Marathons and Exits

Road crews are working on adding a new interchange to the highway I travel in my commute.

The construction got me to thinking about a time in my early childhood when my family used to periodically travel the New Jersey Turnpike to visit relatives.

Exit signs were the primary indicators of progress made - and distances yet to travel. In addition to announcing the name of the secondary road served, each exit sign also provided the number of miles to the next exit.

Twenty-three miles between one exit and another was cause for much moaning and groaning from the backseat. When you're a kid who has already been in a car for over an hour and the next milestone is nearly half an hour away - well that's an eternity.

One particularly hot summer afternoon my displeasure with the never ending ride was heightened by the discovery that a new exit had been added between exits 7 and 8. The new exit was 7A and it was very bad news as far as I was concerned.

In my mind, the new exit meant the distance between exits 7 and 8 had to have been lengthened to accommodate this offensive new off ramp.

Exit 7A could only mean - the marathon ride had just gotten longer.

I wanted to stomp my feet and cry foul - but my Dad would have made it clear that I was going to be the cause of his having to turn the car around.

Triple Thinking

Nuclear Winter, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits. These three things were on my mind as I drove into work this morning.

Twilight Zone and Outer Limits because the world seemed "out of phase". I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Perhaps it was the morning mist that couldn't decide if it wanted to be up or down. There were areas where mist swept across the street, obliterating shoulders of the road - and other places where the mist hung just high enough to make it seem I was driving through a tunnel.

Twilight Zone and Outer Limits because the writers for those two television shows were experts and taking ordinary life and twisting it so to reveal the possibility that something totally incomprehensible could be developing beneath a shell of ordinary appearance. This morning it certainly seemed that something opposite of ordinary could be waiting around the next bend.

Nuclear Winter because as the light from the sun finally managed to push through the mist, the eastern sky turned a alien yellow- green. I imagined that if there enough ash in the air, this dim mutated color could be the most hopeful light the day would bring. A light that could just as easily be radioactive glow as light from a distant star.

Have Cat Will Travel

So there I was cruising along the highway when a motorcycle passed me.

Such an event is not so special - but seeing a cat carrier strapped to the seat behind the rider definitely caught my attention.

While I couldn't take my eyes off the road long enough to really study the cat carrier, I could picture the cat inside. All four paws clutching the wire door while wind blew through the carrier at 70 mph. The cat's tail would no doubt have been fluffed to the diameter of a baseball bat while the cat's fur was whipped in all directions.

Had the motorcycle exhaust not been loud enough to make the floor of my car vibrate, I might have heard the cat's howls of dismay.

Reclaiming Summer

We've been shortchanged.

Remember when the official summer season lasted until Labor Day?

Then school districts and colleges quietly shaved a day here, a day there, - and suddenly the summer season ended seven to ten days sooner.

Let's reverse the trend. Let's restore the official summer season - plus add a few days here and a few days there.

I propose moving Labor Day to the first Monday before the Post-Summer equinox so that summer ends when summer really ends.

Further, I propose the weeks between Memorial Day and the new Labor Day all be changed to four day work weeks. NOW we're talking, huh? Huh, huh?

Now, to identify the right charismatic front person for the cause. Maybe Matthew McConaughey. He has a considerable number of silver screen credits to his name. He also has a rugged, outdoor, summertime appearance. As for leadership skills... well Motivated Mom says she'd follow him anywhere for any reason.

Squirrel Memory

I was watching a squirrel scurry from place to place beneath the trees yesterday. Since he neither picked anything up in his paws nor put anything down, I figured he was taking inventory - making sure he remembered all of his hiding spots.

As I child, I accepted without question that a squirrel was able to commit all of his food stashes to memory.

As an adult I still accept a squirrel's abilities, but no longer without question. Because now that I have trouble remembering where I left my eyeglasses mere minutes after I set them down, I want to know how it is a squirrel can fund nuts weeks and months after burying them.

Ask me what I had for lunch last Wednesday, and the best answer I would be able to provide would be ... food. Yet a squirrel can apparently find that particularly double acorn that was buried twelve Wednesdays ago.

How do the squirrels do it? I really want to know because.....

Oh dear. I've forgotten what I was going to say.

Surging Clouds

It was one of those mornings when I couldn't help but take note of the weather.

Overhead slate gray clouds hung low with dark pregnant bellies. Rather than softly contoured, the clouds were streamlined - slanted hard to the west - as though needing to lean forward in order to drag their burdens of moisture.

Row after row the clouds moved with such speed that they sheared apart along their trailing edges. In a way it appeared the ocean had overrun the shores and was now surging across the sky.

I could only wonder at the strength of the off shore storm that was driving the clouds onward and shivered at the thought of being caught up in its power.

Math and Democracy

First of all - my apologies. I promise lighter reading fare in the days ahead. I know you check in here for relief from the stress of the workaday world. It's just that... I feel compelled to seek an explanation.


One of my personal shortcomings is a low tolerance for stupidity....
...Which is why I seldom follow the news anymore.

Over the past couple weeks, ignoring my own better judgment, I have taken to occasionally listening to news programs during my commute. The resultant simmer of anger and frustration that sometimes boils into road rage has convinced me that a car is not the place to listen to the news.

Is there someone out there who can explain the new math to me?

It's now the "norm" to have 9.875 percent unemployment. (We should be "okay" with this for the long term apparently. We should be okay with the U.S. losing a half million jobs in one week.) Only we don't really have 9.875 percent unemployment, the government just chooses not to acknowledge the additional 8 percent who have given up looking for work and have exhausted their unemployment benefits. - Is this something like what we used to call carrying the remainder or rounding off?

The government will now require people who can't afford health insurance to buy it anyway. Then the government can include the underemployed in the new tax that will be applied to worker's health benefits. Thereby ensuring the underemployed will have even less of the money they didn't have before. Is this the new algebra in which people with empty pockets are represented as x's and y's that cause no moral discomfort?

It used to be that the United States was intolerant of even 4 percent unemployment. And it used to be that Americans had the option of buying food before insurance.

So in addition to the new math, maybe someone can explain the new democracy?

Name Forever

One of those evenings when mental gears just refuse to mesh.

So I offer a short meditation.

Calling something by a name once, you mark it forever.

Port or Left

Either the ship was going to have to veer hard to port or I was going to have to make an extreme left turn.

The top half of the ship's mast rose above the low lying fog. The red running light at the top of the mast blinked directly ahead, as did the the smaller lights at the ends of the yard arms.
It would be only a matter of seconds before the hood of my car met the bow of the ship. And yet my mind refused to direct my foot to the brake pedal.

Such was my disorientation this morning. After months of heading off to work in sunlight I was unaccustomed to the lingering darkness. With ground obscuring fog further adding to the strangeness of what used to be familiar terrain, my eyes and my mind were at odds as to what action was called for.

It was not until after I had barely managed to navigate what should have been an expected turn in the road that I saw the mast for what it was - the communication tower rising from beside the local fire station.

The multiple arrays of antennae mounted to the tower had given the appearance of yard arms on the mast of a sailing ship.

It was with a wave of relief that I continued my journey on solid ground.

Bottle Cap Education

The things you can learn from a bottle cap!

I picked up a bottle of Snapple tea at lunch today - and discovered a small paragraph of information under the cap.

Did you know that no two lions have the same patterns of whiskers - that each lion's muzzle is as unique as a human fingerprint?

I sure didn't. And that got me to wondering.....

Does that whisker thing apply to all members of the feline species? If so just how many whiskers are on a cat's face? Considering the number of house cats in the world, for each to have a unique whisker pattern - well, cats must be carrying around a lot more whiskers than I ever thought.

An internet search provided lots of hits for cat whiskers. But rather than getting an answer to the question of quantity I made a new discovery.

It seems a lot of people are considering trimming the whiskers on their feline friends.

Are they nuts? Have they not seen what a cat can do to the trunk of a tree with front claws alone?

Who in their right mind is going to try snipping at a cat's face with a pair of scissors?

Mortgages and Migration

The term of the average home mortgage is five years. Meaning that in today's world the average American family packs up and moves every five years.

At first I was startled by that piece of information, but as I thought about it I realized that it fits in with another statistic. The average worker in the U.S. changes jobs every five years or less.

Which means... Americans are in nearly constant migration. I guess that fits when I consider early American history of wagon trains and taming the wild west.

Still, it seems a change from shorter term history. As a kid my impression was that families pretty much stayed put. Oh sure, there was the occasional family that moved in or out of the neighborhood. But for the most part I could count on seeing the same neighbors day after day.

Maybe that's just because I was a kid and one year (let alone five) seemed like a good chunk of eternity.

Then again I don't think so. Certainly a new kid showing up in school was the exception rather than the norm. If families had been moving every five years back then, my graduating class would have been a whole different set of kids than I had known in junior high.

So what's changed? What has Americans in a constant search? And what is it they're searching for?

Dream'n of Wind

At one time or another we've all woken from a dream and wondered - Where in the heck did that come from?

There was no wondering on my part this morning after waking from an exhausting night struggling to keep a three masted schooner from running aground.

I spent the night manning the wooden steering wheel of the ship. You've seen the steering wheels in movies if nowhere else. A circle of carved oak some four feet in diameter with heavy wooden spindles running from the hub outward to provide hand holds.

The currents and the winds were against me the entire night. Every time I would steer away from land, the wind direction would change and once again the ship would be heading toward a rocky outcropping.

My cries for help went unheard, carried away by the same wind that buffeted the ship, made the canvas sails snap, and howled in my ears.

One of the heavy sails tore loose from the yardarm above and fell over top of me.

Panicked, I struggled awake and..... found myself wrapped in the bed sheet with the oscillating fan blowing on me at high speed.

Happy Birthday To....

Happy Birthday to Motivated Mom who turns.... another year older today.

This is the 27th time I've had the pleasure of sharing in her birthday. I hope I'll share many more.

While I still look for just the right gift, and agonize over the selection of cards in the Hallmark store every year, I know in some respects these things have become secondary.

Not that I don't think Motivated Mom would be disappointed if I forgot such expressions of affection, but the special connection that develops over nearly three decades is a gift in itself - a gift we share equally.

Some relationships are destined to work out. Some relationships are decided at a universal level far above the two people involved. I would not believe such if I had not experienced it myself.

I cannot conceive of spending twenty seven years with anyone other than Motivated Mom.

Happy Birthday my dear!

King Herman

I was pulling into the parking lot at work on Friday when I noticed a new resident.

The lot I park in adjoins three to four acres of rolling lawn. Furtive movement in the middle of that lawn fell just within the outer range of my peripheral vision. I turned my head to the right but saw nothing. Scanning back to the left, I still came up empty.

I was about to write the movement off to my imagination when the groundhog rose up on his hindquarters. If ever there was a granddaddy groundhog, this was him. Easily the size of a small dog, his loose skin fell about him like the folds of a kingly robe.

Given that I work on the Herman Holloway campus, I immediately dubbed the groundhog King Herman.

I watched as King Herman surveyed the three acres that made up his kingdom. Herman's head ratcheted at an inch at a time, rather like a battery operated wall clock with a jumpy second hand. Herman missed not a single bird pecking for breakfast nor a single car skirting his kingdom.

All of a sudden, in an impossibly quick motion, King Herman disappeared from view and I was left looking at an empty rolling lawn.

Faces and Names

I have this thing with names. I have to speak with someone face to face four or five times before I can connect the name and the face.

As with every rule there are exceptions, but for the most part that's the way it is for me.

This evening I chanced upon the tail end of the Colbert Report. An artist was being interviewed. The artist was talking about a learning disability that prevents him from being able to remember a face. He made the comment that in a face to face meeting, every time the person the artist is speaking to moves their face as little as half an inch the artist sees an entirely new face.

Imagine! In a five minute meeting with a single person, this artist might see hundreds of unique faces and not be able to connect a single one of those faces with the person being addressed.

Now if I had to try to remember the names for all of those faces......

What Happens When....

What happens when 7000 beach vacationers wake to a rainy morning?

After an extra morning snooze they head for the nearby shopping outlets.

What happens when some 5000 cars descend on parking lots that can accommodate 4000 cars?

Pandemonium.

Such was the case today according to Motivated Mom who went in search of sustainance during her lunch break - and found access to all nearby restaurants and eateries blocked by thousands of perpetually circling cars.

Had some enterprising young men had the proper resources, I suspect they could have put a substantial amount of cash in their pockets by offering refueling on the fly. I'm guessing folks would have paid top dollar to have had five gallons of gas dumped in the fuel tanks of their cars to avoid losing out on the next available parking place.

There was a bright side to all of this. Forced to look for alternative lunch options, Motivated Mom found a new "kickin" food vendor offering superior quality for below market price.

I won't share the name. We'll keep Motivated Mom's find safe for the local residents.

Shadow Side Up

I could have been watching a solar eclipse yesterday without the need for a piece of cardboard with a hole punched in it.

Not that there was a solar eclipse mind you. It's just that while I was driving into work, I realized I was staring directly at the morning sun without so much as lowering the sun visor or blinking my eyes.

With calendars now displaying the month of August, the humidity has thickened into a gray filter covering the entire dome of the sky. The effect is that of living beneath an inverted bowl with everything beyond the bowl mutated from its true appearance.

The sun, a muted orb in the sky, offered less light than a hundred-watt bulb. In truth it didn't look like any star from our solar system at all. Which had me contemplating for a few minutes if I was really even on Earth.

Then brake lights flashed on in rapid succession as inconsiderate drivers made last minute lane changes without the warning of a turn signal and I realized that regardless of how different the sky looked, I was still in the midst of the earthly bi-daily migration.

Snakes and Tails

Snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of.

There are no little boys hanging around our house these days, but as far as Motivated Mom's concerned there's way too many of the things little boys are made of.

Few things in the world creep Motivated Mom out like a snake. With all of this heat, snakes seem to be coming out of - well, wherever it is snakes usually hide - at an amazing rate. After nearly stepping on a slithering snake measuring a little over two feet in length and having the diameter of a buffalo nickle, I don't know that Motivated Mom will be going into the back yard any more this year.

Then there's the whole puppy dog tail thing. Motivated Mom has ended up spending more time taking care of Media Girl's dog than Media Girl does. And while I think Motivated Mom would really like to love the dog, well... the dog is just too stupid to be lovable.

Ready to start enjoying the solitude of empty nesting, Motivated Mom finds herself accosted on all sides.

No doubt there's a sainthood waiting for her somewhere.

Attendants and Girth

There were two news articles that caught my eye today. One about the Jet Blue flight attendant who pulled a Snagglepuss (exit - stage left) and another about belly bulge.

And it occurred to me that I had unwittingly discovered the underlying cause for irritable airline passenger syndrome (IASP).

Results of a study on waist sizes indicates that if your pants are tight you're going to die at an earlier age than your slim and trim neighbor (yeah, I know, news flash).

Even a person with an average waistline finds airline seats a snug fit. Feeling those stubby arms of airline seats pressing against their girth, passengers who thought they had long lives ahead of them are suddenly fearful that their earthly existence is slipping away at double and triple time speed.

And how do those panicked passengers deal with a suddenly shortening life span? They take out their frustrations on the poor flight attendants. They demand drinks, pillows, blankets, napkins - because after all they're practically on their death bed.

Already stressed out, but free to move around the cabin unlike the slowly suffocating passengers, the flight attendants seek release from their unanticipated indoctrination into intensive caring. That release comes in the form of a little handle that deploys the emergency exit chute.

Voila' the flight attendant exits to the spacious outdoors- leaving the grumpy, space challenged airline passenger to suffer in unattended agony.

Double Stuff

When Motivated Mom and I moved our family from Pennsylvania to Delaware six years ago we decided we were going to downsize and simplify.

As part of moving, we auctioned off the vast majority of our stuff save for what we considered necessities (clothes, beds - the basics).

Even with a goal for an uncluttered lifestyle free of miscellaneous stuff we still managed to fill the biggest Uhaul truck available.

Now that we're hoping to make another move, we're looking around our house and discovering... aaaggghhhh an insurgence of stuff!

How did this happen? How did these knick-knacks, odds-and-ends, and curios make their way into our house beneath our very noses?

I suppose I might not be so disillusioned in my lack of resolve if the the items occupying corners of bookshelves, drawers in end tables, and the rearmost corners of closets were necessary. But the sad truth is - only twenty percent of what's in our house are must-haves.

So we're once again faced with getting rid of stuff we need not have acquired in the first place.

Homeward Bound

A common thread in conversations today was how people always seem to return home when life throws then a curve ball. We started wondering why this is.

Folks who leave their home town usually do so in search of something they're not finding where they've grown up.

So if after leaving plans go awry, why return to the place that had nothing to offer?

Is it because when viewed from the outside the appeal can be seen? Sort of like not seeing the forest for the trees.

Or is it because nature kicks in and the struggling member of the family is suddenly overwhelmed by the need to return to the nest?

Ultimately we decided this deserves more study. Maybe we should apply for a grant.

Struggling Awake

There is a period of time between sleeping and waking when the mind seems undecided as to which is which. On a normal morning, on a normal day the blurred line of reality is of no more concern than a misplaced comma leading to a momentary misinterpretation of a sentence.

But on those mornings when the figures from a lingering nightmare ride on the last vestiges of sleep, that small disorientation grows into a vast wasteland needing to be crossed. There is a fear that to not move fully into the waking world will lead to a permanent haunting by the malformed creatures of dark dreams.

In the struggle to overcome the lethargy that pulls like mental quicksand, bedsheets entangle our legs, sweat dampens our pillows, and surging blood echoes in our ears.

I was caught in just such a struggle the other morning and found myself wondering.... What if I manage to sit up in bed, swing my legs over the edge of the mattress, and find nothing solid beneath my feet?

Rescued Yes, Fixed Maybe

The car has been rescued from unintended exile (see the two preceding blog posts).

When the dealership opened and again claimed they did not have the car, Motivated Mom was able to relay the exact location of the car based on my stealth reconnaissance the prior night.

I won't bore all you readers with the dealer's continued inept handling of the repair. Suffice it to say I have reason to doubt the underlying cause of the trouble has been addressed.

But the good news is the car has been returned to us. Has the front grill twisted upward in a grin? Are the headlights sparkling in glee? Is that purring under the hood a sound of contentment?

Yes, I believe the little Accent is happy to be home. Perhaps it will perform like a dedicated trooper after all.

Found But Not Saved

We've all seen the animation movies in which appliances, tools, and automibiles possess human characteristics.

I endowed our Hyundai with those characteristics when I finally found it.

Yes, it was I who finally found our missing car when neither the roadsite assistance company nor the dealer would put forth the effort (see previous blog post).

Long after the dealership had closed, long after the sun had set and the moon risen, long after an evening shower had passed through; I found the car in the deepest, darkest back corner of the dealer's lot amidst vehicles with crumpled fenders, missing bumpers, and cracked windshields.

There in the middle of all that forgotten dilapidation sat our shiny black Hyundai Accent. I imagined I could almost hear the whimpers coming from under the hood. And there on the lens of the one headlight - was that residual moisture from the earlier shower or were there tears forming?

Certain the poor little car was wondering what it had done to deserve to be abandoned, I was tempted to pat the metal roof and whisper assurances. At the last moment I changed my mind. The car would think rescue was at hand only to be be left alone once again. Media Girl had the spare key, not I, and with the dealership closed there was nothing I could do until morning.

To be continued.....

Losing a Car

How do you lose a car?

You tow, and you tow, and you tow it.

And in fact Media Girl's car DID get lost on Monday - after being hooked to a tow truck!

We were, of course, disappointed that a new car only two months off the dealer's lot would fail to run.

We called Hyundai roadside assistance. The tow truck arrived, hooked up the car, and took it to the dealership.

Errr, ah, that is, that's where everybody understood the car to be going. But when a subsequent call to the dealer revealed the car had never arrived panic set in.

Phone call after phone call kept leading to an undeniable fact. Nobody knew where the car was.

To be continued....

Away from Shore

Some people will do anything to catch a fish.

That was the thought going through my mind as I watched a teenage boy push a kayak into the surf and paddle some two hundred yards off shore.

As the boy paddled, the fishing reel on the pole his father was holding buzzed like a fifty pound mosquito as the line spun out. The father was standing on the beach and the business end of the fishing line was attached to the kayak.

When the kayaking boy was far enough from shore to worry about small pleasure craft traffic, he looked over his shoulder and got the okay from his dad to drop the hook and weight into the water.

I smirked, gave a gentle shake of my head, and returned to my book. There was no real fishing going on - or should I say no catching going on. At this time of year the fish tend to stay quite a way off shore where the water is cooler.

While the father / son approach was a unique way to get a fishing line out beyond the warm water near shore, I questioned the effort.

Forty minutes later I was neither smirking nor questioning when the father reeled an eight foot shark onto the beach.