Dream Come True

Yesterday I took a vacation day and, along with my son Peter, kidnapped my grandson Eli for the day. First time. Great time. Hopefully first of many. Next stop; Abbyville.

What a day. Had it all planned out.

Picked Eli up at Kelsey's school, drove to Uncle Peter's house and off to West Seattle. In West Seattle we made a birdhouse, painted the birdhouse and took Neko for a walk on Alki. Back to the house, grabbed our swim suits and headed (too early) to the YMCA for swimming and romping on the mats.

We were a long ten minutes too early for open swim and we were regulated to standing by the side waiting for the call. After a swim, we showered up, got dressed and headed for the gym where there were mats galore set out and we ran around, dove and built a mat fort. I am not sure we were allowed to build a mat fort, but Uncle Pete found a cart with a bunch of shaped mats that made a great fort but somehow could not be put back into the cart in the same tidy fashion, but we did our best.

From the Y we headed for Zeeks Pizza (our best child friendly alternative) and ate a good lunch and drove into White Center to pick up my mother, who had four passes to the Museum of Flight.

Wow, what a place. It was amazing and I think Eli had his mouth agape most of the time.

Things I learned hanging with Eli

* He doesn't like to "just chill", he likes to do things
* There are perhaps a hundred things different about my YMCA and his YMCA, as in "Pappy you know what my YMCA has that your YMCA doesn't......"
* swimming entails climbing out of the pool and jumping back in - quite the jumper but it is time to tone down the Olympic dreams - he is a Cougan and "not a strong swimmer" Swimming for him relies pretty hard on the life jacket (my YMCA has different colored ones than his) and a lean back style. Pretty good spinner, but locomotion is not a strong suit.
* He is the funniest looking guy taking a shower that you ever want to see. His head goes down and tilts to the side - all sides, he walks in a little circle and talks and genuinely enjoys himself. A site to see. Did I mention there is usually one arm sticking out away from his body.
* He is quite the talker.
* He was under strict orders to be "flexible" - and was!!!!
* When he is real good and his mommy is being real nice he gets gum. - I meant to get him some but never got around to it - I hope he did not think he was not real good or that I wasn't real nice!
* He has waaaaay more energy than Peter and I. We were beat and he was still the energizer bunny.

A Blessing and a Curse

I always got perfect attendance awards at school. I cannot remember EVER missing a day. But I must have missed at least one day because to quote Dave Barry " I must have been absent the day they took all the boys out of class and taught them how mechanical things work so they could fix anything and everthing".

I got Peggy a Vitamix for Christmas. I did this so she could make brown and green juices that make me vomit, but make her extremely happy. Just three days into her blissful healthy eating good ole' lefty Peggy (the woman who cannot open any cellophane package without destroying it and the bag it came in) got the lid (don't ask me how, it should not be possible) stuck in the teeth of the blender and rendered it in-operable. This put me in my least favorite role of Mr. Fix-it.

Luckily I discovered that there was a little part that was designed to fail and thus keep the expensive motor from hurting itself. This little ($16.00) part attached to the square revolving nut that comes off the motor that is made out of soft, almost hockey puck rubber had literally dissolved itself. One quick call to Amazon had this little baby on its way to us.

On Friday it arrived. Mr. Fix-it attempted to put the new thingee (my technical word for the part) back in and that is when other things began to deteriorate.

The original thingee had kinda melted over the post. Melted and reformed to make putting the new thingee on difficult. I tried all the things one should not do. I tried a butter knife, my pocket knife and screw drivers (both fillips head and regular....with no luck. Then I had a brilliantly bad idea. I have this little drivel thing. Kind of like a dentist tool only bigger and certainly not as sanitary. I gleefully pulled out this little used (impulse buy) tool and started to play dentist on the square nut. After accidentally gouging the cover plate and perhaps the little green thingee that I was not sure just what it did, why it was there and just how big a deal could it be.

I also discovered, by burning the ever-loving shit out of my finger, just how hot the end of the drivel bit can get.

Like all home improvement projects I soon ran out of swear words, patience and hair brained- bad-for-the-part-I-am-trying-fix ideas and gave up. I vowed to bring it into the shop and have a smart guy look at the problem. Not as easy as it sounds.

This requires bringing the part in, begging one of the foreman to look at it, trying to explain what "I" think the problem is and getting laughed at, ridiculed and treated kind of like the skinny guy in the old Charles Atlas add that I am featuring in this post.

So on the one hand, I always have a great place filled with people who can do anything, but boy does my ego pay a price for this service.

But whenever Peggy breaks something I still have three brain cells left (the same ones that get excited every June prior to the big league draft) that think that this time I can become THE HERO OF THE BEACH!