I begged Tim. I pleaded. I scolded, nagged and even berated him. Nothing worked. He still continued to tromp in through the back door onto my carpet without taking his dirty, wet sneakers off. So I locked the back door.
It was Sunday and there were two guys outside power-washing the house, porches and deck. Tim, myself and our twenty-three year old nephew, George, were trying to facilitate things by moving the porch furniture off and then back on to the porch. The off part was easy. George and I had done most of it earlier that morning. We were just waiting for it to dry out enough to move the stuff back on.
Tim, on the other hand, was mucking about with the grill, the shed, the utility area and God only knows what else. He was in looking for a cleaner. Back out. In for paper towels. Back out. In for a garbage bag. Soda. Phone. Snack. In. Out. In. Out. Not to mention the fact that he kept leaving the back door open. A blatant invitation for every bug in a three mile radius to sashay in and take a stab at me! So I finally, firmly closed, then locked the back door.
Soon enough, the porch was dry and the three of us headed out the front door. Tim. Myself. George...who pulled the front door shut behind him.
Tim whirled around. "You did not just shut that door."
"Uh oh. Yeah."
The three of us looked at each other, knowing it had automatically locked.
"Tell me we can get in the back door," Tim demanded, turning on me.
"We could if you had listened to me just once and taken off your sneakers," I defended myself. George wisely backed away and looked for a nice, cozy hole to crawl into.
Deep breaths.
"Does our next door neighbor still have a key?" Tim asked hopefully.
"She did until recently when she was having work done in her house and gave it back to me so that nobody could get into our house," I answered, daring Tim with a look to point out the irony.
"How about the guy across the street?" (our neighbor and friend)
"Nope. But, hey, wasn't he with some special unit in the military?" I enquired as inspiration struck. "Maybe he knows how to pick a lock like McGyver!"
Tim threw me a withering glance.
Hey! Like this is my fault, Mr. I-can't-be-bothered-to-take-off-my-sneakers?
More deep breaths.
"What time is it?" he tried another tack. George and I both held up bare wrists. "Where are all our cell phones?" he asked, already knowing the answer. We all looked at the closed, locked door.
"We'll use the neighbor's phone and call Rose,"he decided.
"Duh. She's getting her hair done or else she'd be here locked out right alongside us." Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have pushed it.
He actually couldn't breathe any deeper at this point, so he settled for gritting his teeth.
"Fine. Then we'll call a cab, and I'll go to the salon and get the keys from her. Now, who has their wallet with them?"
Was he kidding?? We were moving patio furniture around the yard, had no watches or cell phones, but he thought we had our wallets tucked away in our sweats? Now that was reaching.
"Does Tom have a key?" (last resort since he lives a good thirty minutes away)
"Uh, maybe. He did, but I'm not sure if his key is from before or after we changed the lock."
George was now looking for a major mound of dirt to pull in on himself after he got to the bottom of his hole.
"Do you think you could possibly go next door and try calling either Rose or Tom to see if they can come and let us in?"
I was going to suggest that he do it, but I decided it would be nice if the neighbors didn't witness a murder/suicide. I dutifully trotted next door.
"Of course you can use my phone. You should give me a key in case this happens again," she said. I didn't bother to point out that I had given her a key, but she had given it back!!!"
Since it is one of the few numbers I know by heart, I dialed Rose...and got her voicemail. I tried again...and got her voicemail again. I tried Tom at home...and got his voicemail. I couldn't remember his cell, so I went out and yelled across the fence for Tim...who chose not to hear me. I yelled louder. He was still playing deaf. So I had to go down the steps, over and up the steps to get Tom's number in person.
Miracle of miracles, he actually answered.
"Honey," I began without preamble, "do you have a key to our house?"
"What?"
"Do you have a key to our house?"
"A key? What do you mean?"
I wanted to beat him to death. "This is not a hard question...yes or no. Do...you...have...a...key...to...our...house?!" I enunciated each word with excruciating clarity.
"Uh, I think so," he didn't sound too convincing. "Why do you want to know if I have a key to our house?"
"Our house?" I repeated blankly.
"Yes, our house," he confirmed.
"Not your house. our house," I was getting exasperated again.
"Annie?" finally the light dawned.
"Yes."
"Oh, I'm outside. I thought you were Beth calling to ask me if I had a key!"
"Why would...never mind. Do you or do you not have a key to my house?"
"I guess. Hey, by the way, Rose just called here complaining that you people aren't answering your house phone or cell phones."
Counting to ten, I answered, "Yes. I know. That's because all the phones are LOCKED IN THE HOUSE!!! Now, do have a key or not?"
"Oh yeah. I have a key to your house. I'll be right up (yeah, in half an hour)...How did you get locked out?"
"It's a long story..."
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means
Last week at dinner, I was telling my parents how Tim had been chased by a pig out in Arizona. Without missing a beat, my mother enquired (and she was completely serious), "Why was a cop chasing Tim?"
After we picked Rose up from the floor where she was rolling around laughing, and I stopped choking on my salad, we asked my mother why she thought I meant a cop. Her brother was a cop, and nobody in our family has ever called a police officer a pig (maybe not so much because of my uncle, but more because we are not extras on an episode of Dragnet).
"Well," she offered, "I didn't think you actually meant a real pig!"
In her defense, she comes by it honestly. Her mother was forever coming up with some doozies. The Pocono mountains were the Pinocchio mountains and her nephew was training at Pepsi-cola in Florida.
And her mother before her, as family legend has it, once told a waiter that she didn't want the sorbet, or intermezzo course, he was trying to serve her before her entree. Except that she yelled it to him across a crowded restaurant and she didn't exactly say intermezzo course...she called it intercourse.
Fortunately, Tim cannot say much about my family's propensity to misuse words, since it runs in his family too.
For many years, my mother was the director of a choral group called The Interludes. They were a fun, and let's say, um, colorful group of people that Tim decided should more aptly be named The Quaaludes. Sadly, he neglected to tell his mother that was not their actual name, and one day she innocently asked my mom how her "Quaaludes" were. Even more sadly for Tim, he was within striking distance of both moms at the time.
Not to be outdone, his brother Tom had the misfortune to refer to something as "friggin" in their mother's presence. When she rebuked him for his foul language, he adopted his best wide-eyed, innocent look and explained that, contrary to being a bad word, it came from the Latin meaning "to hit".
Congratulating himself on his narrow escape from a lecture, he went on his merry way only to be confronted by his mom about a month later.
Seems she had let the word fly at work to refer to a jammed copier that needed "hitting". Her boss, shocked, asked her if she knew what the word meant, and then had to delicately explain to her that it was slang for another word that began with the letter F.
This probably wouldn't have been too bad if not for the fact that she worked in a church rectory and her boss was a priest.
And the cycle continues...Just a few weeks ago, Rose and I were on the phone one morning and she asked what Tim and I were doing. Kidding around, I told her that we had just had "breckie".
"What?!!?" she shrieked, "Too much information!"
"Well, you asked," I replied, perplexed as to why she found my shorthand for breakfast so offensive.
"Yes, but I did not need to know that." I could all but hear her shudder.
Turns out, she actually thought I had told her we had had a "quickie".
You can't escape your genes.
After we picked Rose up from the floor where she was rolling around laughing, and I stopped choking on my salad, we asked my mother why she thought I meant a cop. Her brother was a cop, and nobody in our family has ever called a police officer a pig (maybe not so much because of my uncle, but more because we are not extras on an episode of Dragnet).
"Well," she offered, "I didn't think you actually meant a real pig!"
In her defense, she comes by it honestly. Her mother was forever coming up with some doozies. The Pocono mountains were the Pinocchio mountains and her nephew was training at Pepsi-cola in Florida.
And her mother before her, as family legend has it, once told a waiter that she didn't want the sorbet, or intermezzo course, he was trying to serve her before her entree. Except that she yelled it to him across a crowded restaurant and she didn't exactly say intermezzo course...she called it intercourse.
Fortunately, Tim cannot say much about my family's propensity to misuse words, since it runs in his family too.
For many years, my mother was the director of a choral group called The Interludes. They were a fun, and let's say, um, colorful group of people that Tim decided should more aptly be named The Quaaludes. Sadly, he neglected to tell his mother that was not their actual name, and one day she innocently asked my mom how her "Quaaludes" were. Even more sadly for Tim, he was within striking distance of both moms at the time.
Not to be outdone, his brother Tom had the misfortune to refer to something as "friggin" in their mother's presence. When she rebuked him for his foul language, he adopted his best wide-eyed, innocent look and explained that, contrary to being a bad word, it came from the Latin meaning "to hit".
Congratulating himself on his narrow escape from a lecture, he went on his merry way only to be confronted by his mom about a month later.
Seems she had let the word fly at work to refer to a jammed copier that needed "hitting". Her boss, shocked, asked her if she knew what the word meant, and then had to delicately explain to her that it was slang for another word that began with the letter F.
This probably wouldn't have been too bad if not for the fact that she worked in a church rectory and her boss was a priest.
And the cycle continues...Just a few weeks ago, Rose and I were on the phone one morning and she asked what Tim and I were doing. Kidding around, I told her that we had just had "breckie".
"What?!!?" she shrieked, "Too much information!"
"Well, you asked," I replied, perplexed as to why she found my shorthand for breakfast so offensive.
"Yes, but I did not need to know that." I could all but hear her shudder.
Turns out, she actually thought I had told her we had had a "quickie".
You can't escape your genes.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
It Had Better Be Broken
Friday afternoon we drove to Pennsylvania to spend the weekend with my family. My dad limped to the door on an ankle that looked like he was smuggling a grapefruit under the skin, explaining that he had fallen down the attic stairs a few hours earlier. It took some doing, but we convinced him to go to the emergency room to have it checked out. Our mistake.
Upon arrival, we were told that there would be a two hour wait to see the doctor. Oh goody. Two hours in a waiting room filled with people who were hacking, sneezing, wheezing, whining, moaning and complaining. I wish we were that lucky.
Finding four seats together, we all sat down, and Tim, my mother and I all pulled out our ipods, intending to turn on, tune in and drop out. My father found a three day old newspaper and checked out the obits, looking to see how many of them had expired in the waiting room of the ER.
My sister, who was at a local fair, began texting me, so I turned over my ipod to my father, thinking a few games of Parking Lot would take his mind off his ankle, which he was still insisting was not broken. Being the anally logical person he is, I figured a game that consisted of moving cars around to free the one yellow car in the back would be right up his alley. Not even close.
"Why can't you move the cars sideways?" he grumbled, repeatedly trying to slide a limo across the screen.
Um, cause Henry Ford foolishly put wheels on cars that only had the ability to go forward and backward?
"This one is impossible," he growled, somewhere around move 287, still trying to push the offending cars sideways. Then, "I don't even know why we're here. It's only a sprain."
I knew we would never hear the end of it if it wasn't really broken.
On the other side of me was my mother, who was watching an old Judy Garland movie on her itouch, and periodically making comments like, "Boy, this place is crowded" and "Honestly, those people over there are soooo noisy", at the top of her lungs. I had to keep explaining that she was the one with the earbuds, and the rest of us could hear her just fine if she spoke in her normal "indoor voice". It really wasn't necessary to compete with the ambulance siren to see who could be louder.
Then there were the two girls across the room who had obviously mistaken this for the waiting room at the American Idol tryouts, and were serenading everyone with renditions of currents hits that made William Hueng sound like Placido Domingo. Even Paula would have been telling them to give it up.
Into this mix, about every fifteen minutes or so, a nurse would come into the waiting room with a clipboard and call out a name to which no one would respond. A beat. Call the name again. Another beat. Try once more. Finally, someone would say, "I think they already took that person back." A shrug. Last look around, as though the person they were paging might be playing hard to get and hiding under a sofa cushion, then they would amble off until it was time to come back in and call the next name to which nobody would respond. Way to stay on top of things, guys. Hey, if you can't find the elderly man with chest pain, you might want to check the maternity wing.
An hour or so into the fun and games, a nurse came in and gave my father a bright pink badge to wear, explaining that it was so that they could "track" his location. Yeah. Is that the same system you've been using to keep track of all the other patients? Because if it is, I gotta tell you it isn't working so well. Ever think of switching to Lojac?
Finally though, someone came out and called my father's name. Still grumbling and insisting that he didn't need to be at the hospital for a sprained ankle, he disappeared into the mysterious "back room".
Shortly thereafter, my sister arrived (she didn't want us to have all the fun) and managed to get into the back with my mom to see what was going on. At this point, we were all pretty much in agreement that if the ankle wasn't really broken, we would be subjected to such excruciatingly painful hours of , "I told you so", that it would make the last few look like a walk in the park. Hospitals and my dad do not make a good combo.
While I waited for them to come out, Tim continued his own personal ritual of the last two hours. He trekked back and forth between the emergency entrance where he could use his cell phone, the vending machines where he could buy me chocolate cupcakes and cookies and himself soda, and the bathroom where he could recycle the soda, using the chair next to me as a pit stop to get updated on the ankle.
It so happened that one of his brief visits coincided with Pat and my mother coming out with the news that the ankle was indeed broken, but that it was a clean break, easily set and easily mended. Learning that we would be spared endless haranguing by my father for taking him to the ER for nothing, we whopped and high-fived each other... much to the shock of the other people in the room. Apparently, it is not a normal reaction for people to be overjoyed when they learn a loved one has broken an appendage. Go figure.
Three hours after leaving, we pulled back into the driveway at the house with one broken ankle, one drained ipod battery, one drained cellphone battery and one newly-filled prescription for Vicodin which we were all eyeing with longing.
Upon arrival, we were told that there would be a two hour wait to see the doctor. Oh goody. Two hours in a waiting room filled with people who were hacking, sneezing, wheezing, whining, moaning and complaining. I wish we were that lucky.
Finding four seats together, we all sat down, and Tim, my mother and I all pulled out our ipods, intending to turn on, tune in and drop out. My father found a three day old newspaper and checked out the obits, looking to see how many of them had expired in the waiting room of the ER.
My sister, who was at a local fair, began texting me, so I turned over my ipod to my father, thinking a few games of Parking Lot would take his mind off his ankle, which he was still insisting was not broken. Being the anally logical person he is, I figured a game that consisted of moving cars around to free the one yellow car in the back would be right up his alley. Not even close.
"Why can't you move the cars sideways?" he grumbled, repeatedly trying to slide a limo across the screen.
Um, cause Henry Ford foolishly put wheels on cars that only had the ability to go forward and backward?
"This one is impossible," he growled, somewhere around move 287, still trying to push the offending cars sideways. Then, "I don't even know why we're here. It's only a sprain."
I knew we would never hear the end of it if it wasn't really broken.
On the other side of me was my mother, who was watching an old Judy Garland movie on her itouch, and periodically making comments like, "Boy, this place is crowded" and "Honestly, those people over there are soooo noisy", at the top of her lungs. I had to keep explaining that she was the one with the earbuds, and the rest of us could hear her just fine if she spoke in her normal "indoor voice". It really wasn't necessary to compete with the ambulance siren to see who could be louder.
Then there were the two girls across the room who had obviously mistaken this for the waiting room at the American Idol tryouts, and were serenading everyone with renditions of currents hits that made William Hueng sound like Placido Domingo. Even Paula would have been telling them to give it up.
Into this mix, about every fifteen minutes or so, a nurse would come into the waiting room with a clipboard and call out a name to which no one would respond. A beat. Call the name again. Another beat. Try once more. Finally, someone would say, "I think they already took that person back." A shrug. Last look around, as though the person they were paging might be playing hard to get and hiding under a sofa cushion, then they would amble off until it was time to come back in and call the next name to which nobody would respond. Way to stay on top of things, guys. Hey, if you can't find the elderly man with chest pain, you might want to check the maternity wing.
An hour or so into the fun and games, a nurse came in and gave my father a bright pink badge to wear, explaining that it was so that they could "track" his location. Yeah. Is that the same system you've been using to keep track of all the other patients? Because if it is, I gotta tell you it isn't working so well. Ever think of switching to Lojac?
Finally though, someone came out and called my father's name. Still grumbling and insisting that he didn't need to be at the hospital for a sprained ankle, he disappeared into the mysterious "back room".
Shortly thereafter, my sister arrived (she didn't want us to have all the fun) and managed to get into the back with my mom to see what was going on. At this point, we were all pretty much in agreement that if the ankle wasn't really broken, we would be subjected to such excruciatingly painful hours of , "I told you so", that it would make the last few look like a walk in the park. Hospitals and my dad do not make a good combo.
While I waited for them to come out, Tim continued his own personal ritual of the last two hours. He trekked back and forth between the emergency entrance where he could use his cell phone, the vending machines where he could buy me chocolate cupcakes and cookies and himself soda, and the bathroom where he could recycle the soda, using the chair next to me as a pit stop to get updated on the ankle.
It so happened that one of his brief visits coincided with Pat and my mother coming out with the news that the ankle was indeed broken, but that it was a clean break, easily set and easily mended. Learning that we would be spared endless haranguing by my father for taking him to the ER for nothing, we whopped and high-fived each other... much to the shock of the other people in the room. Apparently, it is not a normal reaction for people to be overjoyed when they learn a loved one has broken an appendage. Go figure.
Three hours after leaving, we pulled back into the driveway at the house with one broken ankle, one drained ipod battery, one drained cellphone battery and one newly-filled prescription for Vicodin which we were all eyeing with longing.
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