Bank of No Forks was closed for the holiday so I spent the day writing. I pitched a tent in one of the five hundred Starbucks near my house and stayed for hours. I am absolutely flabbergasted that I got anything done because it was a total freak show there today.

I counted five self-important doctors wearing full scrubs and shoe booties. Why would they wear their scrub booties outside the hospital? Or even outside the surgery? They do realize that once they wear them out they become completely covered in germs and thus are totally useless, don’t they? I’m not a germaphobe by any stretch, but good grief. I’m certain they do it just because they want to make sure we all realize they’re doctors and therefore TOTALLY better than us.

I didn’t see it on the Internet, but I think we may have several traveling Broadway shows in town. Or they’re filming a Southwestern version of Project Runway. A couple of the most flamboyantly gay people I’ve seen since the last time I was in San Francisco regaled me for about twenty minutes gossiping about people I’ve never met, but feel like I totally know intimately at this point. Someone named Bernadette apparently dissed Jorge. Whether Jorge was a man or a woman isn’t completely clear as my entertaining new friends kept switching up their pronouns. Either way, Bernadette is a total skank and deserves what’s coming to her.

I had no idea that Starbucks had a big outlaw biker clientele, but apparently I’ve been busy living my stereotypes. One of them ordered a triple decaf espresso. I don’t understand the point of a dacaf espresso in the first place, and then add the triple part and you confuse the hell out of me.  Wouldn’t you assume a bad-ass biker could handle a real espresso? It seems like everyone is going soft these days.

It also seemed as though today might also have been Released Mental Patient Day. Our designated patient apparently had only one volume  and that was 11.  I know this because she talked. A lot.  She was also wearing an in-patient style uniform and socks. Just socks. And a shaved head. She also did a remarkable impersonation of Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder when she put on her headphones. I guessed she was listening to music but honestly that was just an assumption. It’s entirely possible the headphones weren’t even connected to anything but air. She was a certified whack-a-loon and I was that much more entertained. I’ll tell you what I am 100% certain of though and that is her treatment plan can’t possibly include caffeine therapy.

Last but not least, my favorite patron was a tiny little old man. He had to have been at least ninety or ninety-five and was very dapper in his brown suit and fedora complete with a jaunty feather in the brim. He was wizened and ancient and absolutely adorable. He strolled in using an old fashioned umbrella with an ivory-looking handle as a cane. He ordered a cup of Americano – black and sat in the brown, leather chair next to where I was camping out. We shared the end table, his coffee next to my non-fat chai. I worked on my book and he did four New York Times crossword puzzles. He completed every single one. Without help. In pen. Of course, it’s entirely possible that he wrote gibberish in the spaces but I suspect not. When I left to go pick up my kids from school, he patted my hand, gave me a sincere smile, and told me to have a lovely rest of my day.

I actually might have a crush on him.

It’s October ***waggles eyebrows***.

Today opened hockey season ***happy dance***

I’m giddy. I hope my boys do well this year. We’re in constant peril of losing our team to some frigid Canadian town. Where ever they are, who ever is playing, I’m just excited to watch. There is no other game that compares.

For my uncle, I’ll concede that I appreciate the beauty of baseball, and I love nothing more than catching a live game – especially if that means I’m playing hooky to get to the ball park. But the two games are so diametrically opposed to each other that it’s hard to reconcile that I can be fans of both.

Baseball is a lazy, contemplative game with a mellow pace until something really exciting happens and then, Wow! Or, as Harry Caray would say, “Holy cow!”  Hockey barely gives you enough time to breathe from one second to the next.

Puck or ball, rubber or leather – Game on!

***

We stepped off the curb and entered the crosswalk. The crossing guard yelled at me, but I’m pretty sure that’s her new favorite hobby. I took The Bandit’s small hand in mine and I studiously ignored the crone with the octagonal sign.

“Tuck in your shirt, little dude,” I tell him as I herd him and his sister across the parking lot, careful not to step out of the crosswalk boundary lines. It’s one thing to pretend like I’m ignoring her, but it’s another thing to flaunt it. It’s still prudent to obey the rules.

“It’s really easy to tuck in my shirt today,” he informs me with a sly grin.

We’re almost abreast with my nemesis. I risk making eye contact and give a perfunctory nod. “Oh yeah?” I ask. “How come?”

“Cause I’m not wearing underwear.” He tells me this in a loud commercial announcement sort of way. “I’m commando today, baby.”

Of course, now we’re completely even with the crossing guard who very clearly overhears this conversation. I’m 100%

This is the one I want

 certain the Bandit timed it this way on purpose.

“Oh, come on!” I exhale in a loud huff.  “Why do you do this to me?” The one damn time I didn’t do a butt check on the way out of the house. I hoped maybe we were over that hump when I discovered he wore two pair, one on top of the other, the other day.

Semper Vigil. If it’s good enough for the military it’s good enough for me – but I’m gonna want a cape.

Someone who contributes to this blog is an idiot. Often my humor is self deprecating, but this time I’m serious.

Ava came up with this fun, fantastic idea for the Leave A Comment on Your Favorite Blog day. She picked the day and came up with the original blog introducing the idea. All I had to do was add my own little take at the end. I came up with the idea to have a running countdown on the right sidebar.

This is where the idiot part comes in.

I was counting down to the wrong day. As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a maroon.”

So here’s the deal. Or the proposal. Or the covenant perhaps.

We will continue to do our best to entertain you with the minutia of our lives.  We’ll regale you with absurd stories of our families and our own lunacy. I’ll continue to tell you keep you up to date on my burgeoning writing career.

AND YOU PEOPLE WILL LEAVE COMMENTS.

Alright. The goal is not to threaten you. No, the Sisters are begging you. Writers are ridiculously fragile people and we always assume that no comments means that no one likes us.

For Zeus’ sake, give us our Sally Field moment.

I have adjusted the countdown to correctly take us to Monday – Columbus day.

I was trying to hustle the kids out the door before we were late for school.

“Grab my backpack, Mom,” Sassy called from the kitchen where she was filling her water bottle. One of these mornings I’m going to lose my mind over that damn water bottle. She always waits to refill her bottle as we are actively walking out the door.

I reached down and hooked my hand under one of the straps and yanked it up to my shoulder. Well, that’s what I meant to do only when I yanked my arm came out of my socket.

“My God! What do you have in here? A kindergartner?” I asked her. Her backpack had been looking a bit bulky lately but I had no idea the extent of it.

“It’s just my stuff.” Sassy sauntered out of the kitchen screwing the lid on her thermos.

“Sassy, you’re going to hurt yourself carrying around all this stuff.” I unzipped the first outside pocket. I pulled out three granola bars, about 15 hair ties which is odd since she’s always got her hair hanging in her face, 27 flavored chapsticks, a handful of markers, her Fancy Nancy diary, and some random change.

“I need all that stuff,” she insisted.

Zippered pocket number two held three 24 packs of unsharpened #2 pencils, 2 boxes of Crayola markers, 3 large pink erasers, a box of colored pencils, 3 full boxes of Crayola Crayons, and a whole bunch of wadded up paper consisting of memos from her teacher and some graded work.

“Don’t take everything out,” she insisted.

I ignored her and opened the final pocket. Holy mother of Zeus. There were six spiral notebooks, one three ring binder completely full of loose leaf paper, a hard-cover copy of a Wimpy Kid book, a Junie B. Jones book, the charger to her Nintendo DS, and 47 empty candy wrappers.

Seriously, this backpack had to weigh at least 25 lbs. I started unpacking all this nonsense.

“Don’t, Mom. I need that stuff!”

“For what? Are you selling school supplies on the black market?”

“Huh?” She let me know she didn’t know what I was talking about.

“What’s the street price for a box of Crayolas?” I asked her.

“Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about as usual.” She rolled her eyes and cocked her hip to the side.

“This is a slippery slope, my love. You start out with colored pencils and before you know it, you’ll be carting around copier toner.” I piled all the unnecessary office supplies on the kitchen table. “I love you, honey, so I’m going to help you here.”

She blinked at me, annoyed, and sighed deeply. “I need my stuff, Mom.”

“This is for your own good,” I told her and handed her a back pack holding 1 folder, 1 novel (I can’t go to the other room without a book in my hands, I can’t expect her to), several pencils and her lunch box.

“At least let me have some paper,” she begged and reached for the stockpile.

“Nope.” I shoved her out the front door. “You’re going cold turkey, baby.”

“Moooo-oooooom.”

“You’ll thank me later.”

Good Lord, what an evening.

The Bandit lost one of the lenses of his glasses.  So, understandably, I had to kill him. Who had under two months in the poll?

This weekend I had a real mother of a migraine. It’s still hanging in there actually. After crawling all over the floor looking for that damn lens, I can feel the headache throbing over on the right side of my skull. My Honey and I lifted the sofa and searched everywhere in the living room, but we didn’t find it.

One good thing happened. It started out bad, though, so hang in there till the end.

This weekend I was doing a mountain of laundry. It was so big it reminded me of a laundry monster from Sesame Street. One with no sense of humor and filthy language. I swapped a load into the dryer and we went off to dinner. When we got back the dryer was making a horrendous clanking noise – like someone had dropped a handful of rocks in with the clothes. With the Bandit around, one never knows. I unloaded the dry clothes into a basket and discovered with mounting horror that it was my wedding rings and a ring from my paternal grandmother making all that noise. What I didn’t find was my anniversary ring and my great grandmother’s wedding ring.

It wasn’t long before I found the anniversary band in with the clothes in the basket, but still no sign of my grandma’s ring. I tried to remain calm. I mean no disrespect to my husband whom I love and respect dearly, but of all the rings I could lose, that one is the worst. It’s totally irreplaceable. It’s a thin, unassuming band and there are a million just like it out in the world. The difference is on the inside of my grandmother’s band there is an engraving that reads: Bessie Lee May 31, 1917. My grandmother wore it every day of the 74 years that she lived after my grandfather, Lee, gave it to her. Then I’ve worn it everyday since I got it 15 years ago or so. It has been worn every single day for almost 100 years thus the engraving is very difficult to read but I know it’s there.  It made me sick that I might never find it.

I swallowed down the panic and called My Honey. Mr Calm began disassembling the washing machine and I all but crawled into the dryer. We investigated the lint trap and I tilted the machines and shown a flashlight under both of them. I moved every single thing in the laundry room and then crawled around all over the floor in my bedroom where the laundry basket sits.

Apparently, the rings were in my pocket from when I’d done the dishes then stripped off the shorts and shoved them in the washer.  My take away from this experience, of course, is that I should never do the dishes or the laundry ever again.

Cut to this morning. The Bandit had an accident in bed last night so I stripped the sheets from his bed and tossed them in the washer this morning.  When I came home from work, I went to switch them to the dryer. I opened the door to the dryer and, plop, the ring landed right on top of my foot.

Whew! But still. I think it was pretty mean of my grandmother to mess with me like that.  I wonder which of my ancestors is holding onto my little boys glasses.

People, especially Ava, are always asking me why I love elephants so much. This article from Sept 25, 1912 explains everything.

At the circus grounds before the beginning of the big Barnum & Bailey show, a few bystanders saw a most remarkable display of elephant sense and sympathy.

Two of the big fellows were standing on the grounds, slowly munching a bale of hay, when suddenly one of the elephants took a step or two and held up his foot as if something had hurt him.

He then touched his companion on the back with his trunk, and when the other big fellow looked around he found the hurt elephant still holding up his foot and waggling his head from side to side in pain.

Immediately, the second elephant walked over to the assistance of the first one, and taking the hurt foot in his trunk, he removed a large sliver.

Very carefully the first elephant stepped down on the ground, and found to his relief that the pain was gone. The other big fellow then rubbed his trunk on his back, taking the sliver out.

After a glance of mutual understanding and sympathy, the two biggest animals of the jungle amicably returned to their hay, and the bystanders who were watching them received a lesson in animal love which they will never forget.

I also love the anthropomorphism in this article.  I do it all the time, but still.