"Oh my God, what a horrible photograph. My first wanted poster and I look just awful." - Babs Johnson, in "Flamingos"

One in an occasional series [6/25]

I know I haven’t posted since Thursday; I certainly meant to on Saturday.

But I had a kinda tough day at work Saturday. Suffice it to say that I had to call the police, and for about an hour I thought I was also going to have to call Children and Youth Services. What with filling out incident reports and whatnot, I didn’t have time to write my “I-hated-The-Emperor’s-Children-and-here’s-exactly-why” post, or any post at all for that matter. Nor did I have time to do my real work, including my yearly self-appraisal or my portion of the annual report.

Yesterday was filled up with taking a nice long run, and then most of the afternoon was spent conducting alumni interviews and writing up the reports for them. God, was I that eager and enthusiastic when I was eighteen? I hope so; I hope the people who interviewed me were as impressed with me as I am with most of these kids.

So here we are, on Monday, and I have some random stuff to tell you.
I have to write a post about my wonderfully extravagant three hours at Half-Price Books last Thursday. I have to tell you about the wonderful book I am reading right now (Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love).

But it’s been cold and snowing and icy and now sort of rainy, and all these lovely winter weather phenomena (so much better than the weird sixty degrees we were experiencing last week at this time) makes me glad for my in-laws who departed for Florida on Thursday.

They never went away in the winter before H’s brother moved to Florida, but now they leave mid-January and stay till late March. They sometimes stay with H’s brother and his family, and sometimes my father-in-law loses his patience and checks them into a hotel for a little privacy and so they are not the de facto babysitters. My mother-in-law hates this, but as I have discussed before, my in-laws are two very very different people.

My mother-in-law’s birthday is in February, and last year was her seventieth. All the siblings flew down to Florida to surprise her on her birthday. I pleaded new-baby and stayed here with the three boys.

Her birthday was on a Thursday, and H didn’t want to miss any more work than he absolutely had to, plus he had a gig on that Friday. So he flew down Thursday morning at 9 am, and got on his plane back Friday morning at 7; he spent less than 24 hours in Florida, and less than twelve of those awake. And because he put off buying his ticket forever because he didn’t really want to go, and because there was no Saturday stay, the ticket was a wee bit pricey. But, hey, I suppose it had to be done. Yawn.

He said it wasn’t even that warm there. Really, what’s the point of Florida in the winter if it’s not 1) cold and icy HERE, and 2) warm and sunny THERE?

He did as always return bearing gifts: playing cards with flamingos on them for Primo, a puzzle for Seg, a stuffed shark for Terzo, and this lovely little box for me.


This year there will be no surprise visits to Florida.
Primo said to his grandma before she left, “Daddy went to Florida last winter to see you on your birthday.”
She said, “Yes, he did. All your aunts and uncles did too.”
[Well, except me, but what did you expect from me?]
“I don’t guess there will be any surprise visits this year?” she finished, almost a little hopefully.

Immediately, we all chorused, “Oh, no, NOT THIS YEAR!”
And we meant it.