My Profile
Older
E-mail
D*Land
Diary Rings

Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
A Gift from Hil - 2014-12-28
There was A LOT of turkey. - 2014-12-04
Can we just jump to January please? - 2014-11-14
A (don't kick the) Bucket List - 2014-10-28

Join my Notify List and get email when I update my site:
email:
Powered by NotifyList.com

5:06 p.m. - 2013-05-04
Damn, that's a cold ass honky.

And another week goes by.

Despite the utterly perfect weather and the amazing explosion of all things green and petaled life at Casa Sage was less than idyllic this week. I'd hear Mick's car hit the driveway at 5:00 and think...

Things are smoothing out. Don't they always? It'll be fine. Just didn't make for a lot of happy sparkle stuff to write about.

Did I brag about Wolf's most recent report card? I disremember. Anyhow, my son knocked it out of the park again with nothing lower than a B+ and even scored an A in algebra.

He's also started sticking up for himself in gym class where his lack of athleticism makes him game for the bullies and the mouthy gits. Wolf's like me in that he'll suck up an unhealthy amount of abuse before he finally blows, but when he does...Watch Out! On Friday he'd had enough from this one twerpy little freshman who seems to think 5th period volleyball is akin to a World Cup final. The twerp bitches and moans and shouts criticisms and insults and mockeries, not just about Wolf's but about everyone's performance. That this kid hadn't yet had his head jammed into a locker room toilet and been given a swirly is a miracle. Anyhoodle, Wolf finally tore into the twerp much to the delight of the rest of the class. The coach, wise man in that he understands gym class isn't just about sport- the social dynamic is important too- he blithely ignored Wolf's profanity-laced smackdown of the twerp and rightfully let my son get his ya-yas out. Final score? Wolf -1 Twerp- 0. Plus some thumbs up and high fives from the rest of the 5th period guys.

Hey, I'd have been pleased if Wolf had flat out punched that twerp. Seriously. Even if he'd been suspended for it. Of course I am proud of how well Wolf has reined in his outrageously anti-social Aspie behavior. Enough so that he's left the alternative school and mainstreamed back into regular public school. But fitting in and conforming doesn't mean he has to be a patsy and a schmuck. The line between going along to get along and being a dupe and a doormat is one I've struggled with all my life so of course I hope my son learns his boundaries and what is acceptable and what is bullying bullshit far sooner than I did. And at least in this one instance it seems he has. I'm proud of him for sticking up for himself. Time enough later on to learn the niceties of it, for right now I'm happy he's got the chops to speak up when other people are being ugly to him.

In my previous entry I mentioned there were adventures after Chiller. Boy howdy there were. With hours yet before Wolf would be dropped off home by his father we had time on our side and I told Mick I wanted to go to IKEA. We were near enough in Parsippany, and Bergen County specifically Paramus being on our way home, I wanted an IKEA spree. The little clamp-on light next to my desk needed replacement bulbs, half our forks had gone missing, and I wanted some more of those scratchy white bath towels, IKEA products all. He wasn't best pleased, but when is Mick ever happy about a change in plans? I won though so to IKEA we went.

The buggardly thing about IKEA is the heat. It's fricken HOT in there. Okay, I get the Swedes and their thing for saunas, but do their American stores have to emulate them? 15 minutes in IKEA and I'm dehydrated, dripping sweat and completely disoriented. Add to it the deliberately confusing layout and the freakishly clone-like appearance of every single one of their products and this girl is flummoxed. And I have a black belt in shopping. A doctorate in consumerism. I shop even better than I talk, and that's saying something. But IKEA defeats me every time. I'd order online but the shipping is so prohibitive! For instance a couple months ago in the IKEA catalog I found a lovely cabinet to hold a wide-screen TV to replace my current TV armoire. The cabinet was $157. The shipping was $420! Are they fucking kidding me? Same deal with the bulbs for my little light. The bulbs are $9.00 but to have them shipped would more than triple the price. So. My inner bargain bitch and budget-meister insists I haul my butt down to Paramus and do my IKEA shopping in person. All that costs me is gas, $2.50 for the Harriman toll, and my sanity.

Oddly enough while we were in IKEA Mick ran into a former co-worker. Big Bill got Mick caught up on all the gossip and news from the jail while Bill's wife and I made small talk and tried not to faint from the heat. It's not totally crazy for either of us to bump into an acquaintance at IKEA, the one in Paramus is the closest to us, but it's passing strange enough. It's like the time my ex-BIL and I were bopping around NYC on a sightseeing jaunt and he ran into folks he knew from Karlsruhe, Germany in the sub-basement subway station of the World Trade Center. Or how I ran into someone I'd gone to high school with in the men's dressing room of Dillard's department store in the Houston Galleria. Makes you aware of just how small a world it truly is.

Yet for all the smallness of the world Mick and I still managed to misplace the car in the IKEA parking garage. Seemed to take forever to figure out there's TWO garages and we were in the wrong one. Then we got totally turned around and thoroughly lost trying to get on Rte. 17 north when leaving. The access road from IKEA routes you through the Garden State Plaza's parking lot and then abruptly disappears. I told Mick that no matter how hard I try I ALWAYS end up in Patterson, New Jersey, but he didn't believe me. Hear me now, it is IMPOSSIBLE to leave IKEA or the Garden State Plaza and get on Rte. 17 north. Save yourself the anguish and get on Rte. 4 and figure it out from there. Really. Technically you should be able to pick up Rte. 4 for about 200 yards and then directly exit up a ramp onto Rte. 17 north but this is bullshit. As mythical and as impossible to find as Brigadoon. Get on Rte. 4. Go past Loehmann's, the BMW dealer, the Bonefish Grille, and that place with the futons. Find an exit ramp that promises a U-turn and try like hell to get yourself aimed back toward Ramsey. Otherwise you'll do as Mick and I did and spend a hellish two hours touring the residential sections of Fair Lawn, Ridgewood, Glen Ridge, Wyckoff, and Franklin Lakes before finally stumbling onto somewhere familiar. Fortunately for us my grandparents lived in Wyckoff and I recognized enough landmarks to finally get us back through Ramsey and onto Rte. 17 headed toward home. Not pleasant no matter how pretty the houses are. (Which they are, btw. North Bergen is gorgeous.)

As for me personally, I've been fighting back against shingles. The left side of my bod from behind my ear, along my neck, down through my armpit and halfway past my ribs was a mess. A burning, itching, oozing toxic waste site. It's mostly healed and I seem to have escaped the worst of the residual effects, but the past few weeks have NOT been easy.

Ditto the trouble with hemorrhoids and that I've developed a case of bruxism. Never ground my teeth in my whole life, but lately I'm waking up with my molars aching and my jaw knotted with exhausted cramps.

Up news being I haven't gotten my period in four months, so there's hope my wretched reproductive system has finally called it quits. YAY!

To sum up. There's a bazillion daffodils. The weather is kind. My kid is doing well in school and socially. I have new scratchy bath towels that dry really well. It's almost farmer's market season and the bounty therein. Mick and I are working on things. I've lost 10lbs. The scent of violets wafting in through my open windows is entrancing. Thanks to the new bulb I have light in my wee office.


Many good things, and anyway it could be worse, ~LA


Speaking of bargain shopping...


6 Wanna talk about it!

previous // next