Mouse Olympics

by MaryBeth

     You’ve gotta love wildlife.  When you live in the country they live with you.  And you know what they say, Love Your Neighbor.  We park our cars on the grass.  We live off a dirt road, up a dirt driveway, and we park on the grass.  This is apparently a huge invitation to all the country mice in the area to come make a home in the car.  No surprise since with kids, or at least my kids, there are plenty of tasty tidbits to be found in my car.  Meals on Wheels for Mice as it were.  My son was not helping by putting whatever he didn’t like from his lunch in the glove box, creating The Mouse Smorgasbord.  Getting license and registration took on a whole new meaning after that. Good thing I had those pliers.  Too bad about that officer though. I heard heart conditions run in his family.

      I was taking my Mom to the kids’ dance recital one time and let me say, my Mom is NOT a country gal.  She was dressed to the nines, and though polite, you could tell that when she got in my car, her first thought was “eeww.” OK, so it’s old and not the cleanest car in the lot, but it gets me from point A to point B, still, I’m a little self-conscious to see the juxtaposition of MY MOM and THE CAR.  There is something just not right there.  But she’s a good sport so off we go.  I was driving along, maybe 50 or so, and I see what looks like a piece of rubber gasket or something start flapping back and forth from under the front of the hood.  Well things coming apart in the car is nothing new, so I subconsciously note that I need a new gasket under the hood.  Then I realize…there IS no gasket under the hood.  I make an excuse to check the oil, pull over, lift the hood and a very surprised mouse pulls in his tail and looks at me.  “Keep your tail in.”  I tell him.  “My mother’s in the car.”  And we continue on to the recital.  After dropping my mother at the door I head over to the quick mart for some batteries for the camera.  It’s raining, so I have the wipers on intermittent.  As I am driving, I see movement under the wiper blade and sure enough here comes brazen Mister Mouse, up from under the hood.  As the wiper comes down he climbs up.  Now mind you I AM STILL DRIVING,  and you guessed it, the wiper goes up, he goes flying.  At the top of the arc he grabs the blade with both paws and manages to hang on for the trip down.  Now most people might have pulled over, he was on the driver’s side and all, and it’s kind of hard to focus properly with a mouse on your wiper but this is the best entertainment I’d had all week, and besides, this guy wasn’t getting off.  So rather than turn off the blades, I speed them up a little.  Just a little.  And there he goes again:  Ally oop,  Ally down.  This guy is one tough mouse and I want to see what he’s really worth, so I put the wipers on full and now he’s got a rhythm…piece of cake.  I’m still driving, mind you…So of course we have to see if he is truly the Olympian that he’s making himself out to be, so you guessed it, I put the wipers on FAST – he’s watching me as I do this, so he’s ready – boom, off he goes, he’s hanging on for dear life but it’s raining and things are slick and holy mackerel he’s going for the Gold  but his little paws are barely clinging to the blade and ….so I turn off the wipers because now I really have to go see my daughters dance, and we all know one thing: the girls may be cute in their little tutus, but

 

MR. Mouse will be One Tough Act to Follow.

 

120 Seconds

by MaryBeth

     Chris came home this weekend with a good idea.

     “I’m doing a mental cleanse,”  he announced.  “ I am going to go 21 days with no negative thoughts.  If I get a negative thought, I have 120 seconds to get rid of it.”

     “Hey that sounds like a good idea.  How many days have you gone?”

     “Six.” 

     At that point Little Miss Sunshine popped in.

     “Mom, I need a new white shirt for the Spring Concert.”

     “No.  Wear the white shirt you wore for the Winter Concert.”

     “Mom, it has snowmen and holly leaves all over it, I want a new white shirt for the Spring Concert.”

     “No.  Here’s $4.  Go down to the Thrift Store and knock yourself out.”

    “Dad?”

     “Honey, can she get a new shirt?”

     “No.  All her clothes are all over her floor all the time.  Walking through there is like walking through the Bouncy House at the Fair.  Plus she drips chocolate ice cream all over anything white and thinks it’s funny.”

     “I don’t mean to, and it is funny.”

     “It’s not funny.”

     “Dad, do you think it’s funny when I accidently drip chocolate ice cream on every white shirt I’ve ever owned?”

     “Not if your mother doesn’t think it’s funny.”

     “Mom, I’ll get in trouble if I don’t have a white shirt for the Spring Concert.”

     “Honey, you were born in trouble.  Go down to the Thrift Store, they have a whole rack of white shirts.”

     “I hate the clothes from the Thrift Store.  They make me smell weird.”

     “I’ve smelled worse things than you in Thrift Store clothes.”

    “Dad?  Shouldn’t I be able to wear a new shirt for a big event like the Spring Concert?”

     “It’s not a perfect world.  Now off you go.”

     “Dad, you said you’d talk to her.”

     “I did.  Off you go.”

      “Dad, you know she’s being ridiculous.  You said you’d talk to her.”

     “All talked out.  Off you go.  Off you go.”

     “Dad!!!”

     “AND THERE WENT MY 120 SECONDS!!  OFF YOU GO!!”

Silence.  Off goes Little Miss Sunshine.  Not quite so sunny  .

     “So…  you have to start all over?”

     “YEP.”

     “Pretty mad about that?”

     “YEP.”

    “Before you start I need to tell you that I missed a car insurance payment, we were uninsured for 11 days by accident and the State of New York is now confiscating your license plates and registration.”

Pause.

     “Is that it?”

     “And I think I’m pregnant.”

     “Oh?”

     “No.  But now the car thing doesn’t seem so bad, does it?”

     “No.”

     “Good.  OK.  Good Luck with the mental cleanse thing.”

     “Thanks.”

 

Elbow Up!…

by MaryBeth

 

 

     I am the most helpful mom.  Absolutely.  For instance, my son was having a bit of a batting slump recently.  It was as if the ball was invisible.  In Little League, you’re only as good as your last at bat, so this was a big deal.  His Dad taught him to bat as soon as he was able to stand and hold a bat without hitting himself in the head, (it was trial and error for a few months) and he’d done a good job.  This kid could hit.  So a batting slump was not only a baseball crisis, it was an identity crisis.  And you know how those are.

     So I took him to the batting cages to watch his form.  His Dad is out of town during the week, so I am the Father Representative.  It went like this:

     “here comes the ball, get ready, get your elbow up, no not that far, feet apart, no not that much, watch the machine, get your elbow up, get your head on straight, what are you doing….THWACK…well sure you missed it, what are you doing?  Here comes another one, now get your feet apart, center yourself, head up, what are you looking at, get your elbow up, where are your feet, watch the machine, the ball is coming, what are you doing…THWACK…OK that was just practice, now pay attention, square up to the bag, don’t drop that shoulder, your shoulder’s way down, get it up, GET IT UP, that’s better, but look at your feet, get your elbow up, where’s your elbow?, watch the machine, will you watch the machine, you’re all off kilter, get your …THWACK…OK regroup, that’s OK, does it hurt?, get set up, there’s another ball coming, hey pay attention, put that helmet back on!, square up, it’s part of the game, square up and watch the machine or it’ll happen again, that’s better, now shake it off, elbow up, feet apart, here it comes, what are you doing?, GET BACK TO THE PLATE…”

    Well you get the idea.  Thank goodness I am a retired coach, wouldn’t you say?  Where would he be without me?  Of course his Dad came home for his game on Saturday and as The Boy stepped up to the plate, let out a string of expletives, something about ‘What the hell happened to his perfect stance’ or something, I don’t know.

     I didn’t say a word.

It’s Just the Post Office…

Yesterday I had to go to the post office.  It shouldn’t have been that scary – I’ve been there before.  This time I was mailing the invitation packets to my Mom’s 85^th Birthday Weekend to all our partying relatives.  No big deal right?  I had mailed the exact same packets 5 years ago for her 80^th Birthday Bash, and 10 years ago for her 75^th Birthday Bash, so I really knew the drill.  Little did I know that  this time the drill would take a left turn into -

 

The Technology Zone…

 

    I finally got my turn and placed my 19 packets on the counter to be weighed.  They were just slightly larger than a regular letter in the smallest manila envelope you could buy.

     “I think these might be a little more than 42 cents.”  I began.

     The postmistress, Sally, produced a plastic ruler with a slot cut out of it.

\     “If it doesn’t fit through here, it has to go as a ‘flat.’” she announced.

     The pressure was on.  I felt the line behind me hold its collective breath.  I picked up a packet, and with the determination of one who knows anything will fit through anything with enough force behind it, I shoved the packet through the slot.  It went from being crisp and clean to wrinkled and disheveled.  So that’s what happens to the mail. 

     Sally picked up a packet.

     “This has a metal clip on the back.”

     “Yeah, I know, I had to clip them all.”

     “If it has a metal clip it has to go as a flat.  It won’t go through our new automatic sorting machine if it has a metal clip.”  The crowd listened anxiously. ‘Metal clip?’  I heard them checking their envelopes for metal clips.  No one wants to go as a “FLAT.”

I felt like I was going to cry.  I was so sick of these invitations. 

     “It’s OK,” she assured me.  “We can take the metal clips off.”  She picked up an envelope and started to dig into my formerly pristine invitations to my sweet mother’s 85^th Birthday and with barely a rip and a tear, the metal clip came out.

     “But now there’s a little hole…” I moaned

     “Nothing a bit of tape won’t fix.”  She produced a giant roll of tape and went to work on the next one.  The crowd behind me shifted their feet.  We had all missed lunch by now.  I picked up the next packet and ripped out the clip.  A hole’s a hole, right?  Who cares how big it is.  Not me.  Not anymore.

      “I’ll do them.”  she volunteered brightly.  “It will give me something to do.”  I think the mob behind me felt she might already have something to do?  At this point I took a quick nonchalant sidewise glance around and noted that the line actually went out the door.  Not good.

     “That will be 59 cents a piece to go First Class, and I’ll remove the clips for you during my lunch break.”  What kind of good ganja was she smoking here?

     “Ok.”  I stammered.  “Thanks.”

     “I just have to type in each zip code to get a stamp.”  Each zip code? 

     “Aren’t they all 59 cents?”

     “Yes, but I still have to type in each zip code.”  She waited.  “My machine is so slow today.”  The tension was thick behind me.  In Alaska, Officer Joe would have been here by now.  Then the wurring of the machine stopped.  A deadly silence fell upon the room.

    “Uh oh.” Her face went white. “I think it died.”  God, no.  Can’t we do something?  Where’s the defibrillator?  She disappeared into the back and returned with a large man.

     “It’s done.” he announced. And just like that he pulled the plug out of the wall.  The computer screen went black.  Sally immediately took charge of the crisis.

     “I can help anyone who just needs stamps and has exact change.”  A man threw his letters in the air.  Another started banging his head against the wall.  I felt in my pocket for my mace.  Sally patted my hand. 

     “It was better before we had all this technology.”  she admitted.

     ‘Thank you, God,’  I whispered.  ‘that was all I needed to hear.’