Alrighty now! Well, as you all recall from the thrilling cliffhanger Friday, I WENT TO A MEETING! ::jarring orchestra chord::

What a fun and interesting time—we had sodas, and real GOLDFISH® CRACKERS from the good folks at Pepperidge Farm, Incorporated. (Be sure and check out their new Puff Pastry recipes—especially the one for Spicy Beef and Broccoli Windmills—which looks like an appetizing combination of offal on cardboard.) And hold your horsies—not only were there Goldfish® (some of which had been used as industrial desiccants), but they were swimming in a sea of MIXED NUTS! Yummy! You know, when you go to a fancy pants meeting, nothing says class like a can of Diet Coke and a Styrofoam cup full of stale salted snacks.

To make it even better, there was PowerPoint™! Wheeeee!!

Are we not at a stage in our computer literacy to where folks can at least change SOMETHING on the crappy 1997 templates which everyone has already seen about a billion times? If you’re intent on touting yourself as a hip, knowledgeable sort of designer—can’t you make sure your font usage is kinda consistent? Can you make sure all the words fit on the screen and don’t get cut off? You can’t? Okay, then let’s start the meeting.

If I was playing the Meeting Drinking Game, I believe I would have been sloshed in about ten minutes. What kept it interesting is that I decided I had better write the crap down so I could inflict it on each of you—no, you haven’t done anything to me. I’m just a mean, cruel, old man.

SO NOW—let’s begin…the first presenter got up and either didn’t say anything noteworthy or I was asleep, but the next person was fully cranked up. She opened up by dropping some “gold nuggets” on us, which is supposed to describe the stuff they do well. Thanks! Then there was some sort of thing about “earned level of experience”...I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but WHO CARES!! There was a rough patch soon enough, though—the dangerous game of sports metaphors. “We want to be able to, um, hit the ground. Ah, to hit the ball, and run with it.” Darned strange game, if you ask me. Perhaps as a nod to the nodding ones, she talked about wanting to “take the pulse of the audience”. Please, don’t take my pulse. JUST HIT ME IN THE HEAD WITH A MALLET! Wrapping it all up, she wanted to say that she was interested in “building a vision”. Much like working with Tinker Toys, I would suspect.

She tagged her partner who jumped into the ring swinging the metal folding chair of: “making synergies to create high energies”. Having thus clobbered us with this stunning show of gobbledygook, another jumped in and started piling-on: “have a synergy happening,” “the world has turned, and the tide has changed,” and “build a diverse, inclusive community.”

You ever watch a cockroach when you spray him good with Raid, and he flops over and wiggles and his little legs twitch? That was me.

But not to be outdone, it was wrapped up with another team member “committed to producing outcomes” and who wanted to “have some measurable benchmarks” so we could see some “tangible benefits on the ground”. Did you hear that? “Tangible benefits on the ground.” I write that down twice, because it is apparently so important in the scheme of things that the speaker said it twice.

Did I mention we had tiny yellow crackers and peanuts and Coca Cola? They created a very diverse synergy in my lower intestine, causing me to have a positive output.

I sneaked out a few minutes early and walked back up to my office—beautiful afternoon, and for once it wasn’t raining. Got back, checked my mail and hit the Weekend button. Got home, went outside to check on the vast acreage that makes up the Possumrosa, and found that the new experience of dry weather with sunshine was just the thing to crank up the dastardly Japanese beetle population again. ::sigh:: I figured that they would be back—the last time I sprayed the trees, it rained the day afterwards. They were all bunched up in the top of Cat’s cherry tree in disgusting wriggling wads that will be sure to show up in a nightmare sometime later when I least expect it.

Back inside, change clothes, get out the hose and the sprayer and the Concentrated Liquid Death and go to work. They seemed to enjoy the flavor very much, until they started dropping off. Looks like you boys got some bad fugu, eh?!

The rest of the afternoon was blessedly uneventful, aside from the extraction the other loose Little Girl tooth. It was way loose, so I just reached in her mouth and yanked it out after supper. “Thankth, Daddy!” You’re welcome, Spridget. Into the tooth pillow to wait on the tooth fairy, who after everyone was asleep was also very sleepy, but who still remembered to stumble into the bedroom and dodge the multitude of tiny toys strewn about the floor and exchange some money (that she got out of MY billfold ) for it. Then the tooth fairy collapsed into bed with Miss Reba and snored loudly until the morrow.

For one glorious Saturday morning, the kids did not come barging into our room to tattle or to use our bathroom, they did not fight with each other over a sock, they did not turn on every television in the house, they did not engage in bouts of loud, squealing, maniacal laughter. Just nice and quiet—absolute heaven. I actually got to be awakened by warm sunshine. That don’t happen much around my house. Finally got up and started moving around as Reba fixed us some breakfast, ate and then got outside to get the yard back into order.

All that rain we had certainly made the grass grow longer, although it hasn’t really made it any greener. All the weeds and stringy grass had gotten to be a big mess around the trees and planter beds and stuff, so I got out ol’ Mr. Two Stroke—haven’t used it since last year, yet it cranked right up. Which did my heart glad—nothing says Manly Outdoor Activities like a loud, oily, temperamental, snarling two-stroke piece of dangerous whirling machinery. Much like my underwear, the weed trimmer is disgusting enough that no one else wants to mess with it, so I get to keep it and call it my very own without fear that it will be used as wall décor or as a background for puffy glitter painting. I believe I am not the only one who thinks like this—witness the existence of dirt bikes and chain saws and old Saabs.

Got everything chewed to bits in short order (I got me one of them Grass Gator blades, you know) and covered myself with a fine coating of plant fibers, then got behind the mower.

I still sincerely believe if the leaders of the world were each given a lawnmower and a couple of hours of pushing time behind it each week that most of the world’s problems could be solved. The heat and drone and snootful of unburnt hydrocarbons and occasional bed of fire ants really help to focus your mind. Especially like when you’re being very careful not to cut down stuff that’s not supposed to be cut down. ‘Cause that would be bad.

Finished up and took a quick bath and ferried Boy to his friend’s house for a birthday party, which we had neglected to RSVP until about the middle of the swath through the backyard, which meant that the ferry ride to said friend’s house had to make a port call at Target to select an appropriate gift. I like Target—it seems to attract better looking cashiers and shoppers, but they don’t sell ammo, which frankly seems like a natural item. But it was convenient, and it had the Mattel Deluxe Exodia Monster, with Unique Battle Features, Lights and Sounds, which is somehow able to be distinguished from a host of other plastic crap only by nine year old boys.

On then to the checkout, then to the party where profuse apologies were made for being so inconsiderate and not calling earlier (which I blamed on everyone else), then back to the house for a bit to get ready for my teachers meeting at church—stuff to type and print, but I assure you none of it contained the words synergy or empower or Exodia. Got that finished, then turned around with the girls and ran and got Boy from his party and dropped them all off at Reba’s mom and dad’s house so we could go to the meeting and not have to show what bad parents we are by not being able to control our belligerent children. Having dumped my offspring, I swung back by our house to pick up Reba, who had stayed behind to get a shower and recover from a giant bout of malaise that struck sometime between the time I first cranked the lawnmower and the moment I got through cutting the grass. On to the meeting, at which approximately 8 out of 26 folks scheduled to teach showed up, two of them being Reba and me. ::sigh::

Finished up, and then it was on to our weekly trip to Wal-Mart, where we purchased many wondrous items such as shirts and greeting cards and a tiny plant and eight solar-powered walkway lights and the new Harry Potter and the Exercise in Successful Marketing and a some printer paper. Thus fully stocked with much needed items, back to in-laws to get the kids, then back to the house to install my eight solar-powered walkway lights and then eat supper and then go to bed and then once more snore loudly and then wake up and watch all the early Sunday morning home improvement shows.

Got up, got a shower, got the kids up and got them to get dressed, whipped up a nourishing and fanciful breakfast consisting of bowls of cereal, then stuffed everyone into the van and headed out for church. Another beautiful day—sky blue sky, air so clear that everything was as sharply focused as one of those laser printed photos where you can see every single leaf. Fantastic day. Good classes, good sermon, good lunch at the Chinese place, then back home where we did stuff, then back again for evening worship, then home for some homemade hamburgers, then time to pull YET ANOTHER TOOTH, this time out of Middle Girl’s head, then put the kids in bed then send the tooth fairy in once more after they finally went to sleep THREE FLIPPIN’ HOURS LATER. I don’t know what it was, but Cat and Rebecca both would not go to sleep. Too much fun or something, I don’t know. But they finally went away to Happy Sweet Fun Slumberland, and that fairy chick stole more money out of my wallet and stuffed it into the pillow pouch and then it was time to go to bed and snore some more.

And then to get up and come here. Whee.

I have too much garbage to get done this week—Cat gets to go back for her ear checkup, I have my normal exercise in bloated bureaucracy, then I have to go back to the dentist, and then I’ll be off next week—SO, this old pile of crap is going to take a hiatus until after Independence Day. Too much life in the way of productive blogging—I will be keeping up with e-mail, though, so if you have any comments be sure to share them.

All of you have a good holiday, and I’ll see you again after a sufficient period of recovery after being confined with four young children and their mama.
posted by Terry at 12:28:00 PM