|
April 20, 2008
I Should Have Stayed In Bed
It was one of those mornings when I should have stayed in bed. To be honest, staying in bed past 6:00 a.m. always has
a certain appeal, but had I known what lay ahead, I would have been sorely tempted to pull the covers over my head and stay
put.
The day began normally enough. The sun rose, the birds sang, the alarm went off –
and though I thought about ignoring it, I didn’t – and started to get out of bed. That’s when things began
to go wrong. As I swung my legs over the side of the bed, my feet landed on something hard and sharp – a toy truck that
had managed to evade capture last night when I rounded up the toys.
“Dang, dang, dang,” I muttered as I hobbled into the bathroom, splashed water on my face then reached for
my towel. No towel. I forgot that one of my children was Superman last night and his cape – my towel – is probably
in a heap on his floor. After pulling on some clothes I headed into the kitchen for that first shot of caffeine. Bummers,
out of coffee. Now I remember why a stop at the grocery store was on my ‘must do’ list yesterday.
Caffeine free I managed to get the kids out the door and drop them at school. Back home, it was time to sit down at
my desk and tackle the 101 projects littering its surface and I thought to myself, a cup of tea sounds nice on this cool winter
morning. I returned to the kitchen, put water in my shiny, new copper kettle, turned on the stove and decided to get to work
while the water boiled. Big mistake!
I was concentrating on the task at hand when I heard some funny popping sounds followed by a definite thunk. What is
that odd smell? My tea!! I raced to the kitchen to behold the remains of my precious tea kettle. The poor thing was dented
in and charred; its spout lying forlornly by it on the stove. Ooops. Scratch a cup of tea off my list.
Next on my agenda was to locate the new office of our accountant and drop off some paperwork. The office was in a multi-story
building attached to a multi-story parking garage. I found the office, conducted my business and even found my car with a
minimum of searching. Hey, my day was looking up. Then I tried to find my way out of the parking garage. Why is it the only
things clearly marked in these things is parking directions? After circling 300 times, I finally made my way to street level
again but on a one-way street going a direction I didn’t know. Major stess!
The grocery store proved to be the most uneventful part of my day until I pulled into my driveway and prepared to unload.
When I lifted the hatch of my SUV, I learned that the groceries were more eager to disembark than I was. Naturally, the eggs
and a jar of jelly were on top. After cleaning the yuck and glass off the driveway, I decided the dinner I planned was not
in the cards.
Frozen pizza to the rescue! The instructions said place the pizza directly on the oven rack. An inner voice said –
that’s odd, I’ve never done it that way before. Considering the day I had had, you would think I would have known
better than to blindly follow the instructions – but I didn’t. Twenty minutes later as the melted cheese and overflow
sauce dripped onto the oven floor and the smoke detector went on full alert, I told myself, I should have put foil under the
pizza no matter what the instructions said.
When my husband arrived home that evening, he noticed the charred remains of the tea kettle on the stove and smoke
in the air. The foolish man had the audacity to ask, “What happened, world war three break out?” My look told
him what I thought of his attempt at humor.
I tried to explain that the tea kettle had a date with destiny and I thought he liked his pizza crisp but he looked
skeptical. When he spied the broken glass in the trash and the charcoaled-cheese dangling from the oven rack, he decided he
really didn’t want to know.
Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. Now, if only I could figure out which ones those were in advance
and could bottle it – I’d make a fortune! Copyright Bonnie Phelps
2008
March 22, 2008
Life
Sometimes Gets In The Way
When I created this
website, I intended to write something each week centering on my observations about life and family. I did pretty well for
the first two months and then – life got in the way – and good intentions flew south.
I moved to the Silicon
Valley in California in September 2005 but my husband and disabled daughter remained at our old home
on the Central Coast of California. The time finally arrived when they could join me. Let me be clear about this right up
front – as much as I was looking forward to being reunited with my husband and daughter – I hate moving.
Not only did this transition
consist of one move – getting my husband and daughter to our new location – but we also planned to buy a new home
a few weeks later and thus a move from my apartment to the new home was part of the package. The process seemed fairly straightforward
and everything would fall in place like a row of dominoes.
One of my mottos is,
“Life is Full of Surprises – some are pleasant, some are not and some are just downright bewildering.” This
whole series of events falls under the ‘not so pleasant’ variety.
We put our old home
on the market in mid-May 2007 – really bad timing since the whole mortgage and housing market melt down hit with a vengeance
shortly thereafter. Fortune seemed to be smiling on us, however, because we received an all cash offer on our home and the
buyers wanted to complete the sale in 21 days.
I’d had my eye
on a new home development in San Jose and the lot and house
plan I wanted had just become available. We had a solid sale – or so we thought – on our old home so we put down
our deposit and checked off the box next to completing one of our dreams – basically building a home and selecting everything
that would go into it. By early July, our family would be together again and we’d watch our home being built.
A week later, the buyers
pulled out of the sale of our old home. A word to the wise for home sellers in California
– there’s a clause in the real estate sales contract that says buyers can cancel the sale and retrieve their deposit
money without cause for 17 days. Surprise!
It was only late June,
the new home wasn’t due to be completed until late November or early December, we could afford to reduce the price to
be competitive – surely our home would sell in four or five months. No offers came in.
By late October we were
resigned to losing the new home when a family member came to the rescue with the offer of loaning us a good chunk of the money
we would have received from the sale of our old home and we could pay him back when we finally sold our old home in a year
or two when the housing market improved. Yeah, salvation, we could still have our dream!
We signed the first
set of closing papers just before Thanksgiving, found tenants for our old home, gave notice on my apartment and began the
process of moving my husband and daughter to the Silicon Valley. That’s when the first
lender said they could not make a loan to us unless the money from our family was a gift. Paying gift taxes was not an option
so we were passed off to a second lender. That delayed the process until just after Christmas when the second set of closing
papers would be ready to sign.
My husband and I showed
up at the escrow office at the appointed hour, eager to complete the transaction. We’d given them our portion of the
down payment when we signed the first set of papers so all we had to do was sign our names – about 1,000 times as anyone
who has purchased a home will tell you – and collect our keys. Not so fast as it turned out. The first document you
see is the settlement costs. What do you mean we need to bring in another $30,000?!
The rules had changed
and everyone thought we knew. We just didn’t have the extra cash. Hopes were dashed again! Thus began the odyssey of
finding a new apartment and moving within 14 days.
And in the midst of
the packing and adjusting to sharing my life again on a fulltime basis (another column by itself) – our precious granddaughter
decided to make her appearance!
As I said, life sometimes
gets in the way. Stay tuned. I plan to get back on track – until the next time that the business of living throws a
monkey wrench into my well laid plans. Copyright Bonnie Phelps 2008
November 18, 2007
How Come I Don’t Have Extra Arms?
I
believe the reason women are not born with extra arms is that the Almighty is a man. Men instinctively realize they only have
two hands and refuse to be burdened beyond their capacity. Women, perhaps due to an ancient gatherer instinct, just can’t
seem to get past the fact that two arms cannot possibly collect an entire household and carry it out the door.
Men
know better than to try this. Anyone who can put all he needs in his pockets (though that is a debatable assumption, how many
times do men say to their wife or girlfriend, “Would you put this in your purse?”), probably isn’t going
to try to get all the groceries into the house in one trip.
Not
me. Inevitably I load myself up – and would pat myself on my back if I had a free hand – stagger to the door only
to discover I have to put a good portion of that load down in order to open said door. Of course, I will try to open that door without putting things down but it’s not
a pretty picture and typically does not end well.
I
often find myself trying to carry more than it’s reasonable to expect a human to manage without putting a pack on my
back. Unconsciously I must expect to sprout more arms (I’d especially like some with suction cups like an octopus) or
somehow develop magical powers – that old nose twitch syndrome.
The
other day I needed to replace the filter in my water pitcher. I pulled a mug out of the cupboard so I could soak the filter
in its pouch in an upright position. That way I don’t have to get an extra dish dirty. While the filter was soaking,
I decided I might as well clean up the kitchen. I put on my gloves, washed the dishes, wiped down the counter and then decided
the filter had soaked long enough.
Without
thinking – since my mind always seems to jump ahead to the next task rather than focusing on the task at hand –
I plucked the pouch out of the cup before I realized I couldn’t put the filter in the water pitcher with my gloves on.
If I tried to put the pouch back in the cup, the water would spill necessitating the need to wash the cup – horror of
horrors. Mustn’t waste the time it would take to wash that cup! The contortions I went through to remove my gloves and
hold the pouch containing the filter would make Houdini wince.
Vacuuming
is another example. Does anyone else try to move chairs and other objects like tables, recliners and sofas out of the way
while still trying to push the vacuum? Or how about emptying the dryer? Two trips are out of the question except for the trip
back down the hall to retrieve all the socks and underwear that decided to jump ship. Then there’s the exercise of wandering
through the house picking up the miscellaneous items that aren’t where they belong. It starts with one and mushrooms
from there. The glass on the window ledge, the magazine on the sofa, the sweater hanging on a doorknob, the school book on
the floor and before you know it there’s that one last thing you just don’t have room in your arms for. I can
feel my blood pressure rise just contemplating it.
In
each instance, I always think to myself, I can do this. Honestly, I don’t think my behavior is the result of laziness.
Deep down, I don’t think it’s the extra trip that bothers me. I really think it’s a time issue, there just
is not enough of it! Then again, maybe it’s too many readings of the Little Engine That Could. “I think I can, I think I can.” Copyright Bonnie Phelps 2007
November 11, 2007
What’s in a Name?
"Stop jumping on the sofa," I warn from the kitchen. The child continues hopping merrily on her way from
one end of the sofa to the other.
"Maggie . . . No, Jamie . . . No . . . you!" The child points to herself with a dramatic flourish. "Yes, you.
Do you see anyone else jumping on the sofa? Now get down!!"
“But you didn’t say me, Mom. How was I supposed to know?”
she says looking at me with big, falsely-innocent eyes.
Poor old what’s her name. You’d think after all the time and
effort my husband and I spent deciding on the perfect names for our beloved children, I could keep them straight. Hours slipped
by as we poured over the names-for-baby books.
Actually, we spent hours of, “How about this?” and “You’re
kidding, right?” I have this theory. You don’t really know your mate until you try to find a name you both can
agree on for your anticipated little bundle of joy. It’s amazing what comes out in those sessions.
You think he’s level-headed and conservative and he comes up
with names like Sundance or Delight. Positive he’s calm and non-violent, he suggests Rambo or Brutus. “For a girl,
dear?” You think he’s a modern kind of guy and he wants Myrtle or Abigail for a girl and Fitzwilliam or Heathcliff
for a boy. The man doesn’t even read Victorian novels for goodness sake. Go figure!
So why can’t I remember their names? I try, but though I know their
faces even better than my own, their names became a jumble. This malady seems to affect all parents at one time or another
and grandparents can be a lost cause with children’s names in multiple families to commit to memory.
All a kid can do is grin and bear it – and maybe hope to get
someone else in trouble somewhere down the line. “You said Johnny is supposed to take out the trash and I’m Joe.”
I remember my parents calling me by my sister’s name. It was when they confused me with my brother that I drew the line.
Even parents of adult children occasionally stumble over the name of the offspring they are talking to or about.
Parents have devised various schemes in an attempt to overcome this problem.
I’ve known parents who named their children in alphabetical order but then they had to remember who was oldest and youngest
in order to put the right name with the right child. Other parents have created posters listing their children’s names
and photos and tacked them up around the house but to no avail.
I once read about a family who had so many children they didn’t know
what to do, so they named them all Charlie – from one to twelve for birth certificate purposes but for everyday use,
it was just Charlie. Despite flirting with disaster, this plan has certain advantages.
Calling them in for dinner would be a snap and you wouldn’t have
to remember who should do which chore, the first Charlie to show up would do just fine. But I’d sure hate to be the
one to answer the phone when they are teenagers, then try to sort out which Charlie was who.
However, after listening to the experiences of a friend of mine, I’m
convinced the situation is hopeless. She was an only child and her parents still called her by the wrong name, usually one
of her aunts or uncles.
Honestly, it’s not that I don’t know which name belongs to
which child; it’s just that sometimes on the spur of the moment, certain details are hard to drag kicking and screaming
from my memory. Oddly enough, I can usually manage to quickly answer questions like how many tablespoons in a cup –
16 – or the capital of Nevada – Carson
City – or how many feet in a mile – 5280 – but my children’s names continue
to elude me when I’m put on the spot.
“Get down off that sofa, Maggie . . . No, Jamie . . . no . . . whatever
your name is . . . Get down!” Copyright Bonnie Phelps 2007
|
