Sunday, July 1, 2007 – Driving home from the mountains
We dropped Olivia at camp this morning.
We made up her bed, took a couple of photos and said goodbye. Wow, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
But as we were leaving, just a few steps from her cabin – her cabin in the tall, lush rhododendron and shady trees – Jay dons his sunglasses. Call me Sherlock Holmes but I knew something was up. I could hear the counselors now. “Cabin One to base. Cabin One to base. Alert, alert. We’ve got ourselves a crier. Get the tissues ready.”
Zach made it so easy for us so we were caught a tad off guard by the emotions that surfaced when leaving Olivia. Then again, maybe I was ignoring all the signs. Like, when we were playing hangman on the car ride over and her sentence was I W I L L M I S S Y O U!
Don’t get me wrong. She wasn’t trying to make us feel bad or talk herself out of going. She was just expressing herself, very healthily I might add. She was a trooper, too. She was ready for us to go so she could get on with the business of adjusting and making friends.
The ride home has been a little quiet. “What should we do tonight?” we pondered. “I dunno. What do you want to do for the 4th?” I suppose it’s good practice for when the kids are grown and gone and all we have for regular entertainment is each other. We’ll HAVE to find something else to talk about besides the kids. Now I see why people end up getting so many pets.
I think next year – assuming our kids like this whole camp business and want to attend next year – we should coordinate with our friends. It would be really great to have our friends available to hang out and play with, too, with all the kids gone to camp. I mean, what’s the point of get-togethers with our friends and their kids when we are temporarily child-free.
Jay hasn’t stopped talking about Olivia yet. I might need to set up an appointment for him tomorrow to deal with his separation issues. I think he’s flashing back to when his parents sent him away for 8 weeks each summer. I’ll try to be gentle and empathetic.
Later that day – still driving home from the mountains
So much for Camp Mansfield in the UK this summer. Now that, as of last count, 3 terrorist attack attempts have taken place, in the name of Allah of course, the UK is at its highest terror alert possible. I’m trying to be tolerant and accepting of this religion but it seems to me there are at least 2 camps – one that doesn’t believe they are to commit suicide and murder of innocent people in the name of Allah and one that does.
Call me dense but I have a really hard time understanding how one can rationalize that it’s the will of their god to, say, drive a vehicle into a marketplace filled with men, women and children and detonate a bomb killing half of them and maiming others. And then the said bomber will be insured a place in heaven for the act. If you can explain it so I can understand, by all means, have at it. Jay says it has something to do with the vestal virgins.
TRIVIA QUIZ: What song mentions the vestal virgins? First one with the correct answer wins.
So, on the lighter side…did you read about the guy in Illinois who was setting off fireworks in his yard and was killed when he picked up an unexploded missile and peered down the tubing to see why it hadn’t gone off yet? You can guess what happened next.
That’s just stupid. Let that be a lesson unto you this 4th of July now, ya hear!
I just saw a picture on the e-camp website of my son on his first day of camp and I’m pretty sure he is having an awful time and I better go get him. He looks miserable. I feel miserable. It was a bad decision. I should have listened when he said he’d rather go to camp in the city. “Don’t they have camps teaching kids how to live in a big city?” he asked. “Like, today, we’re going to work on hailing a cab. And we can stay in dorm rooms on college campuses instead of cabins.”
Actually, he has it all figured out. He wants to start a city camp kind of like the game of Sims if you know anything about that. Everyone gets a certain amount of “money” to manage. They must learn to budget it wisely and then figure out ways to bring in more income. Or, if they blow it all too fast, they end up sleeping on the proverbial bench. Yep, you’ll have to ask him about it. That’s what he wants to do next year. Leave the nature camps for his sister, he says. He’ll take the city any day.
So in the meantime he’s stuck in the woods for two weeks. Without gel. Without his iPod. WITHOUT HIS CELLPHONE for crying out loud. The kid is probably going insane. He might be drooling and mumbling incoherently about now.
I better call the counselors and tell them to give him a little fix. Just hook him up to something electronic for a wee bit, to wean him slowly rather than cold turkey. We should have weaned him before going. I didn’t think of that, dadgumit.
Oh well, I’m going to go eat my birthday dinner, in air conditioning. I’ll see about checking on Zach tomorrow.
I have nothing to write about. I'm uninspired. Ho hum...
I can report that my children are a couple of clowns. No really. They are clowns. Clown Camp is this week and both of them are attending. It's the Diamond Duo - Morty and Sparkles, along with many of their friends from school.
What do you call a dog with no legs?
It doesn't matter, it won't come anyway.
Yesterday Olivia and Duncan, a friend from school and hockey, went from clown camp to a hockey tournament. It's pretty funny seeing them skating around the rink with clown faces. I heard Duncan's dad tell someone it was his intimidation technique. Not a bad idea. Too bad it didn't work, though. They lost the tournament.
So my sister said she got in a wreck and rear-ended a dwarf. He jumped out of the car and said, "I'm not happy." She said, "Which one of them are you then?"
Okay, I've inflicted enough pain for one day. Let's see if I can find a good clown picture to download and then I'm out of here.
I have sworn off peddler parties. It wasn’t my idea originally. Up until fairly recently I was a regular at hosting parties for friends who were starting new businesses — Mary Kay, Tupperware, Pampered Chef, Tastefully Simple, Southern Living, jewelry, candles, Usborne Books, Discovery Toys. You name it, I’ve been to a party or hosted one. That was until my very honest neighbor said, “I’m sorry, I don’t do peddler parties.” And that’s when the light clicked on, and now I don’t either. That’s when I realized that I don’t like being put in that situation. For instance, I just got an invitation to a neighbor’s jewelry party. “Come accessorize all your summer outfits,” she beckons. Actually, I’d like to get to know this neighbor, to see if they would be fun to socialize with. But I don’t want to have to pay to hang out with her, if you know what I mean. I used to go to these so-called parties under the guise of being supportive. “I don’t have to buy anything, I’ll just go to give her practice.” But that feels crappy. I’m pretty good at not doing things out of obligation but even I’ve succumbed. Either throw a party or don’t, but don’t try to sell me something and call it a party.
So, don’t take it personally but if you invite me to a peddler party or ask me to host one for you I’m most likely going to decline. However, if you want to invite me to hang out and party with you, I’ll bring the wine.
I'm trying out my new video-making software. What do you think? It's a bit busy I know, with all the transitions and what not. And, it's much more clean and crisp on the original than here. But it will give you an idea of how they can be done.
This is the only blog entry that I posted at the other blog site I was trying out that you might have missed. It ran a couple or few days ago. So you don't miss anything I'll repost it here.
In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.
~Andy Warhol, 1968
I love it when it rains in the middle of night and gives everything a good soaking. Especially since we’re supposedly heading into another drought and before long our lush green lawn and lovely flowers might not look so lush and lovely. And when it rains in the middle of the night, it sort of gets it over with so the day can be enjoyed at the pool or on the golf course or whatever suits your fancy.
We already have watering restrictions here in Cary so we can only water on certain days. When Jay left for Florida with the kids, he left me with specific instructions about watering the lawn and I followed them to a tee (what the heck does that mean anyway?) He returned home to a still green lawn. But…after going for an extra watering Wednesday night, he forgot to turn the irrigation system off and it kicked on again Thursday morning, not one of our watering days. Jay discovered this around 7 a.m. Thursday when he went to retrieve the paper but decided, what the heck, he’d let the system run its course. After all, what authorities would be out watching at 7 a.m.?
The doorbell rang around 1 p.m. and I was home to answer it. It was a man from the Town of Cary. Yeah, he was out driving around at 7 a.m. and saw that we were watering the lawn and needed to issue me a warning. I immediately began trying to stammer my way out of it. “Oh, my husband’s been out of town and I must have left it on and we do know the correct watering days and I’m so sorry it won’t happen again.” That’s when I saw the people down at the street by the mailbox. “Are those people with you?” I asked. “And why is that guy holding a video camera?”
“I’m sorry,” he replied. “They are following me today, doing a news report on people violating the watering restriction codes.” Then Big Brother walked away and the guy with the camera removed what looked like a tape recorder from him.
GREAT. Here I am trying to cover up for Jay and now they’re putting me on the news as a delinquent in the neighborhood. Which is why I waited until now to tell you. Maybe, just maybe, the report made the news and since no one was alerted you didn’t watch and catch me looking sheepish and guilty. I like my 15 minutes of fame as much as the next person but there is a limit to what I will do to get it. (I suspect some of you are questioning that.) But please take note, it was Jay, the one scamming his way around Orlando, who broke the law, not I.
So with all this rain and good fertilizing, my night blooming cirrus has its first bud of the season. It should open in another week or maybe less. I’ve told some of you about this plant and it's really spectacular. I got mine from Mona, who has since had to get some back from me. They put out these amazing flowers that smell like the tropics and only bloom at night and only for one night. So, if you would like to see it, let me know and I’ll call you over the night it opens. But you will have to be out until about 10:30 or so. But oh, it’s so worth it.
A friend of mine who’s daughter has gone to school with Zach for several years was curious as to whether her daughter, who will remain unnamed, and Zach were “an item” since she saw her unnamed daughter being very affectionate toward him at a recent pool party. She didn’t mind the idea, though, of her daughter and Zach going together, as “he comes from good stock,” she said. Then she added, “There’d have to be a conversion of course” to which I instantly replied, “Oh that’s okay, we’re good at converting people.”
So, uh, you don’t think she was talking about converting Zach, do you? That just didn’t occur to me then. It wasn’t until I later relayed the story to Jay that he asked, “What makes you think she wasn’t talking about Zach converting?” Well, if that is indeed what she meant then my comment back to her probably nipped that whole notion in the bud, which I have to admit I would not be too upset about. For one thing, I’m not ready for my son to get hitched. He’s 13 for crying out loud. And, well, let’s just say I’m not even ready for him to have a girlfriend or date, and I don’t want him hanging out in a pool with girls who are throwing themselves at him for that matter.
Now, before you take offense, of course I know that it might not have been the girl throwing herself at Zach. He might have had something to do with it, too. BUT PROBABLY NOT so keep your precocious little girls away from my son. There. I said it.
It’s not easy being a mom and trying to keep your children safe and innocent and not letting them grow up too darn fast. Sometimes I am just muddling through and other times I think I know what I’m doing and right now, well, I’m just not sure I know what I’m doing.
Jerry, maybe you have some wisdom to share here. You’ve probably done millions of shows on this subject by now. Or at least you've seen the fallout from the people who didn't get it quite right. Shed some light!
Oh, and yes, I did start a blog at blogspot (http://mypollyblog.blogspot.com) but no one has said what they think one way or the other so I'm not sure whether to stay or go. I like Weebly. It's my first blog experience, and I like working with the smaller, start-up kind of people. And yet. Sometimes one needs to have less hassle. So, tell me what you prefer. Weebly or Blogspot. Don't forget to read the comments. They are by far the best part.
http://mypollyblog.blogspot.com/
Check out this new site and tell me what you think. It's a google product and doesn't have the bugs this one does.
I just found a tick on me. An itty bitty teeny weeny tick. I think that's the deer tick kind that spread lyme disease. Great. Just what I need. Something else to worry about. And I can't stop itching now. Between every couple of words I type I have to stop to scratch my head or my shin or the invisible thing crawling up my arm.
Ticks are gross. Mosquitoes are gross. Fleas are gross. I have no use for any of these creatures. I can't figure out what good they do for our planet. Can you? I mean I understand that bugs provide food for other animals in this grand circle of life. Even flies have a purpose. Their larvae, also known as maggots, not only help to get rid of road kill and the like but they are used medicinally as well. Have you seen how they use maggots to clean out the rotting tissue of gangrenous wounds? Now that's something. But ticks and mosquitoes. Come on. They are blood-sucking, disease-spreading, disgusting creatures that I have no use for.
I'm thinking about jumping ship. I want to work with Weebly but they have so many issues still - you know they haven't even launched their product yet! It's still in BETA, testing mode. So, I'm thinking about going to yahoo, where I know it will work without so many issues. I'll keep my Weebly Pollyblog, for when it's up and running bug-free, cuz that's the kind of day I'm wanting after finding that tick on me. A bug-free day.
I hope you have one, too.
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