The Boom Box on the Shelf is Always Repeating Itself

Baby Bear has a boom box, and he likes to play CD’s by ABBA while he sits on his bed and rocks back and forth. His favorite song—at least for this week—is “Waterloo.”

How do I know this? Recently he’s taken to playing that particular song over and over and over. But oddly enough, not the whole song. He plays it only as far as the part about the history book on the shelf. Then he stops and goes back and starts the song again.

Over . . . and over . . . and over. I have no idea why. If I weren’t already familiar with this song that dates back to when I was almost his age (and there’s a scary thought), I might drive myself insane wondering what that history book is always doing that he keeps censoring. Ironically, it’s exactly what Baby Bear is doing with the song.

But why he’s repeating it, only he knows.

Yet it reminds me of an incident early in my Air Force career. I was stationed at Keesler AFB near Biloxi, Mississippi to receive training in my particular career field of administration. I had to live in the barracks where the dorm chief had one of them newfangled boom boxes (yes, it was that many years ago). So powerful were its speakers that it could be heard all over the barracks of World War II vintage.

One morning, at around 3:30 am, she woke up me and probably a lot of other people by repeatedly playing the opening notes of “When You’re in Love With a Beautiful Woman” by Doctor Hook. She’d play it all the way up until the good Doctor started singing, then she’d rewind it back to the beginning and play those opening notes again.

Over . . . and over . . . and over. I don’t think she was doing it because she was autistic like my son. She certainly wasn’t doing it because she’d been put in charge of sounding Reveille with the song of her choice. No, she was doing it because she was the Dorm Chief, ergo she could.

I longed to break down her door, seize her blasting boom box, then raise it over my head and smash it like Moses with the Ten Commandments over hers. Or at the very least, scream at her to turn that expletive thing off. But she was the Dorm Chief, so all I could do was suffer. No one dared complain, or maybe all the other women liked it and I was the one with the problem.

Either way, I’ve loathed that song ever since. Anytime I hear those first few notes coming out of the oldies station, I switch stations in disgust. It’s a good thing I’m not a sleeper agent, or it might “activate” me to go out and blow something up.

Yet I’m not tired of “Waterloo” yet. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t play it full blast at 3:30 in the morning, but that’s because I remove it from his room at night.

It’s good to be the Dorm Chief—or just a mom.

Back Into the Vault You Go, My Venetian Pretties!

Venice, Italy, 1986. I was younger. Thinner. And now that I think about it, a lot wealthier, too.

Being single helped on all counts.

Back in those days I was in the Air Force, stationed in Germany. On weekends I would go on bus tours to various locales throughout Europe. Venice was one of my favorite destinations.

For the equivalent of $10.00, I rode a gondola—just so a quarter of a century later, I could write in my blog that I did it.

I walked from Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge and back. I probably saw as many cats as I did pigeons.

I ate lunch in a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the Basilica. I said two words to the waiter: “Ice cream!” He brought me an elaborate Neapolitan sundae, complete with whipped cream, cherry, and a wafer. I was delighted, and cared not what it cost or how many calories it had. For I was young, thin, and loaded with lira.

I’ll never forget the W.C. in that place. The toilet had no seat, and flushing was facilitated by a dribbling garden hose threaded through a high window.

On a trip to nearby Burano, I hit my head on an overhead beam as I climbed the stairs in a tiny shop selling the lace for which the island is famous.

I also visited Murano, where others in our group bought huge, ornate chandeliers they planned to hang in homes they had, or hoped to have someday, back in the States.

Shallow person that I am, I bought this set of glassware strictly for its looks:

I love the royal blue. I love the gold trim. And I love the enameled flowers with the tiny pearls at their centers.

Once acquired, these exquisite pieces remained in their original box for nearly twenty years, until we moved into our new home. By then, I decided my children were old enough and sufficiently distracted by video games, that it was safe to unpack the glassware so it could finally do what Old World master artisans had meticulously and lovingly crafted it to do: Collect dust.

And that’s what my royal blue Venetian pretties did in the hutch until yesterday, when Baby Bear smashed one of the glass doors. While they all survived with nary a nick, I’m afraid it’s for their own good that they must be packed away again until further notice.

I just hope it doesn’t take another twenty years.

Boo, Humbug! I Am a Halloween Scrooge

We didn’t do Halloween this year. The Crown Prince wanted to come and hand out treats as always, but his group home, as well as his school, are nearly thirty miles away. It would’ve been too late to drive him back to the home afterward. In the morning I would’ve had to wait until Baby Bear was on the bus to take the Crown Prince to school/group home and yada yada yada the whole thing was just a logistical mess, especially since Mr. Lucky had to work Halloween night.

While I’m no fan of Halloween to begin with—maybe because I do enough dressing like a freak and scaring people and yelling for candy the other 364 days of the year—I still felt bad about all of this. The Crown Prince talked non-stop for months of coming to our house on “Sunday, October 31, 2010” (he knows which day of the week for every holiday each year), and wearing what he calls his “pumpkin shirt” (orange T-shirt with a jack o’lantern face on it) for the occasion. The group home even called on Friday afternoon wanting to know what time we were picking him up. He’d decided. But I had to overrule him, and got utterly no pleasure out of it.

After 6 pm Halloween night, I closed the living room blinds and curtains, and made sure all the outdoor lights were off. We didn’t have any jack o’lanterns or Halloween decorations of any kind; just a generic fall wreath made up of autumn leaves hanging on the front door (after Thanksgiving I’ll switch it out for the Christmas wreath).

Baby Bear and I repaired to the family room toward the back of the house to play Crash Bandicoot on the Sony Playstation.

Despite all my humbug precautions, there were still two separate incidents of trick-or-treaters at the door, sending the dogs into a frenzy of barking. The second group of trick-or-treaters was a little more persistent than the first—they rang and knocked and rang again. The house was dark but dogs were barking at the window, so surely there had to be humans with candy.

Are there new rules out there I didn’t hear about? Kiddies, you don’t go to homes with no lights. I remember years ago when we took our two older children trick-or-treating on MacDill Air Force Base, at one house the doofus resident kept opening the door to tell trick-or-treaters that he had no candy. He’d close the door, then another swarm of kids would come up to knock, and he’d open the door again to tell them there was no candy here, rinse and repeat.

Yet his porch light was on. All he had to do was turn it off and he could go back to his beer and Cheetos in peace. The rules in military housing are quite clear about that, and I could’ve sworn similar guidelines were in place in the civilian community.

I simply didn’t answer the door. There was no point when I had nothing to give, and the overexcited dogs might have escaped to wreak more havoc on the children, and besides, I do it with solicitors all the time. I love that peephole that lets me see not only who’s ringing my doorbell, but what they have clutched in their hands. And it’s never balloons and a video camera and an oversized check with my name on it.

The Crown Prince will definitely be coming over for Thanksgiving (I count on him to rattle off the complete menu for me and to harangue his father about putting up the Christmas tree the very next day).

But the creepiest thing of all about our non-Halloween Halloween? Mr. Lucky has yet to bring home bags and bags and bags of half-price candy.

Bear Hugs and Grumpy Old Men

Yesterday we availed ourselves of our veterans’ benefits with a trip to MacDill Air Force Base, where we shopped for groceries at the commissary. We charged Baby Bear with pushing the grocery cart, but we still have to keep a close eye on him, especially when we get to the end of an aisle, for it is here that he often attempts to make an escape by pushing the cart in one direction, only to let go of it and dash off in the other.

I tend to keep in close physical contact with him at the end of aisles, usually by putting my arm around him. Occasionally he’ll respond by looping his own arm around my waist.

We were thus entwined at the entrance to a very crowded aisle, from which we needed only one item. Mr. Lucky volunteered to plunge into the mob and retrieve it while Baby Bear and I waited for him with the grocery cart.

Mr. Lucky was about to step away just as an old man shuffled by and mumbled something I couldn’t hear, but apparently Mr. Lucky did, for he only rolled his eyes at the old man, then grinned at me and Baby Bear before disappearing into the crowded aisle.

Baby Bear and I waited behind our cart, arms hooked around each other as he swayed from side to side, taking me with him. No doubt we looked like a pair of human windshield wipers. The old man continued glowering and muttering inaudibly before vanishing in the crowd of shoppers.

We’re used to disapproving scowls and inaudible grumbles from strangers.

Mr. Lucky soon returned, still shaking his head. “You didn’t hear what that old guy said, did you?”

No, I hadn’t. The commissary is a noisy place. Apparently we’d inadvertently blocked the old man’s path by stopping the cart while I put an arm around my son and he returned the gesture. Indignant, the old man had growled, “Why don’t you two find someplace else to fall in love?”

I must admit, that wasn’t as harsh as being barked at to “get a room.”

So the old guy thought my son, only a couple of inches taller than yours truly, was my boyfriend. He’s just turned thirteen and because of his height, he does look older. But as for me, “Do I really look that young?” I asked Mr. Lucky.

Talk about your missed opportunities. If only he’d said something like, “Well, of course, Karen! You look younger than everyone! Why, people mistake you for my daughter all the time!” I would have baked him a chocolate cake.

But no, instead he scoffed and said, “Oh, that guy is old and probably half-blind. All he saw were two people in his way. He was grumpy because he had to go around you.”

So much for a detour into the chocolate cake aisle.

Adventures in Eating Out (Minus the Bear)

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, when I was in the Air Force stationed at Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt, Germany, I often took my meals in the cafeteria at the base hotel. Since I don’t like crowds and noise and chaos (yeah, yeah, I know), I tried to avoid going there during peak hours.

Sometimes I’d have the cafeteria all to myself, and I could sit wherever I wanted, eat my meal, and read The Stars and Stripes newspaper in peace.

Until a family came in. Mind you, it was always a different family, since the Rhein-Main hotel catered mainly to transient military personnel and their dependents. But the makeup of the family was pretty much the same each time: They always had ten kids (or at least it seemed like ten) all under the age of four, one of whom was invariably a baby who never stopped crying.

No matter where I sat in that cafeteria, they always took the booth right next to mine. Every single time. There were a hundred other places they could’ve sat, including some with more space for their brood that I swear actually multiplied by the time I got to my dessert and the back page of the paper. But no—they always picked the booth right next to that lone skinny girl who they must have thought was bored senseless with her newspaper and her solitude, and surely would not object to having green jello flung into her hair.

The parents never took the seat that would’ve put their backs to me. Oh no, they always took the opposite seat, so their kids could lean over into my booth and stare at me as if I were behind bars munching on grass while someone hosed me down. On one occasion, one toddler actually climbed over the booth and landed in the seat across from me. The parents did not even budge. Instead—once it dawned on them they were missing a kid—they called out to him to come back from wherever he was. They had to do this several times before he complied.

Back in those days, I wasn’t assertive enough to speak up and say, “Excuse me, but would you please come and get your kid.” Hell, I wasn’t even assertive enough to pick up my tray and newspaper, and move to the other side of the cafeteria. I feared it would offend the parents. How stupid is that?

But I’m getting a little better about it.

Recently, after putting Baby Bear on the bus, Mr. Lucky and I went out to breakfast. Fortunately, the restaurant wasn’t too crowded, mostly couples or groups of adults. There was only one family in there with three kids, all preschoolers.

So guess where the hostess seated us?

That’s right. At point blank range for flying globs of oatmeal. She handed us menus, told us the name of our server who would be with us shortly, then walked away, leaving us to stare at each other in dismay.

Don’t get me wrong. Mr. Lucky and I have nothing against kids. We’ve had three of our own, all of whom we love very much. But when just the two of us go out to eat, we do not want to be near any kids, no matter how well behaved they are. It sort of defeats the whole purpose of why we’re eating out.

You’d think a restaurant hostess would know that. It should be in a rule book somewhere: Avoid seating couples without children near couples with children.

When the server finally arrived, I whispered to her, “We were wondering if we could sit somewhere else?” She whispered back that she didn’t blame us, and discreetly led us to a quieter booth on the other side of the restaurant. If the parents were offended—assuming they even noticed—I certainly did not care.

Our new booth was a vast improvement. Four well behaved adults occupied the booth behind Mr. Lucky. We ordered, and while we were waiting for our food, a strange, disagreeable look came over Mr. Lucky’s face. Then he sniffed his shirt sleeve.

“What’s the matter, dear?” I asked. “Isn’t your shirt April fresh? Do I need to switch detergents?”

He gestured to the empty booth across the aisle from where we sat, and whispered, “Let’s move over there.”

“Why? We’ve moved once already. We’re going to drive the server insane.”

Without another word he moved to the other booth. Since I didn’t want to sit by myself, I followed suit. And that’s when he informed me that someone in the booth behind him reeked of rampant B.O.

Fortunately we had no reason to move again. When the server arrived with our food, she made a good-natured comment on the fact that we’d moved, but she didn’t ask why and we volunteered no information. Better to let her think whatever she wanted to think, which is probably what most people think about us anyway.

Mr. Lucky left her an extra big tip.

Am I Trapped in a Pac-Man Game, or a Bald Convention?

When I married Mr. Lucky twenty-two years ago, he had a full head of thick chestnut hair that started disappearing at about the same moment I tossed the bridal bouquet over my shoulder and into the hands of my already wedded brother-in-law.

Call it hereditary male pattern baldness or an unfortunate side effect of living with me and putting up with all my nonsense, but the fact remains he is quite bald today, even to shaving off what little he has left. In fact, I’m not even sure what he’d have left if he just left everything alone.

Baldness seems to be all the rage these days, and that caused a problem for me earlier this week.

After putting Baby Bear on the school bus, Mr. Lucky and I drove out to MacDill Air Force Base to shop at the exchange store. We hadn’t been out there in probably six months, and were dismayed the find it undergoing heavy renovations. The store was very much open for business as usual, but everything had been switched around and packed close together to make room for the renovation work, leaving aisles half as wide (or should I say narrow) as they were originally.

It was almost impossible to move in that place, especially with a shopping cart. Everyone had to travel in the same direction through any given aisle, or be trapped. It was like being inside a Pac-Man game: We’d turn into one aisle, only to run into a group of spooks coming in the opposite direction. We could either stand our ground and get chewed up, or we could try and back out, only to run into a rogue spook sneaking up behind us and then it’s Game Over.

Before we even had the chance to put a single item in the cart, we made the mistake of leaving it parked at the end of an aisle to make it easier to search and recover what we wanted off the shelves. Mr. Lucky was about to come out with several bags of Halloween candy and place them in the cart when a little old lady swiftly dropped her purse into the baby seat and seized control of it.

Though his arms were full, Mr. Lucky wasn’t about to say, “Excuse me, lady, but that’s my cart you just appropriated.” Old-fashioned gentleman that he is, he let her go (not that she was going to get very far in that crowded rat maze), and I returned to the front of the store to fetch another cart.

But then I couldn’t find my husband. No matter which aisle I went down, everyone else was moving in the opposite direction. At intersections I collided several times with the very same people. Finally I spotted a bald head over in the electronics department. But of course—where else would he be?

I zigged up one aisle and zagged down another to get to him; there was no other way to catch up to him. I finally pushed the cart alongside him and—“You’re not my husband.”

Well, from the back that bald head looked just like him. Mr. Lucky did say he wanted to look at shoes, so I burrowed my way to the shoe department.

Then I heard what sounded like a harmonica. Mr. Lucky enjoys playing his harmonica, but I didn’t know he’d brought it with him. Could he be trying to summon me, without yelling my name? (Only he usually whistles or makes a cricket noise.) Indeed, the sound came from the back of a bald head several aisles over. I pushed the cart that way and—“You’re not playing the harmonica.”

Nor was he my husband. It was yet another bald guy turning a tie rack that creaked with a sound very much like a harmonica.

I felt like I was in a scene eerily similar to one in the Hitchcock movie, North by Northwest, where the cops ran all over the train station grabbing and spinning around dozens of red capped porters in hopes of busting the one most closely resembling Cary Grant; or Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Indy toppling one basket after another in a frantic, futile search for the kidnapped Marion.

Me, I was slithering up to every bald guy I glimpsed as if I were planning to hit on him. I swear every man in the store was as smoothly bald as the aforementioned Pac-Man. The base exchange is always throwing “appreciation days” for the Military, or the Military Spouse, or the Military Family, or the Military Retiree. Did we happen to come here on Military Bald Guy Appreciation Day?

It didn’t help I couldn’t remember what color shirt my husband was wearing. In the end, he found me, as I stuck out more—something to do with being five foot eleven topped with long dark hair.

It could’ve been worse. We could’ve been chasing Baby Bear through this labyrinth—though he might have been easier to pin down. Just follow the thuds, crashes, and shattering of glass right before the alarms start shrieking and the sprinklers commence spraying.

Life in the Military, Part II: The Quest for a Floor Buffer

Legend had it that buffers were available for free checkout from the base self-help store. Mind you, there were three hundred housing units on the base. Three hundred military families with floors that regulations “recommended” be waxed and buffed at least once a week.

The self-help store had only three buffers in its inventory, two of which were always checked out while the third was in a constant state of repair. Everyone wanted to know why they didn’t buy more buffers. The answer was always, “The budget only allows us to maintain three buffers. We can’t buy any additional buffers unless it turns out the third one can’t be repaired. Only then can we order a new one.”

Ha! When I was in the Air Force, I got stuck with supply monitor duty, and let me tell you, no one alive today will live to see that new buffer. I know, because I once had to order one.

Somewhere downtown is a store specializing in appliances like vacuums, zambonis, buffers—anything you use on a floor. When I was supply monitor, you couldn’t just go in there, say “I’d like to buy a buffer, will you take a company check?” then walk out of there with said buffer thrust into a plastic bag with the sales slip and a coupon for a dollar off your next purchase of Johnson Wax.

No, nothing that simple or efficient. Instead I had to fill out Air Force Form 601b in quadruplicate, and submit it to the squadron commander for his signature. The 601b included a huge blank block headed JUSTIFICATION. This was an essay question worth more points than anything else on the form. Here I had to explain why it was necessary to spend taxpayers’ money on a new buffer for the office.

“Buffer is needed to buff office floors after waxing,” I wrote.

No matter what you ordered, whether it was a Number 2 pencil or a Stealth bomber, the form invariably came back stamped with the word DISAPPROVED followed by one of two reasons for disapproval. It was either CANNOT IDENTIFY ITEM or INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION.

In the case of the buffer, the form came back stamped INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION.

What the heck more does anyone need than that? What else do you do with a floor buffer?

I called up the supply squadron and asked the clerk there to elaborate.

“You also need a popcorn popper to pop popcorn,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean the government’s going to buy you one. You have to explain why you need to pop popcorn.”

The supply monitor for the crew of the Enola Gay probably put “Atom bomb is needed to end the war with Japan” on his 601b, and it still came back stamped INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION. He would’ve had to explain why America needed to end the war with Japan.

So I redid the form. Under JUSTIFICATION, I wrote, “Buffer is needed to buff office floors after waxing. Floors must be waxed because they are dirty. Dirt has a negative impact on the Air Force mission.”

Again, the form came back stamped INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION. Seems I didn’t explain how dirt had a negative impact on the Air Force mission. How did it keep the planes from flying? Well, too much of it could clog up the engines and—oh, what the hell. The JUSTIFICATION was still INSUFFICIENT.

Eventually I managed to spin such a convincing story (I borrowed a few details from the movie Independence Day—something about aliens attacking military installations in search of wax residue to oil and fuel their spacecraft before moving on to another planet big on military—or wax, if you will—buildup), that the disapproval was changed to CANNOT IDENTIFY ITEM.

Considering the rarity of buffers, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that no one in the Supply Squadron knew what I was talking about.

The supply clerk advised me—with a perfectly straight face, mind you—to attach a sample of the requested item to the 601b.

Hello? Planet Earth calling, will you accept the charges? If I had a “sample” I wouldn’t have needed to order one! Not to mention that even if I did have a sample to attach, it would have required me to order extra large heavy duty industrial strength paper clips—which Supply couldn’t identify, either. I should know. I’ve sent them 601b’s with whole chains of different paper clips dangling from the upper left-hand corner.

The supply squadron clerk, who seemed to have a witty comeback for everything, said if a sample wasn’t available or attachable, to just include a picture of it instead. See previous paragraph above.

Obtaining a picture of a buffer would have further required me to hire a private investigator to hide out in alleys and dumpsters, waiting for one to skulk by. How much do you want to bet I could have gotten government approval—oh, better than approval, but a federal grant for that?

It was too much. Several months earlier I’d gone through a similar rigmarole ordering envelopes. Long, white, Number 10 business size envelopes. You know what I’m talking about. I know what I’m talking about (at least some of the time). I could interview fifty people on the street and every last one of them would know exactly what I was talking about . . . unless they happened to be assigned to the Supply Squadron.

Apparently the stock number I’d given them for the envelopes—which I got straight from the box containing our remaining inventory—was no longer listed in the supply roster. Some bureaucrat at the Pentagon had been charged with the all-important task of changing the stock number, so who knew how to find it now? The supply clerk presented me with a foot thick binder that constituted the roster, and turned to the section listing envelopes.

“Find your envelope here,” he said.

There were more envelopes listed in that roster than there are Smiths in the Manhattan white pages.

Who knew there were so many different kinds? The kind I wanted was so standard, so common, that it should have been at the top of the list.

But I never found it. We had to wait till they mysteriously appeared in the warehouse months later.

Meanwhile, I went to the commander to tell him of my dilemma with the buffer. He fired off a letter to the commander of the Supply Squadron, and finally got (some) results.

The request was finally approved.

And, like everything else in the military supply system, promptly placed on backorder.

In the meantime, we had to continue borrowing the buffer from another squadron across the street. I asked how they’d gotten it and when, but no one knew. The form used to order it was no longer on file. Regulations dictated such forms were kept in active files for one year, inactive for another year, then moved to archives somewhere in the Ozarks. The person who ordered it had long since gone to that great big VA waiting room in the sky.

It seemed the buffers on hand had always been there, even before the base was built; the buildings and aircrafts and runways had merely sprung up around them.

As for the buffers designated for residents in base housing, I’ve never met anyone in base housing who ever actually checked out one of them. In fact, no one seemed to know anyone in housing who’d ever used one of them, simply because they were never available. No one wanted to go off base and spend hundreds of dollars to buy one of their own, but if you wanted to buff the floors in your on-base house, that’s what you had to do, unless you could find a place that rented them.

I didn’t want to, so I didn’t. At the time I had young children. I swept and mopped, and that was it. When it came time to move to another base, we hired a professional cleaning service to clean the housing unit to the standards required by the Air Force, and let them buff the floors.

All military organizations have mottos. I have one for the supply system:

ACQUISITION IS FUTILE!

Life in Military Housing, Part I

When we were in the military and had to live on base, we resided in housing built half a century ago.

Have you ever watched any of the one hundred and eighteen different types of remodeling shows on that home and garden cable channel? Of all those one hundred and eighteen shows, eighty-six have the root word “design” in the title, the remaining thirty-two “decorate.” Whether it’s design or decorate, I loved to watch them all, and dream of the day when I could have a home of my own to do all the things the people on those programs seemed to have so much fun doing.

The camera would follow a house-hunting husband and wife into a cute 1940’s cottage, a cozy 1930’s bungalow, or even a charming 1920’s craftsman house boasting one of them new-fangled Kelvinators, and the enchanted wife would sigh blissfully and say, “I love the rest of the house, especially the hardwood floors . . .”

“I like the detached garage,” the husband chimes in. “It’s the perfect place for me to work on my boat.” Where they currently live, he has no place to work on his boat, which he keeps parked in his friend’s backyard. His friend’s wife would like to see the boat removed and replaced with a koi pond and pergola, but that’s for another program on the same channel.

“But the kitchen really needs updating,” the wife says.

As much as we delight in quaint décor and believe in preserving the past, we women do appreciate having updated kitchens.

By program’s end, they’ve gutted and removed everything that doesn’t date back to next week, and the house that was built during the Coolidge Administration now has a kitchen bearing an uncanny resemblance to the bridge on the Starship Enterprise—the NCC-1701-D model, for those of you Trekkies who tend to be particular about these things.

And somehow, they always manage to do it all for just under two thousand dollars.

You can’t do any of that in military housing. After you move out, and before the next family moves in, the military might put in a new toilet seat . . . for over two thousand dollars.

The house we occupied on base still retained much of its New Deal era charm, though over time, the square footage had been reduced significantly with each new coat of paint applied to the interior walls whenever the house changed hands—usually every two to three years, and always in an off-blah white. Residents were forbidden to be creative and use colored paint or wallpaper. Consistency and uniformity in all areas of our lives, even on our walls—these were the things that kept our happy little Air Force flying.

We were allowed to make minor little improvements—like installing a vanity around a sink that otherwise had nothing beneath it but ugly pipes—but only with the commander’s approval (someone in authority would have to come in and inspect it after it was installed), and only using materials from what was known in the Air Force as the “self-help store.” This was like a hardware store on the base, where everything was free, but you had to be a resident of military housing to patronize it. In keeping with the aforementioned uniformity in all things, you couldn’t choose between Early American or French Provincial or whatever era you were going for. There was only one style available, best described as “Eleanor Roosevelt Colonial.”

Military housing residents could not buy remodeling materials from a hardware or home improvement store off base, because (1) the government would not reimburse you for your purchase, and (2) whatever item you bought there—like replacement tiles for the kitchen or bathroom—would very likely not be a design authorized by the government, and you would be ordered to remove it and reimburse the government for any damage incurred, as well as the cost for replacing it properly.

But who would want to pick out tiles like those used in military housing? All floors still had the original, albeit formerly white tiles flecked with streaks of gray for that cheap faux marble look—though after so many decades, it was hard to distinguish the flecks and streaks from the rest of the tile. This same cold, dull tile was laid all through the house—living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom. We bought lots of area rugs.

Furthermore, what self-respecting off-base establishment of the twenty-first century would stock that hideous design? They probably discontinued selling it after World War II. Yet somewhere, some defense contractor continues manufacturing them exclusively for the military.

Ideally these floors were supposed to be waxed and buffed at least once a week. Ideally. Theoretically. And only if you got down on your hands and knees with a pile of old rags and buffed the floors manually.

It’s one thing having to do that with fifty other people during boot camp—which I did, and it was called a “G.I. Party”—but quite another when you have two active children and a lot of other, more important things to do with your life. Then it’s no party at all.

“For God’s sake, Karen,” you say, “this is the twenty-first century already. Haven’t you ever heard of ‘buffers’?”

Buffers? Oh, those things! Huge electric monsters that spin along the floor and, unless you weigh at least two hundred pounds and bench press twelve thousand, will spin you along with them till your spinal cord is severed. Yes, I’ve heard of them. But hearing of ain’t seeing, and it definitely ain’t having—at least not on a military installation.

Next entry: The Quest for a Floor Buffer

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.

I Confess: I Don't Like Halloween

The only thing I like about Halloween is that it marks the start of my favorite time of year. I love the late fall—for what it’s worth in Florida—and I’ve always been more of a Thanksgiving and Christmas girl.

I didn’t mind Halloween when we were in the military and lived on base, because the trick-or-treating there was very tightly controlled, allowed only during a two hour window. They never allowed it to run late enough that with each passing hour, the trick-or-treaters grew bigger and older and even scarier than me.

With the two hour limit on the Air Force base, I usually didn’t have to worry about running out of candy, but still I couldn’t resist rationing the stuff. “Here’s a Tootsie Roll for you, a Hershey’s Kiss for you, and for you I have a lollipop. See you next year!” One year, after I dropped a single piece of candy into a teenage girl’s pillowcase, she mouthed off at me with, “Wow! One whole piece of candy! Whoo-pee!” Since I didn’t wake up the next morning to find the car egged and toilet-papered, I felt I got off lightly.

And then there was the little girl who came to the door with her mother, who was pushing a baby in a baby stroller. The girl had her own pumpkin bucket, and another sat on the hood of the stroller. After I dropped the candy into her pumpkin bucket, she said, “You have to give some to the baby, too!”

What a scam! That baby wasn’t even teething yet, and by the time he was old enough to eat the candy, it’d be well past its expiration date. At the time, my oldest son and daughter were toddlers and not old enough for trick-or-treating, while Mr. Lucky was in the living room, slouched on the sofa with the remote control clenched in his hand. He didn’t have to do anything except wait for the two hour limit to expire, so he could eat whatever was left over.

The mother stood behind the stroller, staring me down and daring me to challenge her in front of her children. Back in those days, I was still a doormat, and since this was military housing, for all I knew her husband outranked mine. Without a word I dropped the candy into the pumpkin bucket on the stroller hood, biting my tongue to keep from saying, “Tell your husband he’s welcome.”

Indeed, when I closed the door, I told Mr. Lucky about the little girl exhorting me to give candy to her newborn sibling, and he said, “Ha! No way it’s for the baby—it’s for their dad. Trust me, he’s sitting at home in front of the TV this very moment, waiting to collect his share.”

Just like Mr. Lucky.

Call me neurotic; I know my insistence on rationing the candy is downright irrational. I tell myself I’m only trying to make it last, so everyone who rings the bell will get something. But no matter how much we stockpile, I always worry about running out after twenty minutes. Mind you, I'm also the same person who thinks half a tank of gas is as good as empty.

Mr. Lucky, on the other hand, will lavish the trick-or-treaters with giant fistfuls of sweets, like a returning conqueror flinging spoils to the cheering masses as he rides by in his chariot. He also believes in holding back at least one bag of candy for himself.

One year I did give a few extra pieces to a little girl simply because I thought her costume was so original and amusing. She wore a pair of goggles and an empty toilet paper roll attached to her nose. When I asked what she was supposed to be, she replied, “I’m an aardvark!”

Kids, that’s how you get more candy from grumpy, tight-fisted Mrs. Lingefelt.

I don’t understand myself. You’d think I’d be more excited about this whole business of dressing up in freaky outfits, scaring the hell out of people and shaking them down for chocolate.

After all, it’s what I do every day.

Rakehell: It's Not Just a Term for Regency Romance Heroes

Fall is here, which doesn’t mean a lot in Florida. I miss the season—the crispness in the air, the changing colors, the anticipation of the holidays and the smell of baking pies instead of barbecue.

One thing I don’t miss is raking leaves, which I had to do every Monday when we were stationed in California, and lived in military housing. On Tuesday, civil servants from the base housing office would inspect everyone’s yards to make sure they were keeping it up to military standards.

We had only one tree in the front yard, yet on a typical fall Monday, after filling half a dozen black garbage bags, there were still leaves carpeting the yard. It seemed for every hundred I raked up, five hundred more dropped out of that tree.

When I awoke the next morning and glanced out the window, I had to wonder if some prankster had emptied every single last one of those garbage bags onto my lawn, because the yard looked as if it hadn’t been raked all year. But the long row of bulging black bags still sat along the curb, waiting for garbage pickup like a group of squat commuters lining up for their city bus connection.

So after breakfast I went back out, rake in hand. An occasional gust rustled the tree branches over my head, blowing another future bagful of leaves to the ground. I felt like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, only I was battling leaves instead of hordes of walking brooms hauling buckets of water. I’d filled up three more bags when, with sinking heart, I spotted the yard inspector approaching with his clipboard.

“Morning,” he said curtly. “You know you’re supposed to have those leaves raked up in time for inspection?”

“I did. I had them all raked up yesterday afternoon, and more of them blew down during the night.”

The inspector wasn’t buying it. He plucked a pen out of his pocket and began scribbling on his clipboard. “I’ll have to write you up. Base regulations specifically state the yard must be in inspection order by 0730 hours every Tuesday. None of your neighbors have leaves in their yards.”

He was right. All the neighbors had trees in their yards, yet there wasn’t a single leaf in any of them. Certainly there were browning leaves still clinging to the branches of the neighbors’ trees, but with each gust of autumn wind, the dying leaves fluttered frantically across the street before they finally made a forlorn landing amongst the leaves from my own tree.

I’ve heard tales of a mysterious place deep in the sea, where whales go to cock their fins up. If you found the place, you’d see nothing but giant whalebones everywhere. I’ve also heard of a similar, equally remote place for elephants. The front lawn of our house in California must’ve been the officially designated “bone yard” for dying foliage.

No matter which way the wind blew—east, west, north, south—everyone else’s leaves rolled into my yard—and stayed put. I wondered if there was some sort of magnetic field in my yard, a weird geological anomaly that sucked in not only leaves, but other debris, to include everyone else’s litter. Maybe it explained why the neighbors’ kids practically lived in our yard instead of playing in their own.

At one point I watched a plastic bag go billowing and bouncing down the street, occasionally hopping into one yard and then another before returning to the street, until it finally fluttered to a halt in the dead center of our yard. And wouldn’t you know it, that bag refused to budge thereafter. In frustration I picked it up and dropped it into the middle of the neighbor’s yard. It rolled right back, doggedly following me like The Red Balloon.

In desperation I started beating it with the rake in hopes it would flee in terror down the street to the next county. But instead it only lay there, inert, submissive, a doormat and a glutton for punishment, rather like yours truly used to be.

Every time the yard inspector wrote us up for something, I wanted to see what his yard looked like.

Oh, and right after I finished writing this, I had to get up and go into the living room to stop Baby Bear from using my sofa as a trampoline. As I replaced all the cushions and pillows on the sofa, he went into my office and added the following message to this blog entry:

Hhghggggggggg,

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.