Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Wherein beestings get infected
Her sting welts are atrociously huge, red and warm to the touch. That to me said "mommy, you need to make use of the health plan, schlep to the doctor, and get this taken care of." So I did. Jessica's on a strong antibiotic -- the doctor basically said we all have bacteria on our skin, and when one is stung, the bacteria goes under the sting with the stinger, thus resulting in an infection in some folks.
Our first aid moves were fine and good, but the end result was unavoidable. I'm surprised Geoff's stings didn't get infected, but he's good as gold. Just goes to show someone can look nice and clean and be harboring nasty ickle bacterium, and someone can look the pigsty and be right as rain in the end.
Here are some pictures of her legs. The black lines around her stings are by the doctor. She wants to see the redness not spread beyond the black boundaries of the sharpie. So Jess looks the mottled cow. She got some funny looks in CVS, but I'll tell ya, it didn't bother her.
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Wednesday, July 23, 2003
Wherein we are stung by bees
Until today, one of my biggest claims to fame in my own little mind was the fact I'd never been stung by a bee, wasp, hornet or any other of Mother Nature's winged stingy bastards.
I can no longer put that on my resume.
Today we went out, as usual, geocaching. Tanager, I almost called you to see if you wanted to come, but everyone was already in the truck and I was getting bottled water together and just didn't get a chance...
You should be thanking God right now that we didn't.
The first cache we went to was ... great. Great location, great big rocks, a beaver pond with a huge heron's nest way high up in a tree. We liked it. For the most part. It was a multi-step, and we got stumped on the second in-park coordinates. We couldn't find the hiding spot of the coordinates to get to the next step. The entire time we're looking, I know we're standing right on top of it... just can't find the container or the clue. Even Mr. Tenacity himself conceded defeat after a while. I mailed the cache owner, and he tells me exactly where it is -- only it wasn't there.
So I mailed him back. Perhaps it's gone or perhaps we just suck.
After giving up on our attempts to figure it all out, we abandoned and went to another cache. This one looked pretty straightforward, it again was a multi, but the hints on the webpage were very clear and not at all cryptic or anything, the terrain was perfectly flat, lovely, thin trails through a riparian wonderland. We dove right in to the search, hungry to make the find after getting skunked at the last one. Got to the first set of coordinates, and headed to the second with Jessica handling the GPS duties...
when we were ATTACKED by yellow jackets.
Doug said he saw the swarm come out of a tree after Jessica passed it. I saw a few of them floating ahead of us, and then wham -- she took off screaming. I took off after her, seeing yellow jackets on the back of her thighs. I managed to only get stung once, while I was swatting one off the back of her leg in mid sting. We thought we were far enough away from them, but they kept coming. And we opted due to Jessie's hysteria and the continued onslaught of yellow jackets to run back to the truck. Jessie screaming the whole way.
I've never seen me or my kids run that fast. Even Jack managed to get stung. I didn't know I could run like that. I should take up running in non-bee stinging situations.
We stopped at a drugstore and got Benadryl and Benadryl anti-itch cream as all four of us were welting up, itchy and very sad.
Not a banner day, not a red letter day, not our finest hour for Team Screamapillar. Once again, Jessie swears she will never cache again. I beg to differ. Even though we have had a couple stinky experiences (Kinger's leap, StingFest 2003) we'll be back at it. After all, there are easy as pie ones out there in the world... just waiting for us to find them.
I got an email from a lady today who stumbled across the site and wanted to know what it was about. As usual I'm always amazed at the power of the search engine. So M., if you're reading again (I shan't use your name. I value your right to be anonymous) hope you are enjoying the read and what (a)musings has to offer.
What else can I say -- the monkey sightings continue. I'm continually amused. We are still without cable TV, and no antenna on the house, so it's been a very quiet summer inside here at the Way Out Inn. I kinda like it. Except I really miss the Simpsons. Doug is on the phone with his parents right now, trying to pick a time for them to come to visit. My mother comes tomorrow.
I feel as if the summer is just going to whizz right past us. There are pretty much only four more weeks until the kids start school. I'm finding that hard to believe. I think when they go back to school I may have to reevaluate my Baby Ben babysitting commitment. On Fridays I won't be home from his house until excessively late, and I can't have them left alone here in the house. Breaks my heart just thinking about it, but we'll see what the coming weeks bring. That and Geoff is going to be mad as a hatter when he doesn't get to go to Dan's anymore and play his Nintendo64!
Alright -- I need to get dinner started, we all took Benadryl induced naps, and right now I'm feeling balloon hands and drymouth. More later.
Sunday, July 20, 2003
Flying Leap... wherein my dog jumps off a cliff.
Rupa chastised me the other day because I'm not writing enough. It's true. I'm not. I now realize how badly my job is impacting my goofing off time and that my audience, all three of you, are horribly neglected. I'm sorry. I would quit my job, but we need the money. So, to make up for my lack of regular entries, here's an entry fraught with peril! Yippee!
It starts off innocently enough...
Baby Ben day on Friday was great. Geoff came and loves playing with Ben and loves Dan's Nintendo 64 even more. Dan has all the game systems. He has Dreamcast, Game Cube, X box... you name it. But Geoff totally prefers the N64 scene. I think it has a lot to do with his vision. We went to an after-camp suare at Jessica's camp. She's not overnighting, but most kids are. So Fridays are pick-up days and they do an award ceremony and a special candlelight/fire ring ceremony.
Geoff dripped hot wax on his hand when holding his candle, and ran screaming into the woods. Doug and I laughed at him. He's emotionally scarred for life and swears he will never ever ever got to that camp in the future.
But that isn't the peril of which I spoke at the opening of this entry. Do read on...
| Saturday we went and picked up Doug's new used car. It's a VW Passat, and it needs a name. We've come up with a couple. I had suggested the name Dieter to a journalspace user who got a flashy new BMW, Dieter and the "Sprockets" theme music from Saturday night live seemed to fit his ubermobile. So Dieter is out of the picture. We are looking for suggestions... feel free to send them to me. Jah, das ist sehr gut! |  |
Some that have come up in conversation are obviously Simpsons inspired. There's:
- Uter (did I spell that right?) the foreign exchange student who runs through the locker room screaming "Nein! Don't chase me, I'm full of cho-co-late!"
- McBain for Ranier Wolfcastle.
- Oh, and Wolfcastle was one as well.
- "Die Bart, Die!" was one I brought up because Sideshow Bob has it tattooed on his back and he convinces the parole board that it is German for "The Bart, The!" and the parole board says "No one who speaks German could be evil!"
- Baron von Kissalott
- Baron von Mach Schnell
- Schlegman, with nods and homage to Aaron for telling us the name Schlegman. There's a back story there... not to be shared at this time for lack of reason and space.
So if you'd like to throw some fuel in, please do. We'd love to hear from you.
It's a cool little car, feels like our old Saturn, Rudy, only a tad smaller and with much smaller sideview mirrors. Doug got it for a song. Phat, baby. Superphat. No peril there, right? Indeed.
But read on...
Saturday night I kept myself up until almost 2am reading Harry Potter. I don't know what kind of hex JK Rowling puts on these books but darn, I could not put the thing down! I had to force myself to go to sleep because day was quickly approaching! And the book isn't even THAT well written. I just have to know what is going to happen here! Gah! I'm freaking out right now that I'm not reading and I must stop myself so I can write.
Sunday I overslept church. Which many overzealous and ridiculous evangelicals would clearly blame on my indulgence in Harry Potter, witchcraft and evil. But that's just bung and they are total gits. I've done the same thing with many a book, from Tolkein to CS Lewis. Rowling is not bewitching me. Not in the least. Stop praying for my soul.
Anyway.
I heard the bells ringing at 9:14 and Jack was barking his fool head off, and I couldn't figure out what he'd be barking at. I realized my error. I went back to sleep for another hour.
So there may be peril there for my immortal soul, depending on whether or not you feel Satan has prevented me from going to church, but I don't think that's the peril of which I speak.
Read on...
We eventually got our acts together and went out Geocaching, as is our wont on bright sunny days. We did this geocache, it was a .77 mile hike to the site. We were all in excellent form and made it right close, within 300 feet, in no time.
Doug, using the GPS, once again took us off the trail bushwhacking to the actual cache site, whereas if we'd stayed on the trail and walked an extra 300 feet on top of the distance that we were from the location, we'd have come up to the big rock just underneath it.
Instead, we were up on top of this hugeassed rock, and Doug was walking around the left as I approached the peak of the rock to take a look down, with the dogs by my side.
Now, mind you -- I've never been afraid of having the dogs up on top of a big rock. We've gone to some very ledgy, very high up places with them, and they always stay with. So what happened next was an absolute total shock to me.
Kinger spotted a small pool of water off to the right of the rock, and he immediately wanted in, so he started
| Jack started right after him, knowing that a cool dip in the fresh pond was deserved after a 3/4 mile hike. I yelled at Kinger to stop, grabbed at Jack's tail and caught only a little fur. They kept going, and I watched Kinger slide right off the side of this: Now, it's hard to tell from this angle, but, if I were standing directly underneath the ledge, the rock would still be at least 3 feet higher than my head. No lie. We figure, he fell down 12 feet. Straight down. Head first. And he hit bottom with a horrifyingly sickening thud. And my heart broke into a billion pieces. Panic. Controlled panic, urgency, panic, Holy Shit they did NOT just do that! |  |
Jack landed on top of him. Kinger broke his fall for sure. And Kinger howled and cried. And we couldn't see him, and didn't quite know how to get to him. Holy God's Tonight. Shit. Oh my God.
Doug raced to the bottom with me on his heels, and we saw that Jack was running around just fine like nothing had happened. Jessica, who had a clearer view of the dog after he fell, but not the actual fall itself, told me as she was on her way up to the top that she saw him writhing around on his back howling. So we had no idea what was hurt or how bad, whether or not he landed on his back, or his side, or his feet.
He had limped into the cool water. He didn't want to come out of the pool.
And my kids were now up on the top of the huge motherfargin' rock in the exact location the dogs were when they took a flying leap...
I leashed Jack, and scrambled back up to the top to get the bi-ped children to sit in a safe place, which was, ironically, within site of the cache we came to seek.
Kinger had limped out of the water a little bit right before I went up to stop the plummet of my other two charges, so I could see his right leg was hurting him. I had to get up top and secure the kids, so Doug dealt with Kinger.
Doug let him walk around a bit, I pulled the cache box out, signed the log, put a swag in there, let Geoff pick one, and we came down the rock, Jessica and Doug went ahead with the dogs while I frustratedly dealt with Geoff, who insisted HE was the one injured because he stubbed his toe on the couch this morning.
We eventually caught up to Doug, Jess and the dogs, Kinger was walking but limping badly and panting. I was wondering if we'd have to carry him over our shoulders like a herdsman carries a lamb, but he kept going fine.I desperately wanted to encounter an ATV rider on the trail (we had seen a trio of riders who had gone off not too far away from us, and I wanted them to come back...) to ask if a ride for the dog and Doug back to the truck could possibly be arranged, but Kinger was hanging in there. We made it back to the truck and called the same animal hospital we went to with Jackie back in May. We rushed down there...
They took us right in, examined Kinger, and it turns out he's fine. Well as fine as can be for a dog that did what he did (if you're squicked you, the short version is Kinger jumped off a big rock. Got hurt. Vet visit. Okay).
He's probably got some soft tissue damage, and some bruising, which we can't see, of course, because of the fur. His right leg, which we thought was broken, seems to be fine. He's walking on it and is able to get around. He's sleeping now, they gave him a huge painkiller shot and some anesthetic for when they X-rayed him.
He's to have no physical activity other than going out for business for the next 5-7 days and we are to monitor him closely for any signs of blood anywhere there shouldn't be (coughing, waste products etc...)
He's very lucky, as is Jack. As are we.
 | I mean honestly. What the fuck? Really. How did he manage to do this. What the hell was he thinking? What were THEY thinking. Kinger's confidence and experience on high rock ledges got the best of him. Jack's "I'm with Stupid" philosophy almost cost him his life too. Jack doesn't have any problems. You'd never know he too fell off a huge assed mofo cliff. Lucky lucky little dog. |
Kids usually act like they are indestructible and my dogs have the spirits of skater punks sometimes.
I love them. Stupid shits. I love Kinger dearly, and I really am relieved and happy that he didn't sustain any injuries more than time and patience can heal. I was so sure the doctor would come back with broken ribs, broken this, inner damage to this, irreversible damage to...
"Praise the Lord, ye bright angelic choirs in holy songs of praise!" To quote Handel. Who quotes scripture.
In other news, our cable is gone. They changed over to digital recently and our cable got turned off. So instead of calling the cable company and subscribing we have decided that we are going to get the Dish Network and NFL Sunday Ticket for the fall. I'll be a true football widow. Our tenant has the dish, we just need to subscribe on his and it's like 6 bucks extra a month. So we'll do that. Get the installer guy to come put the dual receiver thingy in there and run the line down. And I think after a few more Doug paychecks it is time for us to switch to DSL, now that it's offered here. Finally.
I am entering the 21st century
So in the absence of cable and with our penchant towards sloth we've been either watching videos, of which we have millions of kid videos and some good Britcoms (Black Adder and Fawlty Towers' full collection) so Jessica has been enjoying the genius of Rowan Atkinson and John Cleese, and laughing her ass off. Nice to see that my girl finds this funny. The boy is disinterested and groans "not Fawlty Towers AGAIN!" and slinks off to bed early.
We say "Not Pokemon First movie AGAIN!" when he selects his viewing choice. So I guess we're even. Right now though, they are watching "Brave Little Toaster" which is one of my very favorite movies and I'm so glad to see both my kids love it too.
Have you seen it? Really? Well... you should. Anyway. How was your weekend?
Monday, July 14, 2003
Tess' Visit, in which a woman grabs her ass in my face. Nice.
Today my boss and I were talking about music. She stopped by the concert on Saturday, a concert I'll talk about at length later, and while we were on the topic of music we found that we have a lot in common listening-wise. I told her about the coffeehouse we used to work back in the day, and she told me a friend of hers went to see this recovering alcoholic who plays jazz, gospel and blues on the piano.
"Preacher Jack?!" I asked with a tone of "you gotta be shittin' me" in my voice.
She dropped her fork and said it was indeed ole Preacher Jack. I guess he's doing well these days and is healthy. Back a year and a half ago I wondered whatever had become of him. Now I know. Perhaps we'll go check him out at a show one day...my boss found out he plays every Friday in Salem at Roosevelts. Hmmmm.
Anyway, I should chronolog our visit with Tess, seeing as so much excitement went down. She came in on Sunday night of last week, Monday and Tuesday I took the day off. I let her sleep in wicked late on Monday, knowing full well the jetlag was probably kicking her ass. We went to Newburyport and loafed around, ate lunch, cruised the harbor, looked at ships. We had dinner and crashed. Tuesday I took her and Jessica geocaching. We set out to do a very local cache, and then went up the New Hampshire coast to do two in Rye.
I neglected to program in the coords for the "virtual" cache, meaning there's something you need to see and then email the cache hider, so we couldn't do that one. And we looked and looked for the second one, to no avail.
Tess was a great sport about it -- she squicks out with spider webs and bugs, but she hung in there, right on my heels with Jessie, lookin' and lookin'... but we failed.
I'll probably go back with Doug and he'll walk right up to it and say "duh, Chris, why couldn't you SEE this. Aduh? Aduh duh duhdee duh duh?"
Wednesday Tess took a train up to Portland, ME to see another friend. She overnighted there and on Thursday I picked her back up at the train and trucked her down to Taunia's where she spent two nights in the diva castle.
Saturday morning we all met up to move Ms. Amy from one part of town to another. I was late in getting there, because I got stuck behind every granny and every tourist from Iowa that was in town... plus, I got stopped at every pedestrian crosswalk with a stop light. It seemed as if everyone said "Let's cross the street when we see a Red Pick-up Truck!" There was a cosmic conspiracy to slow me down.
The move was organized. It was hot but went smoothly. Shah and Amy's friend David worked a hell of a puzzle in getting her couch down the stairs. The truckster came in handy for getting the big stuff, and all her belongings that were not yet moved over to the new place went in one trip. It was an impressive moving crew. I met some nice folks and had fun. Then I took Tess home with me and we went to see Nickel Creek and Bruce Cockburn.
We saw less of Nickel Creek and Bruce Cockburn than I would have liked, and far more of unwashed heathen backs and rude fat bitch asses.
Here's the story. We met up with Gregg, Karry, Karry's bro Kevin, and the kids. They'd scoped out a nice spot which afforded a clear view of the stage. The first act played, he's some guy who wrote a hit song for Norah Jones or something. He was boring. Way too mellow. Nice to hear, but very much not the upbeat and exciting music I was hoping for.
Nickel Creek came on (and Chris looked luvverly in a cute little baseball hat and his mandolin. Yay). They whip into their set, and a hoarde of these hippie kids come and stand right in front of us on the walk way.
We asked them several times to go stand off to the side, that they were blocking our view. One jackass hairy bastard hippie in these ugly assed surfer shorts gave me a ration of crap and refused... but the others were kind of nice and compliant. Mostly because they were higher than the Hubble Space Telescope.
This one guy had on these black glasses frames with no lenses, thicker than Buddy Holly, Elvis Costello, Rivers Cuomo or Spongebob would wear. I don't know who he was kidding, but when he walked away after the fifth time we told him to take his hippystink away, the people next to us said "that is SO not a good look for him," and we laughed.
Tess got the bulk of the humor from our neighbors. Gregg barely kept his cool. Nickel Creek sounded great, but we didn't get to see too damn much of them.
What I was amazed to discover was Nickel Creek brought in the big crowd. After they were done, throngs of people left. Including the hippie kids. I'm going to "Fark" up the picture of these guys' back. They will soon become tattooed freaks from hell.
Anyway, back to the story.
Nickel Creek's departure from the stage may have had the tide receed with the hippie kids and jam-band fans. But it brought in a whole new breed of rude insenstitve pricks. We'd been there since 2 in the afternoon. Gregg and Karry had been there since 10 in the morning.
People started showing up at 7, and they stood right in front of us.
This one lovely, classy pair, especially. They stood in front of us, her in her denim mini and knit tank top, him in some sort of summer weight off-white linen suit, he was probably a former beauty king, but his belly could not be restrained by his nice summer dress suit, and his level of classiness could not be determined by his quality watch and shoes. You know what I mean...white trash dressing well. They stood there and ignored our requests for them to move, they didn't respond. A guy four rows behind us came up to them and politely asked them to move, I saw the fancy dress boy gesture in unfriendly manner, and refuse to move.
Gregg got up.
Gregg talked to the guy, and they got into a verbal altercation. Essentially, Gregg said "You're standing in our way, we can't see." Rather nicely.
The guy responds with, "Well, what about all those people who are standing over there?" and gestures to the far right where indeed millions of people are standing.
Gregg says, "They aren't blocking my view. You are. Can you please move?"
The guy says "Tell all of them to move and I'll move."
What?
Uh, NO. You need to move. So the guy tells Gregg off, Gregg returns the volley, calls the guy all sorts of names but none more harsh than "insensitive prick." I yell to them "No one wants to look at your tuchus."
And the woman grabs her flabby ass in both hands and starts squeezing.
High class here, folks. Way high. I wanted the hippie kids back. They were cute and obliging, and easy on the eyes. At least they'd squat down until they were filled with too much joy and would start standing up to dance, rock and praise.
This woman keeps grabbing her ass. I mean, keeps on doing it.
Tess has photos to prove it. I didn't have my camera handy... I ended up taking Geoff to the bathroom for what seemed like the 10 millionth time, and after that I decided we needed to go. I couldn't see anything but flabby 40 something year old classless ass and it just wasn't worth it to me anymore. Cockburn was only playing his new stuff, Geoff was getting tired, and poor Tess... good sport that she is, she didn't fly all this way to see New England's finest.
We went to Wendy's.
Sunday Doug and I went to church and Tess babysat the kids. There's no Sunday school in the summertime, so we know the Episcopal liturgy is torture on a six year old. Our service was very short, the new pastor was way cool. I really like her (more on that later).
And the rest of the day Sunday was spent baking cookies and shopping and prepping for the All About Buford show in honor of Princess Tess of Alaska.
We barbecued for the band and guests (felt so VIP backstage passy there, yo). Chef Doug did it up right.I bought a DISCO BALL for the band and wanted to give it to them but Adeel insisted I keep it for me. I think they NEED it more, when they do their Michael Jackson covers and "Car Wash..." But now I have a disco ball and have an idea of where I want to hang it.
The show itself was great. Very few people showed up, which in the end is all for the best because my lovely son decided he was going to JOIN All About Buford and got up with them to be their Solid Gold Dancer for a couple songs. He just couldn't resist. All week long, and for months now you know he's been talking about how he's gonna be a rock star. I could feel his little body filling with the arc of desire to perform when he busted up out of the chair and jumped up next to Adeel and started to do this... hand rolling and happy feet thing, watching the band for musical cues. He wanted to perform with Bruce Cockburn, he wanted his band the Bacraders to be up on stage. Well.
He performed. Taunia laughed and lost it during the performance at one point and I distinctly remember hearing her lovely voice intone "Chris is soooo embarassed right now!" in the middle of a song. yep. I was!
Check out that picture up there. Not only is Geoff bustin' a move, but Amy is flashing me the middle finger in some sort of wicked nasty gang sign thing. And you can see Tess' liquid refreshment of choice there...
And Amy -- you're performing and you're smiling. I caught you with a smile on your face. Amy insists that there are tons of pictures of the band and no one is ever smiling. I figured out why. They're smiling all the time, but I can't get a good shot of any of them because the microphones are in the way. Without the mics, there's the smile.
I've never had anyone throw a concert in my honor, so Tess, I sure as hell hope you had a blast and had fun. May you always remember this ridiculous and wacky evening, and your crazy visit to the far East.
I took Tess to NY Monday and put her on the train. I had a great visit with her. It was really nice to meet a total stranger who wasn't a total stranger. She says 'Rock on!' a lot when you tell her something cool (remember, I used to do that all the time too back in the early stages of my journal writing). Rock on!
Back to work yesterday. I got my paycheck today and realized I'd sent my boss the wrong timesheet. I sent her one from May 10 instead of July 10. I got overpaid by 13 HOURS, which is a load of money. My boss offered to void the check and issue a new one, but I've got direct deposit. It's in the account as of this coming morning. I told her I'd fudge this week's timesheet to deduct 13 hours. So I feel like I'm working for free, even though I know I got paid for hours not there last week. Psychologically, it feels awful. And my boss... well, she was amazed by my honesty. I must say, while I'm not surprised I was honest and called out the mistake, I'm somewhat conflicted and disappointed in myself.
What would you do if there was an error in your favor like that? Something to ponder. Email me if you want to let me know.
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Tuesday, July 08, 2003
Code Adam...
It is 7:15am. Doug just left for work. One of the positives about his new job is he has to be out the door early early, so he gets up early early. I have another day off to spend with Tess, so I'm leisurely getting Geoff ready for school. He's watching his favorite cartoon (some sort of square penguins or something like that on Cartoon Network) and I'm drinking some coffee.
On the agenda today is some geocaching with Tess and Jess, and some across the border into New Hampshire sightseeing.
Speaking of free concerts -- you all know in honor of Tess' being here from Alaska that All About Buford is doing a concert just for her. I thought about having them come and play and sing in my livingroom for her, then I figured the church hall'd be nicer.
Do come. It's at 7pm at the church hall of St. James Episcopal church in Groveland. Click here to get directions.
And it's not exactly free. I'm going to demand you throw money in the "pass the hat" hat as it comes around, and there will be a nominal fee for refreshments. The band has to make some money, yo. And they're worth it -- throw some dough in the hat.
That's really sad.
To live your whole life attached to someone, and to yearn for that freedom of self enough to want to put your life in danger, and then only achieving your freedom in the termination of life. I guess that Iran as a nation has been "plunged into grief" by this event. It would have been nice to see them make it -- but unfortunately medicine cannot perform every single possible miracle. These girls took a chance. They had a dream. Not to be realized at this time I guess.
A lot of people have been dying lately. Buddy Ebsen kicked it old school just the other day. We all know about Strom and Katherine Hepburn passing on. Buddy Hackett, who I thought was pretty funny in that Fantasy Island/Love Boat Guest Star Center Square Gets the X kind of way also died.
But the big one that shocked me was that Barry White died on Friday. I didn't hear about it until yesterday when Doug clued me in.
Sad, sad day. Perhaps the Simpsons will put an homage to him in the episode about whacking day, when he did a vocal cameo and sang a song about how bad it is to whack snakes, and how he loves the sexy slither of a lady snake... that was some funny stuff.
God speed, Barry White.
8:45am
Well, I just got back from dropping Geoff off. So I'll tell you a little Geoff story. In my entry the other day I said our trip to Wal-mart was interesting. It was actually the scariest day of my life. Michelle was looking for candles, Jessica and Geoff were on the other side of the stacks, and then Jessie comes around the corner and tells me that Geoff took off into the pet good area. We walk over, call his name, and look in the aisles. No Geoff. So we looked around, calling him over and over, thinking he was just hiding and yanking our chains, and he still didn't appear. Michelle headed over to toys and I approached a stocker in the pet area.
"I need your help," I said to him, and he knew by looking at me that I was very serious and wasn't looking for a flea collar.
He walked me over to housewares and they called in a Code Adam on the loudspeaker. "Code Adam, six year old male, purple T-shirt, short blonde hair."
If you've ever been at a store where they've done this, you may not realize what is going on. Code Adam is a child missing call, named for Adam Walsh, the son of TV's most vigilant bad-guy hunter, John Walsh. Adam was abducted from a Sears toy department in Florida, and was found later, without his head attached to his body. Code Adam shuts the store down until the missing child is found.
And there we were -- Code Geoffreying. The Ellsworth Walmart associates sprang into action in a way I'd never expected. Two headed for the bathrooms to see if he was there, the reason being is that adults often snatch kids, take them to the bathroom and change their clothing in order to quickly smuggle them out of the store.
No Geoff there.
The doors up front were shut and no one could leave the store. Jessica tried to go out to the truck to see if he'd gone out there to play in the cap, but they wouldn't let her. She explained why and an associate walked out with her to go check out the truck.
I went up and down the aisles, looking in each one, checking under stuff. And there was a swarm of blue-vested helpers doing exactly the same thing. Every single one of them was in tune with the urgency of the situation. They were all looking through clothing racks, shelves, behind big bags of Dog Chow.
Geoff had slipped out of the store and was by the vending machines and rides in the store entrance. An associate saw him and started trucking after him, he saw her and started running. Michelle told me it was quite the site.
"Is this your son?" They asked her when she got to them.
"No, he's my friend's son," she replied, thanking God a billion times over that he was indeed not her son! I'm telling you, a couple hours with my kid can be the best form of birth control a couple ever needs.
She found me and walked up to me... I heard them cancel the Code Adam, and we finished up our shopping and loaded up the truck. I had Michelle take the stuff out, and I went and found the two initial associates who helped us at the beginning, Pet Food Stock Guy and Housewares Help Desk Girl. I told them how much I appreciated their help, and how impressed I was at their first response. They smiled, looks like they're used to doing this.
Michelle was sitting out on the bench with the kids and a guy came out, saw him and said "Is that Adam?" and Michelle laughed...yup.
I'm relieved that it all worked out this way. I'm really thankful that this particular staff of employees kicked ass the way they did, like a well oiled machine they jumped to the task and were one with me in the search. I'm thankful that someone caught him. And I swear to GOD they should take all that fun crap out of the front of the damn store, and put it somewhere inside the store, in the dead center, so kids aren't tempted to run out to see if they can ride the rides and get a gumball while mom is looking at citronella candles.
Gah.
Doug said "If I were that boy's mom I'd be embarrassed." And I was. But more than that, I was relieved.
So relieved that I didn't kill him.
Monday, July 07, 2003
And what a party it was!
 | Dude, I am so hot, and so sweaty. Our house had the AC turned off for close to four days while we went to Mt. Desert Island, so it turned into a giant nuclear Easy-Bake Oven. The banner above is from last summer's visit to Cadillac Mountain. We didn't get there this year, but a great time was had by all. Here's the story of our adventures in Maine. As you can see, the cap was put on the truck, and the dogs rode in style... Doug didn't ride there. That's just him after helping them up into the back. |
A little background. At the end of the season last season, Aaron & Michelle needed a place to live for the winter and staying in the cabin with the outhouse wasn't an option. They both needed access to showers for work and school. So Farmer Matt upgraded them to what is lovingly referred to as "The Rathouse." It has a bathroom and kitchen, and a shower. So they wintered there on the farm.
In June, Farmer Matt's mom passed away after a long illness. Matt told Aaron & Michelle that he wanted them to go stay at her property, to protect it. Matt's mom was a world traveler. She was in China before Nixon. She has stuff from just about every continent, and boxes of stuff... There is a lot of value there, and Matt wanted someone there to be caretaker of it all until he can wrap his head around the whole place and decide what to do.
So A&M are now staying in a studio apartment above a garage at a gorgeous house in a gorgeous location on Mount Desert Island. Acres of private land, tons of beach frontage.
Two nights before our departure, Aaron calls and requests a stop at one of the many New Hampshire state fireworks stores. People are ponying up cash for us to bring the explosives. So on Thursday afternoon, we get into the truck, we stop across the border, we load up on bombage and head north.
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 | Top left, the sign outside the fireworks store. Top, Doug with the arsenal of fun. Left... a rather tacky display. It's a coffin with Osama Bin Laden's name on the front with his birthdate under it, and "Died: When you light the fuse and blow his ass to kingdom come!" I think it was about... 60 dollars, price reduced from 80. We didn't buy it. While I'm sure the fireworks inside were a quality and organized display, I think last July fourth this may have been a good seller. But it wasn't for us. We got up to the camp on Thursday night very late. Aaron had made some espionage agreement with Jessica via cell phone somewhere east of Augusta, telling her where the directions to the new location were so we could come up before bed. Only KGB agent Natalia (aka Jessie) forgot what he told her, or didn't take him very seriously. We had no idea he'd told her the secret hiding place. |
We went to bed at after getting what we needed for the immediate overnight, we figured they were already in bed over at the new house and thought nothing of their not being at the Rathouse to greet us.
The next morning Geoff was up at 6. I decided to grab a quick shower and take him to go get ice for the cooler and coffee for me and Doug. I got back to the Rathouse, and asked Doug if Aaron had come by. I told him the cell phone rang while I was in the coffee shop but no message was on the phone. Doug told me we were out of area, and the voicemail wouldn't work for us until we were back in area.
I visited the farm stand and got to play with some puppies. And because y'all know I'm such the other people's pet lover, here's the 10 week old JRT at the farm stand.
painfully adorable, eh?
We had no idea where to get in touch with A&M. We repeatedly called the phone number they'd called us at from the night before but there was no answer. So we drank coffee. We relaxed. We read. We waited. I went to ask someone at the farm stand if they could give me directions, and Aaron drives up. He was kind of confused as to why we're sitting there doing nothing. We're just as confused that he didn't come get us or leave us a note.
The following exchange isn't exact... these are approximations of quotes. But this pretty much is the gist of it:
"Jessica!" yells Aaron. "Where did I tell you the directions were last night when we made our secret spy arrangement?"
"In a silk purse in the cabin," says Jessica.
"So, Jessica, where is the silk purse?" says Aaron.
"Right there," says Jessica.
"And did you open it and get the directions?"
"No. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to..."
Turns out she was nervous about going through something of Michelle's and us yelling at her, so she opted not to touch it. I was eyeballing the purse saying "Damn, that's a nice silk purse," but I didn't take it down or open it, because it wasn't mine.
So we explained our position, how we couldn't get cellphone messages out of range. He told us that he'd called his own phone there at the Rathouse and then realized they'd unplugged the phone to bring it up to the other location. The reason why there was no answer when we called the number was he'd been calling from the phone inside Matt's Mom's house and they never heard it ring.
Jessica was fired from her spy job. She'll have to be a waitress after all, I guess. We all had a good laugh at the O. Henryness of it all. We packed up and went to Matt's Mom's house.
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| The view north, Blue Hill is obscured by haze. | The view west, towards Acadia |
It was gorgeous. Beautiful. Old, large, grey house with garage right at the ocean, with million dollar views of Blue Hill, Surrey, Trenton and Ellsworth. Matt's mom had these buddhist prayer flags hanging out from one corner of the garage to the flagpole, and I kind of choked up. I never got to meet the woman, but from all Michelle has told me her life (and her as well) seems so interesting. I would have loved to have met her, so it touched me deeply to see this little piece of her remaining at the house, flying in the sea breeze.
The place was amazing. We were floored. But there was a party to throw. The boys did the setup, Michelle, the kids and I went to Wal-mart, a trip about which I will speak later. Tents were pitched. Fireworks and dogs were unpacked. Many went swimming. And the party was started.
About 25-30 people came. All sorts of people from the island and their friends from far away places. We met a woman from Vermont who is a curriculum consultant for a company that helps homeschool parents. One of the girls from the farm had her parents, brother and his wife up from Washington DC. Everyone was interesting and smart, there were more dogs and there were kids to play with. There were even two or three ex-girlfriends of Farmer Matt. The beer was cold, the burgers great. I cheffed up some scallops
All the fireworks were brought down to the private beach and shot off to the delight of all, including neighbors who were invited over by Aaron (way to get into good graces).
Here are some pictures:
 |  Jessica made these gorgeous centerpieces with a little help from Michelle. The little tin watering cans are citronella votive candles. The whole thing looked smashing. |
| Aaron and Geoff get the party started. | |
 Top: Aaron and Jacob manning the grill and drinkin' the beer. Right: Some of the sparklers with the low light setting on my camera. I think the two girls in the picture are Nina and Lindsay. |  |
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| Jessie made friends with two little girls, I told them to stay perfectly still with the glowsticks because my camera's low light feature is funky. This is the best they could do... and it's a cool shot. | The fireworks on low light setting were weird... a lot of shadows and big white spots. Some of the shots came out neat. This is an aerial display, and on the right side you can see Doug and Aaron and someone else looking on, illuminated with the smoke and the flare. The figure in front of the fire is Matt. |
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| This is my favorite shot. Doug, Jacob and Matt in front of the ground display. | Another shot of Matt and Jacob. |
 | I think that's Kate with a huge jumbo "Morning Glory" sparkler. She was awesome... great person. Fun to meet her. Everyone had a blast. It was the funnest party I've had anything to do with for a long time. We sat on the deck later and smiled in the citronella candlelight, Aaron was especially happy and pleased. We should always have parties like this. We all slept well and deeply that night. |
Saturday Michelle had to work. Aaron, Doug, the kids, the dogs and I all went out and put out a Geocache, which is still pending approval by geocaching.com... it may be within the park boundaries according to the email they sent us, and the NPS doesn't take a good shine to geocaching.
 | Cross your fingers. Say a prayer. The cache hike was hard. The trail is an old abandoned one to a geological phenomenon called a seastack. The cache will be the best cache ever if it gets approved... ever. Sorry. We're opinionated. Aaron worked really hard finding this site, and no one ever ever ever goes here. I'll cry like a great big fat baby if they email me back a no go. |
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| Our Geocache container before it left for its destination... with Jessie's lovely centerpiece. | Geoff struggles up the rocky trail. |
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| Jessapillar relaxes at the seastack. | Aaron and Doug after hiding the cache. |
| Right: Aaron records the coordinates at the seastack. We did another cache on the island right after we hid ours. This one was very near the farm, on private land with a waterfall and a fresh water pool. The dogs were refreshed by the cold and fresh water, seeing as they'd been ocean swimming incessantly since we got there. The bugs were vicious and I think I was woozy for loss of blood. We got home and had a fabulous steak dinner, and other assorted left overs... then took a nice walk down to the ocean to check out the low low tide tidepools. And the sunset. |  |
| |  |
| Aaron along the rugged and slippery coast. | Doug and Geoff in the sunset light... |
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| Top Left: Geoff makes a silly face. Top right, Jessica and a dog in the fading glow. We found unspent fireworks in the rubble of the original display, and spent time blowing more stuff up in what Jessie refers to as "Fourth of July, Junior." They were mostly spinners, so Aaron pounded them to a stake in the yard, and they did spin. Later that night, Blue Hill did their fireworks show and from Aaron and Michelle's posh little deck we could see all the high up fireworks. It was a nice ending to a hard day. We all slept well and deeply that night also. |  |
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 | Sunday morning dawned early. There were noisy birds and the dogs had to pee. I got up at 6 and had the lower deck behind the main house all to myself. Geoff got up a little while later. I made him breakfast and we waited for everyone else to get up. It was Aaron's birthday, so we had a birthday breakfast that couldn't be beat once everyone was up... and then Geoff wanted to swim again, so we went down and enjoyed one last romp in the ocean. We hit the road between 12:30 and noon, tired, sweaty, but very happy with our trip. I had a blast and could so use another long weekend... today!
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It just occured to me -- I only have one picture of me, and none of Michelle! How'd that happen?
Weird. Michelle -- I'll snap ya later! (echoes of a certain wedding toast there...)
Traffic was okay until we hit Portland. Then it was a 3 hour crawl to our house. We were heading home in order to meet Tess at the airport... I'm glad I asked Amy & Taunia to go get her because I somehow knew this traffic thing would snarl us.
Tess flew in from Alaska and this is the first leg of her East/Midwest tour of fellow bloggers. Right now she's asleep in Geoff's bedroom. It's after 10am, and I'm not sure how long I should let her sleep.
She may be mad... "You let me sleep away my Boston Area Vacation!!!" but I figure the jetlag has to have kicked her butt. It was so cool meeting her, and I figure I'll take her to Newburyport and maybe up to Portsmouth today... have a relaxing drive around and walkabout. It should be a hot one today and tomorrow. I took off of work, so hopefully it won't be a nightmare when I get back there!
Right then. I'll update later, I'm sure. This has been one of the longest entries EVER. Hope you liked the pictures -- I sure enjoyed everything we did and can't wait to go back.
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
busy!
Wow, am I swampped!
I'm like on the verge of getting nervous swampped. And I swear if it wasn't for my sister, I would be so screwed. She cleaned my kitchen and bathroom for me while hanging out here today. She encouraged and coached Jessie in cleaning her bedroom. She did so much work for me and I'm so grateful. I have been straight out flat busy for days, and Tess is coming on Sunday, and we're going to Maine, and I'm teaching a class, and work is chaos...
And wow. Breathe. Let the Inner Rock Star Drive.
Okay. Where to start. When last we spoke, I had put in some garden flowers and had a good weekend. Monday at work was chaos, the short week causes payroll to go into overdrive, and while I do not do payroll my job interfaces directly with the process. There are procedures that must take place every Monday or Tuesday that I now found myself having to do the minute I walked in the door. Chaos. I got everything done. And all day yesterday, all day today, phone call after phone call, small brushfire after small trash can fire. I fought them all. Whew.
On top of all this chaos, which keeps me busy and is challenging and fun, I had a ton of work to complete for the online course I'm helping run at the college. CM conducted orientation on Tuesday evening, 2 sessions, one early one later. I got home at about 9:45 to watch the end of the Serena/Jennifer Crappypotty match (Serena! Yes!) and I promptly passed out.
Today at work, more chaos. Lots of back & forth emails with the ADP people about problems with our online benefits thingie and payroll interface and why reports are reporting warnings and errors and all sorts of crud. Huzzah.
Technology -- it's supposed to make things simpler, right? I'm discovering that it makes things much harder and I'm ready to throw my PC (at the office, not here) out into the middle of the highway and say "screw it, I'll enroll the guy for benefits using the paper form!" and I'll leave it at that.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.
The best part of the past couple days is I've finally gotten that Keep the Dog in the Way Back of the Truck feature, the Cap! I went yesterday morning and had it installed. Not only does it look nice, it makes the truck handle so much better... it is so smooth, so aerosuperdynamic. I feel like the queen of summer!
Huzzah again!
Tonight while I was working on CM's course content and making mad crazy updates and writing content and doing stuff stuff stuff, Geoff comes up to me and informs me his second tooth on the bottom is ready to come out. Y'all know how the first one came out a few weeks ago. So he's been working on this one, and lo and behold, he got it to a good position to take out.
He, once again, was all hard core and tough. I pulled that sucker right out. Pop. Done. He didn't even flinch. He asked me if it hurt me.
Nice.
But it was hard to work on his tooth and work on work. I'd tell him, "go sit down, work on it some more and come back and see me," and three minutes later he was in my face again -- saying it was time for me to pull the tooth. Nope. I'd wiggle it, grip, pull, nope. Go sit down... this went on for about 45 minutes.
I could have finished my work a lot sooner. Such is life. Mom and Internet Technologist all at once.
Anyway -- I have a list a mile long of stuff I need to buy and do before tomorrow. I'm not a list-making type of person, but I've discovered in the past few weeks that I so need to ... order, organize, line up and get ahold and in control of my stuff. So there's a big list here by my elbow of stuff I have to do.
And I know there is stuff missing.
Anyway ... bedtime for bonzo here kids -- I doubt there will be another entry before we split for the northlands so I bid you fond adieu and wish you a happy and safe July 4th weekend.
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