The Pony Gives a Hand

Let the record show that The Pony is more than likely setting man’s communication skills back by tens of thousands of years. He has never been the loquacious sort, like his dad, and like Genius, and like Val on the printed page. Nope. He’s reserved. A thinker. Not one to offer his opinion.

So the other night, I asked him if the gold rush started at Sutter’s Mill. Because The Pony is quicker than my BFF Google, and history is my worst subject. My Achilles heel, right after geography. Which you might have suspected, after that whole England is an island! ordeal.

The Pony was in my office for something. I’m sure I called him in. Otherwise he does not rise from his couch and laptop, where he is perfecting the boneless physique as his muscles and skeleton atrophy. In answer to my question, he held up his right hand, palm toward me, on the way out the door. On that palm, written in ink, was the word YES.

“What in the world are you doing? Did you have that on there all day at school?”

“Uh huh. I’ve found that it saves time. And my left one says NO.” He showed me.

Later, when I had moved to the recliner to watch Survivor and Cutthroat Kitchen (superstar sabotage edition!), I forgot about the palm language.

Aarti, one of the celebrity chefs, was given no sabotages the first round, but was having difficulty getting all the components ready for her proper English breakfast. Being of Indian descent, and having attended a British boarding school, she had the concept down pat. She was running out of time, and I think she meant to say, “I have all these balls in the air,” like she was trying to juggle those components and plate them at the right time. But she started out saying, “I’m holding all these balls…” and I didn’t hear the rest, because I started hooting at The Pony.

“Heh, heh! She’s holding all those balls! And she’s not even in Little Caesars, and they’re not YOUR balls! Heh, heh! ‘I’m holding all these balls!’”

The Pony gave turned his attention from his laptop, and stared me down with a droll expression. He raised his left hand, palm out. NO. But then he elaborated.

“You are not allowed to say that. Ever.”

Kind of like he told me after the Little Caesar’s incident. Without the hand.

As if that will be effective.

Masterpiece. Master Plan. Master Scam.

For the last two days, the parking scheme at work has been upset. You know what THAT means! Val Thevictorian has been upset.

I usually park at the very end of my section of the facility. Only two spaces from the driveway. Then I walk the length of that end of the building to the door, which is almost directly across the hall from my room. I could park closer, but I choose not to.

For the last two days, I did not have a choice. I found this out Friday, when I came back from my doctor’s appointment to catch up on the day’s grading and pick up The Pony. A colleague told me that the parking lot at our end was being resurfaced, and it would be roped off. So we would have to park at the other end.

Here’s the thing. Our workplace is one long building. An eighth of a mile long, actually, because my best ol’ ex-teaching buddy Mabel measured it when we were doing our hall walks. She’s a mathie, you know, so I’m sure it was accurate. And the time it took us to walk two miles was commensurate with what I did at home, having measured with my pre-T-Hoe vehicle’s odometer.

The long building has a gym and music rooms branching off the back. So you can’t see one parking lot from the other. The one I use is just a regular blacktop parking lot, with yellow spaces painted along the building, and two double rows across the rest of the lot, and an ancillary building down the hill. At the lot on the opposite end of our workplace, most of the parking is dedicated to the students. They have numbers painted on each slot, and assigned spaces. Along the sidewalk by the building is a special strip of spaces utilized by the faculty. It is separated from the student slots by a long gravel island with small trees at regular intervals.

We at my end knew that the resurfacing of our parking lot would cause an issue. There is a whole new school being built down at the far end. The workers use the spots on the student lot that are not being used by students. Though the teachers don’t have assigned slots...just try and claim-jump one of those spaces. You’d have better luck surviving if you squatted on somebody’s gold mine at Sutter’s Mill in 1849. Not that I had any plans to take anybody’s spot. And believe me, I know who parks where. I’ve served parking lot duty once a week, morning and evening, for 20 years.

I told The Pony we needed to get there early on Monday morning so we would have a place to park. I cruised through the gauntlet of construction workers at 7:15, and turned into Teachers’ Row. I backed up to get aligned, and parked T-Hoe on the very end. Where there were no lines, even. Nobody could accuse VAL of taking their spot.

The walk to the end of the building was as long as the walk to my door usually is. Then there was another distance of equal length to the door. And once inside, yet another segment of hallway. So I was walking about three times the usual distance to get to my room. From where, on Monday, I had to turn around and go right back down to that parking lot for duty. I couldn't just wait there, since I get back to my room at the bell, same as the kids. I had to log on fifteen times to get my electronics going for the day. Okay. It’s really only five times. But that’s four too many. Oh, and I had to do the same thing at the end of the day: rush down to the parking lot at final bell, (my trip through the hall with students kind of like the running of the bulls in Pamplona), supervise the mass exit, attend a meeting, then back to my room to shut everything down and prep for the next day, then BACK down the three-times-longer distance to T-Hoe. AND we got news that the resurfacing of our parking lot would take another day.

There was no cheating. Our lot was tied off with yellow STAY-OUT tape. Monday and Tuesday morning dawned cloudy and foggy. You could hardly even see that tape from the road, so it's a good thing I knew not to turn in there. I spent both days dreaming about how smooth our new parking lot would be. And wondering when they would resurface the other end. Because then those folks would be parking with us. Plus the students! Which would probably switch my duty closer.

Yes, I was especially psyched to learn Tuesday afternoon that our parking lot was ready to reopen on Wednesday morning. I told The Pony, "I wonder if they made the new yellow lines in the same place. I have my routine, you know. I don't even have to look when I back into my parking space. I can judge it from the yellow lines in front of me."

"I know." Said The Pony. With about as much enthusiasm as Carrie May in The House Bunny.

Imagine my surprise when we rolled down the drive and onto our lot, and I saw THIS:

That's right. There was no resurfacing! No dark black new blacktop, freshly oiled. No bright new yellow lines. Nope. Just this shoddy patch job in some cracks. And the dumped-in asphalt is not even tamped down. It's raised, like a keloid scar that never met Mederma. (You don't want to ask my BFF Google about keloid scars. Trust me.)

AND in some areas, it seemed as if there was a shortage of fresh asphalt (no doubt because excess was used in the keloid patching), because DIRT looked like it was mixed in as a stretcher. Like soybeans in school hamburger.

I can't believe it took TWO WHOLE DAYS for this resurfacing repair touch-up job. What did they use, a toddler's sand bucket and a Sonic color-changing spoon?

Val Thevictorian thinks somebody got taken for a ride in this parking lot deal.

Val Plays the Lame Blame Game

Did I ever tell you about the time I sprained my ankle square dancing? I think not.

It may come as a surprise that Val was not out on the town with Hick, nor out on the town without Hick, nor out on the town trying to meet a Hick when this injury befell her. Val does not go dancing for pleasure. Not even back in the disco days. Nope. Val goes dancing for work. Future work. To increase her chance of getting work. Not that she has to now, mind you. Val HAS a job. From which she will retire in only seven short months, in case you haven't heard.

Way back when the Earth was cooling into a new ice age, not roasting on a spit over the flames of not-heaven in the guise of global warming...Val went to college. She had to take a class in Folk and Square Dance. No. It's not true that Underwater Basket Weaving was full.

So there I was, learning various dance steps, uncomfortable as all get-out, except for the fact that almost every other student in that course felt the same way. We were thrilled when it came time to learn square dancing. At least we had an idea what was involved. For square dance, we moved out of the dance studio, where we had to face only the uncomfortable gazes of our own kind, into McDonald Arena. This was an old basketball arena, at the time being used for physical education classes, what with a brand-spanking-new venue having been build by developer John Q. Hammons.

McDonald Arena was all wood floor and flip-down wooden seats up to the roof, with a narrow path around the last row of seats used by joggers who were not afraid of heights and not subject to nosebleeds at high altitudes. The building was a convenient shortcut from one side of the campus to another. Many students whiled away their down time sitting in the chairs, watching classes or the world pass by in general. So this first day of square dancing, we had a built-in audience.

These were simpler times. Our teacher had a cart that held a phonograph and speakers, which she plugged in on one wall to play a recorded square dance. She couldn't exactly hold a microphone and call it herself, what with traveling around to correct those with two left feet.

You never knew who you might end up with as a partner in Folk and Square Dance. We made two lines, and joined up with the person across from us. When we ran out of dudes, we made a double line of gals. You might get a musclebound weightlifter with excess bulges, or a high-strung 800-meter-runner with flaring nostrils, or a dainty tennis player who made Chrissie Evert look like Quasimodo, or a field-hockey-scholarship Brawny Paper Towel girl wearing a flannel shirt.

I don't remember my partner that day. But I do remember the dude who lamed me. He was one of the small weightlifters. About my height, with medium bulges, a Village People mustache, and a lazy eye. He wasn't much of a dancer.

There I was, allemande lefting, minding my own business, when he tromped HARD upon my left ankle. Stepped right on my left ankle. It wasn't a normal, lateral ankle sprain, like along the outside edge, from rolling your foot over. Oh, no. It was a medial ankle sprain. Because that dude stepped on my lateral malleolus. That ankle bone you see on the outside edge of your ankle. Stepped square on it, pushing all that soft tissue from the inner edge of my ankle to the floor. Against its will.

Thank goodness I was also taking a class called Athletic Injuries. I knew how to cut a piece of foam into a horseshoe shape, bind it on with pre-wrap, and tape up my bad hoof to reduce swelling and increase stability. I was a bit embarrassed about telling people I injured my ankle square dancing. But I really didn't injure it at all. It was that dude. Square dancing can be hazardous to your health.

But it beats The Troika all to not-heaven!
___________________________________________________________________________

Let the record show that Val is NOT in the videos, but that these people could quite possibly have been in her Folk and Square Dance class way back in 19somethingorother.

Thanks to blog buddy Cranky for the inspiration. Or the flashback.

How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down in the Basement, After They've Seen the Strip?

Where in the world is Genius Thevictorian?

He's home now, at his rental house with three roommates in his college town, marking the days off his calendar until he turns 21 in December. Okay. Not really. That calendar part, because I'm pretty sure Genius has no interactions with a calendar, what with his affinity for all things electronic. But he's home now, after a week in Las Vegas. Or simply "Vegas," as our little world traveler puts it.

Yes, he WAS just in California two weeks before Vegas. That was to solicit money seek donations procure donors for his college Solar Car team. The trip to Vegas was to give a presentation. A presentation at ITC/USA 2015. That's a big shindig called the International Telemetering Conference, for the International Foundation for Telemetering. I'm pretty sure that deals with sending wireless info. Genius designed such a system for the solar car. That's what he was presenting.

Genius stayed at the Bellagio Las Vegas, I think. He didn't say so. But that's where the conference was held. He sent me a couple of pictures from his window. At first I thought he must have taken them from his room's balcony, what with such different views. Then I figured that there are no balconies for Vegas hotel rooms, what with gamblers possibly feeling a bit jumpy. So in looking back at the pictures, two of them look like they're from street level.

The famous fountains:

The Strip:

So sorry, people who thought what happened in Vegas was going to stay in Vegas. Your picture is now plastered all over my blog, with its vast readership.

And this giant amusement ride, which actually seems to be the picture from Genius's window.

As I told him by text after receiving this proof that he was actually in Vegas, "Thank goodness there are no pictures from INSIDE a casino!"

We're saving that for when he comes home over Christmas break. Baby's first trip to the casino. He has already asked if I am going to supply his gambling stake. To see if it was worthwhile to come home, I guess.

Yeah. It's not like I'm taking him to Vegas. The riverboats will have to do. And they don't even sail.

You Don't Tug On Superman's...You Don't Spit Into the...You Don't Pull the Mask Off...and You Don't Mess Around with THEM!

From the crazy mixed-up basement of Val Thevictorian, I bring you this vignette, a day late and a blog premier short. (I left it in a comment yesterday at blog buddy Donna's site.)

I have shared most of my spooky stories already, and I'm really in no hurry to have new ones to tell. However...Friday night, as I was going through the DVR shows after watching The Amazing Race, I saw The Exorcist that I had recorded for The Pony last Saturday. He read the book, you know, so he wanted to watch the movie. I have read the book, but refuse to watch the movie. I didn't see it when it originally came out in theaters, and I didn't watch a DVD, and I won't watch the DVR.

So I said to The Pony, sitting there on the couch in our basement, "Do you ever plan to watch this again? Good. Because I'm deleting it. I don't want it on our DVR." Just as I hit DELETE, there was a noise of something falling in the corner past where The Pony lay with his head on the armrest. I sounded like an old plastic audio cassette case falling off the mantel of the fake electric corner fireplace. I accused The Pony of knocking something off, or hitting something to make that noise. He vehemently denied it, though he heard the same thing. Then I heard a knocking sound, like 4 knocks, and accused him again. He didn't hear it, but still denied.

Then that little rat The Pony went upstairs to shower and go to bed! Leaving me all alone with my thoughts.

Saturday afternoon, Halloween, The Pony finished his chore of splitting wood with Hick, and said he was going to be in his room watching a movie. I asked if he wanted me to recommend one. Like the original Halloween. I have the 35th anniversary edition DVD, you know. But The Pony was not interested.

"I really don't feel like watching a scary movie in my room."

Uh huh. And THAT was during daylight hours.

Weighers Gonna Weigh

This is Val's Betrayer:

This is the scale my doctor's nurse chose to believe over her tall weights-sliding-on-a-balance scale. You know. Because the spring scale is so much more accurate. That's why doctors' offices use them. NOT.

Here's the attitude my spring scale has been giving me lately. Even though I have thoughtfully provided him with a new 9-volt battery, just in case he wasn't feeling up to snuff.

Obviously, something is amiss. Perhaps WW is simply worn out, like the hinge on Val's hard case that carries her spectacles to and from school, after excessive openings and closings. The weight of a single Val leg should not be enough to cause WW to malfunction. Still. We take his word over the scale in the medical office.

Val is a robust, Rubenesque specimen of womanhood (DO NOT picture Val with her clothes off!), with a hearty appetite. Which does not mean her meal plan is akin to that of a circus fat lady attempting to maintain her moneymaking physique. She is not living high on the hog in her dark basement lair, squeegeeing gas station chicken grease off her chin. In fact, round about the time school started, Val cut back on her caloric intake. Which is not to say that she survives on arugula and alfalfa sprouts, or adheres to the supermodel regimen of Diet Coke and TicTacs. She is not one of those sprite-like women with a pixie haircut, who sit on the kindergarten chairs at parent teacher conferences, with ample room left over on the side of each tennis-ball-sized buttock, and occasionally indulge in a meal of less food than it takes to keep a hummingbird alive, then complain about their lack of self-control at such a feast.

No, Val merely chose lesser evils as presented. Such as Captain D's grilled tilapia or lemon pepper whitefish with broccoli and slaw (SLAW! SLAW! DON'T FORGET THE SLAW!), rather than the deep-fried plank with cracklin's and fries and hush puppies. At home, a bowl of broccoli, cauliflower, and baby carrots with a slice of Velveeta on top, rather than a side dish of macaroni and cheese, Stove Top Stuffing, garlic Texas Toast. A section of Walmart big sandwich for school lunch, but with the bulk of the bread scraped out for a dog treat, leaving just the crust over the meat. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. No nighttime snacks. Val is not one to make sacrifices and follow some cockamamie plan like her lunch companions, who relapse within a month back to their old habits. So Val just kept on with regular food, and trimmed the fat. So to speak. Cut out her one can of regular Coke each night. That alone would account for 2.8 pounds lost.

Val's Betrayer would have her believe that in ten weeks, she lost 11 pounds. Or two. Or six. She never knew what might pop up on that dial. But as of late, for a couple weeks, it showed 11 pounds lost. Not the 25 pounds lost that the doctor's scale showed. Of course, today it showed another two pounds down.

I have come to the conclusion that Val's Betrayer cannot be trusted. But neither can the doctor's scale. Or nurse.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Bitter

Ack! Such a day I have had!

I dropped off The Pony at school, then headed back home for an hour until time to leave for my doctor's appointment. I might as well have relaxed at home for two hours, because I was not called in until 11:35 for my 10:45 appointment.

On the way up to the 4th floor office, I shared an elevator with a cheery gray-haired lady going to the 3rd floor. She took it upon herself to become my best friend for two floors. "Oh! You're going up to the FOURTH floor! I'm only going to three." Just then the door opened at the 2nd floor. She turned to look at the keypad. I assured her that she had hit the right button. Ours were the only two lit up. On we went, with her telling me somebody must have changed their mind. When she arrived at her destination, she said, "And you continue to have a very nice day." My new best friend.

The waiting room was blessedly empty of children, hackers, and close-talkers. I had a book to while away 50 minutes. I felt like I won the lottery when I was finally called back. Until I stepped on the scale, and the nurse thought it was broken because my weight was TOO LIGHT for her satisfaction. Yeah. What kind of insult is THAT? We got back to the exam room, and she said, "What does your scale at home say?" I told her it said 14 pounds more than her fancy-schmancy balance scale, but it was a spring scale, about 15 years old, and sometimes does not even come on until you stomp it. So you know what she said? She said, "I think we should put what your scale says. Ours must be broken. I don't think that was your weight." I am shocked that she didn't burst into a chorus of "Fatty Fatty Two-By-Four."

The doctor came in to see me, and after handing me a copy of my lab results, turned to walk out in the hall, leaving the door open and his assistant with me, while he got a chewing out from his office manager about the way he codes his lab tests. We had a bit of a dust-up when I disagreed with one of his lab result interpretations. Not enough for him to care more than the five minutes allotted to my health.

Outside, I proceeded to my T-Hoe, sandwiched between two mini-mobiles that were close-parkers. I swear. The two of them could have fit into one space together. I don't know why they had to get so close. T-Hoe and Val are quite popular with weirdos.

On the way to my car, I had to stop for the lazy people shuttle. He kept sitting there, blocking my way across the aisle. Then he pulled up two cars and stopped. I figured he was picking up some lazybones. But no. HE STARTED BACKING UP! Beeping. And BACKING UP. I was already halfway across. I tried to run, even with my FluShotKnee. All I needed was to get injured in front of the hospital and have to wait for them to call the ambulance from another part of the county to transport me to the ER on the other side of the building.

On the way home, I was caught up in the THIRD batch of road construction on this trip. Every route needs a patch of concrete, I guess.

When I got home, the dogs did not even get up to greet me. They lay in the front yard. Juno at least turned her head and looked into my eyes, like, "What are YOU doing here?" Not so sweet, my loyal companion.

AND, sitting in the La-Z-Boy for the hour I had left before leaving to pick up The Pony at school...I saw a woodpecker hopping up the cedar porch post. A WOODPECKER! With me a scant 10 feet away on the other side of the glass. That is quite disrespectful in my book.

I might as well have been at work.