I think that the Mayan apocalypse actually happened two days ago, but its effects were limited to our driveway. If you're a regular reader of my blog--this would be my wife and maybe my Mom--you know that we've recently been having lots of trouble with our PT Cruiser, also known as "the Gaxmobile." My parents have been kind enough to lend us their pick-up truck to get through Christmas Eve, so Julie took that to her church job in Warsaw today. Because you aren't supposed to put carseats in pick-ups, I loaded James into our well-loved 2000 Dodge Neon and drove off to my church job in Gates.
Almost as soon as I pulled out of our driveway, I noticed something was wrong. The car was making a funny sound and felt very sluggish. I pulled off to the side and fiddled with the sometimes sticky parking brake. Nothing. After a few more minutes of trying to disengage the parking brake, I put my four-ways on, and (being sure to check for traffic) stepped outside to go through my usual auto-trouble ritual. My auto trouble-ritual consists of kneeling down, looking under the car, making a thoughtful face, and calling someone for help. There was no one else around except James, but I still feel better when I make my concerned face. One of these days I might actually see something under the car that I understand (currently I only see magical calculus problems) and then I'll be glad that I've practiced a facial expression that conveys to everyone around me "I see that something is wrong which has caused my car to stop working."
As it happened, I did recognize the source of my automotive woes for the morning. My driver-front tire had no air in it. I'm not a tire expert, but I understand that it's usually inadvisable to drive your car without air in your tires. I stood up, made sure that James was okay, then engaged the parking brake, secured the rear tires with props, jacked the car up, and replaced the flat tire with our spare.
I am, of course, totally kidding. I am a pathetic girly musician-man, and I wasn't about to change a tire in my only half-decent suit on a hill with my infant son in the back. So I called AAA and asked them for some help. It was probably a good thing I didn't attempt to change the tire anyway, because, as our AAA representative informed us, our spare tire currently doesn't have any air in it.
My pastor drove out to rescue James and I when she heard about our predicament, and drove us into church with enough time to make most of choir rehearsal. James was great through the whole mess, never fussed, and happily exclaimed "yeah!" to every question she asked him. I left the Neon unlocked with the key under the visor, cursing (not out loud--we were with our pastor) our simultaneously broken vehicles and very relieved that we have such a well-behaved son.
I fielded phone calls from AAA, the tow truck driver, and from a Firestone clerk throughout the church service by ducking out during the hymns. Firestone was the only local tire shop open today, and certainly the only place that would be open tomorrow on Christmas Eve. I knew that we were overdue for replacing the very bald tires on the back of the Neon, and we ended up agreeing to replace all 4. (It was buy 3, get 1 free.)
I picked up James from the nursery, where the nursery worker told me that he had been very well behaved and that "he sure does love that bear." Yes, we've noticed that too. I collected all of his snacks and diaper bag and Steven and binky and carried all of those things at once with him over to his car seat, and as I squatted down to put on his coat
RIIIPPP
...there is now a hole in the crotch of my "only half-decent suit."
Uncle Pax and Aunt Kylie came to rescue us from GPC and drove us home after stopping by Hilltop to pick up the finished copy of A Very Uncles Christmas on the way. (We did not remember to pick up James' missing bottles.) The Uncles sounded good. James makes his presence known on the last track. On the way back I got a call from the Firestone rep.
"Hey, did you guys have a tire-rod replaced recently?"
"Yes, we had one replaced about two weeks ago."
"Well, they didn't align it properly afterwards...that's probably what caused the flat. We'd recommend our standard alignment."
"Okay, how much?"
"That's another 79.99...which will bring your total to $420."
"...Okay, go ahead and do it."
Once we got back I gave James some peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. He was a great sport, and even insisted that he feed me some of his sandwich. (This is cute, but also a little gross. His food travels many miles before he eats it or offers it to anyone else.)
J got back around 12:30 and we waited for the call from Firestone that our car was done. Around 1:00 my phone lit up.
"Hello, Mr. Smith?"
"This is he. Is the car done?"
"I'm afraid not. We found significant rust under the car, and it looks like we're going to need to replace another tire rod."
The total came to $575.
I will say this about today and about all of our recent auto troubles: We are very thankful for cellphones. I can't imagine how we would have done this sort of day without them. We are thankful for Pax and Kylie, who rescued us again. We are thankful for Christmas gigs, which keep money coming into the bank account. We are thankful for neighbors who are willing to watch James while we run to the mechanic. And we are thankful for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and little boys willing to share them. That may be all we're eating for the next few months.
Showing posts with label PT Cruiser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PT Cruiser. Show all posts
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
The Unexpected
If the ghost of Jacob Marley had appeared to me at this time yesterday evening and told me that within the next 24 hours I would be making 11 PM travel arrangements, coercing confidential information from a security company, and playing the drumset, I'd have been at least a bit skeptical.
As it happened, J and I were turning the lights out around 10:30 PM, and she had just reminded me that I needed to pick up some of James' bottles and utensils that were left at Hilltop when I visited the next day. I was perfectly comfortable under the covers and quilts, knowing that my alarm wasn't going to go off early tomorrow and that my Christmas break had begun..
....
....
BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!
I started awake and looked at my phone without my glasses on. I couldn't see very clearly, but then I made out "Davis, Tim" as the caller ID. What did my brother-in-law want at 11:10 PM? Whatever it was, it could wait until tomorrow morning. I turned it off and rolled over, trying to fall back asleep.
BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!
This wasn't my phone. It was J's, and it was Tim calling again. She picked up, and Tim very excitedly offered to drive up from PA first the next morning to fix our broken PT Cruiser. This information took awhile to penetrate my sleep-soaked brain...I still was trying to figure out what time it was. But when I came to and realized what was actually going on, and I was amazed at Tim's generosity. He'd already made arrangements to tow a dolly up with him and use a friend's garage and lift, doing all of the labor for free. We knew that there would be a storm coming in, so we left it until tomorrow to confirm.
The next morning was perfect until about 9:30 AM. James slept in, and then snuggled in bed with us for about 20-30 minutes with hardly any of his wonted 13-month-old wiggling fits. We had a leisurely breakfast, brewed coffee, and held him up to windows to watch the snow coming down and blanketing the fields around us. We lit a scented candle in the kitchen, put on Christmas music, and played with blocks. And we called our mechanic, telling him to please hold off on replacing the timing belt in our PT Cruiser, since J's brother was available to do that for us. We didn't hear back, so we called again and left another message. And we didn't hear back, so we called again. Nothing
It's a six hour trip from PA in good weather...we know we needed to make sure that the Gaxmobile was accessible if Tim was to make that substantial of a trip, so I drove over to the shop to confirm that the car was parked outside.
Alas, into the cold outside. The snow looked beautiful from inside our warm house with pajamas on, but stepping outside in it was unpleasant, and soon my shoes and socks were soaked from scraping off the car in our unplowed driveway. I slipped and skidded my way through the half-plowed roads into the village of Spencerport, and arrived at the mechanic's to find an empty lot. The cruiser was sitting in a bay with the hood propped open, locked away quite securely.
Now when I say "our mechanic," I really mean "the mechanic that AAA was willing to tow our car to." We have our own regular mechanic, and though we'd met the gentleman in Spencerport once before, we've had no regular contact with him. We don't know his name. We don't know his home phone number. We have no means of contacting him when he's not at the shop. I checked all around the dark office windows and even asked around at the fire station next door, but had no luck. (All they knew was that he didn't work on weekends.)
The only number I could find was the contact number for General Security, which had a decal on his front window. I called them, gave them my address, and explained the situation. I begged and pleaded for a home phone number.
"Sorry sir, but we aren't allowed to give out confidential information."
"What about a name? If you gave me his name I could try to find him in the white pages."
"No sir, we aren't allowed to do that."
I stretched the truth a little bit.
"This is the vehicle that we were going to use to get home for Christmas...is there any way that you could call him and let him know that we're trying to get in contact with him?"
As punishment for my slight prevarication about Christmas (we're perfectly capable of getting to Pennsylvania in the Neon) we never received any calls back, even though the kind but inflexible security rep did promise us to call his home number and pass along my message. We called Tim and let him know not to come. He may still travel up with us after Christmas to work on the Gaxmobile, which would save us lots and lots of money. I think that the last chapter in this story has not yet been written. It would all be very interesting if it was happening to someone else.
I arrived home cold and slightly put out to J, James, and lunch. Since J was doing the last of the Christmas shopping with her best friend in the afternoon, James came with me to the Flock of Uncles recording session scheduled at Hilltop. J helped us to bundle up and reminded me to pick up the missing bottles while I was there, and we drove off to meet Calvus, Pax, and Lux.
Some people might think it's an unwise idea to bring a small child to a recording session, but they've never met James. It turns out that he's a very sensitive child who only wants to watch and listen to his Father and his Uncles play jazzy Christmas tunes. We had considerably more problems from the Uncles than from the baby. (Also, many thanks to Kylie and Nicole for their babysitting help.)
When J is asked to describe the Uncles sound, she calls us "improvisatory." By that she means that we do almost everything in a chaotic and unorganized fashion flying by the seat of our pants and reading music (if anyone remembered to bring music) from a single stand (if anyone remembered to bring a stand) and relying mostly on telepathy to arrange the finer details of a tune, such as when everyone is going to stop and start and what key we'll be playing in. I've done a couple of recording sessions this year, but today's was the only one in which the members of the group were recording music they had never seen on instruments that they had never played before. It turns out that the mandolin isn't that difficult.
Also, I played the drums for the first time. I've been getting to paid to teach other people how to play the drums for the past two years, so it's actually a bit of a relief that I can kind of play them. I played the drumset (read: a high-hat and a snare drum with one wire brush) on an up-tempo rendition of Joy to the World. James thought it was great. He danced with his eyes shut and one hand up in the air, which he usually only saves for his favorite Celine Dion recording. (Potential album title for the next Flock of Uncles recording: Almost as Good as Celine.)
I heard a little bit of my drumming afterwards, and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I wouldn't want to do it very often, though. As I held the drumsticks and pumped the high-hat pedal, I could feel my attention span decreasing. The music seemed to blur in and out of focus, and all the dynamic markings seemed to look like "forte or fortissimo" to me. Drumming good. Drumming very good. Hit things with sticks. Hit things with sticks louder! Hunt meat! Hunt meat for food!
Sorry...got a little carried away there with my drumset playing.
We finished the project (A Very Uncles Christmas) and Pax is mixing it down right now. We intend to give it to our older relatives, especially those who are unlikely to listen to it or have developed significant hearing loss. Our "improvisatory" style of performing doesn't always carry over very well to the recording studio. We finished the whole thing in less than five hours, and when I bundled up James to go home he hadn't interrupted a single track.
Of course, we forgot the bottles.
As it happened, J and I were turning the lights out around 10:30 PM, and she had just reminded me that I needed to pick up some of James' bottles and utensils that were left at Hilltop when I visited the next day. I was perfectly comfortable under the covers and quilts, knowing that my alarm wasn't going to go off early tomorrow and that my Christmas break had begun..
....
....
BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!
I started awake and looked at my phone without my glasses on. I couldn't see very clearly, but then I made out "Davis, Tim" as the caller ID. What did my brother-in-law want at 11:10 PM? Whatever it was, it could wait until tomorrow morning. I turned it off and rolled over, trying to fall back asleep.
BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!
This wasn't my phone. It was J's, and it was Tim calling again. She picked up, and Tim very excitedly offered to drive up from PA first the next morning to fix our broken PT Cruiser. This information took awhile to penetrate my sleep-soaked brain...I still was trying to figure out what time it was. But when I came to and realized what was actually going on, and I was amazed at Tim's generosity. He'd already made arrangements to tow a dolly up with him and use a friend's garage and lift, doing all of the labor for free. We knew that there would be a storm coming in, so we left it until tomorrow to confirm.
The next morning was perfect until about 9:30 AM. James slept in, and then snuggled in bed with us for about 20-30 minutes with hardly any of his wonted 13-month-old wiggling fits. We had a leisurely breakfast, brewed coffee, and held him up to windows to watch the snow coming down and blanketing the fields around us. We lit a scented candle in the kitchen, put on Christmas music, and played with blocks. And we called our mechanic, telling him to please hold off on replacing the timing belt in our PT Cruiser, since J's brother was available to do that for us. We didn't hear back, so we called again and left another message. And we didn't hear back, so we called again. Nothing
It's a six hour trip from PA in good weather...we know we needed to make sure that the Gaxmobile was accessible if Tim was to make that substantial of a trip, so I drove over to the shop to confirm that the car was parked outside.
Alas, into the cold outside. The snow looked beautiful from inside our warm house with pajamas on, but stepping outside in it was unpleasant, and soon my shoes and socks were soaked from scraping off the car in our unplowed driveway. I slipped and skidded my way through the half-plowed roads into the village of Spencerport, and arrived at the mechanic's to find an empty lot. The cruiser was sitting in a bay with the hood propped open, locked away quite securely.
Now when I say "our mechanic," I really mean "the mechanic that AAA was willing to tow our car to." We have our own regular mechanic, and though we'd met the gentleman in Spencerport once before, we've had no regular contact with him. We don't know his name. We don't know his home phone number. We have no means of contacting him when he's not at the shop. I checked all around the dark office windows and even asked around at the fire station next door, but had no luck. (All they knew was that he didn't work on weekends.)
The only number I could find was the contact number for General Security, which had a decal on his front window. I called them, gave them my address, and explained the situation. I begged and pleaded for a home phone number.
"Sorry sir, but we aren't allowed to give out confidential information."
"What about a name? If you gave me his name I could try to find him in the white pages."
"No sir, we aren't allowed to do that."
I stretched the truth a little bit.
"This is the vehicle that we were going to use to get home for Christmas...is there any way that you could call him and let him know that we're trying to get in contact with him?"
As punishment for my slight prevarication about Christmas (we're perfectly capable of getting to Pennsylvania in the Neon) we never received any calls back, even though the kind but inflexible security rep did promise us to call his home number and pass along my message. We called Tim and let him know not to come. He may still travel up with us after Christmas to work on the Gaxmobile, which would save us lots and lots of money. I think that the last chapter in this story has not yet been written. It would all be very interesting if it was happening to someone else.
I arrived home cold and slightly put out to J, James, and lunch. Since J was doing the last of the Christmas shopping with her best friend in the afternoon, James came with me to the Flock of Uncles recording session scheduled at Hilltop. J helped us to bundle up and reminded me to pick up the missing bottles while I was there, and we drove off to meet Calvus, Pax, and Lux.
Some people might think it's an unwise idea to bring a small child to a recording session, but they've never met James. It turns out that he's a very sensitive child who only wants to watch and listen to his Father and his Uncles play jazzy Christmas tunes. We had considerably more problems from the Uncles than from the baby. (Also, many thanks to Kylie and Nicole for their babysitting help.)
When J is asked to describe the Uncles sound, she calls us "improvisatory." By that she means that we do almost everything in a chaotic and unorganized fashion flying by the seat of our pants and reading music (if anyone remembered to bring music) from a single stand (if anyone remembered to bring a stand) and relying mostly on telepathy to arrange the finer details of a tune, such as when everyone is going to stop and start and what key we'll be playing in. I've done a couple of recording sessions this year, but today's was the only one in which the members of the group were recording music they had never seen on instruments that they had never played before. It turns out that the mandolin isn't that difficult.
Also, I played the drums for the first time. I've been getting to paid to teach other people how to play the drums for the past two years, so it's actually a bit of a relief that I can kind of play them. I played the drumset (read: a high-hat and a snare drum with one wire brush) on an up-tempo rendition of Joy to the World. James thought it was great. He danced with his eyes shut and one hand up in the air, which he usually only saves for his favorite Celine Dion recording. (Potential album title for the next Flock of Uncles recording: Almost as Good as Celine.)
I heard a little bit of my drumming afterwards, and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I wouldn't want to do it very often, though. As I held the drumsticks and pumped the high-hat pedal, I could feel my attention span decreasing. The music seemed to blur in and out of focus, and all the dynamic markings seemed to look like "forte or fortissimo" to me. Drumming good. Drumming very good. Hit things with sticks. Hit things with sticks louder! Hunt meat! Hunt meat for food!
Sorry...got a little carried away there with my drumset playing.
We finished the project (A Very Uncles Christmas) and Pax is mixing it down right now. We intend to give it to our older relatives, especially those who are unlikely to listen to it or have developed significant hearing loss. Our "improvisatory" style of performing doesn't always carry over very well to the recording studio. We finished the whole thing in less than five hours, and when I bundled up James to go home he hadn't interrupted a single track.
Of course, we forgot the bottles.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Three good, three bad
GOOD
1) I have 70 minutes left of LCS this month, and nothing to do but wrap up my practicing for the day. I have no private students, no Hochstein, no orchestra gigs, and no more Wednesday choir rehearsals until January. Vacation is about to start, and it is most welcome. I'll sleep in, play with James, lounge around in sweatpants, and make lots of coffee. There are still a few church gigs to be played here and there, but those won't be so bad. The holidays really will be lovely this year. We have a beautiful green wreath up in the living room, and soon the whole house will smell like cinnamon bread. (It smelled like pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins when I came home yesterday.) Yum.
BAD
1) The Gaxmobile (our PT Cruiser) is smelling more and more like a lemon. We bought it two months ago from a family friend in PA, and it's already needed two major repairs. J's mishap yesterday turned out to be a timing belt problem, and it will cost at least $600 to fix. I don't exactly why this is so expensive, but it's something to do with the way the front is engineered. Apparently the engine block (correct use of that term?) is so compact that everything has to be taken out before you can tinker around with it. This didn't seem to be a problem to me when we bought it, because my automotive tinkering skills are limited to checking/adding oil. As far as I know, the rest of the car runs by magic. Or calculus. Or some form of wizarding calculus you can only learn at Hogwarts. At any rate, this means that whether we have to replace a timing belt, recharge the defibrillator, or add more gurdyroots to the cosine, it's always going to be labor-intensive and budget-breaking.
GOOD
2) Tomorrow Flock of Uncles is recording "A Very Uncles Christmas." We have never actually sat down together and attempted to record the same musical number at the same time on purpose, so this will be an interesting experience. Since we need a quiet environment without distraction Hayden and James will be coming. Man-paste will be made, festive drinks will be passed around, and all musical ventures will surely be successful on their first attempts. If we can get a few tracks we like, the CD will be an excellent gift to the many relatives who we love dearly but can't afford to exchange gifts with on any regular basis. (Especially on the Dudley side, this would be like trying to get individual presents for the entire population of Portugal.)
BAD
2) J and I have five different Christmas Eve services between us, and only one functional car. The Gaxmobile, of course, will not be completed before Christmas Eve. (The bobotubers have to soak overnight before they form a parabola.) We aren't exactly sure how Christmas Eve will work. I suggested last night to J that I could drive her (and James) down to Warsaw at 3:30 and drop them off with enough time to drive back for my services at 5, 8, and 11. If I leave straight from midnight mass at 12:15, I should be able to pick her (and James) up by 1:30. Maybe we'll see Santa!
GOOD
3) We have money in the bank. We have money in the bank. I admit with some embarrassment that we are not particularly good at budgeting. We usually have some money left over at the end of the month because we are both thrifty by nature, but we are very VERY bad at sitting down with the bank statement and figuring out month-by-month exactly how much is left over in each budget category. (Or, in the case of groceries, how much we're in the red.) Thank goodness we've had lots of gigs and extra work these past few months, and we've had a little left over even after buying a PT Cruiser and a plane ticket to San Francisco and repairing the PT Cruiser the first time and buying Christmas presents for everyone. I sense, when I think about it, that we have no idea how fortunate we are most of the time.
BAD
3) We have a cute advent calendar hanging in our kitchen with little chocolate pieces inside the flap for each "day." We give James the advent chocolate after dinner every night, and he has decided he LOVES advent. He reminds us of the calendar several times a day, especially when he's in his high chair. There's an extra big piece for Christmas Eve, but a storm might be brewing when we get home on Christmas Night and the advent calendar has disappeared. The current plan is to get him really REALLY tired at Smith/Smith/Smith/Dudley Christmas and have him totally sacked out by the time we get home. (This won't be hard...I usually don't make it through the 3rd Christmas either.) Then we'll leave super early in the morning on December 26th (presuming we have a working vehicle) and maybe by the time we return from Pennsylvania he'll have forgotten about chocolate.
Or maybe we'll just keep more chocolate in the house. It doesn't seem like a bad idea.
1) I have 70 minutes left of LCS this month, and nothing to do but wrap up my practicing for the day. I have no private students, no Hochstein, no orchestra gigs, and no more Wednesday choir rehearsals until January. Vacation is about to start, and it is most welcome. I'll sleep in, play with James, lounge around in sweatpants, and make lots of coffee. There are still a few church gigs to be played here and there, but those won't be so bad. The holidays really will be lovely this year. We have a beautiful green wreath up in the living room, and soon the whole house will smell like cinnamon bread. (It smelled like pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins when I came home yesterday.) Yum.
BAD
1) The Gaxmobile (our PT Cruiser) is smelling more and more like a lemon. We bought it two months ago from a family friend in PA, and it's already needed two major repairs. J's mishap yesterday turned out to be a timing belt problem, and it will cost at least $600 to fix. I don't exactly why this is so expensive, but it's something to do with the way the front is engineered. Apparently the engine block (correct use of that term?) is so compact that everything has to be taken out before you can tinker around with it. This didn't seem to be a problem to me when we bought it, because my automotive tinkering skills are limited to checking/adding oil. As far as I know, the rest of the car runs by magic. Or calculus. Or some form of wizarding calculus you can only learn at Hogwarts. At any rate, this means that whether we have to replace a timing belt, recharge the defibrillator, or add more gurdyroots to the cosine, it's always going to be labor-intensive and budget-breaking.
GOOD
2) Tomorrow Flock of Uncles is recording "A Very Uncles Christmas." We have never actually sat down together and attempted to record the same musical number at the same time on purpose, so this will be an interesting experience. Since we need a quiet environment without distraction Hayden and James will be coming. Man-paste will be made, festive drinks will be passed around, and all musical ventures will surely be successful on their first attempts. If we can get a few tracks we like, the CD will be an excellent gift to the many relatives who we love dearly but can't afford to exchange gifts with on any regular basis. (Especially on the Dudley side, this would be like trying to get individual presents for the entire population of Portugal.)
BAD
2) J and I have five different Christmas Eve services between us, and only one functional car. The Gaxmobile, of course, will not be completed before Christmas Eve. (The bobotubers have to soak overnight before they form a parabola.) We aren't exactly sure how Christmas Eve will work. I suggested last night to J that I could drive her (and James) down to Warsaw at 3:30 and drop them off with enough time to drive back for my services at 5, 8, and 11. If I leave straight from midnight mass at 12:15, I should be able to pick her (and James) up by 1:30. Maybe we'll see Santa!
GOOD
3) We have money in the bank. We have money in the bank. I admit with some embarrassment that we are not particularly good at budgeting. We usually have some money left over at the end of the month because we are both thrifty by nature, but we are very VERY bad at sitting down with the bank statement and figuring out month-by-month exactly how much is left over in each budget category. (Or, in the case of groceries, how much we're in the red.) Thank goodness we've had lots of gigs and extra work these past few months, and we've had a little left over even after buying a PT Cruiser and a plane ticket to San Francisco and repairing the PT Cruiser the first time and buying Christmas presents for everyone. I sense, when I think about it, that we have no idea how fortunate we are most of the time.
BAD
3) We have a cute advent calendar hanging in our kitchen with little chocolate pieces inside the flap for each "day." We give James the advent chocolate after dinner every night, and he has decided he LOVES advent. He reminds us of the calendar several times a day, especially when he's in his high chair. There's an extra big piece for Christmas Eve, but a storm might be brewing when we get home on Christmas Night and the advent calendar has disappeared. The current plan is to get him really REALLY tired at Smith/Smith/Smith/Dudley Christmas and have him totally sacked out by the time we get home. (This won't be hard...I usually don't make it through the 3rd Christmas either.) Then we'll leave super early in the morning on December 26th (presuming we have a working vehicle) and maybe by the time we return from Pennsylvania he'll have forgotten about chocolate.
Or maybe we'll just keep more chocolate in the house. It doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Haircuts
Is there something that you do that's childish? Immature? Absurd? And even though you know that you're being a terrible sport, you do it anyway? Like being snarky to department store underlings with no authority whatsoever, or maybe sending back beverages that are 2 degrees too cold? You should really get over yourself and just get along with people.
Just kidding.
I mean, you probably should be nice to underlings and accept slightly imperfect beverages without complaint, but I am in no position to judge you. Every three months I behave disgracefully. I am puerile, absurd, and an embarrassment to my wife and son. (Especially my wife.) I am a terrible sport about getting my hair cut. My Mom used to bribe me (and her other sons) into the tonsuring chair with the promise of chocolate chips afterwards. Then I went to college, and there are lots of pictures of my college days in which I'm sporting a completely unruly bird's nest. (I don't actually remember how/when I got my hair cut in college...maybe my Mom snuck into my apartment and did at night.) J and I got married, and for reasons of "appearing presentable" I was asked to visit the barber's every few months. I was not good at following through on this request.
For one thing, we were newly married and quite overwhelmed with the hectic pace of our single-job no-children no-responsibilities extended honeymoon. That, and I didn't want to leave the house very often when we lived in the freezing tundra of North Chili and I had a cute wife to keep warm at home. The mop continued to grow, however, and J decided to save us money/take control of the hair-cutting decisions by purchasing a home hair-cutting kit.
This would be a great opportunity for an anecdote about how she botched my haircuts but because of our newly found connubial bliss I forgave her. Actually, though, she gave good haircuts from the start. And I was a poor sport from the start.
"Roy, you're looking pretty scruffy. Why don't we give you a haircut tonight?"
"Hmm...do we have to do it tonight? How about we wait until the weekend?"
"We're going to be in Pennsylvania this weekend."
"Well okay, we can just do it the weekend after that."
"That's what you said two weekends ago."
"Hm."
...
"So, we'll give you a haircut tonight?"
"No, I think we should relax tonight. Let's worry about the haircut some other time."
This would go on for several weeks until J was positively insistent, and then I would moan and complain the entire time about all the other things I'd rather be doing and how I didn't want to sit still for 20 minutes without anything to do ("Why don't you talk to me?" "Because you should be concentrating on cutting my hair.") and how the hair was scratchy on the back of my neck and I didn't want to have to take another shower later, because that was wasting water.
Over time, however, I grew to see how childish my behavior was, and I decided that I'd accept haircuts with dignity and patience.
Actually, I'm just as bad or worse now. J has moved on from chocolate chip bribery to a conversation carte blance which promises she will talk about anything I want, including topics that she normally finds dull as dirt. (Note: This would be the time that I would use to talk about football if J was at all like the stereotypical wife who only tolerates Sunday afternoons. My wife, however, is awesome, and loves football just as much as I do...thus we don't need to use carte blanche time to talk about the Bills.) We talk philosophy and theology and languages, and she is always very sincere in her interest. She will have a conversation about anything.
And still, I'm a terrible sport the next time the haircut comes around. So now it's 8:17 on a Thursday night, and I'm waiting for her to get back from a concert, knowing that tonight is the fateful night when I'll have to give up twenty whole minutes of my precious time to sit in a chair and talk with my wonderful wife about Billy Budd and/or the Hebrew numbers I'm supposed to be memorizing with Calvus and/or sex. I really have it rough.
J actually did have a pretty rough day today. She was supposed to go to a playdate with her Thursday ward and our cool new Australian friend (the ward's mother) but our brand-new-to-us shiny red PT Cruiser pooped out a mile down the highway, and she was stuck in an unheated car with a un-napped baby for 45 minutes until I could renew our membership with AAA and a friend of ours could pick them up. No word yet on the severity of the Cruiser's illness, but this will be the first major repair we've put into it since bidding adieu to the Sexy Beast, our hideously ugly but indestructible '95 Buick Century. Updates to follow.
While she was gone I took out the vacuum cleaner to see if James' paralyzing fear of it had abated at all. As soon as he saw it he ran sobbing to the door and tried to pry it open. I put it away immediately, and when I came back to the foyer he was trying to hide in the closet. I might be a terrible father.
Question for anyone with literary insight: Is snuck a word? (As in, perfect of sneak?) Blogger's auto-correct is telling me that it isn't.
J just walked in and started singing"The Barber of Seville." I'm off to meet my fate.
Just kidding.
I mean, you probably should be nice to underlings and accept slightly imperfect beverages without complaint, but I am in no position to judge you. Every three months I behave disgracefully. I am puerile, absurd, and an embarrassment to my wife and son. (Especially my wife.) I am a terrible sport about getting my hair cut. My Mom used to bribe me (and her other sons) into the tonsuring chair with the promise of chocolate chips afterwards. Then I went to college, and there are lots of pictures of my college days in which I'm sporting a completely unruly bird's nest. (I don't actually remember how/when I got my hair cut in college...maybe my Mom snuck into my apartment and did at night.) J and I got married, and for reasons of "appearing presentable" I was asked to visit the barber's every few months. I was not good at following through on this request.
For one thing, we were newly married and quite overwhelmed with the hectic pace of our single-job no-children no-responsibilities extended honeymoon. That, and I didn't want to leave the house very often when we lived in the freezing tundra of North Chili and I had a cute wife to keep warm at home. The mop continued to grow, however, and J decided to save us money/take control of the hair-cutting decisions by purchasing a home hair-cutting kit.
This would be a great opportunity for an anecdote about how she botched my haircuts but because of our newly found connubial bliss I forgave her. Actually, though, she gave good haircuts from the start. And I was a poor sport from the start.
"Roy, you're looking pretty scruffy. Why don't we give you a haircut tonight?"
"Hmm...do we have to do it tonight? How about we wait until the weekend?"
"We're going to be in Pennsylvania this weekend."
"Well okay, we can just do it the weekend after that."
"That's what you said two weekends ago."
"Hm."
...
"So, we'll give you a haircut tonight?"
"No, I think we should relax tonight. Let's worry about the haircut some other time."
This would go on for several weeks until J was positively insistent, and then I would moan and complain the entire time about all the other things I'd rather be doing and how I didn't want to sit still for 20 minutes without anything to do ("Why don't you talk to me?" "Because you should be concentrating on cutting my hair.") and how the hair was scratchy on the back of my neck and I didn't want to have to take another shower later, because that was wasting water.
Over time, however, I grew to see how childish my behavior was, and I decided that I'd accept haircuts with dignity and patience.
Actually, I'm just as bad or worse now. J has moved on from chocolate chip bribery to a conversation carte blance which promises she will talk about anything I want, including topics that she normally finds dull as dirt. (Note: This would be the time that I would use to talk about football if J was at all like the stereotypical wife who only tolerates Sunday afternoons. My wife, however, is awesome, and loves football just as much as I do...thus we don't need to use carte blanche time to talk about the Bills.) We talk philosophy and theology and languages, and she is always very sincere in her interest. She will have a conversation about anything.
And still, I'm a terrible sport the next time the haircut comes around. So now it's 8:17 on a Thursday night, and I'm waiting for her to get back from a concert, knowing that tonight is the fateful night when I'll have to give up twenty whole minutes of my precious time to sit in a chair and talk with my wonderful wife about Billy Budd and/or the Hebrew numbers I'm supposed to be memorizing with Calvus and/or sex. I really have it rough.
J actually did have a pretty rough day today. She was supposed to go to a playdate with her Thursday ward and our cool new Australian friend (the ward's mother) but our brand-new-to-us shiny red PT Cruiser pooped out a mile down the highway, and she was stuck in an unheated car with a un-napped baby for 45 minutes until I could renew our membership with AAA and a friend of ours could pick them up. No word yet on the severity of the Cruiser's illness, but this will be the first major repair we've put into it since bidding adieu to the Sexy Beast, our hideously ugly but indestructible '95 Buick Century. Updates to follow.
While she was gone I took out the vacuum cleaner to see if James' paralyzing fear of it had abated at all. As soon as he saw it he ran sobbing to the door and tried to pry it open. I put it away immediately, and when I came back to the foyer he was trying to hide in the closet. I might be a terrible father.
Question for anyone with literary insight: Is snuck a word? (As in, perfect of sneak?) Blogger's auto-correct is telling me that it isn't.
J just walked in and started singing"The Barber of Seville." I'm off to meet my fate.
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