CANDLEPIN GIRL AT HEART

For some odd reason, my daughter, her friend, and I decide to go bowling. 

They want to go ten-pin bowling, but here in New England, ten-pin is a somewhat rare event.  The few local places that offer ten-pin are usually mobbed because they're multi-plexes that offer indoor golf and video arcades and rides for little kids.  Plus, it's raining out and it's a weekend.  That means everyone and his brother and uncle will be piled into the popular bowling alleys.

Instead, I convince them to go for the candlepins. 

Candlepin bowling is unheard of in most of the continental United States.  That's because Massachusetts invented it.  Players roll Revolutionary War cannonball-sized bowling balls with which the players get three chances instead of two to knock down all the pins on each turn, and there's none of that stupid clearing of the downed pins in between a player's own turn -- using the dead wood as play is what makes this whole game so damn entertaining.

Besides, I know an out-of-the-way bowling alley that offers glow bowling and doesn't laugh at me when I say, "Bumper lane, please."

I love bowling.  When I first moved to Massachusetts from a tiny village in New Hampshire, I discovered a bowling alley within walking distance of my junior high.  I spent babysitting money there after school, despite the fact that the balls often fell off the ball-return and rolled back down the lanes at me while I bowled.  The place was right next to the junk yard, so very fitting, and it was one of the greatest places I ever found to go in my entire life.

Yes, I do love bowling, but I only go an average of once every three years or so.  You see, I totally suck at it.  That's why I like bumper lanes.  I don't often use the bumpers, but I hate gutter balls.  Even worse than gutter balls, though: I am notorious for hitting the 7-10 split.  This means that first I peg off only the farthest pin to the left, and then I peg off the farthest pin to the right.  This is often followed by rolling a ball to either side exactly where it has already been.

Yup, even with the bumpers, I can roll a two like it's my damn job.

I get excited when I break sixty in a game, especially if I do it without the bumpers.  Actually, I bowl a spare in one of the three games we play.  Of course, I follow that up with another 7-10 split, so I get to add one stinking point to my score.

If you've never bowled, definitely go glow bowling.  It's a blast, and you can blame the colors and effects for your score.  But, if you're not from these parts (parts of Canada and the entire New England area - or, at least, the only parts that matter), you've got to try candlepin bowling when you're here. 

Unless, of course, you're easily frustrated, easily embarrassed, or both.  If that's the case, go hang out with the ten-pin crowd.  Me?  I have no shame.  I'm a candlepin girl at heart.

PENCILS AND ANTIBACTERIA

I work in Germ Central.  I am a school teacher, and my life is one gargantuan Petri dish full of horrifying bacteria.  I am more adept with my small, personal container of hand sanitizer than a drum major is with a baton.

I had that weird (but quick-moving) cold last month, the one that is almost (but not quite) the flu.  Since recovering, I avoid coughing co-workers, sneezing students, and infectious minions as if they have the plague because, quite frankly as far as I am concerned, they DO.

So, the other day when a student says to me, "I have a sore throat," my immediate response is so nurturing and so caring and so motherly and so tender.

Yes, it truly is.  I point toward the door and scream, "GET OUT OF MY ROOM!  TAKE A PASS AND GO ... TO ... THE .. NUUUUUUUUUUUURSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The young man returns about fifteen minutes later holding a large white piece of paper.  "I'm sick," he announces, "and I'm going home."  Then, because children often do not understand the concept, he hands the pass in my direction.

My arms flail back and I push my rolling chair away from my desk. "I am NOT touching THAT!"  I say, shock registering in my expression.  He tries to give the nurse's note to me again and again.  Finally, he drops the paper on my desk.

The entire class emits a sound that resembles a train whistle and a fog horn all at the same time, deeply sucking in their collective breath and holding their words in like water balloons on the verge of bursting their contents over anything and everything.  We can hardly believe that this poor, sickly cherub has done the unthinkable: infected my desk.

I quickly grab two pencils and use them to pick the paper up off of my desk.  I start past the rows of students on my way to the recycle bin.  That piece of paper is so outta here.  As I approach groups of children, they all lean far away from me, some flailing their arms to get away. 

Suddenly the air resistance gives way, and the paper starts to slip from between the #2 Ticonderogas.  One girl screams and a couple of boys audibly shriek.  I quickly maneuver the pencils, smoosh the paper between them, and continue toward the recycle bin.  Once there, I let the paper float away into the green plastic receptacle, then I put the pencils down next to the container of antibacterial wipes.

I apologize to the youngster who is being dismissed to go home and rest for the day.  He understands: vacation break is next week.  No one wants to be sick for that.

POST 2K

Post #2,000.  Hard to believe.  Every single day for 2,000 days in a row I have written something ... sometimes short, sometimes long, sometimes a decent narrative, sometimes an inappropriate poem.  Here it is, though.  Post 2K.

I'm not much of a speech-giver.  Oh, I can talk and talk for hours about lots and lots of things.  But, when it comes to talking about myself, I tend to guard that by sharing only want I want to and need to.  I don't suppose I'd make much of a talk show guest, and it probably explains why my dating life is guardedly nonexistent. 

I sincerely mean it when I retort in an argument, "You don't KNOW me!"  It's the truth.  Go ahead and think you do.  You're right ... and so very wrong.

And that's totally my fault. 

For 2,000 days I've opened a few windows and pointed a few bright lights into the madness of my mind.  Still, you don't know me, but, then I again, I don't completely know me, either.  Stick around for another 2,000 days, though.  We might both be surprised by what we find.

Happy 2K, and thanks for reading. 

DE-ICING THE STAIRS ... INSIDE

Of course I find the container of ice melt after the ice all melts off the driveway. 

Yup.  I am finally putting stuff away, and I move a pile of junk that has been sitting on the stairs.  I have been walking up and down past this pile of paperwork for days, just waiting to organize it.  My strategy is to leave it on the stairs because if I actually take it and put it somewhere, I'll forget about it and forget to file important papers.

Today, though, I decide to move the pile.

There, right there, and I do mean RIGHT THERE on the stairs, the same stairs I use at least two dozen times a day, is the partially-filled container of ice melt that I swore I had but couldn't find during the last three days of ice.  I have been slipping and sliding my way to and from the car, and I resorted to buying three containers of table salt when I couldn't find a store with the driveway version.  Yes, the damn ice melt has been under my nose the entire time.

Turns out the empty container I thought was the empty ice melt is actually the old container of ice melt that was refilled with kitty litter.  I am out of kitty litter, not ice melt.

This complete and total blind spot to the ice melt seems almost unfathomable, except that my son has walked past the container, as well.  I am having company today and I don't want anyone slipping and dying in the driveway, so I head outside to spread some ice melt.

Good choice.  Right?  Wrong.  It's in the mid-forties outside, and most of the ice has melted away. 

Oh, well.  I try.  My heart is in the right place (even if the ice melt isn't). 

MAGICAL PEA SOUP POTION OF WONDER

I have a coworker who makes the best pea soup in the entire world.

No, truly.  My mother didn't cook much, but the few things she could actually cook, she cooked well, and pea soup was one of them.  My coworker's pea soup blows my mother's pea soup right out of the pan.  I mean, it's life-changing.

The last few weeks at work have been brutal.  B-R-U-T-A-L.  I have never seen one group of adults so in need of time away from each other and their desks as this particular group at this particular moment in time.  One minute we are crying on each other's shoulders, and the next minute we are ripping each others' brains out with more precision than the ancient Egyptians.

In the midst of all of these post conference nights and during all of our personal and professional implosions, my coworker walks into school one day and hands me a bag.  Apparently my expression clearly shows my confusion.

"I had a ham bone in the freezer," she says with a huge grin, "so I made pea soup.  This is for you."

She knows I love her pea soup.  Now, she knows I love her.  I dance around and sing her praises right there in the hallway.  The video cameras are probably registering a disturbance in our wing.  I don't care.  No, truly, I DON'T CARE.  They can send the loony bin people after me, and I could not care any less than I do right now about anything else in the world other than this canister of pea soup.

This is instant and total attitude adjustment with the simple handing over of the bag containing the magical potion.  Magical pea soup.  Pea soup potion.  Magical pea soup potion of wonder.

Do not underestimate the power of homemade soup, people.  It really does cure ALL.

THANKS TO ALL THE ICE GODS

I hear the tires spinning
The cars can't make the hill
There's ice and snow and white crap
On the roadways still
I ran us out of ice melt
Technically my fault
To make it down the driveway
I'll use some table salt
It's not as if the admin
Could claim they hadn't known
And so I get up early
Just waiting for the phone
Alas - it starts another
Dangerous school day
Why, oh, why? This weather!
Damnit! Just call DELAY.
Oh, well, so now it's seven
Off to work I drive
Thanks to all the Ice Gods
I get to work alive

SALT HAS A NEW PURPOSE

The brilliant idea of having a full day of school today means that my drive home is slippery, dangerous, treacherous, and nearly crash-worthy.  My car, small and without snow tires, slips and slides all over the road, barely climbing small hills and pushing me and my heavy pile of metal vehicle precariously close to the pond as I head home.

The only benefit of the day is that the freezing rain starts as I am driving home, so my car is merely snow-covered when I leave work, an easy clean-off in the school lot.  My son, home early, shovels the driveway so I can back into my space, but within mere minutes of parking, the driveway is completely ice-coated. 

I quite literally make it home in the nick of time.

The predicted deep-freeze tonight poses a problem: icy driveway means I will slip and slide to, and possibly past, my car tomorrow morning.  I check the ice melt supply.  I am reasonably sure that I have half of a container left, enough for the morning melt. 

It turns out to be a bad bet; I have almost no ice melt left.

There is no way I'm going out in search of the damn stuff.  It's too dangerous, and, now that I've helped finish the shoveling in the freezing rain, I am soaked through my outerwear.  I do, though, have a semi-fabulous idea.  I have lots of salt in the cabinet.  For some reason, I kept forgetting to buy salt, and then I kept remembering to buy salt.  This craziness results in having three containers full of regular table salt stashed away.

So, tomorrow morning, when you read about stupid stuff and silly stunts people pull to get to their iced-in cars, remember I said I have that table salt because I am going to use it and hope to the ice gods above that I am able to get to my car (not sail past it) without breaking any bones in my old body. 

Update later; hopefully NO film at 11.