Finally--Eight Random Things

I sucessfully achieved escape velocity at around midnight last night and am now officially on vacation! Now I can respond to the several of you who tagged me days and days ago for the eight random things meme.

Eight Random Things

1. I can't remember the rules to card games. Except for War, you will have to tell me how to play again every time. There is a card playing gene in my family tree that seems to get passed down in the ON or OFF position. For me it is definetly OFF. My Dad is a duplicate bridge fanatic and was quite the poker player in his youth. One of my great-grandmothers reportedly died of a heart attack after a very successful night of card playing. Me, I'm lucky if I can get through a round of gin rummy without embarassing myself.

2. I can wiggle my ears.

3. I sort of never graduated from high school. My family was living overseas and I'd attended three different high schools which all had very different programs. I had learned tons, but did not have a set of credits that added up to a diploma in any given system. So my parents hatched the brilliant plan that I should simply get my GED, tuck my SAT scores under my arm and apply to college for the next semester. I started college in January of what would, under normal circumstances, have been my Senior year in an American high school.

4. This scheme only worked because my Dad had been college buddies with the man who had become Director of Admissions at their alma mater, (which would become my alma mater as well.) So although I usually am only too willing to jump on the bandwagon when criticisms of our current president start flying, when folks start talking about how he only got into the college he got into because of who his parents knew, I keep my mouth shut.

5. I'm the oldest child in my family, but also the shortest. What's up with that?

6. There is also a neatness gene in my family tree that gets passed on in the ON or OFF position. For me it is OFF.

7. I have had twelve cats in my lifetime. I figured this out the other night when my daughter asked me how many cats I'd had. Here's to: CAT, Pussyfoots, Licorice, Gingham, Alexander, Ralph, Spider, Prince Later in the Week, Precious, Lilith, Elizabeth, and Balrog.

8. This list does not include the kittens of Licorice or Gingham who passed through the household quickly before going to new homes. It does not include various neighbor cats who were part of our lives during times when my family or I could not have a cat of our own: Orange Blossom and Black Cat in North Carolina, Marmalade from England or Souvlaki in Greece. It also doesn't include Schniklefritz and Shmuzel, my German Professor's cats who I lived with the summer I sublet her apartment while she was in Germany.

If you haven't already played this game, TAG! You're it.

Nailed

So. I finally had my first pedicure. I dealt with the guilt factor by making it a mother-daughter quality time bonding experience. (My husband and son had gone to a Dodger's game as a father's day weekend adventure, so we needed an equivalent "girl thing".)

I must say it was something like the first time I went into a Starbucks. Just as a dozen years ago I didn't know the difference between a Latte, a Breve and a Chai , I stood staring at the options/prices list completely bewildered by a foreign vocabulary. What is a Full Set Crystal and how does it differ from a Full Set Silk? What could a Pink and White Fill be? What is a Spa Ped.w/Parf.? We stuck with what we knew: a plain manicure/pedicure. My daughter chose bright blue polish.

The other eye-opening bit was the number of men in the shop. Regular looking guys--one there with his own young daughter. I guess it just makes sense in a part of the country where we all go around in sandals a good chunk of the time that everyone wants their feet to look good. And Lord knows I've seen enough guys with SCARY looking feet. Still, my inner midwesterner was exclaiming, "Well, I'll be jiggered!"

All in all an educational experience.

Now, does anyone have a copy of "Nail-Shop Lingo for Dummies?"

In which I discover my true calling

While the people at my house have been busy with "end of the school year" festivities, I snuck out to the movies. I now understand my true vocation and identity: SPIDER CAT.

The Mom of the House says she is very sorry she has not been posting much or responding to your kind "tags" for the Eight Random Things meme. She has been really busy lately. The people are going on vacation soon. I'll bet she will catch up with you then.

Off to practice my web-casting!

Balrog the Kitten

Hysterical Relief

I'm very relieved that the new passport rules have been temporarily suspended. I was this close to cancelling my plane reservations to Canada for week after next in despair that my new passport would not arrive in time. When I went on-line to print out my passport application receipt, I accidently typed in assport instead of passport.

Well, you can tell it is late Friday afternoon because my colleague and I just about expired from laughing about this and snickering about people we know whose assports need to be confiscated.
Good thing everyone else has left the office for the day.

Ambushed

Sympathy seems to be leaning toward my adversary, so I think you all need to see what I am dealing with on a daily basis.

Here I am, trying to enjoy a quiet breakfast. But Noooooooooo. I have to watch my back because that damn kitten is lying in wait on the bookshelf.

You see? What kind of a life is this?

Elizabeth the Cat

A Little TOO Ordinary, Perhaps

My sermon yesterday was a plea for folks to be open to God speaking to us in extra-ordinary ways during Ordinary Time.

Five minutes after the service was over, several sharp-eyed members noticed that we had what appeared to be a big plumbing disaster in the works. The cap of one of the outside clean-outs had blown clear off and sewage was belching out into the parking lot. Our Sunday custodian pretty much is just a set up and clean up guy--not a diagnose and repair guy. After some head-scratching and some half-hearted searching for a plumber's snake, we all concluded that the only reasonable course of action at that point was to call Rescue Rooter.

They promised to send someone within the hour. So I settled down on a bench at a discrete distance to await his arrival. I could hear the Spanish service beginning and blissed out on their singing for a while. In due course the Rooter guy arrived and I spent the first Sunday of Ordinary Time watching him run a 90 foot snake through our sewer line. Then, as if that were not exciting enough he offered to run a free camera through the line to see what was really going on down there. Roots, of course. Growing through the offset joints in our fifty year old terra cotta sewer pipes.

As I drove home two hours after our service had ended I could almost hear God chortling, "Was that ORDINARY enough for yah, Honey?"