The Spring Break vacay ended up appropriately named, too, as it appears every single appliance, electronic- you name it....that I own is on the damn fritz! Break is right. What the heck is up? Lately, it would seem that Mercury is constantly retro in Mama's world. It all started a couple of months ago with our carbon monoxide alarm and began to go rapidly down hill from there. The no-good thing wouldn't stop screaming and is now disemboweled and laying on the top of the Brita water jug. Has been for a while now. I need to get Mr. Mag a "round tuit" the next time I go to Lowes as it is just one more job on his list of Things To Do with apparently no time to do it in. In the meanwhile, I hope I don't decide to get into the Honda and off myself in the garage or the whole family will go with me.
Don't even get me going on the fridge that sounds like a clucking Banty. Seriously. I spend quite a few of my nights on the sofa due to hot-flashing insomnia and the husband snoring like a Grizzly Bear in heat. That thing sings its chicken song all night long and I'm always amazed that the kid's milk is still cold in the morning. I know I live in the South but good grief. Oh, well, it's probably just a matter of time. I ought to give it the ole heave-ho and get my credit card out for that Kenmore Elite stainless steel series I've been dreaming about all these years. I'd have to put it all in my bedroom though since my galley kitchen can barely hold the toaster and knife set that's in it. Those two things still work, thank God.
Speaking of hens..I continue to be mad as a wet one because in the last week or so this immutable techno-karma has even affected my cell, which besides Grey Goose, is every mom's lifeline and must be working and available at all times. It's seized up..not accepting much of a charge. T-Mag may have stuck a red hot in the port thingy, who knows? Not that the 384 pictures, 60 vids and several dozen text messages and a plan with no Internet on the darn thing has anything to do with it. I won't rattle on about the mangled thumbnail I have from trying to press down on the worn-out five year old keys. I see those touch screen I-phone commercials and cry like a baby. An app here, an app there..but, alas, not an app in sight for this SAHM & her monthly budget. Apple can really wring it out ya. Hey, my kid loves her ballet class. It's one or the other. Besides, hubby tells me he thinks there's a law against Facebooking while driving. Ridiculous.
So I dried my tears and got it together and called a beloved techie pal in to save the day. He ended up getting me all of my pics & stuff with this teensy weensy little thing he called a memory card. And I got to show him the neat cup holder I have on the front of my PC tower! Too bad he doesn't do windows or fix 16 year old cars that are hemorrhaging fluid by the buckets all over the carport that ironically look like pools of blood. He suggested that I may have an electromagnetic aura that conflicts with all the mechanisms surrounding me. He's probably right. Could be that or the fact I'm not catching the Z's anymore. After four months of pretty much a no-result treatment on Zoloft (supposed to help us old gals out on our menopausal ride), I'm back to "feeling" again and boy am I ever! I'm making up for lost time. Ya know, it's like I told my doc, I'm more of a Daniel Day Lewis type and that crap made me feel like Tiger Woods at his whoopsy-daisy press conference. It just didn't help me the way I needed it to. I don't really need to stop crying at Geico commercials, I just need to feel energetic, motivated... decent would be nice. And I want my old boobs back, is that so wrong? Too bad I didn't buy Walmart stock in the '70's or I could do the bio-identical route. I've now moved on down the red-clover & dong-quai path and am crossing my fingers. Yep, I think my bud is definitely on to something. It is sort of like a weird negative force field and I'm the Enterprise desperately trying to find my planet. If I'm beamed up, folks, it will only be by pure miracle. And surprisingly, that's just what I got when I washed the husband's cell phone the other day.
We were sitting, watching some tube, and I began to hear this eerily, low hum coming from what sounded like underneath the house. With my luck as of late, I thought it might be a pipe getting ready to burst or something and I was in a panic to find its source. Our auditory journey finally led all four of us to the mudroom. Well, I say mudroom...but what I mean is the crappy little closet that the washer/dryer is crammed into with an accordion door that won't stay on its hinges. I need to start wearing the kid's bike helmet as it came 'undone' the other day and almost broke my left shoulder. Good times. I'll make a mental note to jot that down on Geez's To Don't list. Yep, lately, life is just one big oy.
Anyhoo, after a while we finally traced the close encounter into the very, very bottom of the washer (long cycle, extra hot, shot of softener). There it lay. It's tiny Samsung shell of a body..soaked. The wallpaper, no longer showing the bright faces of our smiling children..now just black and lifeless. I was furious & would have kicked my own ass if I had the flexibility. The husband? Elated. He had been dogging me for months about a new phone, so my carelessness really set him up just fine, didn't it? He probably threw the damn thing in there when I was making a drink. "Well, it looks like we both need new phones now, huh, sweetie?", he says. He then went on to do a two-minute nicely prepared serio-comic monologue about all the great AT&T deals. I had to think fast, so I reminded him how at one point we had shared a car for five years so why not my archaic turd of a mobile? He wasn't too keen on that idea to say the least.
So long story short, we took out the dripping battery, laid it down on a towel to dry and began to pray for its resurrection. Hey, Easter is just around the corner, who knows what could happen? And I'll be damned, by morning's light...it was up and running again! I need to shoot off an email to Samsung and let them know what a good product it is they're making. Been working ever since, too. Impressive. Granted, when he tried to take a pic of the girls at the park the other day, they appeared to have four heads between them and were a Hulk-ish green, but hey, it has a bar or two left, dials out and the creditors can still ring up and harass us, so it appears we're good to go.
Yes, Mama Mags is quite mechanically-challenged these days to say the least but onward, my friends. This past week, we did manage an overnight stay a couple hours away that came with a little before-summer pool fun. The girls loved it and got to burn off some of that endless manic energy of theirs. Strangely enough, it wasn't very busy, so they upgraded us to the Honeymoon Suite. Again..with the irony. I was excited until we opened the door. The room's furniture was quite tired and the toiletries came out of a dispenser but it did have a mega-sized lovebird Jacuzzi tub! The kiddos got to splash and carry on for hours that night. I was exhausted from our Appalachian travels that had us lost up a winding, country road on the way there so I just took a shower, ate a half of a bag of Milanos and went to bed.
We caught a couple of activities the next day. The girls, after begging profusely, got to go to the Butterfly Palace and catch a somewhat humid glimpse of a gorgeous array of fluttery species from all over the world. A wild 3-D flick on the majesty and amazing workings of the caterpillar/chrysalis was shown, and overall, I thought it was pretty cool. Will made me climb a plastic cocunut tree which led to a couple of pulled hamstrings and a fifteen-minute descent. Ouch. Only in Branson, kids!
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The Icelander and I each took a turn at the Titanic Museum. Interesting, quite a few artifacts...a very sobering journey from start to finish. They had Cameron's original bottom-of-the-sea model that he used in the beginning of the film, a few pieces of the china, a lot of photos..even a re-creation of the Grand Staircase. I was told by an attendant that people get married there. Sheesh. We were handed a boarding pass as we went in, assigning us a person that was on the ship that fateful night. I got a domestic servant, Third Class. Figures. She did make it out alive though. Broke but scrappy. That's me all over. I don't want to be too long-winded, so I'll leave out the part about the wristwatch not working & the lousy computer that's beginning to shut off willy-nilly, rearranging the desktop and scanning itself to death. I do have to bitch for one second about my vacuum cleaner though. I have this really dysfunctional hate/hate relationship with those things. I'm sure a shrink could dig a little deeper and find out the why of it all but...I don't what it is. I loathe vacuuming. Always have. I think it comes from the trauma of having to do it every single day for ten years as G. and I had not one but four indoor cats when we moved in together. They shed like crazy. It could also be the lat muscle that separated from the bone in a nasty fall I had between a mop bucket and the napkin rack at a greasy spoon where I waited tables many moons ago. It hurts like the dickens when I do that particular type of repetitive movement. At any rate, it made me the bitter woman I am today and now I can not for the life of me perform that house frau duty without a bunch of naughty words, walloping and whining Dyson envy. G. tells me I'm unrealistic, expecting the thing to do a Bewitched and travel all over the casa..hands-free. I used to love that show when I was a kid, so maybe he's right. I guess when it comes down to it, I had simply run over the cord one too many times and this big puff of smoke came out of the bottom and that was it. Syonara. The one before it had met a similar death....except not before burning a fist-sized hole in the rug. Dear Lord. Father Mag's Ricky Ricardo came out on that one. He was r-e-e-ally mad.
A couple of weeks ago, with broom in hand (not as in riding on but as in sweeping), I had finally had it with my life-long inability to repair, construct, assemble, put together..oh, heck..just to understand how things work, gosh-darnit! So I pulled that stinky old Eureka out of the trash, disassembled it into 23 easy pieces, and was determined to re-chord it and fix the blasted thing and save myself 100 bucks. I fantasized a ballsy high-five with the hub when he walked through the door over how smart and handy his old lady had become. Y-e-eah! Boo-yah! Take that ITT...you don't mess with Mama Mags! Unfortunately, it didn't go down that way. I ended up with a snotty dust moustache, a broken butter knife and not a frigging clue at how to put it all back together. I'd even managed to lose three screws in the process. 'Aw, hell with it," I said, as I gave it one final kick. "Do I have anything that works in this God forsaken house?"
"I do" said the husband.
And that you do, Big Daddy. That you do.
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