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.

Mom and Apple Pie (and Ice Cream and Chocolates)

One of Mrs. Smith’s frozen, ready-to-bake apple pies has been taking up valuable real estate in our freezer since the holidays. I meant to bake it for New Year’s, but Mr. Lucky and the Crown Prince went up to Georgia to spend that holiday with the in-laws---leaving me to deal with Baby Bear and two dogs scared out of their wits by the next door neighbor's fireworks. At the time, I didn’t think it was right to bake that pie and eat it all by myself, so it remained in the freezer alongside a carton of vanilla ice cream.

Eventually Mr. Lucky couldn’t resist digging into the ice cream, leaving only the pie. Occasionally he’d ask, “So when are we going to have that pie, Karen?” and I’d mumble something about pie being “a weekend thing.”

Trouble is, Mr. Lucky works most weekends, and his overall schedule is such that, believe it or not, there’s never been an ideal time to take it out of the freezer and throw it into the oven.

I finally found the time this last week . . . when he and the Crown Prince returned to Georgia for another visit with his kinfolk. I remained at home for four days with two barking dogs and a roaring, rampaging Bear.

On the first evening with his dad out of town, Baby Bear emerged from his room in a deceptively cheery mood, bounced up to me in the middle of the kitchen, and with his trademark yell he pushed all five feet, eleven inches of me flat to the floor! I was barefooted on ceramic tile, so I had no traction to keep me on my feet, and because I happened to be in a part of the kitchen where there was nothing nearby to break my fall, down to the floor I crashed like the Colossus of Rhodes.

That hurt. But at least I came out of it better than old Colossus did. I think he broke into pieces at the bottom of the Aegean. I only got banged up (nice big bruise on the outer thigh), and was in a bit of pain for the next few days.

Since there’s no liquor in the house, I did the only other thing I could to maintain my sanity. I baked that apple pie and ate it with French vanilla ice cream.

I enjoyed a slice for every day Mr. Lucky and our firstborn were gone. That’s a quarter of a pie every day, covered with at least three scoops of the ice cream. I ate it all.

And I did not allow myself to feel so much as a scintilla of guilt.

Oh, and I consumed a whole bag of chocolates, too.

No guilt. Still no sanity, either, and certainly no weight lost, but NO GUILT!

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!

A Midnight Visit from the Police, OR: Let's Scare Karen to Death, OR--Just a Thanksgiving Tale

If your husband happens to be out late one night on a job, and a police car pulls up in front of your house past midnight but you didn’t even call 911, what are you supposed to think?

If you’re like me, you’ll think the very worst and go into Maximum Panic Mode.

I went to bed around 11:30 pm the night before Thanksgiving, only to be jolted awake less than an hour later by our two barking beagles. My first thought was they were calling out to a neighbor taking their own dog for a midnight stroll, but when the barking persisted, I had to get up and investigate—especially since I was afraid they would wake up the Crown Prince (who was staying with us for the holiday) and Baby Bear.

I carefully lifted a slat in the blinds covering the living room window and peered out. Terror slashed through me as I saw a police car parked right in front of our house. The silhouette of a very tall officer stood at the foot of the driveway, feet apart, facing our house, looking very much as if he were trying to ascertain if anyone was home. There were no cars parked in our driveway, and all the lights were off.

I could only think of one reason for him to be out there. My critique partner, Jean, who writes romantic suspense, has described this very scenario in a few of her books, and it usually includes dialogue along the lines of, “We’re very sorry to inform you . . . we need you to come with us so you can identify—”

NO-OOOHHH!!!

The cop remained standing at the end of the driveway, arms akimbo. Why didn’t he come up and ring the doorbell and put me out of my—or rather, plunge me into further misery? Perhaps I should go out there to meet him. “Excuse me, sir, would you mind telling me why you’re in front of my house? You’re making my dogs bark and you’re scaring the hell out of me.”

If only he didn’t look like Gort standing outside the flying saucer. I could almost hear the menacing theme music from the theremin.

But I wasn’t dressed to meet anyone save Mr. Lucky, so I ran back to the bedroom to throw some clothes on. Whimpering and trembling all over, my heart hammering, I returned to the living room window and . . . Gort and the police car were gone.

Now what? Was he on his way back to the station because he thought there was no one home except for the dogs? But he hadn’t rung the bell. At least I hadn’t heard the doorbell; maybe I was still asleep when he rang it and that’s what started the dogs barking.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I call up 911?

“What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher would ask.

“Well, I don’t know that it’s an emergency,” I would say in a tremulous voice broken with panicked sobs, “but my husband is out right now and I just saw a cop parked in front of my house like maybe he was here to—” Scratch that.

Instead I called Mr. Lucky’s cell phone. To my dismay, all I got was voice mail.

By now I was totally freaking. I tried his work place. Maybe he was still there, or maybe someone else there would tell me something . . . or would they?

One of his co-workers answered the phone, and to my everlasting relief, Mr. Lucky was there, safe and sound. His cell phone, he said, was out in the car. But he couldn’t explain anymore than I could why that cop might have been outside our house. The sprinklers hadn’t been running, so it couldn’t be because we were watering on the wrong night.

I was about to go back to bed when the dogs started barking again. I returned to the living room window and—GORT WAS BACK!

At least he remained inside his car, but now what? Was this part of a stakeout? Were we under surveillance? But for what?

I wondered what would happen if I just went out there to ask. Would I get shot? Thrown across the trunk of his squad car and handcuffed? Or be chided with a mere, “Ma’am, get back inside your dwelling, please, and stay there until further notice.”

At least if he came after me like Gort on Patricia Neal, there were no folding chairs in the driveway for me to stumble over and get tangled up in, and no conveniently placed partition for me to trap myself against, instead of just dodging around it and running like hell.

I didn’t want to go out the front door for fear the overexcited beagles would shoot past me and escape. So I turned on all the exterior lights and came out through the garage.

Fortunately, he turned out to be more like Klaatu than Gort.

He met me in the driveway, and politely explained. A neighbor called to complain of a barking dog. I’d heard this same dog several houses over as I fell asleep. But the neighbor seemed to think it was coming from my house. My dogs had been inside all evening, and only started barking when the cop showed up. After determining there was no barking dog outside my house, he’d moved on to see if he could find it elsewhere in the neighborhood, but by that time the owner had apparently wised up and brought his yappy little mutt inside.

The cop then returned to my address to make his report that the complaint was unfounded and our house appeared secure. He remarked that my dogs were actually doing their job very well, and apologized for scaring the bejabbers out of me. He was very nice and professional, and I’m just relieved that my initial fears were as unfounded as the neighbor’s complaint.

Plus, this gave me something to be grateful for on Thanksgiving.

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?

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.

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.

In Which Baby Bear Locks Karen Out of the House

Baby Bear has figured out how to unlock the sliding glass door, so Mr. Lucky cut a two-by-four to fit into the bottom runner. It doesn’t just drop in; it has to be carefully worked in.

Last night, while Mr. Lucky was at work, I opened the sliding glass door so the dogs could go into the backyard to do their business. I went out there with them because otherwise, they’d head for their secret escape route under the fence. (I think they’re squeezing out under the gate, but Mr. Lucky doesn’t think that’s possible because the gate is locked both top and bottom.)

After a few moments, I noticed Baby Bear was at the door, his nose and lips pressed against the glass. Since I can’t lock the door from the outside, I thought it quite odd that he was making no attempt to come running out as he usually does. I pulled on the door handle. It didn’t budge.

He must've locked it. I pointed to it and yelled at him to unlock it.

He laughed and danced. I pounded on the glass and yelled some more. He finally clicked the lock, I pulled on the door handle, and . . . it didn’t budge.

Did he unlock it, only to quickly lock it again? After more yelling and pounding on my side of the glass, and more laughing and dancing on his side, he clicked the lock again as I quickly seized the door handle and . . . it still didn’t budge.

That’s when I noticed, to my horror, that the two-by-four had been neatly placed into the runner behind the other glass panel. The little sneak had figured it out!

More yelling and pounding and pointing ensued, this time all of it directed to the two-by-four. Bear tapped his toes on it a few times, but showed no inclination to remove it. He was thoroughly enjoying this.

I was not. I was trapped in the backyard, and I was panic-stricken. It was dusk, I could hear thunder in the distance, and Mr. Lucky wasn’t due home for another four hours. My only consolation was there was nothing in the oven or on the stove.

The windows were all closed and locked from the inside. I was barefoot and wearing a tank top and very short shorts, so I wasn’t exactly dressed for scaling the six foot high wooden fence that enclosed the yard. Besides, there was nothing to boost me over but an unsturdy patio chair, and the table was too heavy to drag from the patio to the fence. The gate was secured with a padlock that required a key. But even if I did find a way out of the backyard--there was a shovel handy, so I suppose I could've dug my way out, like the dogs--I still wouldn’t be able to get in the house because the garage and front door were also locked, and my keys were inside the house.

Wouldn’t you know it? Believe it or not, I usually keep my keys with me, even around the house, for Baby Bear’s safety and security. I should probably get one of those things my father used to have, that you clip to your waistband and you pull the keys out on a chain. Or a big giant ring, like a medieval dungeon master (or in this case, mistress).

A key is needed to unlock our front door from the inside as well as the outside, to keep Baby Bear from running off never to be heard from again. I read too many heartbreaking stories in the news about autistic children exactly like him, who slip out of the house while their parents are distracted, only to meet tragic ends. He couldn’t let me in through the front door even if he wanted to.

After about ten minutes, he seemed satisfied that I’d completed my transformation into a total basket-case, so he pulled out the two-by-four, allowing me and the dogs back into the house.

If that wasn't enough, when Mr. Lucky came home from work shortly before midnight, I had to unlock the front door for him, because he’d locked his own keys in the car, along with his cell phone. Imagine if Baby Bear still hadn’t removed the two-by-four!

This isn’t the first time one of my little darlings has locked me out—or in. About ten years ago, Fiona locked me in her older brother’s bedroom while her dad was out on an errand. Neither she nor the Crown Prince would let me out, despite all my screaming and hammering on the door. And I didn’t have my keys with me that time, either; so even if I went out the window, I still couldn’t get back into the house. I had to wait for Mr. Lucky to return, which he did about half an hour later.

At least he didn’t lock his own keys in the car that time!

In Praise of Cats

Baby Bear’s Newest Trick: Spitting Spaghetti! This is what happens when you don’t keep Silly String in the house. If only the red sauce splattered all over the walls didn’t make my dining room look like a crime scene.

I told Mr. Lucky to put the dogs out while we ate dinner. I don’t know why he doesn’t do that as a matter of routine, since he spends half the meal ordering the dogs to get away from the table.

As soon as he was done eating, he left to go to work. I cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher before letting the dogs back inside. I opened the back door, and they were nowhere to be seen.

They’d escaped. The entire back yard is fenced in, yet I couldn’t find a hole anywhere, unless they’d secretly been working on one beneath the air conditioning unit a la The Great Escape.

I whistled, though I’m not a very good whistler. I yelled. I cursed. Not a single dog came running back. I was going to have to go out and chase them down before some surly neighbor yelled at me for letting the dogs run loose, as they (the dogs as well as the surly neighbors) are wont to do if Mr. Lucky isn’t at home.

I had to chase down three dogs, and I had to do it on foot. Mr. Lucky recently sold his playboyish Buick Riviera, because it requires premium unleaded and in recent months has done nothing but sit in the driveway looking snazzy. After some discussion we decided we could get by with one car.

The dogs obviously listened in, took note, and hatched their fiendish plot.

Only I couldn’t chase down three dogs and a boy who always runs in the opposite direction from where I want to go, casting off every article of clothing he wears as he makes his mad dash to the nearest dangerous place. So I did something I really don’t like doing—I apologized to Baby Bear, assured him it was for his own safety and my sanity, and locked him in his room.

As I pulled the dog’s leashes out of the hall closet, already the house was shaking from Baby Bear’s pounding thumps of protest. Certainly I could have left him loose in the house and just locked the front door, but then the ensuing damage would be more widespread, and the possible injury to himself more serious. At least this way any disaster would be contained.

We’re in Florida and it’s ninety degrees shortly before 6 pm. I’m not dressed to be seen outside the house, at least not by my standards. I haven’t even had the chance to check my teeth to make sure there are no bits of basil or parsley stuck in the gumline. I have to remember not to smile if I meet anyone.

At least I got some much needed exercise. I swiftly walked all around the block in search of those dogs, but didn’t see them anywhere. I cut through several yards, and crashed a couple of backyard barbecues and pool parties. On my way back to my house, I finally spotted them in the next door neighbor’s yard—the first place I’d checked, as the neighbor (who wasn’t home at the time) keeps a yappy little dog chained up in their lanai.

I rounded up the dogs, put them on the leashes and took them home, where Baby Bear had kicked a new hole in the drywall in his room—and this only six hours after a parent-teacher conference at his school, where Mr. Lucky asserted that Bear hadn't damaged any walls in quite a long time.

He forgot to knock on wood when he said that.

At 8:30 pm that same evening, the dogs were agitating to go back into the yard, presumably to do doggie business. I let them out and went to check on Bear. I swear not more than two minutes went by before I went into the backyard to discover all three dogs were gone again.

Lock up the boy. Grab the leashes. Venture into the neighborhood as dusk is falling. I found two dogs. The other returned on his own a half hour later. I didn’t let them out again until Mr. Lucky came home, and determined that they’d dug a new hole under the fence.

“How could they have dug a hole in less than two minutes?” I asked. “I swear they were out there less than two minutes when they escaped.”

“I guess they’ve been working on it for some time,” he replied. Just like in the movie.

“But if it isn’t under the A/C unit, then why didn’t I see it anywhere at the 6 pm breakout?”

Mr. Lucky couldn’t answer that. But can three beagles dig an escape route that quickly?

Mr. Lucky's Out of Town (Again)

Mr. Lucky went up to Georgia yesterday to visit his parents, taking our firstborn and the smaller dog, Jasper, with him. Baby Bear and I are staying home because things can become very volatile between our two autistic sons, especially if they're together for too long and in less than familiar surroundings. It's the main reason the older boy now lives in a group home.

Jasper's a sweetheart, especially when he turns onto his back, looks at me upside-down with those huge brown eyes, and beats his tail. But Buddy chews up everything that doesn't belong to Mr. Lucky (why is that?) and is always digging his way under the fence and into other people's yards. Needless to say, I wanted Buddy to go to Georgia. But it's precisely because Jasper is the smaller dog that he was picked to go, to my everlasting chagrin.

Instead of the minivan which would've had plenty of room for Buddy the Beagle From Hell, the husband took his snazzy black, two-door, sun-roofed, playboyish Buick Riviera, which I do not want to be stuck with should the necessity arise because it has a tire that's always running low on air. In fact, when Mr. Lucky was deployed for four months last year, he asked me to take the Buick out once in a while, "just to keep it in running condition." But after he left, I had to e-mail him that I found it sitting in the driveway with a flat.

"It gets that way sometimes," he e-mailed back. "It just needs air now and then. We have a pump for it somewhere out in the garage."

Somewhere, he said. I loved how he waited till he was halfway around the world to tell me all of this.

I'll stick to my reliable Chrysler minivan with the warranty, thank you.

Once again, it's just me and Bear--and the troublemaking dog. So far Buddy has knocked over the Christmas tree (not even Bear has ever tried that), figured out how to jump onto the kitchen counter, and has now maimed half of Bear's Teletubbies. While Mr. Lucky was out of town earlier this month, Buddy chewed the ear off Dipsy. This afternoon I found Tinky-Winky missing his nose.

Meanwhile, Bear was up at four in the morning, rocking on his bed while his electronic keyboard played an annoying rhythm full blast. I had to unplug the keyboard and remove it from his room, but after breakfast he hauled it back into his room, plugged it in, and resumed rocking.

Around mid-morning he dropped the remote control onto our ceramic tile kitchen floor, and it burst into pieces like Humpty Dumpty. Ordinarily I would say good riddance to this annoying object which is usually attached to Mr. Lucky's hand, but thanks to his powers of programming, we cannot switch from the DVD player or Playstation to the TV or vice-versa without it. So I had to figure out how to put it back together, and without any help from all the king's horses or all the king's men. Only once it was reassembled, I couldn't get it to work. It was dead.

This was not good. Baby Bear literally screamed in horror when I pointed it at the TV, and nothing happened. When he gets upset, he tends to either hit himself or bang his head into the wall--and we have lots of cracks and holes in the drywall to prove it.

Eventually I figured out that one of the batteries was reinserted backwards--but not after a new hole appeared in the living room wall, only inches above the back of the sofa. That kid is so tall for his age--if only he could make the holes higher, then I could cover them up with pictures. If I rearranged the furniture, swapped the sofa with the electric Charmglow fireplace, then either the mantel clock would conceal the hole, or I could use that picture of my children that sits next to the clock and needs a new frame after I caught a certain dog chewing on it.

Only I can't move the sofa or fireplace by myself, and Mr. Lucky doesn't like to rearrange the furniture unless it's his idea. Yeah, I know what I have to do--make it his idea, and remember to tell him how brilliant he is for thinking of it.

He called this morning, not only to make sure I wasn't entertaining any of the aforementioned king's men in his absence, but to announce the low tire was officially flat. Oh, he and the Crown Prince and Jasper made it to the in-laws' house all right yesterday, but when they tried to go out for breakfast this morning, that perpetually low tire finally blew out. The spare tire, meanwhile, was like the one in A Christmas Story. It was round, it had once been made of rubber.

At least I have four bags of chocolate to get me through Sunday, when he comes home. (He bought them for me the day before he left, wasn't that sweet of him? Of course, they were on sale.)

Number of times I had to get up while writing this post: 4

Nothing like a full moon to make Baby Bear bounce off the battered walls!

Mr. Lucky Comes Home Today! (And Not a Moment Too Soon)

One of my favorite scenes in Planet of the Apes--perhaps because I can so easily identify with it--is the one where Charlton Heston is in his cell being blasted with a giant waterhose, and he howls, "It's a madhouse! A MAAA-AADHOUSE!"

I must have one of those moments at least once a day--only without the waterhose, though Baby Bear, with his love of spraying water, creating puddles, and causing floods, comes pretty darn close.

By Day 7 of Mr. Lucky's business trip, the dogs have dug more holes than I can plug in the backyard fence. In fact, I don't even know what's keeping that fence up now. There's one long trench running along its length.

We live in Florida, where maybe three days a year we have to wear jackets. Yesterday was one of those days, so I sent Baby Bear to school in his jacket. When he came home from school, I went out to meet his bus, which--because he is autistic and developmentally disabled--stops directly in front of our house.

"Mrs. Lingefelt, we need you to come aboard the bus," the driver said. "He's taken off his pants."

I didn't even blink, even though he usually takes off only his socks and shoes on the bus. Nonetheless, I boarded the bus. The driver led me to the very back.

Well, no wonder he does these things. The back of the bus is where you want to sit if you're going to goof off. In the past, the driver has also reported to me incidents of him spitting--and he could win contests doing that. He can sit in the very back seat of our minivan, and hit the dashboard with his spittle.

Miraculously, he was still wearing his socks and shoes. But the pants were gone. We found them under the seat and after the attendant unbuckled him, I struggled to put them back on him. His shoes made it very difficult. HOW did he get them off with the shoes still on?

Only he knows--and he's not talking.

It wasn't till this morning--even colder than yesterday--that I realized he was missing his jacket--a common occurrence. When it gets cold down here, by afternoon it usually warms up enough that jackets are forgotten at school. I had to put a sweatshirt on him. The dogs have broken both zippers on their crates, so when his bus pulled up in front of our house this morning, I had to:

1. Unlock the front door (it must be kept locked at all times for the boy's security).

2. Grab both barking, thrashing dogs by the harnesses and tell Bear to pick up his backpack and go out the door. He's only too eager to comply with the latter command, but not the former.

3. Somehow grab both harnesses in one hand, pick up the backpack with the other, and hurl it out the door. I didn't have to worry about it hitting my son. He's too fast and I throw like--well, like a girl.

4. Take a deep breath and on the count of three, release both dogs as I lunge out the front door, grabbing the knob and closing it before they could charge out on my heels. Fortunately no tails or ears were caught in the door.

Scooping up his backpack, I ran to catch up with Baby Bear and make sure he really did get safely on the bus, instead of dashing for the nearest cliff, railroad track or alligator swamp.

I don't even know why I bothered to clean the house in anticipation of Mr. Lucky's return. The dogs will likely undo everything while I'm picking him up at the airport this afternoon.

And what they don't undo, Mr. Lucky will. Baby Bear just dumps water over everything.

But I'll be glad to have that man home again.

I'm Ready for My Straitjacket, Mr. DeMille (Day 6)

It all started with a horrific thumping noise at 6:30 this morning. Was some axe-murderer banging (or hacking) at the door? Why weren't the dogs barking?

Like the too-stupid-to-live actress in the slasher B-flick who knows there's a serial killer on the loose (and he's even warned her that she's next on his list), but still investigates a strange noise in a dark basement while clad in a sexy negligee, I burst out of the bedroom in a not-so-sexy nightie, only to realize the thumping came from Baby Bear's room.

He was kicking his race car bed as the electronic keyboard auto-played an obnoxious tune over and over, full blast. The blinds had been yanked all the way up, baring the bedroom window.

He was ready to get up and conquer the world--until I tried to get him dressed for school. He barricaded himself in his room and hid under his blanket in the apparent belief that I'd never think of looking for him there.

After he left on the school bus, I put clean sheets on his bed, vacuumed the carpet and plugged the four new escape routes in the back yard, then foolishly thought I might get some serious work done on the computer.

When I came out of my office an hour later, the recently vacuumed floor was covered with stuffing from a plush toy frog the dogs had purloined from Bear's toy box. The frog himself was a tattered, inert rag--as if he'd shed his skin, and I don't know if real frogs do that.

Also, one of Bear's stuffed Teletubbies was missing an ear. I assume one of the dogs sent it to his girlfriend--likely that Jack Russell terrier on the other side of the fence that they're always digging to get to.

When Bear came home, he was barefoot (he always takes off his socks and shoes on the bus), and he greeted me by throwing the shoes at me. As I picked them up, he took advantage of the diversion to take off down the street. Though he's only ten years old, he's 5'6" and 140 lbs--and getting stronger every day. He's not chubby by any means, just . . . BIG.

I somehow got him into the house. I'd crated the dogs in anticipation of his arrival, but Buddy broke the zipper on his crate and was loose. He barked and jumped all over Bear, which Bear does not like at all, leading to more screaming and head banging. I put the dogs out back until everyone calmed down and--no no, that's an exaggeration around here--until everyone . . . well, I don't know--till there wasn't so much barking and screaming and banging.

By now it was after 5 pm, and I was trying to watch the news. At the commercial break, I noticed Jasper had slipped out of his harness again. This time he wasn't such a good sport about letting me put it back on him. I was still struggling with it when the local TV station just had to choose that moment to run a commercial for Domino's Pizza.

"DING DONG! Get the door--it's Domino's!" At the sound of the doorbell on the commercial, both dogs took off barking to our front door, with Jasper dragging me behind him.

Then after dinner--remember those clean sheets I'd put on my son's bed? He dumped water all over the bed and his floor.

Race car beds look really cool, but it's an imperial pain in the rear trying to put fresh linens on them. I have to stand on my head and do backflips just to get the bottom sheet on. And while I was occupied with that, what do you think he was doing out in the kitchen? Why, he was pouring my glass of iced tea onto the floor.

The upside to all of this was that by now he was in a much better mood than when he came home, all giggly and silly.

I have to admit, that's better than the head banging and screaming, and I'm willing to put down a few towels for it.

In less than 48 hours, Mr. Lucky will be home . . . and I'll be in a mental ward.

Number of times I had to get up while writing this post: 5

Mr. Lucky's Out of Town: Items 6-8 (Days 4-5)

Whether you read this blog or something I've posted on a message board or group/list/loop, or even if you've received a private e-mail from me, you can be sure of one thing: If it's more than one sentence long, chances are good to excellent that it was not written in one sitting. In all likelihood, I got up several times during its composition because of something to do with Baby Bear. (Future post there.) So I don't get much writing done on weekends.

New items for the list of things I would rather see go wrong (if they must go wrong at all) when the husband is at home:

6. Dogs are digging at least two new holes under the backyard fence.

7. The sliding glass door is starting to stick along the track. This is not good, especially if it gets bad enough that I can't close the door. The only other access to the backyard is through the windows in my office and the master bedroom. Going out the front door and through the gate is out of the question. We keep that gate padlocked on the inside because Baby Bear is an even bigger escape artist than those dogs. (Another future post there.)

8. Jasper got out of his harness. Our dogs don't have collars, but harnesses. Mr. Lucky says it makes it easier for both dogs and master when they're leashed and out walking. I can put a collar on a dog no problem, but the harness presented quite a challenge, especially with my limited fine motor skills (see last blog entry). It took me half an hour to put that tangled mess back on the dog, and I'm still not sure it's even on right. To his credit, Jasper was very patient and cooperative at first, but after a while he got a little perturbed with my inability to figure out which part went around his neck and which behind the legs, and what to do with the middle strap. I had to check the other dog's harness to see how it was on, and he was never cooperative at all.

And while I was thoroughly distracted and frazzled by this, my son the opportunist went into my office and started rummaging around stuff. He knows I keep chocolate stashed in there, but that's the last thing he needs. I don't drink, because I have to stay sober and keep a clear head to look after that boy--so I must have the chocolate. (Cherry cordials, both dark and milk chocolate, 97 cents a box at Wal-Mart. I cleaned them out.)

Last night he dumped a bowl of macaroni and cheese into the sink full of dirty dishes--I think he rejected it because it was the wrong brand (yet another future post there). I had a lot of fun picking the macaroni out of there. Then he was up at 4 a.m. playing his electronic keyboard with the volume turned all the way up. I don't count these as numbered items, because these two incidents, believe it or not, are all in a day's (or night's) work for me.

Number of times I got up during the composition of this post: 3

Mr. Lucky's Out of Town (Day 3)

Except for one little incident this evening involving a package of crackers, today was surprisingly calm considering it's Friday.

I probably never would've thought to plug in the computer screen on the main desktop if my husband hadn't told me about it. It flashed on, I logged in, and without further ado the printer promptly spewed out three copies of Chapter One. I only needed one copy, but apparently I made three tries to get it to print yesterday, and the computer remembered and took those commands to heart. The entire manuscript printed without incident.

The plumber called around noon to tell me something you don't often hear: He was running early, and wanted to know if someone was home so he could come over now. It took him about half an hour to fix the problem with the outside faucet--a valve needed to be replaced. He said it was one of the easier jobs he'd had. Indeed, Mr. Lucky remarked that he probably could've done it himself, but that leak was getting worse and neither of us wanted to contemplate how bad it might get between now and his return next Wednesday. My husband and I agreed that under the circumstances, $120.00 (mostly labor) was a small price to pay for nipping in the bud a potential disaster that might have cost us hundreds more had we waited.

In the end, the most exciting thing today was when Baby Bear brought me a package of round crackers to open. He doesn't have the fine motor skills to deal with the wrapper, but as it turns out, neither do I. I tore it open and crackers flew in all directions.

The dogs were immediately on the case, but when my youngest child is carrying around food, they always follow him like those little spooks after Pac-Man, usually for this very reason. The Bear can always be counted on to leave a trail of crumbs, but tonight they hit the jackpot.

3CH Logic: Still lit.

Let us close by knocking on wood.

Mr. Lucky's Out of Town: Item 5 for the Log (Day 2)

UPDATE FROM DAY 1: Dogs' new passage to China plugged with three bricks, but I'm still leery. Backyard suspiciously spongy under my feet. Because the leaky faucet is on the exterior wall of the master bedroom, I have an irrational fear of waking up and getting out of bed only to plop my bare feet into a soaked carpet (I'm still scarred for life from last year's Great Flood. Sometimes I wake up at night and think I hear water running. Have yet to wake up screaming, though.) "3CH Logic" still glowing illogically on stereo receiver.

Today's addition to the Log:

5. The computer printer doesn't work. And I need to print out a 100k word manuscript by the end of next week. When Mr. Lucky called this evening to make sure I wasn't entertaining any Chippendales in his absence, I told him about the problem. (With the printer, not with the Chippendales' failure to show.)

"Oh yeah, it was giving me problems too, the other day," he said. "I couldn't get it to work with my new laptop." (Which he took with him.) "Did you turn on the main computer? You have to have it on to make it work with your laptop."

"Of course it's on!" I exclaimed. "Except for the desktop screen. And that's another thing. I can't get that to work, either."

"That's because it's unplugged," he said in his best everyone-knows-that voice. "The on-off button stopped working, so I always have to unplug it when turning off the main computer."

NOW he tells me! I've been using my laptop exclusively for almost two years now, so I didn't know any of this.

"You may have to log on to the main computer to use the printer," he said.

Only I can't do that until tomorrow. Not with Baby Bear running amok throughout the house.

Then my husband told me he was in the midst of driving back to his hotel. I gave him holy you-know-what for talking to me on his cell phone while he's (a) driving a rental car (b) after dark (c) in a strange metropolis.

Later this same evening, I was watching Survivor: China. (I think Jeff Probst has the cutest dimples.) Jasper came up to me and started barking.

"What is your problem?" I asked him. "There are no old mills or abandoned wells nearby, so Baby Bear couldn't be trapped in one." (Though you never know with that kid; he can always find something.) Turned out Jasper needed "to go," so I let him out back and wondered what had become of his partner-in-crime.

I went into my son's room to find Baby Bear playing a video game, and Buddy chewing on a picture book. I yelled. Both dog and boy fled the room while I picked up the soggy scraps of the book. After throwing them in the trash, I realized the TV was off (a common trick of Bear's when no one is in the room), and I seemed to be the only one in the house.

Then I realized I'd left the sliding glass door unlocked after letting Jasper out. I dashed out into the dark backyard. I tell you, that -20 watt bulb next to the patio door couldn't light a beehive. The next door neighbors, on the other hand, have a floodlight on their patio that could guide ships from 300 miles away. Unfortunately, they never turn it on till we go to bed.

But sure enough, both dogs were out there, along with a certain boy who was in the far corner of the yard, rocking on the lawn swing in his underwear.

Thank God we have that fence. I somehow managed to herd everyone back inside, then collapsed on the sofa to finish watching Survivor.

All season I've been rooting for James, but tonight he was voted off. I wondered why everyone on the tribal council and jury were laughing as he walked out, and I think I got the answer when he made his farewell speech to the camera during the end credits.

He had not one but two "hidden" immunity idols in his possession, and didn't bother to play either of them! Reminds me of the time I was playing Monopoly and had two "Get Out of Jail Free" cards, but still paid the $50.00 to get out because I didn't want to waste my two freebies. How dumb is that, I ask you? No wonder I'd been rooting for him. He was a kindred spirit.

That said, don't I at least deserve a reward for tonight's challenge on Survivor: Chez Lingefelt?

Mr. Lucky's Out of Town: Let's Keep a Log of What Goes Awry! (Day 1)

As a military wife, I've had my share of separations from my husband. He had to travel to a different time zone during the third trimesters of my first two pregnancies. Another time I had to deal with not one, but two hurricanes in his absence. (Future post there.)

Now that he's retired from the military, I thought those separations were over, but no. Today he left town on business which we hope will lead to a more prosperous future, and he'll be gone a week.

Things have a way of happening when he's away. Here's today's tally so far:

1. The outside faucet in the back yard is dribbling. Not dripping--dribbling. I hooked up the hose to it, and put the nozzle end in a large bowl, which filled up within minutes. I then placed the nozzle in the middle of the lawn and called a plumber. Someone will be out here on Friday between one and four pm.

2. Baby Bear was home from school less than ten minutes when he dropped his computer mouse, and it broke into every possible piece. I had to move furniture to retrieve the batteries and the plastic cover that keeps them in place. It still works, but after the last time it malfunctioned and Mr. Lucky spent hours trying to fix it and get it to work on the Bear's computer again, I was one big pathetic knot of whimpering anxiety until I established that the mouse still worked fine. A bullet dodged, but I didn't need it.

3. Caught the dogs digging a new escape route in the back fence. I can almost see the twinkling lights of downtown Beijing. Until I can get to Home Depot or Lowe's tomorrow to find something to plug that hole (e.g. maybe a big brick), I'll have to watch them when letting them out there to do their business. This is going to be lots of fun after dark, because the only light on our patio isn't brighter than -20 watts.

4. I turn on the stereo receiver to listen to music, and it shows an unfamiliar red light that says "3CH Logic." I've never seen that before, and have no idea what it means. I did find a button that says "Dolby 3CH Logic" but when I pressed it, the red lit words continued to glow. Whatever it is, it's not going away. The stereo still functions to my satisfaction (though I'm sure Mr. Lucky would detect some nuance of aberration in the sound), but who's to say that if that light glows for too long, the whole thing won't blow?

Stay tuned for more updates. If experience has taught me anything, then I know there's more to come.