Monday, June 17, 2013

father's day...check.

I'm happy to have survived another Father's Day relatively unscathed.  Not only were Miz Susan and I joined on the back deck by four of our children (the fifth flies in tonite) but we also hosted Tomas's mother Pia, who'd jetted in recently from Argentina.  That made for interesting conversations with a constant hum of translation in the background.  Liz and Kate were sort of able to follow along with Liz looking for hints of French in Pia's Spanish and Kate listening for what little Italian she hasn't already forgotten since December.  But Miz Susan and I could only keep looking helplessly to Tomas and Alison for help as to what Pia was saying and vice-versa for her.  We did OK even with a nasty rain squall chasing us inside until the dessert course.

I was generally left alone to do my usual grilling and table clearing and dish washer loading.  But I was called on to hold myself up to public self-ridicule for the entertainment of my daughters.  Who does it better?  They hadn't heard the story of another of my recent brushes with my own stupidity (or worse).  For added effect, I blew the punch line.  The word's out now, I might as well let the whole world in on it.  The story goes like this.

A month or so back when the PowerBall jackpot was approaching the levels of some smaller Minnesota counties' annual budgets, I hit a $4 winner on a ticket.  When this happens, I don't do the smart thing and look for investment opportunities in up-and-coming penny stocks.  Not me.  I take the winning ticket back to SuperAmerica and roll it over into more tickets.  To compound that dumbness, I usually buy a couple more besides.

So, there was this $4 winner and I asked Miz Susan if I had time to walk up to SA to secure our fortune in the next drawing.  Sure, no problem.  So I headed up the street for SA.  But, between our house and SA, lies Cheapo Records and Discs.  Never one to pass up a chance to throw good money after bad, I stopped in and browsed Cheapo. To my credit (about the only thing in this story to my credit) I didn't buy anything.

I was ready to brave the traffic on Snelling when I realized that I didn't bring the ticket with me.  Pretty sure that they wouldn't take my word for it at SA,  I turned around and headed for home.  Sigh.  Susan's seen this stuff from me before so she jumped on the chance to suggest that this would be the perfect time for me to put some gas in her car.  Given the moral low ground that I was occupying, how could I argue?  Out the front door and into the Tahoe for the 2-block drive to Super America.  It gets better.

I gassed the Tahoe up with the usual 10  gallons (I just know that gas is going to go down to $1.99 again and soon) and went into the store to do my PowerBall business.  I reminded the cashier that it was her who had sold me the winner a couple of days ago.  She seemed impressed.  I took my tickets, walked out the door, breeezed right past my car and walked home.

Where Miz Susan and I proceeded to have dinner.  I can't remember what it was but I can guarantee you that it wasn't anything that's been linked to better brain function.  We cleaned up and started to get ready for the trek up to bed.  One of my new pre-bedtime rituals has become a last check to make sure that both cars are locked.  This security consciousness is a fairly new routine for me and comes in the wake of our Toyota getting prowled a few weeks earlier.  I can't for the life of me figue out what else got stolen other than the 47¢ in loose change.  Hey, I wasn't the only sap to get hit that night.

But imagine my surprise when I got out onto the front porch and saw no sign whatsoever of the big black Tahoe which is usually hunkered down in front of our house.  I'll bet it took me a good 10 seconds to reconstruct what had happened.  Or hadn't happened.  With a shriek to Susan down in the basement that I had to go out for awhile, I was down the steps and half running (can't really manage anything much quicker) with the set of car keys in my hand.  What comes next is what I forgot in my story as we were all gathered around the Father's Day dinner table, thus blowing the punchline.  Or at least one of the many punchlines in this sorry story.

When I got to the corner of Laurel and Snelling, I started anxiously looking toward SA to see if the St. Paul cops had surrounded the Tahoe with bomb-sniffing dogs or were hooking it up to a tow truck.  Neither.  Big sigh of relief.  I got to the car, breathing hard, and hit the remote to unlock it.  I might have unlocked another Toyota or two within a block's radius but the Tahoe's locks were unmoved.  Wrong set of keys.  Do I now really have to go home to try to explain this to Susan?

Yes.  Yes, I did.  I trudged back home, swapped keys, warned Susan that I was suffering an episode of early Alzheimer's onset and headed back for my car.  Which, thankfully, had not yet attracted the attention of the local authorities or Homeland Security.  This time, the locks responded to the remote and I was able to drag myself up into the driver's seat and bug out.  Without so much as a thank you to the Super Ameica staff for keeping such a close eye on my car for the last two hours.

I did have some explaining to do to Miz Susan when I finally got home.  She seemed sympathetic and concerned for me but I just know that, inwardly, she was packing a bag for a quick get-away to stay with her mother in Lamberton.  In the Tahoe.

Needless to say, there weren't any winnners in that batch of PowerBall tickets.  Not for me anyway.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

long day's journey into whatever

I woke up with a start this morning at about 3:20. I remembered right away that I'd forgotten to set the alarm on my phone.  No big deal, either way.  I can't remember the last time I slept through a night without waking up and seeing the red numbers on the clock radio reading somewhere between midnight and way too early.  Once in a awhile, I'll actually be asleep when the alarm goes off at 5:10 but that happens like a night or two a month.

I was still a little bit rattled by all this at 3:20 this morning.  Rattled because, even though I hadn't set the alarm last night for good reason, I remembered right away when I woke up that I'd forgotten to set the alarm and was thinking that I needed to be up for work in another couple of hours, what with today being Thursday and all.

The good reason that I hadn't set the alarm last night was, of course, that last night was Friday.  And today is Saturday and I didn't need to be awake at 3:20 or 5:10 or any time much before 9 o'clock this morning.

Maybe I was compensating for last week when I was convinced that we were a day further along on the calendar than we actually were.  Neither state of mind is particularly productive though I guess that being just one day off last week was better than being two days off this morning.  Thinking that I needed to go back to work on Thursday and Friday after having already worked them has to have been a bad sign, though of what I don't know.  I really should have known better because, if I'd thought about it for even a second, I'd have realized that I sure as hell wasn't gonna get paid twice for those days even if I did work them again.

Or maybe I'm entering some early stage of dementia which is messing with my internal clock.  I worry all the time about an early onset of dementia even if I still do OK on the Friday crosswords.  I haven't yet headed off to work one morning to come out of some driving-induced coma two hours later in Fergus Falls surrounded by Egg MacMuffin wrappers, having missed all three exits for Brooklyn Park.  I suppose that's a good sign.  And I haven't yet headed off to work one morning only to get to work and realize that it's Saturday or Sunday.

There may be hope for me yet.