Another Year Grayer

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Another Gray Hair. My initial goal was to write on a
regular basis and I’m so glad I stuck with it. 190 posts, 1264 comments, and
19,000 hits later and my hair is still going gray, in theory. In reality I’ve
yet to find a gray hair. Hate me if you want but it’s my crowning aesthetic
achievement. Keeping up with this blog
may very well be my crowning literary achievement. I never knew that a public
journal could be so rewarding.

Special thanks to my family and friends for letting me make
a mockery of them in order to further my career. Thank you also to all of the
faithful readers out there in the blogosphere. I look forward to another year
of Another Gray Hair!

Value Resort

Disney World can bring out the worst and the best in a
person and that’s where we are right now, staying in a value resort. Value
resorts have lots of benefits. They are on Disney property so you get
transportation and a certain level of that token Disney “magic.” They are very
inexpensive and loaded with garish statues and play structures, perfect for the
under-8 crowd. My kids love it. They think they’ve died and gone to commercialism
heaven.  I agree most of the time.

We experienced some Disney non-magic yesterday when we
waited in the bus lines for over 30 minutes and loaded all of our crap onto a
bus full of other value resort guests for a standing-room only ride across
Disney property. My kids were tired. I was tired. We wanted to sit desperately.
 It was not meant to be.  The 3 mile trip to our resort took over an
hour and we fell into our beds, wasted from our day of heat and
over-stimulation.

Despite the heat and the “you get what you pay for” value
resort transportation experience, we had a great day. Our trip to the petting zoo at Animal Kingdom earned Disney
an eternal gold star for their unmatched customer service. How can you complain
about a place where a staff member literally sweeps up the goat poop as it is
coming out of the goat to ensure that neither you or your child steps in it?

Top Ten Reasons NOT to Pack for Tomorrow's Disney World Vacation Departure

1. My van is in the shop until 6:00 p.m. and I have nowhere to put the luggage.



2. My son is in time out for the third time today because I won’t let him decorate the living room with toilet paper, “Come on Mom. Just one roll. Please!”



3. Packing and drinking don’t mix.



4. My daughter is sleeping. I’d hate to disturb her with the loud packing noises.



5. Vacations are always more interesting when you forget something important.



6. I’ve got writing to do.



7. Packing sucks.



8. If I could just look over my list one more time, I would know that I’m not forgetting anything.



9. Florida weather in the dead of summer is really unpredictable.



10. Holy crap. We have allot of stuff.

The Seven Deadly Clogging Sins

My children have three Grandpas. They have my Father, my
Father-in-law and their Dad. My husband is a 34-year-old Grandpa. He gardens.
He can fix anything. He saves everything and he does quirky little things that
only a Grandpa does like create makeshift tomato cages out of scrap metal.
Yesterday he took his Grandpa tendencies to a whole new level.

I was walking out the door headed for clogging practice when
I remembered that I had forgotten, for the fourth consecutive week, to take my
shoes to the shoe repair shop. For those of you unfamiliar with clogging shoes
(and I bet there are many), the taps are connected to the bottom of the shoes
with small nails. The soles of the shoes are about as thick as a piece of
cardboard and the point of the nails in my right shoe had poked through the
padding and into my foot. It was painful and I was forced to clog in tennis
shoes, one of the seven deadly clogging sins. I told my husband about my
problem and he said, in a commanding voice, “Bring me the shoes.”

His face lit up and I was skeptical but I decided to humor
him. Maybe he could fix my shoes. He managed to save our lawnmower from
complete ruin several times motivated solely by his own unwillingness to drop
$150 on a new mower. My clogging shoes cost about $75. I knew that was
motivation enough to at least give fixing them a go. I brought them into the
kitchen and waited for him to return from the one domain in our house that I do
not enter willingly: our detached garage. It is filled with enough random crap
to make my head spin so I choose to deny its existence.

Amongst the random crap exists a cobbler’s hammer. Did
anyone know that there was such a thing as a cobbler’s hammer? I didn’t. I
pictured the shoe repair with some magical little tool that could exert enough
force to smash a nail inside the 1.5 inch toe area of a shoe. I’m an idiot. My
husband took his rusty old cobbler’s hammer (a large, heavy two-sided hammer),
took the laces out of my shoes and whacked them with enough force to make my
daughter cry. That was all it took. The shoes were fixed. My husband had been
waiting ten years for the opportunity to put that cobbler’s hammer to use. I
hope it was worth the wait.

Arsenic and Ground Beef

My mini-break this weekend took me back to my hometown of
Hartsville, S.C. My Grandparents still live there and I always pop in for a
visit when I find myself in the area. Their home is not conducive to young
children (my daughter came along on this trip) so I have to keep my visits
relatively brief. I introduced myself to Ellen the CNA (their declining health
requires 24-hour in home care) and sat down on the couch for a chat.

My Grandparents have a dog. He is a dachshund, aptly named
“Happy.” He hates children. Each time he is in the presence of my children
Happy bares his teeth, growls and lunges. Because I would prefer that my
children’s blood remain in their veins, Happy is confined to the sunroom or the
backyard for the duration of my visits. Despite his
negative behavior towards children, Happy remains my Grandparent’s beloved and
constant companion. As such, he is treated to all of the best that life has to
offer a dog. I would learn in my visit that the best of everything includes his
diet.

During a conversation with my Grandmother, a loud, pulsating
noise came from the kitchen at short intervals. Curiosity got the best of me
and I excused myself to see what Ellen was doing in there. I found
her standing over the stove stirring ground beef and shoving baby carrots into a
Salad Spinner. She shot the shredded carrots into the ground beef mixture with incredible precision. My grandmother and I had already discussed dinner plans and I
knew that she was getting take-out so I asked Ellen what she was cooking.

“Happy’s dinner,” she responded.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Happy’s dinner. I have to cook it once a week. He gets
ground beef and carrots and the carrots have to be sautéed so they aren’t too
hard,” Ellen said, a twinge of cynicism in her voice (not enough in my
opinion).

I froze. I didn’t know what to say. Part of me wanted to hang a sign
on her neck that said, “I WILL NOT COOK DOG FOOD” and have her stand on the
kitchen table in front of my Grandmother, holding it up in silence like Norma
Rae. The other part of me wanted to give her a big hug and thank her for her
willingness to fulfill my grandmother’s outlandish canine dietary requirements.
Always one to take the high road, I chose instead to whisper under my breath,
“You ought to throw a little arsenic in there,” and walked away.

Wolf Boy

I'm leaving on an impromptu mini-break (thank you Bridget Jones) this morning and I'm not sure if I'm going to have internet access. In lieu of a traditional blog entry, I'd like to ponder something. That something is Duff Goldman's facial hair. It fascinates me. The top of his head is bald but his eyes barely have room to function amongst the hair that covers his face.

I appreciate a good cake decorator just as much as the next guy and I'm endeared to the cast of characters at Duff's Charm City Cake, a motley crew of friends he's acquired throughout his life. He clearly loves his job. He's exceptional at it and he gives one of his employees time off each day to participate in a human pyramid on the lawn of the local art museum. I like everything about the man. I just cannot get past his facial hair. My mind keeps wandering to that kid in Mexico that the media dubbed, "The Wolf Boy." Thoughts?

Appallago!

I feel compelled to give everyone a glimpse into what a Hale family car ride generally entails.  Here’s the dialogue that took place on a recent 20-minute trip:

Son: Mommy, do you want to play a game with me?

Me: Sure. What kind of game?

Son: Trains, hunting on trains.

Me (a little surprised about the hunting part): What are
we hunting?

Son: All kinds of animals.

Me: So what do we do when we hunt them?

Son: Me, the engineer, will stop the train so that you,
the passenger, can look closely at them.

Me: Oh, so that’s hunting?

Son: Yes. ALL ABOARD!

Daughter: All Aboard!

Me: OK. Here’s my ticket.

Son: Choo choo! Chug a chug a chug a chug. Mommy, we’re
moving. Aren’t you going to try to find animals?

Daughter: Choo choo! Choo choo!

Son: Be quiet Tatum.

Me: Oh yeah. Look! There’s a Moose!

Son: If you want me to stop the train, you have to say,
“Appalago” and then the animals name.

Me: Oh, OK. Appalago Moose!

Daughter: Appago Moo!

Son (makes dramatic brake screeching sound): You better
watch out. That’s a red spider moose. They can bite.

Me: Duly noted.

Son: What?

Me: Never mind. Appalago Bear!

 This went on for the entire road trip with my daughter
chiming in, doing her best to say “Appalago” and point enthusiastically out the
window, much to my son's chagrin (he refused to stop the train for her).  I usually have the pleasure of making two trips in one when I'm behind the wheel with the kids in tow, one to my actual destination and the other to the inside of my
son’s imagination. It’s a wild ride!