Somehow, We Never Saw Where It Was Going

So after a very pleasant few days in Montreal and then Quebec, it was time to go home.  Unfortunately, United Airlines had other plans.   They seemed to think we should apply for Canadian citizenship instead.

We arrived at the airport at zero-dark-thirty (with not even a sip of coffee to improve the mood since our beautifully renovated hotel (HA!) did not begin serving coffee till 6am.  Um, hellooooooo....no coffee??? Seriously?  So you want people to be surly and uncommunicative when they check out?  Job well done.) to stand in a moderately long line for check-in. (No coffee, no self-check-in.  We should have seen where this was going.)

There were two United flights leaving at approximately the same time, ours and one to Chicago. There were three people working at the counter: one for the Chicago flight, who seemed able to work a computer, deal with customers and chew gum at the same time; one for our flight, who seemed able to chew gum, and...nope, that's about it, she could chew gum; and one handling the "priority" customers, who seemed only slightly more talented than the woman taking care of our line.  Maybe.  Apparently, our need for coffee was even greater than we thought, because Helen Keller would have seen where this was going.

Now it just so happened that a fairly large group of people swarmed into the priority line at this point because they had "oversized" baggage (sports equipment) with them and claimed they had talked to some employee or other who gave them the go-ahead to get into the priority line (You can see where this is going, right?  Yeah.  We still didn't.)

Meanwhile, the woman working the "Chicago" line finished with her last customer and.....naturally....only to be expected.....started chatting with another employee. GRRRRRRR. But then, wonder of wonders, she logged on to another computer, put up a sign that listed our flight... and then shut everything down and took her break.   Double GRRRRRRRR. (Once again, we should have seen this coming a mile off.  Damn coffee withdrawl!)

Hey, don't mind us.  We've only been standing here for an hour and a half inching forward like constipated snails pulling a wheel of cheddar.  And we really appreciated the game of "got your nose" that you just played with us.  What a fun way to start off the day before being stripped searched, then herded into a metal tube with a hundred of our closest friends,  strapped into a seat designed for one of Santa's undersized elfs,  unloaded through a shoot narrower than a livestock pen to claw our way through a mob to reclaim our bags only to stand in another line.  (And we still didn't see where this was going.)

"I'm sorry,  we've overbooked the flight and there are no more seats available," the woman tried to fake sincerity for our plight.  "We can see if someone with a seat would be willing to give up their tickets for compensation."

Oh.  Yeah. Right.  Labor Day weekend, and you think that three  people are going to give up their seats.  What drugs did you put in your coffee this morning? 

"What's the next flight you can get us out on?"  I asked, trying to hold Tim back from hurdling the counter and making her one with her computer.  How could she not see where this was going?

Rose just pretended she didn't know us.

"Well..." Tap, tap, tap.  "I see a flight to Montreal with a five hour layover and then a late afternoon flight to DC."

So, let me get this straight.  Montreal has hotels where you can actually fit into the bathrooms, cab drivers who don't mess with your heads, and now the only flights home?  If only we had seen where this was going three days ago.

"Fine, we'll take it."


Twenty minutes later, she was still tapping on her computer with not a ticket in sight. 

Um, I hate to interrupt the copy of War and Peace that you are clearly typing out, but any chance we are going to get our tickets before we miss the flight?

"Oh.  You have to go to the window down there," gesturing the counter furthest away in the airport, "for the tickets.  I am working on compensation for you."

Now Tim was holding me back.

"Give us our passports NOW." I channelled the Great and Powerful Oz. This was going to a very bad place, very quickly.

"Here are the passports for Tim and Rose," she offered.

Yup.  She could just about manage to chew gum on a good day.

They took off for the other counter, while the tapping continued.  After another eternity, she upped the degree of difficulty and got on the phone as well.  

Oh, goody.  Now it can take you eight times as long. Going downhill on skates.

Rose came rushing back.

"They are closing the window now," she panted.  "If you don't get down there, you'll miss the flight."

The girl behind the counter still tapped and whispered into the phone, unperturbed.

"I need my passport.  Now." I snapped.

"But I'm still working on your compensation.  Don't you want your $100 coupon toward another flight?"

She should have seen where that was going before she even opened her mouth.

Speak Up!!!

Upon arrival in Quebec, we arranged to do a tour of the city with a guide.  Too bad we didn't bring an interpreter.  One who knew sign language.

At first, everything seemed okay.  Our guide was a nice, older gentleman who pointed out all the historic sights as we passed them.

"And there is Joan of Arc gardens......Here is the the Cathedral......This is the American Consulate."

All very interesting, but then we started to ask questions and things got really interesting.

"Are those the remains of the original fort down there, under the boardwalk?"

"What's that?   You want to walk?"

"No" (louder).  "Remains of the fort?" (pointing to the area in question)

"Names of sports?  Well...let's see."

"The original fort.  FORT!!!  REMAINS!!!  RUINS!!! YOU KNOW, MILITARY.  BANG BANG!...Oh, never mind." I finished lamely as he walked away, probably trying to figure out why I wanted to play sports with a broken foot.

"And here is the first school for girls, started by the Urselines in the 1600's...." And then proceeded to give us a fifteen minute history lesson while trying to open the door of the chapel which was locked and labeled as closed till the afternoon.

Hoping to distract him, I foolishly asked a seemingly innocuous question: "Has school started here yet for the year?

"The start of school?  Well, it was in the 1600's that the Urselines opened the first school........"

Dreading a repeat of the same lecture, I tried to head him off at the pass. "NO.  SCHOOL  THIS YEAR.  AUGUST?  SEPTEMBER?"

  I started pantomiming reading a book and writing, like that was actually going to help. (It reminded me of the time in Italy where they turned the air conditioning off for the night and expected you  to open your windows.  BUG SPRAY! I remember my mother shouting at the desk clerk, because speaking really loudly always makes you instantly understandable to someone speaking another language.  YOU KNOW, PSSSSSSSST! (using an imaginary aerosol can) AAAARGH! (Grabbing her throat to mimic a mosquito choking on fumes), CLECH ( tongue out, eyes rolled back in head, head flopping to one side).  Not only did we not get bug spray, I think they slipped some Prozac into our morning coffee, and dear God, I really have become my mother!)

"Today is August 29.  You think it's cool?  Probably a lot hotter where you are from, eh?"

I bowed my head in defeat.

Tim and Rose fared no better.  They asked about the average price for a condo unit he pointed out and he told them about the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar.  Tim asked something about the government, and he responded by showing him the gardens outside the parlaiment and asking him to translate the names of the herbs from French into English.

"OREGANO! BASIL! PARSLEY!" Tim was shouting out names like he was Mr. Greenjeans making a salad.

Mercifully, the tour ended, and we were left to our own devices and the guidebook.  But the fun was not over yet.

The next night, we went out for dinner to a restaurant that was too far to walk to with my boot.  Upon leaving the restaurant, we hailed a cab and climbed in.

"The Frontenac," Tim said, shutting the door.

The driver bent his head toward us, cupping a hand to his ear.

Tim repeated the name of the hotel, a bit louder.

The driver leaned closer, a puzzled look on his face. Rose and I exchanged glances.

"FRONTENAC!"  Tim bellowed, pointing up the hill.

Once again, the driver gestured for him to be louder.

"FRON-TEN-AC!" Rose and I joined in this time, doing our best to be heard...in Miami.

Visions of ending up in Vancouver drifted through my mind, or worse yet, an hour-long disemenation on the difference between the FRONT and the BACK.  Our hands were on the door handles, ready to abandon Tim to his fate when the driver burst out laughing.

"I'm only kidding," he chortled.  I heard you the first time."

NOT FUNNY.

Close Encounters of The Embarrssing Kind

Checklist for vacation:
                                   passport --check
                                   toothbrush and mini-toothpaste -- check
                                   large sunscreen --check
                                   extra large bag of embarrassment --check

As we got ready to go on vacation last week, I couldn't help but think of the preparation for last year's vacation.

We had booked a safari-- photo.  It's bad enough that the dog looks at me accusingly when I accidentally step on her.  Shooting something?  That kind of guilt I don't need-- and I was running around to all the "outdoor" stores trying to gear up for our adventure.  (Outdoor gear to me has always meant wedge sandals as opposed to 3-inch heels.  Who knew there was a whole world out there of zip-off pant legs and vented shirts!)

Somewhere between REI and LL Bean, I decided that none of my present jammies would do ( you know, for the nightly fashion show in front of the lions), and so I headed to the real stores at the mall.  Unfortunately, trying to find light-weight PJs in October is like trying to find a bathing suit in July or a winter coat in January.  Just.  Not.  Happening.

Except at Vickie's (aka Victoria's Secret, but she and I are on a first-name basis).  God bless their little, "Damn the torpedoes, we sell cotton in winter" hearts.  There, where an inch of lace and two rubber bands worth of elastic can make up a whole trousseau, it is always summer.

Mission accomplished, I was zipping through the mall, bright pink bag dangling conspicuously from my arm (okay, there may have been a dozen few other bags as well--girl cannot live on safari clothes alone-- when I ran into the wife of one of my husband's co-workers, teenage daughter in tow.

"So, your trip is coming up?"

"Yes.  Just grabbing a few last minute items that I need."

At this point, I was blissfully unaware that the Vickie's bag was front and center shouting, "Woo Hoo!!!  Paaar-taaay in Africa!  Let's give those elephants something to really remember!"

Aaand it kept getting better.

"You must be excited."

"I am.  Tim is really looking forward to it too.  Work has been so crazy lately; he needs to get away, relax and have a good time."

"I know what you mean.  The stress can really build up."

"Yes, I'm hoping all Tim's stress will be all worked out by the time we get back."

It was somewhere about halfway through that sentence that I realized the teenage daughter was not really paying attention to us, she was  instead following the neon pink bag like a FOX News reporter follows a presidential candidate.

Now, at this point, I had two options:

A. Explain the bag, which would have gone something like this:
No, no.  The brown bags with the uglier-than-orthopedic footwear is what I meant by preparing for the trip.  Honest.  Look...I have enough khaki here to camouflage Star magazine's 10 Worst Beach Bodies!  I only go to Vickie's for the cotton.
                                                                  or 

B. Ignore the fact that I had just basically told this woman and her daughter that Tim and I were going to make 50 Shades of Gray look like a Mother Goose fairy tale.  I could already hear the conversation when they got home:
     --Well, Tim is going to be really  relaxed when he gets back from vacation.
     --Oh, yeah?
     -- Oh yeah.  Like 'have the neighbors call the police because they think someone is being murdered' relaxed.  Like 'complete all positions in the Kama Sutra: check' relaxed.
    --Oh.  Yeah.  (sound of speed dial being hit on phone)

I went with option B.  Sigh.

A Year in the Life (in 1000 words or less)

Obviously, the blogging twice a week thing did not work out for me, but I think I may be sliding in just under the wire on blogging  twice a year!

It's not that I haven't had anything to blog about.   Hmmm.  Let's see......I've been ticked off by the cable company, phone company, yard people, dry cleaners, sales people, telemarketing people, Tim, assorted other family members, friends, strangers, pretty much anyone living, a few that are dead and some that are currently living, but that if they keep annoying me will soon be dead.  The usual stuff I blog about since it is cheaper than a good psychiatrist and less time consuming than finding one on YELP!

I've travelled a bit.... Paris and Africa most notably, though I'm sure if I really think about it, I can come up with some bizarre things that have happened to me going no further than down the street.  A trip to the drugstore can quickly go from a stroll through Mr. Roger's Neighborhood to Nightmare on Elm Street in the blink of an eye for me.

I've also been busy having cancer this year.  This is sure to generate a lot of blogs, as most of the things about this disease have and continue to really tick me off.  I have a whole new set of people in my life who keep trying to tell me what to do that I need to blog about or I will have to rip off their arms and beat them to death with them (oddly, cancer has not really made me less violent).  At least since they are doctors, they can sew their own arms back on and keep poking at me like I am some giant science experiment (which I kind of am since I have had totally strange reactions to pretty much every drug they have pumped into me.  Go figure--bad reactions to toxic substances.  Hmmmm.  So there are people who have good reactions to poison?)

Anyway,  I now have plenty of fodder for my blog, and lots of stored-up angst, so the twice a week thing should work out just fine as therapy.

Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Gun (With One Bullet)

Why is it that with all their knowledge and experience, doctors and nurses have failed to learn the most important thing of all:  patients need sleep!!!

During Tim's recent hospital stay for knee surgery, we probably got a combined total of fifteen minutes sleep, and only because we took turns distracting the staff.  At one point, I seriously considered trying to find a nice, quiet slab in the morgue for a quick catnap, but figured the autopsy would probably only wake me anyway.

All night long it was a constant procession of people in and out of the room, unless Tim needed something.  Then, they became as hard to find as a Khardahsian at an Amish convention.

Every five minutes, someone was parading through the room like a Miss America contestant working the main runway.

Hi!  I'm Becky/Mary/Julie/BettyJo/BobbyJo/BillyJo/John Boy/Jim Bob.  I'll be your nurse/nurse's assistant/nurse's aid/nurse's mechanic/nurse's accountant/nurse's hairdresser.  My job is to keep you up all day and night until you're so sleep deprived you'll confess to having aided and abetted Benedict Arnold, John Wilkes Booth and Tony Soprano just so you can be executed and get some rest.

I will also wait until you are delirious with pain before bringing you drugs, then demanding you tell me your name, rank, serial number, shoe size, favorite teacher and earliest childhood memory before letting you  have them.

If you can answer all of the questions successfully, I will then ask you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, bearing in mind that 10 is an unacceptable answer and I will continue to harass and browbeat you until you either cry or give up.  One is also unacceptable because we don't actually want you to be pain free since that would diminish our control over you.  Three is the magic answer, but only after the meds have actually kicked in.  If you say it now, it means you don't really need the drugs and are just being a whiny cry-baby.

Even after Tim was sufficiently medicated and possibly drifting off into a restful, healing slumber, the procession continued.

Okay!  It's me again, Nurse NoDoze.  Just wanted you to know that I will be taking your pulse and blood pressure every fifteen minutes.  I am going to leave the monitor clipped to you, so all I have to do is tiptoe in and read the results on the machine without disturbing you, but instead I will wake you up out of a peaceful slumber to share the results and reassure you that you are neither dead nor in a coma.  It is crucial that you know what your vitals are, since, if there is a problem, we may need you to scrub in on your own operation.

Oh, and every seven minutes, I will either want to discuss your physical therapy schedule, lunch menu for tomorrow, urine output, Super Bowl team stats, what's new at the box office and whether Brad and Angelina should have more children.

And, every three and a half minutes, I will be in here haranguing you about the need to keep your knee from stiffening up.  I will take away the machine that they gave you after surgery which moves it for you, thereby letting you get some rest, and insist that you sit, stand, walk, enter a three-legged race and perform three triple-toe loops in a row.

If you complain about the pain and/or crumple into a broken heap at my feet, I will once again demand that you rate your pain, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Finally, around 3am, after forcing Tim to do laps around the nurse's station, Nurse Red Bull turned off the overhead fluorescent lights with their 2,000,000 watt bulbs and announced that he should really try to get a little sleep.

And she really did mean little, since at 5am, she was back flipping on the lights with a cherry, "Good Morning! Let's get started on a new day!"

And by new day, I mean a repeat of yesterday for you with the new shift while I go home and get some much needed sleep.

I Should Have Stayed in Bed

Saturday morning, I got up, filled with hope that it would be a good day.  Not.  Even.  Close.

Tim is addicted to Starbucks coffee (okay, I am too, but I settle for the home brew, his highness has to have the real McCoy), so since he is recovering from knee surgery, I decided to raise his spirits by running out and getting a couple of ventis.

As I headed down the steps into the garage, I half-turned to talk to the dog (I know, I know, but these days, she is the only one who will listen to me whine) and slipped down the last two steps, landing right on my butt on the 2x4 that makes up the one side of the stairs.  Not.  Good.

As I sat astride the plank, educating Chloe to every swear word I know and wishing that I spoke another language so I could teach her even more swear words, all I could think was:  Unless Chloe can carry me into the house or dial 911, I am going to die here.  In the garage.  Sitting on the steps.  In my PJ top, sweats and Tim's jacket (hey, it's a look), while Tim mummifies up in the bed, just steps away from the phone he can't reach.

Days from now, someone will say,"Whatever happened to the Sinclairs?"  and then a neighbor will call about a bad smell and an unusual amount of flies swarming around the house.

I began to wonder if I could teach Chloe how to bark, "My mom has fallen and she can't get up" in Morse Code, but then I realized I didn't have any treats, so...that wasn't going to happen.  Besides, I don't actually know Morse code, so it probably wouldn't have worked anyway.

As I moved on to more positive scenarios in my head of Tim and I side by side in bed (like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber), splitting a bag of ice and alternating the use of the heating pad, competing over who can do more leg lifts in PT, battling for control of the remote, fighting over whose turn it was to use the walker, and duking it out over the last Percoset, I realized that I was not only going to survive, but that I could actually walk again. 

I grudgingly decided to forge ahead with my mission, and drove to Starbucks where I ordered three ventis. (Hey, I not only needed two, I deserved them at this point).  The woman poured one , plunked it down on the counter and walked away while the other woman rang it up.

"Venti?" she said.

Duh.  A.  You were standing six inches away when I ordered it, B.  If you work here and don't know which cup is a venti, then you are probably too stupid to even be breathing, and C.  (this I said aloud) "Yes.  Three."

I even held up three fingers which she ignored while she blithely rang up the one.

"Twelve thousand dollars," she announced (This was Starbucks, after all)

"I need three,"  I reiterated, but made the mistake of handing her the money for all of them.

"Oh.  Uh."  She looked from the money to the register as though I had handed her a Rubik's cube and asked her to solve it while simultaneously explaining Einstein's theory of relativity in German.

"Why don't you just charge me for the one, then ring up two more," I suggested, almost, but not quite able to stop rolling my eyes.

"Um..."

Apparently, my suggestion was not computing in her razor-sharp mind, but like a dog with a bone, she was not going to give up. (If I wave a white flag, will you do the same?  Pretty please with cream and sugar on top?  How about if I just cry?)

Fifteen excruciatingly painful minutes later, I stumbled out of the Starbucks with my three ventis, and maybe the correct change, but I couldn't see past the tears in my eyes to count it as I wept for the future.

Thinking that taking the dog for a nice long walk would clear my mind and help me shake off the morning's events, I grabbed her leash and we headed out. (Okay, I actually thought that crawling back into bed and pulling the covers over my head would help, but I was guilted into the walk by a pair of big, brown eyes and a cute little button nose).

We got exactly halfway around the block when nature called and Chloe squatted in some leaves.  I leaned down with my little baggie at the ready, but couldn't find anything...because it was stuck to her furry little backside.  Eewww.

And to make the experience even better and more memorable, she plopped her little butt down on the pavement before I could stop her and I had a poopy puppy.

Somehow, yelling "NO!" For all that is holy STOP!!" after the fact seemed a bit useless, so I settled for pounding my head against the pavement and ripping out significant chunks of hair.

After carrying her the rest of the way home in order to limit the damage (to her, but apparently not my sweatshirt), I plunked her in the tub to try and scrub off eight pounds of dog poo (Seriously, how can something that small poop out that much?).  I had barely begun when the phone rang.

"Can you get that?"  Tim yelled in to me.

Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Car Trouble

If Tim could, he would totally get a new car every year, or maybe even every six months.  His idea of fun is spending hour upon hour trolling car dealerships, reverently patting shiny new bumpers and stroking soft, supple leather seats.

Myself, I would rather run naked through a brier patch filled with poison ivy while being chased by a rabid dog than shop for a new car.

And that is why we make a perfect couple.  After almost eight years, it was time for me to get a new car, and, rather than endure the whining, pouting and snarky comments that bringing me car shopping elicits, Tim pored over car magazines and the internet, and narrowed my choices down to two, I picked one, and we both drove off the lot happy as little clams.

The bubble of happiness lasted exactly two weeks before it burst.

I was actually enjoying my new car, specifically the "keyless entry" feature before it all went south.  No more digging for keys in my purse like I was trying to tunnel to the center of the earth.  No more patting myself  down looking for the keys as though I was in a Macarana dance off.  Now, I simply had to have my keys and with one touch of the door handle, beep--unlock.  Beep, beep--lock.  It was....magic.

So last Monday, I stuffed my keys into my pocket, grabbed the dry cleaning with one arm, the dog with the other, my purse with my elbow, and my reusable shopping bags with my teeth and headed out to run errands.

Bank? Beep. Beep, beep.  Dry cleaners?  Beep.  Beep,beep.  Christmas wreath?  Beep.  Beep, beep.  Dog park? ----Hmm.  No beep.  Perplexed, I shifted the dog to the other arm and tried again.  ----Uh oh.  Not good.

I checked all the doors, but they were securely closed.  I double-checked the trunk where I had put my purse.  Firmly shut.  I brushed my fingers across the handle yet again.  No beep.  I tried another handle.  No beep.  Another hand.  No beep.  My knuckles.  No beep.  An elbow, nose, chin, knee and big toe.  Nothing.  Chloe's paw, her tail, her nose, the tips of her ears.  No beep.

Aggravated, I got back into the car, pushed the button and it started up just fine.  Huh.  That was strange.

I got back out and tried my touching routine all over again, except this time, I included the five basic ballet positions, a downward dog, part of a pussycat doll routine and a few moves I once saw at the Cirque du Soliel.  Still no beep beep.  Not even a beeee.

By now, I was starting to draw a small crowd and Chloe was looking at me the way I looked at my mom when I was 12 and she danced the hustle at a relative's wedding; equal parts horror, fascination and alarm.

I gave one last valiant effort by removing the actual key from the electronic "key", but even that wouldn't lock the car.  Okay, so now even and old-fashioned, unsophisticated key wouldn't work?  How does that happen?

Since the dealership was less than a mile away, I decided to head over there before one of the people watching decided to call either the men in white coats or the police to take me away (Honest, officer, I swear it's my car.).

As I pulled into the lot, the salesman just happened to be there with another customer.

"Hey! How's it going?"  Big, broad smile.

"Not so good.  My key stopped working."

"Let me see," he performed the same voodoo rituals I had done, to no avail.  "Oh dear."  Not such a big smile now.  Meanwhile, his customer suddenly remembered elective brain surgery he had been putting off and fled, er, I mean left.  "Take it around to the service bay."

When I arrived, the mechanic was waiting for me.

"Let's see what we can do," he declared jovially.

Yeah.  You're smiling now.  We all start out that way.  But you won't be smiling for long. 

He took the key from me and...beep.  Beep, beep.

No way.  Uh uh.  That did not just happen.

But then he got cocky and tried to show off by making it happen again.  This time though, silence...

Frowning, he tried again, and again.  No beep.

"Give me a few minutes," he said, walking away and shaking his head.

I decided to take the dog for a little walk while he was gone and returned to find him writing me a voucher for a cab home.

"It's the strangest thing," he scratched his head,  "the computer is saying the car doesn't even recognize the key.  Do you have the spare key with you?"

Uh.  No.  I don't usually need two keys to run errands.  "Sorry," I shook my head.

"We'll send you home in a cab and call you first thing in the morning.  Do you need anything out of your car?  Because it's locked and we can't get in, and if I use the actual key, the alarm will go off and we can't turn it off."

A.  Of course I need the stuff in my car, but apparently I can't get it, so why bother to even ask, other than to torture me and

B.  What do you mean the alarm will go off?!!?  You mean that would have happened to me at the park?  Perhaps that is a little detail you should tell people when they buy the car?  "Oh, don't ever use your key because that will cause the alarm so sound, deafening you and everyone else within a twelve block radius, but the upside is, there is no way to stop it."

As we walked by the car on the way out, it suddenly unlocked.  Beep.

We looked at each other, startled, then tried a handle again.  Beep, beep.

"Are you sure you don't have the other key?" the guy asked me.

Suddenly, it came to me, a hazy memory of dropping a key in my purse the previous week. 

Oops.  My bad.  Chagrined, I reached into my purse and pulled out the key.  Apparently, they key only locks the car from outside, not from in the trunk, and the key I thought was for my car was actually for Tim's.

"Maybe you could put a colored sticker on the keys to tell them apart," the car guy suggested, somehow managing not to laugh outright in my face.

Meanwhile, I was busy trying to figure out how I could blame the whole thing on Tim and wondering where I was going to get my car serviced from now on.

I Am A Mushroom

After this last year of Snowmaggedon, earthquakes and hurricanes, we decided to bite the bullet and get a generator.

Oh.  Wait.  Tim decided to get the generator and I have to bite the bullet.  Yeah.  That's how it went.

So, two weeks ago, I got a call from someone named Sally who said she was from company ABC (one of the companies Tim had contacted for an estimate).  Expectant Pause.

"Okay.  And...?"  Was I supposed to burst into a round of applause complete with whistles, cheers and stomps, or would she prefer an award of some kind?

"What can I do for you?"  Sally asked brightly, obviously hoping to provoke some kind of reaction other than confused silence.

"I give up.  What can you do for me?"  Um.  Hello.  You called me!

Second pause.  Clearly, this conversation was not going according to Sally's plan.  Whatever that was.

"Uh,"  some of the perkiness left Sally voice.  "I'm calling for Sean...?"

Oh. You're calling for Sean?  Well why didn't you say so in the first place.  Now I understand everything.  Just a couple of quick questions though:  Who is Sean, and exactly how lazy and/or incompetent is he that you have to make the call for him?

"Sean is the one who sold you the generator...?"  Sally volunteered another piece of the puzzle while I was still struggling to voice my last question in a less snarky way than the version that was running through my head.

"I didn't know I had bought a generator, but now I know what the problem is,"  the light bulb finally went on, and I knew who to blame for the confusing morass Sally and I were currently mired in.  "You see, my husband must have been dealing with Sean and he thinks I am a mushroom."

"A mushroom?"  Sally echoed, sounding more than a little afraid of the answer.  I'm pretty sure that at this point, she was plotting ways to get even with Sean...ex-lax in the coffee perhaps?...for putting her through this torture.

"Yes," I answered, similarly plotting my own form of vengeance on Tim, but he would not get off as lightly as ex-lax.  "A mushroom.  He keeps me in the dark and feeds me sh--, er, I mean he obviously didn't tell me what he did."  I finished lamely.

Sally meanwhile was more than a little giddy with relief that she was not speaking with someone she would later have to tell the police interviewer "seemed a little off, but I never imagined she'd take out all those poor, poor people with her.".

"Okay, well, I think I'm supposed to set up a time to come out and install the generator," she said.

And you couldn't have led with that and saved us both this ridiculously painful conversation?  I mean, c'mon, Sally.  Work with me on this.  And what do you mean, you think?  Don't you know what you were supposed to do?  Really?  Are you a mushroom too?

Sally offered me installation as early as the following week.  Wow! I thought.  So soon!  That never happens when dealing with people in the service industry, or at least not without divine intervention or a really big payoff.   Sally, you rock!  And then she dropped the bomb.  Installation would take three days.

Three days?!?  I have to sit at home for three days?  Are you installing a generator or building a wing onto the house for this thing?  Maybe you are assembling it on site from scratch.  Perhaps the installer is legally blind and the installation instructions are written in Sanskrit.  I know, it's being put into place by a team of highly trained snails who will then turn it on, hop in, douse themselves with garlic and wine and become escargot.  Three days?  At home?

"Well, officer, she seemed fairly normal when we arrived on Monday.  We never saw the homicidal rage coming on Wednesday afternoon until it was too late."

Tim was sooo going to hear about this.  I was emailing him even as I was resignedly circling the days on a calendar like a prisoner about to enter solitary confinement.  And I don't care what anyone says, they weren't getting my shoelaces and belt.  I had to have something to keep my busy for three days.

Within an hour or so, I heard back from Tim, who had the gall, the nerve, the utter temerity to chastise me for scheduling the installation on days we would be out of town.

We will?

Yes, we're leaving on Tuesday and won't be back till Friday.

Oh?  And when were you planning on sharing that little gem?  Monday night?  Why don't you just get Sally to call me up about an hour before we take off on Tuesday and have her tell me what's going on?

"Honest officer, I never saw it coming.  I mean, sure, she muttered under her breath and maybe her eyes did circle in opposite directions, but I just thought she was a bit eccentric.  I never suspected anything like this.  Have you even found a piece of Mr. Sinclair?  No?  Not even a lock or hair or a fingernail?"

I am.  A mushroom.

Blinded By The Light

When I was young, my Aunt Margie would spend every Christmas with us, and make decorating the tree about as much fun as a root canal.

"No, no!  You can't hang Rudolph near Mickey."

Why?  Are they mortal enemies?  Can we put Dumbo next to Mickey, or do you think that'll start a stampede?

"Stop!  The blue bells go at the top, they're breakable."

Okay.  I'm fifteen, not five, and they are from K-Mart, not Swarovski.  If I promise not to ride my tricycle in the house, can we hang at least one bell under the six-foot mark?  Pleeeease, can we, huh?

"Wait.  String the lights from top to bottom, not side to side.  And start inside and work out.  You want to give the tree depth."

Um.  You are aware the tree is plastic right?  With metal "limbs"?  And since our lights are from, like, 1935, I'm pretty sure just having them in the same room constitutes a fire hazard, let alone  putting them inside the tree.  Besides, don't you think the tree kind of glows in the dark as it is?

With this scene played out Christmas after Christmas, it's no wonder I am scared for life.

So when Tim and I had our first Christmas, I convinced him to get a pre-lit tree, and then I hung glass bulbs on all the lowest branches.  Hehehe (and then I ran with scissors and went swimming 58 minutes after eating--what can I say, I was young and crazy!)

But last year, Tim talked me into getting a real tree.  He promised faithfully that he would do all the lights by himself.  I would not have to re-live my childhood nightmare.

After about two hours, our tree boasted several hundred lights, woven in, out, up, down and side to side.  It twinkled like a float in Disney's Electric Parade.  Proudly, Tim showed off his handiwork.

"You can't even see the wires, and I used ten boxes of lights," he bragged.

"Okay, you're hired,"  I told him.  "You get to do the lights every year from now on."

And then this year, disaster struck. 

After thirty-two years of dealing with a bad knee, Tim needs a replacement.  That means surgery, weeks of rehab, and lots of pain, both before and after the surgery.

But enough about Tim.  Let's talk real pain, my pain.  This year, I had to put up the lights.

I decided to do it while he was at work, so the fool wouldn't try to climb a ladder with a bad knee.  He called as I was plugging in the first strand, and in a moment of weakness (or insanity), I told him what I was about.

"I'll do it," he roared at me.  "You'll do it wrong.  Leave it till I get home tonight."

Gee, thanks Aunt Margie.  I've got to get off the phone now because I'm having a flashback and I can't hear you over the voices in my head.

So with that vote of confidence, and wishing I could start drinking at 9am on a Wednesday, I began to string the lights.

In and out, up and down, round and round I wrapped, unwrapped and rewrapped those stupid lights.  Morning turned to afternoon as I added strand after strand.  Up the ladder, down the ladder.  Stop and back up to make sure I didn't miss any spots.  My lights just had to live up to last year's display, or I would never hear the end of it.

Somewhere around 3:00, I was about halfway done and wondering how Tim was able to finish in two hours when it was taking me six, when another disaster struck.  I ran out of lights.

Dumbfounded, I stared at the tree.  How could I have used all the lights and not be done?  And what should I do now, spend another day unwinding and rewinding the lights?

Nope.  No way.  Not gonna happen.

I took a picture of the unfinished tree and sent it to Tim, then hopped in the car, drove to Target and bought the last nine boxes of lights they had.

In the meantime, Tim called, howling with laughter.  "I'm married to Clark Griswald from Christmas Vacation!"

"Do you think it's too bright?" I asked.

"Too bright?  When we fire that bad boy up, we're going to take down the whole Eastern seaboard.  Good thing we're having a generator put in.  We'll need it just to light the tree.  I think you can see it from space.  But on the bright side, Santa won't need Rudolph to find our house.  He might need sunglasses and SPF 60, but he sure can't miss it!  Hey, I'll bet your parents can see it from Florida.  Tell them to step outside and look north."

Great.  I married Shecky Sinclair.

The abuse continued when he came home, but the worst part was, the extra nine boxes were still not enough, and I had to spend most of Thursday tracking down the same kind of lights, which apparently no one but Target sells. (But I will save that for another blog)

I've made up my mind though.  Next year, we're going to a beach somewhere and decorate a palm tree.  How many lights could that take?

Who's Training Who?

I have decided that I am not cut out to be a dog trainer.  And the dog knows it.

The problem is, I grew up with cats.  You call a cat and they walk away.  You tell them to sit, and they walk away.  You offer food, and they walk away.  To be fair, there are some exceptions to those rules, such as: 1. the cat doesn't feel like walking away.  In that case,they will curl up with their back to you and yawn. 2.  They have a use for you.  They may need an itch scratched or a warm, comfy place to sit, and 3. you offer something really good to eat like shrimp, fresh Maine lobster or ahi tuna, lightly seared.  They actually may deign to sample it, if the presentation is up to their standards.

I loved my cats, but I accepted early on that I merely existed to serve their every whim and never tried to train them.  Period.

But a dog?  They are supposed to be trained.  They want to be trained.  They beg to be trained.  And it's a piece of cake, right?  Yeah.

Based on these totally erroneous assumptions fostered by doggie propaganda films like Benji, Lassie, and Rin Tin Tin, I decided to give it a shot. 

The first thing I did was buy every book I saw.  I got Dog Training for Idiots, Dog Training for Dummies, Dog Training for People Who Are Too Stupid to be Idiots or Dummies.  I watched all those training shows on the dog TV channel:  AKC Training, How to Train Your Puppy, How to Train Your Dragon, The Dog Whisperer, The Horse Whisperer, and The Ghost Whisperer.  Anything that I thought might help.  And what a colossal waste of time and money that was.

You see, the problem was, all those things are for training perfect dogs who live in fantasy land.

Make the dog walk on your left, at your heel.  Don't let them pull ahead, they tell you.  Uh huh.  That is supposing your dog will walk AT ALL!

Unlike every dog these people worked with, our dog would go approximately five feet, then throw  herself down on the street as though she had just trekked across the Sahara, pulling a covered wagon loaded with bricks.

Firmly tugging on the leash and using a firm, commanding voice elicited a look of utter contempt from the dog and sympathy from passerby who were surreptitiously googling "animal abuse hotline" on their smart phones.

Training her to use her crate as a "safe place" went equally well.  Throw in some treats, they all said.  Get her comfortable with the door open, then close it and she'll be in "home sweet home" and happy as a clam.  Snort (I don't know how to write this sound, but it is the only one I can think of to adequately describe my reaction to this faulty bit of reasoning).

I threw in her favorite treats.  Chloe, who will eat leaves, the carpet pad and rabbit poo as though they were the latest offerings of a five-star master chef, looked at me like: I hope you don't think I'm going in after that because I know it is a trap.  Not only am I cuter than you, I am also waay smarter.

Alternatively, she would approach the crate as though it held a rabid rattler, brace her back feet against the open door and stretch her neck as though she was that slinky dog to grab the treat and then run like crazy with her prize as far as she could go.

As far as using treats to train her to follow simple commands?  Yeah.  That went great...as long as we were in the privacy of our own home where no one could observe her caving in and actually doing something I said.  Oh, and as long as I had a fist full of treats.

First we worked on sit.  Sit.  Treat.  Sit.  Treat.  By day two, she would see the treat bag and automatically sit before I could say anything.  I guess I was too slow with the treats, so she figured she'd just cut to the chase.

By week five, she knew sit, down, stay, heel, off, out and leave it.  If she even suspected I might possibly have a treat, she would run through the list like an olympic athlete sprinting for the finish line.  She would flip, flop, hop, skip, jump and then throw herself down before I could even clear my throat.  She seemed to think that since she had done it all, I should just dump the whole pile of treats all at once and stop wasting both our time.

Take her outside and give her the same commands? Not only did I have to show her the treat, I had to offer it up for approval before she would consider entertaining my request.  Sit?  For a carrot?  Whaddya have rocks in your head mom?  I will sit, but I want a hot dog or at least some chicken.  I also don't feel like staying, unless you want me to walk, in which case, I will be happy to jump up and down in a complete frenzy before throwing myself in the middle of the road and then rolling over on my back and going limp when you try to pick me up.

And so we got a trainer.

Sit, said the trainer, and she sat.

Heel, said the trainer, and she heeled.

Walk, said the trainer, and she walked.

Then we went home.

Sit, I said.  She rolled her eyes.

Heel, I said.  She sat.

Walk, I said. 

Look, she said, you are not the trainer, so get it out of your head that I'm going to listen to you.  Unless you have something really, really tasty for me.  Now, where did you put those hot dogs?

Happy Birthday (Or How I Got Out of Cooking Breakfast Ever Again)

Long ago and not so far away, I decided to surprise Tim for his birthday by bringing him breakfast in bed...and I have been banned from making breakfast ever since. (hehehe)

It was his first birthday after we had gotten married, and I wanted it to be special, so I racked my brain for ideas. A rose petal strewn coverlet? Chilled champagne and strawberries? A candlelit dinner with softly playing violins in the background? A little something secret from Victoria's? Scrambled eggs in a toast cup? Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner!

I mean, really, what says I love you more than "the incredible, edible egg" floating in a toasted cup made of Wonder Bread? It just screams romance and celebration.

So I got up early, snuck out into the kitchen and transformed into a cross between Martha Stewart and the Barefoot Contessa. I mixed and cut and buttered and stirred, until I had produced a feast fit for a king, served up in such a way that the Iron Chefs would have been gnashing their teeth out of jealousy.

Setting my creation on the tray complete with artfully folded napkin ( I had mastered the difficult triangle shape in preparation for the big day), I breezed into the bedroom and set the meal before my victim, er, love of my life with a flourish.

"Um, what is this?" I remember Tim peering down at the tray, poking the food gingerly with his fork as though it might poke back.

"Breakfast," I informed him, pleased with my creative use of breakfast food and a muffin tin. Had the Food Network been around then, I felt sure they would have come knocking at my door. Maybe not.

"I know it's supposed to be breakfast," Tim jabbed at it again, a little harder this time, and watched closely for any signs of aggression. "But what is it actually made from? Anything I might recognize?"

"It's a scrambled egg in a nest.". This was not going quite as I had envisioned it.

In my scenario, Tim was supposed to be scarfing down the sumptuous repast I had lovingly slaved over while gazing at me adoringly. Instead, he was shrinking back away from the plate as though it contained some sort of mutant creature that might suddenly lunge for his throat at any moment, while eyeing me suspiciously as though he suspected I may have taken out a really large life insurance policy on him.

"No, really. What did you do to the, um, okay, we'll call it an egg?" Tim apparently decided I had sufficiently wounded it to the point where he could safely gather some of it up on his fork. Although he did hold it at arms length just to be on the safe side. "Is it cooked?"

"No. I served you a raw egg." Birthday or not, there was only so much I could take. Hmm, maybe Vickey's would have been a safer choice. I mean, would he actually have said, "Black? Lace? Really? What were you thinking?"

"Well, it just looks a little...undercooked. And what is this cup made of?". He banged the side of my cute little toast cup with the knife like he was kicking the tire of a used car he suspected might break down after he drove it five feet.

Note to self: next year, go with the rose petals, because apparently he would find them more appetizing than my current offering. At least he wouldn't be looking at them as though they might do him some bodily harm.

"For your information, the eggs are cooked perfectly. They are not supposed to resemble a rubber product from the Acme gag gift catalogue, which is how you apparently like them. And I'll thank you to stop chipping away at the toast as though you were trying to tunnel your way out of Sing-Sing."

"Okay. Okay. I was just saying..." Tim took a deep breath and gamely shoveled a forkful into his mouth...and then gagged. "Nope. Can't do it, " he gasped, reaching for the juice and downing it as though it was the last vial of anti-venom on the planet.

"Fine." I grabbed the tray. "That's the last time I'm making you breakfast."

"Can I have that in writing?" he called after me as he scrambled out of bed and rushed into the bathroom for his toothbrush, paste, Listerine, Scope and Clorox. "Seriously. I'm not saying that just to be nice."

And so, this morning, for his birthday, I gave him the gift he wanted more than anything...no breakfast.

And we all lived happily ever after.

Missing!

I always tell Tim that if I die first, he will have to sell the house 'as is' because he knows where NOTHING is.

"Do we have band-aids? a heating pad? extra guest towels?  tape? scissors?  toilet paper?  the check book?  my cell phone?  milk?"

Seriously, if it can't jump up and down, waving a flag and screaming "Here I am! Here I am!" while a big neon arrow hangs above it, he can't find it.

I have seen the man literally stand in front of an open fridge telling me we don't have any butter when there are four pounds of it staring back at him.

"Oh.  Well.  How was I supposed to see it behind the yogurt?"

 Yeah.  I can see where that would be a problem what with the clear glass shelves, and also because the butter has only been kept there since, hmm. let me think, FOREVER!

At least when I can't find something, there is a very good reason for it...it's because I have put it someplace  so safe that no one, including me, would think to look for it there.

Most recent case in point:  a phone number on a post-it.

I was given the number late on a Friday afternoon about two weeks ago and I stuffed it into my purse among the eighty-six thousand old dry cleaning tickets, thirty-nine dozen empty Halloween candy wrappers, one hundred pens (only two of which actually work), fifty stubs of old eye/lip pencils, assorted flip-flops (for pedicures), twenty-six pounds of change all in pennies and nickels, and twelve million dollars worth of twenty percent off coupons for Bed Bath and Beyond from 2006 that I habitually carry.

At some point on Saturday, I got the oh so brilliant idea to put the post-it someplace safe, so that I could actually find it to call first thing Monday morning.  And that is the last time I saw that post-it.

I spent days looking for the crummy little thing.  I looked in all the usual places like the office, my bedside table, jewelry box, and bathroom counter.  I looked in less likely places, hoping to shift the blame for losing it, like Tim's bedside table, Tim's dresser, Tim's "basket o' crap" (which is the male equivalent to my purse) in the TV room.  No post-it.  It had vanished into thin air.

I played a few rounds of the "If I were a post-it,where would I be?" game and the "If I were going to put something in a really safe place, where would it be?" game, but I was so bad at both of them I didn't even get the consolation prize of a years supply of Rice-a- Roni, let alone my post-it.

Finally, after opening the same drawers/cupboards/doors for the thousandth time in the mad, hope that the stupid post-it would have magically appeared, I had to give up, call the person who gave me the number, admit that I was losing my mind and/or stupid, and ask for the number again.  Ugh.

And the thing is, I just know, based on past experience that that lousy post-it will show up when and where I least expect it.  One day, I will open the freezer, or decide to organize the garage and there it will be, mocking me, like the cup of coffee I lost awhile back.

One minute, I had the cup in my hands, the next, I had no idea where I left it.  We were getting ready to go out, so I couldn't mount a full scale search and rescue mission, but I did try to retrace my steps and even made slurping noises, calling, "Here coffee, coffee," but to no avail.  My coffee was nowhere to be found.

About a week later, Tim opened the hall closet to get something out and emerged with a coffee cup and a funny look on his face. 

"Remember that coffee you lost?" he asked, holding it at arms length as though it were a poisonous snake or ticking time bomb.  "I think I just found it...or what used to be it.  Now, it's more like a science experiment gone bad."

Eww.  Well, that's one way to kick the coffee habit.

But my all-time best (worst?) was years and years ago (which I unfortunately couldn't blame on age, like I do now), and involved a ring.

This was the first really "nice" piece of jewelry Tim had given me, and I was sooo careful with it.  Right up to the moment I lost it.

I had packed it in our bags to go to Pennsylvania for Easter, and when we got there, the ring was gone.

I blamed the airline employees, sure that it had been stolen, but  Tim pointed out that since we had driven ourselves, that was unlikely.

All through Easter, I checked and rechecked our bags.  I fretted, fumed and worried, anxious to get home.  Finally, the holiday came to an end, we drove home, and I barely waited for Tim to slow down before I was out of the car, making a beeline for our apartment.

No ring.  I looked high and low and everywhere in between.  No ring.  I ripped apart every drawer in the place.  I searched old suitcases, purses and toiletry kits.  No ring.

"Pray to Saint Anthony," my mother advised, nodding sagely.  "It always works for me.

I prayed.  No ring.  I prayed harder, but he must have been helping my mother find all the things she lost (a full-time job even for a saint), because I still couldn't find that darn ring.

"Put it out of your mind,"  Tim told me.  "If you don't think about it, you'll remember what you did with it."

Good plan, general.  Except for one tiny little flaw.  Not thinking was clearly how I got into this mess in the first place!!!  Got a plan B you'd like to share?

Days turned to weeks, weeks to months and then one day, I took down a box from the tippy-top closet shelf where I kept mementos, opened it to put something in and...there was the ring!

To this day, I still have no idea how it came to be in that box.  I suspect elves.  Or maybe fairies.  Hmmm. Possibly a poltergeist.  Because I know I couldn't possibly have put it there.  I would have put it someplace "safe".

Gremlins

Years ago, I had a car that had gremlins running around inside it.  We'd be driving along, listening to the radio, when all of a sudden, the station would change, usually to something that made you want to drive over the edge of a cliff, like talk radio where the topic was "Foot Fungus:  Friend or Foe" or the Lawrence Welk channel with special guest Hans the goat boy and his magic accordion.

No matter what buttons or pushed, or how hard you pushed them, the station would not change until those gremlins were good and ready to change it.  Oh, and bonus!  You couldn't turn the radio off either, so there was pretty much nothing you could do but slap both hands over your ears, drive with your elbows and knees and chant, "lalalalala, I can't hear you," until the station was switched back to something resembling modern music.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the doors would randomly lock and unlock.  Running errands?  Lock.  Lost in a dicey section of town?  Unlock.  Driving down the highway?  Lock, unlock, lock, unlock.  Getting gas?  Lock.  On Tim.  While he was pumping gas.  With the keys inside.

And that was the end of that car.

Now, we apparently have some of those same gremlins running around our house.

Last week, I was watching TV as the dog snoozed behind the couch when, all of a sudden, one of the smoke detectors upstairs gave one long, loud beeeep, and one of the lights above the stairwell started flashing on and off, on and off.

Jumping up, I ran over to the stairs, only to find...nothing.  No smoke, no fire.  No reason why the lights should be flickering like in one of those horror movies where you're shouting, "Run, dummy, run!" to the ditsy girl who simply has to check it out when she knows full well that there is a revenge-seeking, mask-wearing, axe murderer on the loose and so far, nine out of her ten friends have been gruesomely killed in that same stairwell.

I turned the light off, then back on.  Still flickering, but the other light on the switch was completely dead.  I quickly checked the date.  Nope.  Not Friday the 13th.  Whew.  I pressed the switch again.  Same result.  I double checked our address.  Okay, we did not live on Elm street.  I went to the alarm panel.  No alarm had registered.  Hmmm.  Curiouser and curiouser.

Suddenly, the dog went on high alert.  Oh no, was it Freddy, Mike Meyers, Chucky or Dracula???  Nope.  It was only Tim, no axe in sight, coming home from a dinner, and Chloe happily tripped over to welcome him.

I related the bizarre incident to Tim, and he also pushed the button (both lights were now dead), checked the alarm, looked under the bed, in the closet, behind the door, and shrugged, concluding that maybe we'd had a power surge or something.  Meanwhile, I slept with one eye open that night, just in case.

Two days later, the gremlins struck again.

We had a friend over with her dog, and the three of us were laughing as we sat in the basement watching the dogs tumble around the floor.  Suddenly, the alarm went off again.  This time, it really went off, beeeeeeeppp!!!  Tim ran upstairs to disarm it while I assured our friend that it was just our friendly little gremlin and it was not really a fire...probably.  Maybe.  Hopefully.

A few minutes later, the front doorbell rang.  Assuming Tim would get it, I didn't bother to go upstairs, and kept chatting.  About five or so minutes later, Tim appeared downstairs again. 

"You really should answer the doorbell when it rings," he warned me.

"Didn't you get it?" I asked, raising a brow, because surely, he hadn't expected me to run up the stairs when he was, what, twenty feet from the door?  Who was he, Archie Bunker?

"I was at the store," he informed me.  "I went to get batteries for the smoke detector, since I thought changing the batteries might solve the problem."

Confused, I followed him up the stairs.  "Then how do you know the bell rang?  Was it you?  Did you forget your key?  Why wouldn't you call?  And anyway, you're in, so what's the big deal?"  The final words died on my lips as I saw the armed police officers standing in the kitchen.

Crap.  Had the house actually been on fire or broken into?  Did they have Chucky cuffed in the back of the cruiser?  Was Freddy's blood splattered all over my living room walls?  What had I missed???

And shouldn't the dog have heard something and  barked?  Lassie had always barked to warn Timmy just before the dope fell into the well...again.  Couldn't Chloe have at least growled, sneezed or even burped to let me know my life was about to be snuffed out?

I glanced down at the adorable muppet at my feet who was doing her doggie best to smother the officers with kisses and hugs.

"Way to go Chloe," I congratulated her.  "Next time, maybe you can lead the axe-wielding psychopath to the silver before he kills us."

The police assured me though that we actually had not been in danger.  Apparently, the alarm had  come from the "panic" button on one of the key fobs, so they had raced over, assuming the worst.

Tim had arrived back home to find lights flashing and guns drawn, and assumed the worst.

Meanwhile, our gremlin was having the last laugh, since, at the time the alarm went off, we were all downstairs and our keys were on the hall table, upstairs.  Hmmm. I wonder if we can trade in our house like we did the car?

We Don't Do Windows

I have finally found someone worse than all those repair people who give you that infamous "window" as though you have nothing better to do than be at their beck and call.  Service people who won't even give you a day much less a window as though you have nothing to do at all.

Last spring, after a lot of storms and high winds, we needed to have some trees removed.  After doing some research, I contacted a company that had good ratings, and asked them for an estimate.  They told me they would look at the schedule and get back to me with a time and day shortly.

Now to me, shortly means later that day, maybe the next day.  To them, it meant anywhere from that moment until the end of time.  So, two days later, I checked in and asked if they were still interested in giving an estimate.

Huh?  Estimate?  Oh.  Yeah.  Um.  How about next Monday?

Okay.  Can you give me a time frame?

Uh. Hmmm.  Time frame?

Yeah.  You know.  Time frame.  A span of time anywhere from four to sixteen hours when I will sit home twiddling my thumbs and then you show up at the last possible second if you bother to come at all.

We'll have to get back to you on that later.

Later?  Let's see.  To you, shortly means what, a year or two, so later must mean...I give up.  The twelfth of never?

Two days later...still no time frame.  So I contacted them again explaining that while, in their own, twisted little universe they were more important than air, the rest of us peasants actually had something called a life.   At least the phone/cable/heating/appliance repair people had the decency to pretend that they cared about me by going through the motions of scheduling a window, but these tree people couldn't even be bothered to do that much.  I mean, it's not like I expected them to actually stick to what they told me.  So, how about it?  Morning, afternoon, evening?  Pick one.

Oh.  I wanted a time frame on Monday? 

Okay.  Do me a favor.  Get a co-worker to stick a mirror under your nose to see if you are still breathing because I suspect you may be brain dead.

But Monday was a whole two days away.  Did I really need a time frame now?

No.  Why don't you wait until Sunday night at 11:59 to give me a time frame, because I would really enjoy trying to arrange my schedule at the last second.  Challenges like that are what makes life worth living, don't you think?

Needless to say, I went with another company. 

I would like to think that this was an anomaly, but the other day, I ran into the same thing all over again.  This time, it was a guy from the gas company.

We decided this summer, after losing our power for the the kajillionth time, to get a generator.  Because Tim has to have one that could power a small village, the Empire State Building and The Mall of America all at the same time, we needed a new gas meter.

Okay, when can you do it?

How about Wednesday?

Fine.  When on Wednesday?

I'll have to call you back.

Seriously?  C'mon.  It's Monday.  How hard is it to schedule something less than two days away?  I'm not asking for a lifetime commitment, just a vague idea of when you think you might feel like dropping by.

I'm not sure of my schedule.  I'll have to let you know tomorrow.

Super.  Don't worry about me.  I only have places to go and things to do, but hey, I wouldn't want to make you commit to something before you're sure.

The next day, he called back with a two hour window for the following day.

Yippee!!  A two hour window.  Unheard of.  He was my new hero...until he didn't show up.

After two and a half hours, I called and asked how late was he running?
 
Oh. It's not me.  It's, um, let's see, who is it?

Gee, I'm on the edge of my seat.  Who is it?

It's Mike.  Yeah.  He got held up waiting for a part on a job.  I don't think he's going to get there today.  Wait.  Who'd you say you were again?  Morgan?

Bit your tongue.  Bite your tongue.  There is only one gas company, and you need this, I told myself even as I pictured eviscerating him, or at the very least slapping him silly.

No.  Sinclair. 

Sinclair.  You're not on the schedule today.  No. I have you for tomorrow.  Did I tell you today?

It's enough to make you long for the good old sixteen hour window.

I'm Late! I'm Late! I'm Late!

My parents came to visit this weekend on their way down to Florida, and it was like spending time with the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.

First of all, this was the first time they were taking the auto train from here to Florida, and my father had been reading about it on the Amtrak website. I am sooo glad we taught him to surf the net. Next time we have a brilliant idea like that, we should just slam our hands in a door repeatedly. It would be less painful.

"It says you can check in as early as 11:30," he started in on Saturday about fifteen minutes after they arrived.

"But the train doesn't leave until 4...on Monday,". I pointed out. "Why do you want to sit around the station for several hours?"

"I want to make sure we get the 7pm seating for dinner," he informed me, "otherwise, we'll be stuck eating at either 5 or 9."

"So it's first come, first serve?"

"I don't know, but I want to be there early, so we get the 7pm seating for dinner."

Okay. Got it. You want to eat at 7.

"I really want to get there early," he broached the subject again about an hour later. "5pm is too early to eat and 9 is too late."

"What time do they board?". Tim tried a different tack.

"2pm, but I want to make sure we get the 7 o'clock dinner seating," my father stressed.

"So you reserve dinner when you check in?" Tim tried again to clarify.

"I don't know, but 5 is too early and 9 is too late for dinner," said the rainman, er, my father.

"That's a long time to sit in the station," sometimes Tim didn't have the sense God gave a turnip.

Stop. Roll over and play dead. Give up. I tried to communicate telepathically with Tim, but had no more success getting him to listen to me that way than I have when I actually speak out loud to him.

"I'd go around 1," he offered, "otherwise, it'll be a really long day."

"I don't know," my father seemed to waver for a moment, but recovered. "I'd hate to get there too late to get the 7 o'clock seating."

He actually managed to not bring up the subject for at least another hour or two and then only 86 or 87 times more an hour for the next two days.

Each time, we tried to lure him off topic by steering the conversation toward some other aspect of the journey.

"So, does arriving early affect the order in which your car comes off the train at the end?"

"It says it doesn't because of the way they load them on, but it does affect whether you get the 7pm seating."

Shoot me.

"Do you want to order a Netflix movie so you can watch it on your iPad? They have wi-fi on board, right?"

"If we get the 7pm seating, we won't have time for a movie afterwards, so we'll just watch a TV show. That's why I want to get there early."

Shoot me now.

"What do they serve for dinner anyway?"

"I don't know. I couldn't find that on the website, but it says they have three seatings: 5, 7, or 9."

Okay, one bullet for the both of us. We'll stand really, really close.

And while my father was obsessed with getting to the train early on Monday, my mother was just as obsessed with getting to church early on Sunday.

"What time is mass?" she questioned on Saturday night.

"All different times. Sleep as late as you want, and we'll go from there," I told her.

She was up at 7.

"What's the mass schedule?" she wanted to know. "What time do we have to leave? I don't want to be late."

We decided on 10:30 mass at a church less than five minutes away. Rose offered to drive, so at 10:10, my mother decided that Rose was late and she would wait outside for her.

"It's kind of breezy and chilly," I warned, "why don't we just watch out the window?"

"She might park the car and get out before we can get to the door, and then we'll be really late."

Okay, you and dad need to get either a hobby or a prescription for an incredibly powerful drug.

"It's 10:17," she fretted as we stood at the bottom of the driveway getting blown apart. "I don't want to be late."

"I know, but the church is less than five minute away," I tried to soothe her.

"It's 10:20, we're going to be late," she pronounced exactly three minutes later.

Maybe a hobby and a drug.

"It's 10:22. We'll never make it on time."

Hobby, drug and smash the watch.

Fortunately, Rose arrived at 10:25, just as I was getting ready to perform CPR...on myself because my blood pressure shot up sixty points every time Big Ben ticked off another second.

I am happy to say that my mother was not late...much.

I wish I could say the same for my father. Sadly, by the time he stopped for gas on the way to the train, he was late. They were stuck with the dreaded 5pm dinner slot.

"I told you so," he pouted over the phone. "I knew I should have been here early. Now, we'll have too much time to kill just sitting around after dinner."

As opposed to the time sitting around before? I wanted to, but I didn't say it.

Hobby, drug, gun, one bullet.

Love Is A Battlefield

This past weekend, our nephew got married, and like most weddings, family members gathered together to celebrate...and aggravate.

The first skirmish occurred during the rehearsal dinner when a relative of the bride came up to our happy little family group as we were sitting down to dinner.  Trying to make conversation, but inadvertently making enemies with every syllable he uttered, he asked one of Tim's sisters where she fit in the order of the siblings.

"I'm the oldest of the girls," she told him.

"Ahh, but you look like the youngest," he replied gallantly, but unfortunately within hearing of Rose who was across the table.

"Helloooo.  I'm sitting right here," Rose all but growled under her breath while the rest of us snickered.

Oblivious to the daggers Rose was shooting him with her eyes, he continued to dig himself deeper into the hole.

"So how old are your brothers?" he pressed.

"Tim and Tom are celebrating a milestone birthday this year,"  And she named a number I refuse to write because if I see a number that large associated with me in print, I may pass out.

"Really?!!?"  he had the nerve and misfortune to look surprised.  "That's all?  I am ten years older and I thought they were my age.  They are the youngest?"

Uh oh.  Tim's eyes narrowed, while Rose's crossed with the effort it took not to leap across the table and show him who was old.  We all sucked in a collective breath and tried to unobtrusively back away to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

I don't know what he had done with the money his mother had given him for charm lessons, but I hoped he had invested wisely.  He was going to need a lot of cash to pay the medical bills.

"I don't even dye my hair," he boasted, smoothing back the thinning strands.

"That's what we all say,"  Rose countered with a saccharine sweet smile, fluffing her own blond locks, while Tim sniped, "Yeah.  And the sky is green and the grass is blue," out of the corner of his mouth to me, while I kicked him under the table, hard.

Still not feeling the waves of hostility surging toward him, he continued, "I am the best looking.  See," he pointed across the room, "my one brother is grey and the other is bald."

"Maybe you're adopted," Rose offered, batting her eyelashes at him while preparing to go in for the kill.

Meanwhile, I kicked Tim harder to prevent him from entering the fray.  He subsided with a glare and a muttered, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..."

"No.  Really.  I, too am the oldest and the best looking," he beamed at Tim's oldest sister, who, knowing he was a dead man walking leaned back while Rose finished him off.

"Well, we can't all be George Clooney," she declared.  As he opened his mouth again, she cut him off.  "One more word and it's off with your head, undyed hair and all."

The foolish man actually laughed, but finally had the good sense to retreat before he was carried, bleeding off the field.

Of course, this exchange was mild compared to the one that took place the day of our rehearsal dinner, oh so many years ago.

It had been a crazy day, filled with a thousand last minute details that needed to be taken care of, but finally it was time to get dressed for dinner.

Since it was ninety-five degrees out, and we were expecting my cousin and her fiance from out of town at any minute, my mother had turned on all three of the air conditioners in the bedrooms.  The only problem was that in our hundred plus year old house, the electrical system could only handle two and a half air conditioners when all the planets lined up and the moon was in the seventh house.

We turned on a light, we blew a fuse.  Plugged in a curling iron, we blew a fuse.  Opened the fridge, we blew a fuse.  Lit a match, we blew a fuse.

And each time this happened, my father would stomp down to the cellar to do battle with the fuse box, cursing a blue streak.  As for the rest of us, this was not our fight, since A. my father was the only one who knew how to do this, and B.  he was the only one brave enough to actually go down there without a silver bullet, string of garlic, bucket of holy water, ghostbuster, exorcist, or team of green berets.

Our cellar made the Amityville Horror house look like a suite at the Ritz.  Even Stephen King could not imagine such a creepy place.

Somewhere around trip number 56 million, my father succumbed to battle fatigue, and lost it.  He charged back up the stairs from the cellar as though something was hot on his heels (which it may have been...an alligator, swamp creature, zombie, Rodent of Unusual Size), made it as far as the foyer and hollered up the stairs to my mother, "Turn off that (unprintable word) air conditioner in the guest room.  I'm not replacing another (string of unprintable words) fuse."

"I'm trying to keep the room cool for Walter (my cousin's fiance).  He won't want to change in a hot room."  My mother was a veteran of many such campaigns, and this did not phase her in the least.

At the end of his rope (which on a really good day is about three inches long), my father exploded like a bomb, "I don't give a s@#t what Walter wants!"

No sooner did the last word leave his mouth than we heard a knock at the screen door behind him, and there was Walter.  A direct hit!

Without missing a beat, my father turned, stuck out his hand, and said, "Oh.  Hello Walter," and then walked away.

Parents Say the Darndest Things

The other day, I called my parents from Bed, Bath and Beyond to ask what color wood, walnut or black, was the furniture at the condo.

For the last few years, they have had one lonely little collage frame on a rather large, otherwise blank wall, so I thought I'd pick up a variety of frames to fill the empty space.  Sort of like a giant collage.

"Don't get too many," my dad warned me.  "I don't think I have that many really good pictures of Cait from this year."

Umm.  Hellooooo.  I am aware that Cait, your only grandchild, otherwise known as the cutest, most perfect, smartest, best child of all time on the face of the earth is the main focus these days, but aren't you forgetting something?  Something like, gee, I don't know, your three children?

I mean, I know we can't even begin to compare with Cait, but maybe you could include us in at least one picture?  Just a group picture perhaps, where we're all standing around looking at Cait.  Maybe you could photoshop her into the center of daVinci's Last Supper painting and do it as a mural on the whole wall.  The rest of us can be in the background somewhere, or hey, we could be the wait staff.

I have come to accept that gradually, over the last three years, our old photos have been replaced with ones of Cait.  Sometimes, I have even been grateful for the Caitmania that has gripped my parents.

 I really don't need to be confronted with photos of me from the 80's looking like a linebacker in drag.  And who wants to be reminded of those unfortunate years before braces, contacts and clearasil had worked their magic?  And did we really need to have the ghosts of Christmases past photos keep haunting us year after year?  Wheee! Look at us frolicking in the snow with our tacky winter sweaters and smiles that make us look like we're trying to pass kidney stones!!

It was beyond time to say good-bye to those photos, but I didn't know that also meant we were being cut out of the family tree as though we had dutch elm disease.

Ahh, but this is just the most recent affront to our vanity.  The last attack was about a month ago.

Tim had had his back surgery and Pat had undergone surgery on her shoulder.  My dad and I were talking about how small their scars were and how good they looked considering the amount of work that had been done, when he said, "Well, it's not as if we have to worry about either one of them winning a beauty contest anyway at their ages."

Slam!!!  An unprovoked attack where he picked off the two of them with one shot.  The best part is, he wasn't even trying!

"I mean, not that they're ugly or old, or anything," he began to backpedal.  "I meant because of the scars.  Not that they're bad, they're not.  You can hardly notice them."

Wow.  Maybe we should just shoot those two poor humpbacked wildabeasts and put them out of their misery.  Maybe we could borrow the elephant man's cover-up and they could take turns wearing it when they go out in public.  You know, so they don't send poor little children running screaming into the night.

Knowing that no force on the planet would be able to keep me from cheerily repeating his comment to said wildabeasts, he kept trying make it better, but it was too late.  It was out there.  In the universe.  And I was texting even as we were speaking.  Hehehe.

Not to be outdone in the faux paux department, my mother has had a moment or two of her own.  The one that sticks out the most was last year when we were throwing Pat a birthday party.

We decided to gather up a bunch of old photos of her and run a slide show during the cocktail hour.  Since my mom had years ago divided up our childhood pictures (to each his/her own), we asked Paqt to bring the photos over to the house for us to pick what we wanted to use.

As we sat at the table, sorting through the pictures, my mom held up one from many years earlier and reminisced, "This was when you were thin."

As Tim and I fell howling on the floor, Pat huffed with indignation.  "Thanks.  When I was thin.  Before I became Tillie the elephant.  Hang on, P.T. Barnum is calling to ask which of the three rings I'd like to perform in tonight."

My nother tried to mount a defense, but at that point, anything she said just made it worse. 

"No, you were young then."  she protested.

"As opposed to the old, fat whale I am now?"  Pat sputtered.

Tim and I, of course came to her defense.  NOT!  And like any good, older sister, I still remind Pat of this any chance I get.  Hehehe.

Can't wait for the holidays to see what they come up with this year.

Alarmed

Yesterday morning, we decided to sleep in...till 7am.

The alarm clock in the spare bedroom had other plans.

At 6am, I was pulled from a perfectly lovely dream about eating all the cookies I wanted and not gaining an ounce, by an annoying buzz coming from the other side of the wall.  As I stumbled from my nice, cozy bed, Tim and the dog both rolled over, opened one eye and mumbled something about it being the middle of the night before burying their heads in their pillows again.  Rat Bas@#*ds!

Now, at the best of times, after a really good night's sleep, I wake up slowly.  And grumpy.  And sleepy.  And dopey.  And unless the other dwarves are names cranky, unhappy and miserable, I have nothing in common with any of them.

As I child, I would burrow under the ninety-two blankets plus the sheepskin rug I dragged back from Ireland while my disgustingly cheerful, morning-person father stood in the doorway of my bedroom and whistled "Revile."  If I could have pulled myself from the bed before he cantered happily downstairs, I would have beaten him to death with my pink and purple giraffe-shaped clothes tree.  But I digress.

I lumbered into the room, trying to locate the source of annoyance without A. opening my eyes or B. turning the light on.  Luckily, I was able to find the shrilling siren, but had no idea how to turn it off, which necessitated in me turning on the light, actually opening at least one eye and pushing every button until the darn thing shut up...temporarily.

Is there some reason why manufacturers have stopped putting a simple on/off button on things.  Seriously.  They all have buttons with symbols that are supposed to be intuitive and international, therefore easily understood by everyone.  Just like some of the labels on clothing.  News flash.  I have NO IDEA what a triangle with a line through it means!  Does a trapezoid with a zero in the center mean wash in cold water, or lay flat because if you put this in the dryer, it will come out the size of a postage stamp?  Does a semi-circle with dots mean iron, don't iron or have a nice day?  But I digress.

Apparently pushing all the buttons on the stupid alarm in varying combinations does not turn it off, it just resets it for an hour later.  Not that it mattered, because at that point I was wide awake anyway.  I briefly contemplated just throwing it against the wall until it shut up, but with my luck, the only thing that would accomplish would have been setting off the burglar alarm, and I'm sure I have no idea how to turn that off.

So much for a long, restful night's sleep.

Which was why, last night, I was so tired ad looking forward to (finally) a good night's sleep.

Our smoke detector in the hallway had other plans.

At 4am this morning, we were awakened by a short blip, then a longer beeeeeep from the smoke detector.
This time, both Tim and I sprang out of bed (the dog put her paws over her ears and retreated to the back of her crate) and ran out into the hall to find...nothing.  Total and complete silence.

Heart thumping, adrenaline pumping, nose twitching, I hit the lights and made the rounds looking and smelling for smoke, flames, anything.

Tim grumbled about needing to replace the batteries, tucked himself back up in bed, and nodded off again before my blood pressure had even dropped to twelve times the normal rate.

He was conditioned by our first apartment building where the alarm went off about every other night.  After the twelfth kajillionth time of tromping down seven flights of stairs to mill around the lobby in our pajamas at 1, 2 or 3am, along with every other poor slob in the building, he had had enough.  The next time the alarm went off, he called down to the front desk.

"Is there really a fire this time, or is it another false alarm," he demanded.

"No sir, it's really a fire in someone's kitchen," the night clerk affirmed.

"What floor is it on?" Tim barked.

"Three," came the response.

"Wake me when it reaches five," Tim snarled, hanging up.

But I digress.

I was finally able to drift off again and get a whole, solid hour of sleep before our alarms went off.  Yea (read with deep sarcasm, not joy).

As I sat on the couch, sipping my decaf coffee (who needed more excitement?) and wishing I could slip into a nice, peaceful coma, I heard it again.  The alarm in the guest bedroom was going off.

Tonight, I'm thinking of finding a firehouse to sleep in.  It will almost certainly be more quiet.

My Hero

Tim and I love to walk.  Rain or shine, hot or cold, we walk.  At home, on vacation, visiting family or friends, we walk.

So when we were away for the weekend awhile back with some friends of ours, the four of us went out for...a walk.

It started out nicely, strolling through a neighborhood much like ours--wide streets, no sidewalks, houses far apart, lots of trees and other green stuff.  "The country" as Rose likes to call it.

As we approached this one house, we noticed some dogs in the yard.  Three dogs to be exact.  Three really big dogs, who, when they spotted us, all went on high alert and began barking, and not in a "goody, goody, we love people" sort of way.  More like in a "Ready boys?  Let's get'em" sort of way.

But since they were at the top of a really really long driveway, and the owner was out in the yard, we weren't too worried.  Deciding to err on the side of caution though, we shifted over to the far side of the street.  Which only ticked off the dogs more.

Suddenly, as though someone had shouted, "Release the hounds!", 8000 pounds of Cujo and company came racing down the driveway, barking, growling and snapping like they had just spotted the fox...and it was us.

At first, we didn't panic, thinking that surely they would stop once they reached their property line.  Surely they were trained, or there was one of those invisible fences, or...something, anything to save us from the jaws of death headed our way.

Time slowed down as we watched, horrified, while they seemed to be gaining speed as they neared the end of the driveway, instead of slowing down into a nice, non-threatening trot.

Pieces of Discovery Channel shows began flashing through my mind.  Shark Week, Hogs Gone Wild, Man vs. Wild, those guys who live in a swamp.  There had to be some useful bit of survival information that applied here.  Why oh why hadn't I paid more attention, maybe Tivo or DVR'd it, taken some notes  when I had the chance.

What did they say to do?  Climb a tree, cover your head, swim fast, get under a table, carry a taser?  I couldn't think.

"Stand still,"  someone said.  "Don't run."

Yeah.  Okay.  The small part of my brain that wasn't running around screaming, "We're all going to die!" knew that that is what the so-called "experts" say, but when you are looking death in the jowls, that advice seems, what is the word I'm looking for?  Oh yeah.  STUPID.  Sure, I'll just stand here and do nothing while the Hounds of the Baskervilles gnaw on my leg and rip off my arm.

Of course, the thought did cross my mind though that Tim was on my left, between me and Jaws, so maybe I had time to shimmy up a tree after all.

As we all stood there, petrified, a miraculous thing happened.  The dogs skidded to a sudden halt at the edge of the driveway...or at least two of them did.

The third slowed down and looked over his shoulder at the other two like, "Come on, we can do this.  What're you wimps stopping there for?  Look.  It's a four course meal and they're just standing there waiting to be eaten.  Those fools have clearly fallen for the old "don't move" slogan our PR people put out.  Saps.  They should have run for their lives when they had the chance.

He then flew out into the road and headed straight for Tim, teeth snapping, spittle flying, ears pinned back.  Hitchcock couldn't have come up with anything more terrifying.  This dog made his birds look like they belonged in a Disney movie designing dresses and sweeping out the attic.

Tim apparently felt the same way, because the next thing I knew, he had completely discarded the common "don't move" wisdom and put a shield between himself and the dog.  A human shield.  Me.

One minute, he was on my left facing down The Beast.  The next, he was waaay far on the other side of me.  Wow. Somebodies fight or flight instinct kicked in.  Way to go Galahad.

Before I could shove him in front of me once more though, the dog seemed to tire of the "terrorize the people" game he'd been playing, and with a final snap of teeth that really needed to be filed down, or pulled, he trotted off back to his buddies, tail in the air, chest all puffed out, patting himself on the back for a job well done.

Tim, of course, denies his actions to this day, and when we were once again "threatened" by a vicious monster a few weeks later as we walked around our neighborhood, he made a point of putting me behind him to alone bear the brunt of the deadly attack.

"Gee," I quipped, peering over his shoulder at the fearsome monster bearing down on us, "what was your first clue we were in danger again?  Was it the way the poodle was wagging his tail as he ran over, or the slobbering kisses he's giving you?"

"You never know what will happen when a dog is charging," Tim defended himself, scratching "killer" behind the ear.  "I didn't want you to get bitten."

My hero.

The Invisible Woman

Last year, Tim and I spent a weekend at a very nice, small inn/resort where the staff makes an effort to learn your name.  Or at least Tim's name.  Mine, not so much.

At first, I didn't notice that I wasn't there.  After all, Tim is the one who made the dinner reservations, selected the wine, paid for the meals.  He also likes his food prepared very simply, so he was always rearranging the menu items, which I'm sure made him stand out in the the staffs' minds.

"Welcome, Mr. Sinclair,"  they'd say as we sat down.  "What would you like?"

"What can we do for you Mr. Sinclair,"  they'd offer.  "Mr. Sinclair, can we get you anything else?"

It was kind of like being married to Norm on Cheers.  What was her name, Vera?

By the end of the weekend, I expected to hear them shout, "Tim!" when we entered a room, and have his drink ready before his bottom hit the chair. 

Gradually, I noticed that he got the big meet and greet, and I got.....nothing.  There was the hanging on his every word as though he was Einstein explaining relativity for dummies. There were the blank stares I encountered when I tried to alert them to the fact that there was a Mrs. Sinclair.  There was the subtle way the waiter stood with his back toward me when taking our orders.

Tim, naturally, was in complete denial, even as I transitioned from solid, to transparent to totally invisible.

The staff would rush up as we entered the lobby, concern etched into their faces.  "Mr. Sinclair, are you aware that there is some strange woman following you?"  they'd ask, casting dark looks my way.  "What can we do for you Mr. Sinclair?"  It only got worse as the weekend went on. 

"Is this woman bothering you, Mr. Sinclair?"  I could hear the unspoken question when I dared to sit at his table our final night there.  "Would you like us to call security?  We can have her removed.  No trouble at all.  Now, what would you like to eat, Mr. Sinclair?"

Umm.  Helloooo.  I'm his wife.  See the ring?  I would waggle my finger at them.  Sometimes it actually was my ring finger that I put up.

Finally though, the weekend was over, and Tim once again had to acknowledge that he had a wife.

A few months later, we had the opportunity to go back to the inn, this time with another couple who clearly thought my  stories were an exaggeration of the facts.  Until we got there.

"Welcome back, Mr. Sinclair," the woman at reception gushed as we checked in.

"Ahem,"  I cleared my throat.

"Be with you in a moment, ma'am.  Please step back until we finish with Mr. Sinclair, our favorite guest of all time, and the handsomest man on the planet."

Well, okay, maybe I exaggerate a little.  They didn't actually say that he was handsome.

But seriously, as skeptical as they were at first, eventually, our friends began to realize that I had been telling the truth.  And worse, my disease was contagious.  They were becoming invisible too.

"Afternoon, Mr. Sinclair," the staff greeted the four of us as we headed out for a walk.

I arched my brow at our friends.  "See?"  I silently asked.

They dismissed it as Tim simply being the first one out the door.

"Wine, Mr. Sinclair?"  the bartender asked whipping out a nice bottle of white to present to Tim with a flourish, as the four of us sat down for a pre-dinner drink.

I arched both brows, and confiscated Tim's glass since it was the only way I was going to get a drink without stomping my own grapes.  The other two were on their own.  From the slightly dazed looks on their faces though, they were beginning to come around to my side as they faded from view.

Tim, of course, protested vociferously that this was all in our collective imagination.  He insisted he was treated no differently than the rest of us peons.

But the clincher came when we sat down to dinner.

"Mr. Sinclair, I don't know who these people are that have somehow managed to sit at your table, but what would you like to eat?  You usually get the fish.  Shall we prepare it with a side of seasonal vegetables?  And I know you don't do bread, so I won't bring over the basket.  Also, here is a bottle of sparkling water which I know is your favorite.  Now, can I get you anything else?"

Somehow the waiter managed to avoid eye contact with any of the rest of us during his spiel, and successfully insert himself between the three of us and Tim by the time he was finished.

By now  though, it was clear to our friends that they had suffered my fate and ceased to exist.  They sat, mouths agape as reality sunk in.

Satisfied that my point had been made, I leaned past the waiter as he hovered over Tim, just in case "Mr. Sinclair" should need anything like an extra napkin, refill on his drink, more salad dressing, his chin wiped, to be burped.

"Perhaps you could ask him, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, if the people with Mr. Sinclair might actually get a little something to eat and drink too?"

Tim finally had the grace to at least look a little chagrined.  Not that that changed anything until after we checked out.  The three of us and Mr. Sinclair.