Dating...according to Noelle C.

Good afternoon!

Sorry for the long absence my friends, but I've been slaving away to get my newest novel, "Fresh Ice" out to the formatters so you all can BUY IT AND READ IT AND I CAN RETIRE FROM MY JOB AS AN OFFICE DRONE and write for a living.

But until THAT happens, I have this to share with you:

So most of you know that my female coworker, Noelle C, is a lady in her mid fiffties.  She's not, what one would call, a young mid fifties.  She's pretty much me, ten years from now...only with a way more ancient and dim view on everything  (except for Lumbergh, whom she loves) and a whackadoo mental capacity.  She already thinks we're twins, so if you see her, do not mention that I said we're in any way the same.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago she strolled into the office on a Monday looking all, I don't know, happy in a normal way. Not the usual giddy, can't-wait-to-be-in-the-presence-of-Lumbergh happy she usually is. No, this was something different.  So I said, "You seem chipper."

I should have just kept my mouth shut.  When will I learn?  See, yes, my work life gives me great material for this blog and ultimately a few books down the road.  But what I print here is sifted through and boiled down.  I don't bore you with the endless, endless, endless analysis and details of something like...a date with Noelle C.

The story goes like this:  Apparently Noelle C has a new upstairs neighbor.  They were out on their respective patios watering their plant boxes. Now I can only imagine that he struck up a conversation with her because he was blown away by the fact that a women in her shape would have the guts to reveal so much cleavage on a chilly Saturday afternoon, or maybe the guy just didn't know what he was in for.

Poor soul. He knows now.

Anyway, they struck up a conversation, and he invited her to dinner at his apartment the next night. 

"He pulled out all the stops," she told me, "he grilled steak and there was shrimp and he made a really nice salad and there was some wine."

Oh boy, here we go.

"I of course didn't have any wine because, you know back in my modeling days  (right modeling days.  I've seen the pictures.) I drank too much and the cult I was in that wouldn't let me go to college (are you still with me)  didn't seem to care if I drank too much so I smoked and I drank and I modeled.  So I didn't have his wine."  (There's a logic there if you really think about it.)

And now wait for the next thing she said.

"And I didn't have sex with him either.  I told him that right away.  I wasn't going to have sex with him."

Now, granted, I haven't had to date anyone in a very long time.  But I watch enough television to know that just because you share a meal and watch a movie, that doesn't mean sex is going to happen.  Not one the first date.  Well, maybe if the two people are super attractive and one of them is a spy and won't be alive the next day...wait, I digress.  Dinner and a movie is sometimes just dinner and a movie and sometimes it's more than that, but it's not always the direct route to the bedroom.  Am I wrong about this?

Well, in case her mission statement at the start of the evening wasn't clear enough, Noelle C told me that while they watched the movie, she stayed at the very far end of the couch..."as far as I could possibly be from him."

Ya know, I'll bet he just wanted to get to know his neighbors.  And she's a chatty sort of person as long as you don't chat with her more than a few minutes and you realize she never STOPS talking.  I can see why he'd want to spend an evening with what he thought was a normal, outgoing, nice neighbor lady.

At the end of the evening, she said, "I didn't kiss him or anything.  I just thanked him for dinner and walked away."

If upstairs dude hadn't gotten the message by then, he's a moron.

She told me also that he has money problems, and that she's just not equipped to take on someone with money.  All I wanted to do was say, "Hey, he wasn't asking you to marry him.  He was asking you to share a meal with him."  But then I realized, if he was sharing his money woes with her, then he might just be as nuts as she is.

So I guess that's the dating guide according to Noelle C.  Be sure, no matter what you do, that the person who asked you on the date is very clear about whether you are, or are not, going to have sex with him/her.

And who knows?  Maybe this sort of brutal honesty is just what the older generation needs as we chemically prolong our sex drives.  Maybe she's on the cutting edge of something here.

Or maybe she's just whackadoodledoo and left yet another person shell shocked in her wake of whacky destruction. 

Oh boy...I may have just stumbled onto a book title!

And You Wonder why I need a Glass of Wine every Day after Work.

Good evening!

Noelle C, as it turns out, is not a funny person.  She's not like Elsie W, who was loud, annoying, messy, completely unaware of whether or not her clothes were inside out, that sort of thing.  Noelle C is a different person entirely, and yet, the result is the same.

She is driving me out of my mind.

I could look past the fact that she never, ever, EVER stops talking.  It doesn't seem to matter that no one is listening or even within earshot.  It's like that old proverb...if Noelle C is talking in the office and no one's around to hear, will she continue talking?

The answer is YES.

And it's not that she is a complete, total, and utter fanny fluffer when it comes to Lumbergh.  It's almost sad the way she can't have a thought on her own without first clearing it with him.  It's also very sad that she's in love with him.  He seems to enjoy it, except since he's a completely self centered brain fart of a boss, he has no idea the weird repercussions there can be to allowing a whackadoo like her to think he's okay with the overt romantic attention.

Oh, and that part makes me want to barf.

No, the reason Noelle C is driving me out of my mind is that she is deaf in one ear, has almost no hearing in the other, refuses to do anything about it and gets mad when she can't hear what anyone's saying.  She's convinced, since no one talks to her, that everyone thinks she's worthless.  Thing is, people talk to her all the time, she CAN'T HEAR THEM. 

She went in to try on hearing aids.  She was amazed at how loud everything was in the store.  She decided not to buy them.  I get that they're expensive, but if you saw how she does her job, and the complete disconnect there is, you'd want to throttle her and yell, "GET THE HEARING AIDS!"

See, one big part of her job, and, most of the time, mine, is getting phone numbers and addresses from customers.  Elsie W was terrible at this, but mostly because I'm pretty sure she was illiterate, and therefore everything was spelled really, really wrong.  BUT, Noelle C, since she is fairly deaf, instead of turning up the sound on her phone headset, she pretty much just fills in the blanks with whatever she figures sounds good.  This would be fine...except we are sending sales people all over the state, and getting things like the ADDRESS and the CITY right are sort of key.

Today, however, I was at my wit's end mostly because she has this way of blaming me for things that I barely have anything to do with.  For example, this week Peaches is having a fund raiser for her school orchestra.  We are selling candy bars.  Very nice, high end, candy bars.  I put a box out at work.  Everyone loves them, especially Noelle C, who bought 4 in two days AND ATE THEM ALL.

I love chocolate...I would have died with that kind of cocoa intake.

Today, she informed me that she had to stop eating chocolate because she was experiencing allergic symptoms.  (She's convinced herself that the swelling of her butt is exactly the same as the swelling of someone's tongue or lips.)  She said, "You brought that in here and now I'm getting so fat."

Yes, yes, I rammed four gigantic candy bars down your throat in the past 24 hours.

Not happy that I didn't apologize for my sin of bringing candy into the office, she turned to the one person she knew would give her a sympathetic ear:  Lumbergh.  What follows is the precise conversation between a woman who is 90% deaf and won't do anything about it and  a guy who never speaks above a whisper even though he knows she's nearly deaf and can't hear anything he's saying.

"Lumbergh?"

"Yes Noelle c?"

(giddy, because now he's looking at her)  "I can't keep eating like this.  Sarah brought those candy bars in here and now I'm having allergic reactions to the candy."

"So stop eating the candy."

(She doesn't hear this.)  "I'm going back on my diet."

I should mention she was on the diet when she started working at Initech, which is why on her first day she had to pull down her pants in front of me and show me that she was a size 16.  I'm also a size 16. I have never had the inclination to show anyone the size tag on my pants.

"Oh, that's good."

"Yes, I'm going to lose 80 pounds next year."

"Oh, by when?" (now he's interested because well, he's a gym nut.

"January first."

Now,  I know what she means, but since she can't hear his question and he refuses to speak up, I know I'm up for some good theater.

"No, "  he whispers, "by when?"

"January first.  80 pounds."

"No, how long will you take to lose the weight?"

"January first."

"But how many months will you give yourself to lose the weight"

"Next year.  8 pounds a month."

Worst "Who's on First" routine EVER.   This conversation actually goes on for a few more minutes but it doesn't matter.  These two are the number one reason I reach for the pinot noir when I get home.  He whispers, she can't hear, and yet they insist on talking to each other fifty times a day.  And the minute he leaves the building, do you know what she does?

Oh you know what happens....

Yes, she hovers over my desk and tells me how jealous she is because Lumbergh and I have conversations, while he just ignores her.

Folks, I cannot make this up, and I don't think I'd want to....real life is just way too funny.

The Chronicles of Skippy: The final chapter

Good morning!

I've learned two things in the last few days:

1)  You never, ever stop being a parent and

2)  Your children really do inherit a lot more from you than you might even think.

Skippy got to Seattle last Thursday after several days on the road.  He'd visited his last friend, he'd toured his last book store/record store/unusual fast food place/donut shop.  (He really liked Voodoo Donuts in Portland OR)  He was headed for home and he had a deadline:  Minneapolis by 7 Pm Saturday or his cousin, Annalee, was going to punch him.

I should back up.  See, Annalee got married this past June, you may have read my blogs about the hilarity we experienced on the wedding trip.  But Skippy, through of series of events I have yet to decipher, did not get to the wedding.  So, when Annalee her sister Dana planned a surprise B-day party for Hubby's sis Joanie, Annalee made it very clear that Skippy was to get his fanny to the party, or she would punch him.

Now you're caught up.

Skippy's plan was to drive, sleeping briefly in rest stops.  We weren't too concerned, he'd done long driving trips before, so the 24 hours between him and the birthday party wasn't all that long.

He started the trek early-ish Friday morning with plenty of time to make it with stops along the way.  He had his car loaded and Susan, his faithful GPS companion.

Montana...Skippy gets there October 5

About 3 AM Saturday morning, he sent me a text.  "It's Toasty"  he said, and included a picture of the the local weather forecast in Montana.  18 degrees F.  Quite the change from Arizona's 108 degrees F a few days earlier, but that's how things are in a country as geographically huge as the US.  I sent him a motherly text  (I'm fairly good at those now) and, as unlikely as it seems for me, I went back to sleep.

Arizona...Skippy got there
September 25.

I should catch you up on that.  Since my car accident in July I haven't been sleeping well.  I can't fall asleep much before midnight, I always wake up in the middle, and I can't get back asleep.  By 5 I'm up for the day.  This non-sleep habit has actually worked out well while Skippy's been on the road, since he and I have conversed by text quite a bit in the wee hours of the day.

So falling sound asleep after a 3 am text was not normal for me.  I woke at 7:30 thinking all sorts of good things, like how I might have turned a corner with my injuries, or how spending a couple hours with Dee, catching up on what's happening at Gold's gym  (and I've been cleared to do a few things there, so I'm getting back to the gym soon!  Watch out!) might have eased the load of the mental black hole I've been carrying around.  Anyway, I was refreshed, awake, and in a good mood.

That did not last long.  A text from Hubby, who was in La Crosse to get his mother to take her to Joanie's b-day party in the Twin Cities  (are you following this travelogue?) changed everything.

"Call me when you get this.  Everyone is FINE."

Well we all know that just isn't true.  When you get a phone call that starts out with "everyone is fine,"  your first response is always  "WHAT HAPPENED?"

Oh, see, Hubby and Peaches went to the B-day party.  I was a last minute scratch since I just can't travel that far right now.  Between the blinding headaches, the achy leg, and the sore neck, sitting up in the car for more than a couple hours sounded like far too much torture.  So I'm in Milwaukee, Hubby and Peaches are headed to Minneapolis, and Skippy...

Well, it's like this:  Skippy was driving down a mountain in Montana, going well under the speed limit since it was snowing. A truck in front of him was going far more slowly, so he moved into the other lane on the interstate.  In doing so, his vehicle hit a patch of ice, spun, clipped the truck  (seriously, there are two vehicles on the road, it's 5 AM...3 AM local time...and he manages to make contact?  Yes, he is his mother's child.)  spun again, and wound up on the side of the road.

He very suddenly had a new respect for my accident in July.  He also recalled an accident I had when he was in kindergarten...and yes, check the back blogs, it's there.  He wasn't hurt...until he got out of the car and fell on another patch of ice and bruised his leg.  His car, however, was another story.

Skippy's a smart kid.  instead of calling the parent he figured would probably be awake, he called the parent he knew wouldn't freak out.  Which is why, by the time I called Hubby at 7 AM, Skippy was already ensconced in a hotel in Livingston, Montana.    He was able to drive the 8 miles from the accident site, but it was clear from pictures that the Oldsmobile wasn't going much further, certainly NOT to Minneapolis.

Annalee was gearing up for a punch.

Hubby and I worked out a plan where Skippy would get on a Greyhound bus and get from Livingston to Minneapolis, sans vehicle.  Hubby would contact a body shop in Livingston  (there is one...but only one, we're told) and figure out what to do with the car.

Skippy didn't like the idea of leaving the car, and most of his possessions.  That car has been home to him for almost seventeen days.  I tried to assure him that bus travel is great...but having logged more bus time than everyone else in my house combined, I have to admit, it's not as romantic as one might think.  Still, it was cheaper than a plane and faster than Amtrak.  Thus, by 4 pm Montana time, Skippy had repacked only the most important items and got on a bus.

20 hours is a very long time to be doing anything, but riding on a bus with no headphones for the iPod, and very little juice left in the phone, and no way to charge it since his charger was attached to the car, that seems like an eternity.   I hope Skippy took notes, because a trip like that can start a literary career.  (I should know...) 

His texts along the way were great.  He had five transfers through the night, but his first one was probably the worst since a young gent approached him and asked him to "hold something of value" for him. 

Skippy's text to me:  Everything's great except this drug dealer won't leave me alone.

Oh yeah, bus travel...it's romance and adventure.

Skippy and the rest of us made it through the night.  Joanie's party went off just fine, I'm told.  Annalee was ready to punch Skippy at the bus stop at 11 AM Sunday morning.  I was surviving on gallons of coffee, prayer, and a lot of pacing.  (Hey, I got my steps in!)

He arrived, on time, in Minneapolis, to much rejoicing and yes, Annalee did give him a punch.  But the family spent some quality time at Mall of America  (I still haven't been there...) They made there way home at a fairly relaxed pace...while I was sitting at home, waiting and waiting and waiting!  Sure, I was happy he was okay, and yes I was glad they were having a good time.  But moms, you'll all understand this:  I needed to hug my boy!

Finally, by 9 PM Sunday, a mere 38 hours after I got the first text, Skippy was home!    He was a little funky...bus travel is too full of romance and adventure to include showers...but he was home.

He shared with us the high points of the trip, and the low points.  I'm sure as the days go on, he'll share more stories from the road.  He unpacked his bags, all the vital items he couldn't leave in Montana.  He brought his lap top, the coffee mugs he'd purchased along the way, all his new shirts...

and a box of VooDoo donuts. 

"I actually have another box, but I couldn't fit it with my stuff, so it's still in my car."

Other things he left with the car:  The accident report sheet he's supposed to fill out for the state patrol...oh, and all his dirty laundry.

I pity the guy that has to open that car up once we decide what we're going to do with it. I can't imagine that a box of donuts, 14 days of dirty laundry, and a crate of semi non perishable foods are going to smell BETTER after sitting in a closed car.

Still...it's so great to have him home.  This experience has taught me one thing:  I'm not ready for my kids to leave the nest just yet.

Of course, check in with me in a week...the euphoria will probably be gone once I start tripping over Skippys' shoes in the living room again.

Apparently, Biggest Loser isn't the only thing I'm not fluffy enough for!

Good morning!

Pardon the dangling preposition in the title, but somehow saying, "For which I'm not fluffy enough" seemed a little too formal, given the topic of discussion today.

The sandwich that changed
my life...

Most of you know I was in a car accident two months ago, and since that car accident I've been on a very strict schedule of Physical Therapy, Doctors' appointments, daily headaches and dizzy spells.  Well my doctor finally decided to read my physical therapists' notes two weeks ago, and now we can add MRI and Neuro surgeon to the list of medical professionals profiting from my love of McDonald's McChicken sandwiches.  (which I have not had since the accident, BTW.)

So Wednesday was my MRI.  For those of you not familiar which this process, Medical Resonance Imaging is where they shove the affected area of your body into a large tube which is, I'm told, loaded with magnets and they they take images of the affected area, tiny bit by tiny bit, sort of in layers.  That way, if there's even the tiniest bit of your brain, or your neck, or whatever that's damaged, it will show up on the images.

Not so bad, right?  Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Well let's back up.  Two weeks ago I went to a completely...utterly...and ridiculously pointless office visit with my doctor.  This is the guy who forgets what meds he's prescribed me for my hands, and always seems surprised when he reads my chart.  "Oh, why are you taking Meloxicam?"

Dude, you prescribed it for me..and renew the prescription every other month.

Anyway, after a PT session, the therapist wrote another strongly worded email to Dr. Duh, as I will now call him, telling him, again, that I needed an MRI, that there was something really wrong with my neck.  So his nurse, Nurse Also Duh, told me that we'd be doing an MRI at my next appointment.  At least, I'm pretty sure that's what she said.

No, in reality, he wanted to see if I really NEEDED an MRI.  Or something.  But first, he wanted to be sure I was good an riled so the night of my appointment he made sure he was running more than an hour behind.  We finally get into the room, and I'm already cranky, and he yanks on my head a little and they weigh me...why...why...WHY?  And he says, "Yeah, you should get an MRI."

Doctor Duh...thank you for wasting two hours of my life.

The he says, "And here's a number for a nuero surgeon.  Call him, get on his radar."

That's what he said, "Get on his radar."

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

Well I'm a dutiful soldier, so I called the Neuro guy...and left a message.  Then I scheduled and MRI, for which Dr. Duh had not sent a note for preauthorization to my insurance company as he said he would.  Which mean another phone call to Nurse Also Duh.  All of this from the Culver's parking lot during my 54 minute lunch.  (You now, because Lumbergh won't let me make personal calls during the day and doctors and lawyers don't answer their phones after 4:30 Pm.

A week went by, and no call from the nuero guy.  So I called Nurse also Duh and said, "So what does, 'get on the rader' mean?"

"Oh, you're supposed to make an appointment with him.  Dr. Duh called in a referral."

Clear, concise English.  What a concept.

So, like you're gonna, you know,
like fill out paperwork.

So I call nuero guy again, and this time his Valley Girl picks up the phone.  (For those of you who don't know what a Valley Girl is, look it up.)  Turns out Dr. Duh DID NOT call in a referral, so I have to spend 27 minutes of my 54 minute lunch going over everything with Valley Girl.  But I have an appointment.  All that's left is doing the MRI.

So Wednesday after work I don every piece of clothing I own that doesn't involve metal, right down to the jog bra.  (I've been wearing them more often lately, funny how comfortable you can be when you really don't care how your boobs are positioned.)  Hubby drove me to the hospital, three blocks away. 

I should mention, I'm slightly claustrophobic.  This was something I brought up with Dr. Duh. This was something I brought up with the scheduler. This was something I brought up with the skinny nurse who walked me into the room with the tube.  Someone mentioned sedation...

Skinny Nurse gave me earplugs and the soft ear muffs...very sexy...and she explained the test.  I lay back on the sliding table.  Not bad, there was a picture of mountains and rivers on the ceiling.  Then she handed me a squeeze thingy and said, "If you need anything squeeze this."  Then the table started sliding into the tube.

The minute my hands brushed the side and top of the tube I was able to answer the question, "How claustrophobic are you?"

The answer:  "I AM SUPER CLAUSTROPHOBIC!"

I think I broke the squeezy thing.  I kept saying, "no, no, no I need out of this right now!"


They got me out and suddenly there was this lovely gentleman, we'll call him Gary, standing there.  He had the look and sound of a younger James Earl Jones.  Maybe not, but in my head he did.  He and skinny nurse talked about doing the test a different day, maybe a day when Dr. DUH actually prescribed something for me that wouldn't make me feel like an Edgar Allen Poe character while in the tube.

Then I thought I about all the appointments depending on the results of this test.  I thought about the lawyers and the doctors and the nurses who all needed this information and what a pain in the butt it would be if they had to wait.  And how they could make my life even more jumbled and less my own than they all already have.

I stuck the earplugs back in my ears and said, "Do this quickly."

If you haven't had an MRI, this might be hard to imagine, but it's sort of like being stuck head first in a tiny garbage can while the cast of STOMP is beating the can on the outside, to the tunes of the soundtrack from everything loud, violent video game ever.  There's cold air blowing on your head all the time, I think that's supposed to help the claustrophobia, but it just made my eyebrows itch, which I couldn't scratch because my arms were pretty much pinned to my sides which made the claustrophobia WORSE.

Every so often where would be a break in the buzzing, banging, whirring, pounding sounds and then Gary would say, "how are you doing?"

I wanted to be a smart aleck, but I also wanted out as soon as possible.  So instead of saying, "How do you think I'm doing you sadist in scrubs?  I'm living a nightmare and every movie I've ever seen about being buried alive is running through my head."   I said, "Fine."

I started to wonder why I had so MANY movies about being buried alive in my mental repertoire.  Seriously, it's shocking how many movies I've seen where being buried alive is the central theme.  And it's shocking just how fast all those scenes flicked in my head like they were on a film loop.

I would have rescued Sarah from the
evil tube.

At one point I knew I was starting to feel a bit less creeped out when Gary said, "How ya doin?"  And I said, "Any chance we could get some Rick Springfield music pumped in here instead of all the banging?"

"Who?"

Oh sure...I get the one middle aged guy on the planet who doesn't know who Rick Springfield is.  (Meanwhile, a Facebook friend of mine reports she got to have Rick's music playing while she had her MRI.  Clearly, my medical system is sub par.)

Finally, the table slides out of the tube.  Gary is there and he helps me sit up.  "We3'd better be done,"  I say, "I'm not going back in there."

"No, I'm giving you a break.  We have 15 more minutes.  You were squirming too much."

Sarah...I am your
radiologist.

At this point I'm about in tears.  Skinny Nurse comes in and she says, "How did you do?"

"I don't know, I have 15 more minutes."

"What?  No, you're done...right?"

"No, Gary says I was moving too much, I have to go back in."

Skinny nurse glares at Gary who says, "Uh, I was KIDDING."

Dude, you don't know who Rick Springfield is AND you're joking with me about putting me back in that high tech coffin?  Strike one and two.

I will give Gary this...he came out later and talked to me about the test and about how he is also claustrophobic.  I then asked about the open sided MRI machines I'd seen before.  He told me there aren't many of them around, and really those are only for extreme cases, and the pictures never come out as good. 

What I heard was, "Sarah, you're not fluffy enough for an open sided MRI."

Yes Conda, I can hear you laughing at me.

Oh great...so I'm too skinny to be on Biggest Loser and I'm too skinny to be put in a tube that doesn't resemble a gigantic tampon holder...of DEATH.

So there's that.

And now we wait.  We wait for someone other than Dr. Duh to read the tests.  We wait for Valley Girl's boss to see me.  And we wait.

I hate waiting...

The Chronicles of Skippy. part 2

One of my favorite shows right now is "The Amazing Race."  For those of you who don't know, this is a show were several teams of two race around the world for a million dollars.  Along the way they are required to perform tasks, tour landmarks, and be nice (and foolish) around local populations.  The show is educational, it's dramatic, and it makes me realize that if I'm going to travel around the world, doing it under time deadlines probably isn't the best way to do it.

Skippy should really watch that show. 

If he did, he'd know that most landmarks have closing times.  I realize this might seem like a "duh"  thing to say, but apparently he left our house thinking that any stop he made along the way in terms of landmarks would be open no matter what time he reached it.

So when he left Lake City, CO several days ago, his goal was to stop at Four Corners Utah, a neat spot where four states meet at a perfect corner.  Given his inexperience in mountain driving, and the fact that he puts complete trust in Susan, his GPS, it took him far longer than he imagined it would.  Put another way, he didn't leave early enough to reach Four Corners before it closed  (prior to ten PM)

Had he watched "Amazing Race" with me, he'd know he could just sleep outside the gates and they'd let him in at dawn with the other racers...oh, wait, maybe not.

He was disappointed.  What he should have been was thirsty.  Had he been thirsty, he might have reached into the cooler his father and girlfriend packed so lovingly with the supplies I bought.  And he might have avoided something unpleasant.

But he wasn't so he didn't.  Instead, he drove on to my cousin Jane's home in Scottsdale Arizona.  There he spent a couple days in the 90 degree weather hanging out with Cool Cousin Tanya  (that's what we call her here)  and just enjoying  not being in the car.

Next stop, Los Angeles.  I think of this as the scary leg of the trip, this drive up the entire west coast.  Why?  Because now he's staying with people I've never met and don't know.  And, I'm afraid he's going to wind up sending me texts like this one:  "Jaci's mom is in the hospital and I can't stay with her.  Can I use your credit card to get a hotel room?"


What's a mother to do?  Of course he got to use the card.  That's why we sent it with him.  In case of emergency...or friends we 've never met not actually being able to let him stay with them.

Again, though, instead of being concerned about his sleeping accommodations, the boy should have been thirsty. Had he been thirsty, he would have reached into his cooler and possibly avoided something unpleasant.

I like my milk with a few miles on it.

You know, like a couple small plastic bottles of milk exploding somewhere in the mountains, curdling in the Arizona heat, and then crusting over pretty much everything in the cooler.  I can only imagine, when he did finally open that cooler, expecting to find apples, cheese, maybe a juice box, instead he found some soured infection sort of stank covering what could have been a nice little meal in his hotel room.

We're waiting for the Boy
from Wisconsin to bring
us fries.

I will hand it to him.  He didn't try and blame me, too much.  I did buy the milk, so I didn't get off completely free.  But after grumbling about it a bit, and dumping everything in the dumpster for the feral cats  (you didn't know that some of the LA 'burbs are silly with feral cats, did you?  Well my son likes to feet them at In and Out Burger.)  he got into the shower...and started grumbling again.  Apparently his shower head was broken...as was his room window.

Well, says I, the wise mother two time zones away, I guess you're going to have to tell the front desk you want another room.

First I need food, says he.

A few hours later, not late by West Coast time, but well past my bed time here in the Midwest, he announces that he's been moved, but that his new room is half the size of his old one.

Wonder if they charged my card half the amount.

He moved on to Sacramento, were he's staying with a friend named Amy...I think.  He sends pictures to his father, and apparently he's met a singer Peaches likes a lot.  All I know is she spent a big part of Saturday morning squealing, looking at her phone, muttering something about being jealous of Skippy, and squealing again.  I think she's hoping Skippy will bring said singer home with him.

Why not?  There's room in the cooler now.