May « 2005 « Sharp Corners

No child left behind

May 31, 2005

Wanker never ceases to amaze me. About three months ago, he and I decided that Son Three would benefit greatly from being in preschool. We each paid half (per the divorce decree) of what I consider to be a very reasonable tuition and Son Three flourished immediately in his new environment. Then, about three weeks ago, Wanker’s payments for the school suddenly stopped.

Um. Okay.

When I asked him about it, he said that he didn’t think the preschool was anything more than a glorified babysitter and Son Three would be fine without it. Furthermore, he "wasn’t going to pay for it so I could sit on my ass at home or hang out at the beach."

Um. Okay.

For a guy that seems to monitor my every burp, he sure hasn’t been paying attention to the details. I have been gainfully employed for the better part of those three months (in addition to my freelance writing) and, folks, I assure you, I was not sitting at the beach. But, more to the point was this idea he had that my son no longer "needed" preschool. Tell that to the four year old who is so in love with the place that he is sad he can’t go on weekends. Now, seeing as how it was Wanker’s choice to relieve Son Three of something he was thoroughly enjoying, I felt it only fair to give him the honors of telling the child. Oh, but wait. That takes cajones at least the size of peas, right? Well, that rules him out. Instead he insisted that I be the one to tell my son.

Um. Okay.

I ran this little piece of information up Son Three’s flagpole and he had a meltdown of epic proportions. It was right about this time that Wanker also informed me that he wasn’t interested in arranging for any of them to go to the summer school masquerading as a cool camp so now I had three very upset children and one very cowardly father on my hands. Since there was nothing to be done for Wanker’s ______ (hmmmm….please wait while I try to come up with a tactful word….oh well, nothing comes to mind…moving on), I assessed the situation and decided to skip the new job I was scheduled to start next week, go back to freelancing and stay home for the summer with them.

Through an incredibly fortunate set of circumstances, I was able to work out something that allows for Son Three to continue in preschool and for the other two to attend camp this summer after all. There were two unexpected benefits to this little piece of luck. First, the boys think Mommy is the greatest hero of all time. Second, since I passed on the job I was going to take, it looks like my summer will be spent freelancing once again so I can "sit on my ass and hang out at the beach." And Wanker thinks he’s temporarily saving a few bucks in exchange for…..uh. Anyone? Buehler?

Everybody wins. Well, everybody that matters.

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Posted by Lisa Hoover

Yoo hoo….where’d you go?

May 31, 2005

It poured buckets all night and it was, I gather, too much for this frog to stand so he came inside to wake us up this morning by joining us in the bedroom. He stayed incognito for a long time, we never knew he was around, until J walked walked through the room at o’dark thirty and this little bugger jumped on his leg then back up on the wall.

Ever unflappable, J just shook it off and said, "Well. That was a surprise." Master of understatement, that man is.

The frog then went to hide again and….let me tell you…we had NO idea where he’d gone. He’s a master of hide and seek, you see.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Lisa Hoover

Now you know

May 31, 2005

Is it any wonder I can’t get anything done around here?

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Posted by Lisa Hoover

Three down, what’s next?

May 31, 2005

No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get my act together this morning. I have ten thousand and six things to do this morning but I’ve only accomplished three of them:

1) Take the garbage to the curb
2) Work myself into a snit
3) Eat

Strangely, they were all related.

As I lugged all the garbage cans to the end of the driveway this morning in the pouring rain a car drove by and doused me from head to toe in curb-collected rain water. Sure, go ahead and laugh. Then bite me.

Which led me to my snit. Which led me to eat cheese quesadillas smothered in hot sauce followed by a 7-Up.

I get more accomplished by 10:00 AM than some people manage all day.

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Posted by Lisa Hoover

Catherine the So-So

May 30, 2005

Every now and then I do something so civic minded I make myself want to vomit. I offered to briefly volunteer for a group that needed help with something because ~~I love to give freely of my time to other people~~ I like the free cheese at their cocktail parties. It was at one of these recent cocktail parties that I had the great fortune to meet Catherine. If you could actually hear me speak the words "great fortune" aloud, you’d hear a tone of voice normally reserved for announcing to a friend you have contracted syphilis (for this reason, perhaps I should call her Phyllis). Anyway, I digress.

Catherine is the wife of another volunteer within this group. Seeing as how this particular gentleman is, ah, how can I say this…."off kilter" to begin with, it should have come as no surprise that his wife was totally bereft of any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Well, that’s not completely true. She has nice hair.

My first contact with Catherine was when she came up to me trilling about how nice it was to finally meet me, yadda, yadda. Naturally, at first I was pleased because, well…it is nice to meet me. Soon, though, it became clear I was destined to spend a long and painful evening with this woman while she vacillated between insulting my intelligence and just generally annoying the crap out of me. Ever the gracious person, I smiled gamely through the whole…long…two…hours…she spent babbling in my face. It wasn’t until I was safely ensconced in the car alone with J that I unleashed a string of profanity that would make 50 Cent wither.

Fast forward to a couple weeks later. I was going to another event where Catherine’s long-suffering husband was also expected to attend. I wondered aloud to J if he’d be bringing his sainted wife and jokingly said, "If she’s there and wants to go for drinks after this meeting, please…in the name of all that is holy…make an excuse. Tell her you’re scheduled for an elective splenectomy tomorrow. JUST DON’T MAKE ME GO!"

Luckily, she was no where to be seen at the meeting. As per usual, after it ended, I was starving and J suggested we grab a quick bite at a restaurant near the house.

:::cue theme from "Halloween":::

As we walked in to our favorite watering hole, guess who was at the bar watering herself? No, you oddball, it wasn’t Margaret Thatcher.

It was Catherine.

And there was that whole "oh, damn, she made eye contact…what now?" vibe going on.

It was no use pretending we hadn’t seen each other so I did what any self respecting person would do in my situation. I made for the ladies room and left J holding the proverbial bag. Okay, not really. He would have struck me down on the spot. I walked up and chirped the friendliest hello you could ever imagine me uttering, all the while thinking, "ohgodpleasedon’taskustojoinyou." Fortunately for us, she was on her way out but it posed an interesting question during my dinner with J that evening. When is the appropriate time to whip out a crucifix and bible, thrust it in her face and yell, "Be GONE with you!"? Is it permissible on the second meeting or does Emily Post mandate we wait until at least the fourth encounter. Let me know, will ya? I’m bound to see her around town again soon.

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Posted by Lisa Hoover

I’m being eaten out of house and home

May 30, 2005

You know, this home ownership thing is getting old. It seems to me when I lived in Illinois, I went house hunting, saw something I liked, signed my internal organs over to a mortgage company and lived happily ever after. It’s so not like that in Florida. It seems like every time I turn around something else needs to be done in this house and if I complain the slightest bit, someone is always right there to say "well, that’s Florida for ya."

About three weeks ago, Son One came out of his room to tell me there was something flying around in there. Since the windows had been open all day, I assumed that meant an errant moth or bee had worked it’s way into the house. I took a quick peek and discovered there were about two hundred "moths" flying around the room so I packed him off to sleep in his brother’s room for the night instead. Because we have a permanent arrangement with an exterminator to provide me with pre-emptive strikes against eight legged or winged creatures on a monthly basis, I called them to drop by and identify my new found friends. I told them there was no rush, Monday would be fine, and left later that night to spend Friday evening with some friends.

Over snacks, I happened to mention that we seemed to have "some sort of moth problem" or something and I was anxious to have it taken care of on Monday. A collective gasp could be heard around the table. Sensing something very bad was about to happen, I fished around under the table for J’s leg only to discover that he had picked that exact moment to freshen his drink. For the next ten minutes, I was regaled with the same story over and over. Each homeowner (and now former friend) nodded knowingly and said the one word I didn’t want to hear:

TERMITES.

On and on they went…

"So, one time, I had termites at my old house. Like, you know, they ate through the ceiling and stuff."

"Yeah, yeah, I had them too. They got into my garage and feasted on the wall studs until they were powder."

"Yeah, my friend had them so bad the whole back of her house fell down one night while she was sleeping.

"But….oh, Lisa…..I’m sure you have nothing to worry about."

When J finally got back to the table, I was laying face down in a puddle of my own sweat. The nerve of him, leaving me in my time of need like that. The whole rest of the night, I could think of nothing but termites. I refused to order the wood smoked pork loin at dinner. I wouldn’t drink the wine that had been aged in oak casks. I wore a hard hat to bed that night and draped the bed in mosquito netting.

It was a very long weekend, filled with worry and also with visions of trying to walk up the stairs into my son’s room and finding myself in a crumpled heap as a step gave way while tiny termites flew wildly above me, laughing and pointing at me with their little antennae. I didn’t sleep much.

By the time Ed the Exterminator finally got to my house on Monday, I was waiting for him in the driveway, scratching furiously. I grabbed him by the collar, dragged him upstairs, pointed at the now four zillion dead winged corpses and ran from the room. He emerged five minutes later with a handful of these deceased creepies and said that damned word again.

TERMITES.

He went on and on about the difference between wood eating termites and subterranean termites, as if he thought I might be planning a party for them and wanted to get the seating chart right.

"A-yuh. Ya got yerself quite the little infestation there," he told me. "Now we can go about handling this a couple of different ways. Ya see, first there’s the tenting option. Of course, that means you have to move out for three days, take all your food and plants with you and the escaping gasses will kill all vegetation in a two foot perimeter of the house."

All right, so Option One: move to…where? Ed’s house? Will he take us along with all the attending cats, dog, crabs, snakes children and Hershey Bars? One look at the hundreds of dollars of flora and fauna J had spent many weekends planting around the outside of the house eliminated this possibility anyway.

"Well, there’s another thing we can do," Ed assured me. Wall injections. We can treat the problem by drilling holes in the walls at regular intervals and shooting our termite killer in that way."

Okay, wait. I called this man over here because something is eating holes in my walls and he wants to solve the problem by putting holes in my walls? Sure, sounds like a great plan to me. After he assured me they were "really little holes", I agreed to let him do it that way though because, well, the only plan I could come up with involved gas cans and lighters.

A couple of days later, a special technician backed up to the house and unloaded drills, big syringes, boxes of chemicals and lord knows what else. I up and left.

I thought the problem was behind us until, a few days later, Son One reported seeing more termites. I promptly called Ed who told me that he had forgotten to tell me one little detail. Once the termites have been forced out of their comfortable existence behind my walls, they will come out and join the household for about a week so we can enjoy their death throes in person. Not only that, they will also come out to mate one last time as well ("Mommy….what is that one bug doing to that other bug?") Fabulous, so I essentially paid lots of money to have a front row seat at an insect pornographic snuff film.

Like everyone always tells me, "Well, that’s Florida for ya."

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Posted by Lisa Hoover

Fore crying out loud

May 30, 2005

I thought it would be a nice, motherly thing for me to spend the afternoon hanging with the kids on their day off from school. Besides, I need to get in some practice so I decided to take the kids to lunch and then go miniature golfing. I ought to be beaten with a nine iron for that.

Just so we’d be properly fortified, our first stop was a Chinese Buffet to grab some lunch. For the uninitiated, these buffets that seem to be all the rage right now consist of long tables reminiscent of school cafeterias where there are mountains of every type of Asian food you can think of. There’s white rice, fried rice, pot stickers, egg rolls, soups, sushi (if you can really call it that), beef & broccoli, chicken & broccoli, beef & chicken & broccoli, broccoli & broccoli, sesame shrimp, fried shrimp, sweet & sour chicken, beef & peppers, fruit, pudding, ice cream and fried mosquito wings. Once of those wasn’t really on the menu, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. They were out of pudding.

Anyway, they have lots of food. Of course, all my kids wanted to eat was the melon and the chicken while I gorged myself silly on dim sum. We had a rollicking good time eating and slurping Sprite and then decided to head to the mini-golf place across the street. Whoops.

Okay, first of all, Memorial Day weekend is not conducive to big fun at a place like this. It’s staggeringly hot and most of the people appeared to be hung over and very cranky. Except, of course, all the kids. My god, there were four million kids at this joint. Okay, okay, I understand….you don’t have to remind me. This is a place for kids, after all. But was every child in the free world required to be there at exactly the same time? I knew this would seriously suck sushi when I pulled into the lot and saw children of every age cavorting in and around the cars, hanging off the fences, jumping on the outdoor cafe tables and running willy-nilly up and down the greens (yes, Willy and Nilly were both there). Of course, there was no talking my kids out of golfing so we bravely joined the fracas.

The last time we did this sort of thing, someone else paid for it so I had no idea what it cost. My left eye finally stopped twitching a few minutes ago so allow me to read directly off the receipt: $35.14! THIRTY FIVE LARGE AMERICAN DOLLARS for one adult and three gangly, uncoordinated children to hit a little ball around eighteen different putting greens. That’s nearly two dollars per hole! Insanity!

When I said my children are gangly and uncoordinated, that wasn’t meant to be an insult, I was simply stating a fact. They are 7, 6 & 4 year old boys which means they are all feet and distraction. After the first hole, it became apparent that getting the them to line up and take turns hitting a tiny ball with an iron rod into a weensy cup seven hundred feet away was not going to happen. I gave up and told them to just "do their best" and cheered them on as they tried using the golf club like a pool cue. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want them to play the right way, it’s just that the group of six people behind us were beginning to really get on my nerves. By Hole Three, they caught up to us and I was able to determine that there was some sort of wager among the adults as to who was going to have the best score at the end of their game. They approached their competition with as much ferocity as Gore and his hanging chads so, frankly, I was afraid to stand in their way. I let them play through, only to find that the family of four behind them was letting their toddler use his club as a baseball bat. When Junior’s ball went whizzing by my head for the third time, I knew it was time to step it up and get us out of there.

Easier said than done.

I had forgotten that these mini-golf courses were originally designed by the Phoenicians in 804 BC to thwart attempts at crypt robbery. The path to King Tut’s tomb was probably easier to navigate than this course. Things got so confusing that, at one point, I considered using my cell phone to call the front desk to organize a search party while I holed up with the boys in one of the caves on Hole Nine.

By Hole Thirteen, I could see the end in sight so I started knocking the boys’ balls into the cups when they weren’t looking and high-fiving them for getting a hole in one. We had to hurry. The Fab Four behind us was gaining ground! Bat Boy’s aim was getting better!

Finally, we got to Hole Eighteen and here’s where I made a serious error. Now, you and I know that on the final hole, when you finally sink your ball, it will fly down a chute that will take it back to the front desk to be used by the next round of players. I was so intent on ending this painful game that I forgot to mention that trifling little detail to my four year old. After much concentration, he managed to thwack his ball into the cup and, upon reaching down to retrieve it, let out a shriek that could be heard in Uzbekistan. He freaked out that he wasn’t going to get to say goodbye to his beloved green golf ball, much less keep it.

Most parents would have scooped up the "adorable little tyke" and taken him kicking and screaming to the car, posthaste. Not me, though. I took him inside and asked the clerk if we could have the ball back for just a second. I know she thought I was nuts but…well, like I care. With a wary eye, she grabbed one off the pile and what do you think Son Three said?

"Thank you, kind woman."

"Oh, there you are, my beautiful green orb."

"Hi, pretty ball. Bye, pretty ball."

Nope. How about…."THAT’S NOT THE RIGHT ONE!!!"

If you think that I continued this farce by letting him pick through green balls until he found "his", you’re wrong. THAT is the point where I scooped up the "adorable little tyke" and took him kicking and screaming back to the car, posthaste. Okay, actually, he wasn’t the one kicking and screaming. I was.

But now we are home, in relative comfort, enjoying some watermelon and ice cold drinks. As I was writing this, Son Two asked when we get to go golfing again.

"When hell freezes over, my boy. When hell freezes over."

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Posted by Lisa Hoover

A funny thing happened on the way to menopause

May 30, 2005

A while back I commented on the impact of PMS in my life. True to my word, I began keeping careful track of days when I was my normally wonderful, sunny self and days when I became Medusa. After a few months of charting and graphing, a definite pattern began to emerge. For most of the month, I was the most charming, adorable, perky, sweet gal you could ever know (heh) but the week before my period I became a changling. It wasn’t so much that I was in a bad mood, it’s just that my disposition was…ummm….different.

First there was the insomnia. For days, I would toss and turn, my sleep invaded by dreams of being disemboweled by creatures of the sea. Sometimes I’d have nightmares that I was being shot at or chased. Other nights, and these were the most terrifying, I dreamed that the judge was denying me a divorce from Wanker (Oh, was that a low blow? Sorry.)

After insomnia came the muscle aches and pains, flu-like and incapacitating. Then there was tearfulness. Ladies, you know all about this one, right? Crying because you’re out of napkins or because you got spam-mail offering you a lower mortgage rate. Weeping hysterically because you missed the street where you meant to turn. Wailing disproportionately because the weatherman said it might rain in the Outer Banks sometime next week.

The worst part for me, however, was the paranoia. Now, for those of you who don’t already think I’m clinically insane, I’ll give you ammo to Baker Act me now. For the few days leading up to my period, for whatever reason, I became totally paranoid. I was sure that escalating gas prices were a secret operation by the government to bankrupt me. I was convinced that the sweet little old lady eying my children at the grocery store was actually a pedophile in drag. I began looking over my shoulder like I was Victoria Gotti. Seriously, it was weird. And unexplainable. At the point where I got it into my head that Son Two was actually a Pod-Child from the Red Planet of Three Moons, I knew it was time to act.

I made an appointment with a doctor who listened without (visibly) laughing and this man hatched a plan. He gave me a prescription for, of all things, the Pill. He reasoned that my normally, uh, normal estrogen and progesterone went all wacky right before my period and that evening out their levels would give me relief. I was, in a word, skeptical. Furthermore, I was worried. What if an overabundance of hormones was the problem? Would giving me more make things worse? Would adding more hormones to my already shaky system propel me into a living Stephen King character? He could tell I was really on the fence about his approach so he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: I could take the Pill that would let me have only four periods a year. SOLD!

I started taking them about two months ago and, god, I wish I’d done this sooner. Every single symptom I’ve had has vanished into oblivion. I may stay on this medication until I die, it’s that wonderful. Now I’m free to be my spectacularly fun self all month long AND no periods for me. WHEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!! The only bummer is that now I can’t rag about Wanker and chalk it up to PMS. Oh well, do I really need an excuse to do that? Nah.

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Posted by Lisa Hoover

Today is not just Monday

May 30, 2005

I can’t let this day pass without acknowledging our military. I won’t pontificate, just let me say on behalf of myself and my family: thank you so very much.

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Posted by Lisa Hoover

Lecture in hell, dinner in heaven

May 30, 2005

Sometimes if you’re patient, things can really work out well. Last night, J and I attended a lecture that was theoretically supposed to chronicle the historical adventures of a Spaniard that conquered this particular area of Florida back in the 1500′s. Not only did I not learning anything at this lecture, I think the speaker may have actually negated some of the things I did know prior to his talk. To say this guy was boring would be an understatement. When a person starts a lecture by saying, "I wrote a book about this a few years ago but I can’t remember much of what it said so I had to reread it on the plane today," you know you’re in trouble. In fact, most of the lecture time was filled by him simply reading to us from the book. For a topic that could have been fascinating, the lecture was so boring I seriously considered pulling my eyebrows out, hair by hair, just to stay awake. Furthermore, there were some lighting issues in this lecture hall so the speaker was backlit in otherwise near darkness which made him vaguely resemble an apparition from the local graveyard. By the time we got out of there, I was brain dead, had eyestrain and was starving.

To make me feel better, J offered to take me to dinner (god, I love this man). We decided to drive out to one of the fancy barrier islands where one room studios on the beach rent for a thousand bucks a pop. Unfortunately, since we didn’t plan ahead, we drove aimlessly for nearly an hour while I considered reaching over and strangling J lovingly for dragging my hungry, testy, aggravated ass all the way out there just for a grouper sandwich. Just as I was ready to jump out of the car at the next stoplight, J spied a nice restaurant and turned into the parking lot. Little did I know that the next two hours would mark the closest I’ve ever been to dining heaven.

Prepare to drool, dear readers: while gazing out the window at a lovely view of the water, we shared a bottle of wine and an appetizer of mini tacos made of seared ahi tuna layered atop fresh guacamole and topped with caviar. For dinner, J ordered a 16 oz. steak that was cooked perfectly and rested comfortably on a pillow of garlic mashed potatoes with a pretty stack of greens adorning the plate. I had a filet of Yellowfin Tuna (cooked so expertly I nearly wept) glazed in tamarind and served with wasabi mashed potatoes. Dessert was chocolate ganache with caramel sauce and a side of fresh whipped cream. Oh, and a glass of port. My god in heaven, I’ve never eaten such good food in my life. Ever. In fact, I will never be able to eat again because no meal will ever come as close to the perfection I experienced last night.

Now, don’t go thinking this was some high falutin’ restaurant that required a dinner jacket and tie just to get a table because it wasn’t. Actually, it was a pretty down to earth kind of place. They have a resident calico cat that you must step over to get in the door, the atmosphere is casual and laid back and they even put crayons on the table! Stunning food, cats and crayons….what more could a girl want?

In the grand scheme of blogging, this is probably not the most fascinating thing I could ever write about but I was moved, people. We go to tons of restaurants and, though some local places are really quite good, none have made us quite as happy as this little out of the way place did last night which is why you all have to hear about it. No, I won’t tell you where it is or what the name was. That’s my little secret. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have seen angels and I must pray.

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Posted by Lisa Hoover