Soup Is Not A Finger Food

Broken

YOU KNOW HOW SOME DAYS, everything that happens to you is tied together with a common theme, a leitmotif if you will? Yesterday's theme was BROKEN. 

And yes, I realize these are first-world problems, but still, they are my problems and this is my blog and so I am going to tell you about them.

I took the 'Burb back to the body shop that fixed it in December because the right-side headlights - the ones they had replaced - were noticeably dimmer than the ones on the left.  We waited, thinking it would be an quick 'n' easy swap of defective headlights for new.

Peezer was very patient. Here, he is lobbying me for an E5, after consuming an A6. I spent $2.25 on a junk-food breakfast for him while we cooled our heels.

Alas, as these things often go, it wasn't a quick fix, so they finally put me into a rental car and sent us on our merry way.

Meanwhile, yesterday was a Federal Holiday so the boys were off school. After a morning of quiet reflection on the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s contributions to the advancement of racial equality in the United States of America sleeping in and playing video games, Seth decided to go longboarding on a sunny, cold Monday. As I was fetching Peezer from an afternoon playdate, Seth called me, the distress in his voice evident: "WHERE ARE YOU?"

Me: "I'm on my way home, where are YOU?"

Him: "In the 'hood. Can you come pick me up?"

Me: "Why, what happened?"

Him: "I think I broke my foot."

Thank goodness he was wearing his helmet. If only he'd worn it on his FOOT.

It wasn't dramatic, but the swelling was evident and he was in pain, so Curt hustled him out for a fun evening at the ER where they confirmed our suspicions, wrapped his foot, gave him a Vicodin and sent him home with instructions to get a cast in the next day or two.

 

Honestly, we're taking this in stride. This was our first ER visit since February 2006! And it's the first broken bone for any of our kids.  Of course, this is going to put a big damper on that whole learning-to-drive thing. You see, last Friday, Seth obtained his learner's permit (he aced the exam!). I don't want to say I'm relieved, but... well, part of me isn't upset about having to wait a little while longer on that.

While they were at the ER, I got on the phone with Maneesh, a nice man at Verizon DSL who walked me through countless ipconfigs and pings and restarts, all in the name of restoring wireless internet and, consequently, calm to this increasingly wired family. The DSL quit working on Friday, right after I'd spent almost three hours at the MVA with Seth, and I just didn't have the energy to call India then.  We were away for the weekend, but the minute we returned, the boys were all MOM, CAN YOU PLEEEEEASE FIX THE INTERNET??? (Well, no, I can't fix the Internet, but I can try to restore connectivity to our home, would that work?)

Never mind the fact that I can't Facebook  play Words with Friends  Blog  work if I don't have internet access. It was as if they were afraid I would forget!

The sillies!

After 90 minutes of "Yes, ma'am, okay ma'am, would you please try one thing for me, ma'am?", Maneesh determined that while he had successfully restored DSL connectivity, I was on my own with the wireless router. Maneesh helpfully offered to connect me with their "Expert Care" service, where, for $14.99 for a "six month subscription" they would help me get it up and running. I said no thanks, Maneesh, give me a tracking number and I'll try it myself. 

 And guess what?  I GOT IT WORKING AGAIN!

I'm trying hard not to be smug, Maneesh, but I've got your Expert Care right here, buddy. 

So, to recap: The internet is fixed, the patient is resting comfortably, and I'm about to go take one of Seth's Vicodin return the rental car and pick up my beloved Burb.  You see? We have problems and we address them head-on and we FIX. THEM.

Now, who wants to come help me assemble a coffee table that's been in its box since it arrived almost two weeks ago? Anyone? Bueller?? 

 

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

I KEEP TRYING TO SING THAT SONG TO MYSELF because it helps me -if only a little bit - to squelch my inner Grinch. It just doesn't feel like Christmas is less than two weeks away.

We've put up our Christmas tree and decorated the house. Much of the shopping is done. Tacky Christmas ties and jewelry have been donned.  We've attended a couple of holiday parties.

And we've baked cookies. Which should really get me in the spirit, right? This year, we went from this

to this

in 48 short hours! And there are what, 12 more days until Christmas? At this pace, I'll need to make like six more batches of Sand Tarts! But everyone loves 'em. And we don't bake them so we can look at them, do we? (Visit my other blog, My Grandmas' Recipes, to get the recipe.)

Meanwhile, Peezer has begun a martial arts class, which he looooves, but which has me scrambling to get home early enough from work to take him on Tuesdays. Then Seth finally admitted he felt yucky enough yesterday to allow me to take him to the doctor, so I scheduled a telecommuting day around that. Not to mention, December is the busiest time for an HR professional, and I'm busy TIMES FIVE CLIENTS right now. But it sure beats unemployment!

It's a juggling act around here, people. It's all about time management.  Though sometimes I wonder if I unintentionally sabotage myself.

Last week, I picked up the Suburban from the repair shop, returned the service loaner, and had enough time to make it to pick up Peezer on time without rushing. However, I encountered a patch of stop and go traffic, and unfortunately, the guy in front of me stopped and I.... go-ed. Right into the big metal bracket on the back of his vehicle where the spare tire should have been. Normally, if it's Suburban versus Honda CRV, you'd put your money on the Burb. Not so this time:

Ugh. Well, no air bags deployed, no one was injured, the other driver was pretty nice about it, both vehicles were driveable, and the insurance process has been fine. But it's just one more thing to have to deal with at an already-busy time of year.

At least I didn't wreck the service loaner!

So now I'm zipping around town in a rented Nissan Altima. Which is actually cool, because, unlike my land yacht giant SUV, I can park an Altima in a DC garage, so I'm going to take a break from Metro and drive downtown this week. Which will probably make me appreciate my Metro commute.

Still. I've loaded Christmas music onto my smart phone so I can listen to it. I have a stack of greeting cards and four books of stamps and I'm kinda looking forward to that project. Curt's talking about cranking out another issue of our famous annual newsletter, "The Leek." 

And amid all the hustle and fuss, I've received a few reality checks. A beloved teacher at our middle school just died after a two-year battle with cancer. An older cousin went out to cut down a tree by himself and was struck and killed when it fell.  Blog-friends are facing challenges: One's facing her first Christmas without her husband, who died earlier this year. Another is in the midst of an ongoing struggle to overcome cancer. The list goes on.

My challenges seem like pure fluff when you consider all of that.

So, Deck the Halls and all that stuff. THIS is what I need right now:

 

THAT's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. The rest is just... fluff.

 

That's enough. No, really. I mean it.

I'M NOTHING IF NOT A MULTI-TASKER. In fact, though I've not been diagnosed, I'm sure I have just a touch of adult ADHD. Which is good for my work, because I'm a consultant with four  five six clients, so I have to be able to toggle. And toggle I do! But lately there's a lot of other stuff going on aside from work, and it's a lot to handle. For starters,

THE AIR CONDITIONER STOPPED WORKING. In August. Fortunately, it was right at the end of the summer's worst heat, and we have been muddling along just fine with window fans ever since. As I write this, the guys are installing a new unit outside, along with new heat exchangers in the furnace, because those were also cracked and cracked heat exchangers can cause carbon monoxide leakage and carbon monoxide KILLS, so we couldn't allow that. So yeah, I'm really excited to be writing a giant check for air conditioning today that we probably won't use again until 2012.

But hey, that's part of the fun of owning a home, right? Of course it is. And so is DEALING WITH YOUR INTERMITTENT HOME PHONE SERVICE.  Last week, it all stopped working. This past weekend, it seemed that I narrowed the problem to the main floor jacks - the downstairs ones worked - along with the demise of our only corded phone. I plugged in the wireless set downstairs, and for one day this weekend, it worked. Until this morning, when it started ringing all funny and when I answered it I would hear dial tone and lots of static. then later I picked it up to see if it had fixed itself was still doing it, and I heard someone else's conversation. I was immediately transported back to a simpler time, when both my grandmas had party lines at their houses. However, back then, you knew on whom you were eavesdropping. Today, I couldn't tell who it was.  Totally random! Then a few minutes ago, I did receive and was able to answer a call. Still staticky, but the calls are going through. Baby steps.

It may be worth noting that our DSL, which is delivered through the very same phone line, has been working the entire time. Well, except for when it freezes and I have to reset the box. Which is daily. But normal!

In other baffling tech news, OUR ONE DIRECTV BOX IS GIVING THE REMOTE CONTROL THE SILENT TREATMENT. Apparently they've come to a stalemate, because the remote no longer works. Which is highly inconvenient, and I realize how whiny that sounds, but it's a COMPLICATED SETUP that can't be operated by anyone who was born before 1970 the buttons on the box. I have been postponing the call I know I need to place to DirecTV in order to resolve this issue.

Also from the "Stuff Our Parents Never Had To Worry About" desk, I have one kid whose cell phone recently "broke" (he said it "fell down the stairs at school" and I really do want to believe him), so I bought a replacement from a Very Nice eBay Seller, then had to fight with Verizon Wireless to have them waive the data plan requirement. Because the kid is 13 and in 8th grade and he does NOT need a data plan on his cell phone. And the other kid dropped his two month old iPhone, cracking the screen. Now he can pay $169 for a replacement through the insurance that costs $9 per month, or $200 for a replacement at the Apple store. 

And as if all that weren't enough, we're trying to refinance. And it's dragging on because we started the process with one company, then switched to another. All the signing of forms and copying of documents makes me long for the days of the "no-doc" loans (Approval process: "Do you have a pulse? Are you a citizen? Here, please, take all of this money and then some more, too!). Suffice it to say, the process has changed quite a bit since our last trip around this block in 2006.

And I could go on! I could complain about our multi-theater campaign against invasive insects: Stink Bugs on one front, Camel Crickets on the other. I could talk about the shelf that randomly fell out of our bookcase two weeks ago, causing one of the shelf pins to disappear. We haven't replaced it yet. I could talk about the three trips it took to get one headlight replaced in the Suburban. (It wasn't just the bulb.) I could talk about earthquakes and floods and petulant teenagers and how my house is never completely clean.

But I won't. Because we're dealing with all of it, and we're doing just fine. We just take it as it comes, right? What other choice do we have? And yes, I do fantasize about hopping on the first flight to Bora Bora, but really, how long could I stay there before I started to miss the mundane routine of my life, my family, my little place on this Earth? Surely not more than a couple of years  months  weeks... 

One of those days

ONE ADAM TWELVE, ONE ADAM TWELVE, we've had a Wine-One-One emergency dispatch at 1800 hours. Caller self-identifies as a caucasian female, approximate age 30-35 (heh!), suburban-dweller. She commutes to the city, and shows evidence of foul mood, short patience, agitation and a sense that the universe has conspired against her today.

ROGER THAT, Wine-One-One response is en route with emergency reinforcements, OVER.

That's how my day has been, and I don't mean to bitch but - well, yes- yes, I do. It's my party blog and I'll cry bitch if I want to!

This was the second morning of the new school year and in the interest of fair and balanced reporting, I will say that the day started out fine. The a.m. routine went smoothly today. Peezer was in an unusually good mood. Nobody missed a bus or forgot a lunch. I was even able to catch Metro a little bit early, which was good, because I would have to leave my client early to hustle back to the 'burbs for a follow-up doctor's appointment. (More on this.)

Of course an earlier train means a more-crowded train, and I could see every single eyball in my car roll up into each individual socket when two women - nannies, apparently - each rolled an oversized stroller into the center doors of an older-model car. This detail matters if you know Metro - the older cars have vertical stripper poles grab-bars placed in such a way as to make maneuvering a wheeled bag or suitcase difficult, if not nearly impossible. Never mind a large-wheeled, jogging-style stroller!

The ladies positioned themselves so as to completely prevent anyone from accessing the center of the car to stand. But the real fun began when we got to the busy downtown stops, where most of us were trying to exit. It is not a stretch to say that it was a veritable game of Twister (only with shoes), all of us trying to jostle around the apparently oblivious unconcerned nannies, over strollers full of innocent toddlers (it's not their fault), while keeping our giant briefcases from colliding with heads, knees, or kidneys and avoiding stepping on any toes.

Did I mention, I reeeeeeally had to pee at this point?

I finally Houdini-ed out of the car and made it to work where I crammed as much as I possibly could into a small, four-hour window, accomplishing far less than I'd intended to, owing to meetings that were held to discuss all the work I needed to accomplish and whether my schedule would allow me to spend even more time on work.

At the appointed hour, I grabbed a sandwich, dashed for Metro and had a blissfully uncrowded ride home. I gobbled my lunch while walking from the train station back to my car. Because? No eating on Metro!

Fortunately, I was prompt to my doctor's appointment - a whole five minutes before my 2:30 appointment. And that's why I was so surprised when the office manager said, "Mrs. McCormick? We had you down at 2:00, I'm afraid you'll have to reschedule..." with this tut-tut look in her eyes.

"Um, noooo, I wrote it down for 2:30, I'm sure it's 2:30," I said, at which point I experienced a PTSD-style flashback to the time 15 years ago when I drove 40 miles with a screaming infant Seth to a dental appointment, only to be scolded for being 10 minutes late and told I would have to reschedule, upon which I promptly burst into tears and blubbered about crying babies and bad Beltway traffic. Amazingly, they managed to "squeeze me in" for my routine exam. And that was the last time I ever went to THAT dentist.

But I stood my ground as she pecked at the computer. "Oh, wait, let me check... AHA, yes, I do see it, your appointment IS for 2:30! So sorry!"

Of course you are.

They took my copay and escorted me back and I stripped from the waist down and underwent a diagnostic sonogram to rule out certain things that might cause heavy menstrual bleeding. Oh I know, I'm oversharing. But I just want to say this: Sonograms are infinitely more fun when you can see pictures of a wee, thriving embryo up in there.

When the violation procedure was over, I was told to dress and return to the waiting room, where I would be called back to see the doctor. That took about 10 minutes, but the wait in the exam room took close to 30. I finally poked my head out to see what was going on, when the doctor came 'round the corner, ready to see me. And the thing about her is, although she has run late both times I've visited, she makes me feel like I'm the only patient she has when I'm there. And so I will probably go back for that reason alone.

I just wish I understood why, if they thought I was 25 minutes late they were going to send me away, but they have no qualms parking me in an exam room for that long and then some. Because I get paid by the hour, PEOPLE. I don't work for a trade association accrue oodles of paid sick time to squander on routine examinations or "mental health days." If I don't work, NOBODY PAYS ME. Time is money, and I can pretty much count the money I did not earn while I was wasting time in the exam room. 

Work-life balance MY ASS.

Anyway. I hurried home, hoping to salvage the last two hours of the workday to catch up on all the work I didn't get done earlier. Only when I flipped open my laptop, it wouldn't connect to the DSL. (!) Further troubleshooting revealed that our router didn't need to be reset - it was actually a problem beyond that. This time, anyway; we often have to reset it but that usually does the trick.

THAT would explain the Verizon service tech at the top of our road with his head buried in the gray box-thingy up there!

Because I live near Civilization, I packed my bag and headed out to find me some free WiFi. On the way out the door, I explained to Seth where I was heading.

"MOM. YOU NEED TO GET RID OF DSL! IT'S ALWAYS NOT WORKING!" said Captain Obvious.

OH, thanks, Son. I AM VERY AWARE. WTH do you think I'm leaving for Panera now?

I immediately called Soup Husband Curt and implored that, if at all possible, could he please pick up the Peezer (say what?) (bonus points if you got that reference) by 6:30. No problem, says he. And I proceeded to workworkwork and feel rather guilty that I didn't buy anything at Panera in exchange for their reliable, superfast wifi because their shortbread cookies are truly effin' awesome. And that was all good until Curt called me at 6:08 pm, apologizing profusely but he wasn't going to make it after all and could I please go get Eli? Stupid Beltway.

Oh, sure, he offered to cover so I could go back out later to do more work, but now I'm home and the spaghetti is cooking and WINE ONE ONE is here, first glass of Malbec down, because you know, it's been that kind of a day. And I'm hoping I can catch up on the rest of my work tomorrow because frankly, the wind has completely left my sails and now that I've vomited all of this onto this screen I think Ima going to pour another glass of Malbec because IF A LITTLE IS GOOD, MORE MUST BE BETTER. And don't you even try to argue that point with me because I might have to cut you.

But hey - thanks for reading!

 

Mixed Feelings

I AM ALL ALONE in my too-quiet house and it feels... wierd.

Summer, while it brings a welcome respite from the frantic pace of the school year, becomes for us a patchwork of camps, trips, and path-of-least-resistance parenting as we attempt to juggle boys with free time and our work schedules. When they were younger, my older boys eagerly went to camps. Now they'd rather hang out, visit friends, do whatever.

Now that Peezer is school-aged, he's enjoying day camp this year.  But ten whole weeks of camp are expensive! And Peezer's main camp was closed last week for the July 4 holiday, and doesn't run the last two weeks of August. So there are holes in the coverage that need to be filled with trips or other elaborate arrangements.

Last week we vacationed at Dewey Beach. The end of next week we're taking a quick jaunt to South Carolina - I'll tell you about that one later. Otherwise, we do have to WORK and all, so we end up sending the kids elsewhere for short stretches to break up the daily monotony of sleeping in / non-stop XBox / TV / ramen noodle lunches.

Peezer and The Boss left Sunday for a week with family in PA, and I just put Seth and our niece (who is the same age as Seth) on a plane bound for Houston where they will hang out with cousins for a whole week!

(Dear Houston, please accept my apologies in advance for any bad behavior - I'm sure it was an accident! - and just send me a bill for the damage. Many Thanks!)

And not counting the dogs, who will need a walk soon, and work, which I must get back to in a moment, there is no one depending on me for anything.  No lunches to pack, no sunscreen to apply, no fights to referee, messes to clean up, children to nag to bathe / clean up their socks / chip bags / cups / soda cans / popsicle sticks. No iCarly or Spongebob Squarepants to tune out. No wet towels to peel off the floor. No frantic drop-off or pick-up deadlines, no therapy appointments to hurry to, no one to remind to take their medicine, no playdates to arrange, no trips to the pool (well, maybe we'll go - that might be fun, to be there and not have to wonder if our kids are safely buoyant)...

I hear a lawn mower outside and have a fan blowing but otherwise?

Shhhh. It's veeerrrrrry quiet.

And right now, I like it.

It'll be this way until Saturday or Sunday, when the younger two return. The teenagers fly back next Tuesday.

Yet as much as I need this break, this reset, it feels rather strange. I'm feeling aimless. Marginal. Because this week? I can make some decisions without regard to how it impacts the kids.

Of course, there is the dog to consider. 

Anyone want a dog? Because even though the kids are gone, I still have to combat the dog-hair tumbleweeds.

See? I'm not getting off entirely without obligations.

It's good for the kids to get away: Good for them and good for us. And as happy as I am to have a few selfish days to myself, I have to say, I'll be really happy to see them when they return.