Posted by tee in photos, sense of place
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For about three or four hours today we were completely cut off from the outside world - thanks to a major phone company outage across the area that stripped of us our internet connection, land line and cell phone service. It was a beautiful three or four hours.

Now that it’s back, I put the phone on speaker a few minutes ago to tell Ryan - who was on a three-way call downstairs with his very goofy friends, Gabe in Santa Fe and Mark in Alamosa - that it was time to wrap it up for the night.

As soon as I hit speaker the first thing I heard, from an unidentified voice with a fake southern accent, was: “Now Jedediah, don’t you judge me because I’m Jewish…”

Posted by tee in de la vida, kids + pets
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At the breakfast table…

Sarah: “Knock knock..”
Me: “Who’s there?”
Sarah: (quizzical look).. “I have no idea.”

Followed by a blank stare, until she bursts out into giggles.

Posted by tee in quotes
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“Affix an ISBN number to your butt, and I’ll love, grope and fondle you too.”

 -me

Posted by tee in quotes
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In his 15 years under my watch, Ryan has sustained exactly three injuries. A burn on his eyelid at about 15 months old when an ash from my mom’s cigarette (don’t get me started) fell on him as he bumped into her leg. A whack in the forehead with a door at about two years old when my grandmother threw open the pantry door she didn’t know he was standing behind, resulting in some heavy duty blood but no lasting scar.

And then tonight - after an impressive 13-year stretch, injury-free - a nasty spill at the Alamosa skate park left his face roughed up enough to make me feel faint and very unstable when I saw him walk out of his friend’s house and toward me, waiting in the truck. His left eye had swollen up to resemble a grossly discolored, almost-black golf ball, his cheek torn up and smeared with blood.

“What happened?!” I asked, leaning out the window.

“What?” he asked, reaching in for the bag of overnight clothes he forgot when I’d dropped him off a couple hours earlier.

“Your eye! Your face!”

It can’t have hurt all that bad when it happened, because he then put his hand to his face and felt around, as though he had no idea what I was talking about. He felt the swelling and blood, and said, suddenly remembering, “oh yeah! I tried a ‘drop in’ at the park, and went face-first into the concrete.”

I stared, barely blinking.

He leaned down and looked into the truck’s side mirror, and at the sight of himself said: “Woah! Cool!”

As any self-respecting mother of a teenager must do at some point in her growing childrens’ lives, I put aside my biting urge to throw his bloody body into the back of the truck and drag him to the hospital.

Instead, I glazed over, my own eyes wide and unnaturally affixed to some point beyond him so I didn’t have to look at it, managed a big fake mannequin smile, and told him to call me if he notices any dizzyness, pain or vision problems, then nodded stiffly, politely to he and his friends standing by the roadside as I drove away slowly with my hands clenched to the steering wheel and my teeth biting into my lip, eyes still wide and frozen in alarm all the hour-long ride home.

Posted by tee in kids + pets
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Before my mom and step-dad, Bruce, made a brief and temporary move out here to Colorado they lived in a cute “Over-55″ mobile home park - despite that when they got in, neither of them were yet 55 but that’s another story - on the picturesque and growing southwest side of Reno. It was a great spot for them, they had a bunch of friends in the park, and the park loved having them, in part because they were the youngest residents and therefore were always out fixing stuff, helping with stuff, shoveling snow.

But when they got back to town they found the park was full and they kicked themselves for selling their two bedroom there to come out here. It doesn’t help that home prices around Reno have shot sky high in the last several years, and that senior park remains one of the few nice-but-affordable places left. So they’re staying at a small but comfortable long-term stay hotel, holding out for a house to come up for sale in the park. Which, morbidly, is only likely to happen if one of the elderly residents should die. People there know they’ve got one of the last, best spots in Reno and aren’t in a hurry to give it up.

No matter. While they’re waiting they went and got pre-approved for a mortgage so that as soon as one comes available they can jump on it. In the meantime, they’ve got spies all over the park watching for “opportunities”.

“Bonnie! Come quick! I just saw the ambulance come take Mrs. So-And-So away. I went over there and they left the door unlocked… let’s do a walk-through!”

“Bonnie! I think Mr. So-And-So’s kids just came and got him… come check the place out just incase he doesn’t come back!”

And there’s apparently someone who did pass away a few months back, whose daughter has taken over care and ownership of the home every few weeks. My mother’s foot hurts from tapping it so hard, waiting for the daughter to put the place on the market. She and the lady over at the park’s office are keeping close tabs on activity over there, and my mother is poised and ready to pounce as soon as anyone resembling a Realtor is seen driving in that general direction.

I’m sure she’ll comment here, objecting and exasperated and saying that *I* am exaggerating. Do not believe her. She once joked that maybe she’d go kick the safety salts off the ice outside one of their doors, “just to move things along”.

Posted by tee in de la vida
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Posted by tee in fun stuff, photos
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