Oklahoma weather is insane. I thought the weather in New Orleans was unpredictable. Jeez! Thursday evening the wind began to pick up. It seemed to come out of nowhere.
My baby girl had a Girl Scout egg hunt. The boy was able to participate since he’s been dubbed an official Girl Scout Brother and has been unofficially adopted by the girls…except my daughter; she wishes they’d all take him home so she can be a “lonely” child (I think she means “only”).
During the egg hunt, the wind blew up the dust and made the leaves on the ground whip up into spirals. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke from the grass fires that raged in the distance and a milky haze filled the sky causing the mountains to resemble ghosts. It resembled early morning fog. The evening sun struggled to shine through. None of this stopped the children from their hunting game. They ran carelessly around the fields finding their brightly colored eggs filled with sweets and trinkets, oblivious to any danger.
Later that night, the winds blew violently with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. Many times during the night, I awoke to the howling of the winds whipping through the trees as branches were snapped and thrown against the house. My daughter ended up coming to the door to ask to sleep in my bed. The commotion outside had woken her up as well and probably scared the shit out of her.
The next day as I was running errands, I noticed trees ripped from the ground by the roots and fences toppled over. Branches were everywhere. Many homes were missing shingles but the wind was relentless. It was still bludgeoning the landscape with fury.
After school, I dropped my son off at a friend’s home for a sleepover (is that what you call what boys do??). My daughter and I headed to Wal-Mart in search of a futon to put into Buddy’s old room. The wind was still blowing around something terrible and when my daughter went to get out of the truck the wind snatched that door and nearly flung her onto the pavement. Luckily, there was no vehicle parked next to us or our door would have crashed into it causing some awful damage.
As we exited the truck, my daughter called over to me that she couldn’t close the door. When I came around the truck to the passenger side, I had to jerk the door nearly as hard as I could to get it to become unstuck. I assumed the door had been whipped open further than it was supposed to and had just needed to be yanked back into place. We went ahead into Wal-Mart and I didn’t think another thing about it.
When we returned to the truck, girl child went to get back in and called me over because she couldn’t open it now. I walked over and gave the door a quick tug and the awful sound of metal filled my ears. I looked over in the direction of the hinges and saw that the door was slightly over the corner of the fender. There was chipped paint and I could see where some of the metal was bent. I could tell that the door was crooked too. On the drive home, I could hear the wind coming in through the door. It sounded like I was driving with the windows cracked.
After we returned home, I called the insurance company and they set me up with a local body shop to get an estimate. Today, I dropped by the shop to have them take a look at it. They are going to need to replace the entire fender which is going to run roughly $1400 and once they remove the door it is possible that the hinges will need to be replaced as well. Thank goodness for insurance! I will only need to pay my deductible.
The guy at the body shop was able to make a minor adjustment to try to prevent any water from coming into the truck. Although the great state of Oklahoma hasn’t seen a good rain in I don’t even know how long, I was sure the door was leaking. Why? Because being the genius I am I decided it would a good idea to go through the carwash to clean my dusty ass truck.
Each time the water jets came across the door, water trickled down the window. Sometimes my genius shines. I’m telling you!
Now I wait. Apparently from what the girl doing my paperwork told me, I’m not the only person that was lucky enough to get some vehicle damage from the crazy wind. It looks like it will be the beginning of May before they can get me in.
One good thing is we had an existing dent on the fender that I was planning on getting an estimate for anyway. Since the wind messed up the door on the same side, I was told that the fender needs to be replaced anyway.
So although it sucks that I can’t use the door right now, at least, I can kill two birds with one stone. Also, for the time being, I don’t have to listen to my children bicker over who is going to sit in the front seat. Thank goodness for small favors.
Driving down the street the other day, I actually broke away from my IPod and clicked on the radio. That’s unusual for a few reasons. 1.) Music today, to me, (this is me being old) has lost a lot of its originality. Instead of being unique, they try to mimic and then one up their musical influences. Boring! I know this is nothing new but it just seems much more prevalent. 2.) The typical radio stations around here play the “hits” aka crap or country or Christian…also, crap. 3.) The few classic rock stations that I am able to get around here (and I use the term “classic” loosely since it plays songs from the 80s and 90s) are so static-y that half the time I don’t even bother.
My kids, on the other hand, are typically like any other generation. They think the “new” music is so amazing and original. I have to bite my tongue sometimes because they tend to get really offended when I insult their musical preferences. I have to remind myself that my parents probably hated my choices too.
My son has a pretty decent grasp of music…in my opinion…as in he likes many of the things that my husband and I enjoy. Although, he does like Katy Perry. Of course, he reminds me every time he sees the Addidas or Proactiv commercials that it’s just because she’s hot.
My daughter on the other hand has definite elementary school girl taste. She likes to listen to Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Justin Beiber, and Ke$ha (yes, the chick with a dollar sign in her name…how the fuck do you even pronounce that???). I don’t think this group is talentless. I just think that their songs lack substance. Counting Crows they are not. Again, elementary school girl taste...I mean, I liked New Kids on the Block when I was her age.
There is a fourth reason I end up listening to the radio. 4.) I forgot my IPod at home. Oops! This is exactly how I gotstuck listening to the radio this time.
So, yeah, the car ride…
We end up listening to this…
Oh, Gaga! Even though, you try to capture us with your shock and awe, I can’t help but feel like I’ve seen and heard this all before…most recently Madonna. To be more specific, isn’t “Born This Way” just an updated cross version of “Express Yourself” and "Vogue" anyway? Seriously, have you listened to this, Gaga?
It’s Friday! Pour yourself a grown-up drink and proceed with the happy dances. Also, sit back, relax, and join me for this week’s Fantastic Friday Five.
1.) In this day and age, I’m not what anyone would consider a “techy”. Normally, my cell phone is the freebie that you get each time you upgrade and nothing more. BUT…this time I decided to join the rest of the world and find out what the hell is so fabulous about having all that crap on your phone. Last night, I got an Evo Shift and I have no freaking clue what the hell I am doing. There are apps for everything. Need to know how to wipe your ass? There’s an app for that. Need to break up with your boyfriend? There’s an app for that. Need a hit man? Apparently, there is an app for that too. Is there an app that teaches me how to use these apps? Just wondering…
2.) My daughter has been busting her tail selling Girl Scout cookies. She has sold nearly 200 boxes. Her goal this year is 600. The first day I took her out her hair was in pigtails. Now she is convinced that the pigtails are what is selling her cookies. So she asks for me to put her hair up each time I take her out to sell. She went to one house and she asked the man that answered the door if he wanted to buy cookies and he declined. She turned to me and said, “I KNEW he was going to tell me ‘NO’.” The guy ended up buying 8 boxes. Part of me wanted to give her a fist bump but I didn’t want her to think guilt was the appropriate way to reach her goal although it was obviously effective.
3.) My husband made a HUGE mistake. Never, EVER, tell a woman to purchase clothes and shoes for herself and add “I don’t care what it costs.” I don’t feel bad, though. I rarely shop for myself so this was quite a treat and since he is coming home in a couple of weeks it will be a nice treat for him as well. See? I’m not selfish. This benefits both of us since it stands to reason that the happier I am the happier I’ll be able to make him. Logic…plain and simple.
4.) Gas is effing expensive! I know I don’t need to say it but it’s true. I put $25.00 bucks in my truck the other day and I didn’t even get a half of tank. Today, I noticed regular unleaded was $3.08. This is not a good sign for summer.
5.) Lastly, I’ve been wondering…where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? She owes me money.
Well, another week down and another week closer to seeing my husband. Yay! More to come soon…
I’d like to say there is a true excuse for my lack of posts lately but the truth is I just haven’t felt like blogging. Not that I was lacking anything to write about. Just the month of December and January up to now are full of tales of sheer “idiocracy” and devastating woe. To get myself back on track, I will indulge you with the fun filled adventure of traveling with my sometimes pain in the ass but always interesting children. Lest we forget the infamous bus trip (Part I and Part II).
For Christmas, we went home…as in back to New Orleans. Normally these fun-filled family trips are driven by my husband and I sit at his right hand navigating my ass off and annoyingly monitoring the gas gauge as I have some twisted fear of running out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Call it what you want. I call it shamelessly watching waaaaay to may horror movies. Not to mention, I am also in charge of occasionally reaching into the back of the car to threaten the offspring for bickering over who is taking up a larger percentage of the oxygen that fills the back seat. Well, my dears, this trip I played a dual role. I was both driver and navigator. Although, as you read earlier “navigator” seems to be a jack of all trades role just like “mom”. How convenient!!
The morning we left was a frenzy of childish excitement. The kids were bouncing off the walls like they had just downed a Red Bull. The boy loaded all the suitcases into the back of the truck and the girl was instructed to load the coats into the front seat with the laptop. We say our goodbyes to the roommate, Buddy and Deuce the dog and hit the road on the 724 mile trip. Since I’m not accustomed to driving for so long, I had decided that I would stop halfway and stay in a hotel both ways.
Almost into Wichita Falls, I glance over to the pile of coats in the front seat and realize I don’t see mine. So ask my daughter if my coat is in the back seat with her. She informs me that my coat is on the kitchen table. Why is my coat on the kitchen table, you must be wondering to yourself. I was wondering the same exact thing as I thought freezing my ass off with only the hoodie I was currently wearing. So I say, “Girl, I’m confused. I told you to put the coats on the front seat. They were all piled next to the suitcases. Why did you put yours and your brothers into the truck and put MINE on the kitchen table???” Then I got the answer that all parents LOVE to hear. She replies, “I don’t know.”
Great! So we are an hour away from home and already this trip is becoming more fun by the minute. All I could think about for the next few moments was how I was going to turn into a human popsicle. Then it dawned on me…I was going to New Orleans where the humidity will melt your face off. So no worries.
Dallas always scares the hell out of me. I learned to drive in New Orleans and those people are scary as hell but those crazy Dallas folks are INSANE!! It seems from the numerous trips we have taken back and forth through that city, there is never a good time to drive through there.
Jesus, Tom Cruise, Buddha, and Oprah help you if you find yourself in Dallas during rush hour. Those people drive like they are are playing Grand Theft Auto and/or think they are on fire a la Ricky Bobby-style. Luckily, I missed rush hour and I must not have been near a mall or shopping center because I didn’t hit any retarded amounts of holiday traffic. That was the quickest I ever moved through that city. EVER! I was sure to rub that in my husband face when I talked to him later that night.
My plan was to make it into Longview but since I didn’t run into any major traffic in Dallas, I made it into Shreveport. There I snagged a hotel room. The kids thought they were some sort of celebrities since the receptionist handed both of the kids goodie bags filled with candy and popcorn. I almost didn’t have the heart to tell them we held Priority Club memberships to the hotel chain. Later once the restaurant opened for dinner, I took them downstairs to feed them. I made sure to drink a few glasses of wine to settle my nerves. Hey! I just drove six hours in a vehicle with my children and now I’m stuck in a hotel room with them. Don’t judge me!!
After dinner, I made some phone calls and checked in with a few family members who wanted me to keep them updated on my whereabouts. Afterwards, we all took our turns showering and settled into the comfy beds. The kids fought over what to watch and I relaxed browsing the Cracked.com website trying to tune them out and convince myself NOT to call room service for an entire bottle of wine! It was hard but I managed.
The next morning we loaded up the truck again and headed to the restaurant for breakfast. Later we hit the road yet again. Most of the trip was smooth sailing that is until we got to Baton Rouge. I was sure we’d run into traffic once we were close to the Mall of Louisiana as it was December 23rd but this traffic was before the bridge even. I ended up discovering that the traffic was caused by a small amount to road construction and a whole lot of stupidity (i.e. people in southern Louisiana are not very educated in the ways of merging). Oddly enough, once I made it near the mall the traffic wasn’t too bad.
Finally we made it to our destination. We were set to spend about a week there, leaving just before New Year’s. We stayed in our normal spot at the Château Terry aka Nick’s grandparents’ house. Staying there was difficult though for both me and the children. In April Maw-Maw passed away. So other than the funeral, this was the first time we had made it back. Part of me kept expecting her to walk out of her room at any moment. The kids confided in me on a few instances about similar feelings during our stay. They would tell me they were scared and I would tell them Maw-Maw was nothing to be scared of and if there were any ghost in the world I would want to cross my path it would be her. They would calm down. Once my daughter asked me what was she supposed to do if she saw Maw-Maw, I winked at her and told her “Tell her I said ‘Hi!’”.
The boy had a more difficult time dealing with the issue. A few days before we left to head home, we found out a friend of his from back in Oklahoma was dead. The fourteen months we had preparing the kids for the likeliness that Maw-Maw would pass once we found out she had cancer NEVER could have prepared me for how to help my 10-year old deal with the death of his friend at the hands of his parents. Don’t worry. More to come about that in a later post. I told you I had a list of things to blog about during my time on hiatus.
Anyway back to trip…
While we were there we visited here and there with family and friends. It is sort of stressful trying to spread yourself so thin. Everyone wants to see you. The kids had a blast being spoiled from every possible angle. They ended up racking in enough Christmas money to buy themselves each a new TV and entertainment center. I was glad that most people gave the kids cash. That was less stuff I had to lug back to Oklahoma. At one point, my daughter got sick with some sort of stomach bug which is no shock considering the air is full of the aroma of piss and puke thanks to years of Mardi Gras, oh, and death courtesy of Hurricane Katrina. Good ol’ New Orleans!!
The kids received a substantial amount of money that I managed to convince them to spend on something worth a crap instead of useless toys. They obliged once we made it back to OK.
We attended the annual Christmas Eve Party at my parents’ house. My sister and I usually make broccoli balls and eggrolls together. This year she insisted that she could get Bayou Broccoli like Copeland’s through her restaurant. Unfortunately they were not as yummy as we had hoped and she still had to fry them herself. She nearly burned the house down. I made the dipping sauce so at least one thing would come in tradition. For some reason, I’m still confused we did not do eggrolls. Mrs. Turner made some kick ass spin-dip. That’s spinach and artichoke dip for those that don’t know what’s up! Everyone that came brought goodies.
We did Secret Santa for the adults. My secret cheap-o totally jipped me!! It’s time for a deep breathing exercise right about now.
Pause for some pictures highlighting our trip...
My mom who is usually completely on edge during events like these was unusually calm. I secretly wondered to myself if she was popping Xanax in the bathroom or sipping something funny when no one was looking. Maybe she was huffing paint…oh wait, that’s someone ELSE’s mother I’m thinking of.
We also had the pleasure of meeting Paw-Paw’s lady friend. While I want him to happy and she seems very nice, it is still something that I need to get used to. It seemed to happen fast but who am I to put a time limit on anything for anyone other than myself? The girl child seemed oblivious to what was going on but the boy took a more defiant stance. He informed me that he was NOT going to call her Maw-Maw. I had to have a discussion with him basically letting him know that no one expects that at all but I expect him to show her some respect just as he would to any other grown up which he agreed to. On another occasion my daughter crawled in my lap and after relating to me how much she missed Maw-Maw. She then proceeded to enlighten me of her fear of the new lady-friend being mean to her. I then had to de-Disney deprogram her by letting her know that every new person that seems to replace another person isn’t always necessarily bad. We talked about how no one could ever replace Maw-Maw in our hearts. We just have to stretch it out to make room to fit one more.
I’d be lying if I said after the adventures above I wasn’t looking forward to going home. I was anxious to once again be in my solitude and not be so “popular” anymore. I joked to my husband that I was going to turn my phone off for a week after I made it back. The adventure was not over yet. We still had the trip home to tackle. Fate was laughing at me…I could hear it.
We began the trek back to Oklahoma with the same plan in mind…drive halfway, stop for the night, drive the other half. Once again, we ran into traffic in Baton Rouge. This time in lieu of the road construction I was lucky enough to be caught behind not one, not two, but THREE trucks carrying wide loads being escorted by state troopers. People get stupid cautious when they see a cop. The constantly tap their brakes and do grandma speed under the speed limit. Speed limit is 55 mph? Let’s do 35 mph. Every time I would get to multiple lanes that would allow me to get around the wide loads, I would get a few miles up the road only to be caught behind yet another one.
I finally made it into Shreveport and we stayed in the same hotel. We did the same song and dance as I described above during the previous visit. When we left the next day I decided to stop at the Texas welcome center. The kids enjoyed picking out brochures for places they would like to visit when there dad came home. When we finally got back on the road, we ran into the worse traffic of the whole damn trip!
Somewhere between Shreveport and Longview on the interstate when we were not at a complete standstill, we were doing 5 mph…10 mph when I was really lucky! Of course, I assumed somewhere up there one of the lanes were closed probably due to an accident. AND of course, when I finally saw the sign to say what lane was closed I OF COURSE was in the wrong lane. I immediately put my blinker on and started to try to find and opening or some with enough courtesy to let me over. I was unfortunate enough to be driving next to the biggest assholes on the planet. You know the ones. They drive as close to the other person as possible because GOD FORBID you get in front of them and get somewhere first.
After driving like this for a good half an hour trying with no luck to get their attention aka get them to stop avoiding eye contact with me, I finally had that road rage feeling come over me. I refrained from grabbing the tire iron and smashing in their windshields. Although that would have made for an interesting tale, right? I rolled down my window and put my head completely out of it and began yelling at the driver of the SUV next to me. “I’ve been trying to get over for the past 30 minutes! How about you stop being a tampon and let me in?” She looked at me like I was a complete lunatic and made an opening. Fuck her!
As for the other jackass, he was now in front of me in a company vehicle complete with a “How’s my driving?” bumper sticker. Guess who called that number? This chick, right here!! I made sure to report that he was driving on the shoulder trying to avoid the traffic and he had a wolf on his roof dancing to what I believe was “Surfing USA” by the Beach Boys but who can be sure. Afterwards just to annoy the twat behind me, I began letting a car from the other lane in front of me every few minutes or so because I’m courteous and, ok, slightly vindictive too. What?!?! I told you I learned to drive in New Orleans.
Once we were out of the traffic from Hades, the ride was smooth and uneventful. Again, there was no suicidal traffic in Dallas. As we entered Oklahoma, I stopped at their welcome center so the kids could pick out some more fun places they want to visit. Home was about an hour away and the turnpike lets you do 75 mph. GLORIOUS!!
Finally, we made it home in one piece, with no blood on our (my) hands. So I’m back and ready to fill in the darkness of the emptiness I left you guys with during my absence.
