Friday, June 26, 2009

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!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

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?

Friday, June 19, 2009

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.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

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.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

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.

Friday, June 5, 2009

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.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

From Bad to Worse

I begged Tim. I pleaded. I scolded, nagged and even berated him. Nothing worked. He still continued to tromp in through the back door onto my carpet without taking his dirty, wet sneakers off. So I locked the back door.

It was Sunday and there were two guys outside power-washing the house, porches and deck. Tim, myself and our twenty-three year old nephew, George, were trying to facilitate things by moving the porch furniture off and then back on to the porch. The off part was easy. George and I had done most of it earlier that morning. We were just waiting for it to dry out enough to move the stuff back on.

Tim, on the other hand, was mucking about with the grill, the shed, the utility area and God only knows what else. He was in looking for a cleaner. Back out. In for paper towels. Back out. In for a garbage bag. Soda. Phone. Snack. In. Out. In. Out. Not to mention the fact that he kept leaving the back door open. A blatant invitation for every bug in a three mile radius to sashay in and take a stab at me! So I finally, firmly closed, then locked the back door.

Soon enough, the porch was dry and the three of us headed out the front door. Tim. Myself. George...who pulled the front door shut behind him.

Tim whirled around. "You did not just shut that door."

"Uh oh. Yeah."

The three of us looked at each other, knowing it had automatically locked.

"Tell me we can get in the back door," Tim demanded, turning on me.

"We could if you had listened to me just once and taken off your sneakers," I defended myself. George wisely backed away and looked for a nice, cozy hole to crawl into.

Deep breaths.

"Does our next door neighbor still have a key?" Tim asked hopefully.

"She did until recently when she was having work done in her house and gave it back to me so that nobody could get into our house," I answered, daring Tim with a look to point out the irony.

"How about the guy across the street?" (our neighbor and friend)

"Nope. But, hey, wasn't he with some special unit in the military?" I enquired as inspiration struck. "Maybe he knows how to pick a lock like McGyver!"

Tim threw me a withering glance.

Hey! Like this is my fault, Mr. I-can't-be-bothered-to-take-off-my-sneakers?

More deep breaths.

"What time is it?" he tried another tack. George and I both held up bare wrists. "Where are all our cell phones?" he asked, already knowing the answer. We all looked at the closed, locked door.

"We'll use the neighbor's phone and call Rose,"he decided.

"Duh. She's getting her hair done or else she'd be here locked out right alongside us." Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have pushed it.

He actually couldn't breathe any deeper at this point, so he settled for gritting his teeth.

"Fine. Then we'll call a cab, and I'll go to the salon and get the keys from her. Now, who has their wallet with them?"

Was he kidding?? We were moving patio furniture around the yard, had no watches or cell phones, but he thought we had our wallets tucked away in our sweats? Now that was reaching.

"Does Tom have a key?" (last resort since he lives a good thirty minutes away)

"Uh, maybe. He did, but I'm not sure if his key is from before or after we changed the lock."

George was now looking for a major mound of dirt to pull in on himself after he got to the bottom of his hole.

"Do you think you could possibly go next door and try calling either Rose or Tom to see if they can come and let us in?"

I was going to suggest that he do it, but I decided it would be nice if the neighbors didn't witness a murder/suicide. I dutifully trotted next door.

"Of course you can use my phone. You should give me a key in case this happens again," she said. I didn't bother to point out that I had given her a key, but she had given it back!!!"

Since it is one of the few numbers I know by heart, I dialed Rose...and got her voicemail. I tried again...and got her voicemail again. I tried Tom at home...and got his voicemail. I couldn't remember his cell, so I went out and yelled across the fence for Tim...who chose not to hear me. I yelled louder. He was still playing deaf. So I had to go down the steps, over and up the steps to get Tom's number in person.

Miracle of miracles, he actually answered.

"Honey," I began without preamble, "do you have a key to our house?"

"What?"

"Do you have a key to our house?"

"A key? What do you mean?"


I wanted to beat him to death. "This is not a hard question...yes or no. Do...you...have...a...key...to...our...house?!" I enunciated each word with excruciating clarity.

"Uh, I think so," he didn't sound too convincing. "Why do you want to know if I have a key to our house?"

"Our house?" I repeated blankly.

"Yes, our house," he confirmed.

"Not your house. our house," I was getting exasperated again.

"Annie?" finally the light dawned.

"Yes."

"Oh, I'm outside. I thought you were Beth calling to ask me if I had a key!"

"Why would...never mind. Do you or do you not have a key to my house?"

"I guess. Hey, by the way, Rose just called here complaining that you people aren't answering your house phone or cell phones."

Counting to ten, I answered, "Yes. I know. That's because all the phones are LOCKED IN THE HOUSE!!! Now, do have a key or not?"

"Oh yeah. I have a key to your house. I'll be right up (yeah, in half an hour)...How did you get locked out?"

"It's a long story..."