What time is it?

I was awakened by the pleasant 'whoosh-thump' of nail guns. They are re-roofing the house next door. I am all in favor of roofs that don't leak. I am less in favor of working on the roofs before the sun is fully up.

Pup was up and barking at the idiots on the roof outside our window, so I drug my disgruntled self out of bed. I stumbled to the kitchen, poured a cup of tea, and squinted at the two teenagers on the roof. Something wasn't quite right.

To the bathroom, contacts in, and back to the kitchen. I sipped my tea and studied their progress. They were moving right along. Unfortunately for them, they were moving in the wrong direction. They were putting the shingles on upside down. I thought long and hard about not telling them. It seemed fair since they had woken me so early, but with interview season coming I need to store up all the good karma I can.

I opened the window and caught the attention of the nearest teen boy. "You should start from the bottom. You guys are putting them on upside down."

He stared me down. "Right. I'm sure you've roofed before. We know what we're doing." His buddy giggled.

I shrugged. I had tried. Their boss came by about 8. They spent the next hour ripping off all the shingles they had put on that morning. Looks like karma doesn't like being woke up that early either.

"I've got a touch of hangover bureaucrat. Don't push me."

Pup has an internal alarm clock that gets us both up around 6:00 a.m. Unfortunately for me, it does not have a snooze button. Four hours of sleep, and we were up and back on the road.

I dislike the idea of bumper stickers. I can swallow one or two on a vehicle, especially if they are work or military related. I get those. I actually like it when a car has twenty or thirty on the back door. It’s a friendly notification that the two of us will probably never be friends. Then there are the cars with bumper stickers whose messages are belied by the driver’s behavior. I particularly hate those. I offer for reference the woman with the ‘hang up the phone and drive’ sticker who was talking on her phone and driving fifteen miles under the speed limit on a two-lane highway for about fourteen point seven miles. She was annoying me doubly – stupid driving habits and stupid bumper stickers. I muttered an ancient curse upon her back tires and passed at the first opportunity.

Usually I am in a hurry to arrive at my destination and blow by all the roadside attractions, but not this time. Pup and I stopped at every brown-signed tourist stop we passed. Jesse James’ birthplace – we saw it. George Washington Carver monument – we were there. Harry Truman’s birthplace – check. If there had been a sign for America’s largest ball of yarn, we would have stopped.

One of our first detours was John Wayne’s birthplace. It was a precious little white farmhouse draped in American flags. I loved it. The sidewalk was made of bricks donated by people from around the world, famous and not so famous. Someone had a van with murals of John Wayne covering all the sides.

While we were there, we met a group of bikers headed to Louisiana. I admired their bikes, and they admired pup. (She is rather pretty, but I’m rather biased.) We exchanged favorite John Wayne quotes. (Mine is from McLintock, in case you were wondering.) It was a lovely ten minutes.

My excellent sense of direction took us the wrong way out of town. We had turned down a gravel road (because all gravel roads eventually come to pavement or end thus bringing your lostness to a conclusion, though not always a satisfying one). We crested a hill and there it was, rural Midwest Americana at its finest. Cornfields on one side, beans on the other, a creek dividing the two, and a red-sided, one-lane, covered bridge awash in sunlight. We had stumbled on a covered bridge of Madison County. We took a break to stretch our legs and wandered down to the creek side. There was a man taking photographs of the bridge. He looked up as we came down the hill. He held up the camera.

“Do you mind?” I tilted my head quizzically. “May I shoot you two?”

I smiled and agreed. He snapped a few photos, and we chatted for a few minutes. Clint Eastwood, he was not. He was a very nice man shooting some of the bridges for a piece for a magazine though. We discussed pup (who was being a doofus and pointing dragonflies), and he gave me a tip on a good restaurant for lunch in a nearby town.

Iowa is better than I previously thought.

Hourly rate

I finished summer classes on Wednesday. While attempting eighteen master’s level hours in ten weeks was not my best idea, it doesn’t matter. Fait accompli. I grabbed my favorite boots, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, my swimsuit, and a sundress, loaded pup in the car, and headed south. Nothing restores a girl’s spirit like a road trip. It was well after dark by the time we made it out of the city. It also happened to be storming. I flipped the wipers on high and kept driving. At one point the rain was coming down so hard the road lines were obscured. I toyed with the idea of pulling over under an overpass and sleeping the storm out but pressed onward. We drove through two tornado-producing storms on our way to the hotel that night. Two. Perhaps the overpass idea had merit.

We finally made it to our pre-booked accommodations around 1:30 in the morning. Pup was being a brat, I was exhausted, and all I wanted was a bed and pillow for a few hours. As I was pulling into the parking lot, I noted the room doors were on the outside of the buildings. In my past experience, that has never been a good sign. The lobby door was locked, so I rang the bell – five times. A rumpled man emerged from a back room rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“How much did you pay for the room?” he asked.

“I have no idea. DH paid for it online. Forty?” He eyed me suspiciously.

“It will be fifty five dollars then, plus tax. If you have a pet, it’s twenty more plus a hundred dollar room cleaning fee if she destroys something. You are on the second floor.”

I eyed him suspiciously. “She’ll be sleeping in the car.”

I grabbed my bag and the key. A wave of musty air hit me as I opened the door. A queen bed with two flat pillows took the majority of the space. A wall mounted lamp cast a yellow glow over a lonely towel, washcloth, and bar of soap resting atop a spindly brown table. The TV was directly from the 1960’s. I did some quick math and determined there was not a hundred dollars worth of objects pup could destroy unless she managed to maul the questionable mattress to a timely death. I thought about going back to get her but decided against since she was sleeping quite happily.

I have been on many a trip where a layer of road grime was part of the allure, but I desperately wanted to shower and brush my teeth that night. There was a tiny problem with my plan. The shower was still wet, the curtain was half pulled, and there was a special something floating in the loo. (Did I use loo appropriately or does it mean the entire bathroom? I’ve wondered that.) I looked back at the bed suspiciously. The motel did rather have the feel of a ‘rent-by-the-hour’ place.

I just would have rather they cleaned the rooms between the hours. I switched rooms, and pup upgraded from the car to the motel room – pet fee waived.

Incorrect measurements

I went to pick up my bridesmaid dress last week for my best friend's wedding. This is the second dress the store has ordered me for this wedding. The first one was a teensy bit too small in some areas, so I was forced to choose a new style so the dress would be in the store in time for the wedding.

It takes six weeks to ship the dress. Apparently, even though they are a national chain, they have every single dress ordered shipped via camel from Sri Lanka. My dress made it in, safe and sound.

I insisted upon trying the dress on before I left the store. The sales assistant assured me it would fit since she had helped me choose the dress the second time. She humored me though. I pulled off the plastic covering and slipped the dress over my head. Up went the zipper....and stopped. Three inches separated the two edges of the dress in the bust area. Are you friggin' kidding me?

I stormed out of the dressing room. "It's too small."

"No, it is the right size."

"It's too small." I showed the assistant the expanse of exposed skin on my side. She tsked and called over the seamstress. The seamstress agreed it was too small. Out came the tape measures. Over came the manager and another sales assistant.

" I do not understand. You wore this size last time you came in. We were going to take in the waist." The assistant looked me up and down. She leaned in conspiratorially.

"Perhaps, you got the implants?"

I denied plastic surgery. She asked if I was sure. I replied I thought I would remember falling asleep in the operating room and waking up with an improved chest:hip ratio. The seamstress looked up at me.

"Your chest is a size 12. Your waist is size 4. This will never fit. We get bigger size and take in waist." The manager tutted. They couldn't get another new dress in store in time for the wedding. Perhaps I could try the sample size twelve? I thought of C. and agreed. The assistants scurried off to find the twelve and all the other dresses they had in that color in the store. I dutifully tried on the sample dress. It seemed a bit big, so I clinched my arms tightly to my sides.

Bridal stores are set up rather interestingly. There are a zillion mirrors surrounding small raised circular platforms. This allows everyone to see all angles of the dress they are contemplating. It also gives everyone an excellent view of the other people trying on dresses.

I came out of the dressing room and stood on the little platform while the women circled me.

"Raise your arms," the diminutive seamstress said.

I did as I was told.

The dress promptly fell to my hips.

The prospective groom sitting at the next platform over with his prospective wife wolf whistled.

We're going with a smaller size.

Do you hear that ringing?

I am notorious for not answering my phone. It drives my friends crazy. It drives my family crazy. Sometimes it even drives me crazy. Over the years, different people have developed different strategies to get me to answer the phone or call back.

My grandmother calls twice and leaves messages about how I am a terrible granddaughter, probably lying dead in the street somewhere, but she wouldn't know because I never answer my phone. I'm not sure how I would let her know if I were dead in the street, but it is an effective tactic. I always call back.

DH just keeps calling over and over until I either give in and answer the phone or stuff the darn thing under a mattress. He does not leave voicemails. He knows I often forget to check them, then get completely overwhelmed at the sound of that snide automated voice saying "you have seventeen messages" and promptly delete them all without listening to any to avert an imminent panic attack.

Some have taken to calling DH and leaving messages for me. He makes an excellent secretary. I have one friend who only calls between the hours of 1 and 3 AM. I always answer his calls, although it is mainly because I am confused and think it is my alarm clock. Effective, yes. Nice, no.

I have lost my phone, frozen my phone, driven over my phone, and had my phone stolen by my pup. They refuse to sell me phone insurance. Good call on their part.

Take last week for evidence they made the right decision. It was an accident, I swear. I was cleaning the oven and talking to some idiot who wanted me to donate money to his grassroots healthcare reform program. I have no idea how these people found me. I tossed my phone on the table when I was done with him, finished cleaning, and put my cast iron skillet back in the oven. About twenty minutes later I heard a muffled ringing. I followed the ringing to the kitchen, but it stopped before I could find the phone. I looked in the refrigerator, the freezer, the cabinets - all the places I have misplaced my phone before. No success. I emailed DH to have him call the missing phone. I found it in the oven, warm and a teensy bit melted.

Oops.

The good news is it still works. The bad news is the speaker is rather gooey looking. So if you call, and if I answer, speak up people. I can't hear you.

Goodbyes again

It's one of those things where you wait days for something to happen, and then you are sorry that it did. That's about how I would sum up the past week.

DH's grandmother passed away, an event we had been expecting. We had lived the week or so before waiting on edge for the call to come. Come it did, at 6:30 in the morning. A deep sigh, tears, and then a flurry of activity. Packed and on the road, heading back to the farm.

Funerals are a strange thing. There is an odd combination of sadness and joy that make it hard to find your emotional footing. It's like a family reunion on which one person is missing out. The food is always the same (although I've learned there are regional differences). The sentiments are always the same. The preaching is always the same. I suppose we find comfort in that, in the rituals of death.

Personally, I hate them. I've been told I am so vehemently against going to funerals because I don't want to show my emotions. Poppycock. I have lovely emotions, and I am rarely unwilling to show them. Anger? No problem. Happiness? I'm there. Adoration? You bet. Grief? Well, maybe I like to keep that one a little more to myself.

My theory is that I have seen a lot of death. It comes with the business - a job hazard I suppose. Some deaths still hit me hard, like S.'s. Most don't though. I know it's a platitude that is spouted a lot at funerals, but I truly believe that the people who die are going on to a better place, a place where they are healthy and young and happy. Oh, and hot. I think everyone in heaven is hot. I couldn't find that in the Bible anywhere, but it makes sense.

You know the saying, "if you make something idiot-proof, someone will just build a better idiot"?

I have found that someone.

On hiatus again

Blog will not be posted this week due to a death in the family. My apologies.

S

Unwanted knights

I hear that chivalry is dead. I accidently developed an excellent experiment that seemed to prove otherwise. Men are quite gallant - more so than I wanted. The experimental protocol:

Step 1: If at all possible, be female. If you can't pull off step 1, the test may not work quite the same way.

Step 2: Once you are on the highway, notice that your car is pulling to the left just a tad and recall that you meant to stop and put air in it before you left. Sigh heavily at your terrible memory, and pull over to the side of the road. Do your absolute best to be wearing a dress and very high heels. It would most likely work with other clothing choices, but this will be a definite aid.

Step 3: Put on hazards. Get out of car. Note that the stupid tire is all the stupid way flat. Toss your hair angrily over your shoulder, annoyed that you don't have a ponytail holder so your hair is going to be in your face while you change the tire. Be thankful you figured this out before you ruined the tire. Open trunk. Bend over to pull out spare. At this point, the first car should be stopping.

Step 4: Thank the gentleman for stopping and explain that you just have a flat and don't need his assistance. Tell him again. Give up and let him take the tire out of the trunk. Show him how to loosen bolt so he can get tire out. Tell him again, firmly. Thank him for his phone number. Assure him you don't want him to be late. Send him on his way. Roll tire to front of car where flat is. Go back to trunk to pull out jack and tire iron.

Step 5: Try not to get hit by second car pulling over. Explain to nice man that you have things under control. Thank him for stopping. Assure him you can do this. Give up and let him crawl under car to put jack in place. Politely pull tire iron out of his hand. Send him on his way with profuse thanks. Crawl under car and move jack to proper place. Start loosening nuts.

Step 6: Wipe grease from hands off on napkin first guy gave you with number on it. Notice you have a smear of dirt on your leg from the jack and a smear of grease on your forehead from the tire. Laugh, start to wipe it off. Jump toward ditch to avoid getting hit by third truck stopping.

Step 7: Explain to three guys that you are almost done changing tire. Get picked up and set on tailgate of truck by the one who looks fourteen. Chastise him about manhandling and hop down. Ask if his mother would approve of that. Notice him looking sheepish. Check time. Let them finish changing the tire. Thank them profusely. Jump in car, roll down passenger window, blow a kiss, and tell them that their mothers would be very proud as you drive away.

I appreciate the chivalry, really I do. I think it's darling when men stop to help women. I would just rather they only stop if they actually know how to change the tire.