Always been a storm. . .

December 14, 2010


Speedboat, anyone? Row boat?

If not, an ark would be more than welcome.

But please, no canoes.

I've seen some wild and wacky weather, but yesterday's monsoon was something else.

Rain in sheets.

Thunder and lightening in December.

Umbrellas making people airborne because they certainly weren't keeping anyone dry.

Sidewalk travellers soaked from roadside lakes cum tidal waves created by the sadistic drivers who wanted to see the splash.

When we retrieved Em from the highschool yesterday, I thought perhaps a kid pick up drive thru had been established.

Cars were lined up on Prospect Street like coffee addicts waiting for their morning Timmies. 

Teachers tossing students into cars filled with anxious parents hoping that whatever saturated child ends up in their vehicle is actually their own.
Or at least a better one.




This morning, the city has enacted Emergency Measures.

But these measures apparently do not extend to the universities, therefore, I have to go to work and give my Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods exam.

While we live at the top of a hill, we have to travel to the bottom of the hill and then up another hill in order to get to the university.

Given the school and road closures, I have to leave early to get to work on time to give my 9.00 am exam.

And to make sure Keith gets to his 9.00 am exam. 

Because if I have to be miserable, it's only right that someone else, preferably one to whom I have given birth, share in that misery.

While Em lounges in the luxury of having school closed, nestled warm and snug in her bed, Reilly purring loudly beside her equally pleased that she will be home with today.

And it doesn't take a brain surgeon, or someone with a 200 IQ to figure out where Stephen is at 7.25 am.

The world can be very cruel. 






Yesterday, in the panic to get from the school to the car with minimal soaking, Em misplaced her cell phone.

Panic ensued.

There is nothing to cause panic faster in a teenaged girl than the loss of her cell phone.

To not be able to talk to those people with whom she just spent the entire day causes calamity of catastrophic proportions.

I suspose it isn't much different than when I was a teenager.

More than one afternoon, after getting off the school bus, I wiled away the hours between after school and supper lying on the floor of my father's in house man cave, talking on the phone to my friends.

The friends I had just left.

Because who knew what would happen on the bus from Oromocto to Geary that would HAVE to be shared with my other hormonally charged teenaged girl friends?

The difference is that my parents KNEW I was on the phone.

Mostly because they were trying to get through with some direction or other regarding dinner, or unloading the dishwasher, or repointing the chimney. . .something small and easy to do.

Unless my mother had left one of her infamous directives written on paper towel.

In a house full of paper, we always looked for the orders for the day on paper towel.

I'll have to ask her about this when I see her Saturday.

My kids, because of cell phones and texting, can communicate with one another without me even being aware of it.

All of a sudden, one of them will appear in the kitchen, (because in spite of it being 2010 I still spend most of my time in the kitchen) to tell me they're going somewhere or other.

Having been brought up in a pre-cellphone era, I still say things like, "But I didn't hear the phone."

They just roll their eyes at me.

Shake their heads.

And start surfing on their in phone internet for a nursing home.

For now.

Because clearly my competence is depleting if I can't remember that they have almost telekinetic, mindreading powers thanks to their cell phones.






Poor Em.

She took the car apart in the driveway, hoping desperately that her phone had fallen into some small crack or crevice heretofore unknown to us.

Tires tossed on the rain saturated front lawn.

Engine torn apart, parts scattered hither and yon.

Birds and small woodland creatures snug on the front and back seats.

I think a couple of squirrels were rolling the steering wheel down our court.

But alas, no cell phone materialized. 

We even went back to the highschool, in monsoon like weather conditions to search for her phone.

Attached to the top of our car, a spot light powerful enough to alert alien life forms of our presence on Earth.

And completely drying out the sopping sidewalks and rain permeated pavement.

Still no cell phone.
Hope: some kind hearted highschooler found her phone and took it to the office.

Reality: some smart ass highschooler has Em's phone and is wracking up charges that will break the bank. 

Or a bus ran over it.

And what's left of my small, almost invisible, thread of sanity.

My cell phone shit storm has now been extended to include my children.






In spite of having two stressful weeks, weeks that could have resulted in me not falling off the wagon but hurling myself off it with reckless abandon into a vat of peanut butter M&Ms, I managed to lose another 5.4 pounds, bringing the total to 22 pounds lost, never to return again.

Ever.

Christmas will be a carrot walk compared to the past two weeks.

Between students, kids, husbands, I could have easily consumed enough sugar and carbs to sink a battle ship.

But I didn't.

I am, however, working on how to make grapefruits taste like pb M&Ms.

I think it'll be a best seller.



Title Lyric: Storm by Fleetwood Mac