he instructed me loftily.

Gee, now why didn't I think of that? I guess because I've never traveled before and seen one of those new-fangled contraptions. Go-ool-ly. Is that what they call tech-no-lo-gy? Too bad I can't read either, or I might have seen the directions printed right on the front. By the way, you manage to get the heat working?

Beep...beep...beep...beep. Rattle, rattle. Boop boo. Error.

I just smiled smugly.

"Clearly, it's broken," he defended his computer expertise.

No. Really? I guess that's just one more thing to add the the (growing) list then.

Not in the best of moods, we somehow made it through the rest of the evening and into the next morning without further incident. They did come and fix the safe, but not the internet or lamp, and although the heat never came on, at least we had stopped the cold air from actually blowing, so we considered it a victory to get one and a half out of four. Woo hoo!

I took the first shower in the morning, and while Tim tried to defrost himself with the hot water, I finished packing up. I heard the shower shut off, and then Tim laughing, which is not his usual reaction to being clean.

Almost afraid of the answer, I called out, "What?"

Choking back more laughter (which frankly had a slightly maniacal edge to it), he told me that it was a good thing that I had taken the first shower.

"Why?"

He opened the door to show me the knob to the hot water cradled in his hand.

"It just fell right off" he explained, shaking his head.

Before anything else could go wrong, we finished packing up and got out of disaster central.

"Did you have a good stay?" the guy at the reception desk asked Tim as we checked out.

"Yeah, Fine," realizing it was not this guy's fault, Tim decided to forgo the litany of complaints associated with our stay.

"Good," the clerk enthused.

Tim rolled his eyes and bit his tongue.

"Glad you had a great experience with us."

That was it. The magic word. The duck dropped. Tim couldn't keep it bottled up inside for another second.

"Great?" he fired back at the bewildered man who looked like he had pulled the tail of what he thought was a kitten only to realize too late that it was a lion. "Great? Yeah, it was great when the internet didn't work and there was no light in the room. And it was really great when the safe didn't work. It was super great that our room was so cold you could hang meat in it. But the greatest thing of all was when the hot water handle fell off in the shower this morning. I tried to be nice, but you just couldn't let it go. You couldn't accept 'fine'. No, you had to push it with 'great'!"

I don't think I've ever seen anybodies eyes grow that large that fast before. I'm guessing it was at that point that the man erased the word great from his vocabulary. I imagine him now enquiring of departing guests, "How was your stay? Adequate?"

It's A Long Way To Tipperary...And Twice As Far To Our Room

Despite my many travels, I had never been to Hawaii. It always seemed a little far to go just for some palm trees and a beach. But after a mere twelve hours in the air, we landed in paradise...and then found we were not done traveling.

Upon checking in to our hotel, we were escorted to our room on the fourth floor by the bellman who explained that since the hotel was built on a hill, we had actually checked in on the sixth floor and had to go down to get to our room

On the way, we passed the bar, one restaurant, the concierge, the lounge, shopping arcade, a real estate operation and the gym. I've been in towns that were smaller.

We made all the usual chit-chat: where are you from? How long are you staying? Let me tell you about the hotel, give you the unabridged history of Hawaii and explain, in detail, nuclear physics. And all that was just until we got to the elevator.

Once on the fourth floor, we started down the hallway toward our room which was apparently located somewhere on the opposite side of the island, or in Siberia. By the time we came to the next hallway, we had covered politics, religion, literature and conducted an in-depth analysis and comparison of Hawaii 5-0 and Magnum PI. Somewhere around the halfway mark, I began wondering when they had built the bridge over to California that we were apparently on.

At the end of the next hallway, our room was still nowhere to be seen and we had moved on to exchanging fondest childhood memories, complete medical histories and family trees going back to the Norman Conquest with the bellman, who was now our best friend since we had known him longer than pretty much anybody else we had ever met, including family members.

As we turned down the third (or was it fourth) hallway, I began looking for the complimentary shuttle bus or hoped that I could hail a passing cab or maybe even flag down an ambulance to see if they could administer some oxygen.

Meanwhile, Tim, who was bringing up the rear in our happy little parade, was looking like a very grumpy bear who had been prodded out of hibernation somewhere in about mid-January and muttering dire imprecations involving our travel agent, the woman at the check-in desk and me who was somehow to blame for the fact that he was developing a blister on his left foot and some kind of "-itis" in his knee/ankle/hip.

Finally, before we had to resort to the Donner party buffet special, we arrived at our room where we were given the grand tour and had our passports stamped.

Unfortunately, although we had checked in at breakfast, it was now dinnertime and the restaurants were all back on the other side of reception, two thousand or so miles away. Arming ourselves with packs of trail mix I had taken from the plane (which is what passes for a meal nowadays), we began the loooong trek back to civilization, leaving a trail of peanuts, pretzels and sesame sticks to help us find our way back.

And so it went for the next five days, except the whole being on a hill thing added to the degree of difficulty.

We found that if we stayed on the fourth floor, we eventually came to the spa after only a two hour hike where there was an exit to the top level of the three-level pool...after you walked down a flight of steps, took the path through the garden, marched over hill and dale and followed the yellow brick road.

Or, we could take the elevator that was only a one hour jaunt away to the first floor and come out by the kiddie pool and jungle gym. Then we just had to walk around the entire circumference of the seventy-two acre pool to get towels and a seat (I thought Texas was the state where everything was supposed to be big.).

And if we wanted to go to the beach? Hey, no problem. We just slipped into our hiking boots, packed a lunch and two snacks, headed out past the pool, the one restaurant, the ancient Hawaiian burial grounds, headed for the first star on the left and then went straight on till morning.

But the good news here was that the return trip was uphill all the way, so that by the time we got back to the room, our suits had dried completely and the thirty pounds of sand that clung to various body parts had done a fabulous job of exfoliating things that weren't ever meant to see a loofah and it had dried to the consistency of hardened concrete! Jackpot!

All in all, it really cut down on the number of trips we made back and forth. Hmmm. Forgot the sunscreen? Let's see...make the trip all the way back to the room or risk skin cancer and third degree burns. Wait a minute, I'm thinking. Yeah. I'm thinking that by the time I make the trip, the sun won't even be out anymore.

Dinner reservations at eight? Better head out from the beach somewhere around, oh say, noon After all, we'd have to leave the room by five just to make it to the lobby by 7:59.

The upside of it all though was that we got plenty of exercise without ever going to the gym. Not that we would have been able to get there anyway before coming back home once you factored in the travel time involved.

The Birds and the Bees

This year for vacation, Tim and I went to Hawaii. The island, the people, the beaches, I loved. The birds and the bees I could have done without.

First of all, there are like seven hundred million of those tiny, little sparrows per square inch, and they all want whatever you are eating. Since most of the restaurants there tend to be "open air", mealtime is like being an extra in a Hitchcock movie.

One of the first nights there, we noticed a mist being sprayed every couple of minutes from the trees above the restaurant. A cooling water vapor to help customers beat the heat? Nope. Insect spray to protect from mosquito bites? Uh uh. Grapeseed extract to keep the birds away. Who knew that birds hated grapes? Not the birds.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell them that they were supposed to be repelled by it because they pretty much soared right through the spray and flocked to the restaurant like K-Mart shoppers to a blue light special on toilet paper in aisle three.

From our first morning at breakfast where we decided to have the buffet, we had to guard every morsel that we put in out mouths from the birds. Leaving our unattended coffee on the table, we wandered off to graze. Fresh pineapple? Pineapple danish? Pineapple juice? Maybe the papaya or hey, pineapple/papaya juice? Decisions, decisions.

Returning to the table, we were greeted by fifteen dozen birds or so literally lining the table and chairs all eagerly peeping and craning their little birdy necks to see what yummy treat we had brought for them. While Tim grabbed his napkin and charged the table like a marine hitting the beach at Normandy, I anxiously peered into my coffee cup, hoping none of the little rascals had decided to use it as a hot tub, while simultaneously wondering if bird poop sinks or floats.

The following mornings, Tim kept requesting a table "in the back away from the birds." Yeah. Because the invisible force field running through the middle of the restaurant guaranteed they couldn't get past the first few rows of tables. Right.

I believe it was the third day where one persistent little fellow landed at our table and hopped over to me with a definite, "you gonna finish that muffin?" gleam in his eye.

Tim waved his Wall Street Journal at him. He flipped Tim off. Tim stood up and shook his napkin at him. The bird rose in the air, circled the table once, landed in exactly the same spot and favored Tim with a "Oh please. Did you think you could get rid of me that easily?" look.
Tim grabbed the newspaper again, and made a few matador-like moves before jabbing it at the bird like a sword. My hero. The bird laughed and edged closer to my plate.

Before Tim could go all Don Quixote on him though, the people next to us left, abandoning an entire half of a cinnamon roll which must have looked better than my muffin, or at least been easier pickings. I swear, though, that as I saw him rise into the air, he extended the middle toe of his foot toward Tim.

All in all, birds are so much cuter when they are animated and helping some mice make a ball gown.

As bad as they were though, they were nothing compared to the bees. They are definitely cuter when they are animated, not to mention a lot less painful.

About halfway through our trip, we had dinner at a romantic, candlelit restaurant on a beautiful, private beach overlooking the ocean. It was perfect, and I'm sure I would have really enjoyed it had I not spent a good portion of the time in too much pain to care about such trivial things as moonlight and roses.

Arriving early, we were escorted to the bar to wait for our table. No sooner had we sat down then I felt a little prickle on my back. Thinking it was the elastic gather from my dress, I reached back and gave it a tug only to feel a BIG prickle.

"I think I've been stung," I gasped to Tim.

"What? Where?" He could see nothing on the back of my dress.

The line of fire moving down my side convinced me I was right, and I headed for the nearest restroom. Fortunately, there only seemed to be one other person in a stall, so I eased the one side of my dress down to see and angry red mark with a wicked-looking stinger protruding from its center. So much for romance.

As I stood there trying in vain to reach it, the bee plopped out of my top and into the sink. I'm sure the older woman coming out of the stall was a bit disconcerted to find a half-dressed woman leaning over the sink yelling, "Die, you miserable cur! Die!", but all she said was, "You should get some Benadryl" before tottering off.

Well, and thanks for all your help. No, no. Don't worry about the stinger the size of a harpoon sticking out of my back, pumping poison through my system. Clearly, your third martini is calling you. I'll be fine.

Clutching my back which was now swelling up like the Elephant Man, I stumbled back out to the bar and begged Tim to order me a really large drink, because I was so not having him pull out the stinger without some anesthesia. The bartender offered to let us use the manager's office for the operation and gave us some gel to rub on the spot. I would rather had been offered a second martini.

It was the birds though that got the last laugh. On our final night there, we had dinner at a charming little restaurant in yet another beautiful, romantic setting. Afterwards, we strolled onto a bridge overlooking a koi pond and watched the fish lazily swim back and forth.

"Look," Tim said, "there's a perfect spider web stretching across the pond, glistening."

"Where?" I strained to see it (although why either one of us thought I wanted to see a giant spider web I'm still puzzling out.)

"Right there," He pointed.

Unable to see it from where I was standing, I crossed to the opposite side of him, leaned forward over the railing, and put my hands down in a nice, fresh pile of bird poop!

Yeah. Gotta love those birds and bees.

The Key to Younger-looking Skin...Stay out of the Drugstore

My sister recently celebrated her fortieth birthday, and I had to share the ugly truth with her. Forty is not the new thirty.

At thirty, I could use one soap for both my body and my face. I didn't shed skin like a snake, and collagen was just a word, not a way of life.

Getting older turns a simple trip to the drugstore for something as seemingly innocuous as soap and moisturizer into a fact-finding mission that would put a congressional junket to shame.

Although my mother faithfully promised me when I was eleven and breaking out that my skin would clear up by the time I was eighteen, she was wrong. And so I stand in the "soap" aisle, pull out my reading glasses, and try to find something oil-free. But wait. I also have wrinkles and lines. So I need something moisturizing. But wait. If I moisturize too much, I'll break out.

And how do I know if I have wrinkles or deep wrinkles? The actress in the picture doesn't look like she has any wrinkles, so which product is she using, and was the photo taken before or after she had the plastic surgery?

And what's the difference between wrinkles and lines? Do I need three different soaps: one for acne, a second for wrinkles and yet a third for lines?

And what about an exfoliant? That seems to be a necessity. According to the bottles, if I simply exfoliate, I will uncover younger-looking skin. So maybe I should buy a tube of that. But how many layers will I have to scrub away before I don't need the wrinkle formula anymore? And will I actually have any skin left?

No matter how much the face wash does for me though, I'm not out of the woods yet. I still need to further moisturize, protect, repair, replenish and defend. Washington had to do less prep work to cross the Delaware.

First, I need to fill in the craters and crevices I wasn't able to sand-blast away with the soap by using products that tout collagen, spackle, latex or silly-putty. I have to bo-toxify my forehead, eyes and nose and mouth areas.

There are nighttime formulas and daytime formulas, which are not interchangeable. Apparently, "regenerating" can only be done under cover of darkness. The way the ingredients work is so top secret that if we were to wear them during the day and see the progress being made, it would be the end of civilization as we know it.

There are creams for the eyes, balms for the lips, and oils, gels and lotions for the face. Eyes need to be de-puffed, lips puffed, cheeks plumped, jowls firmed, eyebrows lifted and pores minimized. And all that is before you discover that you really need products that are SPF 145 as well.

Once you have dotted, blended, smoothed, soothed and coated your face to give the temporary illusion of youth (yeah, like I'm going to get carded the next time I go to a bar because my moisturizer has four ingredients ending in "-plex") it's time to move on to the body soaps.

Here too, there is a dizzying array of issues that need to be addressed. Moisturizing or "intensive" moisturizing? If I do the intensive now, what will be left for me when I'm fifty, or sixty? Where do you go from there? Jiffy Lube?

I can also exfoliate here too, but none of these are as "gentle" as the face scrubs. There are heavy duty, sand-blasting formulas with shards of razor-sharp pellets of...salt?...gravel?...steel?

Many products also boast a "firming" formula, which is good, but once again, I have serious doubts my skin will look like the model's without at least ten strategically placed rubber bands and twelve or so paperclips.

And then there are the different scents. Do I want to smell like a pear, a peach, or a mango? How about a strawberry rhubarb apple pie, or a blueberry plum cobbler? Am I supposed to eat it or wear it? That might be taking the whole inner beauty thing a bit far.

Maybe I want to smell like an orchid though or a rose. Lavender is good and it will relax me, so I can fall asleep faster. But wait. Do I want to fall asleep in the shower? Didn't I just get up? And if I choose hibiscus shower gel, will it clash with my tuti-frutti scented moisturizer? Because no matter how much "moisturizer" is in the soap, I still need to apply a thick coating of moisturizer if I don't want my skin to look like it belongs on an alligator.

Once again, I can firm, moisturize and exfoliate as well as perfume myself silly. But this product also has to be non-greasy, non-comedogenic, hypo-allergenic, fast-absorbing, clinically proven, long-lasting, organic, more filling, better tasting, low-fat, low carb, and high in fiber. Oh, and it has to give me a natural glow in three to five days. And get rid of cellulite. And promote world peace. Is that too much to ask?

By the time I have scrutinized each and every label, brow furrowed in concentration, lips pursed in thought, I have created a whole new set of lines, wrinkles and bags to be dealt with. Maybe the secret is that when you turn forty, you should just head to the nearest baking aisle and a large can of Crisco.

Sleepless in Florida

Last Friday, we took our niece on her first "sleep-over" vacation to Florida. She slept. I didn't.

Friday night, feeling a bit homesick, she decided she really, really needed to crawl into bed with Tim and myself. No problem. It was one of those extra large, California King-sized beds. There are mansions with less square footage than this thing. In fact, you need to send out a search party to see if anyone else is even in the bed with you. Which is why I'm still trying to figure out how one little seven year old could make it feel like I was trying to sleep on a postage stamp.

About two hours after we fell asleep, I had that dream. You know, the one where you are falling? Except it wasn't a dream. Her highness had somehow maneuvered me right to the edge of the mattress where I was precariously hanging on for dear life.

Rappelling the twelve feet down to the floor (oh, did I mention that the actual double-thick mattress is on top of a platform bed that you need a pole-vault and a good, strong tailwind to get up on?) I debated leaving her there and taking the middle position, but I was afraid she would continue to roll in that direction and I really didn't want to have to explain to her parents why their child looked like flat Stanley when I returned her.

I very gingerly leaned over and nudged her toward the middle. She hunkered down and snored louder. So much for plan A. I gently put one hand under her shoulder and one under her legs and rolled her over. She rolled right back. And took my pillow. There went plan B. On to plan C: I outweighed her by about six tons, and was going to have to use that to my advantage.

Clambering up onto the one-inch mattress border that she had so generously left for me, all the while wishing I had taken mountain climbing in PE instead of pistol, I simultaneously rolled her and slid in and over as far as I could. Victory! I could now lay claim to a full six inches of mattress real estate. I was ecstatic.

The only downside was that I had to stay on my back and brace myself against the bed frame so that she couldn't reclaim her space. Oh yeah. That was comfortable. Suddenly, the webbed lounge chairs out at the pool were beginning to look like a little bit of heaven.

By some miracle though, I was finally able to fall asleep again only to be woken up an hour or so later by a bad dream--hers. Yep. Nothing gets your heart pounding faster than being pulled out of a sound sleep by someone yelling in your ear, "I didn't do it!" while thrashing around like a really big, really annoyed fish in a very small net. If they ever need a back-up for the paddles on the crash cart at the local ER, I've got just the thing.

After we soothed her and got our heart rates down to two hundred beats per minute, I settled down again to find I had lost half of the space I had fought so valiantly for. Oh well. Sheer exhaustion allowed me to drift off to sleep (you have to pick your battles, I guess), but like clockwork, I awoke from yet a third dream (this one was mine. Score: me=2, my niece=1). In this one, I was Gretel and the witch had successfully coaxed me into climbing in the oven to check if it was on.

I awoke to find a fifty pound plus human heating pad pressed up against my back. Goody. Just what I needed. Something to ward off the cold, Florida night. Oh, and I was once again reduced to hanging off the edge of "our" side.

Resolving myself to the situation up top, I picked myself up out of the puddle of sweat I was lying in and slid down to give the bottom of the bed a try. I might have to deal with feet in my face, but the ceiling fan was positioned directly above the bottom of the bed, so the trade-off was worth it. Or so I thought.

Turns out those ceiling fans actually work. Who knew? Now, instead of roasting to death, I was freezing to death, and guess who was rolled up in the sheet, snug as a bug in a rug?

I decided I wasn't meant to sleep. Oh well, there was always Saturday night. Except that her loose tooth fell out and she was so excited by the prospect of the tooth fairy visiting that she didn't want to go to sleep on Saturday.

Somehow, Tim managed to sucker me into tooth fairy duty by claiming he had nothing smaller than a twenty. If I had known that would be the price of just one nights sleep, I would have let him wear the dress and wings and added another twenty of my own (actually, if there really had been a dress and wings, I would have been willing to chip in two twenties.).

10 pm rolled around, but there was no sign of the sandman. 11 pm came and went. Not one grain of sand in our lovely little niece's eyes, but the sandman sure had knocked Tim over the head with one of his larger bags. At this point, I was considering either spiking a Shirley Temple with Valium for our niece, or a large coffee with No-Doze for me.

By 11:30, she no longer seemed quite so lovely, and I was contemplating just handing her a fifty and telling her to put the tooth under her pillow when she got home and the fairy would match it.

Finally, when I checked somewhere near midnight, her head was down. Moving with a stealth that would put 007 to shame, I crept over to where she lay sleeping, reaching ever so cautiously for her pillow and...her head popped up like a jack-in-the-box.

"What're you doing?" she demanded suspiciously.

"Er. Um. Jut checking to make sure you put the tooth under your pillow. Wouldn't want the tooth fairy to have to pass by. And speaking of the tooth fairy, you know she won't come as long as you are awake." Smooth. Nice save. I patted myself on the back as I crept away.

At 12:30, I slipped back again, sure that she just had to be asleep. Personally, at that point, I could have slept hanging on the side of the bed. Heck, I could have slept dangling on a single thread, suspended over shark infested waters.

Once more, I reached for her pillow, and, just as my hand closed around the tooth...her eyes popped open. "What're you doing?" she demanded again.

Uh oh. I had used up my one and only excuse and my sleep deprived brain wasn't coming up with anything else.

"Er. Um. Uh. Hmm. Something, something, just checking," I mumbled desperately. "Gotta go."

Propping my eyelids open and swearing to myself that the next time, Time was so wearing the dress and wings, I didn't care what it cost, I waited another half hour.

This time, I whispered her name first. Then, I bumped the bed. Finally, I jiggled her pillow. She was, at last, asleep. Fighting not to collapse in a heap next to her, tooth in hand, I made the exchange and stumbled off to catch a few winks myself.

The next morning, she was up and at 'em, calling her parents to tell them that the tooth fairy had found her even in Florida. "But," I overheard her say, "it was the strangest thing. Annie was just obsessed with my pillow!"

Taking it to the Next Level

What is it with exercise people and their obsession with taking things to the next level? Recently, my trainer bumped things up to the "next level" for about the tenth time. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out what was so wrong with the first level.

Was it not enough for her that I regularly collapsed on the floor in a heap after each and every set of fifteen reps, gasping for air like a fish out of water? Wasn't she happy that I couldn't climb the stairs for a week after each session without the aid of at least three people, a lever and a pulley? Didn't she feel job satisfaction when such physically demanding tasks as, oh, it don't know, blinking and breathing became painful enough to make me seriously contemplate not?

What gave her the idea I was ready for the next level? How exactly did that thought process go?

Okay, three sets of fifteen didn't literally kill her, so let's go for five sets of twenty. Hmmm. Still able to hang on to consciousness by a thread, so let's kick it up to the next level and do eight sets of one hundred. Holding one thousand pound weights. In each hand. And to rest in between each set, she can drop it down a level and do ten sets of twenty other exercises from the I'd-rather-be-getting-a-root-canal-without-Novocain list.

I used to dread the mornings she showed up with a device called a Bosu, that I'm sure they invented during the Spanish Inquisition (basically, it is one of those big exercise balls cut in half and mounted on a plastic frame).

Like the ground wasn't hurtling toward my face fast enough with a regular, old-fashioned push-up, I now had the added challenge of trying to balance on a round, springy object without crash-landing my way to a nose reconstruction.

"Go deeper," she would urge. "Keep those hips up."

Yeah, like either one of those things were actually possible. Well, on second thought, maybe the deeper was possible, as long as I didn't have to push back up, but somehow I got the impression that wasn't what she meant.

Before I could fully recover from the upper body work though (in other words, three days bed rest), we would move on to the legs.

"Okay, you're going to do squats with one leg on the Bosu, then jump over it, landing in a squat with the other leg on the Bosu."

I'm going to do what???!!! Evidently, she had mistaken me for a frog. I barely have enough strength and coordination to manage a normal squat on solid ground, let alone squatting, hopping, and changing legs.

If I'd had so much as an ounce of strength left after the ten sets of twenty (or was it twenty sets of ten? I don't know because I lost count somewhere around two), I would have seriously considered finding an ice pick and creating a new exercise for my biceps involving the Bosu and a sharp, downward movement, then kicked it to the curb with my powerful glutes.

I tried in vain to convince my trainer that just because I no longer felt like blacking out or throwing up half-way through our sessions didn't mean I was ready for this next level. I was happy where I was, really. I didn't need to ever again wear a bathing suit that didn't have a stomach panel and skirt. And who needed sleeveless tops anyway? Air conditioning had been invented so that we would be comfortable wearing long-sleeve shirts in ninety-five degree temperatures.

She didn't buy it, and we moved on to the dreaded "next level".

I have now gone from being a frog to a kangaroo, hopping madly back and forth across my backyard, leaping and springing into the air, like I'm trying out for either the NBA or Olympic pole-vaulting team (without the pole).

"Higher," she tells me. "4001, 4002..."

Half the time she doesn't even count out loud anymore though because I think she's afraid if I hear that I'm only on ten and I have to get to 8000, I might do something drastic like hop over to the neighbor's yard and seek sanctuary.

Lunges off a Bosu? That's for sissies. The four-foot high steps down to the patio are a much better place to really work the quads. And hey, we've gone waaaay beyond using those wimpy stairs in the house for step-ups too. Now the eight-foot wall out back is just right for that treat. Oh, and let's add a karate kick and a lunge for good measure, while doing presses with two thousand pound weights, blindfolded and backwards.

I'm beginning to get nostalgic for the good old days when she would hand me a two pound weight and worry that I was going to give myself a concussion trying to lift it with both hands over my head.

The worst part though about this next level stuff is that nowadays if I survive the full hour (and it is pretty much touch and go), I can't even reward myself with coffee and chocolate. I head for the nearest bottle of water and have to debate whether I want to drink it or just pour it over my head. It's at least an hour before I can even contemplate the thought of anything else, and by then, I start to wonder if it's worth it (for the record, chocolate is always worth it, but still, I wonder). And I can't get rid of the nagging worry in the back of my mind. What if, gulp, when I get to the next level, I can't face a candy bar or cookie until, heaven forbid, noon?

Maybe, if I try really hard, I can come up with a way to avoid the next level before I get there.

Happy Anniversary

In honor of its tenth anniversary next month, Blogger has invited people to write about the role blogging plays in their life. Apparently, some people use their blogs to help them find a job, keep in touch with family and friends, form support groups and even showcase their talents.

Not me. I keep a blog because this month is my twenty-second wedding anniversary, and, after twenty-two years of listening to me ramble on about the latest disaster to befall me, Tim has finally managed, with much diligent practice, to tune me out. I'm convinced that when I talk, it's like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons. All he hears is, "wah-wah, wah wah. "

I would share my woes with my friends, but, well, then I would have no friends, so in the end, keeping a blog is cheaper than therapy.

I guess I can't blame Tim too much though, because I do seem to have more than my share of issues with cable companies, phone companies, computers (okay, technology in general), planes, trains, automobiles and, oh yeah, inanimate objects.

The first few years we were married, Tim was very sympathetic to whatever my latest plight was. For example, when my new car developed a personality of its own, sort of like Stephen King's Christine, he was there for me.

As I rode down the street, Christine Jr. would decide she didn't feel like listening to rock, and change the channel to, say, rap or maybe talk radio, never anything I would even remotely, under pain of death, be interested in.

I would try changing it back. Christine Jr. ignored my request. I tried changing it to something else, anything else, before I had to either slit my wrists or become Vanilla Ice's number one fan. Christine Jr. decided to go with a solid, "no way". Finally, in total frustration, I would turn the radio off completely. Or not. Use of the button depended on whether or not Christine Jr. was finished with getting me to appreciate the finer points of the latest Milli Vanilli song.

As if that wasn't enough, Christine Jr. also taunted me by randomly locking and unlocking the doors. Bad neighborhood? Unlock! (he he he) Stopping to get gas? Oooooh, too bad for you. Lock! Hey, just so you know, you can push those buttons all day. Nobody tells me what to do!

Naturally, when I took her into the shop, there wasn't a thing wrong with her. Oh no, I was the crazy one. Tim took my side though against Christine Jr., and helped me exorcise her (okay, so we traded her in...and I could only hope it was some smug, know-it-all mechanic who somehow got saddled with her).

As the years have passed though, Tim has come to accept situations such as this to be the norm, sort of like Darrin accepted Samantha, Major Nelson, Jeannie, or Ricky did Lucy; you know, calm, cool and collected.

Latest case in point was a few weeks ago on the train to NYC.

Tim had forgotten his ipod, so I insisted on getting a splitter and second set of earbuds so we could share mine. As we settled into our seats, Tim opened his newspaper and began reading. I began setting up base camp.

First: shelter. Knowing from past experience that Amtrak has somehow gotten the idea that they are transporting sides of beef as opposed to people in the cars, I came prepared with a jacket and a pashmina, which I proceeded to wrap myself in, mummy-like.

Second: food. The only thing worse than airline food is train food. Reheated, microwaved chicken. Rubber ball. Enough said. So, I pulled down my tray table and foraged in my Mary Poppins-like bag for my stash of cookies, pretzels, honey-roasted almonds and bagel. That should be just about enough for a few hours. About this time, they came through offering beverages, so I took a coffee and added it to the growing pile.

Third: necessities of life. I rooted out my copy of the latest People magazine, blackberry, hand sanitizer, reading glasses, tic-tacs, ipod, and kindle. Now I was ready to enjoy the ride.

Over Tim's objections that he had plenty to occupy him (please, he only had a few measly newspapers and his blackberry, the equivalent of going on a week's vacation with only a toothbrush and single change of underwear), I began setting up the ipod. And that is when the curse struck.

Somehow, through no fault of my own, the cords and wires had become inextricably tangled into one giant mess. Patiently, I worked at the knots, snaking an earbud through here and a prong under there. I threaded, tugged and pulled for a good ten minutes. Tim just rolled his eyes and hid behind his paper as though that would make him invisible.

After another fruitless few minutes (seriously, how do neatly coiled cords become so entangled? Are there little purse gnomes that get their jollies out of stuff like this?) I decided I needed to get a fresh perspective and tried to recline my seat a bit (yeah, more room was going to magically untangle the cords--I remember learning that my first year of high school physics).

I pressed the button and pushed back, and...nothing. I used two thumbs to press the button...still nothing. I used four fingers and a forearm...and still nothing. I tried just the middle finger which I knew wouldn't work, but it made me feel better, and flung myself back against the seat like a battering ram...once again, nothing.

Finally, Tim could ignore it no longer, and with a muttered oath, he stood up, leaned across the seat and tried to muscle the seat down. It moved a whole quarter of an inch...and so did my coffee, right onto my lap.

You see...disaster. And that is why I keep a blog.

The Case of the Mysterious Yellow Flags

They cropped up overnight. Literally. One day they weren't there, and the next...there they were, little yellow flags stuck all over our lawn, indicating the gas lines from the street into our house and lamp post.

I had no idea they were even there until Tim called the other day on his way to work, asking me if I knew anything about them.

Perplexed, I rushed to the window, and sure enough, there they were, along with spray-painted yellow lines that had not been there the day before. Actually, they had not been there the evening before when Tim got home from work. So, sometime overnight, our lawn had mysteriously sprouted these nasty yellow indicators.

Uh oh. This could not be good. I looked to see if the infestation had spread to any of the other yards on the block, but we were the only one. Great, and I had garden people coming to plant some flowers within the next couple of days. Why, oh why, were they picking on us? And, more importantly, who was behind this dastardly deed?

Whoever it was knew they were not going to receive a warm welcome, as evidenced by the fact that they had snuck about in the dead of night, too cowardly to show their faces in the light of day.

Worried about how much of our front yard we were going to lose (Hey, it may not be much more than an intricate network of weeds, but they're our weeds), I decided to investigate.

Digging in my files for our last bill, I looked to see if there had been some sort of notification that I missed warning they were going to make my life a misery for the foreseeable future. But there was not so much as a word from those spineless jellyfish known as the gas company.

Okay, so I would have to broaden my search. I got onto the website, looking for news of any upcoming projects planned for our neighborhood. Once again though, I came up empty. So. They wanted to play it that way? Fine. Two could play that game, and I am not without resources.

Everybody knows that any detective worth his salt always has a snitch. Didn't Starsky and Hutch have Huggy Bear? Well, I have not one, but two neighbors who make Huggy Bear look like a mere cub. I knew that if anybody had the 411 on the yellow flags, it would be one of them. I would have been willing to bet that when the craven sneaks had slipped in during the dead of night to carry out their nefarious scheme, at least one of the two had seen and possibility interrogated the perpetrators.

After all, they were the best at ferreting out details. I'm pretty sure Ian Fleming used them for a role model when he created his 007 character, and I'm almost positive Woodward and Bernstein used them to conduct some covert operations on the whole Watergate scandal.

So, over the course of the next day or two, I struck up casual conversations with my sources and worked the yellow flags into the conversation. Shockingly, I came up dry. Even they, as good as they are, knew nothing about the flags.

Reeling from the shock of the two of them coming up empty (Had the world stopped spinning on its axis? Were pigs suddenly flying?) I began to consider other possibilities such as Martians, Leprechauns or Fairies. Surely this had to be the work of supernatural beings if my two neighbors hadn't seen or heard a thing.

Maybe, instead of indicating gaslines, the stripes and flags were really marking a landing strip for an otherworldly invasion. Hey, this could be the new Area 51. I wondered if I should look into a line of ET shirts and coffee mugs. I could make a fortune!

Or maybe these were the new, updated version of crop circles. New technology is constantly making things smaller. If personal computers no longer fill an entire room, maybe the little green men decided their mysterious markings no longer needed to fill an entire field. Yeah. I could be onto something here.

Before I could fully explore my new theories though, the mystery resolved itself.

Tim had been urging me to call the gas company directly and ask them what was going on, but, subscribing to his motto that it is better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, I put the call off until after the gardening people put in my spring flowers (so I'm a little behind this year. That's okay, we'll celebrate Christmas in February to make up for it).

When the plant people arrived, I called their attention to the flags, explaining that I had no idea why they were there. The woman just laughed and told me she knew why they were there, because she was the one to call and tell the gas company they were going to be digging around in our yard.

Mystery solved. And yet, that left me with a new mystery altogether, which was this: exactly how deep did they need to dig to plant a few petunias?

Food Rules

I am not the most adventurous of eaters. Growing up, I took PB&J or bologna sandwiches to school for lunch, and the bill of fare at home was most likely a roasted chicken or meatloaf. Every once in a while, my mother would get "creative" and make chicken smothered in cream of mushroom soup in the crockpot or some kind of casserole topped with crushed potato chips. Where was Bobby Flay when we needed him?

When I would be invited out to dinner with a friend of mine whose mother served such exotic things as chicken consomme or fillet mignon, I would be told to eat whatever I was given or order whatever my friend ordered. Apparently, my parents lived in fear that I would throw caution to the wind, and order the thirty pound lobster stuffed with caviar. Meanwhile, I was anxiously scanning the menu for fried chicken in a basket and praying I could telepathically transmit this wish to my friend.

Although I've gotten better as I've gotten older, and consomme no longer scares me, there are still things that contain a huge "ick factor" and I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

Tim, despite his claims to the contrary, also has food rules. We can't help it. We both grew up in a town where meat is cooked until it's grey, veggies until they are limp and potatoes were the side dish. Sadly though, most of Tim's rules involve vegetables. Different rules, same deep, scarring, psychological issues.

And that is how, last Friday night, Tim and I ended up haggling over the seven-item antipasto platter we had decided to split for dinner.

We had stumbled upon a great little place near Lincoln Center, and had only about a half hour to wolf something down before the show there (South Pacific) started. The antipasto bar seemed like the perfect solution, and with over thirty million items to choose from, surely we could agree on a mere seven. Not really.

I suggested eggplant Parmesan, he shuddered and countered with squid.

You mean the tentacle things with the suction cups still attached? Ick. I don't think so. Rule number one of my food rules clearly states: No food that looks like it did when it was alive. If it can wave at me from the plate, I don't eat it. Try again.

He pointed to a shellfish platter.

Um. Nooooo. That violates at least four food rules. In my experience, most seafood is either waving, staring or actively fighting you. If you need special "tools" to dismember your meal, or worse yet, if you simply ingest the entire animal, lock, stock and feet, it's pretty much a no-go for me, and he knows this.

But two can play the "I know you won't eat this, but I'm going to stupidly suggest it anyway" game. I pointed to the roasted asparagus.

He eyed the seafood longingly, but wisely held his tongue.

I briefly considered the snow peas, but didn't have the heart to even point in their direction.

After a series of negotiations that would have made Winston Churchill proud, we each selected one item just for us and compromised on the remaining five (and by compromise, I mean I mostly got to choose).

Of course, the food rules had to be strictly adhered to . For example, rule number two: no raw food (we both have that rule). I don't care how trendy it is or how cute and artsy they make it look, it is still basically bait. I can't look at sushi without thinking of the scene in Jaws when Roy Scheider is throwing bucketsfull of chum over the side of the boat to attract the shark. I may be odd, but really nothing about that scene made me hungry.

A few years ago, someone sent us a complementary appetizer: ahi tuna tartare. Dismayed, we both poked at it to see if we could revive it enough to swim back off the plate under its own steam and relieve us of the pressure to choke some of it down. When the CPR failed, we tried the age-old trick of moving it around the plate and trying to hide it under the seaweed accompaniment (double ick--chum and ocean weeds).

And then there is rule number five: No food that has absolutely, positively no taste by itself, like tofu, especially when I could be ordering chocolate cake instead. I might just as well drench my wicker porch set in balsamic vinegar. The taste would be the same and I know it would have better texture.

Conversely, there is rule number eight: Nothing too spicy. Hot flashes and hot food are not a good combo. I generally like to avoid ending my meal with a trip to the emergency room to treat dehydration.

Tim has avoided certain spices since two episodes years ago. One involved half a teaspoon of curry in an entire pan of chicken divan that I made before we set out on a four-hour car trip. The trip actually took three and a half hours, but that was only because we went ninety miles an hour between rest stops and didn't come to a complete stop before Tim was off and running. Had I known the effect, I would have bought stock in Charmin.

The second was when Tim, mistaking the deadly kim-chee for a harmless pig in a blanket, took a big 'ole bite...and then his head exploded. The other people in the restaurant loved the show, but not one of them volunteered the helpful info that he should be eating bread or rice to put out the fire instead of shoving the fire hose down his throat.

Despite all the rules though, we did manage to end up with enough to eat, and were both happy as clams (which I wouldn't eat since it violates rules three, four and six -- no whole animals and nothing slimy or chewier than a piece of bazooka).

Do Not Disturb

Tim and I decided we needed to escape the crowds and craziness that is the fourth of July in the nations capital, so we hopped a train and headed for the quite solitude...of New York City!

We arrived Friday afternoon, and after a quick bite and a leisurely stroll around (of course, leisurely in NYC means you do a four minute mile or risk getting mowed down and left for road kill on Fifth Avenue), we went back to the hotel to freshen up before dinner.

Wanting to ensure privacy (we learned our lesson in Paris) we hung out the "Do Not Disturb" sign, then locked and chained the only door into the room (we also thought briefly about hiring a bouncer, but decided to keep that option in reserve for the time being).

After a quick shower and change of clothes, I slipped the sign off the door and we started to head out. Halfway out the door though, Tim realized he had forgotten something, so we popped back to get it.

No sooner had the door shut, then there was a knock. "Housekeeping"

Wow. That was fast. What, were they staking out the room, just waiting for the sign to disappear before they jumped in there? Now that is one dedicated staff (or people with too much time on their hands).

"Five minutes," I requested, as Tim and I shuddered in remembrance of our last weekend trip. Maybe a bouncer wasn't such a bad idea after all. Later that night though, when we returned to the room, we decided to risk it and just go with the sign and the double-locked door again. We're crazy like that.

The next morning, still wallowing in the unaccustomed privacy of our room, I turned on the shower and..no water. I turned if off and tried again. Still no water. I felt the panic rising, clawing its way up to the surface. This was not good.

As those close to me know, a shower is near and dear to my heart. Compared to me being denied my morning shower, Anthony Perkins in Psycho looked like a kindly, lovable hotelier mere offering to help Janet Leigh get at that hard to reach spot on her back.

I shouted for Tim, who rushed in hoping to avoid the meltdown he knew from experience was barely being held in check. Like a knight in shining armour (or a man grasping at the last straw), he battled the recalcitrant shower handle. He turned, he twisted, he even shouted and cussed, but the shower stubbornly refused to yield. Finally, he had to admit defeat and call the front desk.

In anticipation of the maintenance guy they promised to send up, I removed the "Do Not Disturb" sign from the door. No sooner had I closed it, then there was a knock. My heart beat faster with pure, unadulterated joy at the speed with which the maintenance guy had responded to our plea for help. With the sign still dangling from my fingers, I pulled open the door.

"Housekeeping," the woman standing there chirped.

Seriously? Did these people camp out in the room next door, just waiting for us to leave? I've seen cats pounce on mice with less speed and determination than the housekeeping staff at that hotel.

"Can you come back later?" I asked, "Our shower is broken, and they are sending someone up to fix it." Why I felt compelled to explain the situation to this woman, I don't know. It isn't like she cared why we were still in the room, she just knew she was going to have to keep our room under surveillance a while longer.

No sooner had I closed the door on her then there was another knock. This time, behind door number one: the maintenance guy! Who suspiciously had only a screw driver. Did he not know he was here on the most important job of his career? Had it not been impressed upon him how vital this shower was? He should have shown up with the Craftsman deluxe tool cabinet, and all he brought was a screwdriver?

But, it seemed he was a miracle worker after all, and after five minutes in the bathroom, I heard the glorious sound of running water. All was right with my world again, and nobody was going to have to die.

I ushered him out the door with many thanks, then once again hung the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, and headed into the bathroom where I gleefully turned the shower handle. And no water came out.

The vein in my left temple started to throb. Was this some sort of cruel joke? Did they want me to go all Godzilla on them and raze their hotel? Because I could do it.

Once again, Tim rushed in in response to my distress call and monkeyed around with the handle. And once again, I found myself removing the "Do Not Disturb" sign from the door while he called the front desk and suggested that they send the maintenance guy back up to actually fix the problem this time.

Within minutes, there was a knock on the door. I steeled myself to answer the door calmly, but if it was the housekeeping staff again, I couldn't be responsible for my actions. Thankfully , for them, it was the maintenance guy.

Before I could even open my mouth, he produced two faucet parts explaining how he was sure one or the other of them would fix the problem. So, if he knew he hadn't really fixed the problem the first time, why had he said he did and left? I resisted the urge to flush him and his parts down the toilet.

In short order, he was back out in the room though, admitting that it was a third part he needed, which he didn't have, so he would have to go get it. Okay, that was it, now his death was going to be slow and painful.

Tim held me back while he escaped to get the part. But before he returned, there was to be one final visit from housekeeping, because they hadn't pushed me far enough yet. What was it with those people? Were we the only guests in the hotel, or did we just look exceptionally sloppy? I believe Tim handled that one, since he didn't trust me to be around people at that point.

The third time proved to be the charm, and I did get my shower, but not before I put out the "Do Not Disturb" sign one last time...and double locked the door...and made Tim stand guard.

...Again

It's true. Machines hate me. Near as I can figure, there must be some sort of networking site they are all hooked into that allows them to trade info on me and figure out how to make my life more difficult.

The latest machine to join forces with all the other evil machines in my life is the self-checkout counter at Home Depot.

The other day, I ran in to pick up three items. Three lousy little items. Naturally, they only had two check-out lanes open, both of which had lines that extended into the next state. Par for the course.

Why they even put in more than two or three lanes, I'll never know, because that's all that are ever open. Do they really think that taunting people who are holding hammers, saws and other assorted lethal tools with closed lanes is the smart thing to do?

Miraculously, the self-checkout lane seemed to be moving at a turtle's pace instead of a snail's, so I got in that line. Faster than you can recite volumes one to six of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I was at one of the machines swiping my first item. Beep. Into the bag it went. Second item. Beep. Also, into the bag. Third item. Beep. Onto the counter it went since the box was too big to bag.

And there is where the big 'ole fly landed smack in the ointment. The payment machine registered the item, but the large screen did not and the voice kept telling me to place the item back on the scanner.

Great. Dueling machines. Now they were no longer content to come after me one at a time. They were tag-teaming me.

I looked around for help from a store employee that did not have a computer chip running them. Several minutes of frantically waving my arms as though I were guiding a 747 in for a landing on aisle four finally attracted the attention of an employee who came over to see what the fuss was about.

"You didn't scan the last item," she explained patiently.

I pointed to the machine which indicated I had. She pointed to the checkout screen which said I hadn't.

Again, I pointed to the machine which said I had. Hey lady, just so you know, I can do this for quite a while before my arm gets tired. But something about the way I was baring my teeth at her must have made her rethink the whole competition thing, and she took out a passkey, scanned it, pushed some buttons, and indicated I should try...again.

There. That was all I wanted. Now was that so hard? I may not have said the words aloud, but she knew what I was thinking.

As she tried to make good on her escape, I scanned the item again, and...once again, it showed up on the payment screen, but not on the checkout screen. Boy, good thing I got help, otherwise I might be here all day. This time, I was less subtle in my request for help. I believe they heard me over in the next county.

Passkey in hand, the same woman came back...again, and repeated the totally useless steps she had already executed and...surprise! They didn't work...again.

Hey, maybe we should repeat the pointing exercises all over again too. They didn't work the first time, but, who knows, maybe twice is the charm.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the self-checkout line now rivaled the line for Space Mountain at Disneyland, and, added bonus, it was all men who were thinking, "Dumb woman. She should have stayed in aisle two where she belongs and leave the technical stuff to the guys."

As they sighed and shifted from one foot to another, I did my best to place the blame where it belonged...on the demon machine.

"What's that?" I bellowed. "It's broken...again?"

Something about the way they rolled their eyes told me they weren't buying it.

"Swipe your card," the woman advised me, clearly at a loss for what to do next.

I knew in my heart of hearts that it wouldn't work, but I humored her anyway and swiped my card.

No reaction from the monster machine, so she swiped her card...again. This time, I actually think I heard satanic laughter coming from the machine.

"It's frozen," she deduced when nothing changed...again.

No. Really? I never would have guessed by the way the screens haven't changed in the last...hmmm...let's see...hour! Now for the million dollar question. Can you unfreeze it or not? She surrendered without even trying to swipe her card again and advised me to try another line.

Another quick glance at the line of men waiting for the self-checkout machines told me to not even suggest just moving to another machine. I think I saw a few of them fashioning nooses and fingering axe blades as though warning me what would happen if I even looked like I was contemplating such a move.

Shooting the devilish machine one last malevolent look, I headed for another line. I was so over the whole self-checkout thing...again.

As if someone knew I was skating on the edge, they suddenly opened another lane and I quickly got into it since it was the shortest one and only wrapped around the building six or seven times.

When I finally got there though, I had to hold my breath that things would go smoothly since I would have to deal with the same woman that hadn't been able to help me with the self-checkout ...again!

Living the Fairy Tale

I have to tell it. There is part II to the previous story. There was one other time in Ireland that we had trouble with finding a place, although in retrospect, it would have been better for us if it had stayed, er, lost.



Since none of us had much money, we had opted to stay at a lot of small bed and breakfast type hotels. We decided, however, to splurge and treat ourselves to one night in a real, honest-to-goodness castle. We were gonna live the fairy tale. Too bad it turned out to be Shrek instead of Sleeping Beauty.



Our first indication that things were not going to work out for us was when we couldn't find the castle. Once again, there was no real address, but we figured ,"how hard could it be to find?" Biiig castle, tiny little town. It should stand out, right? Nope. Wrong. This place was hidden away better than Brigadoon.



Finally, we did spot a sign with an arrow, indicating that the castle lay over the bridge on the outskirts of town. Ahhh. Directions at last. So over the bridge we went. Five miles later, there was still no castle, and no more signs, so we turned around, trying to figure out where we had gone wrong.



As we approached the bridge again from the opposite direction, we spotted the same sign showing that the castle was over the bridge in this direction.



Excuse me? If both signs were correct, that meant the castle was somewhere...on the bridge?...under the bridge?...hovering over the bridge? Hey, maybe we were staying in Brigadoon after all. Sadly, it took us about four more trips back and forth across the bridge before we were willing to admit that the castle wasn't actually there.

Just as we were about to cry "uncle", Tim spotted a road near the bridge. Or what might be a road. Maybe more of a lane. Or perhaps a path. Whatever. It looked like perhaps someone, at some point had driven what appeared to be a vehicle with wheels this way, and after all, it was Ireland, so we took it.

Twenty minutes later, as we sat in some farmer's field facing a very large, very angry-looking bull who seemed to view our little car as a rival for his cows' affections, we came to the conclusion that perhaps it wasn't really the road to the castle after all. We're smart like that.

Once again, we found ourselves back at the bridge trying to interpret the signage. Eventually, and I appear to have blocked this out of my conscious memory, we did find the castle. Even after all these years, though, I have not been able to block out the actual castle itself, no matter how hard I try.

Glad to be there, we eagerly ascended the grand staircase to our room. Tim and I were on the second floor, while my mom, Pat and Mary Ann were in the turret. (he he he)

As we pushed open our door, we recoiled in horror. Far from the sumptuous decor we expected, it looked like our room had last been updated in the 5o's...the 1850's...by someone who had mistaken it for the local bordello.

Bright orange carpeting (stained, by what I still don't want to know) warred with the red and black flocked wall paper, while an enormous naked, gold cupid chandelier hovered over the bed which was covered by a nasty-looking spread with large gold tassels. The shower curtain was stiff with age and I'm pretty sure the mold was the only thing keeping it from completely falling apart. Ewwwwww.

Were they kidding us? Really? Seriously, where was the hidden camera? We were supposed to sleep here and not have nightmares? I began wishing we had given up looking for the castle when we didn't find it on the bridge.

Turns out they were completely serious about the room though, and the castle was fully booked (apparently, we were not the only suckers, I mean tourists, in town that night). Suddenly, the turret didn't look so bad. Maybe I could hang my hair out the window and somebody from "Maid Brigade" would climb up and rescue me.

With no other choice, we resigned ourselves to our fate for the night, consoling ourselves with the fact that, with all the castle had to offer, we would not even be in the room anyway.

With cheerfully grim determination, we enquired at the front desk about the skeet-shooting offered in their catalogue.

"Oh, shooting? We host a contest once year. Too bad you just missed it, it was last weekend."

Grrr. How about horseback riding?

"Weell, it's not actually here at the castle, but it's really close. Just over in the next village. It's easy to get to."

Yeah, I'll bet. We'll probably only need a map, compass, guide dog, Sherpa and picnic lunch just to get there. Thanks, but I think we'll pass. So what is there to do besides shrieking in horror at the accommodations?

"You could visit the town?"

After weighing our options, which were, um, let's see none, we decided to go into town, gorge ourselves on fish and chips and try and plot a course for our escape the next day back to the comforts of a lovely little motel by the airport.

As hard as it was finding our way to the castle, we wanted to make darn sure we could find our way away from it!

Lost (Literally)

No matter where we are in the world, Tim has a pretty good sense of direction. He knew the driver in Paris was not heading the right way, even though he couldn't communicate it to him without his translator.

In Tim's book, there is nothing worse than getting lost or not being able to find a place. It's a total guy thing. But sometimes it can't be avoided.

Years ago, we took a trip with my mother, sister, brother and two family friends to England, Scotland and Ireland. Due to the mountain of luggage we toted around with us, we needed to rent two cars for the duration.

Tim drove car one while I navigated with the map (this was way before nav systems), and my mom followed in car two. The rest of our happy little band alternated between the two cars.

Everything went well enough in England where they believe in putting up fairly accurate signage and have paved roads and maps whose lines actually represent the roads. And then we got to Ireland.

On our way out of Dublin to the west coast, Tim got quite ill, so I had to drive. With much trepidation, I handed over the map to my mother, sister, Pat, and our friend Mary Ann, and told them they would have to lead the way. I would have done better putting on a blindfold and throwing darts at an atlas. Those three could get lost in a broom closet with a flashlight and mapquest. But I had no choice.

True to form, two hours later of careening around hairpin turns and dodging suicidal sheep, we ended up dead-ended at a lake. This would not have been nearly so distressing had we been planning to visit the lake, or even the county, but since we were actually aiming for a major city on the opposite coast, it was not a good situation.

Tim woke up, and I believe his first words were, "Where in God's name are we?" And the really tragic part was, nobody knew for sure.

"A lake," did not seem to be the answer he was looking for, especially when it was not accompanied by the actual name of the lake.

"What county are we in?" he rasped out. Again, his question was met with blank looks and helpless shrugs.

"Are we still in Ireland?" Okay, now he was just grasping for straws. After all, Ireland is an island and we hadn't crossed any water...well major waterways...I didn't think. I don't know, I was too busy trying to keep from plunging over the edge of a cliff every time another car wanted to pass on the wrong side of the narrow cow-pass they laughingly refer to as two-lane roads in that country.

Eventually, we found a native who was able to assure us that: A. we were still in Ireland (so there!) , and B. we were still on the east coast.

After pouring over the map for a good half hour, we were able to figure out where they went wrong, if not why, and plot a course back to civilization (my mother, trying to put a bright face on things by saying, "At least we got to see a place most tourists don't see. Aren't we lucky?" was not helping. It was like the captain of the Titanic trying to put a bright face on the whole sinking thing by pointing out that at least there was plenty of ice for cocktail hour.).

Tim managed to keep it together and climbed back behind the wheel to finish off our journey, which was uneventful until near the end.

The hotel we had booked into in Cork had no actual address that we could find, only a description that it was "on the hillside overlooking the river" (Gotta love the Irish--ask a simple yes or no question of us and you get a forty-five minute dissertation with the most detailed, colorful descriptions you will ever hear in your life. Ask for a little help with directions and you get the vaguest, most rambling explanation that leaves you more confused than when you started.).

But we were young and still had a shred of hope and optimism, so we figured we would find it.

The only problem was, as we pulled into Cork, I looked behind us and there was no blue car following our red one. My mother, Pat and Mary Ann had vanished!

Tim, being gallant, pulled over and waited for them to appear. After all, he reasoned, there was only one main road and we were on it. Foolish boy. Applying reason to my family. Tsk, tsk.

Black cars whizzed past, red cars whizzed past, even blue cars whizzed past, but not the one we were looking for.

Feeling a sense of duty, Tim turned the car around and backtracked to find them, against the strong urging of Mike and myself to "Save ourselves" and not end up dead-ended at a cave or a giant pile of cow-dung which is where they were sure to be.

Much later, after a fruitless search (duh. Tim couldn't have seen that coming?) we convinced him to head to the hotel where we could check in and perhaps marshall some troops for a fresh search party later.

As we drove up the hill and prepared to make a right turn into the hotel, we encountered the blue car chugging down the hill and making a left into the hotel. Turns out, they had started chatting and followed the wrong car! Fortunately for them, the luck of the Irish was with them and they didn't end up back at the lake (which was a real possibility).

Poor Tim. And that was the last group trip he went on. Wonder why?

Lost in Translation

I have a friend who speaks five languages fluently. I speak one--English--but I can say hello and order wine in at least four languages. Pretty much all you really need to know. Sometimes though, it would be nice to know just a couple more words.

The other day in Paris, three of us were in a car on the way to dinner with a driver who, I believed spoke about as much English as we do French. But, no matter. He understood our mangled pronunciation of the name of the restaurant--we thought.

After the first few turns though, we began to doubt that he was taking us in the right direction.

"Are we headed to la Fontaine Gaillon?" Tim enquired in loud, slow English, which is exactly the same as speaking any foreign language.

Pause. No response.

Our friend in the front seat gave it a try. Whew! Glad he speaks French, I thought.

"Are we going to la Fontaine Gaillon?" he repeated.

Wait. What? I looked at Tim to see if I was nuts or if he had heard his question repeated in loud, slow English.

Surprisingly, he got an affirmative answer. Hmmm. Guess Tim wasn't loud enough or slow enough.

Not satisfied that the driver really understood his concern, Tim persisted. "I thought it was in the other direction from our hotel," he leaned forward and yelled in the driver's ear.

Pause. No response.

"We thought it was in the other direction from our hotel," once again our friend's language skills dazzled us.

"Yes, I go this way," the driver replied.

Okay. This was getting just plain weird. I was hearing English, but clearly our friend was actually speaking French to the driver. I guess the jet lag was worse than I thought. I looked at Tim to see if he had heard the same thing I did, but he was too intent on getting at least one answer out of the driver without a translator.

"Isn't the restaurant over by the Louvre?" he bellowed, leaning so far forward his nose was practically pressed against the windshield.

Once again a pause and no response. Oh, this guy was good.

We exchanged puzzled glances with our friend who gamely interpreted one more time.

"Isn't the restaurant over by the Louvre?" he once again repeated loudly and slowly.

"Yes, but the traffic is bad, so I go around," the driver answered straightaway.

Okay, now this was just getting bizarre. I know our friend was speaking English that time. I could tell from the bright red color creeping up Tim's neck. So why wouldn't the driver answer Tim? Had he offended him in some way? He was wearing Italian shoes, but the tie was French. Didn't that count for something?

Hey. What if it was the accent? Did our friend's mid-western twang sound more Parisian than our flat, east-coast diction? Maybe Tim would have gotten further if he'd tried a "Hey y'all" or "How you doin'?". Even a "Yo. 'sup?" might have actually gotten some sort of acknowledgment.

Alas, we would never know the truth because before Tim could go with his instincts and throttle the driver until he admitted he actually understood and spoke flawless English, we arrived at our destination...Where I promptly ordered us each a nice glass of wine...in French...I think.

No Rest For The Weary

This past weekend, we were in Paris. We arrived very early Friday morning, and since neither one of us got even a wink of sleep on the plane, we decided to take a short nap before we landed face down in a plate of quiche.

Never imagining we would be bothered at 7am, we neglected to put out the "I'm relaxing" sign before we slipped into our jammies. As it turned out, not only should we have put it out, we should have had it flashing in bright, neon-colored lights.

The first knock came just as we were headed for nirvana--the bed. A way-too-chipper-for-7am hotel staffer stood there bearing a complementary fruit plate and bottles of water.

"Welcome," he beamed, and proceeded to set up our treat, making at least thirty trips back and forth for plates, napkins, silverware, moist towelettes, etc.

Somewhere around trip number twenty, I began to think it was too bad they haven't invented some sort of device that he could use to make life easier. Something that maybe had, oh, I don't know, wheels. Yeah, maybe some sort of a wheeled cart that could be rolled into the room, and either left there or quickly and easily unloaded and wheeled back out. Something maybe like that thing in the hall he used to bring all this stuff to our room in the first place. Nah. Crazy idea. It'd never work.

Finally, he was done, and with a cheery wave au revoir, he disappeared and we were left to see who could make it to the bed and fall asleep the fastest.

The last thing I remember is making sure Tim set the alarm, which turned out to be totally unnecessary.

The next thing I remember is hearing Tim say, "Get out!" and prying open one bleary eye to find another member of the hotel staff standing in the bedroom doorway.

"I came for the mini-bar," he was muttering, clearly misinterpreting "Get out" to mean "Please, come in. Don't mind the people in the bed. You just rush right over and check out that mini-bar to see how much damage they were able to do in the whole HOUR they were in the room."

The second "GET OUT!", accompanied by Tim rising from the bed like a grizzly coming out of a really long hibernation, seemed to need no translation. Last we saw of that guy, he was booking it out of the room like he was going for the gold in the 100 meter dash.

This time, we made sure we had the "I'm relaxing" sign firmly placed on the door, and briefly contemplated wedging the couch, the coffee table and the bed under the handle before heading back to sleep.

What we failed to realize though, in our sleep-deprived state, was that we had two doors, one in the sitting room and one in the bedroom. The hotel staff unfortunately realized that they had yet another chance to keep us from getting our beauty sleep though, and right on schedule, one hour later, there was a pounding on the door.

"Bonjour! Make up the room?" a woman who clearly had a death wish called out.

"No! Go away!" Tim responded in a tone that threatened to set back foreign relations a good two hundred years. I guess we won't have to worry about an ambassadorship any time soon.

"I will come back later. OK?"

Yeah, sure. How about in, oh, say, an hour? We wouldn't want to break our pattern here and get more than 40 minutes of sleep at any given time. Hey, maybe you could bring back fruit guy and mini-bar guy, and we could eat all the tiny little bags of chips, drink all the itty-bitty little bottles of vodka, pig out on strawberries and macaroons and then get really crazy and open all the cute little shampoo bottles. Par-T!!!

Once again, we headed wearily back to bed only to have the alarm go off before our heads even hit the pillows. At that point, we were afraid of who might show up next, so we gave up, showered, and headed out without bothering to remove the useless "I'm relaxing" sign.

As we waited for the elevator, it occurred to us that maybe that was our mistake in the first place. Instead of putting the "I'm relaxing" sign on the door, maybe we should have put out the "please make up room" sign instead. It wasn't like we could have had any more people coming into the room. I don't think the hotel staff was that big.

Bits and Pieces

It is not uncommon for people to leave things behind like a bag in the overhead when they fly, or a pair of glasses at a restaurant or even their phone in a cab. I prefer to leave something a bit more ...personal.

Awhile back, I was fortunate enough to score an aisle seat on a ten hour flight next to a husband and wife from California. Shortly after take-off, both of them nodded off, and I was able to read my book in peace and quiet (Woo-hoo! An on-time flight and no annoying seatmates. How often does that happen?).

While I read, I began worrying the nail on my thumb which hadn't seen a manicure in weeks and had begun to rip despite my best efforts. Read, pick, read, pick, read, flick! The entire top of my fairly long nail went flying off and landed right in the lap of the husband who happened to be sitting next to me.

Glancing at the couple's faces to make sure they were still sleeping, I pondered what to do.
Did I, A: reach over and try to grab the nail before either of them woke up or, B: sit on my hands and cast suspicious looks at the flight attendant? Decisions, decisions.

I dismissed scenario B as being impractical. How could I cut into the dried-out, brick-like piece of cardboard masquerading as a chicken dinner with only one hand? I contemplated the first scenario. I could envision one of both of this nice, middle-aged couple waking up just as my hand made a grab at hubby's nether-regions. What could I say? "Don't mind me, I'll be done here in just a minute" or "Hi there. Just retrieving a bit of DNA from your husband's lap."? Somehow, I didn't think either of these would go over too well, and we had a really long flight left ahead of us.

So I decided to take the only option left to me. I would somehow create enough wind to blow it right off his lap. After all, it was a teeny, tiny little thing. How hard could it be to move it? Grabbing my blanket firmly by the edge, I began to fluff it frantically up and down. The nail didn't budge so much as an inch. Great.

I took the Skymall magazine and fan it back and forth vigorously enough to create a small tornado. The nail stayed right where it was. Jeeze, was it glued to the guy?

By now, I was starting to get some strange looks from the woman across the aisle who was huddled under a blanket, sweater and jacket against the sub-zero temperatures they keep the planes at these days. I had one last idea before I would have to revisit the snatch and run scenario again.

Taking my book, I flapped and flipped and fanned and fluffed. But still the nail didn't budge. Now the woman was looking a little scared and glancing around the plane as though she might seriously be considering trading her aisle seat for a middle as long as it was far, far away from Typhoon Mary.

Fortunately, we were both saved from further action by the arrival of dinner. In the confusion of waking up and trying lower his tray table, the nail disappeared somewhere in the folds of his pants. By the time dinner was over, the nail was long gone, but I'll bet he had an interesting visit to the restroom later.

Not satisfied with that episode, I had another incident a few weeks ago.

Tim and I were at the theater. At one point in the show, the audience rose to its feet to applaud, and when I did so, the tie belt on my pants caught on my bracelet and came undone (and that is why I hate belts!).

Now this would not have been too bad except for the fact that my pants, which were not too close fitting to begin with, slipped a bit when the belt loosened. Add to that the fact that I was also juggling my program, my pashmina and my purse, and, well, let's just say that I looked like I was applying for the contortionist's job with the circus.

Trying to get Tim's attention for a little help was useless since he was exchanging appreciative remarks with the person on the other side of him, and totally oblivious to the fact that I was about to compete with the action on stage with a strip tease in row 7.

As I wiggled and shimmied and grappled with the stupid belt, everyone began to sit back down. Deciding I could use gravity to my advantage, I leaned forward, hitched up my pants and tried to put the seat back down with my bottom as I tied the ribbon.

Just as I was making my bunny ears, and congratulating myself a bit prematurely on my cleverness, the gentleman in front of me sat down...and back... all in one fluid motion. Which put his head right into direct contact with my mouth.

Several problems with that. 1: it hurt, but 2: he was bald and 3: I had recently applied a nice, thick coat of pink, glossy lipstick.

To my horror, as I drew back and began to apologize, I saw the perfect imprint of my lips on the crown of his head. Unable to help myself, I began to giggle as I resumed my seat and could barely keep my eyes on the stage for the rest of the show.

I can only imagine how he had to try and explain to his wife later that evening exactly how he got lipstick on the pillow.

The Itsy-Bitsy Spider...

When I was a child, my mother had an old, used car that I believe they paid my parents to take off the lot. Mint-green and white and the size of the QEII, I'm sure it was the cat's meow in it's heyday, which I'm guessing was around 1936. By the time we got it, the green was no longer so mint, and it more closely resembled the Titanic--after eighty years at the bottom of the ocean.

I'll never forget the day that we were driving up the street, and a nice, big Daddy Long Legs spider decided to pop up out of the ripped upholstery on top of the front seat "bench" and say hello. Suddenly, the half-acre back seat dwindled to the size of a postage stamp as he began his inexorable march towards me.

My mother's claim that "you're so much bigger that he's more afraid of you than you are of him" did not impress me. I might have been bigger, but he had six more legs and a definite gleam in his eye that said, "Mmm. Lunch!" I can still remember bolting from the car with speed that would make a cheetah sit up and take notice.

Despite my mother's most fervent assurances that she had killed it and he was the last of his kind on the planet, I was constantly on "spider watch" every time we got in the car, sure that he was just biding his time and as soon as my mother turned her back, he was going to resurface and get me. And so began my lifelong hate/hate relationship with bugs.

Yesterday, I was once again terrorized by a multitude of the hateful little creatures.

I picked up my six-year-old nephew from school, then swung by his house to get the extra car seat Tom had left on his porch for when I picked up my niece from school later that day. Plopping it down on the back seat, I noticed a few little ants cavorting merrily on its seat. Brushing them off, I got in the car and started down the street only to hear my nephew say, "Hey Annie, there's more ants."

Thinking it was a mere one or two, I breezily told him to just "Squish 'em."

Two minutes later, he spotted more. And more. And more. It was like the entire ant population of the east coast had taken up residency in this car seat.

Flashing back to my own childhood, I knew I couldn't put my niece into this ant farm disguised as a car seat. She is even more of a drama queen than I am, and I don't want to have to read on her facebook page in a few years about how her aunt had traumatized her and made it impossible for her to ever lead a normal life. She should blame her mother like the rest of us!

My first thought was a gas station with a really strong vacuum to suck the evil little creatures out into oblivion, but since it was in the middle of a thunder and lightening storm, I decided against holding a metal tube in my hands. I opted instead to swing by the house and 409 them to death.

My nephew and I took the offending piece of car furniture up onto the porch and found a whole colony of the nasty little buggers had taken up residence under the seat cover. I sprayed and he squished any escapees that tried to head for my front door, which he informed me was okay to do since these were "wild ants" and therefore untrainable unlike the ones in the household ant farm he hoped to get. Yeah. Whatever kid. Just keep stomping.

After coating my back seat with the spray cleaner, and still sure that the next time I get alone I'll be swarmed, we headed off to get his sister.

I probably should have bribed him with some chocolate to keep his mouth shut about the whole incident, but I didn't think about it (probably because I couldn't get past the little voice in my head that was shrieking, "Ewww. Bugs in the car, bugs in the car!") and so he regaled my niece all the way home with the gory details.

And as if that wasn't enough bugs for one day, one of the critters must have escaped and sent out some kind of signal that I hadn't been sufficiently tortured because later that evening when we were down in the basement doing an arts and crafts project, we found ourselves under attack again. But this time, the bug world called out the big guns.

As I ran water in the utility sink, suddenly, from up out of the drain came the T-rex of spiders. Seriously, this thing had its own zip code.

Trying to play it cool, I managed to trap it under a plastic container (I was not going to squish it and have to clean ten gallons of spider-blood off my walls) so that Tim could deal with it when he got home (he he he). Of course, this drew the curiosity of the kids who eagerly rushed over to see the spider...and then even more eagerly rushed for the nearest exit (although my niece did seem to consider, for the briefest of seconds, throwing a saddle on the behemoth and trying to ride it).

Within minutes of reaching the safety of the TV room upstairs, during which time I had to repeatedly lie to the kids and tell them that the spider couldn't possibly get out from under the container, come up the stairs and murder us all out of revenge, Tim arrived home.

He barely had time to shut the door behind him before he was inundated with pleas to "Kill the spider!" Scoffing at us for being afraid of a little ole' bug, he went off to do his duty, and I followed close behind to make sure he didn't chicken out when he saw the size of his opponent. The other bravehearts stayed abovestairs.

Reaching into the sink, he pulled up the edge of the container, and I believe his exact words were, "Oh my God!" as he jumped back and the monster scuttled back down the drain.

Tim ran the hot water and pronounced him dead, but in my heart of hearts, I know he just probably cracked open a new bottle of shampoo, fluffed himself and is lying in wait for the next time I enter the basement alone and unarmed.

Bugs. I hate 'em.