Previously On MINDBLOGGINGTYPOS...
OK, so there's a half a month or so to catch up on. First, I turned 38. There, I said it. 38. Are you happy now? And I admit I've struggled with it a bit. I'm sort of realizing my own mortality, you know? What with the shoulder problems and all. Maybe my doctor isn't full of excrement. Maybe it really is arthritis. But I'm still going for a second opinion.
Oh, on that topic, I was growing my hair out for a while. And I even shaved off my goatee. My neighbor said I looked 15 years younger. Good to know if I ever commit a felony and need to change my appearance. But then one day, I walked by a couple of mirrors in such a way that I was able to see the top of my head. And I do mean the top of my head and more important, NOT the HAIR on the top of my head. Sure there was some hair. But it looked so sadly pathetic. I flashed back to this picture my Mom has of me at 4 or something on the little horsey booster seat at the barber getting my curls cut off. And my substantial cowlick growing up. And I hated it because I always had to part my hair on the side. There's forehead where that cowlick used to be. And then I flashed to my longhair, pony tails, and eventually (gulp) mullet styles through college and early adulthood. Rachel will not agree, but I would rather go back to the fro'd out mullet than go with my hair in it's current state. And coincidentally, I found our clippers that had been missing since Lauren and Paul's wedding. So off it came. And then I took the new 4+1 blade vibrating razor to it and I was back to baldy. And the goatee grew back pretty quick. And I even got some of that Just For Men stuff and darkened it up a bit. And I feel a little better about myself.
Did you ever notice that when you do something drastic to your appearance, it takes a while for you to form an accurate mental image of yourself again? Like even when I shaved my goatee and grew my hair long, my mental image of myself was still short hair or bald with the goatee. It's like when we cleaned out the garage (more to come on that topic) - when I open the door from the kitchen, I still expect it to be the giant mess and am surprised to see it reasonably organized.
Anyway, the birthday was fun. Rachel got me tickets to see the Beach Boys. Let's hope they play our song (which unfortunately is now the theme song for that show on HBO about Mormons, but we still wait the five minutes after the Sopranos every week to hear it before we go to bed).
Then there's the dogs. They are doing much better. They are putting on weight and are just about back to normal. We got one of those bark trainer collars for Moe and she is responding. And yes, I did test it on myself. And yes, it hurts. But we are at the end of our ropes with them barking at people who come over and figthing with each other. Moe barks at the door, then Cody barks at the door, then Moe attacks Cody. I do not understand what that's all about. Anyway, we say, "No barking!". And if she keeps barking, we say, again, "No barking!" and push the button that makes a high pitched beep. And if she keeps barking, we say, "No barking!" and push the button that gives her the zap.
We used to just say, "Stop barking or...or I'll say stop barking again!" The first time she got zapped, she barked at the collar instead of the door. Pretty soon, she learned to stop barking at the sound of the beep. And now, she is much better about shutting her yap at the first, "No barking!" even if the collar isn't on her. She does this kind of whimper whine "oh I want to bark so bad" thing. Anyway, it's helping.
Wow - that's a lot of text and no pictures. And this is already a fairly long post and I've only just scratched the surface. So I'm going to tell one more story, sharing one more event, with pictures, and then go to bed, and then try to get caught up further tomorrow.
OK, so this is way back on the 18th of May. I have never felt more like a 50s housewife than I did on that day. I remember old comics and stories and TV shows and such where the husband calls his wife at home from the office and says, "Honey, a few of the guys are going to come over after work today, you don't mind, do you honey?" Or something like that. You know, the housewife is cradling the phone on her shoulder whhile holding the crying baby and ironing his shirts. Maybe there's something boiling over on the stove and a vacuum salesman at the door. That old cliche. Are you with me?
This is what started it all...
Whoever (whomever? whomsoever? How about "The idiot who...")
poured the driveway did just a sloppy job. It looks like either a form broke or they just dumped the end of the pour. It looked even worse when the entryway was just cement. Rachel (with help from Billy on the slate and Michele with one 'L' on the tile) fixed that - you can see it a little in the first picture.
OK, so on Wednesday, Rachel calls and says that Larry at work brought his cement saw and could come over to fix the messed up cement by our front porch and could I cook dinner for him. Well, I was, and to some extent still am, new on a job and trying hard to make sure I am productive. It's a lot of pressure to be a new hire working in a remote home office. I am constantly worried that someone will call while I'm in the can or something and it will give the impression that I am goofing off or something. This is also why I haven't been doing much blogging. I've been busy, and then at night I don't feel much like typing more or cropping pictures and such.
Anyway- I told her it wasn't a good day and that Thursday would be better. And that was fine. And I mentally prepared a meal plan. I would grill. A good foundation. I could grill and help out with the work to be done. I had never seen a cement saw and I was intrigued. I thought maybe I would get a chance to use it and do that old Tim Allen grunt a little.
Well, around 11:00 on Thursday, Rachel called and said her first boss was going to come too. No problem. Then at 12:30 or so, her second boss wanted to come and her first boss was bringing his wife and daughter. OK, I can handle that. Dinner for 8. Doable. Then at 3:30, she called and said, "Well, word is getting around and..." When she got home at 4:30 or so, she informed me that there would be an additional wife and three more kids.
So it became dinner for 13 on short notice. I defrosted some more meat and prepped a lot more vegetables and doubled up on the rice and...Crap! It's not enough food! Instead of just a big London Broil, I added chicken and switched to Teryaki skewers. I switched from herbed rice to vaguely Asian rice. And I fired up the fryer to make tempura vegetables. Fortunately, there is always plenty of beer in the fridge downstairs. Oh, and I even dug up a box of fortune cookies I bought a while ago.
And I scrambled. Not eggs, I scrambled to get it all prepped and cooking. And then people started showing up. I was in the kitchen in my apron. Outside the men were donning overalls and goggles and re-breathers and hooking my hose (the one I use to water plants) to the massive and awesome cement saw. I went out and said, "Gee, I really want to help, but I don't want to get my apron dirty." And they laughed. And I went back to cooking.
I am proud of the job I did. It all came out good and the timing wasn't bad. Rachel's second boss' wife asked if I was a chef. I assured her that I am not, although I play one on TV. And we all ate downstairs. Gary was impressed with my liquor collection and made some fine martinis - he even brought his own olives stuffed with bleu cheese. Please note that "bleu" was NOT a typo.
We sat around for a couple of hours outside on the deck. That was a first since the wedding. It was great to finally meet and get to know people from Rachel's work. They were all really nice and I look forward to hanging out with them more in the future. And some of us had bourbon and a bunch of us smoked cigars.
And it felt like I was growing my balls back.
And I didn't realize how bad the front porch looked because I just hid it with a planter. But now that it is repaired, it looks so much better.
That's it for now. I've go to get to bed. And it may be a few days before I get back to this. I've got a lot to do for work tomorrow. And then Jake and I are loading up the Super Trooper with tools and heading up to my Aunt Lisa and Uncle Dave's cabin in Calaveras County for the annual cleanup.
Uncle Dave is under the weather right now. My aunt is keeping family and friends up to date, so I won't share the details. If you know about it already, well, you know. And if you don't, let's just say they caught it early and we are cautiously optimistic while awating test results. And he's the healthiest guy I know, aside from Ted. Prayers and kind thoughts for him are appreciated.
Also, when I told Jake what we were doing this weekend - 4 1/2 hour drive and yard work, he expressed enthusiasm. My 13 year old surprises me sometimes. I mean he's a great kid, but he's 13, after all. And I'm sure there are a few hundred things he'd rather do. I told him I appreciated his positive attitude, and he said, "Well, it's a family thing and you just do it." I love that he gets that and thinks that way. And it's probably my favorite thing about our family - whether it's moves, or hard times, or illness, or injuries, or putting weddings together, we consistently come together. And I think we appreciate the good times together more because of it.
OK, so I'll leave you with some scenes from next week - The Chicago trip, hanging with Julie, Travis, Sadie, and Marlene, the Wright Plus Walk, the Old Town School of Folk Music and the purchase I made there (might have to NetFlix Deliverance), the trip to Indy from Chicago, the end user conference, real Indy 500 race cars in the lobby, the flight home, the Re-Fi, earwigs, and the hot tub.
And I'm sure that to those of you who are frequent guests at the Hotel Yorba, you just read, "Blah blah blah...blah blah blah...blah blah...HOT TUB!!!" It will be in some time next week. What's everyone doin' the weekend of the 10th? Bring towels.
Oh, on that topic, I was growing my hair out for a while. And I even shaved off my goatee. My neighbor said I looked 15 years younger. Good to know if I ever commit a felony and need to change my appearance. But then one day, I walked by a couple of mirrors in such a way that I was able to see the top of my head. And I do mean the top of my head and more important, NOT the HAIR on the top of my head. Sure there was some hair. But it looked so sadly pathetic. I flashed back to this picture my Mom has of me at 4 or something on the little horsey booster seat at the barber getting my curls cut off. And my substantial cowlick growing up. And I hated it because I always had to part my hair on the side. There's forehead where that cowlick used to be. And then I flashed to my longhair, pony tails, and eventually (gulp) mullet styles through college and early adulthood. Rachel will not agree, but I would rather go back to the fro'd out mullet than go with my hair in it's current state. And coincidentally, I found our clippers that had been missing since Lauren and Paul's wedding. So off it came. And then I took the new 4+1 blade vibrating razor to it and I was back to baldy. And the goatee grew back pretty quick. And I even got some of that Just For Men stuff and darkened it up a bit. And I feel a little better about myself.
Did you ever notice that when you do something drastic to your appearance, it takes a while for you to form an accurate mental image of yourself again? Like even when I shaved my goatee and grew my hair long, my mental image of myself was still short hair or bald with the goatee. It's like when we cleaned out the garage (more to come on that topic) - when I open the door from the kitchen, I still expect it to be the giant mess and am surprised to see it reasonably organized.
Anyway, the birthday was fun. Rachel got me tickets to see the Beach Boys. Let's hope they play our song (which unfortunately is now the theme song for that show on HBO about Mormons, but we still wait the five minutes after the Sopranos every week to hear it before we go to bed).
Then there's the dogs. They are doing much better. They are putting on weight and are just about back to normal. We got one of those bark trainer collars for Moe and she is responding. And yes, I did test it on myself. And yes, it hurts. But we are at the end of our ropes with them barking at people who come over and figthing with each other. Moe barks at the door, then Cody barks at the door, then Moe attacks Cody. I do not understand what that's all about. Anyway, we say, "No barking!". And if she keeps barking, we say, again, "No barking!" and push the button that makes a high pitched beep. And if she keeps barking, we say, "No barking!" and push the button that gives her the zap.
We used to just say, "Stop barking or...or I'll say stop barking again!" The first time she got zapped, she barked at the collar instead of the door. Pretty soon, she learned to stop barking at the sound of the beep. And now, she is much better about shutting her yap at the first, "No barking!" even if the collar isn't on her. She does this kind of whimper whine "oh I want to bark so bad" thing. Anyway, it's helping.
Wow - that's a lot of text and no pictures. And this is already a fairly long post and I've only just scratched the surface. So I'm going to tell one more story, sharing one more event, with pictures, and then go to bed, and then try to get caught up further tomorrow.
OK, so this is way back on the 18th of May. I have never felt more like a 50s housewife than I did on that day. I remember old comics and stories and TV shows and such where the husband calls his wife at home from the office and says, "Honey, a few of the guys are going to come over after work today, you don't mind, do you honey?" Or something like that. You know, the housewife is cradling the phone on her shoulder whhile holding the crying baby and ironing his shirts. Maybe there's something boiling over on the stove and a vacuum salesman at the door. That old cliche. Are you with me?
This is what started it all...
Whoever (whomever? whomsoever? How about "The idiot who...")
poured the driveway did just a sloppy job. It looks like either a form broke or they just dumped the end of the pour. It looked even worse when the entryway was just cement. Rachel (with help from Billy on the slate and Michele with one 'L' on the tile) fixed that - you can see it a little in the first picture.
OK, so on Wednesday, Rachel calls and says that Larry at work brought his cement saw and could come over to fix the messed up cement by our front porch and could I cook dinner for him. Well, I was, and to some extent still am, new on a job and trying hard to make sure I am productive. It's a lot of pressure to be a new hire working in a remote home office. I am constantly worried that someone will call while I'm in the can or something and it will give the impression that I am goofing off or something. This is also why I haven't been doing much blogging. I've been busy, and then at night I don't feel much like typing more or cropping pictures and such.
Anyway- I told her it wasn't a good day and that Thursday would be better. And that was fine. And I mentally prepared a meal plan. I would grill. A good foundation. I could grill and help out with the work to be done. I had never seen a cement saw and I was intrigued. I thought maybe I would get a chance to use it and do that old Tim Allen grunt a little.
Well, around 11:00 on Thursday, Rachel called and said her first boss was going to come too. No problem. Then at 12:30 or so, her second boss wanted to come and her first boss was bringing his wife and daughter. OK, I can handle that. Dinner for 8. Doable. Then at 3:30, she called and said, "Well, word is getting around and..." When she got home at 4:30 or so, she informed me that there would be an additional wife and three more kids.
So it became dinner for 13 on short notice. I defrosted some more meat and prepped a lot more vegetables and doubled up on the rice and...Crap! It's not enough food! Instead of just a big London Broil, I added chicken and switched to Teryaki skewers. I switched from herbed rice to vaguely Asian rice. And I fired up the fryer to make tempura vegetables. Fortunately, there is always plenty of beer in the fridge downstairs. Oh, and I even dug up a box of fortune cookies I bought a while ago.
And I scrambled. Not eggs, I scrambled to get it all prepped and cooking. And then people started showing up. I was in the kitchen in my apron. Outside the men were donning overalls and goggles and re-breathers and hooking my hose (the one I use to water plants) to the massive and awesome cement saw. I went out and said, "Gee, I really want to help, but I don't want to get my apron dirty." And they laughed. And I went back to cooking.
I am proud of the job I did. It all came out good and the timing wasn't bad. Rachel's second boss' wife asked if I was a chef. I assured her that I am not, although I play one on TV. And we all ate downstairs. Gary was impressed with my liquor collection and made some fine martinis - he even brought his own olives stuffed with bleu cheese. Please note that "bleu" was NOT a typo.
We sat around for a couple of hours outside on the deck. That was a first since the wedding. It was great to finally meet and get to know people from Rachel's work. They were all really nice and I look forward to hanging out with them more in the future. And some of us had bourbon and a bunch of us smoked cigars.
And it felt like I was growing my balls back.
And I didn't realize how bad the front porch looked because I just hid it with a planter. But now that it is repaired, it looks so much better.
That's it for now. I've go to get to bed. And it may be a few days before I get back to this. I've got a lot to do for work tomorrow. And then Jake and I are loading up the Super Trooper with tools and heading up to my Aunt Lisa and Uncle Dave's cabin in Calaveras County for the annual cleanup.
Uncle Dave is under the weather right now. My aunt is keeping family and friends up to date, so I won't share the details. If you know about it already, well, you know. And if you don't, let's just say they caught it early and we are cautiously optimistic while awating test results. And he's the healthiest guy I know, aside from Ted. Prayers and kind thoughts for him are appreciated.
Also, when I told Jake what we were doing this weekend - 4 1/2 hour drive and yard work, he expressed enthusiasm. My 13 year old surprises me sometimes. I mean he's a great kid, but he's 13, after all. And I'm sure there are a few hundred things he'd rather do. I told him I appreciated his positive attitude, and he said, "Well, it's a family thing and you just do it." I love that he gets that and thinks that way. And it's probably my favorite thing about our family - whether it's moves, or hard times, or illness, or injuries, or putting weddings together, we consistently come together. And I think we appreciate the good times together more because of it.
OK, so I'll leave you with some scenes from next week - The Chicago trip, hanging with Julie, Travis, Sadie, and Marlene, the Wright Plus Walk, the Old Town School of Folk Music and the purchase I made there (might have to NetFlix Deliverance), the trip to Indy from Chicago, the end user conference, real Indy 500 race cars in the lobby, the flight home, the Re-Fi, earwigs, and the hot tub.
And I'm sure that to those of you who are frequent guests at the Hotel Yorba, you just read, "Blah blah blah...blah blah blah...blah blah...HOT TUB!!!" It will be in some time next week. What's everyone doin' the weekend of the 10th? Bring towels.
posted by Eric Soderstrom at 11:32 PM
1 Comments:
Nice to see the blog updated again. Seems I read more of Blue Meme than your blog these days. Blah, blah, blah.....Hot Tub. Can't wait to see that view of Brokeback mountain from the tub. I liked the part about Jake pitching in and his comments about helping family. He is a very dear boy. Have you thought of wearing that dog zapper collar to bed with Rachel controling the zapper? Could be fun. I think the video tape of that would spread virally over the web even faster than Pam and Tommy. Gotta plan a trip there or you coming here. Need more laughs. You are deserving.
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