Walking through the Park on a Moonlit Night...

On the edge of the little town I live in is this manicured city park with a walking path, perfectly shaped trees, and frogs...I've never actually seen the frogs, you understand, but I can hear them.  Sometimes I wonder if people in China can hear them...
Truthfully, I'm not exactly certain if they are really in the park or in the decorative ponds in the back yards of the nearby houses.
What really bothers me about the frogs is the fact that they do not actually say, "Ribbit."  Its more of an incessant, "Orc, Orc, Orc"...  The sound would be unnerving if I didn't know what it was and where it was coming from.
On the far side of the park, kids are playing baseball under bright spotlights...Not that they would need the lights to play...the moon is full and huge -- like a giant neon light in the shape of a pancake.  There are no electric lights illuminating the walking path in the park, but I'm not afraid because the moon lights my way, guiding my footsteps.
Trees look different at night than they do during the day.  Something about moonlight -- the shadows it casts on the leaves makes them stand out, as though under a spot light -- they almost don't look real.  The individual leaves are defined in a formal way, like in a museum diorama...
The lightning bugs are out...not many of them yet, but enough to make me feel like I'm walking through a fairy land...I remember when I was a kid, how I used to love to catch them, watch them blink in my hand and let them go...I used to get so mad when the neighborhood boys would catch them and tear them apart.
Usually while walking in the park, I hear wind through the trees, cars passing in the distance...I don't hear that tonight...I can't even hear the kids playing baseball...All I can hear are the frogs..."Ork, Ork Ork"... like an amphibious Greek Chorus...Still can't see them...Maybe that's a good thing...

Bam goes the Mylar!

POP!  

You could hear the sound from the exploding balloons from all parts of the University Bookstore I used to work at...We had a very popular balloon department and as a cashier, it was also my job to help out there.  I seemed to have a talent for popping the balloons I meant to fill with Helium and put into pretty bouquets...I used to love the colors in the balloons, how the light went through them...the bright, vivid designs on the foil Mylar balloons...Trouble is, if you put too much air in them, or let them touch the ceiling (metal shards in the tiles), KABOOM, no more pretty rubber balloon!  

After working at the store for a few years, my boss let me help her pick out balloons she would order to sell in the store...I loved looking through the Mylar picture-balloon catalogs.  There were balloons with cute slogans on them: Happy Birthday, Good Luck, Welcome Back... 

Others had cute cartoon characters on them, or animals, or smiley faces...

We also had balloons for anniversaries and baptisms...

Most of the time, she'd order anything I picked, but occasionally she'd veto my picks... 

For some reason, my boss didn't like the Birthday Balloon featuring a Grim Reaper with the caption: "Don't worry...I'm just here for the Cake..." 

We were pretty fast at blowing those things up, but even when we were really hopping, we could only blow up 20 balloons per hour...Most of the time people didn't care, but sometimes you'd get a customer who'd call up and say, "Can I have 100 balloons in an hour please???"  

One time I told a customer that was impossible and about how many we could do per hour and she said crisply, "Is that your best?"

I didn't say so, but I thought, "No, Lady...we're just slowing down our pace because you have an annoying voice..."  Just for the record, I did NOT say that out loud...

I wasn't always good at blowing those things up...It took practice...there's a science to it...too little air, and the balloons look limp or sick...too much and the thing's libel to burst in someone's face (not good)...It took me two years to perfect the size...I always liked to make the balloons really big so they looked like giant light bulbs...oddly enough, that didn't sit well with my boss...She didn't like it if I let helium out of them either...waste of gas apparently...I suggested letting me use the extra gas to make my voice go high and squeaky, but she reminded me that I could suffocate that way...bummer...there's always a catch...

We also had this clear, goopy stuff we'd put into the balloons before we blew them up...supposedly it made the things last longer...I DON'T know if it was true or not, but it WAS fun to play with -- as long as I didn't get it on my clothes...If you accidentally put too much in the balloon, when you blew it up, it would be heavy, and hover in mid-air instead of floating happily like it was supposed to...this was ALSO a mistake I made a lot at first...

Then there's the ribbons...They look SOOO innocent...those things look easy to curl and tie onto the balloons, but the truth is that Balloon Ribbons are evil entities bent on making store clerks insane...

You have to slip knot them just right or the balloons escape...then curling them is an absolute nightmare...The trick is to run the sharp side of a pair of scissors across the flat side of the ribbon, making them curl (I cut myself a lot...do NOT try that at home...).  I was never very good at that...when I first started out I had the nasty tendency of shaving off half the ribbon, so it hung limply like a wet tea towel...not exactly festive...Finally my boss showed me the trick of using a letter opener instead of scissors...this kept me out of the insane asylum...

Then comes my nemesis...

Arranging balloons in a bouquet...

This is another activity that LOOKS easy...

It isn't...

You have to know exactly where to put each balloon or they all end up on the same level...or spaced unevenly...

It took me forever to figure out how to do this...

At one point, I was CONVINCED that the balloons would move on their own...I'd have them just so and they'd be unevenly spaced again...

My boss seemed to be a natural at this...

She was one of those elegant, capable ladies who did everything easily...I think the balloons secretly feared her...

The only thing that didn't make me crazy were the clips that we used to hold the balloons closed...we just twisted the bottom of the balloon three or four times and snapped the plastic clip into place...VOILA....that helium wasn't going anywhere...
When I was a kid and would blow up balloons for birthday parties or something, I'd get stuck tying the ends of the balloons into knots...I won't waste TOO much time there...except to say that I spent most of my time chasing the balloons around the room when they shot out of my hands like a jet every time my fingers got tangled up and I lost my grip...

Holding the balloon bouquets down was always a challenge too...for one or two balloons, it was pretty easy: you just needed a light plastic weight and everyone is happy...

For bouquets of 50 or more, things got harry....they tended to try to float away in spite of the weight dangling from their ribbons...

We had these weights that looked like giant Hershey's kisses...without the chocolate though...bummer...They'd work for moderately large bouquets, but sometimes the best thing to use was a stuffed animal...

For a while I was thoughtlessly tying the ribbons around the Teddy Bear necks, but my boss told me that looked like cruel and unusual punishment for the stuffy (like we were trying hang it or something)...so then I started tying the ribbon around the bear's waste...this was great unless I tied the ribbons too tightly...then it looked like a warped advertisement for a weight loss program...

If you're waiting for a point to this blog entry, or a punch line, you're going to be sadly disappointed, but I'll end with a quote from Winnie the Pooh that used to grace the back wall of the University Bookstore balloon department: "No One Can Be Uncheered with a Balloon..."

That's probably always true unless you're a teddy bear and some moron ties a bouquet of balloons around your neck...

Wayward Footwear...And Other Things that Are Totally Beyond My Comprehension...

I've heard many comedians make the same joke about socks and the dryer...

Its an old joke...

Its a trite joke...

Its funny every time...

WHERE oh WHERE did that other sock go?  

I have countless socks -- that I am afraid to get rid of because (sure shootin) if I throw the lone-socks away, the mates WILL show up...

If it were just a few of us that experienced this phenomenon, it wouldn't be that weird...

But we have ALL lost socks in the dryer...and we've ALL found the mates after throwing the other one away...

Where do they go? 

Is it elves? 

Gnomes? 

Does Elvis come back from his home planet and steal them?

WHERE ARE THE SOCKS? 

Why is it that there can be NO, repeat NO bird poop anywhere on a driveway or in a parking lot and yet MY car is covered in white deposits???  Why is it that to birds, cars look like toilets?  Cars have only been around for the last century.  Its not like they've been in bird territory for thousands of years, serving the purpose of a bird's WC...oh no!!!  They just decided to use them for target practice...

I wonder who the first bird to do this was...Brilliant bird...Probably had a bit of Tom Sawyer in him...(only instead of white washing a fence, it had to do with a model T...this is an after a while joke...you'll get it later...) 

Who decided that Green meant Go and Red meant Stop?  No funny joke here...just wondering...

What part of "NO CALL LIST" do telemarketers find so difficult to understand...

Does my dog actually know what I'm saying? Or has she learned to look cute because she knows I'll give her treats??? Or both?

How is anyone going to be able to run for public office in 20 years with things like Facebook and You-Tube around??? 

I can picture it now: 

Candidate #1: "Sir, did you really say, "LOL LOL...I just laughed so hard at that commercial, I have milk coming out of my nose!" ? How can we take you seriously in this position when you can't control your nostrils?"

Candidate #2: Well I'm sure voters will be interested in something you wrote on Twitter ... "I have just invented dirty dish art in my sink...I don't want to wash them now and ruin it!"  

Well, it might make the news more fun...

The Phone Call

Its hard to believe that it has really been 20 years since that dark morning in February, 1991 when my mother had her heart attack. 

I was just a kid and I woke up early that morning to get ready for my scout meeting.  I was trying to tame my frizzy hair when I heard my Dad call my name and say, "Your mother's had a heart attack." 

Dad's got a weird sense of humor, so I thought he was kidding...even though honestly I didn't get the joke.  "What?"  I replied.  I thought Dad was going to follow up with a sarcastic comment about how Mom was upset because I had left food on a plate accidentally when I did the dishes the night before or something like that.

I walked out into the living room where he sat on the couch putting on his steel-toed work boots.  

"I took your Mom to the hospital last night while you were sleeping," he said calmly. 

He wasn't kidding.  

"Why didn't you wake me up?" I asked. 

"You would have taken too long getting ready," Dad answered matter-of-factly.  "Mom could have been dying and I had to hurry her to the ER." 

"How is she doing?" I asked awkwardly.  

"She was stable when I came home last night.  I didn't stay because I had to come home -- even at your age, you shouldn't be home alone all night." 

"Can we go see her?" 

"No," Dad said.  "She's in the ICU and she isn't ready for visitors." 

"When will we be able to see her?"

"I don't know."

"You're putting on your work boots." Now I was matter-of-fact.  I had not been raised to cry in these situations...I just felt a little spacey...like in a dream. I watched as dad tied a tight Russian knot in the leather laces of one of his boots.

Dad nodded again.  "I have to go to work today.  I'll be leaving in just a few minutes.  I'm going to take you to stay with your grandparents tonight, so go into your room and pack an over night bag -- just enough stuff for a night or two. If you're still staying with Grandma and Grandpa after that, we'll get you some more clothes.  Hurry up, I need to get to the factory." Dad's working hours often went late into the night and he didn't want me home alone.

I hurried into my bedroom and packed an over-night case, including books and other things to keep myself occupied during my stay with my grandparents.  I don't remember the car ride to my grandparents' house, but I do remember standing with my father at their front door.  "I'm just going to drop you off here and then I have to hurry to work.  You be good now and mind Grandma and Grandpa."  

Dad stayed 10 minutes before leaving for work. Grandma gave me some breakfast and then said I could go play in the guest room for a few minutes.  I remember staring at my over-night case sitting on the foot of my bed.  It was blue and old.  The room had clean white walls and it was a bright day outside, even though it was overcast.  It was an unusually warm February.  

I sat on the bed, reading for a couple of hours.  Uncharacteristically, I didn't feel like playing and I escaped into a book.  I wanted to call my mother, but I couldn't.  She was in the ICU -- whatever that was.  I didn't know then.  It didn't sound good.  I knew what a heart attack was though and it scared me.  People died of those.  I wanted to hear Mom's voice.  

A while later, Grandma came to the door and suggested that I walk over to my cousins' house.  "It's warm outside and you can play with them," she said. 

Carrie and Katie lived down the street from Grandma and Grandpa.  Amy and Tom lived in town too.  Grandma said they would be over at Carrie and Katie's house too.  

I don't remember much about my visit with Carrie and Katie -- just that it was comforting being around my cousins and talking to them about what had just happened with my mother.  Carrie, Katie, and Amy and I decided that we would have a slumber party at Grandma's -- I remember thinking it was nice that they didn't want me to be alone...

Playing with them distracted me from my worry.  That night we had fun and Grandma let us make popcorn and watch a movie.  We went to bed early. 

The next day was President's Day.  No School.  Grandma, Aunt Linda, Amy, and I went shopping.  I still have two books I bought for myself that day.  I read for hours that afternoon, after we got back from shopping.  

I still hadn't talked to my mother on the phone, but I had gotten an update from Dad.  Mom had endured 3 heart attacks on the night Dad took her to the hospital.  She had almost died.  I would get to talk to her soon.  

I just wanted to hear my mother's voice. 

Tuesday morning came.  I had to go to school.  

Back then I was attending a Seventh-day Adventist elementary school.  It was a tiny brick building with two main classrooms and a medium sized-gymnasium stuck to one side.  There were only 17 students and six of them were in my grade.

Grandma and Grandpa took me to school that morning.  I walked into the front door with my head hung low...

I met my teacher in the hallway and blurted out.  "My mom had a heart attack." 

Mrs. Walker gasped.  "Really? Lynn? Is she okay?" 

"I think so," I replied.  I didn't really know though.  I would know if I could just hear her voice again.  

My friends at  school knew Mom really well from Church and were all worried about her.  They wanted to know when she was coming home.  "I don't know," I told them.

That night at my grandparents' while I was doing my homework, the phone rang.  I was sitting in the guest room studying for an upcoming spelling test.  I still didn't let myself think about my mom.  Grandma came to my door and said, "Your mom's on the phone for you." 

I jumped off the bed and ran to the kitchen where the phone hung on the wall next to the counter.  "Mom?" I said into the receiver, terrified that there would be no answer.  

"Hi Sweetie," Mom's gentle voice replied.  

"How are you?" I asked.  "When are you coming home?"

Scary Santa

At the place where I work there is a life-sized Santa Statue...this is the single FREAKIEST thing I have ever seen....You know how Santa is usually portrayed as kind and sweet and adorable?  Not this one!  This guy has big blue eyes that follow you when you walk by AND his "eye area" (I don't know what else to call it) sticks out -- so its almost bigger than his nose...It kind of looks like an "alien Santa" or a sinister character out of "Lord of the Rings"...or "Star Wars"...

Everyone in the office is scared of this statue...We had him in a back corner, but someone unthinkingly moved him out where people could see him...he was freaking out workers sitting behind desks because of his Big, Unwinking eyes glaring at them, so we moved him next to the front door...trouble is, Ol' Santa started freaking people out as they walked in the building...(How to lose potential customers, lesson 1)...

I suggested turning him towards the wall, but someone pointed out that that might just make Santa mad (and none of us want THAT to happen)...

Every day one of us gets the job of checking to make sure that Santa hasn't moved on his own...I mean seriously, has "Child's Play" ever had a Christmas version? Freaky!

Over the loudspeaker, we have Christmas music playing..."Santa Claus is Coming to Town" came on once and we heard the lyrics, "You Better Watch Out, You Better Not Cry...Better Not Pout...I'm Telling You Why...Santa Claus is Coming to Town!!!"

I turned to the receptionist and said, "Wow, in this office, that sounds like a threat..."

-- Especially the part where the song says, "He knows when you are sleeping...He knows when you're awake..."

Scary...

I'll keep you posted...

No, Laura, there is NO Santa Claus...

I never believed in Santa Claus...this is probably a good thing...When I was 3 years old, someone took me to see Santa and I got so scared that I cried...Admit it, people, that red suit is SCARY!!!

My parents had logical reasons though for not wanting me to believe in Santa.  Mom reasoned that if I grew up and found out that she had lied to me about Santa, that I might start thinking Jesus wasn't real either...she wanted to be totally truthful with me...

When I grew up (especially with my personality), this turned out to be a good idea...while I was still a kid though, it got me into a lot of trouble...

My cousins were taught to believe in Santa...they thought the Big Guy brought them all their presents every Christmas Eve...even though they had no Chimney...I never figured that one out...I got in BIG trouble one year when I told them that there was no real Santa Claus...They cried and told my Aunt and Uncle who then went to my parents and told them how mad they were...

Even though my parents didn't believe in teaching me about Santa, they DID believe in having fun...

My father worked second shift at a factory and often had to work Christmas Eve...and he loved cookies...So every year, I would ask my Dad what kind of cookies he wanted on Christmas Eve...He always wanted Chocolate Chip!  Every Christmas Eve "Santa" would get milk and cookies and they were always gone by morning!!! 

Incidently, Mom and Dad ALSO did the same thing for me with the Tooth Fairy...I didn't believe in the Tooth Fairy, but I still hid my teeth under my pillow and voila!  The next morning I had a nickel...

Mom always told me that The Tooth Fairy was actually my father in a Tutu and Tights...

Yes I have been in theropy....

Merry Christmas!!!

Down Stream...

When I was a teenager I went to aquatic summer camp in the Ozarks for a week.  In the middle of the week, we took a canoe trip down the current river.  There were over fifty of us on the trip -- three or so to a canoe.  I didn't know how to steer, so I was remanded to the middle of the boat, not that it bothered me much: that gave me a chance to look at the scenery and chatter with my friends while we rowed... 

The sky was a beautiful sapphire blue and the river was lined with luscious trees and high rocks...The one downer was that the water had a putrid smell to it, so when the bags we had with us in the canoe got wet, they stunk. 

We had been floating down river for a few hours when one of our camp counselors told us we could stop and rest.  We were all restless teenagers, so few of us were really interested in sitting on the river bank for very long -- a couple of the counselors took a group of campers across the river where there was a cave they were familiar with...

At first I wasn't interested in the cave...I was talking with friends and watching the water rush by -- I soon got bored and wanted to join the others.  One of our leaders pointed out that if I crossed the river, the other campers probably weren't too far in and I could join them...

I wanted to do this, but I wasn't acquainted with the science behind swimming across a river.  When you swim across a swimming pool, there is no current, so you end up directly across from where you started most of the time.  In a river, there is a current and you move downstream with it -- so its usually a good idea to start crossing a little upstream so you down go too far down river -- I didn't know this and no one told me.  I was used to swimming in pools and lakes, so I started swimming toward the cave, giving little or no thought to the moving river water.   

Half way across, I lifted my head for a breath and noticed that I had moved away from the cave. "Duh," I thought, "now what?"  The opposite bank was sheer rock and I wasn't clear on my position.  Confused, I panicked and started getting swept down stream.  Stupidly, I called out for help and swallowed some water. 

"Am I going to drown now?" I thought. "Help Lord!" 

I looked down and saw some rocks under me. 

"Laura, watch out!" I heard one of my friends call from the bank.  Ahead of me I saw a huge rock in the middle of the water. I grabbed it and held on tight.  Once I regained my breath, I climbed up onto it and sat there for a moment, my legs drawn up in front of me...I felt like a mermaid on a rock in the middle of the sea (albeit an awkward, confused, and stupid one...).  The rock was huge...maybe three feet across, so I was sitting pretty comfortably.

I hadn't been swept away as far as I had first thought.  I was really only a few yards away from where I had started swimming and I felt like an idiot for having panicked (I was a teenager and I felt like I had acted like a child)...but now I was afraid to jump back into the water to swim to the bank, so I sat there...I figured my friends could retrieve me when they went by in the canoe...it would only be another 20 minutes till we started off again...

It didn't seem to occur to my fellow campers that I had made any mistake, that I was afraid, or that I was stuck on a rock in the middle of the river.  They seemed to feel that I had discovered something fun and they wanted to join me.  Four or five other teenagers swam out to the rock, climbed up top and then dove back into the water, whooping with delight...

I felt really stupid -- especially when each of them returned to the shore unscathed.  

Finally after about ten minutes, a boy about my age noticed that I seemed frozen in place and asked,"Do you need help?"

"Blonde moment," I said sheepishly.  "I'm scared of getting caught by the current again." 

He smiled.  "Its okay.  I'll swim with you.  Just move with the current and don't panic...you'll be fine."

HOW could I resist that? 

We jumped in together and swam to the shore without mishap.  A few minutes later, we were all back in our canoes, heading down river. 

My friends still wouldn't let me try to steer.