Seventy-one

The weirdness of last week totally carried over to this one, starting with Mike getting into a fight with the guy who delivers my groceries.  We have this service here that’s totally great, you order everything on line and then it gets delivered for five dollars.  I've been using it for about three years, basically since it started.  Last Monday night, the food shows up, and it's a delivery guy I've never seen before.  He tripped walking up our front walk and dumped the bags all over the flowers, killing all my begonias.  He says to Mike super sarcastically, "I think I'll be fine, I should be just fine." Like, thanks for asking.  There's a shocked pause and then Mike says, "What's that supposed to mean?"  And it was all down hill from there.  It ended with this guy throwing Charmin into my front hall and snapping, "Thanks for the business. I really appreciate it."

We called, they said all the right things, but quite frankly I'm too scared to ever use them again, so now I'm back at Cub standing in a twenty foot line, bagging my own stuff frantically while the guy behind me’s hash browns come flying into my peaches.  And yes, I'm still talking about food.  I really feel I need to patch things up with the delivery guy.

Then we had parent night at school, where Finny’s teacher told me he brought a Roger Clyne CD to school for show and tell (I knew that,) and said to the class, "This is my uncle.  He was gonna put me on the cover of this cd, but decided to put a picture of himself  instead."  Then another mom told me Finny had taught her son a song about putting snow down your pants.  I predict expulsion before second grade. 

Meg doesn't need glasses, and she almost cried when the doctor said it.  I definitely think my Hillary Duff theory was correct.  She stopped complaining about the headaches, too.

Seventy-two

Well, things started off with a bang on Friday, as Liz and I realized we were not seated together on the plane and I was wedged in with the flying Elvises.

"I'll ask my seat mate to switch," she promised, since clearly, the Elvises didn't want to be separated. With that, she went back to her chair and fell immediately to sleep.  (I should explain she's seven months pregnant, so she must be forgiven for not wanting me blabbering at her all through the hop from Phoenix to Las Vegas.) It's only about a half hour trip, but this group managed to make it feel like a lifetime.  They were all drunk as skunks, had on matching wigs and giant gold sunglasses,  yelled clever things like  "VEGAS, BABY, VEGAS" and  "IT'S ON NOW, GIRLFRIEND" and constantly high-fived each other, each wag of their flabby arms spilling more of their non-complimentary cocktails on me.  I tried to convey my disapproval by glaring at my Time magazine extra hard, you know, kind of "I'm serious, I read TIME for God's sake" but it turns out Reagan's letters are actually pretty damn dull so that was no good, either.  By the time I got off the plane, I had a raging flying Elvis hangover.  But I had to shake it off because  we had a date with the Circle R beauty pageant and it was about to begin........

Now Melanie, with whom we stayed,(she'll probably never let me again since I kept letting her cats out and blew up her toilet) is an executive at the Frontier.  Several weeks ago, a ninety-three year old Asian man named Mr. See and his sidekick Jeep, that's right, just Jeep, appeared in her office and told her they wanted to hold one of their world famous 'Circle R' beauty pageants at her hotel. 

Seventeen women from foreign countries and two from the states stood on the stage at Gilley's western bar inside the hotel competing for titles like 'Disco Queen of the World', 'Supergirl,' 'Supermodel of the World,' ('of the world' was very big)  and my personal favorite, 'Queen of Models'. Now, these titles were all created by the old chinese guy, and were awarded in no particular order that I could tell.

It would stand to reason that Queen of Models would best Supermodel of the World, but Supermodel of the World got a bigger crown. Go figure.  Miss Germany, by far the most beautiful, was crowned last and her crown was the biggest, so I guess she won.  I got my picture taken with her. The only girls who didn't get anything were the two from the states.

Now, before you go blaming al Qaeda, you should know that Miss Florida's costume consisted of a red dress and an orange held high, even though, in her words, she's "deathly allergic to oranges." Citrus handling heroics aside, you do need to put in a little more effort, even for Mr. See.   When asked about her future plans, Miss Florida said, "I want to be an aspiring actress."

There was not a huge crowd. Us, a reporter from the Vegas Weekly (the supermarket freebie) and a guy who looked like if Harry Connick was on steroids.  He was there alone, chain smoking and I think mentally selecting which girl he planned to attack later.

Saturday consisted of shoe shopping (two pairs) manicures and pedicures, which I'd  never gotten before. I've never wanted anyone to look that closely at my feet. I have to admit, it looks lovely, and made me feel much better about wearing the beautiful strappy sandals I bought.

That night we went to Harrah's, where Melanie used to be the entertainment manager.  She knows everybody who's anybody and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone she not only knows but is great friends with. So we got to see everything for free. In one night, we saw a totally Vegasy musical variety lounge act, a wickedly funny comedian, (I seriously almost broke a rib) and a tits-n-feathers show. (The very same one featured in the Showgirls documentry on HBO.)  We were even invited to go bowling with the tits-n-feathers ensemble afterward, but since Preggie is preggers and it was 12:30 a.m. we declined.  I do need to say that Liz was a total trooper the whole weekend.  Heaven knows if I were pregnant, I wouldn't have done any of it.

We drove out to an enormous resort in Summerlind on Sunday, to see another comedian friend of Melanie’s perform.  Definitely a different kind of crowd from the strip but no less entertaining....lots of shriveled old ladies wearing gloves and hogging all the slot machines, but wearing DKNY casual wear instead of clothes from the Goodwill.  Is that one word?

The first time I ever went to Sin City, I fell in love with it hard, but I have to admit I was pretty disappointed with the casino crowd.  I had imagined something straight out of a James Bond movie, lots of beautiful high rollers in tuxedoes and ball gowns, discreetly rolling the dice in the romantic half-light.  The reality is, of course, much different, far more Branson than Bond.  I got over it pretty quickly, especially when I realized the drinks were free.

So I'm home now and Molly's so ticked at me for being gone all weekend she spent the whole morning pitching a gigantic hoonie.  She won't even look at the present I brought her, unlike the other two.  Finbar slept with his Elvis poster and Meg wore her Elvis charm bracelet to school.  I have to go up and clean an Exxon worthy syrup spill in the kitchen.  It was there when I got home last night, but I just didn't have the strength to deal with it.

Seventy-three

It's my birthday.  I'm a billion bajillion.  If I had been born again the day after I graduated from high school, I'd have graduated again.  The good news is that tomorrow is Margy's, which takes the pressure off me.  Mom and Dad are out in Denver celebrating with her, because they love her more.  Well, I mean it's fine, they've known her longer. Wayyyyyyy longer.  Plus, they probably feel sorry for her because she's so homely. (For those of you who don't know Margy, she looks like Cheryl Ladd and Kim Alexis combined.)  Once I dated a fellow who I found out later had been shot down by her. "Gee, her little sister sort of looks like her, if you squint and turn off the lights.......yeah, if Margy had been in a horrible accident and had reconstructive surgery, I can see it........"  I was with an old childhood friend recently  (Tara Murphy) and she asked if Margy was still beautiful.  Before I could even answer with an emphatic NO she went into this whole schpiel about how Margy had been the prettiest girl in Minneapolis and blah blah blah.  OK, so, I have two sisters who literally had to get restraining orders against infatuated males and me, who turned her senior prom date gay. "Oh, Katie, you can't turn someone gay," you might be thinking, but you didn't see my prom dress.

So to celebrate, I went to bed at 8:30 last night and woke up to roses and Caribou coffee, which was extra sweet considering poor Mike had been working till the wee hours at the TC Marathon expo and got up early to go get the coffee.  He has to work all day today, so the kids and I are gonna bake a cake together and go rent Holes.

Everyone is yelling for breakfast---

Seventy-four

Got a call from school yesterday at about noon that Meg was in the nurse's office and wanted to come home. Load up Molly, drive to school, there's Meg lying on a gurney doing a great Scarlett O'Hara.

"My.....tummy........hurts......" she moaned softly.

She kept it up all the way to the parking lot, where she broke into a happy skip to the car.   I'm not against anyone taking a day now and again, I mean she's in third grade, it's not like she's missing physics.  Plus we'd had a really fun evening Sunday, putting up all the Halloween decorations and whatnot, and she wanted to keep the love going.  Sometimes you just feel homesick, and that's fine.  So we got home, she put on her nightgown and sat down to draw more scary pictures to tape in the front window. Three hours later, it's time to go back and get Finbar.  He's standing in a group of about five really big kids, very animatedly telling them a story.  When my car got to the front of the line, the big kids helped him load his backpack, put it on him, found his coat, plopped him into our car and all yelled, "BYE, FINBAR!"

 "Finbar, who were all those kids?"  I asked.

"Just some eighth graders I know," he said.

Fairly anti-social daughter who'd rather skip school and draw pictures and Mr. Never-met-a-man-he-didn't-like Belushi kid.  How did this happen?

"So how was school, Finny?"

"Good, we read Leo the Lio--PURPLE SLUG BUG NO TAG BACKS PERSONAL PERIOD JINX NO UNJINX!!"

"THAT WASN'T PURPLE IT WAS BLUE BESIDES I SAW IT ON THE WAY HERE IT DOESN'T COUNT AND IT'S NO TAGS BACK NOT NO TAG BACKS!!"

"I SAID NO UNJINX  NO TAG BACKS!"  They are now slugging each other with great gusto.  Molly is singing Itsy Bitsy Spider quietly to herself, probably wishing she lived in a Romanian orphanage.

"DON'T HIT ME I'M SIIIIIICK!!" Meg pounds Finny hard. I had to talk myself out of pulling over and leaving them at the side of the road.

When we got home, Meg disappeared upstairs for a while.  When she came back down, she had the thermometer in her mouth.  She took it out and handed it to me with much hands-a-shakin', Shanghai Fever effort.  One hundred and eight degrees.

"Wow. You're really sick.  I guess you can't go with your class to the apple orchard tomorrow,"  I said.  She thought for a minute and said, "That thermometer must be broken, because I feel a lot better."

Seventy-five

Just got back from dinner with Mike's family.  Kristin, one of the team U.S.A. runners who also works for us, was babysitting and since she already put in a full eight hours at the store, I promised her I'd be home by nine.  So we're all at the country club talkin' and laughin' and havin' a great time, but I'm sort of nervously noticing how it's getting sort of late and the party is no where near ending, how am I gonna graciously get out of here?  I mean, the waitress just cleared our entrees and it's 8:40.  (By the way, I got Jambalaya. Jambalaya at Edina country club.  It was white rice with a chicken breast on top.  When I ordered it, I asked the waitress to 'spice it up' for me......... so she took her top off.  Not really.  I'm full of wine right now.  Anyway, it came with a bottle of Tobasco on the side.  I envisioned the cook rooting around in the kitchen for anything at all spicy, muttering, "They promised me at the Vo-Tec no one would order the Jambalaya, especially not spicy.  Godammit.  I think I'll take a piss on her dinner.")  Anyhoo, at ten to nine, just as I was getting the courage to stand up and make my goodbyes, Mike's brother leans in to the table in a very, no-more-kiddin'-around-this-shit's-serious way and says, "We need to talk about Uncle John's will." AHH!! I can't leave now, how rude would that be! So I borrow someone's cell phone and go outside to call Kristin and tell her I'm really sorry you worked all day and now I'm making you watch my brats so I can go out boozing when you need to get up at the crack of dawn and RUN, but I'm gonna be late.  Except I don't know how to work the dumb phone, I don't even know how to use my own, but there are a bunch of people outside and I want to look cool so I just start punching keys hoping to God somehow it will magically make the phone ring in my house. 

"Hello?" It's some old lady, I don't know who the fuck it is, and I don't know how to turn it off. And she keeps going with the "Hello? Hello? Who is this?"  I just kept pressing zero until she hung up.  So I went back inside and handed Tim's wife Jennifer back her phone, and she looked at it and the little screen which is there to I guess to completely rat you out is all bright green and covered with zeros.

"What did you do?" She asked.

"I have to go home, " I said. 

I have to go home???

"Thanks for dinner, it's sad Uncle John's dead and stuff, catch you later! Oh, sorry I wrecked your phone!""

See, this is the kind of stuff that happens when Mike leaves town.

There are three little girls upstairs watching a Mary Kate and Ashley marathon. Heidi and I did a swap where her girls would sleep here, and Finbar would sleep at their house. During the car ride over, Meg told me that Finbar had sneaked a box of cereal bars and eaten four of them. So I told Heidi he probably wouldn't be real hungry because of it, and she said, "So he'll just have diarrhea all night?"  And right as she said it, Finbar yelled down the stairs that he had just pooped his pants.  I jumped back in the car and left.

I can hear Molly crying, so I should go upstairs but I'm no even close to done.  I know this is one of those posts I'll re-read tomorrow and be super embarrassed by. Damn the torpedoes, I'm posting it anyway.

© Katie McCollow, 2004 • katie.mccollow@mac.com