What Happened in the Tent

I love camping.  I get charley horse cramps in the back of my upper thigh occasionally.  When paired, these two activities might lead to your husband having to carry an unexplained ten pound rock in his pack.

We usually go wilderness canoe-camping in groups.  We like to put our tents fairly close together because one never knows when bears might come strolling through looking for tasty morsels of humans.  I am not very brave when it comes to bears.  Or anything for that matter.

Our tent was pretty small, because we were on an extended canoe trip. Portaging between lakes, my husband carries the canoe, and I carry all the gear.  So we have a small tent.  Even so, Husband-Dear winds up making an extra trip because I can’t carry it all.  He’s a pretty nice guy.

Finally, the last brush stroke in this setting is that we are nearing retirement age, and when I get into my sleeping bag, it takes Herculean effort to get up off the ground. If a bear did come, I’d have to escape by rolling away from him in my sleeping bag.  I’ve been imploring my husband for several years now to rig some ropes and pulleys to hoist me up in the case of an emergency.

Our camping mates had performed their evening ablutions and zipped the final zipper.  Light snoring could be heard.

But then, I moved my cramp-prone leg the fatal way and OH, HELP!  Charley horse of the most massive magnitude!

I gritted my teeth and wheezed “Oh, oh!” imploring my husband to come to my aid. 

He wrestled himself out of his bag to help, nearly knocking down the tent.  Finding me in the dark, he began rubbing my calf. 

“No, higher, higher,” I hissed through clenched teeth.  I just wanted to get up and walk it off, which was impossible.

Titters erupted from other tents, I am told, but I could not hear them at the moment.

“Is that better?” Husband-Dear kept demanding.

“Not yet, not yet!”  I was dying, the pain was so bad.  “More!”

Husband-Dear climbed around in order to work on my leg more.

I was still seizing up, panting in agony.  At last, thanks to assistance from H-D, it began to abate. 

“Ah,” I sighed. “Whew!  That was a bad one.”

“Glad I could be here for you,” laughed my husband.

I did not see what was so funny.  I was just so appreciative that it was over.  “Thank you darling.  You are awesome.  I sure love you.”

“I love you too,” he said.  Even in the dark I could tell he was smiling, but I didn’t know why.  Didn’t care.  Went to sleep.

At breakfast, everyone was smiling at us, and my husband was grinning mysteriously.  I couldn’t imagine what the amusement was.

It wasn’t until much later, when I informed everyone that I had a bad charley horse, their surprised looks clued me in as to why naughty ol’ Husband-Dear was so pleased with himself. 

“What?  You let them think right here in camp we were…” I telegraphed him.  We have been married so long we can communicate by arched eyebrows.

He shrugged.  He thought the 10 lb. rock I snuck into his bag later that day was funny too.  “Some things are just worth it,” he said.

Would You Let Your Daughter Be In A Beauty Pageant?

My daughter, age 7, wanted to be in a beauty pageant.  I couldn’t care less about them, but I always swore that I was going to encourage their interests no matter what.  Have you ever made that promise?  So now it was time to see if I could follow through.  I dreaded going to this, and hoped she would forget about it.

To tell you the truth, I don’t even know how she found out about it.  Somehow she got a brochure.  Do they pass these things out somewhere?  Since this was the little girl who had once sent out invitations to a party I knew nothing about and promised that there would be candy and goodies and that I would allow party-goers to “trash the downstairs” (seriously), why was I surprised that she found out about the pageant, got the brochure, and sent it in? 

So our pageant packet came.  The first thing we were supposed to do, naturally, was get a sponsor to donate money, such as a local business man.  Little Miss had to go asking for money, so this could be the hurdle that might push the pageant idea into the trash.

“The packet says ask a storekeeper, or doctor, or dentist,” she said.

My husband thought this was a hilarious idea. “The dentist!  Yeah!  Get him to pay OUT for a change.”

Little Miss put on her cutest dress and was quite charming.  It wasn’t long before we were driving home with a check in my purse.

Now we had to come up with a dress.  Little Miss went right to her Grandma, as she was an experienced seamstress, and the two of them concocted something right out of Disney’s wildest dreams.  Fluff!  Pouffy!  Pink! Bows!

When Little Miss went to try it on, Grandma had her go out in the front yard for photos and the ENTIRE neighborhood of the senior mobile home park came out to see.  Gushing!  Gooing!  Snapshots!  Little Miss was thrilled.  I took about a hundred pictures.

Her dad was going to need a tuxedo to walk her down the runway and he readily complied.  See last three sentences of former paragraph.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea. 

The big day came, and believe me it was all day.  Hordes of little girls and moms arrived at the hotel conference center, and yikes, I was horrified to be one of them.  A pageant mom, yep, that’s me.  It was no use hiding in the bathroom.  Little Miss was dancing around and starry eyed. 

Everywhere we turned there was stuff for sale: tiaras, programs, professional photographs.  Pageants are a money-making venture, so watch your pocketbook. 

The little girls were not allowed to wear make-up of any kind, so moms had nothing to do but fluff petticoats and curl hair.  The hotel was humming with curling irons.

After the initial promenade of 280 smiling, strutting, crying, skipping, or fleeing little princesses, it was time to get in the interview dress.  The girls went in to be interviewed ten at a time, and each was to sit in front of a grown-up who would ask them questions.  Parents had to wait outside.  We squirmed in our chairs and wondered how she was faring.

Little Miss re-emerged to spy our eager faces.  “Well,” she said, “I had a very fat man ask me questions.”

“What did he ask?” we clamored.

“He asked if he came to my house, what I would fix him for dinner.”

“What did you say?” I asked, picturing fish sticks and macaroni and cheese, my children’s favorite dinner.

“I said: “For you? Lean Cuisine.’” 

Her dad nearly fell down laughing. 

                 

“Well, he was pretty fat,” Little Miss asserted.

“No!  You said that?” I was trying to control my burst of laughter and be serious.

“No, I didn’t really,” she confessed.  “But I thought it.”

“So what did you really say?”

“Well I thought about what a big man like him might like to hear.  So I told him steak and mashed potatoes.”

Here I had been worried that she would say “orange doo-doos”, which is what my kids used to call macaroni and cheese when they couldn’t say orange noodles.  They remained “orange doo-doos” looooooong after they could say noodles.

“Well steak and potatoes was a good choice,” I said, nodding.

Next came a long wait for the other girls to finish up interviewing, and we were stuck in a bland hotel conference room. It had chairs lining the walls and little else.  Little Miss can’t sit still very long and lasted about fifteen minutes.  Other girls looked like they were going to fall asleep or burst into tears any minute.

“Awwwright,” Little Miss announced, jumping up. “We’re playin’ Turtle Tag!”

Little girls rubbed their sleepy eyes and those about to cry stilled their quivering lips.  Moms looked curious.  I said nothing and remained seated.  One never knows what Little Miss might dream up.

“Moms on this side of the room, girls on that side,” she ordered. 

The girls readily jumped up at the promise of a game.  Some of the moms did too, I imagine they were as bored as I was.

Little Miss filled them in on the rules and said, “Ready, go!”  Screaming and merriment commenced.  A half an hour later, red faced cherubs and giggling moms barely heard the pageant official who came to announce we had to get ready for the next event.

Little Miss and her daddy walked down the runway together and she struck poses at the end of the runway and beamed at the judges like she had been doing this since she was two.  Where did she learn to do that?

By the time it was all over, she was “best friends forever” with the girl who went on to win the whole thing.  Little Miss ran up to her when her crown was announced and hugged her with the obligatory tears as if it were a Miss America pageant.  Little Miss herself finished in the top 10% so went home with happy memories.

I did too, but it didn’t have anything to do with crowns and dresses.

If you ever decide to do one of these things, just let me know and I’ll send you the directions to Turtle Tag.

Smarter Than the Average Rabbit

 Our dog was yapping ALL DAY at a little bunny that was brazenly helping himself to our garden. I could not take his barking at it one second longer, so Mom and I simply had to hatch a plan to catch that wrascally wabbit. Mind you, he did not sneak in at the dead of night and nibble a carrot.  No, the beast stomped in bold as brass in the middle of the day and mowed through rows of lettuce, carrots, everything.  He stood up and sampled the corn.  He scorned the peppers and knocked them over, as if a comment on the lack of consideration we had in planting such stuff for him.

Furthermore, our dog was yapping his head off every time he spied him in the garden, and no amount of scolding or threats from me seemed to matter to him.

The rabbit had to go.

Household members of the old-time philosophy suggested rabbit stew, or at least scaring him with a pellet gun. 

But the soft hearted animal lover of more modern philosophies would not hear of it.  Besides, where would I find someone with a pellet gun?  Look in the yellow pages under Rabbit Hunters?  Google Elmer Fudd?

“I’ll get rid of him.  I am smarter than the average rabbit,” Stout declarations were made and plans devised.

I got a trap.  Baited it with the time-honored carrot.  Waited.

Mr. Rabbit was having none of it.  Why go in a cage and eat a limp carrot when there were rows of crispy and crunchy ones ready to be dug up and devoured?  No rabbit in trap.  Grrrr.

But I am smarter than the average rabbit.  The dog was yapping his head off, and I was determined that rabbit was not going to bother us anymore.

“Why don’t you get a net and throw it over him?” Mom suggested.

Ah, ha!  I had just the thing.  Awhile back when we had a cherry tree, we netted it so the crows wouldn’t get the cherries.  Not that it worked.  But we still had the net.

I gathered it up and tiptoed out to the garden. “Here, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.” 

Surprisingly, our white cat Twinkle saw what I was doing and got it into her head that she needed to help.  As I sneaked up on the rabbit, Twinkle approached from the other side and actually herded  the rabbit toward me.  I am not making this up.  But at the last minute, the rabbit jumped over the green onions and skittered away through the basil. I landed in my knees in compost.  Curses, foiled again!

But I am smarter than the average rabbit.  The dog was driving me CRA-ZEE with this yapping and I was going to catch that rabbit if it was the last thing I did.

Mom suggested it would be easier to capture a fox and set him on the rabbit.  Ha, ha, very funny.  I called Animal Control and they came out.  The rabbit sat in my garden bold as brass, eyeing the woman in her spanking clean uniform.  After a merry chase with what looked like a butterfly net, the panting Animal Control officer had all sorts of suggestions about chicken wire or doing away with the beast, but said if I used peanut butter in the trap, it would work.  Next morning, no rabbit and the dog was still barking.  A week later Animal Control had collected a possum and a raccoon but no rabbit.

But I am smarter than the average rabbit.  The dog was now not only barking but digging with his claws at the window.

I looked online and found some concoctions to put around the plants in the garden.  It said to tie up 2 tablespoons of cayenne pepper and 2 tablespoons garlic in a coffee filter and put a series of them around the plants. 

“Okay, Mom,” I said.  “You watch this.”

“I’m watching,” she said with a yawn.

“Oh ye of little faith,” I said, and went to strew my rabbit bombs in the garden.  Mr. Rabbit watched with interest as I hollered at the dog to be quiet.

In a few days, the coffee filters were kicked away from the plants, which had been eaten and turned into rabbit pellets.

If that dog did not stop barking all day I was going to lose my mind.

But I am smarter than the average rabbit. 

So I gave away the dog.

Assembling Nonsense, or More Technology Fun

I bought Mom a new rolling office chair at Costco so that she could be slid under the dining table easier.  Choices for rolling dining room table chairs are pretty limited and I wanted something now.  Her beautiful dining table chairs were becoming looser and looser as I manhandled her up to the table.  Good ol' Costco had a nice little desk chair, so I sat in it and pronounced it good.  Not the same chair, but similar:

Now I gotta get the big box into my cart.  While muscling it in there, my soda dumped out of the cart . Ker-splat. Ice everywhere. I had to go confess to an employee. They were very sweet about it.

After getting it home and hefting it out of the trunk, through the garage and into the living room, I now had to assemble it.

 Who writes these instructions? In performing the voodoo necessary to make it stand up and twirl, I forgot to put on a sleeve over the central pedestal, and once assembled, that baby is not coming undone. Even though I tried to get it apart.

 But Mom LOVES it.  Throughout dinner, she implored me to buy one for myself.  Not on your life.

Now I had to tackle the TV.  We had turned off the cable service when no one was living here in this house, but had reenstated the service.  The Internet worked, the TV in the bedroom worked, but alas the TV in the living room did not.  Hmmm.  After calling and going through menu options to the cable service, getting connected to the technology dept, yet still to no avail, they said they didn't know what was wrong with it and I could have the technician come out to the tune of $55.  Had to think on that one.

My thinking usually entails calling for my amazing handyman husband Hans-Dear.  He was in Seattle, but answered my call.  He recognized the pleading ring.  We decided the reason it wasn't working was that I only had the cable box hooked up and not the DVR.

So that meant (scary music swells) I had to HOOK UP THE DVR.

How hard could it be, right?  I had to fuss and fume about it though, as required on page 1, 237 of the instructions, which you know is required reading for my generation. "WARNING: Cable system will not work if owner has not plugged in the frustration cord. Plug it in the back by the heebastoben next to the rebastat."

Then you had to decided whether you had HD-M-16, AK-47, XYZ and several other letters, or ZYX,74-KA, 61-M-DH.  I had no idea, and just decided to match the red cord on box A to the red cord on box B, the green one and white one the same.

I let fly with a few choice words, as required on page 10, 476 and voila! We now have HD, a remote that is sync-ed and a DVR.

Then my phone quit.  Ha, ha, very funny, I told it.  You know not with whom you deal.  I turned the wretched thing off and then on and it surrendered.

There you go.  You may now call me The Bad Ass Technician.  Just don't shorten that name too much.

Journeys With a 90-Year Old

To all you people who think traveling on an airplane with children is difficult: ha, ha, ha, ha.  Just dress 'em up cute, and you're golden.  If they are age 5 or so and give them a bag of caramels and a packet of Go Fish cards.  Then, when you don't get to sit together, the child can ask the 28 year-old man next to her if he wants to gamble for caramels.  Not that her parents ever taught her to gamble, mind you.  The child and the man will both be amused the whole flight.  Don't ask me how I know this.

But the story today is at the other end of the spectrum.  I still followed my credo of dress 'em up cute.  Mom wore her warmest, prettiest sweater.  We want her to have good service, after all.

The flight went pretty well, even though it took a half an hour for her to stare at the pictures of soft drinks and juices and ask me repeatedly what I was going to have.  She can't hear on the plane, so talks loudly, but I just kept pointing to the picture of the Sprite.  No caffeine to get over active systems engaged, thank you.

  

I always worry Mom will need to go to the bathroom at some inopportune time and sho’ ‘nuff, in spite of the Sprite, she tugged my sleeve right as the pilot turned final approach. 

I told myself not to stress. We descended and turned short final amidst loud comments: “I don’t think I can make it. When the people get off can I go to the bathroom?” There were lots of concerned looks from nearby passengers. They did not know what her problems might entail and they did not want to be caught between some old lady and the bathroom.

However, we landed safely and folks, not surprisingly, got off in record time. This might be a new idea for airplanes. Play a recording of an old person needing to use the bathroom. You think everyone rushes for the door NOW. The Alaska Airlines officials wanted her to get off rather than use the onboard restrooms as the plane had a quick turnaround in Orange Co. and they were ready to board passengers for the flight back. I wanted her to get off too, for if she needed help I did not want to be struggling to help her in a cramped stinky airplane restroom with someone pounding on the door to hurry up.  Mom does NOT hurry once she's in there.

Mom is no longer able to walk all the way up the aisle, so they came with an aisle chair and that helped. 

 We brought her wheelchair with us, and I was wondering how I was going to push it AND her walker loaded with our carry-ons up the jet way, but the gate agent took us all the way to baggage claim.  I can imagine the relief the others were expressing that we were out of there.

My brother Scott told me before we left that he would park and meet me at baggage claim.  He was nowhere to be found.  I started calling him.  He must be just about to walk in, so I wanted to tell him that I was going to take Mom to the restroom so he wouldn’t wonder where I was. I didn’t want to be helping Mom and have to start answering the phone when he called to say he couldn’t find me. I'd probably drop it and accidentally kick it three stalls away.  Then of course, I'd never want to touch it again. 

When last I reached him, he was at home with his cell phone off! Oops. But his wife Kathy was in her car nearby and came in a jiffy. While I was talking to her, Mom is clamoring about going to the restroom, and here came our bags.  I just grabbed them. Not a good idea.  I shoulda thought. Now I had 4 suitcases, the carry-ons, the walker and Mom with her purse in her wheelchair. 

Bags are not to be left unattended, or they will be confiscated, according to the loudspeaker's threatening message.   I was thinking about asking a nice woman standing there if she would watch them for me while I took Mom to the bathroom, when my phone rings and it is Kathy wanting to coordinate where to meet.  Just at that moment, a baggage handler comes up with a big cart. He wants to know if he can take the bags and where.  Poor Mom is clanging like a fire alarm by this time.  I'm talking to Mom, Kathy and the baggage handler is asking me questions and no one can really hear.

The baggage handler got us out to the curb.  Kathy came in a matter of moments and she said she’d load the car while I ran back inside, pushing Mom in the wheelchair, sweater flapping.

  All was well, I had brought extra change of clothes, but we didn’t need them. Whew. 

We rejoined Kathy and someway, somehow, she had folded and squeezed our load into the car.  Hugs and laughs, then she whisked me back to their house.  You will never guess what we had for dinner.

Pea soup. No kidding.