Mom Buys Everyone Cars


BMW 3-Series (E90)

BMW 3-Series (E90) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

… except for me.

Since my Dad’s death back in the fall of 2008, Mother has, in one way or another, gifted vehicles on all the licensed members of my immediate family. DNOS got the ball rolling when she asked for Dad’s car (mostly to make sure that Mom didn’t give it to our brother, CB, who behaved in a most heinous manner in the days following Dad’s death). She drove it a bit but ended up selling it in the end.

Which resulted in Mom buying our nephew, N1, his first car. He’d been promised Dad’s car and when he found out that DNOS had sold the car, whining on a toddler level ensued from both the boy and his mother, my youngest sister, Baby.

N1 promptly wrecked the first and second car he received due to his Grandmother’s guilty conscience, so she bought him a BMW, used, causing Rob to remark,

“What do I have to fix around your Mom’s house the next time we visit to get her to buy me a BMW?”

The beemer came to an untimely end within weeks. The State of Iowa decided it had enough around the same time Mom did. The state pulled N1’s license and Grandma closed her car loan office.

At this point in the story its cars 4, immediate family benefiting from free cars just two. CB, Baby and I were still free car free.

After N1’s infamous visit to CB last fall (his reward for losing his driver’s license, dropping out of high school and wrecking 3 cars was a holiday in Cali), CB was forced to decamp back to the mountains for some life rebuilding. Of course, he needed wheels and naturally, Mom mailed a check.

Cars 3. Siblings 2 out of 4. One grandchild/three wrecked vehicles.

Not long ago, Mom and I were chatting and she admits to me that despite vowing to close the Bank of Mom/Grandma, she lent money to Baby and N1 for … cars.

“Seriously?” I said.

“Well, Baby’s car engine blew up and without a car she’d have to move back in with me. That’s not happening.”

“But what about N1? He lives with his Dad. What’s in this for you?

“The temp job at the plastic plant worked out. It’s shift work. Without a car, he won’t be able to hang onto the  job,” she said. “It’s the first job he’s had.”

“I guess spending the winter moping in your Dad’s attic is an inspirational vision quest sort of thing,” I replied.

“And he has a girlfriend.”

Who lives in his Dad’s attic with him. Or so I am told. Only way to salvage some manhood in such a situation is full-time employment and a car.

Although Mom insists her latest bit of largesse is no gift because she required both Baby and N1 to sign contracts stipulating repayment, I have my doubts. Baby still regularly grocery shops in Mom’s pantry and has no end of cagey excuses to try to con cigarette money from Mom’s purse. She wouldn’t have to do either if Lawnmower Man wasn’t drinking up her paycheck now that he is “too disabled” to work. And it won’t be long before N1 has some emergency that will cause him to skip a payment.

“You’re going to be a Great-Grandma before you know it,” I told her.

“Oh, I better not be. I had a talk with him about that.”

I didn’t ask for details. It’s giggle-worthy enough to picture my 80-year-old mother giving the birth control what-for to my 18-year-old nephew without them.

Now however, it’s everyone has gotten a car but me. When I pointed this out to Mom, she stammered a bit because it honestly hadn’t occurred to her, and it wouldn’t. This is just one thing on a long list of perks afforded my younger sibs that being the oldest makes me ineligible for. Being the prodigal’s older sib is perk free. It is known.

It’s not as if she’s never helped me out; she has. I am not forgetful or ungrateful, but it’s disconcerting to hear her fear for her financial future, knowing that the only reason she won’t retire is out of fear of going broke and knowing that she’s spent thousands and thousands on cars.

And I didn’t get one.

“She couldn’t afford to keep you in the wheels you are accustomed to,” Rob said.

“Well, that’s your fault,” I countered.

“Indeed, I spoil you.”

He does at that, which is interesting because I wasn’t raised to be such a woman. I don’t have expectations of jewels, luxury holidays where I don’t prepare a single meal or even the latest techie toys (which judging from my clusterfuck experience with my smart phone’s voice navigator today is just as well). My Dad would be quite pleased with how modestly I live. His eyes would wiggle like one of Santa’s elves if he knew about the cars though, but when they met up again somewhere in the future, he won’t say a word to her about it. He spoiled her too.

What Not to Wear: The Skunk Hunting Edition


Striped skunk, Mephitis mephitis

Striped skunk, Mephitis mephitis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I am already snuggled up in bed, heating pad on my low back and ice pack around my neck. It’s been a tough week of Yoga Challenge and semi-ear infections. Suddenly, I hear Rob on the main floor,

“Annie! mumble, muffle, completely unintelligible!”

Responding to the urgency of his tone, I call back,

“What?”

What? I was in bed! Covered, comfy, wrapped in heat and ice. His call wasn’t followed by a thud, so I could reasonably assume he hadn’t collapsed and it was highly unlikely that any of the mainly septuagenarian crowd at the hamlet’s annual chicken supper had gone wild and stormed our back porch in an ice tea induced frenzy.

However, he didn’t reply, so I uncomfied myself, put on my robe and headed downstairs where I found him with his toothbrush in his mouth (which explained the muffle), peering out the bathroom window into our backyard.

“What’s wrong?” I inquired, thinking that this had better be earth shattering enough to have pulled me out of bed.

“I saw the skunk,” he said. “It was walking toward the shed but disappeared as it got close to the retaining wall.”

Okay, this was news.

Our neighbors discovered a skunk den under their shed, which borders our property, last spring. Mama Skunk and a half-dozen wee ones. They filled the hole and attempted to block it off with plywood and concrete blocks. We all thought the matter resolved. However, one of the skunks returned when the rains came this year and dug out the old den. Last weekend, Rob and I woke in the middle of the night to find our entire house awash in eau de skunk.

All the windows were open and the malodorous creature had gone off either in our back yard or the side yard under our bedroom window.

You know how strong odors eventually fatigue your sense of smell, so even though the smell remains your sense of it collapses under the strain and it seems as though the scent is gone? That doesn’t happen with skunk. Just when you think your poor nose is about to give up, and you are darn grateful for Mother Nature’s thoughtful gift of olfactory fatigue – it ramps up again. And again. And again. It’s like a skunk is right there next to you, stiff-tailed and spraying.

Ever since, we’ve been on the look out because Pepe LePew is not keeping to the neighbor’s yard.

As I am peering out the window, I realize that Rob has disappeared, followed by the sound of the back door opening and closing and footfall on the deck.

I hustled up the stairs to the landing window and observed my brave skunk hunter, armed with a pellet gun, stealthily stalking his prey through our back yard, clad only in a bath towel and runners.

No, it’s okay. The neighbors have seen him in a towel before and given the fact that even though it’s 9:30 our quite northern exposure means that the sun won’t be setting for at least another hour. Excellent light for skunk spying and getting a great view of your neighbor, brandishing what looks like an actual gun, wearing a towel and exposing a titillating amount of thigh.

I must say that I admire my husband’s casual attitude and the feline ease with which he hunts. If I hadn’t been so intent on spotting the smelly intruder, I might have had presence of mind to grab my phone and record the event. It’s not something you see everyday … in most neighborhoods.

Rob slowly covered ground. The garden. The driveway. The shed area. He even got up on tip-toe and checked out the neighbor’s yard. As he did this, I kept an eye out for Monsieur Skunk. I had no idea where I find tomato juice at this time of the night and didn’t want the creature to sneak up on Rob.

Later, when I told Rob my sole concern was what I would do if he got sprayed, he replied,

“Do you think I don’t know what signs to look for before a skunk sprays?”

It was the tone of a Mountain Man aggrieved.

“And thanks for being concerned about my actual safety,” he said. “Skunks can carry rabies, you know.”

I didn’t know that, and now I have that extra tidbit to make me paranoid about allowing Dee to play unattended in our back yard until the skunk is caught and relocated.

It will have to be trapped and removed. Rabies. Stink. The prospect of a summer of tomato juice baths. I am shuddering already. Back in Canada’s lawless un-gun-controlled days, a man would simply take aim and fire. End of skunk issue. Today the county brings traps and comes back to pick them up when said nuisance wanders into one. I can’t even begin to imagine how foul an experience for the neighborhood that will be.

Better that, however, than my semi-naked husband losing his terry loin cloth in a spray of stench. The neighborhood might recover from that less quickly.

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On Being One Half of That “cute old couple”


Affectionate old couple with the wife holding ...

Elderly love(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You know for a certainty that you are indeed old when young women begin to refer to you and your husband as “so cute”. As in “Today I saw this old couple walking through the park holding hands. They were so cute. Someday, I hope I am an old woman who still holds hands with her husband.” The assumption being that the elderly couple in question are actually with their spouse and aren’t widowed folk who’ve randomly hooked up at the retirement complex for entertainment and recreation purposes.

But whatever. Far be it from me to disillusion a young person who still believes in marriage. It’s not as if they exist in droves anymore.

Rob accompanied me to the doctor’s office yesterday morning. I have a pesky polyp and removal involves a certain amount of slicing and frying. My doctor, a lively old fella who resembles a garden gnome – minus the hat and fluffy whiskers – assured me that I would not feel a thing. Not exactly true and Rob was concerned that I might be too distracted to drive myself home safely.

He also hates to allow me to go to the doctor’s on my own where skin things are concerned. This particular problem has been recurrent and benign, but being a fair-haired natural ginger (the latter part only when I feel like it), one can never be complacent where skin is concerned. I’ve had skin enough slashed and burned off to know that the derma can turn on you without warning. He doesn’t want me to be on my own should that happen because he lived the aftermath once before and it isn’t something you do again when you can easily prevent it.

So, we are sitting in the waiting area, chatting and holding hands, when the assistant came out to collect me. Before I followed her, I gave him a quick kiss and then proceeded down the hall to one of the many treatment rooms in the hive that hides behind the waiting room door.

As I seated myself, she smiled at me and said, “You two are just like newlyweds. That’s so cute.”

She left the “I hope I can have that one day” part unspoken, but it hung in the air nevertheless.

Cute.

I am now so old that young women find my perfectly normal interactions with my husband “cute”. “Sweet” and “endearing” cannot be far behind, and gods help me when “you guys remind me of my nana and papa” tumbles off someone’s lips.

There are worse things. Mocking. Remember the YouTube video of the couple trying to figure out how to send a message with their Mac? Cute and hilarious.

Endearing and snuggly in a puppy/kitten sort of way and chuckle-worthy at the same time. The ultimate elderly hell.

Oh, I could view it as Rob and I being inspirational. That’s how the young woman will likely present the scenario to her friends as they gather around at some pub on Whyte Ave. They will breathe sighs of relief knowing that old people still held hands and kissed, which probably means they still have sex. The fear of romance-less unions once the honeymoon is over and a few offspring  pop up being a big nightmare scenario for the young. That and the shackles of matrimony. That archaic hold over from feudal days of yore. Good to know that some of us bet the odds and don’t arrive at the half-way mark grim-faced for our slog towards decrepitude and certain death.

Of course, I didn’t tear the dear thing’s fantasy to shreds by enlightening her about the fact that, from a certain point of view, Rob and I still are newlyweds. Barely married five years and blessed with the luxury of not having to raise a single child from scratch as they were all in various stages of walking, talking and able to attend to their own bodily functions. Kinder to let her believe that Rob and I represent some undiscovered by statistician’s norm. That unicorn of couples – cute, aging and still still glowing.

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