BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

As promised, I am throwing together a few blogs about our adventures on vacation. Please make note that they won’t necessarily be in chronological order as far as the vacation itself went. They are actually in “transcribed jotted down note order,” which makes sense to me, but not really everyone else. At any rate, this is number three in the series…

A Yellow Headed Blackbird... Native to the Tetons

So there we were… Grand Tetons… Jackson Lake… Signal Mountain.

Beautiful scenery, wild “thangs” running around all over the place, and I’m not just talking about E K, mind you. Yes… She is the quintessential “Redheaded Wild Thang,” but there were other furry, feathered, scaled, and otherwise armored critters running about the land of desert, prairie, mountain, whatever…

Seriously. There are pictures. One of them is over there to the left. We saw that crazy little bastage running around at one of the scenic pullouts that overlooked a prairie-like tableau, complete with the Teton mountain range in the background. Just for the record, I can show you the pics of the critters, but not of The Redhead being all wild. There are laws…

So… Again… There we were, coming down off yet another mountain. Or maybe we were cruising about on the two lane highway betwixt point A and point B. Or maybe it was a combination thereof. I’m here to tell ya’, it tends to get mixed up after a bit… The thing is, we were in the rental Jeep, with E K behind the wheel – Why? Because we were on our way somewhere and because E K has to be in control at all times. Y’all should know that by now.

Something else I’ve mentioned about The Redhead Who Shall Be Obeyed, is that she has some sort of organic GPS built into her brain. That, or a lodestone. Probably both. The only problem she will run into with it is, of course, construction that she wasn’t warned about, and the unfortunate occasions when she neglects to download the map updates to her brainpain – she has a Firewire socket on the back of her head, ya’know… This was one of those incidents.

The Tetons hiding in the clouds...

Where was I? Oh yeah… We were traveling and The Evil One hadn’t updated her Grey Matter 2000 GPS. Not to worry… Liz was in the back seat with a map, and she was feeding coordinates to the redhead, so all was good. In fact, Liz not only had a map, she also had a book that contained all manner of info about various attractions in the area – a tourist guide of sorts. We not only used this to figure out what we WANTED to see, but also what we should probably avoid – as in, too many tourists. Now, during all of this map deciphering, Liz enlisted the aid of the O-spring to read some of the smaller print.

“Why?” the child wanted to know.

“Because I’m blind as a bat,” Liz replied.

And so, all was still good. The o-spring read the small print, and together she and her Aunt Liz provided targeting coordinates to the Redheaded Tank Commander behind the wheel.

At one point, after offering up some pretty spectacular information and directions – much like the folks on the Bing commercials who spit out a whole list of things – we all mentioned how great it was that Liz had the book along with her.

Liz replied, “I just love books and maps.”

This prompted a comment from the tween, “If you’re blind as a bat then why do you love books and maps so much?”

“What do you mean?” Liz asked.

O-spring rephrased her question. “Well, if you’re blind as a bat you can’t see, so how can you read them?”

Instant logic. Just add gifted tween.

We all chuckled. Well, all of us grups did, anyway.

Liz, being quick with a comeback herself, explained, “I just use my bat sonar.”

I'm A Bison... Moooo

Again, we all laughed. Except the o-spring. She puzzled over the comment for a moment, remaining silent as we drove along. After a few moments, our chuckling and chittering died down, and all that was left to fill the void was the sound of the tires against Wyoming pavement.

Then, without warning, child-o-mine spoke up again, deadpan serious as she explained,  “I don’t think you can use echolocation to read maps and books…”

Good thing E K didn’t wrap the Jeep around a Bison on that one. The damn things were everywhere. As it was, we had to clean Cherry Coke off the inside of the windshield and driver’s side dash. You know how those rental car outfits are about the extra cleaning charges…

More to come…

Murv

Allow me to quell your fears. This blog entry isn’t about what your dirty little minds think it’s about.  So there.

 Now, on with the story…

It was a weekend just like any other weekend, with the exception perhaps that it was Fourth of July weekend. However, since July 4th has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on this tale, we’ll stick with, “It was a weekend just like any other weekend.” All good? Terrific…

On this particular weekend like any other weekend I had been doing elebenty-gazillion loads of laundry just like any other weekend. However, I was finished with laundry, so I don’t guess it has any real bearing either, other than the fact that I had “specially washed” one of the O-springs garments sans fabric softener because she was on a mission to dye it a different color. Of course, what with the spring being a little to the young side for handling stuff like dye and hot water without dying the whole room, adult supervision was needed.

For the record, E K has me doing the laundry, but I don’t dye. Allowing me to dye something would be tantamount to allowing the o-spring to dye something without supervision.

Anywho… On this particular weekend we had also purchased a new computer for E K. Super fast, loaded with memory, storage, and all housed in a black case to match her shoes and leather wear. E K likes to coordinate, you see. Therefore, we were in the office. I was busily doing whatever it is that writers do when they are working on 57 projects at once. E K was playing Speed Sudoku… Or HALO 17: The Leather-Clad Bitch Edition… Or  hacking NORAD… Or maybe it was paying bills and checking her Facebook profile. I never can keep any of that straight. Either way, we were engaged in office type computer activities, and the spring was watching the toob — that is, right up until her program ended and she had a sudden, powerful desire to dye the aforementioned garment.

No… She didn’t try to do it herself. That would be way too predictable… Come on… You know me better than that…

Acquiescing to the Tween Urgency of the project, E K sent the child on a mission. That being to go into the basement and retrieve the large bucket we use for whatever sorts of things one might require a large bucket. And so, off the o-spring went to “haz a bukkit.”

Two minutes, seventeen seconds elapsed when we suddenly heard a door fly open, followed by a running child – the herd of elephants noise was then followed up by a herd of wildebeests bounding up the stairs toward the office. The louvered doors split, swinging inward with enough force to cause a sonic boom. The silence in the wake of the sound barrier being broken was quickly filled with a panting child.

Gasping for breath she yipped, “OhMyGoshIt’sHUGE!!”

I remained silent. I knew better than to get involved.

“The bucket?” E K asked.

“Nothuhbuuug!” Child-o-mine replied.

E K puzzled aloud, “The what?”

Our tween panted some more, then gulped in some air and yelped, “There’sAGiantBugDownThere!”

E K found this to be funny. So did I. But that’s not the funny part I’m here to tell you about.

So… E K says to the spring, “How big is this bug?”

“OMGIT’SHUGE!” the kid replies.

“Really?” E K says.

“YES!” the wild-eyed child tells her.

“It’s been raining,” the redhead explained. “It’s probably just a water bug.”

You see, our basement is an unfinished, leaky, storage/laundry hole in the ground. Whenever it rains, we get water, and maybe even some water bugs.

Now, as we know, for E K this isn’t a really huge issue. If it’s a bug she likes, she picks it up and moves it to a safe, out-of-the way, natural habitat sort of location, and then threatens anyone in the general vicinity with death if they even look like they might be intent on harming the insect. However, if it is a bug she doesn’t like it still really isn’t a problem – and she does, in fact, have a list of bugs she doesn’t like. It’s a short one, but it’s a list nonetheless.  Either way, in the event of the bug being on her hit list, she just puts on her patent leather cockroach killers and goes to work with a wicked gleam in her eyes and a smile on her lips. It’s pretty much the same as how she deals with men, except that as a rule, when it comes to men instead of insects, I’ve never seen her set one free, move him to safety, nor protect him from harm. Quite the opposite, actually… But I digress. This is about actual insects, not figurative ones.

The o-spring, however, hates ALL bugs. She fears ALL bugs. She would be perfectly happy for ALL bugs to be eradicated from the face of the planet. Hence the fact that she was now standing in the office hyperventilating.

But back to the dialogue…

“IT’SHuuuuuuuuuggggggeeeee!” the child repeated, not really placated by EKay’s explanation for its presence in the basement.

“Did you see it on the floor or on the stairs?” EKay asked.

“Onthefloor!” the short person replied.

The redhead shrugged and said, “Okay, well the bucket is on the shelf right at the bottom of the stairs.”

O-spring returned, “IknowIWasDownThere!”

“Well… Did you get the bucket?” E K asked.

The child thought for a second, then with the first inkling of calm she had shown since hurtling up the stairs, she delivered the punch line: “Wellllll… I SAW the bucket…”

Fifteen minutes later we held a funeral for the water bug. After we scraped him off the sole of EKay’s pump, of course. What with him being a water bug and all we flushed him. Seemed fitting.

After all that you have to wonder if he “Saw The Bucket” too… I’m thinking he probably did. Right before he kicked it.

More to come…

Murv