Hey y’all—time for more bracing tales of life in the suburbs—celebrity sightings, stomping upon Homewood, being trampled by Yellowshirts, frogs, lizards, spiders, battries, and my ship has come in!

We went out to eat Friday, mainly to celebrate the return of my wife’s cravings for real food. Although chicken noodle soup is tasty and nutritious, there comes a time when the only thing that satisfies one's appetite is being able to gnaw on a big hunk of dead cow.

The deliberations and negotiations were carried out as they usually are—“Where you want to go?” “I don’t care.” “What about [insert list of every restaurant with a 15 minute drive]?” “I don’t know.” SO, in the interest of maintaining my chipper demeanor, I made the command decision just to pack everyone in the van and go a’huntin’. First stop (after innumerable requests from the non-adult contingent to stop at Harde-arb-taco-papajoh-wendy-mcdon-soni-krystals) we drove through the lot at Applebee’s, which was packed. “Onward,” I shouted to our coursers—(well, no, I just did the Ralph Kramden slow-burn in my overactive imagination) then went on to Bennigan’s, which was not packed but just busy enough to slow our service down.

Actually, the problem was that our waiter was newish, and although having the puppy-like desire to do a good job, was still obviously new to the concepts of making sure everyone was supplied with eating tools and bread plates and getting all of the correct food to the table at the same time and keeping a check on the fluid levels. There were about a thousand wait staff around, and I kept envying the booth beside us who had the suave guy who knew all the specials and was back every few minutes with refills and snappy patter. There was also a girl in there who was a dead-ringer for a young Anita Morris. She seemed kind of miffed at something though, so it’s probably better that she was someone else’s waitress—just watching was more than adequate. In any event, the food was foody enough and there was quite enough ‘sláinte’ (defined as “our servers do a louder ‘Happy Happy Birthday’ clapping-song-train than those dweebs at TGIFridays) to go around. We finally got our check, and for all of you former waitstaff-types, old skinflint me left PuppyBoy a 15 percenter (but figured on the food total, not the total plus tax—I do have my standards).

Sometime between bedtime Friday and Saturday morning, our weather got misrouted and we wound up with something originally intended for Minot. The sun was out, but there was a constant 20 mile an hour freezing cold wind blowing. This would have been fine, except Saturday is soccer day, and Middle Girl had an 8:30 a.m. game. I put on my much-loved Auburn U. sweatshirt and thick socks (and all the rest of my clothes, too). The game was in Homewood, which is a suburb of Birmingham scrunched right up under it to the south; the actual field was on top of a small ridge which was almost as high as Red Mountain, and was completely shorn of trees. Which meant that the entire game was spent getting sliced by that wind and pulling the neckhole of my sweatshirt up above my ears and wiping tears off of my face. The girls, however, didn’t seem to mind at all. They ran around and laughed and managed to win 3-0. Rebecca played the entire first half and most of the second and managed to stave off a couple of scoring drives. Luckily, the Homewood girls missed several shots on goal, otherwise it would have been another loss. Our record so far (I think) is 2-2-1, and as always, daddy is so proud.

Back across town, and time for Little Boy’s game. I had left everyone else at home in the bed, and when Girl and I got back, only Boy was ready to go. And it was time to go. Right THEN. I spent a few minutes in the bathroom alternately watching my wife do different things with her hair and glancing conspicuously at my watch. “Uhhhh, do you think maybe you are close to maybe being ready to go?” “I don’t know.” Golly, that freezing 20 mile an hour wind just blew through our bathroom!

You know, before I was married and had kids, I was NEVER late for anything. Old habits die hard, and they really make everyone annoyed at you when they manifest themselves, especially in those inconvenient and uncomfortable times when, say ferinstance, we are trying to be somewhere on time.

I gingerly suggested that I needed to get Boy to his game so he could get a chance to actually play, and for her and the rest of the crew to meet us at the park. Lesser of two and all; one of those terrible decisions which sometimes must be made, but in retrospect was the right one—they finally showed up at half-time of his game.

It seems that the Caboose, who had started out fully dressed when I left, decided to change clothes, but had not put anything back on. This was not discovered until Mama called her to the assembly point at the back door and said child arrived wearing only a pair of panties and her purple PowerPuff Girl sandals. There was also the episode of sullen churlishness from Biggest Girl, who decided that when everyone was trying to get ready to go do something fun, it was the perfect time for a counteroffensive of furious passive-aggressiveness. I’m not sure, but I believe my wife had to dress her, too.

While this high drama played itself out, at the park Jonathan’s team was getting their hind-ends handed to them by the Yellowhammers (with their oh-so-cool yellow shirts). I don’t know what the problem was—it had finally warmed up and the wind had died down, so it was nice and pleasant, the ref was doing a good job (although, sadly, she did not have shorts on), the other team wasn’t overly aggressive or really great—but we were still getting yellowhammered. Little Buddy did manage to add some levity to the proceedings. He was playing back at the goal in the last quarter and was trying to backpedal and block a shot. He isn’t quite coordinated going forward, much less going backwards, so he got tangled up and wound up on his back with his butt and feet high in the air. As luck would have it, the other little kid’s shot glanced off the soles of Boy’s cleats and bounced clear over the net. A fabulous save, and comedy, too! That’s my boy. Alas, they lost, and had to drown their sorrows in Capri Sun. Sugar water in flexible pouches has amazing sorrow-drowning powers.

Time for real work. To make up for abandoning Dear Wife to the savages, I was posted to yard duty when we got home. First thing was to start gathering up all the old flower pots from last season and the punctured, no-longer-inflatable swimming pool and take them to the dump.

One big heave of the old pool to get it out of its resting place and it was a re-creation of the frog scene in The Ten Commandments. At least two big fat ones hopped out, along with a couple of lizards and an assortment of bugs. The kids came running over to look, and I tried to get the biggest frog, but it got away. Oh well. Now cleared of wildlife, I dragged the pool around to the front and heaved it into the back of the truck. It was then that I discovered that not only had it been full of my little forest friends, it also still held several slimy quarts of brackish rainwater and frog pee.

The flower pots went in with much less trouble.

In order to save some time, I was also assigned to load the truck up with stuff to take to the charity place, so all the boxes of too-small clothes and no-longer-played-with-toys were also loaded in. Finally ready, fetch the keys, hit the switch ‘Rr. click click click. Ruhrrrrr. click click click.’ In the parlance of the fellows with whom I hunker, she was deader’n a hammer. More time wasted. More Ralph Kramdenesque slow-burn takes. I tried to jump it off and even THAT wouldn’t work (and very nearly burnt up my flimsy little set of non-macho jumper cables—I have to get me a set of those nice big 0 gauge ones!)

So, out with the tools, out with the battery, off to the AutoZone down at the foot of the hill, back up with a fresh new battery, battery into place, ‘RuhhmUHMMMmmm. Sputt sputt RumRUMrumaa pop pop humphrumrumble pop mmmmamum’…ahhh, the antedeluvian language of the F-100. The best thing about old vehicles is being able to pop in a battery without screwing up all of the rest of the electrical system or engine computer or radio presets. It can also be repaired with a screwdriver, a ball peen hammer, and a pair of Vise Grips.

Off then on my rounds then back, and start making a place for the new storage shed. I have missed having one of these, but the neighborhood I live in frowns on them. It has gotten to the point, though, that all of the yard tools and general mess laying about looks much worse than any little shed could look. My plan is to do this in stages to keep the nosey-Parkersons at bay—first is to make a little level gravel area right behind the house, then plant some tall evergreen shrubs to hide the side of it, then assemble the shed into bigger pieces in the garage, and finish it up at night. Bwuhhahhhahahahhha!

The rest of the afternoon was spent hauling wheelbarrow loads of gravel around the yard, trying to keep the kids from chasing the neighbor’s cat, and putting enough 20-0-0 on the yard that it smells like a stockyard.

After supper and completing the various hair dryings and fingernail trimmings of various children, I checked in on my e-mail and found out that I now have an inside track on making the big-time. You know, some people spend their livelihoods buying up lottery tickets. Others of us, due to our well-connected friends in high places, are able to have money plop down into our laps. Now this is supposed to be a secret, but you folks are my friends and I think you should be able to benefit from my good fortune. You see, I got a message from the famous Dr. Francis Fregene, who works for the Nigerian Federal Government Contract Review Panel. He promises to share a portion of a US$26,400,000 (Twenty Six Million, Four Hundred Thousand US Dollars) sum with me, just for letting his Official Government Agency use my bank account! I am sworn to secrecy about this, but it looks like I might just be getting a cool 25% of that total. See folks, that’s what living right will get you! Man, just think of all that money! 6.6 million smackers. I think I might get my truck painted AND get me a good bed liner! I might even buy Possumblog its own domain name!
posted by Terry at 1:46:00 PM