Oh, I know you all have just been a’clamorin’ for this mess—who am I to deny you the incredibly detailed remembrances of the past 72 hours. (And won’t you be surprised when FOX picks it up and makes it into a show! It’ll be three times better than 24, and they’re talking to Eli “Voice of NASCAR” Gold to play the part of me! That’s money in the bank, baby!)

A word of warning: The following is way too long.

FRIDAY. Got home and found that Reba had picked out some anniversary cards and gifts—I am impossible to buy for, mainly because I would be satisfied with anything she gave me—bright blue leisure suit? Thank you, it’s beautiful! Poke in the eye? Your lovely fingers make it all the more enjoyable! I’m just as happy with nothing as anything, but she still feels bad if she doesn’t get a little something for me. I won’t tell you all of it, but two of the things were a couple of videos of stuff we never got to see in the theaters; A Beautiful Mind, the story of some chick who looks exactly like Jennifer Connelly who falls in love with a schizophrenic math wiz (wow, just like me) and The Lord of the Rings, the story of Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett and a bunch of guys running around. But, before we could enjoy these, there was the Pre-Mother’s Birthday and Anniversary Dinner that was thrown together for my sister’s benefit, since she was only going to be home for a day or two.

Over to Riverchase to the Hunan Garden Chinese Restaurant (and every time I type “Hunan” I mistakenly type “Human,” which just makes me giggle every time I think about it) and had a very nice meal, except for the constant necessity of telling one particular member of the Oglesby family to quit putting her mouth on the plate, and quit blowing bubbles in her Sprite, and quit talking with food in her mouth, and quit loudly asking to go to the bathroom to poop, and quit turning around and staring at the two guys behind us, and quit asking why they are holding hands, and quit burping, and quit putting rice in her hair. SHEESH! (Can’t take my danged mom ANYwhere!)

Actually, this was Tiny Girl, who since coming down with her cranio-nasal cruddiolity (I realize some of you aren’t familiar with the medical terms, but it makes me sound smart to use them) has just been an absolute pill. Apparently all of her gray matter has been replaced with green matter, which causes a decided slowing of the firing of the “Good Girl” synapses, and an inversely proportional quickening of the synapse exchanges devoted to loud, obstinate, turdliness and associated lachrymal deluges.

All the rest of the kids excitedly yammered to my sister about her new kitty, and I resisted the urge to say something mean like, “Cats are wonderful—you’re eating one right now!” I had enough to deal with without that, so I just tended to my Kung Pao animal flesh, which was really good.

It was fun; good to see Mama and sis, but I sure was glad to be through with it, just the same. (Mainly because I wanted to go home and watch my movie.)

Got the kids in bed and put in Lord of the Rings. Movie Review Time I was never a big Tolkien reader, but had enough general knowledge of his work and of the hype about the movie and all the Burger King toys to sorta know what to expect. Excellent movie—I enjoy stories about stuff such as this with all the elves and ogres and trolls and dwarves and silly English kkkkkk-niggits. Beautifully done movie, lots of walking about, some real fancy swordwork. (Interesting note, just in case: Orcs fight just like movie ninjas—huge hordes who politely wait their turn to attack the good guys.) Did I mention Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett? Them Elfwomen is sure real purty like. Which might make for a pretty good second episode if they make it to where Middle Earth somehow manages to intersect with The South. First of all, we’d get rid of all them glowing Elvish blades (although it is worth noting that Elvis collected knives) and show ‘em how to shoot (which Elvis REALLY liked), which would really throw them Ninja Orcs for a loop, and there would be a wet t-shirt contest for Elfchicks, and dadgummit, we’d find a ride for all them little Hobbit fellers so they wouldn’t have to walk everywhere—in fact, what would be even better is to have ‘em ride around in Bigfoot! Now THAT, my friends, would be a derned MOVIE!

Anyway, the movie really is very nicely made and the live scenery and studio sets are beautiful and nicely detailed—the only parts that got in my way were the edits for when the Hobbits appeared with other actors. Sometimes they obviously used kids, other shots relied on camera angles, and others were CGI, but it wasn’t quite seamless because the proportions kept changing; this is especially true when kids were used, simply because of the different proportion of head to body size between a child and an adult. Liv Tyler is in this movie, but not enough. Nor Cate Blanchett. I wish now that we had seen it at the theater, but it still translates pretty well to the small screen. The scary parts are good enough to have given Catherine and maybe Jonathan bad dreams had they been watching it, but for kids over about 9 or 10 it’s probably not too bad. I didn’t have more than a couple of nightmares, myself—I believe it was the thought of big, hairy Hobbitgirl feet. Eww.

SATURDAY. Finally, the end of regularly scheduled horseback riding. They have really enjoyed it, and I have, too, but it does take a big chunk out of the productive part of the day. They got to ride bareback this time, and Jonathan managed to do all of his leaning over and turning around and stuff without getting scared, even though once he slid off and made a big Sam Peckinpah production of falling in slow motion to the ground. (Would have served him right if he had landed in a big pile of processed horse feed, but at least he jumped back on without having to be chastised by Dad.) After they got through, the kids were as nasty as could be from the aforementioned sans-saddle riding. Horses are prone to becoming quite dusty and sweaty—JUST LIKE KIDS! Eww. Took them home and made them strip in the garage then run squealing upstairs to take baths.

Did some laundry, Reba cooked some soup, I finally fixed the tire with the screw in it, refilled all the bird/squirrel feeders, pulled up mimosas (another of the fine family of invasive Asian species), trimmed the roses, struggled to defeat the wild tendrils of the wisteria vine which has grown to Audrey-like proportions, and generally puttered around getting all stinky and hot.

Came in, sat down, opened the curtains at the kitchen table so I could watch the hummingbirds and vegetate, and had lunch. The girls had already finished and were avoiding chores in other parts of the house and Boy had just finished his bath, so we had a bowl of Mommy’s special home-made soup.

Reba sat down and all three of us just sort of sat and talked about not much.

Look at that little bird.

Need to go to the store.

Trees are starting to turn.

That hickory tree looks dead.

Other trees have really grown this year.

Except Catherine’s. Mean ol’ Japanese beetles just about got away with eating it all gone.

“What’re Japanese beetles?” asked Jonathan.

It is instances like this that the professionals call “teachable moments,” when a topic comes up naturally in conversation and you are able to impart your knowledge to your child in a way that will be memorable and allow him a better understanding of the world around him.

I put my spoon down, and started off, “Well, son, they are small, round, metallic-looking beetles that eat tree leaves, like Catherine’s cherry tree…” His little eyes were locked on me with an earnest desire to learn, to grow… I deftly held up the corners of my eyes, “and they gettah they choppastickah, and they fry arong until they see a yummy twee, and thennnnn they EATAH IT UP AHH GONE! And before they put a littah soy sauce onah leaves, they hold their sixah littah ahms up in the air and yell, ‘BONSAI! BONSAI! BONSAI!’ As I kept up my highly inappropriate, culturally insensitive anthropomorphic stereotyping of Popillia japonica, (including the dreaded sumo variant) he collapsed into a paroxysm of silly laughter, at one point falling down completely onto the kitchen floor and rolling around.

“And that, son, is what a Japanese beetle is.”

Saturday evening we went to get Oldest Girl some church clothes—Reba took her to the row of clothing stores between Home Depot and Target, while I agreed to keep the others far, far away to avoid undue shopping stress. I dropped off Mom and Ashley and drove back down to Target by way of the lower parking lot, which was again full of the old car Saturday cruiser folks. Many more than there were last month, and a few more better looking cars this time. Still a lot of odd ones that have a lot of sentimental value only to their owner—one stood out—a jacked up, bright yellow, stock-bodied shoebox Ford Tudor. Yikes, talk about unique. And hard work—a business coupe or convertible would have been much easier on the eyes, and none of the ’49 to ‘51s look right with a lift kit. Whew. Lots of other good stuff was there, though, but I dared not get out and look with three little demolition dynamos. Anyway, I would probably wind up doing something stupid like buying something.

After a couple of hours of Targetry (with only two trips to the restroom and only fifty uses of “DON’T TOUCH THAT!”) we met back up with our other shoppers and headed home in a just-starting rain. All of the cruisers picked this moment to start leaving, too, so getting out was a chore. And loud. Finally got out onto the highway and pulled up alongside a relatively nice GT500-KR fastback, which seemed to be quite a handful on the slightly wet pavement. Yow. 428 cubic inches of pure pucker power. I reminisced to Reba about the time I found myself staring back at a line of traffic after trying to complete a simple left turn onto a damp street in my AMX.

“Do you miss your car?” I had sold it right before we got married. “Nah, not really. I had been ready to get rid of it and start something else, anyway. Maybe one day it might be fun to do one for Jonathan.” Which, if you know the signs, is the sound of someone laying the groundwork for a future in which his obsessive/compulsive personality disorder is transferred back to its rightful home under the hood of an obnoxiously loud and fast hunk of iron (cleverly disguised as a father-son project.) Heaven help us all.

SUNDAY. Good crowd at church, no hiccups with Sunday school, ran out of time long before I ran out of material for the kids in my class, and made the big mistake of bringing my bag of goodies. I am an idiot. They had been nice and quiet for 45 minutes, and then I get them all wound up when it was time to go, by rewarding their niceness with a chance to get a prize out of the sack. Which created pandemonium (which is really bad in church, you know.) Not gonna do that again.

Afterwards, we went to see my mom again at her house, stopping first for our usual meal at Ruby Tuesday. Once again we arrived too early to get Jennifer, instead being saddled with some glacier-slow moon-faced idjitboy. When I asked where Oldest Girl’s food was, he went back to the kitchen to check, but before coming to tell us what was going on, decided a better customer-relations duty was to walk right past us with his other hivemates and sing their HappyCrappyBirthday song for someone on the other side of the restaurant.

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh.

Jennifer The Great came by to say hey, and I verified for future reference that she does indeed come on duty at noon. She said she did, so it now looks like from now on we’ll just have to wander aimlessly around Leeds for an hour so as to be sure to get her. She asked if everything was okay (even though it was not her table) and I allowed that our dough-brained server was not quite in her league. She asked if she could get us more napkins or anything else (again, even though she wasn’t our waitress) but I said it was okay. I wanted that little fellow to work for every dime of the tip he got. He just better be glad my mom wasn’t there, or all he would have gotten would have been a dime. My mom is very…thrifty.

Got to her house, and had a very nice visit. She would kill me if she knew I was telling you she is going to be 73 next week, but I do it anyway just to pick on her. And I pick on her mainly because if she wanted to she could still whip me. And just about anybody else. She works her own garden, cuts her own grass, keeps up her own big old house, works 40+ hours a week, and thinks nothing of calling stupid “stupid.” For any of you who like Billnhillary, Ralph Nader, David Duke, Louis Farrakhan, Jane Fonda, Jesse Jackson, Don Siegelman, art that looks like a drop cloth, lawyers, car salesmen, PETA, or women who act coarse, I would advise you to steer clear of admitting these things in front of her or you might get your ears pinned back. It’s always fun to visit Mom.

The older girls really like this trip, because Granny Jean had gone through her closets and found some of my sister’s duds from the Nineteen Seventies, which due to the great care my sister had shown them, and their near indestructibility, were now ready for a new generation of fashionably retro-minded young girls. Thankfully, these were not the hippy-dippy crap that Old Navy sells nowadays, but some of the kinda cute clothes that were made back then (believe it or not, there actually were some, but they don’t have the same self-referential ironic parody potential as the really ugly crap.) The girls were tickled to death to go through them all, and I’m glad they have some clothes that don’t start falling apart as soon as they’re worn once. It got time to go much too soon. Happy Birthday, Mom!

Headed back for evening church, headed home, ate some more of that good soup, and time for blessed rest.

Then came Monday morning, which failed to kill me, but another such victory and I shall be undone.

Then comes tonight with soccer practice and homework and baths and maybe, just maybe, a bit of time to watch my other new movie. (While at Target I managed to sneak a copy of The Magnificent Seven into the cart.)
posted by Terry at 3:29:00 PM