kindness of strangers

My sister's first car was a 1984 Ford LTD, and she ended up driving it for about 5 years. It was a faded butter yellow with a dingy yellow interior. Although most of the cars in our family had official names*, the yellow car was never officially given a name. In high school, sister's friends called it "the tank" or "POS", but those names never really stuck.

One afternoon Sister, who was still in high school, noticed that she had lost two of her hubcaps. Dad went to the junk yard and found two more, neither of which matched the originals or each other. The car was also short one seatbelt, so while at the junkyard Dad found another seatbelt. When Sister asked him why it was red, he answered, "I thought this car could use a little more character."

Poor Sister. None of her friends wanted to ride the strip with her, which was good because she never had to pay for gas. But it was bad because that meant she had to straight-pin the lining of the ceiling all by herself.

This yellow submarine was also equipped with a "princess door" behind the driver's door. You had to be careful who you let sit in the back seat, because the door would not always open from the inside. Usually the driver would have to get out and open the back door, like royalty. Or -- if you were the lucky person who could open the door yourself, we'd call you a princess.

And although all of these things added to the flair of the yellow car, you could argue that at least it would get her from point A to point B. Except that wasn't always true, either.

The yellow car didn't like the rain. This was a big problem for living in middle TN, because Murfreesboro sits on top of a rain magnet. It's always raining. In fact, The Hater likes to tell a story that one semester he had an evening class on the other side of campus from his dorm, and EVERY week he had to either walk to class or back to his dorm in the rain. Lots of rain.

We both lived on campus at MTSU, and Sister and I would frequently call each other to see what was shaking. Sister called many times from lots of different places in M'boro, needing a ride because her car had just stopped in the rain. She learned that she would have to check the weather before she drove home because she was afraid it would die on her out in the boonies. I need to establish that the two of us literally had to push this car dozens of times - it was a constant wet affair.

One time Sister called and said she was outside my dorm. An unexpected storm had hit the rain magnet, and I went down to help her. The drainage system at MTSU was nonexistant... so big rains left the roads full of water. I was wading calf-deep in water when I got to the yellow car. We had to push it to the nearest student lot, which was up an incline from where we were. We'd done this many times, and assumed the pushing positions.

But this time was different. There were the usual gawkers with umbrellas staring from the sidewalk, but this time some guy dropped his backpack on a bench and started pushing with us. Sister and I were surprised - this had never happened before.

We needed the extra muscles getting the car up the incline, but with this stranger's help, we got her to a legal place where she could dry after the rains were gone.

We were all drenched. The rain had been coming down in buckets. We'd had to wade the car to higher ground, and we couldn't've done it by ourselves. We apologized to the now soaked hero, who said it was no big deal, picked up his backpack, and swam on. We thanked him.

But sometimes a simple thank you doesn't seem big enough to cover your appreciation.

A few years later a friend of mine broke her foot. She called me because I was in nursing school at the time, which meant I must have known what to do. We iced it down and suggested she go to the ER. She didn't want to go. We told her to call us when she changed her mind. She lived on the third floor of a dorm that didn't have an elevator - and only outside stairs.

This girl was hard core stubborn. She decided that she'd be able to get to her car herself, and hobbled down three flights of stairs herself on her way to the car. She admitted that by the time she got to the parking lot she'd take a few hops, cry, and hop again.

She reports that a stranger came over to her and asked what was wrong. As she told the story between sobs that she was on her way to the ER because she thought she broke her foot, he put down his backpack and gave her a piggy-back ride to her car.**

I have no way of knowing if it was the same guy who helped us push the yellow car up the hill, but I like to think that it was. I'd like to think that he'll somehow stumble across this post and know that many years later, he's still remembered and appreciated.

I called Sister to verify the details, and she said that this morning she was thinking about the yellow car because she was driving the to grocery store and questioned hitting a puddle. She had to remember that her current mode of transportation would not stall in the rain. We both laughed and talked about how many miles we ended up pushing that car to higher ground.

* Poppy, Buttercup, Walter, Harrison, Trigger, Tonto, Bullet, Elvira, Eleanor, Neyland

In albums of pictures, Sister and I can't remember taking one of the POS yellow car. I stole this one from a google search.

** The girl in this story is Marianne. You can find a link to her page to the right under "Sightseeing". I don't think she'll mind me telling her story.

not tired

The problem with not being tired at this hour is the later, not the now. I feel great right now. I'd be content playing video games for a few hours or watching a couple of movies.

But I can't... because I have to be at work at 7 tomorrow morning for a meeting. I wish I could justify to myself that it's an important meeting, which it is, but other than a sleepy face, I bring very little to the table. Which, in one way, is great because I'm just expected to show up.

Although I can show up exhausted, I'd prefer not to because it'd make for a really long day.

The Hater says he's ready for bed, but he's still playing Rock Band and not making any progress towards actually going to bed.

A yawn. Was that sincere or have I convinced myself that I'm tired? My brain probably doesn't know the difference.

But my eyelids do.

misadventures in electricity

We've head a dead can light in the kitchen for a week or so. It's one of four overhead lights in the space, so missing one really made a difference in being able to see what you were doing.

On our list of things to do today was to get a new light bulb for said socket. This requires getting out the BIG ladder from the garage and clunking it around to get to the dead light.

The Hater took it out of the socket and the glass part of the bulb separated from the metal screwy-base. We took the info we needed to figure out what type of bulb we needed to get for a replacement.

Even as novices, we know it'd probably be smart to cut the breaker to the kitchen before we try to get the screwy part out of the socket. Imagine The Hater up on the ladder, cursing and reaching, while I'm on the ground trying to shine a flashlight up to him. It was awful, but we swapped it out.

We decided to go ahead and swap out the other three while we were already making a mess. The last three also came apart while he was trying to take them out. I really can't tell this story to give enough credit to exactly how annoying it was... so you'll just have to imagine... and then make it at least two times worse than that.

But it's done, and according to the light bub packaging, we won't have to change them again for 7 years. Even better, when we turned the electricity back on, they made the kitchen way brighter than it's been since we moved here.

You can see all kinds of dust that we'd not even noticed before. Fabulous. Thanks, Al.

ten minute post

I have ten minutes to spare before I have to leave the house. So for the first time ever, I'm bringing you a ten minute post...

The Hater went to play poker this morning. I was going to sleep late, but the cat had other ideas. The Hater didn't win the tournament, but stayed around a little later to see the action on the tables. I've not heard how he's done with that yet.

While he was gone, I cleaned the house from bow to stern. We're talking dusting and vacuuming, people. My back is sore, so I must have done it right. I'm going to make The Hater do the bathrooms when he gets back to the house.

We still have laundry to do. That's our consistent weekend mantra... and this weekend is no different.

I've volunteered at the church to be on a team of note writers who send notes to people who are sick. My turn has come around again, and I've sent out 10 notes today. I want to say the last time it was my turn I had about 15 to write, but that was several months ago and I don't remember. But it's done, so that's good.

Except we're going to need more stamps. I'm out of stamps. That's another recurring theme in this house.

Tonight I'm volunteering for something that will take most of the evening. The Hater plans to get home shortly after I leave the house. That's not intentional timing, or so I assume.

My jonquils are doing well, but they're slow. Dad tried to force them this winter and gave them to me in a pot while we were home at Christmas. I've watered them and talked to them, and I now have about 8 or 9 shoots, some of them getting tall, none of them with yellow heads yet. I should probably turn the pot so that all the shoots don't end up growing like they needed more V8 in their diet. ( ///)

The Hater said last night that he wouldn't be opposed to a ficus tree in the house. So I guess we're now in the market for one of those, but I've got to read more about them to see if I've got a place where it will live. No sense in planning for herbicide.

When it gets a little warmer we're going to paint another coat of tinted sealant on the wood fence in the back yard. The other houses in the neighborhood who didn't seal their fences aren't looking nearly as nice as ours. The tint really makes a difference.

One more minute.

I think our tree in the front yard is dead. The Hater doesn't. He'll find out once it doesn't make any leaves this Spring. The shrubs look like they've done well over the winter. When it gets a little warmer I want to get a ground cover for the front bed. I've seen some around OKC that's a larger (leaves the size of your handprint) verrigated cover that seems to do well around here, but I have no idea what it is. We may also plant some monkey or mondo grass under the tree, if it lives, or under tree #2, if it's dead.

It's been crazy at work this week. And next week looks like it's going to be busy, too. Usually the third (or fourth) week of the month isn't as bad for me as the first and second.

Mom's birthday is tomorrow. Polly's was yesterday. HBDTY to you both.

Time's up.

family politics

All of my adult family members are passionate about their political views, but none of them agree on the same things. This makes for exciting conversations at the horseshoe pit.

Dad says that his older brother, Jerry, was a Democrat until he started making money and decided to become a Republican. All I know is that all of my memories revolve around Jerry making Democrat jokes. He would even cut political cartoons making fun of Democrats out of the paper and mail them to Dad. Dad would of course reciprocate and mail political cartoons making fun of Republicans back to Jerry.

Jerry came to Tennessee to visit in the spring of 2001. While Mom and Dad were out, Jerry drove up with two 50 pound bags of fertilizer. He drove out to the field next to our house and spelled out “(MY DAD'S FULL NAME) REPUBLICAN” with fertilizer in the grass close to the road. The letters were five feet tall and nearly stretched across the entire field. He was so pleased and tickled with himself, and he made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anyone what he had done. (I told Sister because it was too funny, but she promised not to tell Mom and Dad.)

That summer I was in basic camp at Ft Knox. The letters I received from home explained that Jerry was chomping at the bit to hear if Dad could tell if the letters had grown out of the grass yet. Dad, who was supremely gagged, immediately knew that Jerry had been the culprit. The only way Dad could get back at Jerry was to pretend like there was nothing to report, and that’s exactly what he did.

Jerry called the house every day for weeks, asking questions about how all the plants were doing. Mom and Dad feigned ignorance and acted like everything was okay. Jerry called Sister and asked point-blank if the letters had come up in the yard yet. Sister, who had been coached by Dad, told Jerry that I had mentioned the fertilizer, but the field looked normal.

Truth be told – it was so extremely obnoxious that everybody noticed it. People driving down the road slowed down at the house to read it. Neighbors asked about it. Friends pointed and laughed. Dad couldn’t keep the field mowed short enough that summer… but it didn’t matter because those lush, dark green letters jumped out like the Queen of Spades after you led with a seven of diamonds.

Jerry knew that something had to be showing. He called family friends in Summertown, and asked them to drive to Lawrenceburg to see if they could see anything in the field. Good friends that they are, they drove over on a Sunday afternoon. They’d been sitting on the porch for a while before he asked Dad about the letters in the field. Dad explained to him that they weren’t telling Jerry that they could see them because Jerry wanted so bad to gag Dad. He went back home and called Jerry, telling him that he couldn’t see anything in the field, either.

It was fun for me because I was at Ft Knox for six weeks and I received installations of the story in letters from home. The best part is that Mom and Dad have a friend who has an airplane, and they went up to take pictures of the field from the air. They mailed a picture of the field to Jerry, who in turn was both tickled pink with its success and extremely gagged that everybody pretended not to see it.

* Dad says that Jerry also painted “(MY DAD'S NAME) REPUBLICAN” on the door of the catch’em house garage, but it didn’t last long before someone covered it.

my sandbox

This blog is my sandbox, my domain, my rules, my opportunity to practice free speech. If you don't like that, then you're welcome not to come back.

I have tried to keep the language between what would be considered PG by chance that an unsupervised youngin might land here looking for information about your hero and mine, Peyton Manning. (With the exception of one post that I can think of in the past 2 1/2 years.)

This is my gift to parents who don't monitor their children. I might watch the language I use, but I don't pull punches when things push my buttons.

I'd argue that I don't have a lot of buttons, either. Especially in the world of blogs. If I don't like what's written on someone else's blog, I don't go back. It's that easy. It's not my place to leave messages saying that I don't like what or how they posted or whatnot. It's their sandbox, and I go back to mine.

It's easy like Sunday morning.

The real purpose of this blog is to inform close friends and family about the boring drama in the lives of two full-blooded Tennesseans stuck in the land of Uglyhoma. It's a way to stay in touch without chunking up gas on I-40.

In short, this can be summed up by a quote from the great philosopher of our time, E. Cartman, on South Park, "Whateva! I do what I want!"

* Besides, if you don't like "The Bruce is Loose", then you must not be a Vol fan. This is the update: we're 26 and 3. The best season in the history of the program is a reason to celebrate. If this bothers you, you're the one with the problem - not me.