Riding in Cars with Boys

So, I went there and back again today. I had to make a run to Chicago to pick up some cabinets. They wouldn't fit in my car, of course, so I rented a cargo van to do it. You know, one of those serial killer vans? Well, I had to take Seth and his buddy with me, so they could do the lifting, and wow, was that a treat.

I just love teenaged boys. They make the most interesting road trip companions.

First, they asked me if I had duct tape, because they wanted to duct tape their mouths and wrists and look out the back window frantically during the trip -- just to freak out the people behind us, and to confirm the serial killer aspect of the van. Ixnay on that one -- more because we didn't have duct tape than anything. I would've loved to have a picture of that. I feel fairly certain it would be Seth's Facebook profile picture shortly thereafter. The next thing you know, CPS and/or the FBI would be knocking on my door, so maybe it wouldn't be a good idea after all.

On the way there, they mostly did nerd things like Algebra 2, talking about cube roots, played chess, and slept. Boooooring! The trip home was a whole different matter.

There was one point at which Nick was playing with the radio, giving his commentary on the stations in a word or three -- white noise, country, "Nope", white noise, female singer, "don't like you," white noise, rap, "uh-uh", white noise, more singing, "boring", white noise, male singer, "you can't sing," white noise, rap, "no way," white noise, more music..........you get the drift. I can't remember exactly what he ended up leaving it on, because I was more interested in the commentary than the actual music.

I had mentioned to the boys that they had missed all of the huge windmill-wind-energy-thingies on the way up there, so Seth asked me to be sure to point them out on the way home. Like you can miss the things -- they are HUGE, and there are dozens of them. It looks to me like something out of War of the Worlds, and quite frankly, they are a little creepy. Well, Seth was zonked when we got to them on the way home, so I poked him, and got a "huh?" I told him the windmills were in front of him. He said "neat," stared into space for a minute, and was out again. A few minutes later, I decided to poke him again, because we were close enough to see how big they were. "Huh?" "Windmills." "Neat." Stare into space. Zonked.

I don't think he remembers seeing them now. I'm not even sure he did, because he looked messed up.

About half an hour later, the cabinets I picked up were rattling to beat the band, and I do mean it was LOUD. I jokingly told Nick to quit messing with them, at which point he half-yelled "there was a spider, and it was huge, and I hate spiders." I asked where said spider was. He looked at me like I was nuts, and told me he'd killed it dead. This turned into an interesting discussion about spider heaven. 16 year old little philosophers they are.

A little while later, Seth looked out the window, and I heard him say "COOL!" I asked him what, and he turned and looked at me with some kind of giddy and said "have you ever moved your Adam's apple up and down while looking in the mirror? It's amazing!" Somehow I don't think MY Adam's apple would be amazing, but whatever floats your boat, brother. It kept the boy entertained, that's all I've got to say.

And of course, when I pulled into the CVS drive-thru, Einstein and his buddy asked what I was doing. "Picking up my drugs," said I, to which they both responded "cocaine, or weed?"

I need to start drinking.

The Five Things

My computer nerd co-worker told me that his father told him at their wedding reception that there are five things you need to do in order to keep your marriage intact in times of, shall we say, discourse? I think that he is pretty spot on with his suggestions.

Here they go. In case of a disagreement, the man of the house is to immediately say these five things, preferably in order:

1. Please forgive me.
2. You were right, I was wrong.
3. It will never happen again.
4. I don't know what came over me.
5. I love you very much.

I have, of course, made my co-worker repeat all of these things to me any time that he disagrees with me which, of course is often, given his viewpoint of functionality vs pretty with our software, and my completely opposite view -- it's not gonna function well, unless things are cleaned up and pretty. I do, however, modify the last one a bit, since him telling me he loves me is just plain wrong, since he is very happily married. Instead, we have substituted it with "I have a deep and abiding respect for you and your position."

Repeat as necessary. And please note, there is no version for the female to use. As we know the man is always wrong. Right?

The Grapes of Seth

This son 'o mine never fails to crack me up.

I came home from a night of treadmilling, and Seth came bursting into the kitchen sliding sideways past me. "Do we have any grapes? I need a grape," he said, as he opened the refrigerator door. I told him I was fairly sure that we did not have grapes. I was actually QUITE sure that we didn't have any grapes, but that didn't stop him from frantically rifling the fridge, nonetheless, after which he turned to me and said "do we have a candle? I need a candle."

I reminded him that candles require fire to be of any use, and that Seth and fire stopped being a good idea like..........well, never. He kept badgering me frantically about a candle, and he went gliding -- no joke -- into the living room to get one. He came back into the kitchen asking whether we had a lighter. I pointed out that any lighters we had likely went out the door with his father, and I doubted there was one here. I told him to use a piece of spaghetti, which is the way I always light candles. He asked about that "clicky thing we use to light the fireplace," and I directed him to where it was.

I seemed to be having a problem getting an explanation as to why he needed the non-existent grape and a candle, when he informed me that he'd been watching "really interesting videos" on youtube. I asked if they involved things blowing up. He responded, "not exactly." So far this whole thing has not instilled confidence in my situation, and I barely had my jacket off.

So The Boy finds the candle, then comes in and lights it with said clicky lighter thing. Then blows OUT the candle. And semi-immediately clicks the lighter above the candle. The lighter lit. Like normal. Disappoinment on boy's face. The process was repeated. And repeated again. Each time, a sigh of disappointment. Finally after the fourth time, he pronounced that it didn't work. I asked him if he was supposed to be creating a fireball of death or what, and he responded, that no, the grape was supposed to kind of melt into a ball of protoplasm.

Except that he never found a grape. And I still have no idea where the grape was supposed to be put, since all he was doing was lighting a candle, blowing it out, and then clicking the lighter.

Sometimes I am fairly certain that Seth and I are not in the same orbit, but I want to be in his, because it is a very happy place where people are easily amused. Even without the grapes.

The Manly Man-Boy

So I discovered the other day that despite the fact that only two people live in this house now, there were EIGHT bottles of shampoo or conditioner in our shower. Eight. There are slightly less shower gel bottles -- four, to be exact. And one is a smaller one from a gift set that Thomas gave me, so let's call it 3 1/2.

Seth was a little concerned, however, at his lack of manly options. Apparently, as he says, he just didn't feel right showering with pink girly smelling shower gel. I pointed out that there was one bottle of manly Avon "Oak" that had perhaps an inch of stuff left in it, but he wanted to get something else the next time we went to the store.

So tonight, we went out into the night and went shopping at Kroger. When we got to the skin care aisle, he made a beeline to the manly smelling stuff which was, in typical teenaged boy fashion, Ax. I turned the corner to the next aisle while he was perusing his options, but heard him say something about "attraction." I asked him what the heck he was looking at, and he replied with "Dark Attraction." I pointed out the many ways of wrong that sounded to me. His reply was that "Dark Attraction doesn't exactly sound like something I want to be rubbing all over my body."

The boy has a point. I didn't even look to see what he put in the cart, but I can tell you two things: 1. It wasn't pink. 2. It was not Dark Attraction.

Man's best friend

Boo, our 7 year old mutt on Prozac, loves to eviscerate stuffed animals. Jill used to buy him toys at the DAV, just to let him gut them. He did, within minutes of them entering the house, and leaving the living room looking like a big cloud, with stuffing all over the place. He then carries the floppy carcass all over the house, and plays tug-o-war with anyone who will join in. Jill can even get him to play hide and seek with it. It's hilarious.

He hasn't gotten to do it much since The Brat left for school, but he has a new habit: pulling the batting out of my quilt. I have a quilt, not old, that is getting rather shredded from me bundling up in it. It's not a huge deal. Although I love that quilt, it was bought for cheap at Sears, and has now been relegated to covering the man-cave couch, in a desperate attempt to keep the dog hair at bay. Well, Boo has decided that it is his personal mission to remove the batting from inside every square inch of it with his teeth. It's quite something to watch, and he keeps at it, despite our admonitions to leave the darned thing alone.

So Thomas was over the other day, to watch football with Dan. Dan wasn't home yet, so the Heir to the Throne was sitting in the King's chair. Weird noises were coming from the couch, and we looked over to see Boo chewing on a piece of batting that he had stuck in his mouth. "What are you doing," said The Heir. Boo just looked at him and kept trying to get the stuff loose. It wasn't looking good. It was, as a matter of fact, looking more like he might barf on the couch, cause he just could not get it loose. "Not going too good for you, is it, Boo," said Thomas. Boo sat up and stuck his head near Thomas, with a look that said "I'm not too sure about this, dude." Thomas started laughing.

It was at that moment that Boo, formerly so terrified of him that he'd pee on the floor if Thomas even looked at him, gave him the ultimate gift: he dropped the whole slimy mess on Thomas' shirt. I swear he looked proud when he laid back down.

Warning: potentiall offensive to non-medical people

I will just say, nurses have an odd sense of humor. Be forewarned.

So, in my "new" job of 2 months, I am a systems analyst, working in our electronic medical record department. I'm quickly gaining a rep as the housekeeper of the system, because I've been fixing all of the typographical errors, punctuation gone awry, and lists that aren't alphabetized. Typos make me crazy, so maybe we can say that after 2 months, I'm almost sane. Not.

One of the nurses put in a Help Desk ticket to get a bunch of old diabetic monitors taken off of the list, so that the docs don't have to wade through a bazillion listings that aren't usable. It started with a list of about 50 things to do, maybe more, and now it's morphed into a huge project. Keep in mind that the majority of our patients are on Medicaid, and Medicaid won't pay for everything. add to that that the list of a bazillion things has listings for brands like Albertson's and Giant Eagle that do not operate anywhere near central Indiana. So yeah, I've been weeding those out.

I also took out the listings for the Land Before Time diapers, which I'm sure Jill wishes were still made, since it's one of her favorite movies. It gave me a real visual, remembering how many times the kids watched that movie. A visual that wasn't nearly so profound as when I came across the listing for a Vaginal Dispenser.

What the heck is that?

I thought at first that maybe it was one of those things you use to put Monistat in, but we call those applicators. So yeah, I have no idea, but I can't get the picture of a vajayjay spewing out M&Ms out of my head. I think I'll stop cleaning now.

Never can say goodbye.....

So I went to lunch with the girls yesterday, and when I left, I got a true shocker. Now, I work in da 'hood, and I'm not easily surprised by much of anything that happens there. We share our side of the building with a bunch of social services. We get propositioned regularly by the prisoners. We ladies consider it to be a good week when we have toilet paper, because it's stolen on a pretty regular basis. And let's just say, you could get higher than a kite walking in the front door most days. It keeps the workday interesting.

So I went out to my car and put it in reverse. Started backing out really slowly, and suddenly the door on the car next to me flew open. The back door, that is. So now, I'm not only watching out for stoned drivers in the parking lot, I was worried about that door hitting my mirror as I tried to get out. I slowed down even more. I realized that the door wasn't closing, so then I was worried -- does this dude know that my car is moving, and is he gonna back into me. That was when I got an eyeful.

Dude was doing a furious booty shake, droopy pants and all, right in my passenger's window. WOW.

I thought that was strange enough, and was wondering if it was a private dance, till I backed up far enough to turn the wheel to get out. That's when I saw that he had moved to the back of his car, accompanied by his lady friend, and now BOTH of them were going at it with booty shakes the speed of lightening. They were still at it when I exited the parking lot. It was like having two butts waving goodbye.

That was a first. And that alone is something I never thought I'd say about my place of employment.

So enjoy this video, and if you don't know what a booty shake is, wait till 3:00 on the video, then imagine this being done practically in your face by a total stranger. I know I'll never forget it.