Tell It To COACHIE

When I was in high school, the song “Boys of Summer” by Don Henley was really, really popular. It was on the radio nonstop, and everybody just loved it. I, on the other hand, hated it. We didn’t have cable TV then (no one in DC did, but that is a story of injustice for another day) so I wasn’t subjected to the video that often, meaning my dislike of the song was only slightly tied to the fact that Don Henley desperately needed a shampoo and cut. Every time my friends and I went out, the song was all over the car radio and in regular rotation at whatever restaurant or bar or Booeymonger we were loitering in. Eventually, after one too many sessions of hearing all my friends sing along, I confided to my friend Kobie that I hated it. To my great relief, she agreed with me (mainly because she was more of a Elvis Costello/Marshall Crenshaw kind of girl). But now, after all those years of loathing it, I really don’t mind the song, because it reminds me of my high school friends.

However, there is another song that I have always hated, that I continue to hate, and that I will always hate. A song that for whatever reason is regularly on the airwaves here in Missouri - “Lady In Red” by Chris DeBurgh (his daughter was Miss Universe in 2003 in a fuschia dress - need I say more? Also, he is the demon behind the song “Don’t Pay the Ferryman - I must stop reading about him now before he ruins my whole life). I hate that syrupy, whispery, sensitive voice and the synthetic music. I hate that I saw the crappy movie Blind Date which I believe (but can’t confirm) included it. I hated the Weight Watchers commercials that just used the “lady in red” line over and over even though it had nothing to do with losing weight. The lyrics are horrible, and if you want a song about appreciating how pretty your wife is, I think Eric Clapton covered that with “Wonderful Tonight” (which, although I’m rather sick of, I’d gladly listen to daily if it meant I never had to hear Lady in Red again).

The only purpose of this post is to attempt to get this song out of my head by transferring it to my many readers. Unfortunately, once the HP reads it, I’m sure he will begin singing it to me at every opportunity. It will be slightly more entertaining because he does not know the words to any songs, so he makes up words that sort of sound like what the words might be.

However, as a public service to those who hate Lady In Red as much as I do, I will provide an alternate song to get stuck in your head, one that I heard in the store yesterday for the first time in probably 20 years - Key Largo by Bertie Higgins (click here for awesome 1982 album cover).

Although life in Virginia was a little lonely, what with the HP deployed and all the chaplains and chaplains’ wives hating me, at least I didn’t receive any invitations to the “parties” where people want to sell you crap. I don’t have a problem with moms wanting to make a little money, particularly Army moms who can’t work because they are always moving or getting stuck with a deployed husband. In Kentucky if someone I liked was having a “party” selling something I could somehow use (like kitchen crap) I would generally go, buy something, studiously avoid the chief saleswoman who was trying to get people to host additional “parties,” and then scurry home before the other “guests” started talking about other types of crap that they like to sell.

Here in Missouri, the “parties” have reared their ugly heads again. Weeks ago a woman down the street dropped off an invitation to a toy “party” scheduled for last Thursday. She seems very nice, her son is in Marty’s preschool, and I figured chances were she was probably selling something that one of my kids or nieces or nephews might like (or something I could keep on hand as a gift for one of the hundreds of birthday parties that seem to be going on around here). So on Thursday Marty and I got all gussied up and walked down the street to the party.

No one was there.

I rang the bell (and then Marty rang in 2 more times) and the dog came to the door, but no one else did.

There is a scene in the movie Ratatouille when the food critic tastes, well, the ratatouille, and is transported back to his childhood. He’s standing alone looking sad, and his mom brings him in and feeds him some comfort food (obviously, again, the ratatouille). For a brief moment I had the same experience, remembering a time in high school when I showed up at someone’s house for a study group only to find out that it had been cancelled, and I slunk home feeling like an idiot that no one had thought to tell me.

Since I am not quite the same insecure girl I once was, on the way home I decided that there must be a simple explanation for the confusion. Maybe one of her kids was sick at school, maybe no one had arrived in the first 10 minutes so she fled the scene, maybe the dog in the house had attacked and killed the whole family in their sleep. Whatever had happened, I knew I was in the clear – I’d tried to attend, whenever the party was rescheduled, I could claim I was busy.

Yeah, uh, so yesterday the “party” hostess called to make sure I was coming to the “party” this Thursday. The simple explanation was that I was a week early for the “party.” Although I may hold an advanced degree in Chemistry, apparently I am still not familiar enough with the Julian calendar to determine what week any particular date falls in. Although I have to shake my head at my own stupidity, at least I have the small consolation that no one was home when I tried to attend the first time. Still, there’s also the small sense of dismay that I have not dodged the crap-buying bullet after all.

Everybody has those dreams where something that is going on in real life is incorporated into the dream. Once many years ago, I had a dream that I was standing near a canal in Bethany Beach, and as I stepped down onto the dock, a crab pinched my big toe. I woke with a start to find my preschool aged sister standing at the foot of my bed with a big smile on her face, grabbing my toes. Given the soccer player that I was in those days, she’s lucky that I didn’t accidentally kick her baby teeth out when she startled me awake. Another time I dreamt* that I was standing in line waiting to sharpen my pencil when someone stabbed me in the back with an already sharpened pencil. When I woke up I found that I had rolled onto a straight pin in my bed (I was a bit of a slob back then, but really HealthTex, did you need to put 15 pins in every shirt that you sold? There were always way too many pins floating around in my bedroom.)

Last week I had a dream that I was at a family picnic, and we were all gathered around the picnic table when someone handed me a brown paper lunch bag and told me there was a dead turkey chick inside (why turkey? I don’t know – I don’t think I even know what a turkey chick looks like). For whatever reason, I stuck my hand in to pull it out, and the chick clamped onto my finger with its teeny little turkey chick feet and wouldn’t let go. When I pulled it out of the bag, it was a bright yellow fur ball, with googly eyes and plastic feet – kind of like this

but faker and crazier looking. However, in the dream it was very much alive and squeezing the crap out of my finger. I thought that it was clamped onto my index finger, but when I awoke, my pinkie was really sore. Now, a week later, my pinkie is still sore and stiff, but I don’t know why.

In theory, the injury may have occurred while I was sleeping. I do occasionally sleep with my hand hanging off the bed, so maybe I pinched it in a corner of my headboard, or maybe one of our kiddies squashed it into the bedrail while sneaking into our bed. Then again, maybe I hurt it during the day, but I didn’t really feel it until I was asleep. It could have been a housekeeping injury (stop laughing) brought on by excessive sweeping in my attempt to keep our house free from ants and mice. Maybe I just hurt it while rushing around attempting to get things done in my typical graceless manner.

But what if rather than a pinch or a bang, I was injured by a mysterious bite?  Given the recent story of the boy who was bitten by a bat and never knew it and ended up dying of rabies, I felt I had to investigate the possibility that some rabid creature could have snuck into my bedroom, bit me, and then fled from the house undetected. So far, I have not noticed any little puncture marks in my finger, but I still need to fish out one of the kiddies’ magnifying glasses and take a closer look. I checked under the bed and did not find any animals in their death throes (or healthy ones either thank goodness). I’m starting to think I’’m in the clear, but I don’t think I can rest easy until the pinkie recovers.

* I had to stop and look that word up. It doesn’t look right does it? But it is.

Since leaving home for college, I’ve lived within the delivery area for newspapers from Worcester, Charlottesville, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Louisville, Richmond, and now St. Louis. Every time I move I try out the local paper, sometimes one or two issues, sometimes a three month subscription, but I’m always disappointed. I always return to The Washington Post. I would much rather read a newspaper that I could hold in my hands and spread out on the table or read on the couch, but until I’m within the delivery area of the Post again, I’m stuck at the computer.

I don’t particularly enjoy reading the paper online, because I like to read the paper like a book – cover to cover. I read everything on the front page, then the next page, until I get through it. Unless something has really got my attention, I don’t jump from the front to the back to read story continuations. This may be a sign of an attention deficit, but I prefer to think of it as an exercise in mental agility, keeping all those stories straight in my mind until I get to their conclusions. (Yes, as expected the explanation of how I read the paper is not only boring but confusing, and actually, unimportant to the rest of this little post.)

Last year I almost abandoned the Post online, because they had sold all of their ad space to some company hawking foot fungus cures - the ones with the nasty commercials featuring gross little devils tearing up peoples toes. I would attempt to position whatever I was reading on the screen to show as little of the ads as possible, but not only were they all over the screen, they were animated and very hard to ignore. I believe I even sent a complaint e-mail, but strangely the ombudsman never got back to me or apologized for the ads.

Since then I have not really paid much attention to the banner ads, because a lot of the time they are for Microsoft or airlines or stores – nothing offensive or interesting. That is, I didn’t pay attention until yesterday when a bold maroon and gold banner ad told me that Comcast was going to air a rare interview with Daniel Snyder – owner of the Redskins.

I’ll admit that I dislike Dan Snyder purely based on what I’ve read about him (and based upon the fact that he made all his money from AOL which I hate). He may be a peach in real life, but I haven’t seen any evidence to support that. Ever since he got all cranky about TV cameras showing him in his luxury box, I’ve thought of him as a big baby who really didn’t get the joy of football, Redskins’ football in particular. And I won’t stop to complain here about the way he’s run the Redskins. I just have the feeling that he’s snotty, and worst of all, boring. (Evidence: His new best friend Tom Cruise who is the most boring celebrity ever, except during those brief times when he goes off his bipolar medication and jumps on people’s couches).

But maybe I’m wrong. Look at these fascinating quotes that Comcast has released to get everyone excited about the rare interview: “Last season was real disappointing…”; “I’m real excited about the future with Joe Gibbs…”; “It’s surprising the scrutiny you get in your personal life…”

If only I had Comcast! What other revelations must be lurking in that interview? I just know I’ll be missing out on surprising judgments like, “Our fans are the best fans in the world…” or brilliant strategy secrets like, “We need to take this season one game at a time…” or uncanny predictions only a true insider could provide like,”If we stay focused and every one gives 110 percent, we’ll have a great season…”

Maybe I can get someone from the East Coast to tape it for me.  Or maybe it will be so brilliant and insightful, Comcast will release it on DVD.

Today as I was upgrading to the next version of wordpress, I was clicking around in the archives to make sure the upgrade hadn’t accidentally deleted all of my words of wisdom, and I came upon a post where all of the apostrophes and quotation marks were scribbles. I went through and changed them all, and then as I saved it, I realized that some people might be accidentally tricked into coming here and checking for new content. So here’s some:

We have moved into our Missouri house and in theory I could start posting again. Unfortunately, before I left Virginia I instructed the HP to deposit our computer desk into a dumpster. The desk was ugly, heavy, and old, the fake birch veneer was peeling off the MDF frame, and basically the kiddies had spilled so many things on and around it, it was becoming a free-form petri dish.

Our computer is now sitting on an entryway table, which is too high for me and makes my elbow hurt (the old “mouser’s elbow” - I believe my father had the same problem, so clearly in future generations Darwin will be working against my family tree).

On August 14th I ordered a new computer desk from a certain internet company that prides itself on delivering everything for $2.95. Yesterday the desk finally arrived in an enormous tattered box, and every piece of the desk is chipped or broken. (And in a development that does not bode well for my relationship with the delivery man, it was dropped off without so much as a knock, and he slunk away before I had a chance to see the mess he was leaving me.)

I contacted them and asked for a refund, but somehow my request was “accidentally” processed as “replacement.” Now I have to wait for the next desk to come and then send it back and ask for a refund. Needless to say, I feel a little uneasy about buying another desk until I actually get rid of the one that’s on its way here. I was told to dispose of the damaged one however I see fit, but first to keep it for at least 10 business days in case the delivery company wants to inspect it. So I may be having trouble navigating through the house for the next few weeks.

So that’s the story.

And now my elbow hurts.

But I will stop and say that although the blog improvement resolution is a failure, I’ll be back more regularly some day soon.