He drives me crazy

ooh ooh
like no one else
ooh ooh...

Mikey and I are planning a trip to Chicago sometime in the next few months. Driving, of course, since he won't get on a plane. We also need to go to Orlando to visit his 81-year-old grandpa -- before it's, you know, too late.

So I fiddled around with a trip planner and figured that it's a twelve-hour drive to Chicago. It'll be rough with Britt strapped into her carseat, but doable if we split it over two days.

Orlando, however, is 19 hours. That would be three days driving -- and three more days driving back.

Also, just for kicks, I looked up Newport since we want to go back there next year for a second honeymoon. That's a 25-hour drive, at least eight days in the car getting there and back.

After reporting my findings, the discussion went something like this:

So, how are we gonna get to Orlando?

We're not flying.

It's only $311 per ticket!

No. I value my life too much.

Later:

So, if you value your life too much to get on a plane to Orlando, how are we getting to Newport next year?

We'll have to take a two-week vacation, I guess.

(**crickets**)

How 'bout I take a plane and meet you there?

The Honeymooners

Last year I told you about our first date, which was 13 years ago yesterday. Nine years ago yesterday, we got the wedding over with and were flying off the next day to Newport, RI, for the most wonderful, most romantical, most magical, most fantabulous honeymoon ever.

We stayed on the top floor of the Inn at Shadow Lawn, which is supposedly haunted; the window on the left was our room and the window in the middle was our huge bathroom:



The building was gray when we stayed there; looking at their website I see that it's been repainted and is now called the Agincourt Inn. I also see that they've redecorated our room, which used to look like this:



And now it looks like this. The chandelier and the bedside lamps are the same but everything else is new.

Anyway, before we left, Bridgie packed up to go wherever she stayed that week and took every pair of shoes with her except my high heels for work and a pair of wooden-soled clogs, so I clomped around Newport for the first two days in those stupid clogs and they damn near killed me. My poor feet were swollen, lacerated and bleeding! On the third day we finally detoured to a shoe store and bought me some tennis shoes, which turned out to be only slightly more comfortable. Here's a picture of me and those friggin' clogs at Rosecliff; you'll notice they're in my hand and not on my feet:



But it didn't matter. We had a great time traipsing all over town and, when we couldn't hike any further, we'd call a cab to come and rescue us. We managed to visit all the mansions on the Preservation Society tour, plus Belcourt Castle and Astor's Beechwood. Here's Mikey at The Breakers, acting like he owned the place:



And then, on our last full day there, we somehow got the bright idea to rent bicycles. We did fine, at first, until we passed the point of no return, and then it was pure hell. Starting downtown, we pedaled to the end of Belleview Avenue and then followed the road that circled the southwest side of the island, and back to downtown to turn in our bikes. I figured it up afterward; I think it was about fourteen miles.

On the south side of the island we found a public beach, so we stopped to wade. Well, I stopped to wade; Mikey still has Jaws-phobia so he watched me wade. I got out about knee-deep and looked down to see jellyfish swirling all around my legs. I was back on the shore in a split-second, hopping around the dead jellyfish all over the sand. I dunno how I didn't get stung.

At the far southwest corner of the island was Brenton Point, where the sea hurled itself against jagged rocks and sprayed way up in the air. It was a spectacular sight but I didn't get any pictures because, by that point, I was too busy pedaling grimly along while praying for a flat tire so we could legitimately call someone to come and rescue us.

No such luck, though, so we pressed on until we reached Hammersmith Farm, Jackie O's childhood summer home, so we toured that and then we pedaled back into town and turned in our bikes and we will never, ever do that again.

In spite of the parts that didn't go quite right, there's isn't anything about that trip I would change. It was perfect in every way. Sometimes, when life gets us down, we'll look at each other, sigh and say, "Oh, God, I wish we were in Newport."

Last night, we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary with a bottle of Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages and our photo album from that trip, and agreed that our tenth wedding anniversary sounded like the perfect time to go back for a second honeymoon.

If I can get Mikey on a plane, that is. You know how he is about that.

Britt Gets Bugged

I had a couple of cute videos that were too long for YouTube, so I'm trying out DropShots.

In this one, we found an empty locust shell (or cicada, if you must):


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Ready For Her Close-Up

This is usually what happens when I get out the camera: Britt quits doing whatever cute thing she was doing and tries to get behind the camera so she can look at the view screen and see pictures of herself. I finally flipped the view screen around on this one so she could see herself while I was filming her:


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Sarah's parents called

wanting to see Britt -- for the first time in six months -- so we went over there on Sunday. And guess what they had?

A copy of the police report.

According to the report, the call was received as a road rage incident and a patrol car was dispatched. The officer caught up with the two cars (not three) and saw the brown Cadillac swerve towards Sarah's car four times before he switched on his lights and siren.

When he was arresting the two people in the Caddy (a man and a woman), they told him that the chick in the passenger seat of Sarah's car had pointed a gun at them. When he went to Sarah's car to ask about the gun, he saw a pipe on the driver's side floorboard in plain view, so he searched the car and found syringes in the glove compartment, empty packets with meth residue and $800 cash in Sarah's purse and a gun under the passenger's seat, so he arrested both of them, too.

After he got Sarah and Patty to the police station, he checked the back seat of his car and found the package containing 29.82 grams of meth stuffed down behind the seat. The two people in the Caddy had 13 grams of meth on them; the guy is reputed to have been involved in several drive-by shootings in the city and the woman had just received a suspended sentence for possession of meth the day before all this happened.

The police report further stated that the reason the man and the woman in the Caddy were chasing Sarah is because Sarah had slept with the woman's boyfriend.

Anyway, I'm done with it. I'm done with her. I will not allow her to visit Britt again unless a judge tells me I have to.

The end.

The Good-Bye Girl

Britt watches a neighbor get into her car and drive away:

Sisters Thursday

Remember our Sisters Weekends? Those annual no-husbands-no-kids-allowed estrogen fests, communing over food and jigsaw puzzles? It's been way too many years since we've had one but, you know, life gets in the way and all that.

So Debbie called Tuesday night and said that she'd rented a hotel room near me and the four of us were expected to begin converging there Wednesday for a much-needed weekend of sisterhood.

And Britt was not invited.

I was a little perturbed that I wasn't included in the planning for this because it was very short notice and I have no babysitter and no car right now and if I had been included in the planning I maybe could've made some babysitting arrangements or rescheduled the thing to a more convenient date. Also, I could've told her that the hotel she'd chosen was nowhere near me, but anyway...

I didn't make it over there Wednesday night, but Thursday morning I was up at the butt-crack of dawn to go condo shopping with them -- and, yes, Britt was invited if that's what it took to get me on board. So we scoured the northwest part of the city all morning and into the early afternoon for a condo that suited Cathy, then went to lunch, adjourned for naps, and reconvened after Mikey got home from work so he could watch Britt for me.

It was the first time the four of us had been alone together in way too many years. We went out to dinner, had a few drinks, laughed a lot, and went back to the hotel, where Debbie introduced me to Sudoku (she said I'd get hooked on it, but I already have a pointless time-wasting addiction -- my Family Tree habit). Mikey called to see when I was coming home and put Britt on the phone to lay the guilt on thick, so I stayed an hour longer than I'd intended to out of pure stubbornness.

We were supposed to go condo-shopping again Friday morning, but Cathy wasn't up to it. I was relieved to hear it, because I wasn't either. I heard nothing further until 4:00, when my sisters showed up on my doorstep without warning. They had tried to warn me, but I hadn't answered my phone, which I later found stuffed behind the sofa cushions.

It was embarrassing to be caught in my jammies at 4:00 in the afternoon -- though I usually wear jammies 24/7, I do put clothes on if I know somebody's going to be looking at me. Also, I hadn't done any chores in two days and Britt had dumped out a bag of Chex Mix on the end table while I was passed out on the couch recovering from the night before. I'd cleared the stuff off the table but I hadn't gotten around to picking up the overspill from the floor yet. So, anyway, they didn't see me or my house at our best.

They invited us out for an early dinner, because they wanted to eat and go to bed early since everybody was worn out. I had to pass, since Britt and I had just finished a late lunch due to the aforementioned passed-out-on-the-couch thing. After that I never heard another peep from them, so I guess the Sisters Weekend kind of petered out -- not from lack of interest but from lack of energy.

Gawd, what a bunch of geezers we are.

The Sarah Saga (Cont'd)

I cannot give you a coherent narrative of what happened because Sarah didn't give us one. Her story was manic, disjointed and rambling.

Mikey spent most of the visit in the front yard trimming the weeping mulberry trees because he can't stand to be around her, but when he'd come in to cool off and get a drink, I'd flee to the garage for a smoke because I can't stand to be around her either. So we each got a version of the story and, after she left, we compared notes and found that a few critical pieces of info were missing.

Anyway, here's what we got, as best as I can tell it:

Remember Shane? Kayla's daddy? The guy Sarah was arrested with the first time, when they borrowed somebody's truck and drove it down to Mexico and sold it? The guy who kept showing up on Bob and Sarah's doorstep no matter where they moved? The guy who "kidnapped" and "raped" Sarah after she married Bob? Well, it's all his fault.

When Sarah was here in April, she'd told us that she and Shane had got back together, but he'd "beat the shit" out of her and was no longer in the picture. Which is strange because his most recent arrest record shows a domestic assault & battery charge on June 10. Anyway, she says he's pissed that she filed charges against him so he set this whole thing up as revenge. Which is strange, because she's the one who called the cops on herself.

So she and her co-arrestee, Patty, were in Sarah's car, being chased by two men (one she knew slightly; the other she didn't know at all) in separate cars and they were throwing beer bottles at her car. So she called the cops. Then she and Patty were taken to the police station in the back of a police car and after they get out, a cop reached in and found 29 grams of meth stuffed down Patty's side of the seat. Patty immediately pointed the finger at Sarah, saying, "It's hers."

Sarah and Patty were both charged with drug trafficking, and she also said something about paraphernalia charges that were dropped. The two men who were chasing them were arrested as well, but I don't know their names so I don't know what they're charged with.

And there was a third woman involved somehow, because Sarah complained that this woman had only spent one hour in jail and was released. She is apparently Shane's new hide and they are now on the run together.

Sarah, on the other hand, spent several weeks in jail and swears up and down that she kept her mouth shut, but now she's been labeled a snitch and people are trying to kill her. She can't go to her condo anymore so she's living with the old guy out at Blanchard again. But she says Shane is the one who's a snitch and she knows that "for a fact" because she's been to the DEA office with him. And now she's had a gun held to her head and somebody drove up alongside her car and pointed a gun at her (I'm not clear on whether this was two separate incidents or just one), so she's scared shitless because Shane's connected with the Mexican Mafia in south OKC.

She says the other three (Patty and the two guys who were chasing them) all go to court on the same date, but her court date is a week later, so she's convinced that they all plan to plea bargain in exchange for testimony against her. She, however, was planning to beat them to the punch by going to the DA Monday (the next day) and spilling her guts so she could disappear into the witness protection program and take her kids with her. Because she doesn't belong in prison, you see.

Umm... I think that's it. Does it make as much sense to you as it did to me? None at all? Yeah, me neither. My eyeballs are still spinning in my head.

The Sarah Saga

will have to be continued later. Maybe tomorrow.

Britt's sleep issues have kept me alternately rocking her and trying to tiptoe out of her room without waking her for the past two hours, and now I'm not in the mood to talk about Sarah, or about anything else for that matter.

Sorry to keep you in suspense, but it can't be helped.

P.S. Finally got Britt to sleep for the night at 2:52 AM.

Lord, Lord

Sarah called again wanting to see Brittany, so Mikey and I talked it over and agreed that she could visit between 3:00 and 6:00 this afternoon. She showed up almost two hours late, as usual.

I'm still so geeked out from the visit that I can hardly put a sentence together, so I'll have to tell you the whole story after I've slept on it. I did get a detailed description of her "tracks," complete with the number of blown-out veins (and I was all "yay, dogies"), but she's been clean for a WHOLE WEEK now and she's finally SEEN THE LIGHT! Woo-hoo!

I guess facing 25-to-life for drug trafficking would be quite an eye-opener.

So hard to believe our beloved Britt came out of the belly of that...THAT.

I will leave you with this teaser: The dumb shit called the police on herself.