Frenzied Daddy

We have spirit, how about you?

The DQ today had Crazy Hair day at school – to celebrate school spirit. She looks great as a redhead!

I never could have asked my dad about this, and that’s ultimately why I agreed. It’s her last year in Elementary school and she’ll be moving on, so it’s her last chance to do this at her school. Every year I consider getting some temporary hair dye and letting her go to it. I kind of expected more of a Stephanie result, but this dark pink outlook looks good too.

There were kids there with colored hair, kids who had it in braids that were moussed up to look like pippi longstocking, and one kid had stuck a balloon in her hair and pulled it up and around it so that she looked like either a conehead or marge simpson.

I want my girls to have a lot of the things I wanted when I was a kid. I’m constantly comparing how I see their childhood against how I see my own (through the fog of the years since then) and I just want them to be happier than I was. And stronger, especially when it comes to money. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to talk to them about money.

Blunt Money ( catchy name ) has an interesting post on the fear of looking poor. Why we don’t order “just water” when we’re out with friends, or why we sign up for multiple potluck items.

Actually I don’t have a problem ordering water. But I do hate feeling like “I look poor.” Why do I hate to take bottles and cans back to the supermarket? Because that’s what poor people do. Why do I hate to sell my books back to Powell’s? Because it’s a sign that I’m broke. And to me, if you have more money, you have more books; they go hand in hand. So selling the books shows that I’m broke and then having fewer books in the house shows that I’m more poor ( relative to before I sold the books ).

Actually I’m working on that last one; I’m trying to treat the books in my life less as a sign of wealth and more as “clutter.” If I’m not going to read it again, or if it’s going to be many years before one of my kids needs it, then it can go. Although some of the books are still here. The David Eddings Belgariad, for instance.

I hate people coming over because the house is a mess and I feel that it looks like we don’t have the time to clean it. ( Why don’t I just clean it? Good question.) I mentioned before how I hated having people over when I lived in Anchorage.

Yeah, I have a strange phobia of looking like I’m broke. But I’m working against it. However, that doesn’t mean I’m about to stop paying for the DQ to have hot school lunch, or keep her out of band; I don’t want her to appear poor either. Struggles. All the time. Anyway, it’s an interesting post, and y’all should read it and consider what appearances you try to avoid too.

We went to Grammas’ house for Turkey Dinner on Sunday. It was really nice to get together as a family; my brother,his wife, their two sons, my wife, our two daughters, our grandmothers. We ate turkey and had fun, but the most fun really was watching the kids play. At one point, three of the kids were sitting around playing with the trains while the eldest ( DQ ) was staring off into the distance.

The TT was awesome; she helped put out the chairs for the kids’ table. The DQ was mildly surprised when I had her meet me in the kitchen for an important discussion. The important discussion was … “DQ, this is the dishwasher. Gramma P worked hard on dinner, you can help her load the dishwasher. Just follow her lead. You’ll be great.”

I’m so mean.

Damn.

It’s things like this that make me wonder what the heck I’m doing living in the basement and writing web pages. I haven’t really ranted in a while so I’m due. Stand back while I clear the bile from my ducts.

This 78 year old pensioner lived on her Social Security for ten years and still managed to save enough money to take the dream trip of a lifetime; she and a friend planned and booked a flight and then a cruise to Alaska. It looks like she paid her money directly to Princess Cruises.

This woman was scheduled for a trip to Anchorage, where the cruise would start, from Baltimore, to Minneapolis and then to Seattle, and then on to Anchorage. She made it to Minneapolis.

Things went downhill. The flight from Minneapolis to Seattle was delayed for two hours due to mechanical problems. We’ve all been there. It happens. So she missed her flight from Seattle to Anchorage. Then she had an opportunity to run from one end of SeaTac to the other — to be faced with a full airplane, and no room for these two elderly ladies. They raced to another plane, but that offered flight was booked too. Two people offered their seats to the elderly women but the flight attendants wouldn’t let them switch. So these two pensioners who saved for ten years for this trip of their dreams missed their boat when it left from Anchorage.

Northwest Airlines did great; they offered to send the women on another flight to a different port and they could meet up with their cruise. But they would have missed the glaciers — the part that made it all worth while for the ladies. And when the ladies decided they’d rather just go home because they were exhausted ( I guess waking up at five in the morning, taking two flights, racing across SeaTac can be kind of wearying ), Northwest flew them home for free. And then refunded their money for the flights that they didn’t use.

They refunded it to Princess Cruises. Another person might expect that something would be returned to the woman; at least the airfare for the trips, trips that weren’t even on Princess. This is what pisses me off.

But Princess spokeswoman Julie Benson said the woman will not get the refunds; Princess keeps the combined total of $559.80. The cruise line negotiates fares and special refund conditions with the airlines, Benson said, and the line’s policy is an industry standard :”The cancellation penalty applies to the cruise, airfare, prepaid excursions and pre- or post-cruise packages.” Because the woman hadn’t bought travel insurance (her friend did), she gets nothing back. Benson said it would be unfair to other passengers to do something different for just one.

So not only does this woman not get the dream trip she saved for ten years for, but she’s out the $2500 and the $550 for the airplane tickets. Damn.

I had a new experience yesterday. I was driving heck bent for vinyl to Vancouver for a couple of reasons; a meeting and some benefits. I was in a hurry because I had an hour to get back and get ready for the DQ’s parent teacher conference. I zipped through the bank drive thru, barreled up the road to Marine Drive, turned the corner, and after the light, the Ford was running kind of slowly.

Perhaps I needed to give it more gas. I was doing 20 in a 45 MPH zone. I pressed the gas pedal to the metal … wait. It was already at the metal. I had the damn thing floored and it was going 20, no make that 15 miles … and then it sputtered and died. Imagine my surprise!

I guess the only “idiot light” for gas in the Ford is the match I light after I go through Taco Bell.

I pushed it into a handy parking lot and walked over to the security booth to explain my problem. They seemed to understand, but I was speaking into an answering machine, so maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Never had a car run out of gas before. A smart person would have flipped open his cell phone and dialed AAA. I, on the other hand, had left my phone at home to be charged. I told myself all the way home that I was smarter than this. Luckily it wasn’t raining or my mood would have been really damp when I got home. It’s only about 2 1/2 miles home, so I made it just as Ms B was pulling around the corner to take us to the appointment.

Ms B dropped me off with some gas and stuck around to make sure I got it running; no problem. We were only about five minutes late to the conference.

Just fyi, I updated the wishlists page to reflect stuff for the girls. For those of you who ask.

Miss B was suggesting that as she’s getting older, perhaps a name more appropriate for her personality would be in order. She actually recommended DQ, short for Drama Queen. What do you folks think? In turn, Miss K could be “TT” or “Tiny Tyrant.”

Miss B, or DQ, came home from the Scholastic Book Fair Wish List with these books she wanted. We haven’t bought them yet, but you can see sort of what she’s enjoying reading. Her reading really took off in fourth grade ( last year, for those of you who don’t know her.) The list is not in any particular order.

You can see her list here:DQ’s Wish List

I mentioned Ms Dexter in my last post. She was awesome. And the only mention of “Sondra Dexter Teacher Anchorage” — First Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching.

I’ve been really lucky with some of my teachers.

I don’t like to write about my life in Anchorage. I always feel that y’all are gonna judge me based on it. But it was a long time ago, and things have changed a lot for me. However, somethings have stuck with me. First, most of my “formative” years were spent in a trailer park that was built on, what to all intents and purposes used to be a swamp. I hated it. Well, I didn’t really know different, so I can’t say I hated it, but looking back, it was pretty bleak.

The toilet pipes ran under the trailer, and would freeze once or twice a winter, and our toilets wouldn’t flush and the shower wouldn’t run. We had a small bathroom next to my room, and in the middle of it was the washing machine. It was almost always pulled out of where it was “supposed” to be, sitting in the middle of the bathroom connected to the bathroom sink. It was difficult to get past, my clothes didn’t get cleaned, and I rarely got a shower. So I was greasy and smelled funny.

I was embarrassed by our trailer. One time in Junior High school my Science Teacher (Sandra Dexter) took several of us to a science fair. I asked to be dropped off last, basically because I didn’t want any of the kids to see the trailer. I still can’t believe that my father brought up two boys in that single wide. “At least,” he would say, “it’s paid for. We couldn’t afford the rent on a house, and we have this.”

It’s funny; I never really thought of my dad, who would crawl under the trailer with a space heater or a hair dryer to unfreeze the pipes. It was “something he did,” and so I didn’t think too deeply about it. But it would be hard to get myself to crawl under there. Dark, closed in, smelly, muddy. I can’t even crawl under my car to change the oil.

Anyway.

I routinely violate the main tenet of working from home; I stumble out of bed, pull my pants on (usually the ones from yesterday), get a cup of water, and stumble downstairs to the computer, where I stare at the Internet until my brain works enough to start working. A shower isn’t really in that plan. If I don’t have anywhere to go, taking a shower doesn’t enter the picture. For that matter, I’m frequently in the same shirt I wore to bed. In this way, I’m repeating my childhood; I’m sitting in smelly wrinkled clothes and haven’t showered in days.

Some days I’ve turned around to see Miss B “ready to go to school.”

In the same shirt she wore yesterday.

I’m hoping it’s only a role-model thing and not a “totally uncaring” thing. At any rate, I have even more reason now to shower every morning, and change my shirt.