Writing the Write on Walking the Walk

I walk about two miles every day. It’s just about one mile from my house to the community center, so there and back makes two miles. I hope to increase it. I used to walk in the mornings, after putting Baby Bear on the bus, but this being Florida, at this time of year it’s now too hot to walk that distance at nine in the morning. I can’t do it any earlier because the Bear himself is frequently up around six. So now I go in the early evening, when it’s relatively cooler.

There are just two little things I don’t like about the walking, both of which come from having a hopelessly introverted personality: Having to go around people ahead of me who walk slower than I do, and greeting strangers walking or biking in the opposite direction.

Anytime I set out walking and I see someone else on the sidewalk ahead of me, my heart sinks. I don’t have to run to catch up to them. I’ve always walked very fast, and Mr. Lucky is always exhorting me to slow down and wait for him. It’s my normal pace. If I walk at my normal pace, I will always catch up to whoever is walking in front of me, even if they’re a hundred feet ahead. Sometimes I think if other people walked any slower, they’d leave a trail of slime.

I can’t slow down myself. I’ve tried. It drives me insane. My legs must move faster, only not fast enough to run. As I catch up to the person in front of me, for some stupid reason I always dread having to go around them. I’m afraid they’ll hear me coming up behind them and turn to look—and then I’ll have to smile and say something to them (oh, God forbid) as I hasten around them.

Yes, I know. Just go around them, Karen! It won’t kill you to smile and say, “It’s just me,” and then go around them!

This wouldn’t be a problem for me if I ran, or rode a bike. Runners and bikers go around me in the same direction, and we’re all cool with it. But this is walking. No one ever walks around me. I have to walk around everyone else, or take baby snail steps and make slime.

And then there’s what I call “The Pamela Tudsbury Effect.” In a scene from one of my all-time favorite novels, Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War (I can’t recall if it’s also in the mini-series, not having seen it as many times as I’ve read the book), protagonist Victor Henry is enjoying an early morning stroll around the deck of a passenger ship taking him to his new assignment in Germany. He figures five laps around the ship add up to about a mile, and he means to walk up to fifteen or twenty laps if he can.

Ambling in the opposite direction is Pamela Tudsbury, who has a similar objective. On each side of the deck they run into each other, so they smile and say hello. After this happens two or three times, Henry suggests joining her in going the same direction. Pamela is grateful for this, confessing that every time she sees him coming towards her, she feels like a fool preparing to grin and greet from so many paces away.

How I can empathize!

Every time I see someone coming up the sidewalk in the opposite direction, I find myself clearing my throat and pushing any stray hair back from my face. I try not to make eye contact till we’re within ten paces. Then I force all the muscles around my mouth to stretch back into some semblance of a pleasant expression, and with a deep breath I manage to push a pathetically mealy-mouthed “Hi” out of my throat.
   
Ninety-nine percent of the time they’ll say something first, but I always respond even if it kills me, or I think it will. Sometimes I worry they might not have heard my response and they’ll press on wondering what my problem is. But would it really make sense for me to say “Hi” again, only louder—just in case they might not have heard me the first time?

One percent of the time I might actually be first to grin and greet, but let me tell you, for the introvert, that’s death.

Especially when the other person doesn’t respond, or even look at me. Then I get to wonder what their problem is.

Do such people have any idea of how much effort it takes for me to stretch my facial muscles into something approaching a smile? To force that choked “Hi” out of my mouth? And most importantly, of how stupid I feel to have socially exerted myself for nothing?

I wonder if this is why treadmills are so popular? Are they just preferred by introverts, or people who don’t want to have to walk around obstacles and someone else’s slime?

Does This Make Me a Victim of Birtherism?

My driver's license is up for renewal, so today I went to renew it. New regulations in Florida require the presentation of certain documents in order to renew, to wit: Proof of U.S. citizenship (e.g. birth certificate); SSN card; two documents confirming current residence; and a marriage certificate to show the link between Karen Maiden Name on the birth certificate and Karen Married Name on the driver's license. That'll teach me not to keep my own name!

We were married in Denmark, so the marriage certificate is Danish, and in four languages! Thank the Lord I've never been divorced or remarried, or I would've had to bring along divorce and marriage documents for each and every marital misadventure, because Florida wants to see the whole painful trail of name changes.

The birth certificate is wallet-sized and sort of resembles a credit card. It includes the Seal of the State of Washington, where I was born, and clearly states that it's a "Birth Record Certification" from the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. On the reverse it states, THIS CERTIFICATION IS A TRUE ABSTRACT OF THE ORIGINAL BIRTH RECORD OF THE PERSON NAMED ON THE REVERSE SIDE, WHICH RECORD IS ON FILE WITH AND IN OFFICIAL CUSTODY OF THE STATE REGISTRAR OF VITAL STATISTICS AT OLYMPIA. ISSUED UNDER AUTHORITY OF SECTION 43.20.090 REVISED CODE OF WASHINGTON. Signed by some bureaucrat who by now is probably enjoying a nice fat pension.

(Bear with me; I really do intend to get somewhere with this.)

Although not requested, I also brought along my DD Form 214, Certificate of Release or Discharge From Active Duty, just in case I needed to wave it at them and yell something along the lines of, "You can't do this to me--I'm an honorably discharged veteran!"

Once there, the clerk spent quite a long time furrowing her brow over the birth and marriage documents. She accepted all the other documents without incident, but these two made her suspicious, and she took them to her supervisor. At one point a third bureaucrat was summoned to scrutinize these documents which certified two of the most important events in my otherwise pathetic life. What, were they going to deny me a new driver's license because they didn't think my marriage was valid?

No, but in the end they turned me down because in their collective opinion, my birth certificate was not valid and ergo unacceptable.

That birth certificate, obtained and given to me by a parental unit, was accepted for enlistment in the United States Armed Forces. It was accepted when I applied for a passport. It was accepted by the rejecting triumvirate's Danish counterparts when we applied for a marriage license. The United States Air Force, in turn, accepted the marriage license as the basis for changing my last name and later, recognizing me as a military dependent spouse.

But it is unacceptable for the mere renewal of a driver's license in Florida!

Oh, I did pull out the DD Form 214, if only to prove my assertion that I was in the military where that birth certificate was accepted. They did tell me that with the 214 I could get a "V" for Veteran on my new driver's license, and I can't begin to tell you how comforting that was; but I was going to have to contact the State of Washington for a certified birth certificate.

That's costing me $31.50. In the meantime, they kindly issued me a temporary driver's license in case the birth certificate doesn't arrive before the current license's expiration date of March 16th.

Thank you for letting me rant.

A Day of Waiting . . . and Waiting . . . and Waiting at the Lab

Actually, it was only two hours, but it seemed like all day.

Once a year I’m sent to the lab for routine blood work. This year was no different from last year. Every year it’s the same:

I always manage to go on the day when only one phlebotomist is available, which means a two hour wait. And the only available seat for waiting is always next to the guy who (a) is a heavy smoker who stinks like the bottom of a filthy butt can, and (b) wears a tank top and spends way too much time stretching his arms over and behind his head.

I try to lean over the other way, but there’s a water cooler there and another man keeps drinking from it (I can only assume he must be trying to manufacture a urine sample). While he’s drinking cup after cup of water, he’s hovering over me and I can’t help wondering if he’s trying to read my Nookcolor over my shoulder, or pathetically hoping for a cheap glimpse of cleavage.

More people are called to the back than come out. This could be because the phlebotomist seems to only summon people who aren’t there. Like Ben Stein calling out in vain for Bueller, the phlebotomist will repeat a name several times, and even try different pronunciations of the name, but no one in that crowded waiting room so much as budges, though there might be one or two yawns. Finally she’ll give up and call out the next name on the list. Everyone still remains slumped in their chairs.

Where are these people? Why can’t she call out the names of people who are actually there? Like my name? I’ll spring up for anything that sounds even remotely like “Lingefelt” just to get away from Waterboy and Smelly Guy.

There can only be two reasons for this annoying phenomenon: Either the phlebotomist has today’s roster mixed up with the one from last Wednesday, or those people really are there, but they’ve long since lapsed into boredom-induced comas.

Sometimes it’s tempting to claim to be one of those people who never respond when their name is called, just to get in and out and on with my life. But who’s to say they didn’t sign in for something a lot more intrusive than blood work—which might even explain why they’re no longer there. They lost all nerve and fled after signing in.

I was the only person there who brought something to read. There were no magazines or newspapers lying about, and more than one person grumbled about how there should have been a TV.

Indeed, there was a lot of loud grumbling, mostly from little old ladies, about the long wait and how it was interfering with more important places to go and infinitely more interesting people to see. You’d think after eighty or ninety years on this mortal coil, it might have dawned on them that anytime they go to a lab or doctor’s office, they’re bloody well going to be waiting awhile and should plan accordingly.

I didn’t like the long wait, either, but reading helped pass the time and kept me from getting sucked into that gripefest.

I save my griping for this blog.

Chiding My Choice of Cheese

I’m all for friendly cashiers, and I always appreciate their cheerfulness in the face of all they do, and the crap they must put up with while spending so much time on their feet.

But sometimes, I really sort of wish they would refrain from questioning my purchases and expecting me to explain them.

Yes, I know ramen noodles are high in sodium. Thank you, I’m well aware there’s a hurricane out in the Gulf, and that these frozen chicken nuggets will be no good if the power goes out. But I’m going to buy them for my son anyway, because he loves them, and who knows? Maybe, just maybe, we won’t have a power outage. As it turned out, we didn’t, because the hurricane shifted elsewhere. But the clerk in that scenario actually chastised us for not stocking up on canned goods instead, and Mr. Lucky grumbled about her busybodying all the way home.

Today it was about cheese, specifically the kind pictured below:

From Sargento, it’s a six ounce resealable bag of mild and white cheddar cheese pieces shaped like Mickey Mouse. Unlike most cheese products, the pieces within are not individually wrapped; you just unzip the bag and devour.

They are perfect for Baby Bear, who loves cheese in any form. He’ll go through all 64 slices of sandwich cheese (which means lots of little wrappers everywhere) and even break into bags of shredded cheese bought for nights we do Mexican.


I’ve been known to buy bags of Mickey Mouse cheese by the truckload. In all fairness, most cashiers simply declare the cheese “cute” and leave it at that, for which I’m grateful.

But not today’s cashier. “Who’s the cheese freak?” she wanted to know.

“My son,” I replied. “He loves cheese, and it’s good for him.”

She just had to ask how old he was, and I told her. It was clear from her stupefied reaction that she thought it very strange I was buying Mickey Mouse cheese for a thirteen year old, when there are so many other cheese products out there packaged in a more sophisticated manner. She mentioned her own teenager who, just like our Bear, ate all kinds of cheese—slices, cubes, blocks—but never in Mickey Mouse form.

To her credit, she stopped short of asserting her teenager wouldn’t be caught dead with a bag of this stuff, but guilt-receptive parental unit that I am, the vibe was there and duly picked up: I was babying my son, embarrassing him, and he’d probably never get a date or hold down a decent job, and would grow up to become some crazed sniper in a bell tower, all because I made him eat cheese shaped like Mickey Mouse when he would’ve preferred it shaped like air guitars.*

As there was a long line behind us, I thought the better of getting into an equally long explanation of my son’s autism and other issues; how because of that alone, and not the shape of his cheese, it was not outside the realm of possibility that he’d still be living with us at age forty anyway; and why Mickey Mouse cheese really is easier for him than that string stuff that has to be peeled open, and is designed for people with super fine motor skills, none of whom live in my house.

You might say I was feeling a little cheesed off.

*He does, however, prefer vegetables shaped like air guitars.

Guess Who Destroyed a Smoke Alarm? (Hint: Not Baby Bear, and Not Mr. Lucky)

It was me—yes, Karen!—in another one of those “this could only happen when the husband’s away” moments:

The day after Christmas, Mr. Lucky went up to Georgia to see his parents, taking with him the Crown Prince and Bart the chocolate beagle. I’d had trouble sleeping the previous night, and so was not at my best—whatever that is, since I’m not sure I’ve ever been there. Part of the problem was two boys who don’t seem to need as much sleep as I do—both the Crown Prince and Baby Bear were up very early Sunday morning, and I simply cannot sleep when the younger boy is awake. Terrible things are more likely to happen if I do. Mr. Lucky attributed our sons’ wakefulness and energy to the excitement of Christmas.

After they went to Georgia, I was really hoping to get a better night’s sleep. But alas . . .

At approximately 2:30 am, I was awakened by the regular chirping of the smoke alarm. It chirped about every minute or so, calling for a new battery.

Why? Why, oh why did it have to start doing this at 2:30 in the morning? Why did it have to do this when I had very little sleep the previous night? And why did it have to be on a night when Mr. Lucky was away?

At first, I thought I could ignore it and go back to sleep, but that wasn’t happening. As I stumbled out of our bedroom, which is just off the family room, I could hear the chirping right over my head, where there was one of the many smoke alarms scattered throughout our house.

We have ten foot ceilings, and I was in no mood to go out to the garage and drag in the stepladder. I grabbed a broom and a chair from the dining table, and poked at the smoke alarm till it fell open to reveal the battery.

I tore out the battery. Still the alarm chirped. I said some very, very bad words and began beating the smoke alarm till the casing broke off, revealing all the tiny little bits and wires and doodads inside.

And still it chirped.

More banging and stabbing with the broomstick ensued, till something snapped and sparked, and the other half of the smoke alarm clattered to the floor, leaving only wires dangling out of a hole in the ceiling. YET IT WAS STILL CHIRPING!

How to shut it up? I didn’t know where Mr. Lucky was keeping the hammer this week, and I was in no mood to ransack the house looking for it.

I thought of grabbing the shovel and digging a hole in the backyard to bury the alarm, but it was too cold and dark outside. So I did the next best thing—I rushed it out to the garage and shoved it under a pile of stuff, hoping that would stifle the persistent chirping.

Yet when I returned to the family room, I could still hear loud chirping from the ceiling.

So I started yanking at the wires that dangled from the hole, till there was nothing left to yank. After the snap and spark, I dared not go further. But it wouldn’t stop chirping.


I was furious and frustrated. I went back to bed and drove myself insane wondering how I could muffle that infernal chirping until Mr. Lucky came home . . . in another three days.

Where’s the duct tape? Suppose I took that whole bag of cotton balls beneath the bathroom sink, and taped it over the hole? And suppose I added the complete Sunday edition of the St. Pete Times, would that be enough?

These were the crazed, deranged thoughts racing through my mind as I struggled in vain to go back to sleep. I was at least thankful that Bart was in Georgia. That particular dog would’ve gone nuts from the chirping. Only Jasper has the good sense to go into hiding and stay there.

It didn’t help my mood when Mr. Lucky’s alarm clock went off at 7:30 am. My own alarm clock is so easy to turn on and off—it has a huge snooze button I can pound with my fist—but Mr. Lucky’s clock is all tiny identical buttons set into the casing, and you have to hope you hit the right one with either your fingernail or a very pointy stylus sold separately.

That’s why whenever his alarm clock goes off and he’s not here, I just rip the cord out of the socket.

To continue with the smoke alarm that wouldn’t die, it wasn’t till after I’d had at least one cup of coffee that I realized the chirping came not from that ugly hole I’d left in the ceiling outside our bedroom, but from the smoke alarm in the opposite corner of the family room . . . outside Mr. Lucky’s man-cave.

I’d attacked the wrong smoke alarm.

Well? It was the middle of the night! I was tired! I was ticked! And I swear the chirping had been coming from the smoke alarm outside our bedroom!

I wasn’t even sure we had any 9-volt batteries in the house. There were none in the cupboard where I kept all the other batteries (mostly AA’s for Baby Bear’s toys), so I rummaged through the “junk drawer” in the kitchen. Whenever he deigns to put anything away, no matter what it is, Mr. Lucky always crams it into that drawer.

But it was there that I unearthed an unopened package of 9-volt batteries. They’d probably been there since we moved in, and with my rotten luck, they were no longer any good.

Yet when I switched one out with the old battery in the smoke alarm, the chirping finally ceased.

When Mr. Lucky came home, he was appalled by what I’d done to the other smoke alarm. “I can’t believe you totally destroyed it,” he said.

“You had to be here,” was all I could say. “Under the circumstances, I really think you would’ve done the same. I’ve seen how you are whenever you use the broiler and the one in the kitchen goes off.”

“But I’ve never torn the whole thing off the ceiling and smashed it to smithereens!” he exclaimed. “You’re dangerous, Karen.”

I don’t know if he’s ever given me a finer compliment.

A Rant About Gift Wrap

I like to use as many different kinds of gift wrap as possible each Christmas—the more varied, the better. I love wrapping paper covered with candy canes, poinsettias, holly, snowmen and snowflakes, teddy bears, gingerbread men, Santa Claus in numerous poses, and of course Disney characters.

But when it comes to gift wrap, I do not like solid colors, plaids, or stripes (except on my candy canes). I find them boring, unimaginative, and not the least bit festive. I don’t like seeing any of them on bed sheets, either.

Which brings us to those multi-packs of Christmas gift wrap you can buy, usually three or four rolls to a package. They’re a great, economical way to get a variety of designs, except for one teensy little problem: It seems as if every multi-pack out there includes one roll of either solid-colored, striped, or plaid wrapping paper. If I buy these convenient packs, then I’m going to be stuck with unexciting solids, silly stripes, and plaid. Ordinarily I like plaid, but not on my gift wrap—or the bed sheets—unless there’s a sexy Scotsman underneath.

I can’t shake the feeling that each pack includes a solid, stripe or plaid because the gift wrap manufacturers can’t get rid of them any other way. But then why would they make them—unless there’s a very powerful lobby out there dedicated to Saving Our Solid, Striped, and Plaid Christmas Gift Wrap?

I won’t use them. In fact, unless the other rolls in the package have designs that totally blow me away, I’ll just not buy them at all and pay a little extra for individual rolls that allow me to choose exactly what I want, instead of having S, S, and P forced on me through some Spread the Monotony scheme.

In that spirit, I try not to use the same gift wrap design more than once for each person whose gift I wrap. I only wish I could get Mr. Lucky to do the same without having to beat him over the head with that old Claxton fruitcake I pull out of storage along with the ornaments and lights every year. Each Yuletide, he waits until five minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve to wrap my presents. I give him every single roll of wrapping paper in the house, a dozen or more different designs (save any S, S, or P), and I exhort him not to use the same design twice. His usual response is to roll his eyes, but he also knows I must be humored.

Yes, yes, I know that what’s inside the gift wrap is more important than the wrap itself. But I like the variety, the dearth of sameness, the wild explosion of many colors and patterns beneath the tree, a kaleidoscopic chaos with the promise of never knowing what’s next but it’s certain to be a feast for the senses.

In other words, it’s what I know.

P.O.'d at the P.O.

Last December we received what appeared to be a Christmas card. The house number and town matched ours, but the addressee’s name and street were completely different. For all we knew, it might have included family photos, baby pictures for someone’s grandparents, or a check from a generous friend or relative to make the addressee’s holiday a little merrier. We took it back to the Post Office, only to have it show up in our mailbox again the very next day. Fortunately, Mr. Lucky knew where the street was, and because he’s such a nice guy, he ended up delivering it to the folks in person.

The following March, I found in my mailbox several post cards from the Census Bureau, all reminding me to fill out my Census form and mail it back by April 1st. Only one of the cards was correctly addressed to me. The others were for residences scattered to the four corners of the town. I trust THEY remembered to fill out their Census forms, even without the reminder.

Then last week it happened again—we received a regular business sized envelope so thick, that the sender (whose return address was a P.O. Box) had to stand in line at the post office to pay for the extra postage. I don’t know why she didn’t just slap on an extra stamp.

Notwithstanding, whatever it was, it was addressed to my house number, my street, my town, state and ZIP code—but the addressee was not the name of anyone who lives here. Neither the first nor last name was even close to that of anyone who lives around here.

I looked for both the sender and addressee in the White Pages, but neither was listed.

The sender went to a lot of trouble to pay for extra postage on this thick, stiff envelope. There may have been photos enclosed. It was certainly important to the parties concerned. So I took it to the Post Office.

I waited in line. And waited and waited. I don’t know why they have three windows, when only two are ever open. Finally it was my turn—and I made a point of informing the clerk that while that was my address on the envelope, I was not that person, nor did any person by that name live at my address. Could he please return it to the sender?

He made some weird mark on it and declared he would take care of it. I thanked him and went on my way.

The next day it was back in our mailbox. That weird mark looked something like “ANK”—not “UNK” which might have made more sense to me. No one had bothered to pull out the “Return to Sender” stamp with that rude pointy finger. Hadn’t that clerk heard of Elvis?

Back to the Post Office I went, contemplating how to confront the clerk about this without—well, going postal. When I arrived, the same two clerks manned the same two windows, while the same third window remained closed. But the same old long line snaked all the way back to the door—each person with a stack of boxes probably going overseas, and of course no one will fill out a customs form while waiting, because they're hoping the clerk will forget to tell them they must have one. Alas, he may forget to use a "Return to Sender" stamp, but he never forgets to make YOU step aside and fill out a form.

Did I really want to stand in line for half an hour just to ask the clerk to please, for the love of God and Country, stamp RETURN TO SENDER on this bad penny of an envelope, only to have it boomerang back to my mailbox? No, I did not. Could I trust him to do his job this time? No, I could not. Would he even want to see me again, especially when I was in a foul mood? (All right, a fouler mood than usual.) Unless he was doing this to make me come back so he could get my phone number and ask me on a date, I think not. Besides, I'm already married.

So I went over to the table, pulled a pen out of my purse, and wrote RETURN TO SENDER, ADDRESSEE NOT AT THIS ADDRESS!!! in huge black letters, complete with those exclamation marks (though there should also be a double underline under NOT). Tempting as it was, I resisted the urge to add epithets and a raving manifesto on why the Post Office was losing money. There was only so much available space on the envelope anyway.

I slipped it into the mail slot just like I do with the bills, pulled the slot open again to make sure the letter dropped down like I always do (I felt validated when I saw Meg Ryan’s character doing the same O/C thing in When Harry Met Sally . . .), and for the second time that week, I went on my way—but didn’t thank anyone.

It’s been over a week now, and I haven’t seen that letter since. I hope—nay, trust—it went where it’s supposed to go.

Most Dreaded Phrase in the English Language (Second in a Series)

“What do you want to do with this?”

Uttered by Mr. Lucky when rerun season starts and he gets it into his head to clean out the garage, a closet, or his man-cave.

“What do you want to do with this?”

My heart sinks like an anchor into the pit of my stomach every time he says he’s going to “clean out” something, because it means I won’t get anything done for the rest of the day. Every five minutes he’ll crash into my office holding up something he’s unearthed and—

“What do you want to do with this?”

Most of the time I tell him to put it back where he found it—especially if it came out of a closet. “If I wanted to do anything with it,” I say, “I would have removed it already and done whatever it is I wanted to do with it.”

But no, he’s trying to create more space in the closet/garage/man-cave by moving everything into my office, till I can’t even budge from my chair for all the spoils of nearly twenty-three years of marriage piled around me like the inventory from Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu—

“What do you want to do with this?”

—Or what they found in the underground chamber in National Treasure, though I’ve always thought it looked like the same old junk minus the sled.

“What do you want to do with this?”

Trouble is, we’ve only accumulated the kind of stuff that would get us laughed off Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars.

“What do you want to do with this?”

I told you, every five minutes. See how annoying it is? He barges back into my office, nearly impaling himself on that cheap tarnished brass knock-off of Anubis that’s supposed to double as a “beverage butler”, and proceeds to empty a bag full of little odds and ends across the keyboard of my computer, even as I sit here typing an opus.

“Look what I found,” he says, thrusting a snow-globe under my nose. As “Lara’s Theme” plays, glitter swirls around a snowy tableau of Yuri Zhivago stealing scrap lumber from a dilapidated Moscow structure while his Party stooge of a half-brother contemplates shooting him for it. “Did you know we still had this?”

“Yes, now please—”

“What do you want to do with this?”

I tell him I had the snow globe put away to keep Baby Bear from dribbling and shooting hoops with it. It is, after all, made of glass and that kid has a thing for breakables. A destructive thing.

“I’ll just put it here for now.” And Mr. Lucky places it on the last square inch of space remaining on my desk.

For now, he says. I know how long “for now” is. Why does he think I can’t get out of my chair anymore? The room was already near capacity from junk he brought in here “for now” the last time he cleaned out another part of the house. I remember that well. Bush was still president. Bush 41.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating, since we haven’t lived in this house that long, but it really does seem as if—

“What do you want to do with this?”

Finally I lose it and yell at him to do whatever he wants with it, just leave me alone.

Why doesn’t he ever seek my input on the really important stuff? Like the time he waited till after he destroyed the receipt to announce he blew all our lottery winnings on the Bioflex 2000 Ultimate X-Treme Digital Family Gym for Home, Office, or Still in Its Original Box Under the Bed. We already had one that’s been holding up our mattress since, yes, Bush 41. With that lotto ticket we could’ve bought a brand new bed frame and paid someone to haul the Bioflex away.

Or the time he traded in my car for a handful of magic beans. That wasn’t what I had in mind when I told him I wanted something “that gets better gas.”

Funny how he never asks, “What do you want to do with this?” in regards to the Bioflex or beans.

Possibly he already knows what I’d say.

(For the first Most Dreaded Phrase in this series, click here.)

Why? WHY?

Ever since we switched back to Daylight Savings Time, I’ve had a devil of a time getting Baby Bear to wake up in the morning. His school bus usually comes around 8:30, and I’m lucky if I can get him even halfway out of bed before 8:00.

But now that school is out for spring break, guess who’s up at 6:30 am playing Frogger with the volume turned up full blast, and the place lit up like Vegas?

I had to check the other side of the bed to make sure that was Mr. Lucky, and not some Elvis impersonator I didn’t remember picking up in the casino bar the night before. No one was there. Then I remembered he’s up in Georgia with the Crown Prince.

And there is no chocolate in the house.

At least I’m not waking up to find my bed floating in overflow from Baby Bear’s bathroom. Let me be grateful for that!

The Real Baby Bear Comes Back--and Strikes Back

On my bookshelf is a well worn book club edition of The Second Lady by Irving Wallace, published in 1980. It’s a Cold War political thriller about a KGB plot to abduct the First Lady of the United States and replace her with an almost perfect double in hopes of gleaning a vital piece of classified information from the President.* Needless to say, the imposter made a few blunders that nearly blew her cover and raised a few suspicions among certain members of her staff.

But not the President. A typical husband in the grand American tradition, he didn’t notice anything the least bit different about his wife.

The First Lady’s mother would have known something was amiss—if she weren’t conveniently deceased.

Which brings us to Baby Bear. I recently blogged about his uncharacteristically good behavior this summer. I’ve been wondering if he was replaced with a Second Bear these past two months, only to be switched back last week when Mr. Lucky took our older son up to Georgia to visit his grandparents. Baby Bear suddenly went back to being his old rampaging, pillaging, plundering self. Do I detect a sinister KGB plot, or a mere reaction to his father’s absence?

I wanted our chocolate beagle, Bart, to go to Georgia with them. Mr. Lucky agreed, until the night before his departure when his father called to declare, “No dogs!” Showing no fear of his own wife, Mr. Lucky complied. He was gone four days, leaving me with the Bear, two dogs, and no car. And—perhaps worst of all—no chocolate.

So what went wrong in his absence? An homage to the late Mr. Wallace and The Book of Lists of which he was co-author:

1. Bart is the same dog who balks at going outside when his master is away. I suppose I should be thankful that when he expresses his displeasure, at least he does it on the bathroom rug.

2. Barely an hour after Mr. Lucky left, the remote controller for Baby Bear’s Playstation went kaput and I couldn’t get it to work again, not even after charging it up or with the cable still plugged in. I had to call Mr. Lucky on his cellphone for advice. Well, okay, not so much for advice as to cuss him out for having the temerity to leave me when he should have known the controller would die an hour later. He instructed me to turn off the Playstation, unplug everything, then plug everything back in, and reboot the Playstation, talking me through a convoluted process that reminded me of when they tried to restore power to Jurassic Park and get it back online. And while I didn’t have any velociraptors chewing my arms off, I did have to contend with two barking dogs, one angry, frustrated Bear, and a thunderstorm that caused a sudden power surge, briefly knocking everything out and ending our phone conversation in a burst of static. Mr. Lucky probably thought I slammed the phone down on him in rage, and I wouldn’t have blamed him for making the assumption.

3. Later, the controller decided to work properly again. Then Baby Bear dropped it behind the entertainment center. Retrieving it was a job for Indiana Jones, complete with huge clouds of old dust, falling objects (note to self: next time, remove framed photos from top of entertainment center before venturing behind it), and sights no human has seen for seven hundred years.

4. Baby Bear has rediscovered water. When he isn’t dumping it on himself, he’s The Human Fountain, throwing and spewing it all over the house.

5. He’s figured out how to turn on the shower in his bathroom. The shower makes almost no noise compared to the tub faucet, and he seems to know it. I lost count of how many times I found him sitting in the tub beneath the shower spray. Sometimes he was clothed, sometimes not.

6. He loves to rock back and forth. He rocks hard enough on the family room sofa that he can actually make the sofa itself rock back, and a new hole in the drywall behind it.

7. Mr. Lucky called the next morning from his parents’ house. His father had taken his mother to an appointment, and since he didn’t have a key to their house, he and the Crown Prince would be stuck there for a few hours until the parental units came back. I was hard pressed to commiserate with his dilemma.

8. Not surprisingly, I have 0 words to report at the weekly check-in for the TARA Book Challenge.

9. I had no chocolate.

10. And I still have no chocolate. I AM OWED CHOCOLATE!

*Now why can't I write blurbs that concise for my own books?

Someone Please Stop My Husband

Mr. Lucky has long dreamed of replacing the carpet between the kitchen and children’s bathroom with something else. Initially he considered ceramic tile to match that in the kitchen and bathroom, but now that his dream is closer to reality (see previous blog entry) he speaks of laminate wood flooring.

I don’t have a problem with this.

He went on to talk of extending the wood flooring to the dining area and family room.

I can’t say as I have a problem with this, either. In fact, I think it might improve the appearance of the family room. And I’m not the one who’s going to have to unhook and dismantle every electronic component in the entertainment center.

He assured me this wouldn’t be done all at once; that we would do first the hallway, then a month or two later, the dining area, followed by the family room. Eventually, he said, he’d like to do the rest of the house.

Now, I do have a problem with this.

“Fine, but not my office,” I said.

“Yes your office,” he countered. “Think of it. No more dog hair, no more odors, and no more stains that have to be soaked up and sponged and worked out over time. All you have to do is wipe them up.”

I just stared at him in horror.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“Problem? Oh, no problem at all. Just that it would mean having to move all my books. Again!”

“Well, of course it would,” he said, with the blithe air of one who knew he would not have to get stuck with that thankless task, since he’d be the one laying the floor. “But it would only be for one day.”

He totally missed the point. The fact remains the books would have to be removed from the shelves, transported to another room along with the bookcases, then transported back and reshelved.

As Betty Boop might say, “No! No! A thousand times, NO!”

Please don’t make me move my books again. If necessary, I’ll start an online petition against it. I’ll stage a sit-in, and go on a housework strike!

So what if he thinks I’m already on day 8,031 of the latter.

The Saga of My Bad Hair Life Continues

Fellow writer Vicki Lane recently blogged about her adventures in hair coloring here and continuing here. I could certainly identify and empathize with her, having blogged about similar mishaps of my own here, just over a year ago.

The hair stylist in that blog entry was so determined to see my hair highlighted, that for the rest of 2008, I didn’t dare go near that particular salon for fear I wouldn’t get out alive—or at least with my hair un-highlighted.

Yes, it sounds like a subplot from a Seinfeld episode. Yes, I’m still too easily intimidated by people and need to work some more on asserting myself. And yes, I’m being ridiculous.

Especially when a couple of months ago, I went to another hair salon to get my bangs trimmed. I like my bangs straight and the rest of my hair one length. All that feathering and layering doesn’t work for me. I have absolutely no aptitude for fixing up my hair, so the simpler the style, the better. As I write this, my hairstyle is very much the same as it is in my official portrait here.
Not everyone likes my "Anne Baxter as Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments" look. Fine. But I like it, and Mr. Lucky (almost as bald as Yul Brynner, who played Rameses in the same movie) likes it.

Getting back to that other hair salon two months ago. Without asking if it was all right with me, the stylist trimmed those bangs in half a dozen (maybe more) different lengths “to get you away from that schoolgirl look.”

I didn’t have the guts to say, “But I like that schoolgirl look. Why can’t I have my bangs the way I want them?” Better yet, WHY COULDN’T I TELL THE STYLIST EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED? I would’ve done so had she not launched her pre-emptive strike by belittling the look I already had. Did it not occur to her that I had that look for a reason—because I liked it? For that matter, did it ever occur to me that she wasn’t a mind reader, but a human steamroller to my asphalt?

No, because that day I was an ass—and it was my fault.

When I walked out of there, my bangs didn’t look as if they’d been trimmed at all.

By the holidays, they were not only hanging in my eyes again, but because of the varied lengths they were even hanging over my nose, so last week I went back to the same salon I visited last January. Surely that same stylist wasn’t there anymore?

She was.

All right. Surely she’d be busy with another client?

She wasn’t. In fact, she was the only stylist available.

Very well. Maybe she wouldn’t remember me from last year, and hold me hostage to highlights.

Alas, she did remember me, and she did indeed ply me with all their current specials on highlights. On the plus side, she did trim my bangs the way I wanted them, so I’m back to my Nefretiri/schoolgirl look and all is right with the world.

She thinks “caramel” highlights would look great on me. I was able to put her off with truthful pleas about a tight budget, which Mr. Lucky appreciated. Resourceful soul that he is, he’s offered to buy a bag of caramel candies, then melt them down and put them in my hair.

I think I’ll wait for the economy to improve. So let it be written . . .

Baby Bear's Inexcusable School Holiday

Upon coming home Monday afternoon from a day of Christmas shopping with Mr. Lucky, we found a message on the answering machine from the nurse at Baby Bear’s school: He had a runny nose, and would I please call her?

The call came around mid-morning. She hadn’t called a second time, nor had she tried Mr. Lucky’s cell, and by the time we got this message, it was past two o’clock and Baby Bear would be out of school just after three. His school, an Exceptional Student Center (ESC) for children with special needs, is next to a high school that lets out at about the same time we listened to this message. The nurse said nothing about picking up Bear, which was just as well. There was no point in trying to go to his school now, especially with the high school getting out.

Several years ago, when the Crown Prince was a student at the ESC, they called me to get him after he cast up some accounts, and I arrived just as the high school was released. By the time I got the Crown Prince in the car, the People in Orange Vests, who patrolled the parking lots and thoroughfares around the three schools (there’s also a middle school on the other side of the ESC), would not let me out. A sign posted at the entrance to this vortex clearly stated “Buses Only 2:45-3:15 PM” and I was not driving a bus. We had to wait in the parking lot till all the buses had left. Meanwhile, the Crown Prince had to open the passenger door to toss more cookies to the ground. The Person in Orange Vest who stood in front of my vehicle glaring at me was unmoved by my firstborn’s plight. Rules were rules.

Never again.

As Baby Bear got off the bus Monday afternoon, the bus driver handed me a letter signed by the school nurse. It was a form letter. “We will call you immediately if your child becomes ill during school hours. You are expected to arrange for your child to be picked up AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE after receiving our call.” (Caps theirs.)

This was followed by a list of the usual maladies that resulted in children being sent/kept home from school. The nurse had checked Item 8: “Excessive mucus from nose (runny nose), particularly greenish-yellow mucus.”

Neither Mr. Lucky nor I saw any mucus of any color seeping out of that kid’s nose Monday morning, nor did we see any Monday night after receiving this letter. But the bus driver was bound by that letter not to pick him up Tuesday morning. We were to keep him out of school for the next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, I read the teacher’s entry for that day in the notebook he and I use to communicate our thoughts about the progress and behavior of our autistic, non-verbal Baby Bear. According to the teacher, Bear was very active on this day, enjoying himself on the computer, etc. His nose ran a little after he was outside, but the weather's been cold lately. Otherwise, there was nothing to indicate he was unwell.

Tuesday, we still saw no sign of any mucus. Baby Bear was in his usual high spirits, banging on and bouncing off walls, dangling from the rafters, swinging from the chandeliers, and running an entire decathlon in the house. He wanted to go out for donuts, we took him out for donuts. He wasn’t sick. But he had a whale of a good time staying out of school.

Then we got a phone call from the school, a recording which informed us that our child (they referred to him by name) had “an unexcused absence”, and would we please call the school to explain.

ARGH! They’re the ones who ordered us to keep him home on Tuesday because they said he was sick—though he clearly (let alone greenly or yellowishly) wasn’t—and now they were calling it “an unexcused absence”? I was too incensed to call them back.

Today, Baby Bear went back to school without incident, and came home this afternoon with no note.

And still no mucus.

L is for Lemmings Locked in Line

If you’ve ever seen any of those old disaster flicks from the 1970’s—think Airport or The Towering Inferno, or in the case of Baby Bear, whose catastrophes usually include water, The Poseidon Adventure—then you have an idea of what it’s like taking all three of my autistic children grocery shopping: Each person has his or her own subplot or drama that intertwines with the others’, all spiraling through a seemingly endless trail of destruction.

Naturally I prefer to go grocery shopping when they’re in school. During the summer months, if Mr. Lucky was deployed somewhere, I would stock up on—nay, horde as many groceries as I could fit into the pantry and refrigerator (one of those big freezers out in the garage would have been nice), simply to minimize trips to the Air Force commissary. But they couldn’t be avoided altogether.

In such cases, we’d go first thing in the morning, right when the commissary opened and it wouldn’t be as crowded. More often than not, it’s very crowded; I’ve since found that Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon is like the base commissary on any day of the week.

Aggravating matters is what happens—or doesn’t happen—at the head of the maze (described in previous blog entry) leading to the cash registers.

A supervisor will stand at the head of the line, watching for when one of the registers is ready for another customer. She will then direct the person at the head of the line to that particular checkout.

“Number Eight is open,” she says, and he pushes his loaded cart to Checkout Number Eight.

A few minutes later, the customer at Checkout Number Twelve places the last of her groceries on the rolling belt, and pushes her cart forward to the opposite end of the checkout.

“Number Twelve,” the supervisor will say to the next person in the maze line.

This does nothing to speed up the checkout process. The result is that over the years, many susceptible commissary patrons have been brainwashed, like religious cult recruits or Manchurian candidates, into never leaving the maze for an open checkout until they’ve been directed to do so by the supervisor.

The problem worsens when the supervisor finds something more worthwhile to do in another part of the commissary. The whole winding line screeches to a dead halt, like that scene in the Disney/Pixar cartoon, A Bug’s Life, where a leaf flutters to the ground in the middle of a column of busy marching ants, disrupting the column and effectively splitting it into two. The ant who suddenly finds himself at the head of the newly broken second line is paralyzed with panic, and doesn’t know what to do until a senior ant happens by and guides him around the leaf, until he can link up with the end of the first line, and the bug’s life returns to normal.

Every time I go to the commissary I get stuck behind two such bugs, usually an older couple—we’ll call them Ike and Mamie—part of the extensive retired military community which, at our local base, far outnumber active duty personnel.

No sooner do Ike and Mamie reach the head of the maze than the supervisor is called away to deal with some other, more earth-shattering crisis—someone’s can of cat food won’t scan properly and the cashier can’t punch in the price manually unless both she and the supervisor insert their keys into the register and turn at the same time, like the launching of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Ike and Mamie are left puzzled and totally bereft of initiative.

“I don’t see her anywhere,” says Ike. “Yet there are at least three checkouts that look open.”

Then pick one! I silently seethe.

“I don’t know, dear,” Mamie dithers. “I’m worried about the Rocky Road melting.”

Then get your Rocky Road to the nearest available checkout! I want to yell. Meanwhile, the line has grown out of the maze, and is stretching all the way back to the deli. “Excuse me,” I say, “but what do you think would happen if you went ahead to that checkout anyway?”

Ike strokes his chin. “I don’t know.”

Mamie shudders. “I’m not sure I want to find out.”

“My kids are about to start World War Three,” I say. “Do you mind if I go around you and risk making a mad dash for it?”

Mamie grabs Ike’s arm. “Don’t let her do it.”

He sternly shakes his head at me. “If you were a young single fellow with no one waiting for you back home, I might tell you to take your chances. But you’re a woman. With children. I can’t in all good conscience allow it.”

You’d think there were watchtowers manned with searchlights and armed guards, ready to shoot and kill anyone who dares to make a run for the nearest available register without the blessing of the supervisor lady. This is the United States of America, and most of the commissary patrons have risked life and limb for the freedom to fill their carts with groceries and proceed to the checkout of their choice. Yet here they all stand like frozen lemmings.

Meanwhile, I have to keep the Crown Prince and Baby Bear from breaking out of the maze and racing each other to the nearest door marked “EMERGENCY EXIT – DO NOT OPEN – ALARM WILL SOUND - WE ARE NOT KIDDING - YOU WILL BE IN BIG TROUBLE IF YOU PUSH IT!”

But what child of mine can resist?

Once my darlings do succeed in setting off the alarm, it gets everyone moving—except Ike and Mamie, who don’t want to lose their place at the head of the maze. As the sirens wail amid flashing red and orange lights, I duck beneath the cart expecting to hear machine-gun fire and explosions, and the voice of Alan Rickman booming over the P.A. system, “T minus thirty seconds and counting.” The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could gallop by through a shower of blazing meteors, reduce everything to a smoldering ruin of ashes beneath a sky choked with obsidian thunderclouds, and I swear Ike and Mamie would still be standing there, wondering if the supervisor lady will return anytime soon to direct them to a checkout, and fretting over the fate of their melting Rocky Road.

Call this my third argument for wanting to pick my own checkout, instead of getting clogged up in the maze.

More recently, the supervisor lady has been replaced by a huge, high-tech device that hangs over the head of the maze. It flashes the number of the next available checkout, and a voice (not Alan Rickman’s) announces, “Next, please!” It strikes me as being very Big Brotherish, and I don't think it makes the line move any faster. People still must be told when they can proceed to the next available checkout.

At least we don’t have to worry about it wandering off like the supervisor lady and my children.

L is for Lingefelt in a Long Line

This last Tuesday, I spent forty-five minutes in line waiting to vote. Every so often, a poll worker would come out and ask if anyone’s name started with A or G or P, etc. Not surprisingly, they never asked for anyone with an L. I brought along a book to read (The Butler Did It by Kasey Michaels, one I’ve read before; hilarious and highly recommended), and was thankful I didn’t get stuck between two people who happened to be, as they say in Regency England, bosom bows.

I’m reminded of our days in the military, where a lot of time is spent waiting in line for one reason or another, especially at the base commissary where we shop for groceries. We can’t pick any old checkout the way we can at civilian grocery stores. Instead, the commissary uses ropes and posts like the ones at the bank, to create a maze and make lab mice out of us.

Fairness aside, I don’t care for this method of lining up commissary patrons for at least two reasons. In the first place, I usually get stuck between two people, one in front of me and one behind, who happen to be intimate lifelong friends. This happens every time I go to the bank, too. They talk to each other—loudly—and usually about a mutual acquaintance (she couldn’t be a friend—not with friends like these) who isn’t there to take offense at having her gynecological problems broadcast in such gory detail in so public a forum.

It’s very confusing. The lady in front of me appears to be looking at me, when she’s really looking at the person behind me. I have to try and act like I’m not eavesdropping, yet I know the two of them are hoping I’ll become so uncomfortable with their graphic discussion about their hapless subject’s hysterectomy, that I’ll tell the lady behind me to go ahead of me so I won’t be caught in the middle.

Does the woman in front ever offer to let me go ahead, so she can have an unobstructed view of her pal while they continue to foam at their respective mouths over the size of the absent third party’s uterine fibroids? Of course not. Do I ever have the backbone to ask the woman in front of me if I can please go ahead of her? Of course not. I’m Karen Lingefelt.

That, or the two people are long lost friends or lovers who, after—why, it’s been years!—of separation, are reunited right there in line and spend the whole time catching up with each other’s life stories that never seem to include anything I might incorporate into my next novel. Sometimes the line is long enough that if they can find a notary waiting a turn, I might get to be a witness at their on-the-spot wedding.

The second thing I don’t like about the commissary maze is that I’m denied the freedom to choose who I want to wait behind. I’d rather take the checkout with the man holding the armful of junk food for his football game or Star Trek marathon, than the one with the woman my mother’s age, whose grocery cart looks as if she’s planning to entertain the entire Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. She does everything slowly and painstakingly, as if she’s performing open heart surgery on a butterfly.

All patrons are required to present their military ID cards at the cash register. This has always been the rule all over the world, for the three decades I’ve been part of the military. So you’d think after all these years, a military veteran/spouse older than me would know by now to have her ID card ready; but no, she always waits for the cashier to request it, at which point she embarks on a full scale expedition to the bottom of her purse to excavate it. Ditto the coupons and the checkbook, unless she’s paying cash and then it’s usually in coins and small bills, or really really big bills that can’t be changed unless the cashier can find a supervisor with access to the safe.

Even after she’s finally managed to pay, she refuses to move forward until she’s balanced her checkbook and conducted a major audit of her five foot long sales slip, interrupting the cashier while she’s trying to ring up my groceries to question a suspected discrepancy. If the cashier did make a mistake ringing up her groceries, maybe it’s because the customer before her was still hovering around interrupting her with similar trifles. Many’s the time my own full cart has been rung up, and I can’t swipe my ATM card or punch my PIN into the keypad, because the woman who was originally in front of me is still standing there trying to reorganize her purse so as to honor her ID card with a proper reburial.

Next time: What happens—or more accurately, doesn’t happen—at the head of the commissary maze.

Unfair Hair

Both my sons are blessed with hair I can only dream of. It’s thick and wavy, and if they go too long without haircuts, they wake up in the mornings looking like Lyle Lovett. I love to run my fingers through Baby Bear’s locks, and he seems to enjoy it. Meanwhile, my own hair remains naturally straight.

I say it’s not fair.

I don’t know whether it’s the result of encroaching middle age (oh, all right, so it's already encroached!) or the humidity in Florida, but my hair no longer holds curls as well as it used to. I can’t remember the last time it was permed, except it was before the photo at right was taken, which was in May 2003. By that time I’d given up on perms because they never lasted more than a few weeks, even when my hair was shorter. Since then I’ve resigned myself to the curling iron—not that I can perform miracles with it.

Daughter Fiona had the same kind of hair as me, long and straight, save for the inevitable tangles. How did the Crown Prince and Baby Bear get so lucky?

What an odd choice of word, because when I asked him, Mr. Lucky said our boys got that thick wavy hair from him. I only have vague memories of that now. When we got married, he did have thick chestnut hair, but it was already receding, and now, twenty-one years later, he’s gone totally bald.

And he wholeheartedly agrees it’s not fair.

His own father went bald, and he has four brothers, all of whom still have all their own hair. This raises the question: Will my sons eventually go bald?

Mr. Lucky is of the opinion that if our oldest was going to lose his hair, we’d see evidence of it already, because Mr. Lucky himself started losing hair as a teenager. He believes the Crown Prince is safe. The fate of Baby Bear’s locks remain to be seen.

I say again: It’s not fair.

It's Hurricane Time!

According to the current projected track as of this writing, Tropical Storm Fay is following a path eerily similar to Hurricane Charley in August 2004. If it holds, we could be seeing some exceedingly nasty weather Tuesday night.

One area where Mr. Lucky and I have never seen eye to eye is the gas tank. I like to fill it up once it gets down to half a tank. He prefers to wait until he has to get out and push. He claims it’s a holdover from when he was an impoverished 19 year old who could only afford a couple bucks’ worth of gas at a time. Funny how this seems to be the only aspect of his youth he still clings to.

When we went out for Sunday donuts this morning, I noticed the fuel gauge showed half a tank, and told Mr. Lucky we should top it off. He disagreed. Half a tank, he said, was plenty.

“You say that now,” I replied, “but after all the driving you’ll be doing between now and Tuesday morning, you’ll be down to ‘E’ in no time. And in the meantime, Fay will strengthen to Category 1 and there’ll be a mass stampede to all the gas stations. You’ll be waiting in line for hours to get gas, and that’s assuming they don’t run out before you finally pull up to the pump. Then the storm will come and knock out all the power. Without power, the gas pumps won’t work. We’ll be stuck with no gas. And I’ll have something new to hold over your head till death do us part. I’ll bring it up every time we have an argument. Do you really want that?”

“You and your melodramatics. You’re caught up in everyone else’s mass hysteria,” he grumbled. “You’ve bought into all the media hype. And I know what you’re about to say, because it's what you always say--that if I’d been here for Hurricane Charley, we’d still be waiting in line for gas.”

At the time of Hurricane Charley in August 2004, we were living in military housing at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, an installation surrounded on three sides by water. Mr. Lucky, however, was deployed, leaving me with two autistic boys ages 15 and 7. Our Chrysler minivan had half a tank of gas when Charley was over Cuba; I filled it up anyway. It was a Wednesday.

I didn’t go anywhere else until Friday morning, when Charley had entered the Gulf of Mexico and had it sights set on the Tampa Bay area. I’d just put the boys on the school bus when Mr. Lucky’s supervisor called (the people in his office kindly checked up on me while he was deployed) to give me a heads-up: The base commander was expected to issue an evacuation order around noon. Most people would not leave until that order was issued, if at all.

For the next hour I paced around the house, watching the weather map of Florida on the TV with the entire Gulf Coast trapped inside “The Cone of Doom”, debating with myself what to do. I could not take my boys to a designated local shelter where there would be crowds of other people and children. The chaos and unfamiliarity of such a place would agitate both boys (see previous blog entry). Torn from their vital routines, they’d be running amok and screaming all over the place and I’d be constantly chasing them down, trying to keep them from running outside, grabbing other people’s food, wrapping themselves in other people’s bedding. They wouldn’t be able to play the video games or watch the DVD’s that make them sit still for more than a few minutes. They wouldn't sleep, even with their meds. And if they didn't sleep, I wouldn't either; and I'd be in even worse shape to keep them from fleeing the shelter or otherwise terrorizing the other shelterees.

They needed to be in a safe place that was familiar, with familiar people who understood them, where the routines and securities of home could be easily replicated.

That place was their paternal grandparents’ house, 200 miles away in Valdosta, Georgia.

The idea of driving that distance with those boys, without Mr. Lucky, was very daunting, but I had to do it. It was obvious from the Cone of Doom that we couldn’t stay at MacDill. In the end I was so knotted with anxiety and dread that I didn’t want to wait until the base commander issued any order. I figured I might as well pack up and get it over with now.

Around 10:30 am, I loaded up the minivan with the boys’ food and meds; their bedding and clothes, and their favorite toys. I locked up the house and left the base. As I did so, I noticed a long, long line of cars winding from one street to another, all waiting to get into the base gas station where I’d filled up the day before yesterday.

I drove to the boys’ school, pulled them out of their respective classes, and by high noon we were on I-75 headed north. The traffic wasn’t too bad; it was typical of an ordinary early Friday afternoon. Baby Bear rocked in his seat the whole time. All was well until we reached the other side of Gainesville and ran into heavy rains from the outermost bands of Tropical Storm Bonnie, that swept into the Panhandle that same day.

I slowed to a crawl as the road disappeared in a curtain of heavy rain. That’s when Baby Bear decided to do his usual Houdini with the seat belt. He took off his clothes and started slithering all through the minivan, digging and tunneling and burrowing like a giant worm. This was very upsetting to the Crown Prince, who yodeled and thrashed in the front seat next to me.

It was almost like that scene in the movie Jurassic Park, where the guy gets trapped inside a vehicle with a dilophosaurus—also in the midst of a tropical storm. Picture me in that same scene, with the vehicle on a busy interstate and two dilophosauruses—complete with spitting!

This went on until I found the next rest stop. I parked, but left the engine running—which in my frazzled state probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I had this nutty fear that if I turned off the car, it wouldn’t start up again and I’d be stranded with these two boys. I blame it on that ridiculous complex I acquired when our Ford Aerostar broke down in the middle of nowhere in Texas on a Sunday afternoon when everything was closed (again, see previous blog entry).

Do not lock that door, Karen, do not lock that door . . .

After exiting the vehicle, I ran around it in the pouring rain to open the sliding side door, and Baby Bear shot out as if he’d been fired from a cannon. He was nearly naked, wearing only his diaper. I chased him halfway across the parking lot before I finally caught him, and even then I had a hard time keeping a grip on him—he was slippery not only from the rain, but from the perspiration he’d generated from over two hours of rocking. Once I got him back into the minivan, I didn’t even bother putting his clothes back on—I just wanted to get him buckled back in and get the heck back on the road. I strapped him in with two seat belts, wrapping them around him and looping them over and under each other every which way to make him work for another escape. We resumed our journey. He stayed put until we arrived in Valdosta around 4 pm. The evening news showed traffic leaving Tampa and St. Petersburg almost at a standstill.

I don’t know how I did it, but I did it. And I’m glad now that I did it. But I hope I never have to do it again.

Charley made landfall about 24 hours after we arrived in Georgia. Until a couple of hours prior, it was expected to hit Tampa/St. Petersburg, but changed course and hit Port Charlotte instead.

Fast forward to this morning’s donut run. After picking up the donuts, Mr. Lucky turned into the gas station, which was a little more congested than usual. (I wonder why?)

Was he caught up in everyone else’s mass hysteria? Had he bought into all the media hype? No, he just wanted to shut me up, God bless him.

For tranquil is the life of the husband, and wise is he who appeases his wife with the affirmation that she is always right.

Autistic Children in Public

This news article didn’t just hit close to home—it struck me right in the heart:

Autistic Kids’ Outbursts Stir Furor and Guilt

We know our autistic children are disruptive, and we don't like it anymore than anyone else. We don't excuse it, to the extent that we try to avoid putting them in situations where they will disturb other people. But sometimes, we have to take them out--e.g., to the grocery store or doctor's office, where there are other children. I do not relax on any of those occasions, for fear Baby Bear will spit on some unsuspecting person or knock over a smaller child like a bowling ball picking up a spare. In fact, Mr. Lucky thinks I should relax and not be so overvigilant and sensitive to dirty looks.

For the very reasons stated in the above article, we’ve never taken any of our children to church. We trust God understands this, because He’s God. Once upon a time, children like mine were probably thought to be demonically possessed. On the other hand, one might think Baby Bear’s nonsensical babbling is “speaking in tongues” and that he’s full of the Holy Spirit. I do know he’s full of unholy spit, and like the young man described in this article, he deploys it wherever we go. I'm always afraid that one day he'll spit at the wrong person, and suffer violent retaliation.

Baby Bear has never been to the movies, for the same reason he’s never been to church. The Crown Prince, on the other hand, does fairly well at the theater. Even though he’s almost twenty years old, he still likes Mr. Lucky to take him to see the newest Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks cartoons. Not only have they gotten strange looks from people, but once a woman actually approached my husband and son in the theater, and asked if they weren’t a little old for the likes of Finding Nemo. She may have been wary that they were pedophiles on the prowl, and I can understand that concern. Still . . .

Our children are not good travelers. It’s an ongoing struggle to keep Baby Bear buckled in; he liberates himself every time we go out, and we invariably have to pull over and strap him in again. They can handle a drive to their paternal grandparents’ house two hundred miles away, but beyond that, all bets are off. When we moved from California to Florida in December 1993, we drove the whole way on Interstate 10, and the Crown Prince and Fiona all but stopped eating during that week. (Don’t get me started on when the car broke down halfway between El Paso and San Antonio, on a Sunday afternoon when everything in rural Texas is closed. That’s on my Top Ten Worst Moments of My Life list.)

Even without the children, neither Mr. Lucky nor I have ever enjoyed air travel, considering it a necessary evil. We will not board a plane with any of our children unless we absolutely have to. Fortunately, this has only happened once.

When we lived in California, the military doctors at Travis Air Force Base wanted to send the Crown Prince to a specialist at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Right before the military medivac plane took off, the crew insisted on removing him because of the disturbance he created. After being rescheduled for another flight, with doctors’ orders to be sedated, he and Mr. Lucky managed to fly to Texas and back. The consultation, meanwhile, turned out to be a total waste of everything. Mr. Lucky said they could’ve just mailed copies of the child’s medical records to WHMC.

And just like the parents of the kid in the article whose uncle thinks he should be institutionalized, I’ve had to call the police when the Crown Prince, in the absence of his father deployed overseas, became violent toward me and Baby Bear. I didn’t know what the hell else to do. I hated doing it; I hated myself for doing it—so much so that the last time it happened, in May 2006, I let him chase me out of the house and into the driveway in hopes the neighbors might see and call the cops, because I didn’t want to. (It worked. To this day I don’t know who called, but a short while later, two sheriff’s deputies pulled up in front of our house.) He was placed in a group home after that, and fortunately he’s very happy there, but I wish it hadn’t happened that way.

Just taking a trip to the grocery store is a subject for a whole other blog entry.

I’m not complaining; I certainly hope that's not how this sounds. I’m just saying that what’s in that article is dead on, and this is how we deal with those issues chez Lingefelt. (If we had a "normal" kid, we probably wouldn't know what to do with him!) It’s the life we know, and we can’t imagine any other. But we still love our kids for it.

By the way, the article failed to mention how important it is for everyone, on both sides, to keep their sense of humor about it. That, I believe, is the secret ingredient for dealing with this.

Baby Bear's School Portrait

Last Friday when Baby Bear came home from school, I found a wonderful surprise in his backpack: An envelope full of photos—an 8 x 10, a couple of 5 x 7’s, and assorted wallet sizes. It was his “spring portrait” package, just in time for Mother’s Day.

It’s a great photo, as photos of Baby Bear go. Because of his hyper nature, school portraits tend to be very hit-or-miss. We're lucky to get half his face in the shot.

I only wish I’d been told in advance what day the school was taking photos, so he wouldn’t be photographed wearing the same striped shirt he wore for last year’s portrait.

Already I could hear the comments from relatives.

FATHER: “What, you can’t afford to buy him a new shirt? Doesn’t your husband make enough money these days? Maybe you need to sell more books.”

MOTHER: “He should have had his hair cut before his picture was taken.” According to my late mother, anyone whose hair touched the eyebrows, covered the earlobe, and/or fell below the atlas of the spine, needed to be hauled into court so they could have their name legally changed to “Cousin Itt.”

MOTHER-IN-LAW (never to me, but always to Mr. Lucky): “Why is he wearing the same shirt as last year? Does Karen send him to school in the same shirt every day? Doesn’t she ever do laundry? Is she still writing?”

BROTHER (doesn’t matter whose or which): “Now which one of your kids is this again?”

This isn’t the first time I’ve been surprised by photos from Baby Bear’s school. I have one from a couple of years ago in which he’s beautifully posed against a lush, misty forest background. Yet he’s wearing a very casual dark blue-and-gray T-shirt. ARGH! Had I known in advance when they were going to shoot that photo, I would have dressed him in something infinitely more presentable that day.

I check his backpack every day for messages and notices. The school is simply not getting the word out, and Karen is annoyed.

These photos are sent to parents on a sort of honor system. “Select your photos – send in your payment – share with family and friends – then sit back and enjoy their snarky comments about your little darling's ill-chosen outfit!” (Well, okay, that last isn’t on there, but at least for my son’s school, it should be.) You pick the photos you want out of the selection offered, write a check to the company, then return it to the school along with whatever photos you don’t select. I’ve often wondered just how profitable this is for the company doing the photos.

Indeed, this year there was a letter enclosed with the photos, on school district letterhead and signed by the principal, stating, “Any picture debt will be placed on the debt list for the following 08/09 school year and student will be unable to attend the end of the year activities (6th, 7th, 8th grade special events).”

That tells me they’ve had a bit of trouble with their honor system in the past. Mr. Lucky is of the opinion that some of the middle school students, horrified by the braces and acne and overall gawkiness of puberty reflected in the photos, do not take the packages home to their unsuspecting parents, but trash them instead. I know I can’t bear to look at any photo of myself taken at that age.

Baby Bear is not a middle school student, but is enrolled in the “Exceptional Student Center” annexed to the middle school, which is comprised of special needs students of all ages.

On Monday I wrote a check for the photos, and sent it back to school in the envelope provided.

Today is Wednesday, and it’s still in his backpack.

And Karen is still very annoyed.

It's My Blog and I'll Whine If I Want To (First in what will certainly be a never-ending series)

The day started out well enough, except when Baby Bear lunged at me (something he does a lot for no particular reason). As I reflexively held up my hands, he smashed my left ring and pinkie fingers. That made it very painful to type on the computer.

Mr. Lucky went and picked up our firstborn, the Crown Prince, and brought him back for a visit. Baby Bear was thrilled to see his big brother, constantly smiling up at him and tugging on his hand. There was many a moment, in fact, when I saw his mouth and tongue moving in such a way, that I was sure he was trying to say his brother’s name. I did my best to prompt him many times, pointing to the Crown Prince and saying his name, but Bear has yet to say a real word.

Still, I loved seeing them get along so well, and it made me wish the Prince still lived with us.

Shortly after four, Mr. Lucky left in his Buick Riviera to take our oldest back to the group home where he lives, about thirty miles away. About a half hour later, he called me on his cell phone. He’d just taken the exit off the Interstate to the group home, which was still about seven miles away, and the belt on his Buick broke, overheating the engine. He needed me to come and pick them up and take them the rest of the way, then bring Mr. Lucky back home.

It was almost five o’clock on Monday. I couldn’t think of a worse time of day to be on the Interstate, especially with Baby Bear. We’ve been having a lot of trouble keeping him buckled in the back seat of the minivan lately, but for some reason he’ll stay buckled in the front passenger seat (at 5’6”, he’s big enough), so that’s where I strapped him in minus his shoes because he would’ve doffed them before I backed out of the driveway. I switched on the ignition, and with an ominous ding, a picture of a little gas tank lit up on the dashboard. The needle on the fuel gauge just brushed the top of the letter E.

Mr. Lucky, the last person to drive the minivan, had struck again. That man will not pull into a gas station until he’s running on fumes, or—in at least two cases that I’ve been holding over his head for years—until the tank simply runs dry and the car sputters to a halt in the very middle of the road. Me—Ms. Perfectly Self-Righteous—I never let the tank go below half, and let me tell you, that paid off several years ago when we had to evacuate because of a hurricane (subject for a future post).

We usually gas up on base (when we go out there, twenty miles away) or at Wal-Mart about seven miles away, but I didn’t want to take a chance on going that far with so little, so I pulled into the first gas station on our trip, which had pumps very different from what I was used to. A Cadillac was directly in front of me, and turned into the nearest available pump. I stayed right on his tail, hoping he’d pull forward to the next pump, but instead his reverse lights flashed on, and I had to back up. He wasn’t there to get gas, he was there to go into the convenience store, and decided he wanted to back in to the parking space out front. I had to sit and wait while he maneuvered his huge car as if he were trying to steer the Titanic around that iceberg. In the meantime, another car zoomed in from the opposite direction and took the pump I’d originally hoped to get.

Finally I got to a pump. Baby Bear screamed and thrashed in his seat, probably because we were in an unfamiliar place and weren’t moving. I came thisclose to locking the keys in the minivan (thank you, God, for stopping me just before I shut the door).

I inserted my ATM card and played twenty questions with the computer while some very annoying rock music blared from speakers over my head. Then I couldn’t get the pump to work. Twice I pushed the Help button. In a moment of desperation, I pushed the blue handicapped button. No one came out to assist me or even point out to me what I was doing wrong. In disgust I slammed the nozzle back into the pump, which was a very stupid thing to do, because in so doing I smashed the same two fingers I’d bashed earlier while fending off the lunging Bear.

I said a couple of very bad words, and got back into the minivan, where Bear was using the dashboard as a busy box. I pulled forward to the next pump, which had been vacated while I was smashing my fingers.

I inserted my ATM card again, and answered the same old twenty questions--but this time I figured out what I’d done wrong before—there was some silly lever I had to flip up (or maybe it was down) before the fuel would flow. No wonder they wouldn’t come out and help me. I was very frazzled.

As the gas tank filled, our bank account drained. Fifty dollars later, we were on our way. My two fingers were throbbing. The air conditioner blew heat on my feet because Bear had been playing with the knobs. All the way, he rocked back and forth in the seat as if he were playing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” with an invisible playmate. It actually affected my ability to accelerate.

I had to get on one Interstate, then from there merge onto another Interstate, all during rush hour, before we finally found Mr. Lucky and the Crown Prince just off the exit ramp.

The Crown Prince, at 6’5”, insisted on folding himself into the very back seat. Bear decided to join him. We drove to the group home to drop off the older boy, during which time Bear got out of his seat and came up front to lay on the horn. As Mr. Lucky strapped him into the back seat using at least two seat belts, Bear started rocking forward again and hit his dad right in the nose.

Ah, if my husband and I had a dollar for every time that kid hit one of us in the nose, or the mouth . . . or smashed our fingers . . . we could buy a full tank of gas for every car and truck on our street.

I asked him if he wanted me to drive back, otherwise he’d have to sit with Bear to make sure he stayed buckled. No way was Mr. Macho doing that, even with a throbbing nose. He insisted on driving, so I crawled into the back with Bear.

To get back to the Interstate, we had to drive a seven mile stretch of highway running parallel to railroad tracks. Every time we passed a railroad crossing, with the red lights and crisscross signs and striped barricades—Bear pulled on me and pointed to it, jabbing his finger in the air until I said, “Railroad crossing.”

There must be a railroad crossing every hundred feet along that stretch, because it seems as if that’s all he did until we got to the Interstate. Who are these people always complaining that railroad crossings aren’t clearly marked? My autistic son sees every darned one of them.

On the way home, something that could only spring from my anxiety-fevered imagination occurred to me: I told my husband how I put my ATM card and PIN number into the first pump but didn't get gas from it. I was worried that someone could pull up immediately afterward and fill up on my card. He said no, that it should time-out and even if it didn’t, the person wouldn’t get more than fifty dollars’ worth.

By that evening, I had two blue fingernails on my left hand, and wondered if I’d have to polish the rest in a similar shade to match. Though they’re still tender, they’re doing better now, as is Mr. Lucky’s nose and his Buick, which went in for repairs the next morning.

A check of the bank account confirmed that no one got free gas off my ATM card. At least it gave me something new to worry about.

Oh, and the number of times I had to get up for Baby Bear related incidents while writing this post? 9