The To-Do List

Normally at 4am there is very little that I think about. Oh sure, in the fog of my mind there are little reminders like don't trip over the cat on the way to the loo and don't forget to flush, but that's about it. I have never been one of those people who sit up in bed bolted awake with sudden worries or overwhelmed by what seems like an impossible amount of work to do.

That's why I was so surprised to be wide awake this morning as the alarm clock ticked over past 4:00. It all came about because somehow even in my sleep I started to understand that we are leaving Australia in 14 days and when we return in early January we very likely will have only a couple of weeks to clear out our house.

As I tried to force myself to return to my favorite dream -- the one where I am young and thin and my hair falls over my brow -- I instead started thinking that we've got to get some moving companies in to give us quotes. And I have to call the lawyer who did the contract for this house and get the survey. And I need to dig out the building certificate for putting the roof on the deck. And we need to arrange for Streak to be boarded at a cattery while we are in the US. And I will be wasting a couple of hundred bucks if I don't consolidate the storage bins we rent. And we really would be stupid not to get flu shots before spending so many hours on planes as winter starts in the US. And - well, there were lots more things on the to-do list, but who can remember the things we think about as we lie in bed trying to get back to sleep?

Letting your mind race through all these tasks is, of course, fairly tiring and I must have dozed off at some point and didn't get up until a little before 7. With coffee brewed, I became a man of action. I turned on the laptop and located some moving companies. I added their web address to my bookmarks. Same with a place that boards cats.

It was too early to call then, but I figured I would get around to it all later. And then I thought that it would make a reasonable blog topic, which I badly need since I haven't posted much lately, so I started writing this. However, despite my love of procrastination, I do intend to start ticking off the list.

For one thing, I don't want to be lying awake at 4am any more. For another, the real estate agent just rang and one of the people has asked for a copy of the contract. Suddenly 14 days is starting to seem like a very, very short time.

Grumpy Old Me

LK and I are so over this selling-the-house thing. We are getting grumpy, feeling put upon and put out, and generally not enjoying it.

It's only been one week since we first opened the house for inspection, so perhaps it's good that the whole process only lasts three weeks. After only two viewing days, we're tired already of having to leave the house so people can poke around and look at our home. And we know many of them aren't even interested in buying, but are just nieghbors having a stickybeak.

Right now we are sitting out on the deck because we don't want to get in the way of the cleaners the agent wants us to use before the inspection day. Fair enough, at least we don't have to do the cleaning. But it is adding to a growing sense that the process of selling the house is definitely taking over from the satisfaction of living in the house.

On Tuesday one of the people who went through on Saturday asked to send in a building and pest inspector and also to have a chance to wander around and check out the house one more time. All very positive signs - they're spending money on inspectors, can't wait to get back to have one more look. We should have been happy. But when I told LK that night that I hated it and would not be here for any more of that sort of stuff, she said, "I can't believe you feel that way. It's exactly how I feel, too."

We both know that you have to let interested people send in inspectors. We did it when we bought this place. But knowing is one thing, feeling it is another. We're still at the stage of "This is our house and how dare you come in here tapping the walls and shining lights into the back of the cupboards and crawling into parts of the house we've never even been to."

And, of course, we know from experience that the building inspector's primary concern is to avoid a lawsuit for failing to detect a problem, so he diligently looks for every little thing about the house that may either be a concern now or maybe, who knows, some time in the future. For us, this is a wonderful place to live. For him, it's a great opportunity to find fault with all sorts of things - he's kind of like the Rush Limbaugh of tradespeople with an audience of one.

I think we will just have to let the agent handle this stuff if more people want to send in the inspectors. Anyhow, my laptop is running out of battery, and I am stuck out on the deck (I mean, undercover entertaining area) and cannot charge it. So I will just post this and shut down.

I hope someone buys this place soon. I am getting very grumpy.

Halloween 2

Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
an' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
An' all us other children, when the supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,
An' the Goblins will get you
If you don't
Watch
Out!

from "The Little Orphan Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley

I'm not even sure if anyone today knows what goblins are, and I am not sure if I ever really knew myself. But I can tell you one thing for sure... goblins used to scare the daylights out of me.

With the annual Halloween orgy of horror movies on most every channel on the cable, it has reminded me of one of the earliest times in my life when I couldn't wait to be scared out of my wits.

Given the swiss cheese nature of my memory, I am surprised how vivid the recollection is, but I can still picture the littlest details as my Dad would sit me on one knee and Brenda or Peggy or whoever else was around on his other knee. Then he would start to recite James Whitcomb Riley's masterpiece about Little Orphan Annie.

That's the fist stanza up above and you can - and should - read the whole poem here. But to properly appreciate it you have to get past the words and into the theatricality of the poem. Dad would start slowly, just more or less telling us that Little Orphan Annie has come to their house to stay and you'd listen to the rhythm of the poem and the soft tones as he told you about her chores.

And then - because we had done this dozens of times and knew exactly what was coming - we'd start to squirm a little, feel the tension rise as we anticipated what was coming even though his voice hadn't changed a bit. We were usually squealing by the time he tightened his grip on our arms and loudly barked out "Or the goblins will get you if you don't watch out". I swear, I am getting tense just thinking about it almost 60 years later.

Of course it was us kids who kept begging him to recite the poem to us. It was delicious to be scared and yet know that we were completely safe at the same time. I think the folks making scary movies today could learn a lot by figuring out why this was such a thrill to us kids and made such a deep and lasting impression on me as one of the wonderful moments of my childhood.

In hindsight, I think it's remarkable that a poem written in 1885 could still be scaring kids in the 1950's. And even more remarkable that my father knew the whole poem and seemed to like nothing more than get us on his knees and warn us that the goblins would get us if we didn't watch out.

Halloween

Happy Halloween. This has been a day that began with us cleaning and rearranging and stashing things like coffee pots because it was our first day to show the house.

A little before noon our agent, Mary-Anne, exiled us from our own house and told us we couldn't return until 1 when the viewing was over. We went to Crows Nest and decided to try out a new restaurant boasting "Build Your Own Burgers", which we now know is restaurant-speak for you can have the stuff you would have been able to have for free anyways, but now we get to charge about 5 bucks more.

The burgers were good, though pricey, but the lunch was excellent because while we were reviewing the menu our great friends Shirley and Cheryl walked past and we got them to join us.

After lunch, LK went to the grocery to buy 12 bags of candy bars to give to Trick or Treaters. I went to the drug store to get six prescriptions for diabetes filled because of all the candy I used to eat when I was a Trick or Treater. Karma, I guess.

Then we went home where Mary-Anne filled us in on the viewing. She said that 19 families had come through the house and about 2 or 3 were "good inspections", which I think means they are strong prospects. We talked with her for quite a while, and if I have to get it to a simple sentence. it would be: Good first day and we'll find out how good later.

After that, we had about an hour before Rachael and Matt came over with Lily to trick or treat the neighborhood. (We apparently have a strong American contingent living here and it's prime territory for Halloween treats.) LK used it to carve an excellent jack o'lantern. Lily's friends Chloe and Amy eventually joined her, and after some play time at the house Rach and Matt took them around to harvest sweets.

Lily dressed as a pumpkin. It's a costume she's had for years and rediscovered recently. She decided that she wanted to wear the costume again, even though it's really designed to fit a girl of about 2 or 3. As you can see from the picture, she somehow pulled it off although the cap makes her look to me like Drew Barrymore in Grey Gardens.

When I told her today that Auntie Sandy (as she calls her) had first made the costume for Jordan when she was a little girl, Lily got quite excited and couldn't wait to tell her parents that the costume was quite special because Auntie Sandy had sewed it.

Anyhow, an hour later three 7-year-olds were wolfing down candy. I am positive none of these girls ever eats this much candy, and I was starting to feel a little nauseous myself watching them. I tried to slow them down with all the arguments adults use that have zero impact on 7-year-olds with piles of chocolate in front of them.

Out of desperation, I finally said, "Lily, if you keep eating Snickers you are going to end up looking like Bampy." Her two friends both stopped and looked at me with a true lack of comprehension. Then Lily piped up, "He means we will all be fat." Chloe and Amy nodded. Then, confident that they did not need to fear baldness at an early age, all three girls went back to scarfing down their candy.

They finally left, and LK and I were alone, but Greenwich is now unofficially a Halloween Center of Excellence in Australia. LK bought 12 bags of 12 candy bars. By 7:30 we were down to 10 little Snickers and dreading what would happen if the doorbell rang two or three more times. Fortunately, the tide receded with five candy bars left and we were able to relax.

As we sat down, we both realized we were very tired for no obvious reason. It may just be that we have finally reached the Showing-the-House finish line and it was probably just an unconscious response. Anyhow, LK is making a late dinner. She has just blown out the candle on the jack o'lantern and proclaimed Halloween officially over. And soon after we eat, I think we will both be happy to crawl into bed.

Mama, Pappy and Bubba

I don't know why it all started, but a few months ago my Dad and I had been talking on the phone and he said he was going to switch the call over to my mother. Only he said, "I'll give you to your Mama."

Now I have never called her Mama in 60 years, and she and I both cracked up that he had said it. But then the next night he said it again. And the next night. Until, through sheer repetition, her name became Mama, and I have now started saying "Hi, Mama" when she comes on the line.

Then one night a few weeks ago, she decided that if she was going to get a new name after six decades then so could I. So when I said, "Hi, Mama," she told me that from now on if her new name was Mama then mine was going to be Bubba. We both had a good laugh because Bubba is just not a name our New England family has dealt with. However, I knew I was in for it the next night when Dad answered the phone with "How are you, Bubba?" And it has stuck since then.

So, it is just the sort of silliness that makes families laugh. Well, kind of. Yesterday Mama told me that she had been shopping and saw a box of frozen hamburgers called Bubba Burgers. "I had to buy them," she told me, even though she had never bought frozen hamburgers in her life. And then this morning my father (whom I now call Pappy) sent me e-mail pictures of the Bubba Burgers box.

This being the era of Google, I can now tell you that Bubba Burgers were invented in the early 1990s by Walter "Bubba" Eaves. The company's web site says that Bubba's dream was "to create a burger that he would be proud to serve to his friends at his home." Which doesn't seem like all that grand a dream to me, but perhaps if you're named Bubba it is.

And, much like George W, it was Mission Accomplished for Bubba. Again, to quote the web site, ". . . he was so proud of his creation he named his burger the BUBBA burger®. With these high standards, the BUBBA burger® was born!"

Surprisingly, the company making the BUBBA burger® is not the first one to get mentioned when you google the words Bubba + Burger. That actually belongs to a small chain of restaurants in Kauai Hawaii known as Bubba's, (if you hadn't already guessed the name). The restaurants specialize in burgers and in fact their menu offers a wide range of burgers. They are the Bubba, the Double Bubba, the Big Bubba, the Slopper and the Double Slopper. And if you really want to know what the Double Slopper is, you can check out the menu yourself here.

And while you're there, check out the rest of this site. It is one of the funniest and most entertaining sites I've visited. You just need to know that Kuaui's Bubba restaurants have as their motto: "We cheat tourists, drunks and attorneys." And at the bottom of their menu, they tell you that you can add lettuce and tomato for $1, but then caution: "Not Recommended. Been served without it since 1936."

And while they don't appear to be freezing and shipping Big Bubba Burgers or the Double Slopper to the world outside Hawaii, you can order some items.

My favorite is a package of beans called "Bubba's Organic Bubble Bath". Its directions are simple: "Cook and eat with 1 bowl Bubba's Budweiser Chili 1 hour BEFORE bath time."

Anyhow, enough about the various Bubba burgers and back to the main subject of our new names. It must be time to give Linda Maureen a new name in line with Mama, Pappy and Bubba. Perhaps Linda-Mo? Oh, never mind. I have already been calling her that for years.

A Proper Knees Up

Today I did two things I haven't done in years.

The first was that I knelt down. The second was that I stood up after kneeling down.

I cannot remember the last time my knees let me do a proper kneel-down, but today I decided to chance it in pursuit of getting our house sold. On Saturday I had painted over some chips and scratches on the yellow columns at the front of the house. The assumption being that people react quickly to how a house looks when they first approach it, and it seemed important not to let them see that we hadn't bothered with the dings and nicks since we moved in.

Anyhow, the paint job on the columns seemed effective enough without going to the trouble of repainting the whole thing. But all the yellow paint I had spilled on the marble pavers of the porch needed a scrubbing this morning.

I also wanted to paint the step at the front door. For some reason the previous owners had painted it bright red, which I have always thought was an odd choice for a yellow house with aqua trim. But in the 9 years we have lived here much of the red paint had worn away to the point where you didn't know if it was a red step with lots of wear or a wooden step that had been bleeding.

Anyhow, it was time to kneel down. Nothing ripped, tore or even hurt much. I was thinking this wasn't going to be as bad as I had worried. Then I realized I still had to get my other knee down.

Once both knees were down, I started scrubbing like a scullery maid - if you can imagine a bald, fat scullery maid with a moustache. The yellow paint came up pretty easily, and all that remained was to get the paint and do the front step.

Which is when I learned that kneeling down - as challenging as it may seem - is much easier than standing up.

Much.

More or less stuck on all fours on the front porch with little idea how to get out of that position, I ran through my yoga positions in my mind. Perhaps one would show me the way to get upright again.

The Downward-facing Dog is supposed to start from a kneeling position, but I've always cheated and skipped the kneeling part, so that was no help. The Sun Salutation had taught me how to do a sort of squat that uses my knees to stand up from a bent-over position. Unfortunately, I can now tell you that you cannot squat when you are sitting on your feet, and really it was getting those feet out in front of me that was the real challenge. So that was little help.

I finally figured out that the porch railing could also function as a pull-up bar from the position I was in. Grabbing it, I was able to swing one foot and then the next in front of my body. And from there I did a modified Sun Salutation and pushed my way through to the upright position. My Wii guy probably would have told me I need to work on my balance, but it did not matter.

And yes, the whole process had to be repeated in order to paint the step. So you could say that I have now done this kneel-down-and-get-back-up thing twice. But when I was done, I was relieved that twice would be quite enough for the foreseeable future.

That was until a few moments later. I forgot to shut the front door afterwards and Streak walked through, leaving paw marks on the newly painted step and paint marks on the porch pavers. LK volunteered to clean up the paint the cat had tracked, and I did a quick fix on the step, but it will need another coat. I guess I will be back painting the step one last time tomorrow.

Assuming my knees are still working when I try to get out of bed.

Living Large

Fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin' world go round
Get on your bikes and ride
Queen



Many of you have probably heard about Club Bounce by now, but I just discovered it. It's a nightclub in Long Beach, California that caters to plus-sized people. And if "plus-sized" sounds too politically correct to you, you may prefer the way the Associated Press put it:

This expansive nightclub a couple blocks from the Pacific Ocean, with its flashing lights, friendly atmosphere and wall-rattling hip-hop sounds, caters specifically to fat people. That's right, fat people. Not just any fat people, either, but fat people who are proud to call themselves fat people.

Now I am willing to acknowledge that I am fat, but I am not proud of it. I really cannot get my head around how someone who cannot touch their toes would be proud of that. Anyhow, you can read all about Club Bounce in the AP report and there's another interesting story here on a web site called nightclub.com that caters to the bar management trade.

The owner of the bar makes a big deal about creating an environment where plus-sized party-goers can enjoy themselves without feeling like "the fat girl at the bar", as she described it. I would sooner think my reaction to the club would be more like "there's nothing but fat girls at the bar", but then I am obviously not tuned into the Club Bounce way of thinking.

I mean, it's not like a gay bar. I can understand why gays would want to have a place where they can get together without worrying about being bashed if they feel like doing the lambada. But honestly, is there a dance floor anywhere in the world that prohibits chubby folks from boogeying?

Or is it that the chubby folks feel out of place with people who wear black because they like the color and not because it hides their shapes? Certainly I have learned over the years that the easiest way to look thinner was not to lose weight - which is very hard work - but to hang around a bunch of very fat people. So maybe that would be the best reason to go to the club for some of us.

I don't want to sound too harsh about Club Bounce. Live and let live, so if the XXLs of this world want their own place to dance, more power to them. But I have to tell you I am quite disappointed because I wouldn't be allowed into the club.

While I pass the physical requirements easily enough, my problem is that the club requires that men wear shirts with a collar and it bans sneakers. In order to get in, I would have to abandon my retirement uniform. I just don't think it's something I would consider if the only payoff is that I get to dance with a bunch of large people who boast that they're fat and proud of it.