Category: Uncategorized

………and my favorite city.

Labor Day weekend may be about celebrating the American worker, but in my part of the world it’s about the Sparks Flea Market.

Sparks Kansas.

Yep, it’s in the middle of nowhere.

Last year we took Will and he thought it was all kinds of fun.  This year we took Maggie and Nate.  Prior to leaving, Nate told the siblings, “Kids, this is your mother’s Super Bowl, now don’t do anything to spoil it.”

Yeah kids, don’t make me get out a can of whoop-ass.

The siblings got along.  They bought stuff, they survived ridiculously hot temps, they ate corn dogs and sat in a tub that a farm boy cut in half and made into a loveseat.

The Farm Boy is not married.  He’s never even dated which led to some awkward silence on our part.  If I knew a guy who was that talented I’d snap him up in a heartbeat, but I didn’t say that out loud as you never know the sketchiness of the kind of guy who would tell complete strangers that he’s never dated.

We came home with an old trellis, a rusty blue tool box, a green oar, a bowling pin, birdhouse, some locker baskets and a shelf made from an old piece of luggage.

And just before we left, we ran back to buy one more thing from the farm boy.  That’s when we discovered that he may have some issues with gas. 

The first time I ever saw a protest was in the sixties when we were piled in the family station wagon headed to see our grandparents.  It was a civil rights protest that we passed and it made The Queen Mum really nervous.  Dad said they were standing out there to make a point and weren’t interested in bothering anybody.

A few years ago, our church organized a walk to join a protest in Kansas City against the Iraq War.  I told The Big Daddy that we needed to put our money where our mouth was when it came to this and so the whole family went.  He and I might have been more effective protestors had we not both been suffering from A Massive Hangover.  As I was walking with a friend, she told me she was suffering from the same affliction, and that church of ours wasted their best intentions on some of their slacker parishioners who thought the prep was to get shit-faced the the night before.

When the Westboro Baptist Church showed up at the kids high school with their “God Hates Fags” posters, every man, woman and child within twenty miles came to that protest to drown them out and send crazy packing.

Last week in New York City, two dozen women protested their right to go topless.  One woman said that her dog has six nipples that anybody can see, but if she were to show her two she’d be arrested.

But your dog isn’t picking the kids up from school, making a deposit at the bank or digging in the freezer case at the Winn-Dixie for the Green Giant Sweet Kernel Corn that’s two for one.

My years of living make me believe that if we all gave peace a chance we’d be better off.  And while I appreciate the right to protest and wouldn’t hesitate to do it if I believed in the cause, I’d rather passer-bys just be looking at my sign.

Twenty years ago when we moved to Kansas we rented a townhouse.  Coming from the D.C./Maryland area, the idea of actually buying a home was absurd.  It didn’t take long for us to figure out that here in the heartland, home ownership was a real possibility.

The Big Daddy was all about scouting out a new homestead, and so we’d map out the Sunday open houses, pack up the kids and snoop in other people’s lives.

We argued a lot in these open houses.  The Big Daddy, enamored with the bells and whistles, and me not so much.  I’m not hauling groceries up a flight of stairs to a kitchen that some idiot put on the second floor.  Another time we were in a house with gold-flocked wallpaper on the entire first floor and when I said I’d seen enough he told me I was being too negative.  When we got to the backyard with the above-ground swimming pool coated in algae, we both barfed a little in our mouth.

On the way home from one of our shopping trips we passed an Open House sign in a neighborhood we weren’t familiar with.  We stopped anyhow and oh, how we could see ourselves living in those digs with the wide open downstairs “great room” that the kids were already running around in.

We likeyed that place.

When we inquired about the price it was $450,000.00.  Hmmmm…….that’s several hundred thousand dollars more than we intended to spend.

The realtor nodded knowingly and wished us well as she pointed us and our sweaty kids to the proper exit.

She stood in the doorway and watched us pull away in our Oldsmobile Firenza, and I bet it was the faux wood paneling on the side of our station wagon that was a dead giveaway that we had stumbled into the wrong neighborhood.

“How long til my soul gets it right?”   

Maybe not so long.

Or an eternity.

My new favorite video and I found it without kid intervention.   

I got that right 😉

When Maggie was little, she liked to play school.  As is often the case with the bossy first-born, she was always the teacher.  She’d gather her brother and kids from down the street into the basement to educate them, and why they put up with it every day when they’d already spent all day in school is beyond me.

When she went to college, she decided to go into journalism with hopes of being the next Katie Couric.  When the greeter at Costco told her that her smile was so pretty she should be on t.v., that sealed the deal.  After one semester, she decided to change to media relations.  Her father said, “Oh, so when a company recalls a drug that makes people sicker instead of better, you’ll be writing the bullshit to make it look like they weren’t really in it for the money?”  They may have sealed the deal on that major being short-lived.

Her second year of college, she listened to the universe and became an education major.  

She is now a 3rd year teacher and at 25 years old, she’s worked harder than I have my entire life.  She chose to work in the inner-city and this is her second year as an ELL (English language learner) teacher.  Throughout the week she works with every kid in the school whose home language is not English, the goal being to fast-track these kids ability to learn.  It is daunting.

This year her student population has gone from 60 to 100.

One teacher.  One part-time aide.  Lunch on the fly.

While her father and I have instilled social justice and awareness in all of our kids, this bossy first-born has walked the walk, and all those years of playing school in the basement was a precursor for the seismic shift she would make in the lives of hopeful families.

Before Mallie Bee went off to school, we were in the car and a Taylor Swift song came on.  Oh Lordie, I really can’t take her.   After the song, they were talking about how she writes her own stuff and wow, really?  She might consider turning that over to somebody who’s interesting.

When a new song of hers comes out, the internet is buzzing over what boyfriend did her wrong that she had to write about, but does anybody care?

Every time I hear Bonnie Raitt sing “I Can’t Make You Love Me” it kills me.  When I hear Taylor Swift sing anything I want to kill the radio.

She’s young, attractive and wealthy, but talented?  Meh.  If I were this chick I’d sue for theft of character…………….

The first time I ever rode a bus was when I would visit my Grandma.  She didn’t drive and counted on the bus to take her everywhere.  She let me sit by the window so I could watch the scenery, and when it was time to pull the cord to ring for our stop I had the honor.

For a few years before I started taking the train, I was a daily bus rider from the suburbs into Chicago.  My friend, Pat, got on about a mile before me and would save me a seat in the back.  Every morning we had the same driver whose job it was to get his riders into the city and to our jobs.  If the expressway was a hot backed-up mess, somebody up front would pass the hat to pay the tolls so our driver could take the Skyway and get us downtown faster.  He wasn’t supposed to do this, but he did.

The bus was full of interesting characters.  There was the guy that Pat and I went to school with who was an epileptic.  He was working at a bakery making donuts when he had a seizure and burnt both his hands so badly in the hot oil for making donuts that they had to be amputated.  Another guy watched people sleep and if your head started bobbing, he’d straighten it out for you.  The pervy old guy who checked the girls out every morning.  It didn’t occur to us that we were better than these people.   We were just trying to get to work.

Mark and I were discussing the disconnect in society these days, the lack of empathy for the less thans, and even outright disdain.

That didn’t happen on the bus.  We all paid the same fare, we all had someplace to get to, and when the hat was passed it didn’t matter how much money you threw in so long as we all got where we needed to be on time.

On those occasions when weather wreaked havoc on the buses for the return trip, sometimes you would run into a rider from your morning bus and things would seem better……..for making your way home in the dark during a storm can be frightening, but isn’t that what we’re all trying to do every day? 

As if the universe couldn’t have timed this any better, I started working this week.  I had an interview more than a month ago for a place I previously worked at that is opening a second store.  I think I’ve become an expert on interviews and if I ever wrote a book it would be about that.

Kathleen, tell us a little something about yourself.  Well, first off, I’m questioning whether applying for this job was a good idea.

What about ________________ interested you?  It was the only legitimate listing on Craigslist in the last week.

How do you handle criticism?  Isn’t there some sort of honeymoon period before we jump to that?

What do you expect to get paid for this job?  Trick question.  Not playing.

I’m approaching shift #3 of the week and have already been on the hunt for new-standing-all-days shoes.  Next week I’ll have twice as many hours.  I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing given my new working life, however, I’m a frequent mind wanderer and an-in-my-head-story-writer……..which I intend to keep on the down low from my new employer.  

At least until they bust me.