Bad Timing

Why is it that when you're leaving for a long trip the car won't start?  Or you're waiting for house guests to arrive and a pipe bursts?  Or you're expecting ten for a holiday dinner and the oven konks out?


Several years ago we'd packed our SUV to begin the drive from Massachusetts to Florida.  STUFF for eight months was wedged in like a puzzle.  Golf clubs and tennis rackets slid behind the front seats.  Boxes of paperwork, books, and computer equipment lay on the flattened trunk where the back seats had been. Suitcases spread toward the rear door.  Coats and jackets topped the mound, while shoe bags and boots plugged the holes.  We set the alarm on the house and adjusted our front seats.  Charley turned the key in the ignition.

NOTHING!  Over and over - not even a whine.  Battery dead overnight.

We called the dealer, who promised a tow truck, which arrived an hour later, which had no luck charging the battery, which then needed a tow.  Only one problem:  the BMW couldn't be towed in "Park," and without the ignition on, the gears wouldn't shift to "Neutral."  Oh yes, one other problem:  the over-ride access to the gear shift was under the cup console between the front seats and needed a wrench.  Guess where the BMW geniuses had stored the wrench?  In the trunk.  Guess what else was in the trunk?

We unloaded the car, piled everything in the garage, and watched as our BMW inched its way up the tow truck in "Neutral."  When the car arrived two days later, we made sure it started before we packed it up again, and we never turned it off till we hit the first rest stop 200 miles away.

*************

One son and daughter-in-law were hosting fourteen of us for Christmas Eve several years ago. On the way home from the airport after picking us up on Dec. 23rd, our son received a call from home.

"What's up?" he said.

"We have a flood."

"What?  Where?"

"A pipe was leaking under the kitchen sink and water began pouring into the basement.  I called Serve-Pro and they'll be here soon."

"Unbelievable!  Did you shut off the main water line?"

"Yes. I've got buckets in the basement but there's a big hole in the ceiling down there."

"We're about forty-five minutes away.  Call me when they get there."

Serve-Pro came and cleaned up.  They left behind a blower/dryer in the middle of the kitchen, a wet vac in the basement, and a new kitchen pipe for the holiday.

"You really shouldn't use this sink after Christmas," the man said before he left. "There's mold under the cabinets and it's unhealthy.  All the cabinets will have to be torn out."

"That means a new kitchen, I guess," my daughter-in-law said.  "We weren't planning on it this soon."

"Well, don't worry about Christmas Eve," I said, giving her a big hug.  "We don't care what we eat, as long as we're together.  We can always order pizza! Why not sit down and dad and I will put the children to bed?"

The next day I set the dining room table while our daughter-in-law emptied the lower cabinets.  That evening fourteen of us enjoyed a beef tenderloin roast with Lyonnaise potatoes, fresh green beans, spaghetti squash, and Tiramisu that had been stashed in the refrigerator.  We danced around the blower that continued to rattle in the middle of the kitchen, grateful we didn't have to wash dishes in the bathtub upstairs.

************

A friend of ours was an avid tennis player and agreed to substitute for another team. During the third set in a three-hour match, she injured her Achilles Tendon.  The surgeon ordered a "boot."

"You'd better take it easy for a while, till we can confirm whether it's torn," he said.

"What about Christmas dinner?" her husband said.  "We can always go out."

"No, eight other people are planning to come, and I've already prepared some things ahead.  We'll carry on."

Deidre stood like a stork on one leg making the canapes and setting the table the day before. She hopped from sink to refrigerator preparing two beef Wellingtons and four vegetables on Christmas morning, then went to get dressed.

At 3:30 p.m. she turned on the oven. The oven refused to oblige. "Honey, we have no oven!"

"Try resetting it.  Maybe you didn't hit the proper sequence.  I'll check the breaker."

Deidre tried again, following instructions in the manual. Still nothing.

"OK, now what??  They'll be here at 5:00."

"Call Kim.  Maybe we can use her oven, since she's coming anyway and lives around the corner."

At 5:00 the other eight guests arrived.  Mark served them a drink and Deidre's famous canapes, heated in the microwave.  At 6:00 Deidre announced, "I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid we have no oven!  If you'll excuse us, Kim and I are going to drive to her house to cook your dinner.  Her ovens have been pre-heating."

Fifty minutes later, the ladies removed the four vegetables and two beef Wellingtons from Kim's ovens and nestled them in towels and blankets in the trunk so they wouldn't wobble.  Kim slammed the trunk and got behind the wheel.

She turned the key in the ignition...NOTHING.

"Call Mark!  He can come get the dinner."

The ladies went around to the trunk to open it for Mark's arrival.  STUCK!

"Call Mark back and have him bring my husband with his keys," Kim said.

Together the foursome jimmied the trunk open and transferred everything to Mark's car. Dinner was served at 7:00.

Three nights later Deidre hosted a birthday party for Mark.  Sixty people enjoyed her hot canapes, heated in another neighbor's oven.

Ladies' Night Out

                                                                    

     I opened the envelope and saw shoes - beautiful shoes - all over the invitation.  I figured my friend was selling some brand I'd never heard of and probably wouldn't want.  Or maybe it was a fundraiser.
     But there was no mention of a sale or a charity.  The invitation asked me to come enjoy the company of my "sole mates," and to wear my funkiest, dreamiest, or most comfy shoes...to go wild, or not.  A girls' night out!
     I looked through my closet and brought out a shocking pink pantsuit and a blue spiky wig.  No blue or pink shoes in there, though.  I ran to PayLess.
     For eighteen dollars I found six-inch stilettos in a pink, blue, and white floral.  I pictured my back twisted like a pretzel after five minutes in those beauties.  But the immediate issue was getting them on over the balls of my bunions. 
     I went up a size and, like Cinderella, slid the shoe over my left foot.  For some reason, probably having to do with the right side of my brain being dominant, my left foot is one-quarter-inch larger than my right.  So going up a size was automatic, and  I'd brought along some knee-highs to make the slide less painful.  I held onto the shelving and tried to stand up.  Miraculously, I was able to take a few steps.  "Perfect," I thought, "as long as I don't have to stand to talk, drink, or eat."
     A photographer snapped shots of the most unique pairs among the fifty that stepped over the threshold that night.  Who would've guessed - our hostess had on my exact shoes!  Well, they weren't exactly the same, since she'd used a glue gun to encrust the six-inch heels in crystals.
     That was just the opener for our hostess' creativity.  The living room showcased magnificent pairs, including red sparklers resembling Dorothy's from "The Wizard of Oz."  Quotes around the room brought to mind Imelda Marcos' famous line during her exile, "They went into my closets looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes."  Eight-and-one-half-by-eleven-inch renderings of Prada, Jimmy Choo, Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Ferragamo, complete with peacock feathers and laces to the knee, surrounded the dining room.  A miniature shoe collection sat in the center of the table.  In the downstairs party room, tables were set for dinner with a single shoe and "Fifty Shades"-type poem as centerpieces.  We found our assigned seats and admired the red, purple, and gold footwear painted by our hostess on three-foot-by-three-foot canvases around the room.
     Fifty ladies in a conga line, wearing shoes they couldn't stand in (or not wearing them - I'd jettisoned mine under the table), created an indelible image. In a contest we guessed the most expensive pair on the shelves at Nordstrom.   The answer was a $3900 pair of Christian Louboutin's, but the winner didn't receive shoes for a prize.  She received wine - even better!  We formed a circle to pass decorated flip-flops to our right and left, over and over, until our hostess said, "What you hold in your hand right now is yours."  I ended up with pink ones, topped by floppy white roses.
     It was our hostess' birthday, and the two-tiered cake boasted a Cinderella-like crystal shoe on top.  But it was our hostess' daughter who made the night so memorable.
     "Our family's been through a lot in the last several years," she began, "and yet we feel so fortunate to celebrate Mom's birthday with you.  There's nothing more important in life than friendship, love, and the memories we create together...not our jobs, not our houses, not our clothes, not even our shoes!"
    

Pump It Up

"Pump it up" does not refer to an aerobic routine, body building, implanting anything foreign in the body, or even  balloons.

It is the name of a franchise where children under age ten go berserk.

Last weekend I attended my first "Pump It Up" party for our granddaughter's fifth birthday.  Twenty-six party-goers gathered in the lobby, where they ran from end to end, careening into each other.  A staff member herded them onto a carpeted area to watch a safety video.  No movie, no entrance.  Silence ensued - during the movie.  The attendant crowned our granddaughter "Princess" and asked her to lead the procession into the abyss.  First, though, they had to wait for a previous group to exit.  Parties were scheduled every half-hour.  While waiting, the attendant morphed into a cheerleader.  "Who's the Princess?" she yelled.

In unison:  "Emma!"

"Who??"

"Emma!!!" 

The kids were psyched into a frenzy.  Around their necks they wore glow sticks to identify them inside the black chasm. Strip lights outlined bouncy structures.  Parents and grandparents ran through the expanse to find their darlings, but the darlings had been swallowed.  "They'll be asleep by six tonight," I said to no-one.

There were four bouncy houses in this room (each held ten), an inflatable slide two stories high, riding toys for those under three years, and air hockey.  An attendant monitored each structure.

One of our grandsons came down the slide immediately behind a girl twice his size.  He tumbled into her at the bottom, where they both exploded in ludicrous laughter.  Then he rolled over the inflatable barrier and fell onto the mat below.  His neck tilted at an unnatural 90-degree angle.  I rushed to help him, sure he'd never move again.  He started back up the steps before I even reached the mat.

After thirty minutes, a loud speaker announced that party goers should line up to proceed to the next room.  More inflatable structures, but higher.  I was grateful for a bench near the exit, where I withdrew into my coat, tortoise-like.  It muffled the high-pitched squeals.

An interminable thirty minutes passed before the loudspeaker announced that party goers should line up to proceed to the "food court."  Here Emma took her place on an inflatable throne, her crown still intact.  Staff members served pizza, water bottles, pretzels, cheese doodles, and cake.  Did these kids really need more sugar??

"What do they charge for this?" I said to my daughter-in-law. 

"Four dollars a head for the hour and a half, up to twenty-six kids.  But then you have to select a food package."

"A food package?"

"Yes, and I had to bring our cake."

"What are the food packages?"

"You could select hot dogs and that would cost a lot more.  And you could add more hours for an additional cost per kid."

Why hadn't I thought of this?