One Part Inspiration...

I don't know about you, dear cyber-reader, but I have very vivid dreams.  It is not unusual for me to wake up from dreams with tears in my eyes, or a smile on my face. I often tell my husband about my dreams and he looks at me kindly, but I can tell he thinks I am a little bit crazy. Not too long ago, I was having a dream that he was ruffling my hair.  Usually I like it when he ruffles my hair, but in my dream, it was causing me much consternation.  Every time he ruffled,  a part of my body became paralyzed.  It started with my feet.  I couldn't move them.  Then it moved up my legs.  Soon, all my appendages were paralyzed. I. Could. Not. Move. [I don't know what was really happening as I was sleeping.  Perhaps, I was getting embroiled in my bed covers.  Maybe I had myself wrapped up in a roll and that's why I couldn't move.] Panic set in.  I was desperately trying to feel my feet. My arms.  Anything! Nothing. My ar...

Today, I headed out for a visit with a dear family friend.  It was mid-morning; the sun was shining(somewhere under the clouds - [sunny days always lend themselves better to a story]) and the birds were singing.  I drove up our road and stopped at the corner, when I saw one of our city's finest (I am referring to the police department) with a car drawn across the road in a cordoning-off-limits position. I rolled down my window and she informed me that they were on the lookout for a suspect who had possibly crossed the border.  She took a cursory glance in my van to see if I was hiding him.  Nope.  First I'd heard about it.  Then she told me that if I could head out, but I couldn't come back because the road would be blocked. After asking her a really stupid question - which as it was coming out of my mouth I tried to retract, but it was no use "Do you have a timeline?".... I took a deep breath and headed out.  I didn't know when I would be able ...

Last week, my young sister-in-law came to stay with us for a few days.  She is still in school and it was my responsibility to ensure she had her homework done.  The first day, she worked on it on her own.  I was happy because it was math homework.  Math and I are not friends. The second night, I asked her if she had homework.  She said (rather miserably) " Yes, and it is algebra and I don't understand how to do it." .  I assured her that there were enough math whiz-kings in our household to help her conquer this mountain.  (One of them would NOT be me but I didn't mention that) Fast forward to early evening.  I was on my way to doing some errands and suddenly remembered  I needed to follow up on the homework thing.  So I asked her to get out the page of math.  She brought it to the table.  I asked her if she had a pencil (Stall tactic - because I took one look at the page with all those "X" and "Y" combinations and I bega...

Not far from where I live, is a "park and ride" where my mother-in-law and I meet once or twice a week to carpool and save a little gas.  On Monday when I returned to the van, and started it up, I knew immediately something was wrong.  It is just NOT RIGHT when a mini-van sounds like it's trying out for 'The Fast and the Furious #299".  It's a mini-van afterall.  The decibel level was so loud, and the reverberation was so strong, that I turned off the ignition right away. Ever the optimist I am (not), I decided to try again.  I turned the ignition key once more, hoping for better results.  Carbon monoxide poisoning would have been immediate if I had been in a garage.  Huge blue puffs of smoke billowed out from underneath the van.  I got out.  I went to the back of the van, and kneeled on the ground (in my work clothes).  The muffler was still there.  Now I was completel...

One of the reasons  I like living on the "wet coast" is that the incidence of a 'snow event' is fairly low and when it arrives, it is usually short-lived. [And by short-lived, I mean it falls one day and is gone the next because the temperature rises, or the rain returns] I would be just as happy never to have another snow day in the rest of my life.  I don't like being cold.  I don't like the idea that the power might go out at any moment.  I don't like the looming possibility of running out of supplies.  I don't like the unpredictability of snow days.  I get anticipatory cabin fever when snow is predicted.  Will it last one day?  Two?  A week?  Will I have to resign myself to being like Laura Ingalls Wilder in Little House on The Prairie ?  For most of my life out here, the meterologists bat fairly low.  Their dire predictions of 'snow events' are not that accurate.  Fearmongering is...

It was a sunny September day.  I was enjoying a lunch with my  father-in-law.  The older kids were in school, and my baby was down for a nap.  It was quiet in the house except for the sound of our conversation.  And yet, every once in a while, I heard a crackling sound.  It was weird.  I wondered if wasps were trying to get through the roof again.  I looked around but saw nothing.  And then I heard it again.  I asked him what that sound was and he said he wasn’t sure.  We resumed eating.  But the sound became so insistent that we had to look for the source.  We looked out the window and found our answer. The barn, which he had been painstakingly taking apart and burning in the burn pile, had caught on fire. The flames were crackling,sizzling and hissing. The sky was ablaze.     It was impressive . We ran outside and pondered what to do.  I asked him if he wanted me to get the hose.  ...

A few weeks ago, we passed another milestone.  My #2 son graduated into the world of driving.  This marks my last foray into the world of instructing my kids to become defenSiVe!!! drivers. Although I have had a lot of experieince in this area, it never gets old.  New drivers have a perfect mix of trepidation and impertinence. They can cause an instantaneous rise in blood pressure and inability to form a complete sentence in the person who is now relegated to the passenger's seat.                                              Being a driving instructor causes me to have a split personality.  I alternate between being as calm as a boat in a windless sea, and frantic as a... as a.... well, as a mom locked in a min...

They are installing new water mains along our street.  The people are very pleasant, and when they see you are turning into your driveway, instead of continuing down the road, they make every effort to scale back the work and let you through. Since we have some room on our driveway, they have used it to dump loads of gravel, park huge excavators, and pile up pipes.  The other morning, I was pulling out of the driveway, and because there were so many workers and big machines to my left, I decided to turn right and go around all the construction. The sun was in my eyes, I was on a bit of an incline and the van sat a little higher than a car.  So,  I drove right into the large hole they had dug, in preparation to install the pipe.  CRUUUNNNNCCHH.  Having got myself into the hole, I realized quickly, that I also had to get myself out of the hole.  I avoided eye contact with anyone and CRUUNNCCHH drove out of the hole, and kept going.  ...

I don't like clothes shopping. You may have guessed that by now. I try to avoid it if I can. I'm allergic to humiliation. There's something about walking into a store, trying to guess my size, and being completely wrong, that gives me hives. One time, I went into a store where they give you numbers to keep track of what you try on. If you decide you don't want something, you have to give it back and they give you another number. And you can't go back out on the floor to see if there's something more appropriate, unless you don't have any numbers left. Already uncomfortable with this system, I ventured into the change room and found that the dress didn't fit. I went back out to the guard lady in the change room, and asked quietly if it came in a larger size. She yelled out to the woman at the other end of the store " SALLY, CAN YOU GET THIS IN A LARGER SIZE?? ?" I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole before she said anythin...

My daughter brought her cat, when she moved back in with us. The cat is very friendly. She likes to keep track of everyone. Especially at 4 in the morning. I'm not a fan of having a cat jump on my bed, and I do my level best to get her to understand that playing with the plastic bag in the garbage can is not night duty. Nor is hopping up on our head board to look outside. The cat says she understands, and then completely ignores me. So I put a laundry basket in front of the door - full of unsorted laundry. I woke up to see her looking out the window. She'd pushed the door open - laundry and all, and decided to keep watch for us while we slept. It doesn't help that the cat is a tad bit lonely for my daughter, who is house-sitting for some other people. She wanders around looking for my daughter, and although she is temporarily distracted by us, she definitely misses her missus. She doesn't meow. She just jingles. Her collar has a little bell on it that alerts us to...