To The @#^%$ Who Stole (Broke, Lost) My Coffee Mug

To whom it may concern (and you know who you are):

Several  weeks ago, I came back to work after the lovely long weekend (which in my world means 2 days in a row off) field trip to Chicago with my kids, went into the kitchen to get ready, and discovered my coffee mug was gone from the day shift cabinet.  It was not the best way to start 14 hours of work on a holiday.

This is the 4th time at least, over the years, that my mug has gone missing at work.  The odd thing is, that with one exception, none of them were the kind of mugs anyone but me would even want to use.

There was a mug I had picked up on a visit to Salem, Mass., another from a Boy Scout event. If you hadn't been there, you had no reason to be interested.

Now I understand over 20 plus years a certain amount of carnage happens, but this is the second mug in less than 6 months.  The first one was a "Starbucks helps save the enviroment" mug, that got 10 cents knocked off my 3.00 latte on the (very) rare days that I felt so inclined.  But it was just the right size, and had the all important lid, and in fact looked just like a Starbucks carryout cup.  In fact when it went missing I thought that perhaps some overly zealous cleaning person had tossed it thinking it was paper, not plastic.

But this time you, whomever you are, hijacked something special.

I  purchased the mug from the Zazzle store of my friend Linda Roy at  Elleroy was here.  She is the queen of snark, and snark is an excellent self defense in the work place.  Since my workday starts so early (7 AM) it was appropriate to say the least.  And it was nice to have a reminder of the world beyond when I am stuck in Mundania.

Here's the thing. On the plain white side of the mug I had taken a permanent magic marker and written "This is Meg's mug" in great big letters. It was impossible to miss. Even had you shattered the mug you should have still seen enough of my name to figure out whom it belonged to.

I can only assume one of four scenarios:

1) You broke it and don't have the nerve to tell me.

2) You broke it and lack the common decency to tell me. 

(In short you just don't care.)

3) You liked it so much you took it home with you.

4) You don't like it, but you knew it was mine so 

you took it just to mess with me.

At this point I have give up hope of getting my mug back.  I have even resigned myself to the inevitable, and acquired a new mug.  This one is non breakable, says something cool about dispatchers, and I am carrying it back and forth every day.  

                                                           

I realize this all sounds like a lot of fuss over a relatively small thing. but when you work in shifts in cubicles, you have nothing that belongs to you except what you carry in.  Little things like a photo of your kids or the mug you drink out of become very important.  They are all you have that's yours. So it matters a lot to me that my mug is gone.

But on the other hand, I want to thank you as well. Your jerkishness is a reminder to me, as I get closer to potential retirement, that a workplace is just a workplace. It's not my home and it's not my family. Random acts of thoughtless like yours will make it easier to walk out the door one of these days.

Teenager Meets Wildlife And Both Run Screaming

The other night I was curled up on the couch as the Girl and I binge watched a whole season of Total Drama Island. (I appreciate the animated snark fest, and find it far more entertaining that any "real" reality show.) Anyway I had fallen asleep on about the 7th episode, only to be awakened shortly after by a semi hysterical daughter: "Mom...Mom...MOM!!!"  I of course jump up, having never lost my panic at 2 AM  instinct that all mothers acquire, to be confronted by a girl standing and pointing at her laptop like she had just discovered Pod People in the neighborhood. (Never seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Do so as soon as possible. I prefer the 50's version with Kevin McCarthy but the 70's version with Donald Sutherland is good too. Anyway I digress.)   I followed my daughter's pointing finger to my laptop where I was confronted with the spider ambling across the top, minding his own business.  He was mostly legs, about the size of a nickel although to the Girl just then he looked more like Aragog or Shelob.  I attended to the spider (admittedly if the Boy hadn't been out at camp I would have let him attend to the spider), and then turned to laugh at the girl, who can camp outdoors for two weeks with no complaints, but freaks out over a daddy long legs on the computer,.  Admittedly though she's been having a hard time lately with the wild life in the urban jungle.

Last week, she went to take out the trash.  We have city supplied dumpsters on wheels, with lids that aren't supposed to be lifted by non humans. No one told the raccoon that she found inside the dumpster when she opened it, of this fact however.  I'm not sure how he lifted the weighted lid, but they are intrepid little @#%s, so anything is possible.She shrieked, scaring the raccoon and anything else in a 10 mile radius, and now requests an escort when dumping the trash. The raccoon, meanwhile, having had his tail caught in the lid while escaping, hasn't been sen since.

We have been having quite the heatwave lately, and have been leaving the bathroom window open, as its several floors up and not accessible to burglars.  Unfortunately, it turns out the window is accessible to bushy tail urban rats otherwise known as squirrels, one of whom was admiring himself in the mirror when the Girl went in the bathroom one night. (Still not sure how he did this. There are no trees or electric lines on that side of the house. Maybe he learned to teleport.) She raced downstairs screaming. I asked her if she had shut the door. She said she hadn't and I told her to do so, before he decided to curl up in her bed when he was done with his shower. We then waited about 15 minutes, and went back to check the room, the squirrel of course was long gone. Naturally the window stayed closed and the light on all night.

So her reaction the the spider was quite understandable under the circumstances, but it does leave me to wonder why we are so spooked by animals in the city that we wouldn't even look at in the country?  I frequently take calls at work about deer in the city. (The deer population is booming in the area, due to the absence of hunting and natural habitat.)  They usually want the animal warden to come fetch said deer and take them somewhere "safer". First of all, there  is no where is in the city "safer" as they will continue to wander no matter where you leave them. Secondly, your development is built in their old woods, so what do you expect. Third how do you expect us to persuade them, they are as big as us and have hooves and sometimes? (My husband thinks such persuasion should be done with a crossbow, as he and the girl are fond of venison jerky, but then he grew up on a farm and really isn't spooked by wildlife.)

 There is, the Girl pointed out to me, as certain shock in the discovery of this wildlife where we don't expect it to be (especially in a garbage can they aren't supposed to be able to get into.)


So things have mostly returned to normal now. The wildlife is staying outdoors for the time being (with the exception of the ones we have invited in, bird, snakes, and fish, and they are all in their appointed containment units.)  And I know when we go camping again she won't have any issues at all (except maybe for the spiders). There, after all, we are the invaders.


Update: Last night the raccoon was back in the garbage can again.  The girl swears she is never taking the trash out again.  Score now reads: Girl-0, Wildlife-6.


 

100 Word Song "Empty Chairs"

I am linking up this week to the 100 word song linkup at Lance Burson's My Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog, partly because the challenge is featuring one of my all time favorite songs: "Empty Chairs" by Don McLean, featured on what may be my all time favorite album--American Pie.

Each week Lance or one of his compatriots pick a song and challenges us to write a blog post of 100 words or less inspired by the choice.

Throwing Out My Lazy Boy

We put the chair down at the curb

 (or devil strip as we say here in Ohio) .

The chair I rocked my babies in.

The rocker I sat up in all night

When heads were stuffy and needed to sleep upright.

The babies are mostly grown now.

The rocker no longer rocks,

nor does it stay reclined

(rendering it useless more or less).

Still there is sadness carrying it out

It looks empty sitting at the curb

(or devil strip)

something a chair should never be.

And the spot where it used to sit.

Is even emptier.

The Sixth of June--Lest We Forget

Do certain dates just stick in your head, so that they stand out even when you encounter them other places? 9/11, 7/4, 12/7 are all examples of this.  Veterans Day 11/11 is another for me at least,  and 11:11 always seems to catch my eye when the clock rolls over to it. 

Today is 6/6 and its another one of those dates, at least for me, as not one, but two major historical events took place on this day.

70 years ago today, when Allied Forces landed on the beaches in Normandy, France it was one of the pivotal moments in history: the beginning of the attempt to rescue  Western Europe from the domination of the Third Reich.

When I was young, one of the books I would try to flip through was my dad's copy of "The Longest Day" by Cornelius Ryan.  I was far too young to get all the battle strategy, but old enough to be fascinated by the stories of individual soldiers.

If you have ever seen the opening sequence of "Saving Private Ryan" you have some idea of what that morning was like.  It was noisy confusing and deadly.  Many men died in the water without reaching shore. Gliders carrying  paratroopers crashed. It could have been a fiasco.  But somehow they hung on and secured the beach. It would take almost a year, but the end had begun.

Wars since then have become ambiguous to say the least, but this was a time when people knew whom they were fighting and why.  Some times people refer to it as the Good War.  I'm not sire any war is good, but it was certainly just.

Had D Day failed, the Allies would still probably won in the end, for the German war effort was slowly collapsing--but it would have taken longer and many more lives would have been lost.  The Nazis would have had time to complete the Final Solution.  So much depended on those young men in Normandy.

This day also marks the anniversary of the death of Robert Kennedy, an event I have come to believe was one of the great tragedies of American History. Like D Day is was a turning point, but in a bad way. 

I have personal memories of this event, as it happened about a month before my 8th birthday. 

That was perhaps the worst year in history to become interested in current events, as all the news was bad. 

I grew up Catholic so of course everyone was fascinated by the Kennedys and rooting for Bobby to win.  

I remember my dad, who work midnights, coming home from work with news of the assassination. 

I remember my teachers crying at school. (It was the quietest last day of school in history.)

As I got older and read more history, I became more and more convinced this was a great turning point of American History.  

First there was the 1968 elections.  Had he lived Kennedy would have won the nomination. He almost certainly would have beaten Nixon, as he could run against Lyndon Johnson and the GOP. (Hubert Humphrey almost beat him and he was Johnson's VP.)

Alternatively the GOP might have gone for a more liberal candidate, possibly Rockefeller.  In either case, its doubtful the Vietnam was would have dragged on.

But something else was lost as well. Kennedy was that rarity, a person of privilege who had not forgotten the struggles of others before him. In his 4 years as Senator from New York he spoken against war, apartheid, racism and poverty.  He brought people together from diverse groups. He could appeal to their better selves.

In April of 1968, two months before his own death, RFK addressed a crowd in Indianapolis, IN that had just learned of the murder of Martin Luther King. He spoke off the cuff and from his heart to the crowd about the tragedy, but also about what was necessary to make the nation whole again:

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."

It is a matter of record that hundreds of cities rioted in the wake of King's death--but not Indianapolis.

That was the voice, and the belief in politics and America at its best, we lost 46 years ago, and we haven't gotten it back.

Road Trip

When I was a teenager, my father took me to Cleveland's Municipal Stadium (aka "The Mistake on the Lake") to see an otherwise meaningless game between the Cleveland Indians and the Milwaukee Brewers.  The Brewers were in those days an American League team, and Hank Aaron, who had spent his whole career in the National League was ending his career as the Brewers DH, and giving AL fans a chance to see him play. (This was a big deal in the era before inter-league play, when one only saw the other guys in the World Series and the All Star Game.)  My father, who treasured the memory of seeing Bob Feller pitch an opening day in Cleveland, said "You need to be able to say you saw Hank Aaron."

It's gone now, but here's how it used to look.

So when my son called me from college last February, shortly after Derek Jeter announced his retirement, to say "Mom, we need to take a road trip. We need to see Jeter play" I knew exactly where he was coming from.  This was a player who was a sure Hall of Famer, and one of the last great players of the era my son grew up watching ball in, just as Aaron had been for me.

Such a road trip seemed to take more planning than the invasion of Normandy.  After comparing the Yankees road schedule to the school and summer schedules of both children we determined that our best opportunity was the Memorial Day series in Chicago.

 The cost of hotel rooms would have been too much, so we would take night time bus trips instead. This one day visit for special events plan is something we have worked on over the years, starting with the time we did a day in DC for a Girl Scout concert and some sight seeing.  Over several months we purchased game tickets, then outbound bus tickets, then inbound.  We invited one of the Boy's friends, a fellow baseball player, to come along as well. We stocked up on refreshments for the bus, gathered all the info on navigating the Chicago subway system.

The outbound trip was OK, except for a small glitch when we learned the bus from Columbus to Chicago had been rescheduled for an hour and a half later. Our original plans to arrive in time to watch batting practice was transformed into making sure we got there before the first pitch. (Plus they were giving out bobbleheads. No sense going all this way without getting bobbleheads right?) We weren't terribly appreciative that we were given no notice of this, especially as we had gone to customer service with our tickets earlier to check the departure gate, you would think they could have clued us in on the departure time while we were there. In fact customer service at Columbus Greyhound was a bit of a fail all the way around.  The clerk said we should have know when the bus wasn't called at the original time that it had been rescheduled.  Obviously he wasn't in Cleveland the night we waited for a bus from Detroit that was several hours late because it could only travel in first gear. (Those customer service folks kept us advised however.)

Then there was the line problem. If you have ever travelled by Greyhound you know that everyone lines their baggage up at the gate and that's the order passengers board. when you're on a day trip you have limited luggage, but I set down a backpack to hold our place in line. When it came time to board we all stood with our backpack, and i was accused of playing games with line cutting, since 4 people shouldn't have been with one bag.  Unless the boys put their wallets down there, we didn't have anything else.  All this was going on at 4 am, which wasn't helping any one's mood.

Once we got on board the bus, everything went fine though. We made good time to Chicago, arriving at the bus depot with plenty of time to find the subway station that would take us to the stadium.  We were walking through parts of downtown, and saw some really cool buildings.

Early in my working life I was a customer service clerk at Sears, so I got a big kick out of seeing the Sears Tower, even though they aren't there anymore, and its called the Willis Tower now. (Also I guess the floor cracked on one of the viewing rooms a couple days later, sign anyone?)

We got a little lost finding the right subway stop, but a very nice Chicago police officer steered us in the correct direction.

We made it to the stadium in plenty of time for the bobbleheads. (I know you all were worried about that.) Walking up the ramp into the stadium we had a spectacular view of the Chicago skyline.

 Had great seats in the right field upper deck. Excellent view of the batters.

The only flaw was that the sun was behind us so we were in the shade much of the day. It was cold enough the girl needed hot chocolate at one point.

The girl guards her bobblehead and her chocolate.

The game was exciting, the Yankees won it in the 10th inning, and the White Sox manager got thrown out of the game.

Of course the only thing that would have really ruined the trip was if Jeter hadn't played, but he did, as did Ichiro Suzuki, another great we had never gotten to see.Neither one got on base, but that of course wasn't what it was about anyway.

Walking from the subway stop back to the bus depot, we were appalled to discover that next to nothing was open for a family to eat at in downtown Chicago. We passed Dunkin Donuts, Sbarro's, even Starbucks and a Burger King  that had all their lights out. We were reluctant to explore too much, since we didn't want to be caught out in a strange city after dark. In the end we dined at the bus depot, where

the food was at least hot off the grill and not too expensive.

We spent our wait time reading and playing games on our electronic devices. Twice, once at sundown, and again after dark the boys went out side and took some more pictures.

 

By 10 we were on our bus and by 7 am we were home. 36 hours from when we started. It was nice being on the road with both kids again. Lately I have taken college road trips with the Boy, and by next year I'll be doing the same thing with the girl, and although it is nice getting the one on one time with one child or the other, there's something about travelling in a pack that's fun as well.  There's a certain special sort of co-operation required of travelling together.
With one already in college, and the other zooming through high school, it isn't likely we will get to take too many more road trips like this together.

And for me there was also a certain feeling of coming full circle, of fulfilling a certain quest.
Baseball, like scouting has always been a means of connecting my children with the grandfather they never knew. My dad, who said I needed to be able to say I saw Hank Aaron play, would have understood.  Every generation has its sports heroes, and one should get to see at least a few of them in person.

Hopefully my children will get the chance to do the same with their offspring some day.