Now and Then



 Last year, I took Caymen on a little day trip down my memory lane, that included drive-by's of the house I grew up in, my elementary school, high school, first church, and first job. For some reason, that made an enormous impression on her.

So I decided it'd be fun to take it to the next level. I reached out to a dear friend, Miss Terry, and she hooked me up with the phone number to the elementary school principal, who was kind enough to allow me to take Caymen on an unsupervised tour last week.

We loaded up that morning and headed out on our most epic memory adventure yet.

We began our day at the high school (home of the Braves, yo) to say hello to Miss Terry. Just so we're clear, I'm not one of those people who mourns her high school days. Besides cheerleading, I didn't have a big identity in high school. I wasn't popular, but I wasn't unpopular...or maybe that's just something unpopular people say. My goal was simply to get out of high school, fall in love, get married, have babies, and live happily ever after. Mission accomplished. The fact that I still put on my old cheerleading uniform and force my daughters to pose for annual mother/daughter cheer pics is irrelevant.


We met up with Miss Terry, who proceeded to spoil Caymen with cookies and books in the exact room where I flunked pre-algebra. Whatever. Glad somebody could have some happy memories in that room.

Then it was off to my elementary school. The good old Possum Eagles. (Who came up with that?) Despite my hatred of school that I still can't explain, I feel a bond with that building. the teachers I had (mostly good), and the many friendships that were formed there. When you spend Kindergarten through 8th grade with basically the same people, you will form lifelong bonds with them. I mean, this is when the memories you can actually remember start, right? That's kind of a big deal.

It only made sense to start at the beginning. The Kindergarten room, which oddly enough smells exactly the same, but at the age of 45, I immediately pinpointed the underlying source: urine. Something Caymen and I have in common was that we both cried every day in Kindergarten. Every.Day. The difference is, my poor sweet Mrs. Haycox had to deal with it, whereas Caymen's wonderful Mrs. Easton got a reprieve when the principal stepped in and allowed us to slowly wean Caymen in at her own pace, sometimes one hour a day...and her room didn't smell like pee, so there's that. So Caymen and I thought it'd be appropriate to go into the Kindergarten room and put on our sob faces for old times sake.

She asked if we could go into the teacher's lounge beside the Kindergarten room. Dude. No. We'd be soooo busted.

We proceeded through the old elementary annex, where the smell shifted from urine to asbestos and lead paint. That's where Mrs. Haycox was promoted my first grade year...if you call getting stuck with me in her class a second year in a row a promotion.

My 2nd grade year, I had Mrs. Wright. She'd sneak me sunflower seeds as a snack. Can you even imagine that happening today? She could've killed me the one year I finally stopped crying. But I also can't imagine kids today reading a poem in their phonics book called 'I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor' either, yet there we were. Any 45 year olds with an irrational fear of being swallowed whole by a snake? Anyone? *raises hand*

On our way to my 3rd grade classroom with Mrs. Joseph, we stopped by the cafeteria and checked out the wall where they'd hang a big screen and show us the movie 'Where The Red Fern Grows' on the last day of school every year. They either secretly thrived on my tears or wanted to ruin everybody's summer, but no amount of giant rectangle pizzas, greasy round fiestadas, or huge sugary peanut butter balls will ever outweigh the memories of the tragic dog death movie in that room, albeit close.

From there, we graduated to the upstairs corner 4th grade room of Mrs. Dunmire, where every Monday, we were required to make a flower to hang on the bulletin board as a form of discipline that week. If you screwed up, you had to tear a pedal off, and then you personally destroyed your own work of art with each offense. Sure, I could've chosen to behave in such a way as to keep my flower whole each week, but I choose not to live in the world of regret.

Across the hall, 5th grade became middle school and we began changing classes between Mrs. Short, Mrs. Wells, and Mrs. Rollins...the super scary social studies teacher who'd lean over me and her round gold locket necklace would dangle in front of my face in what I can only assume was an attempt to either hypnotize me, make me cry, pee myself, or at the very least, wish I was back across the hall tearing pedals off. If so, she won. All of the above.

6th grade consisted of Mrs. Short, Mr. Short, and Mrs. Spriggs, who was almost tolerable unless she wore her outfit covered in giant vines of purple grapes. That outfit seemed to bring out the worst in her...or maybe it was me...but tempers ran high in Room 33.

In the 7th grade, we graduated to blue lockers. Speaking of big deals. That's also the year I first began cheering...for Possum Middle School...abbreviated in cheers to "PMS"...and at the tender ages of 12-14 was forced to chant "P-M-S...forever, the best!" in front of crowds of people. Yeah, that didn't scar me at all.

It was also in the 7th grade that I was introduced to 3 life-altering concepts.

The first was journaling. I will never forget Miss Carleson-turned Mrs. Sewell, standing at the chalkboard writing a sentence that we used the first 5 minutes of class journaling about. It was the first time in my life that I was encouraged to tap into random thoughts and as it turns out, I have an over-abundance of random thoughts. And as it also turns out, you can make a little living writing random thoughts. Who knew?

The 2nd came from across the hall where Mrs. Brown introduced me to the horrid concept of Science Fairs and the 3rd happened upstairs when Mr. Stultz proceeded to ruin everything I knew to be normal in my world when he mixed letters and numbers called algebra in what proved to be a disastrous combination for me. Thirty-three years later, my feelings haven't changed. And I counted on my fingers to know it was 33 years ago, so ha.

Those same concepts were carried over into the 8th grade, with the same results. Writing, yes. Science, no. Math, oh hell no. Then throw in the time I got in trouble for sharing my opinion in history class that I wasn't going on the DC field trip because I thought it'd be boring. Can we discuss how I've still never gone to DC because I still think it'd be boring? What? No one thinks that but me? Ok, cool. (Baby Boomers, zip it. You're no longer entitled to scold me for my opinions.)

 While we were upstairs, our tour wouldn't have been complete without a stop by my 2 most frequented places through all of my years there. The library. And the nurse's station. Put me where the books are and I'll happily lose myself in a world of fiction. Force me into a row and lay a test on my desk, and I'd most likely land on a cot with a stomach ache until she called my mom to pick me up.

Yet another bond Caymen and I share. She said, "That's no fair. Our nurse never lets me go home. She takes my temperature and then calls you to tell you I'm not sick." I explained, "That's because you show up in her office at the exact time you know my Zumba class is ending in hopes that I'll pick you up on my way home. She's onto you." *rolls eyes*...amateur.

No elementary tour would be complete without mentioning the extras. Gym where we'd bowl, race on scooters, jump on a trampoline, and try to kill each other with a dodge ball. There were no written reports in our day. It was gym, for crying out loud. On the same note, in music class, we'd sing songs. That's it. We'd sing and it was fun. And then there was Art class...where Mrs. Conover would yell and literally throw away your stuff if it wasn't done "right." We need not wonder why I'm not crafty.

I had so much fun telling Caymen my stories, watching her laugh, and seeing my childhood through her eyes.

When we arrived back to our neck of the woods, we went to our little ice cream shop, and then we had a picnic in the grass in front of her school. This is a place where lots of her memories are being made. Many of her opinions are being formed, concepts introduced, and talents can either be honed or discouraged. This is her now. Not so very different from my then.

Who knows, maybe someday, she'll return here to walk her kids through these halls to share her memories...or better yet, maybe she'll be enrolling them here to create their own.

The River Wild

Jusssst sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

a tale of a fateful trip,

that started from this tropic port,

(aka; a deep muddy incline under a busy overpass)

aboard this tiny ship.



(Or in our case, a giant homemade inflatable raft consisting of a bunch of inner-tubes tied together.)

 

The mate was a mighty sailin' man,

the skipper brave and sure,

 twelve passengers set sail that day,

(7 adults, one 10 year old, 2 toddlers, and 2 unborn babies)

 

for a four hour tour,

("How long will it take to float from County Line to Snyder Park?"

"An hour or 2 tops.")

A FOUR HOUR tour.

 

The waters started getting rough,

our homemade boat was tossed,

despite the cell phone GPS,

the Courters, we were lost,

the Courters, we were lost.

 

So this was the tale of us castaways,

we were there for a long long time.

We had to make the best of things,

it was an uphill climb.

 

We lost Gatorades and tennis shoes,

but managed not to freeze,

the toddlers came away unscathed,

but for an irrational fear of trees.

 

So the next time we try tubing,

information we should seek.

County Line is on the Mad River,

Snyder Park is on Buck Creek.

Snyder Park is on BUCK CREEK!!!!

In the cast of Gilligan's Island, our family is short one Professor. 

And one of these days, my eyes are gonna roll straight out of my head.

 

*A huge THANK YOU to Nick's dad, Jim, for the ride from the highway back to our cars...and an apology for kinda being in-lawed to us forever.



Take Me Out To The Fall-Game

Be forewarned that just because it's been 3 months since my last post, doesn't mean I don't have a lot of ridiculousness to catch you up on, so be prepared for more frequent posts in the near future. I'll just go ahead and apologize right now.

Someone (probably Zac, because most of our family events originate with him), found a special deal being offered by the Columbus Clippers baseball organization. For $25, you and your party of 10 or more could enjoy all you can eat sliders, hot dogs, popcorn, chips, and cookies, on a private balcony, while watching a Clippers game. How could we not? So we gathered our family of 10, invited Kearstin's boyfriend and his brother to join us, starved ourselves for a day, and headed off to spend an evening of eating. Um, I mean, watching a baseball game.

We found our way to our 3rd floor balcony where food was laid out buffet-style.

Let me just take a minute to clear something up. We don't go to these events looking for trouble, and to be fair, a lot of what happened there that night was unavoidable.
1. We can't control wind. Please.
2. We didn't design the table and chairs to be up against the edge of the railing overlooking right field. Come on.
3. Plates, napkins, and cardboard boxes of popcorn? What were they thinking.
4. Positioning a security guard directly below our balcony was nothing short of entrapment.

Right away, one of our tickets went flying over the edge onto the field and landed beside a player from the visiting team who looked up at me and then slid it into his back pocket. Fine. Keep our ticket and nobody get mad. (Refer back to #1 of things outside of our control.)

So we filled our plates, sat down in our seats, and focused on eating while they played their little baseball game...or whatever. That's when Ron's full box of popcorn fell over the edge of the balcony onto right field. Now, anyone who knows my husband, knows he doesn't go around throwing perfectly good food over the sides of balconies willy nilly. Popcorn weighs like nothing, and refer back to #'s 1-3 of things that weren't our choice. Actually, go ahead and include #4, because that's when Security made us a little visit to let us know that things from our balcony have been falling onto the field.
Dude. We know. We were there.

Before he arrived back to his post below us, Kearstin's plate and Barbara's napkin landed on the field. (Numbers 1-4, people. I can't keep reminding you this wasn't our fault.)


But for the rest of the game, we managed to keep our food and accessories off the field. That is, until 8th Inning when my granddaughter threw her Na Na over the side of the balcony and onto the field. To clarify: A Na Na is a pacifier and it was thrown. Not blown. Thrown.

So bye bye Na Na, right? Wrong. Not only does she love her Na Na, but that Na Na came from Nick's mom's house and she'd specifically told them to return that Na Na...the one currently laying in right field directly below Security...back to Granna's.

As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures. So being the good Chuckles that he is, Ron looked up the right fielder's name and began repeatedly yelling at him. "MARK! GET GRANNA'S NA NA!" Of all the things Mark's ever heard yelled at him from the stands, I'm willing to bet this one was the hardest to ignore. But ignore he did, because Mark isn't going to throw away his shot at the big leagues someday to satisfy his curiosity of what a Granna or a Na Na might be.

If right-field-Mark wouldn't get Granna's Na Na, surely the bat boy would. It's like his job. So Aubrey and Nick found their way to the seats behind the bat boy and began nicely asking for this one teeny tiny little favor...pretty please and thank you, walk out onto right field and save Granna's Na Na!
And he did!











Right-field-Mark could really take a lesson on priorities from the true team player.

It's rare that any of my posts end with an 'And they lived happily ever after' moment, yet here we are.
As for the Clippers baseball organization and their security team...well, they might wanna know that Ron's department decided to host their annual picnic there for their employees. And their family. This Saturday.

We're coming for you, Mark.
And we're bringing our Na Nas.

Zip-Whining

Sometimes an activity gets planned and I think, Oh, this will be a blog, but then everything's going along so smoothly, and I think, well, this might not be entertaining after all. But then, outta nowhere, it happens. Something huge. Often tragic. And almost always involving Ron. At my expense.

Two weeks ago, we went zip lining at Mega Caverns in Louisville with a group of friends, and as it so happened, it was over the weekend that marked the anniversary of our first blind date 17 years ago. We call it Shon Day. (Our names. Shari + Ron. Combined. Please don't make me explain everything to you.)

Anyhoo, 4 fun couples zip lining through caves in Kentucky. How could this not get ridiculous, right? Don't get me wrong, we had a total blast, but nothing crazy-blog-worthy, although considering we're talking dangling from a wire hundreds of feet in the air with our lives literally in the hands of 2 teenaged employees responsible for clipping us safely to the lines and then stopping us from careening into the cave walls at each end, I should probably be more grateful. But the writer in me had hopes for some excitement to report. Granted, one of us got car sick on the way down, and some loser chick line-jumped her into the bathroom stall at a gas station, but it didn't escalate to a fight or anything, so you know it wasn't me. I don't choose many battles with strangers, but line jumping me to pee would definitely be one of them.


Later, BFF Lissa and I decided to sneak a selfie during the probably-really-important instructional lecture on how to put our harnesses on...and then we needed help putting our harnesses on. But still. I needed more.

Things did get stupid at the halfway point when we had to cross what was basically a swinging rope bridge with our partner. Ron forgot he's the one afraid of heights and started jumping around in the middle of the bridge to mess with me and ended up traumatizing us both in the process. Had that gone any more wrong, I wouldn't be around to write it anyway. And when one of our trusted teenaged guides pretended to slip off the edge of the platform, I stopped looking for blog material and snapped into survival mode.

The final ride consisted of side-by-side lines where we were required to climb onto a small wooden platform across from our partner and race them to the bottom. One guide stayed at the top to get us hooked up. The other guide waited at the bottom to catch one of us. The husbands. She caught the husbands. The wives were responsible for spotting and grabbing a single rope hanging at the end of our line while everyone gathered at the bottom who'd gone before you screams "CATCH THE ROPE!" as you fly by, just in case you're feeling rebellious and deciding that not catching the rope would be the ultimate finger to the man. And assuming you do actually catch the rope, then you have to hold on for dear life to avoid sliding back over the abyss until the guide is finished making sure your husband is totally safe. How 'bout we just put all the forks in the spoon slot while we're at it.

I'm not a feminist. I do not claim to be able to do all that men can do. So give them the damn rope to grab because I prefer the 90lb teenaged girl safely catching me at the bottom, thanks anyway.

We'd planned on doing their ropes course afterward, but when we stood looking at a Chuckie Cheese version of a ropes course and our group of 8 large adults were scheduled to go behind 2 birthday parties of 7 year olds, we gave our non-refundable wrist bands away and spared ourselves a shred of dignity. Obviously, disgracing ourselves on an amateur ropes course designed for children could've very well ended up being the blog, but not worth it.

So we left, nothing really to report, except a fun relatively smooth adventure with friends as we headed to the hotel...with our cake.

Despite Ron going to the added effort of trying to have the Walmart bakery write 'Happy Shon Day'...which after 4 failed attempts later, she still got it wrong, and it ended up saying, 'Happy Birthday Shon Day'...the cake really had nothing to do with our anniversary or even the adventure with friends. We just take a cake to every hotel. And then we split it down the middle and eat it with forks straight off the little cardboard saucer till it's gone, as seen in this picture from Hilton Head. We do it every time. It's like our thang. The only difference this time was that we'd share it with our friends...and cut it into individual pieces and eat it from plates like civilized human beings, because, you know, witnesses. And since I don't allow myself sweets at home, our hotel cake is a big deal. Like, huge. Don't screw with that.

So we arrived at the hotel. Ron carried our luggage and I carried the cake. I stepped into the elevator uneventfully, because I'm 45 and this ain't my first rodeo. Ron stepped one foot across the threshold and WHAM. He got smashed by the elevator door and thrown up against the side. Okay. I was there. I saw the whole thing. Ron doesn't move fast, but that door was comin' in hot, and it's been my experience that elevator doors closed a little less violently than that, but apparently, Kentucky Drury Inn's think their elevator users have had it far too easy for far too long with, like, having time to get both feet inside. Time to start cracking the whip.

Later that evening, Ron ran up to our room to get the cake. Then he waited for the elevator to bring it back down. See where this is going yet? Now, having been just recently rammed by that very elevator, one would think that'd be fresh on his mind, and maybe, oh, I don't know, NOT balance the cake on one hand like a waiter or at the very least, pick up the pace when it came time to climb inside. But no. And WHAM went the door into his arm and SLAM went the cake onto the floor.

Man buys wife cake.
Man takes wife to hotel with cake.
Man destroys cake when he gets crushed by the hotel elevator. Twice.
*Cue music*...Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme...

The good  news: It didn't say 'Happy Birthday Shon Day' on it anymore. Funny how that minor

mishap pissed me off just 24 hours previously.
The bad news: It didn't say anything on it anymore, because the icing was thrown off the top of the cake and squished down the side.
In more bad news, and this will probably surprise you: I don't have a great track record with my emotions when it comes to food crisis and my responses should never be witnessed, much less videoed. (ie; the Mrs.Grass's Soup Incident of 2016...and now the Hotel Cake Catastrophe of 2017.)

After the meltdown lasting roughly 4 minutes, I pried off the lid and verge-of-tearsed the pile of icing across the cake in what ended up looking like a mix of frothy poop laced with blood. A few people actually accepted a piece, certainly not because it looked good, or even to be polite, but in an attempt to get Ron's head off the chopping block. Then we sat there looking at the mess on our plates until Andy broke the silence with a line from Clark Griswold in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation..."If this tastes half as good as it looks, we're all in for a real treat."

And a blog was born. See? As promised. Huge, tragic, involving Ron, and at my expense. Voila.

Everyone needs a group of hilarious friends to make memories with, who make you laugh till you cry, willing to share your nasty elevator floor cake, and witness your meltdowns but love you anyway. If you don't have some, get some.

It needs to be said that Ron redeemed himself this past weekend at a Drury Inn we stayed at in Ohio. His elevator entrances and exits were clean and well executed and the cake never touched the floor...of course he was forbidden to carry it, so there's that.

Roast Ghost

I've written about our dogs before. Not exactly warm fuzzy stories, but then again, 'warm and fuzzy' doesn't exactly describe anything about our family. You might remember the infamous dog fight/missing eye story featuring our dog, Summer, in Fright Night, and who could forget the notorious poison control/vomiting inducing trauma with all of our dogs in Dog Days. (Sadly, Tia was hit and killed by a semi in front of our house later that year.)

We've since added Bam Bam to the mix. His full name used to be Bam Bam Brown Bear, after the Alaskan Bush People, but Caymen changed it to Bamberly James because she doesn't share my borderline obsessive infatuation with the Alaskan Bush People. He's a mix of Chinese Crusted Powder Puff and Frat Boy Asshole, so I guess his new name suits him. A few months ago, we called him '30-Turds' for a week when he went completely insane one night and pooped a landmine of individual piles of dung all over our rec room. Bam's loads of fun.

But a story you may not remember from years ago was tacked onto the end of  Piece, Bye Peace, which referenced our dog Quincy and her nasty habit of sneaking pieces of dead animal carcasses into our house. I wouldn't bring it up again, except it's a detail that explains a part of what happened here on Monday. And trust me when I say, that's the only thing explainable about what happened here on Monday.

That's the day I have both grandbabies. That being said, on Mondays, there's a baby gate blocking the top of our stairs. I honestly thought the worst thing that happened this past Monday was Summer and Bam Bam suddenly losing their freakin' minds and digging up the carpet on the bottom stair. Because, seriously, what else could they do in one day?

Don't ever ask that. Because late that afternoon, I found Quincy, sitting on the top step, just on the other side of the baby gate, holding a giant piece of dark brown something in her mouth. Oh lawd, not today. Nobody else was home, my grandson was playing downstairs and I'd just laid our granddaughter down for her nap, yet none of that stopped me from screaming, because I know a scream-worthy situation when I see one.

I jumped the gate, opened the door to the garage, and began yelling, "Get out! Get out! Get out!" So she dropped her treasure on the top step and ran out the door. So then I started yelling, "Pick it up!! Pick it up!! Pick it up!!" which is obviously a command we need to work on because she stood in the garage with a look that said, I don't know what you want from me. But Summer knew, because she bolted to the top of the stairs and grabbed it, which caused Quincy to run back inside to defend her goods.

*Insert dog fight and more screaming*
Sassy really knows how to entertain babies.

The whatever it was began shredding apart before my eyes until I finally got them off of it and back outside. Accepting the fact that my overactive gag reflex was about to get a thorough workout, I slowly moved toward the mess on the stairs, and then the smell hit me...beef? I bent down to see a perfectly seasoned freshly cooked roast ripped into large chunks all over our stairs and my mouth started watering. (Hey, better than gagging.)

The obvious question. Where in the crap did Quincy get a roast?
It boiled down to 2 choices, because we only have 2 neighbors. One next door and one across the street. Nobody's gonna throw away a whole roast, and seeing as Quincy knows how to nudge a screen door open, she'd obviously just stolen somebody's dinner.

So I packed all the roast pieces in a Walmart bag and hid it in the outside trash can under all the dirty diapers, as you do. Then I waited guiltily inside for the angry text, call, and or knock on the door that was surely gonna come. I mean, meat was stolen. I wouldn't let that slide.

When Tuesday morning rolled around and I hadn't heard from anyone, I assumed somebody must not have had their heart set on roast and moved on with their lives. Then Tuesday afternoon, a knock on the door.

I opened it to find a man standing beside a large white van with the dogs barking at his feet.

He said, "Are these your dogs?"

Crap.
I said, "Yes."

Please don't say roast. Please don't say roast...

He said, "I almost hit them with my van."
I said, "Why?"

Please don't say roast. Please don't say roast...

He said, "Because they were in the road."

Huge sigh, thank you, Lord.

As I was talking to him, the neighbor came hurrying from her house across the road.
She said, "Is this about your dogs?"

Sh*t.
I said, "Yes."

Here it comes. Roast, roast, roast, roast...

She said, "They've been crossing the street and going way back in the fields over there."

Sigh of relief, I can't live like this.

I thanked them for watching out for our dogs while carefully avoiding blurting out the word roast, and closed the door having just dodged 2 bullets.

Then I went to Zumba and found out that bullets travel in 3's.

As I was getting out of my van, my next door neighbor was arriving for class and approached me in the parking lot and began catching me up on what's been going on with her, when she suddenly said, "Oh my gosh, and THEN on Monday, I cooked a big dinner and we never even got to eat it."

You know that special effect they do in movies where the person listening, like, blacks out inside their head, and the person talking starts to sound all muffled in the background. Turns out, that's really a thing.

When I finally came to, I asked, "What'd you cook...roast?" because that seemed like a more casual follow-up question than, did my dog steal your dinner.

She paused and said, "Grilled chicken."

How have I not had a heart attack yet?

So the mystery of the roast lives on.

Of course I'm not happy that our dog stole someone's dinner, but I'm relieved it wasn't any of our neighbor's...and let's be honest, if she's gonna drag a dead animal into the house, it's a refreshing change to have it already prepped and cooked.