RAGBRAI widow: Day 6

I’m going to have nightmares about crab grass.

Especially after seeing THIS:

We have a 7-foot-wide “dirt patch” in our yard where the garden dirt was sitting for a couple weeks.  After the recent combination of rains and drought and tsunami, it quickly turned into a “weed patch.”

And because I hate being that neighbor who mows or weed whacks when the neighborhood is so deathly silent, I sat out there at dusk and pulled out those crabby bitches by hand.

Aren’t I so thoughtful?

Gah. I can’t stop staring at that picture.

So here’s the miscellaneous stuff we’re doing to take our minds off the crab grass:

I’m reading The Help.  Great book so far.  Very similar to Ya-Ya Sisterhood that Mike loves so much.  (I wish I was joking.)

The girls are getting really into helping me around the house.  I never thought the day would arrive.  But lately, they’ve been begging me to let them cook, clean, pick up the house, and especially: pick vegetables from the garden.

They love that last one so much that I’m constantly yelling at them to leave those poor baby beans on the vine so they can become BIG beans.  I have a handful of plucked-too-soon eggplant and about a dozen green tomatoes.

And I’m mixing in some money lessons.  I occasionally reward them with coins if they go out of their way to help me.  Like tonight: Alison came out and helped me pull weeds then put away the bikes.

So I offered her a quarter or a dime if she could tell me which one was worth more.  Bribery and education go hand-in-hand.

I’m being serenaded almost nightly with piano and song.  All three of the little farts sit on the bench and plink away.  At least lately they’re aiming toward a melody instead of random key spanking.

It’s when they break into their third rendition of Jingle Bells that I pull the plug.

Movies.  The girls and I have watched a dozen movies over the last week, almost all of them after 9:30 at night.  We watched one-and-a-half of the Night at the Museums. 

Six days.  I can’t believe it’s been six days already.

Maybe it’s because he works so many nights – leaving us only a few minutes to chat while he gets ready for work – that I’m not terribly lonely yet.  I miss him, but we’re still pulling through okay.

And the girls are becoming more independent.

Maybe Mike should stay away until I’ve got the girls tying their own shoes (nope, still haven’t mastered that one) and cooking supper for ME.

A girl can dream.

RAGBRAI widow: Day 5

How are things at the house?

Good. I’m getting a lot taken care of, although now that I look around, it probably doesn’t appear that way.

I hate that part of the stay-at-home job, the invisible work that you don’t get credit for, only the blame when the bills don’t get paid or the kids’ teeth fall out with cavities.

It sounds like Mike is having a great and miserable time on RAGBRAI, so that’s some consolation.

I told him, I want to hear what a fabulous time you had when you get back. You’d better go on and on about how much fun it was. And take pictures. I want to look at pictures and say, Hey, remember that time you went on that really fun bike ride?

WARNING: I will be incredibly irritated if he pisses and moans about how aweful it was on this vacation we’d planned for and paid for over the last year while I stayed home to tear out the basement floor and fix our house and our yard and his car and go car shopping while dealing with insurance phone calls and paying bills and preparing for college and 1st grade. I’m getting annoyed just thinking about the possibility that he’s not having fun. Where’s my claw hammer…

Anyway, we decided to sell Mike’s car to the insurance company for the full payout. I asked Mike what he’d like to do as far as a new car.

His response: I trust your judgment.

Oh, there are so many possibilities to mess with his head here. Stephie said I should test drive a really pimped out brand new car and leave it on the driveway for when he gets home.

The kids are ready for RAGBRAI to be over.

Last night, they peppered me with questions.

When is Daddy coming home?

Where is he sleeping tonight?

Is it going to be rainy there? Will his tent rain on him?

I miss Daddy so much.

Which is sweet, except when I’m trying to cook supper and Kristin is standing 4 inches behind me, simultaneously playing Madagascar Penguins on her Leapster and asking me to bring her father back and maybe she’d feel better if she could have a piece of candy.

And while we’re on the subject of things no one cares about, the guy who poured our foundations and put on our window wells stopped out yesterday. He rushed out after I told him we’d had our basement flooded, which meant I needed to rush to get into non-pajama clothes. He rang the doorbell as I was throwing on my jeans.

He looked unnervingly like Crocodile Dundee, minus the hat and with the addition of a few decades of sun damage.

He told me that he would no longer warrantee the wells since the frost was what had detached them from the house, but that he could pour us some concrete ones for the bargain basement price of $1500-1800. Because he liked my face.

I turned him down for the moment.

I have the money if I spend less on a car, but I’m thinking the five $4 bottles of exterior aluminum caulk – which I already own – are looking cheaper better than getting stuck buying another grandma-esque car. And I refuse to buy yet another white vehicle. People are probably starting to wonder if we’re a white supremacist family with the white cars and white house and blindingly white wife.

And there’s not enough alcohol in the world to make me believe buying a sweet ride and blaring Big Pimpin’ through corn pone Iowa is a bad idea.

Mike and I will probably try to do the work ourselves with the help of my kinda-sorta-brother-in-childoutofwedlock. Mike used to do concrete construction, among many other jobs of the labored variety, before he got hired on at the mill.

Which brings me to an aside...

I can't stop reading the comments on the local news page. And, more specifically, can't stop getting pissed off at the whiny nature of the commentors.

One mini news blip stated that the garbage men were starting their day promptly at 7AM to "minimize the amount of time spent in the heat." Keep in mind, we've had Heat Advisories nearly every day for two weeks. It's miserable out there.

One woman's response: That they're lazy.

I let my temper flare up. Mike never worked for the garbage crew, but I know many of them would hurry to get their jobs done by noon, not to run off to drink or nap, but to go to a second job.

So I unleashed a little sarcasm on her. It was after a long build-up of frustrations from people who do nothing but piss and moan about civil servants. It wasn't the one comment that set me off, but a long list of comments.

ME: Seriously??? What is WRONG with some of you people. I swear there is never a single story on here without a complaint. I happen to know more than a few people who work for the city and TRUST ME, while you sit and FB from your cushy office job, you would NEVER trade places with the work they do. The days that you're whining about your AC at work, they're out in the 100* weather doing manual labor. But don't break a sweat lifting that pencil...

R: You don't have to like peoples opinion but you do have to respect their opinions if you expect the same in return. I chose my job knowing I would be in a climate controlled environment. I live in Iowa, it makes sense.

C: And just because I chose a job that has to do with that HEAVY pencil I lift and that pays three times as much sounds like a bad career choice. My bad

M: a little bit of gratitude for service workers goes a long way. Just sayin...

ME: I don't have to respect anything, especially blind generalizations by people who seem to have nothing but disdain for every other human being if it gives them 5 minutes of gratification. Cassandra, I don't care how much you make. It doesn't give you a pass to be a brat.

R: I guess I didn't realize it only matters what you have to say. Its just to bad your words are hypocritical. Your tired of the complaining & you called her a brat but all you did was complain & act like a brat.

ME: Renee - I don't "expect" respect for my opinions. I have opinions because it's what I feel is right, not because I care how other people feel about them. And as far as being hypocritical? So be it. Maybe I should join in instead? Dear Little Baby Jesus, I hope ALL the city and county workers and construction workers and all the apparently *less-intelligent* people in our communities who chose to work in non-climate-controlled environments due to life circumstance or genetic predisposition or personal choice or because they must be sinners are able to do their jobs safely and hopefully far, far away from this forum and the opinions of people who feel they are lazy for not disinfecting their trash cans before placing them exactly 12" from the curb. Please, someday, give them brains so they can get real jobs and spend 80% of their day belittling others online. In Facebook, I pray... Amen.

Who says I need therapy?

RAGBRAI widow: Day 4

And of course, by “Day 4” I mean “yesterday.”

If I remember correctly, I spent most of the day in a mental coma, debating whether to make beef stir fry for supper, or beef stir fry for late supper.  I decided not to make beef stir fry at all, but to make it for tonight.  I’m glad I took the time to think that decision through.  Take notes.  There will be a quiz.

Mike called me at some point – still alive, still not bleeding from any part of his body – and I explained to him that, if we take the money for his car instead of buying it back, then sell our Suburban, we’d have about 20,000 to spend on a car and a truck.  OR we could just buy a new car and keep the Suburban.  Hear my sighs of irritation… SIGH.

He couldn’t decide.  He told me: Use your best judgment.  Whatever you want to do.

Like I don’t have enough to worry about!  It took me 6 hours to decide not to make stir fry, for gods sakes.

So now I’m car shopping.  I think I’ll have a car sitting on the driveway when he gets home Saturday afternoon.  Might even put a big bow on it.  I’ve found quite a few decent ones, one of which is a 2003 Lincoln LS with all the trimmings.  Eight years old, but who gives a rat’s ass?  With our luck, it’ll be destroyed in six months by a random act of God.  Or random act of raccoon.

(And yes, I realize I just told everyone in internet land that my husband is gone until Saturday.  It doesn’t worry me as much as it should worry any potential burglars.  I sleep next to a claw hammer. And have a full-sized MagLite and sanded down shovel handle under my bed.  I kind of fantasize about sinking the teeth of that hammer into the skull of an intruder.  So yeah.  That.  And the fact that my husband can be kind of a chickenshit when he gets really scared – just ask him – so I usually have to go wondering by myself with weapon in hand.  Him being gone is actually cutting out the middle man.)

The second half of the rest of my evening was spent at the neighbor’s 5th birthday party.

The girls love Gage’s house.  Even though they’re devastated that the wind storm two weeks ago took out his huge swing set, they’ve told me that they still like to visit him.

Let’s hope the girls become irretrievably hideous or Gage becomes less of an adorable little blonde thing over the next decade or I’m going to have to seriously rethink putting up an impenetrable force field between our houses, he is just that cute.

We only had one moment of mini drama when Alison tried to bite a little boy in the skull after he made a sudden turn. Smack!  Her tooth is now loose, but it’s one I want gone anyway.  In fact, I’ve stopped cutting up their apples in the hopes that they’ll lose teeth before they need to be “extracted.”

Thanks to reading other mothers’ horror stories with piñatas, I knew we needed a boundary.  Logs sufficed well enough, except the dad, Cory, almost was decapitated by his own child when he broke the No One Past the Logs rule.  And now you know, young man…

CAAAANNNDYYYY!!!!

That should be enough sugar to last us until next Easter.  Of course, I told the girls to pick up as many square candies as they could find.  I love me some Now N Laters.

After chasing down a neighbor’s dog for 10 minutes and catching him only to find out he’s NOT the neighbor’s dog but actually a stray – yay, me! – I brought the girls home where they sat on the couch watching cartoons and pretending they weren’t exhausted, yawning be damned.

I forced them to go to bed at 10:30 with the promises that they’d get a visitor today.  Possibly Untie Stuffie or Grandma.

The girls obliged, but they neglected to inform me that they’d be standing in the doorway of my room at 3:30AM, blankets over their heads.  Thankfully, I’m a little slow on the draw with the claw hammer.

Turns out they could sleep in, anyway.  Stephie crapped out on us and won’t be coming up to help me build my workbench and clean out the garage.

Then again, do you really want a person like this:

working with power tools?

Advantage: Loren.

We’ll see what we can get done today.  If only I can decide what to make for supper…

RAGBRAI widow: Day 2

I’m starting to miss Mike. Just a little.

Who else would understand my excitement for 30 Rock, pretzels with jalapeno cheese dip, and brightly colored, overpriced sports cars?

I was actually kind of pissed off at him on Day 0. We woke up early, then had an argument about whether or not we should park his crap at my parents’ house while he went back for his dad, versus leaving us at Hardee’s.

I caved in. Hardee’s it was.

Hardee’s at 5 AM is kind of a scary place.

I made the girls eat outside.

I added the second picture simply because this girl is a weirdo.

Yes, Mike. That child is yours. She’s the same one who plays her Leapster while wearing a hooded sweatshirt and one Michael Jackson-esque Hello Kitty glove in the middle of the hottest week of the Summer.

Clearly, I haven’t had much time to think about what Mike’s up to… with the flooded basement and all that comes with it.

On Day 1, my parents offered to come up to help, and while everyone was in such a cheery mood, I told them they may want to wait for the Rainpocalypse to pass.

After they arrived, we spent the first half of the morning emptying the basement of all the hard work we’d put in over the previous Fall.

Then we all decided we were hungry, which meant I bought $60 of beer and a couple bags of snacks at the gas station.

Half in the bag, we managed to put in a new post and mailbox… fairly straight.

The neighbors who’d lost their entire roof two weeks ago came over and offered to help. Mainly I was grateful they let us throw the roof and siding debris into their construction dumpster.

And now thanks to the insurance adjustor taking his sweet time getting around to our house, we have what I believe is our loveliest patch of lawn to date.

Thankfully, my mom gave me her old garden wand. Probably because my lawn and gardens are so incredibly depressing that she just can’t bare the thought that they’re about to die.

My second favorite part of Day 1 (after the liquid lunch, of course) was the phone call from my insurance agent, giving me the heads up that flooding isn’t covered by my plan. I’ve looked into flood insurance (not everyone is “eligible”) programs, and I have no fucking clue if we can get compensation for the hundreds of dollars in wood and supplies that are heading over to the dump.

Well, it might be a close second with the moment I realized I should probably get out of the heat.  I’m kind of surprised I didn’t die while hoisting all that roofing crap into the wheelbarrow and pushing it up the street. I started blacking out around the corners of my vision as I walked, but the end never came. I’m pretty sure that’s not how I want to die, so I’m not disappointed, but I will say this: I drank a whole 6-pack yesterday and never peed once. Yay, dehydration!!!

In good news, the basement is almost entirely dried out. Which is saying something, since our “floating floor system” (the black stuff above) REALLY became a floating floor system, rolling waves and all.

As for RAGBRAI Day 2, I have no clue what happened. I pretty much blanked it out.

Oh, besides the fact that the local bank rejected our insurance checks for $2400, leaving me paying for all sorts of cleaning and construction supplies and wondering why my debit card wasn’t going through. Then trying to use my business acct and realizing my daily limit had been exceeded. Thank you, Target card… for buying my groceries. Jeezus frick. You’d think – with a town this size – that MAYBE, just MAYBE, they’d call us and say, Hey, you needed TWO signatures on this check, so that I could come down and claim them and forge Mike’s signature on them instead of mailing them off and delaying the money for another week. Is that too much to ask???

We also discovered a load of hot peppers, beans, pea pods, tomatoes and eggplant are nearly ready for harvest.  Alison spent 20 minutes digging out pea pods and crunching them down as fast as she could pick them. I didn’t even know she liked peas.

The only other thing I can remember is that we went to the post office to tell them that they can start delivering our mail again (because apparently having a mailbox wasn’t clue enough for them) and the girls started yelling, KITTENNNNS!!!!

Sure enough. Kittens. A poster on the wall advertised them. FREE. And they look just like Moochie.

I texted Mike: How angry would you be if we had another family member when you got home, then attached the picture.

You suck. How many did you get?

Ye of little faith! I haven’t gotten any… yet. I called and they have seven 3-month-old kittens left.

The girls picked Krissy, Gemma (with a hard G), and Mrs. Cat for potential cat names. They girls apparently don’t see any resemblance to their own names, since I told them No, you CANNOT name the cat after yourself.

We talked to Mike yesterday and it seems as though he’s survived another day. Seriously. Last year, he bit the dust hardcore when his dad’s headlight fell off his bike and Mike nailed it with his tire. His arm is still scarred. I’m waiting to hear the bad news for THIS year.

It’s something like 2 or 3 people die on average each year. The last year that I rode, two guys got struck by lightning and another one died of a heart attack. It’s a really weird feeling to see the bikes slow down and ten minutes later an ambulance squeezes past.

On a completely unrelated note, Lance Armstrong rode today. I wonder if Mike will see him out at the beer tents tonight.

They’re at Boone today, and the only thing I know about that town is that some of the guys from the team 16 years ago hooked up with a bunch of slutty chicks there. I can say that because I’m 30. And I believe I’m now officially allowed to look down on youngsters.

So yay, have fun tonight, Mike! I guess?

If tonight is anything like last night, we’ll stay up until midnight watching Up while the kids share a giant bowl of Corn Pops.

Mother of the Year? You bet. I might have to crack open one of the 8 7 bottles of beer I have from Day 1’s lunch to celebrate.

RAGBRAI widow: Day 1

Can we pretend that Sunday never happened?

Although we DID get a lot done… new mailbox, all the house debris off my lawn (thanks to the neighbors coming over even then their house is missing the roof!), the water out of the basement (as well as the floor), and my dryer duct shortened so I no longer have to worry about a dryer fire.

Tell that to my two fire extinguishers that now reside in my house, one on each floor.

It’s just that when my parents come over to help, it seems like a good idea until it seems like it’s NOT.

I’ve got pictures and stories and all that crap, but I’m already 3/5 of the way through Day 2 and have a long list of work ahead of me.

It’ll have to wait until this evening…

RAGBRAI widow: Day 0

Last night, I called The Children’s Place.

Um, hello. I bought about $130 in clothes yesterday, then got a coupon in the mail for 25% off my entire purchase.  Do I need to bring all my clothes in for a price adjustment?

Actually, that coupon doesn’t apply to prior purchases.

Okay, but I can just return everything and repurchase it with my coupon, so…

I suppose you could do that.

I will do that.

And I did.  At that point, just to spite her and their store’s evil policies.  While I got the stink eye from cashier lady, Mike took the girls over to Claire’s.  Kristin came back with a huge grin on her face and a card filled with earrings that Mike bought for her with his precious beer money.

(For all you haters out there, that’s just one of the many reasons I love my husband.)

We got a text during errands that we should come over to the neighbors’ for supper.  I would like to point out that there is an inverse ratio between how much of a hurry I’m in and how fast Mike walks.

(Is it on purpose?  That’s just one of the many reasons that I want to slap my husband.)

A disappointed and seemingly antisocial Mike opted out of supper so he could pack for RAGBRAI.

While the girls and I visited at the neighbors, the power went out.  The wind shook the trees.  The rain seemed more like a faucet full on.  The neighbor’s roof – previously damaged 2 weeks ago but nothing obviously urgent – leaked water into their bathroom ceiling.

During the commotion, I noticed our Suburban pull up in the storm.  A soaking wet Jesus stood before us in the light of his flashlight.

Wow, you mean he was coming over to visit since the power took out his ability to wash clothes?  Wrong-O.

Loren, I need your help.  The basement is flooding… it’s just pouring in  through the window.

Go home. Light candles. Threaten the children with their lives if they touch the candles.  Go downstairs to assess.  See water in the window well.  A foot deep.  No, more than a foot.  Pouring through like a spout.  Cram towels in the track.  Realize it’s futile.

Cuss like a sailor.

Mike and I ran to the garage where I grabbed two sand pails.

Ignoring the fact that our clothes were as wet as if we’d jumped headfirst into a swimming pool, we knelt in the mud in the blinding rain and bent down to scoop water out of the window well by the bucketful.  It was a race.  We could hardly keep up with the water pouring into the well.

I could also hardly stop laughing in between Mike’s motherfuckers.

It was all so ridiculous.

We’d just gotten a check from the insurance agent 6 hours earlier for the prior week’s storm damages.  And gotten a phone call with an offer to total Mike’s car out 2 hours before that.

And now the basement was becoming a floating lake of OSB.  Once the rain finally stopped, we stood back and started laughing like idiots.  Luckily it only took 20 minutes for the majority of the water to drain away.  The rest of it would have to wait for the removal of our floor, and Mike was slated to leave for 8 days about 5 hours later.

During this same time, my mom and sister were at a Lady Antebellum concert a county away, enjoying a night out.  (Dad was supposed to go, but duty called at work.  Stephie stepped in to help.)

Isn’t she adorable?

(Happy 53rd birthday, Mom!)

This is what I gather happened:

At some point during the concert, Dad texted Mom that storms were on their way.  Probably at the same time that Dad texted me: Are you getting clobbered by the storms yet?  I couldn’t answer since I was busy trying to build an ark.  Two of every animal, girls.  Decide amongst yourselves who gets to swim with the cat.

Mom and Steph hurried to the bathrooms, and while waiting in line, let a woman ahead of them in more desperate need.  The lady offered them 3 beer tickets as thanks.

While redeeming those tickets under the beer tent, luck would have it that it started to rain pretty steadily.  When it slowed, they ran back to their seats under the awning.

The band played a few more songs, then suddenly played hit after hit after hit and bang bang boom the fireworks went off, well before the concert was scheduled to end.

Just then, the real rain hit.

That same downpour that Mike and I had been fighting minutes earlier.

They ran to Jeff’s diesel truck – their super classy transport for the night – only five blocks away, parked in someone’s yard.  When they got there, Mom had 2” of water in her purse and her makeup was streaked.  They looked like “drowned rats,” and she told me she finally knows what jeggings feel like.

Yes, my mother is awesome.  She knows what jeggings are.  Then again, she lived through the first 80s.

Even with 4-wheel drive, they couldn’t get out of the person’s yard.  The owner came out, laughing, giving them the “go ahead” hands to gun it.  Mud splatter and ruts later, they were freed.  Into the bumper to bumper traffic with an hour wait to the highway.  That’s when they remembered they were out of diesel.

A bunch of horribly timed turns later in search of a back alley gas station, they got behind a car with hazards flashing.  They couldn’t tell why, though, because the rain almost entirely blinded them.

Stephie turned to Mom, Do you feel lucky today?

Mom laughed and said No.

Steph rolled the truck past the car.

I assume at some point the saying: Turn around, don’t drown crossed her mind.  Or maybe not.

Even at a crawl, the water sprayed several feet over the truck’s roof.  Mom said, It was like riding a JetSki down the street.

Luckily for them, it was a diesel and stayed lit.  I can absolutely see my sister being one of “those” people sitting on top of a vehicle roof, waiting to be rescued downstream.

Stephie kept saying, Do you realize how bad it was raining?  It was pouring!

I may have had some idea… (see above where we were out in our yard for 30 minutes getting a free shower in our impromptu swimming pool).

After all the crazy antics, Mom was most worried that she had to crawl upstairs in her own home in the buff.  She might have drowned, but god forbid, don’t let anyone see her old lady ass crack.

Maybe that’s a bit too harsh a criticism, especially since prancing around my house displaying my old lady ass crack seems to be a hobby of mine.

Then again, I don’t have a cabana boy right next door to worry about.  Chris?  Matt?  RJ?  Anyone else?  I’m always taking job applications…

Mom says she feels like she’s had terrible luck lately.

I feel like I have a radishbush up my ass!

A what up your ass???

A radishbush.

I don’t get it…

You know – a RABBIT’S FOOT.  How people think they’re lucky?

Oh wow, I thought you said radish bush.  I was wondering if they bring bad luck or something.

I think we’ve decided that we’re cursed.  I also think we’ve decided I need my hearing checked.

And after that crazy evening, we had to be up at 4 AM to take Mike in town for their team RAGBRAI bus.  They drove their bikes and gear across the state to the Western edge in preparation of tomorrow, the first official day of a 7-day ride.  I hope he got some sleep. I only had about 2 hours and the girls had 4.

I have a feeling this is going to be a long, long week…

To Colleen

Happy 53rd birthday to my mom.

She deserves way more than a 4-sentenced blog post, but I spent the first 1/2 of the morning being a lousy daughter – forgetting it was her birthday until Dad called and said, By the way, it’s your mom’s birthday today and she’s right next to me, and the second 1/2 being seriously depressed while cutting broken vegetables out of my garden and putting away laundry that I’d hung over kitchen chairs to dry at 1:30 AM because our now-flooded basement decided that our dryer doesn’t need to actually DRY the clothes.

So yeah, after all that, she’s coming up here tomorrow with my dad to help remove the basement floor and dry everything out.

Happy Birthday to the Mother / Grandmother of the Century!

No whammies, no whammies

“Poverty Causing President,” in case you can’t read the print. The last one said “Mendacity of a Dope.” They’re getting increasingly less funny, especially when most of the people in our state have no idea what mendacity even means. Ahem… (looking it up online…)

mendacity: having the tendency to lie.

See? Now we’re all smarter.

I miss the days of the simple OOPS!. Or No Clue. Or OBummer, Obama bin $pendin’, or SCAM.

The miracle that is: colored duct tape.

That picture has nothing to do with anything I had planned to write, but I didn’t want to forget to post it. Since that seems to be a problem of mine. (See a lack of the post The Missing Week: Part 2 of 2. I might get around to it. When I do, it’ll be called The Missing Post of the Missing Week Part 2 of 2: Part 1 of 1.)

I amuse myself.

As I’m typing, there’s a man on my roof. While I’d like to imagine him shirtless and sweaty from the heat, he’s in a polo and poking at my shingles, taking measurements.

I apologized and promised him that I’m not trying to be a nitpicker, but that I didn’t want to overlook anything since I don’t know what’s covered. Every time I pointed something out, he’d say, I’m not sure that that would be caused by wind, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Um, it wasn’t just a windy day. It was the force of an EF1 tornado for 48 minutes.

So I point to things and tell him how much they cost me… my $8 solar lights – 2 of which no longer work, one broken in half, the other just not working (he’ll “give me the benefit of the doubt") – my bricks that busted in half, my $65 chicken that is now headless…

Why does this remind me of Michele?

I’m whittling away at my $1600 deductible, eight dollars at a time.

My garage door is gonna cost at least that much, so anything else is just gravy.

Have I mentioned that we had siding embedded in my fence? There’s nothing I love more than working on that motherfucking fence.

Send me good insurance mojo… I’m going to need it. Big money, big money! No whammies!!!

It’s gettin' humid in here, so take off all your safety clothes

It’s that time of year again when I start whining about the weather like an incontinent old ninny-head.

It’s HOT. It’s not only hot, but it’s HUMID.

I took this snapshot on Tuesday night at 10PM. Pee. EMMM. PM. As in nighttime. 100hundredandfucking7. (I went ahead and put a little star in case you don’t know where Iowa is, since probably 1/2 of Americans think we’re near Texas.)

We drove our sweaty asses in town this morning for Emma’s eye appointment. I’d found a tiny brown dot over her iris a couple weeks ago while camping, and since it didn’t hurt and it didn’t LOOK bad, I started Googling. Oh my god CANCER. And MORE Cancer. And scooping out of eyeballs to get rid of Cancer.

I know the popular saying “Google is not your friend,” but does anyone really ever listen to it?

We spoke to the opthalmologist, and as soon as he got the magnifier up to her eye, he laughed and said, Well THAT’S interesting…

Why does the weird shit happen only to US?

He explained that she has rust inside her cornea.

From what, he’s not sure. Probably a piece of metal. But the metal is no longer there. And her eye has healed over “quite nicely.” Nicely enough, in fact, that he doesn’t want to chance damaging her eye with surgery if the rust seems content to stay put.

Now I get to watch her eyeball like a hawk for the next couple years to make sure it doesn’t move or change shape or get irritated.

We met up with my sister at the mall, but not before spending a small fortune at The Children’s Place. (Place your bids, ladies… this stuff will probably be up for garage sale when they grow out of it in half a week.)

Kristin got the Fedora, Emma got the rose petal skirt, and Alison got the sweater dress.

Kristin is now insisting she’s a detective. Because otherwise why would she have such a bitchin’ hat? So watch out.

Stephie lugged me down to Von Maur to try on shoes because she’s tired of looking at my 2-year-old yellow Soffts. I paid a lot of money for these. I plan to wear them down to little black and yellow cracked flaps of cardboard.

Which of course meant that we headed to the kids’ section. Another fortune spent. At least it was clearance this time.

In a moment of wisdom, we decided to drag the girls out of the mall and into the inferno in order to fetch lunch.

Stephie likes to crank the AC, so my car was whining through the parking lot.

It read:

but I’m pretty sure it meant:

We passed a group of brown-glazed men working on the main street through Northeast Cedar Rapids.

Stephie: Look at those poor bastards. (As she fanned her armpits in the air-conditioned breeze.) I could never work in this heat. I would die. LOOK at them – wearing no shirt under a safety vest. That’s what I’d do. I’d wear…

Me: …safety green pasties.

Stephie: With blinkers. And a bright green g-string.

Me: Definitely.

In yet another moment of heat-induced mania, we took the girls to Stuff, Etc. It’s a consignment shop where they make you pay more for regurgitated goods than you pay for it new.

We found a small white wall shelf for my bathroom, but by the time we circled back through the store, it was in someone else’s cart up at the counter. I hesitated and wondered if I could make it to the car before she realized I’d stolen it out of her cart, but I sulked instead behind her with a glass measuring cup I’d found for $3.99.

After standing behind her and being harassed by Stephie for missing out on the shelf for three minutes, I lost all desire to buy anything there. Stephie asked, Do you even really WANT that measuring cup? Can’t you just buy a NEW one??? It looks gross.

I peeked inside at the white residue caking the bottom. They probably made meth with it. Can I put it back?

Here. Let ME do it.

She plopped it – CLUNK – behind the cash register and waved goodbye to our happy little shelf.

Then we got in the car and laughed. Because heat makes us giddy. And everything is funny by this point in the story.

We picked up her spawn at the daycare where she sends her child. It’s more like a sports club-slash-school-slash-field trip facility. I would like to point out that my sister now not only doesn’t have to work a 9-to-5 job, but sends her son to this child’s paradise.

I never want to hear you complain about my years as a stay-at-home mom.

I noticed that they also have infants at this place. I say that because you can see the babies sleeping in the cribs right up against the windows.

It’s just like window shopping for puppies.

We dragged the four kids and our fat, sweaty carcasses to Coldstone Creamery, where they happily announce that under NO circumstances do they accept LivingSocial or Groupon coupons, but please do enjoy your treat. Kinda like a big Fuck You before you even place your order.

By the way, I had no such coupon. But I kinda wish I had, just so I could piss and moan a little more about it.

As we’d come into the parking lot, I’d seen this green taxi. But Stephie’s demonic voices wouldn’t allow us to get any closer than this shot through the car window.

GetmyeouttathisgoddamnedheatNOOOOWWWWW.

You don’t argue with that.

Titillating Tuesday

I finally fetched our mail from the post office today.  I figure eight days is long enough.

I opened a utility bill and we had such a large credit that it said “DO NOT PAY” across the bottom and top.

Did we get some kind of credit for losing power for a day?  Or did I get all stupid last month and pay it twice?  I discount no theory.

I apologized to the post master, saying that with all the storm drama, I’d completely forgotten that we didn’t have a mailbox.  And our mailmen don’t particularly love getting out of the car to bring packages up, let alone junk mail due to missing mailboxes.

I sure hope they enjoy the five MILLION pounds of textbooks I ordered this week.  Find a place to stuff those sonsofbeeches.

---

I finally ordered a new garage door this morning.

The pervy old guy – after asking which of my children he could keep (ten seconds into meeting him) because he “love(s) little girls” and I laughed along with him while secretly thinking I bet you do – asked me TWICE if I should wait to order the door in order to consult with my husband, throwing in a “honey” or ten for good measure.

I write the checks around here, Sweet Cheeks.

Then he told me he wished he was married to me.  Who doesn’t?  Besides the obvious one of my husband, anyway…

I’m almost glad he threw that in there because up until that point, it seemed as though he was putting me in my place.  Now I know he’s just an idiot.

Then he showed my girls a picture of his grandson and asked which of my girls would like to marry him.

None.  Unless it gets me some kind of family discount.

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Speaking of Mike:

He likes to harass the crap out of our kids, sometimes literally.  The kids are relatively quiet until the moment he walks in the door.  He has them trained to go into superpsychotic monkey mode.

He also likes to pester ME.  But he uses the kids as weapons.

Emma has been running around the house over the last week, telling me how wonderful our lives would be if only we had a Sunsetter.

Mom, we need a Sunsetter!  And maybe some tables.  Wouldn’t that be great???

And yes, you know what a Sunsetter is.  It’s an old person awning that they advertise on TV.

He’s got her convinced that we need one, NOT because he wants one, but because he knows she won’t let it go.

Too bad I’ve been working against him.

I’ve got the kids convinced we need a scooter.

Meep Meep.

Doesn’t it scream mid-life crisis?

I think I’m paranoid–about twins

I went to a baby shower a week ago – the day before The Storm – for a friend whom I haven’t seen in a couple months.

We always have a good time when we get together.

Unfortunately, Mike wasn’t able to make it, otherwise I’m certain he’d have had the Diaper Genie on his arm like a Transformer gun.

Anyway, I got a text a few days ago from the same friend, telling me she has something to show Mike and I and could we come over on Sunday?

I was freaking out.

I told Mike: Do you think she’s having TWINS???

Because every time anyone says “I have something to tell/show you guys,” it’s always twins.  We are the go-to people for sharing the twin information.

I convinced Mike that that’s why we were going over to their house.

So last night, Mike and I hung out in their livingroom with friends of theirs and an old coworker of mine, and our friends asked us to have a seat on the couch for a presentation.

I was all Here it comes!  The ultrasound pictures!!!  TWINS!

Then on the screen came a good-looking guy talking about vacation packages and getting discounted TVs from an online mall, and I was all Wow, they put a lot of time into this. They’re trying to throw us off their scent.  I wonder when the ultrasound pictures are gonna pop up on the screen!

Yeah, it never happened.  But we did find out about a fabulous way to travel at a discounted rate!

Mike will never let me live it down.

All the way home, he kept giggling, Prestige WorldWide… Boats and Hoes.  You have now lost all credibility.  You were SO CONVINCED it was twins.

In case you don’t follow the reference from Step Brothers:

In any case, I talked to my parents because I’m all out of money and figured they’d be the only ones in our family doing any traveling this year after we get raped simultaneously by the dentist and insurance adjustor for thousands of dollars.

I was too late.  My parents informed me that my SISTER has already signed up and tried to get them on board.

I think Stephie is going for some kind of record for most work-from-home business opportunities.  MaryKay. Avon. Silpada. I know there’s more here…

So yeah.  I was beat to the punch by my sister.

And I told Mike the only way I’d sign up is if he talked to the guys at work, some of whom call themselves: Redneck Trash with Too Much Cash.

He gave me a meh.

So now the plan is that if anyone is interested in signing up, I’m sending them to my friend.  Happy early baby present!  They’ll need that extra money for the twins they’re not having.

I guess I’ll never get my boats ‘n’ hoes.  I’ll be a boatless, ho-less, loser for the rest of my life.

Weird is genetic

Spawn: When you hold my hand, don’t pull my arms too hard or they’ll fall off.

Me: Does that happen often?

Spawn: Sometimes.  Or sometimes my leg falls off.

Me: I hate when that happens.  Sometimes my arms AND my legs fall off, then I roll around on the floor – a legless, armless blob.

Spawn: Because you can’t walk without legs.

Me: Exactly.

---

Munchkin: Are Auntie Stephie and Uncle Jeff married?

Me: What do YOU think?

Munchkin: Yeah.

(They’re not.)

Me: How do you know?

Munchkin: They sounded out the words.

---

Big Al: When I grow up, I’m gonna be a fighter-fighter.  And when the bell sounds, I’m going to put my boots on VERY fast and jump in the truck, and I’ll take a water hose to put out the fire.

Little Baby Round Head: When I grow up, I’m gonna be a liVarian.

Big Al: When the librarian’s house is on fire, I will hear the bell.  I’m going to put my boots on VERY fast and jump in the truck, and I’ll take a water hose to spray out the fire.

Monkey: When I grow up, I’m gonna be a teacher.

Big Al: When the school gets on fire, I’m gonna tell the kids to get out.

Me: Burn, baby, burn.

---

Shorty: He had a tiny dog.  I think it was a Chi-walla.

Mike: Don’t you mean Chihuahua?

Shorty: No, that’s silly.

Me: Oh, that’s right… I’ve heard of that breed.  A mix between a Chihuahua and Koala.

---

Child: Something’s wrong with this water.  It tastes like hotdog water.

Me: The latest KoolAid flavor.  Yummy.

We’ve got El Derecho stuff!

Har. Har. Har. I crack myself up.

That’s about as clean as the humor gets around here.

Me: In your BUTT.

Mike: In your MOM’S butt.

Mike cracks himself up. He’s constantly making YOUR MOM references.

Which is why he had double the fun when my sister was here yesterday. It was a two-fer. Because we have the SAME MOM. (He had to spell it out for us, apparently.)

Stephie came up to tolerate Mike’s crude sense of humor and obvious butt-crack, coin slot jokes in order to help clean up the neighborhood after our Derecho on Monday morning before the butt-crack of dawn.

There’s no more relaxing way to wake up than at 5AM to Mike throwing his body up out of bed with a LOREN! Get the kids in the basement… NOW, then jolting upright only to hear what seemed like our house being sucked into the World’s Largest WetVac.

Mike – the lookyloo of the lookiest – was right there with us, huddled under the stairs. He didn’t dare go near a window. In fact, I was the one furthest from safety, perched on the edge of our “safe spot,” while Mike asked me from his prime spot: What IS that SOUND??? Can you see anything out the windows? No honor amongst spouses.

Instead of being tucked away, I sat and held on to a board that we’d – only a year earlier – bolted into the concrete floor for just such an occasion. It only ran to the upstairs banister, yet I could feel it shaking and snapping like our house was dancing around it.

Mike and I gave each other a look that said we knew we’d be lucky to have a house to go upstairs to.

Then came the sirens. Although we weren’t sure at first with all the noise of the rain and wind.

And a continuing bangbangbangbangbangbang like a crazed gaggle of woodpeckers which we later figured out was our Radon pipe that ran from below our house out to the top of the roof. Our house was twisting and popping against it.

There was so much rain and debris that we could only see alternating white and black smears out the window, depending how often the lightning flashed.

We sat down there for 45 minutes, thinking the entire time: Is this what it sounds like to be in a tornado? Or will it get louder? Why isn’t our house flying away yet? When should I dive into the corner on top of the kids?

I tried to call my parents but we had no signal.

I tried to get radar but we had no internet.

I tried to get our weather radio signal, but it was splotchy at best.

The winds died down to a dull roar at around 6, and we went up to assess the storm and damage.

I first noticed the neighbors had a flap of shingles missing. Then the girls pointed out that our mailbox was gone. Along with the horrified: How will we ever get our mail?!?

Mike peeked out the girls’ window and laughed.

Um… my bumper is off.

What do you mean?

It’s OFF MY CAR. IN THE STREET. OFF.

Sure enough. Mike’s car got hit by a roof. The new neighbors across the street had lost a chunk of their garage, and Mike’s car and our driveway FOUND it.

(Remember that the next time you complain about hail damage.)

We took a flashlight and found out we were missing part of our fence and had debris from dozens of houses on our lawn. On the way back in the house, I noticed that my hanging basket was also missing the mommy and baby birds that have been our “pets” for the last month or two.

I was devastated.

I’d heard the basket swinging and smacking the porch as we’d headed to the basement, but I was hoping they’d flown off in anticipation of the storm.

The weren’t the only fowl casualties.

The adorable ceramic chicken planter that Stephie had given me for working at her open house was in several pieces on my lawn. I took this then considered sending her a ransom note.

I heard the neighbor yelling for a dog, unusual since he doesn’t OWN a dog. Then I saw why. Only a house away, our other neighbors had lost their entire roof.

I jogged up the street and asked if they needed help, but it turned out a couple firemen had helped them out of the basement already and they were in a neighbor’s house.

We found fun trinkets all morning. This OSB came with a side of 2”x6”x12’ that scooted right up to the house. I am incredibly grateful it didn’t IMPALE anything.

Thanks to starting at 6AM and the help of a random (unknown) neighbor who happened by with his daughters and a wheel barrow, we had all of the shingles, siding, plywood and plastic out of our yard within two hours. We also found his decorative pillow.

I couldn’t figure out how my newly planted tree could snap off at the base then fly over our house but end up pushed underneath our deck. Or how our bricks had thrown themselves OVER our fence and broken in half with just straight line winds and not a tornado, but that’s what the news kept reporting.

I finally understood this morning when they reported that the Derecho had had sustained winds of 110-130 mph. The storm lasted for NINE HOURS in totality. Holy hell.

No wonder.

Mike spent most of the day at the neighbor’s house, and Stephie and I helped a little in between fetching him ice to salvage his groceries and making phone calls to our insurance.

The only positive side to this whole story (other than no people being injured) is that I noticed the mommy dove had come back to her nest. I was so sad for her. There was no way those babies survived.

Then I wondered… and I started searching.

I finally found them, huddled underneath our downspout, 20 feet away.

I scooped the fluffy babies up, one at a time, and plopped them carefully into the nest.

I’ve never seen such a happy bird in my life.

She immediately cleaned them up then sat on their heads.

Another neighbor and I found three of her baby Robins on the ground, but there wasn’t a mother bird in sight. We put them back in the nest and hoped she’d show up.

She finally did this morning.

(I’m an intervener, if you haven’t noticed.)

Watch the price of corn this year. Acres and acres and acres of corn were snapped off at the base, all across Iowa. This crop is TOAST. Even if it stands upright again, once the corn grows and puts weight on it, it’ll blow over in the first wind.

Luckily we like our neighbors, so while yesterday was extremely tiring, we’d spent the day with people we enjoy.

We finished it off with some time at the neighbor’s house, grilling out and discussing insurance deductibles and the Beastie Boys.

At least this happened on a Monday. Tuesday is garbage day, and I'm betting they'll have a few truck fulls.

The Missing Week: Part 1 of 2

I disappeared for almost a week.

It’s this new magician’s act I’m trying called: Having a Real Life for a Change.

So far, it’s given me a lot of reasons to stay home and drink.

On with the pictures!

Sunday evening, I spoke to my dad about possibly meeting us for fireworks since Mike would be at work and he would be home alone – my mother was visiting her mom in Wisconsin since she hasn’t been doing well lately.

I thought it would be a nice pick-me-up.

I forced myself to go even though I was tired and lacking in motivation, and Dad forced himself to go even though he was fighting off food poisoning.

I’m glad we made it.

We went early enough to be seated directly across from the display on the Cedar River.

After paying more than our fair share for fried food, we coughed up another five bucks to tip Mr. Lincoln for a quick picture. He’s one of three presidents the girls recognize.  (Actually, they only recognize Lincoln and Obama, but they think Benjamin Franklin was a president no matter how much I try to persuade them differently.)

Stars…

… and stripes.

Booms…

wows

… and oohs.

I’ve got more pictures and lots more to chat about in regards to our camping extravaganza this week, but I’ll put that in my next post, part 2.