Be All You Can Be

After hitting the speed bump at sixty, being seen out and about without all my makeup on and my hair perfectly coiffed [is that a great word, or what?] no longer seemed to matter so much. Here in my neighborhood at least. The days of knowing I'll run into some guy I've been dying to date [and vice versa] are so over. The last time I had a guy in my house it was for a wellness check. I kid. He was checking for a gas leak. 
          I simply save the war paint and styling for important things, like lunchtime meetings in fancy offices in the city, where you don't want to be mistaken by the guards for a bag lady who stole somebody's computer. 
          Of course, in the end, it ain't the guys you have to impress, it's the women. They're tough as Nancy Grace after a verdict. Some bitch recently asked why I hadn't had a facelift yet. Not that I looked bad, but think of the improvement. [Note to self: don't start conversations in Jiffy Lube.] At a party another babe had to show me where Botox could do me some good, tracing the myriad "character lines" that form the Mariana Trench in my forehead. 
          It occurred to me that I may have taken this no makeup, bad hair, casual dress thing a little too far, when I stopped to chat this AM with a neighbor as I waited for a cab to the train for a meeting downtown. To set the scene, I was wearing clothes that didn't have a Carhartt label and my shoes had no treads. Meanwhile, she kept staring at me as we discussed her trip to pick blueberries in Michigan. More accurately, I was telling her about MY trips to pick blueberries in Michigan. Her kids began staring too, when they came outside to join us. They stood a couple of feet below me, looking up, eyes wide, mouths open, the way kids do when you're a complete stranger they've never met before. Or just someone they can't place. You could be the woman next door, but something's very different.  
          When there was a lull during my monologue, their mom said, "Oh, you've got makeup on. You look nice."
          There it was, the unfinished sentence. "You look nice..." Did she mean I didn't look nice those other times? Who am I kidding, of course she did, but not so much in a bad way. Just an acknowledgement of how we all use our yards and driveways as extensions of the inside of our homes, like Tony Soprano wearing that raggedy robe outdoors to get the paper. Or clipping your toenails on the front steps.  
          But mostly, it's the uncombed hair and lack of makeup thing that I have taken to heart. Along with wearing outfits I swipe from the Goodwill bag when everything else is dirty. [However, no matter what pair of paint-stained shorts or faded softball tee I'm sporting, I always wear a bra. I'm 67. Enough said.]
           Where was I before getting sidetracked with a visual of the pendulums swinging? Oh yes, Wearing make up. Combing hair. Or not.
           After surprising my neighbor with my great facepaint job while impersonating a woman yesterday, I woke up today and decided that from now on, do the hair and makeup. No matter what. No matter where. Hair and makeup and maybe use the Tide stick and get rid of that stain on the front of my blouse. Or, here's a thought, how about a clean blouse? I can do this.          

Payback Is Coming

The village where I live has a unique way of handling issues like flooding and power outages. When they make mistakes, we get to pay for them. 

          Thirty years ago when I moved here, I noticed, along with everyone else in the neighborhood, that our street flooded whenever there was an inch of rain. After the 100-year flood of 1982, followed by another 100-year flood in 1987 [obviously Mother Nature sucks at math], the village had an epiphany. What you need are bigger storm sewers, they said. Why thank you, we said. But there was a catch. Along with the fancy new pipes, they said, you'll also want the matching new curbs to accommodate the metal grates you'll need to drain the water into the storm sewers and take it away. And it just so happens we're having a sale. In the end, the village paid for the sewers. And the neighborhood forked out a thousand dollars per household for the metal grates and the fancy new curbs that will surely enhance the value of all our homes blah blah blah. 

           Fifteen years later, the street still floods after an inch of rain. In fact, over the weekend when we had five inches fall in just two hours, the street flooded up and over the parkway, past the sidewalk, through the yard, and stopped just six feet from my house. 

           But the good news is that once the rain has stopped, the flood water drains much faster. So the new pipes suck when it comes to preventing the flooding, but they're great for drainage. The mistake they made? The grates. They aren't big enough to handle the load when there's a downpour. The flood water turns into a 500 pound gorilla trying to squeeze into an eight pound bag. Naturally the village won't pony up the money to make the grates bigger. Or admit they made a mistake. 

           The next mistake the village made was during the early years of the tear-down frenzy. Two new houses went up on our block and the grade elevation for each house was notably higher than the rest of surrounding homes. Big mistake. After the first one-inch rain, the other eight backyards were way under water. And the water sat there for weeks and weeks. My backyard had its own fish pond for more than a month. Another neighbor lost her entire lawn. 

           To voice their concern, the neighborhood had a meeting with the storm commission, which declared that this event was just a fluke and it was probably caused by excess vegetation, which was our fault. I am not kidding. 

           However! For the low, low price of $1500 per household, they could have the problem fixed. No, we said. You allowed the builders to raise the grade. This time we're not paying for your mistake. But, they claimed, we can't fix our mistakes unless you pay for them. Nope. Yep. Nope. Yep. Until the woman whose lawn had been destroyed showed up for a meeting carrying her brand new baby and called them names that cannot be printed in a family friendly blog -- for this entry at least. [See George Carlin.] Somehow the village found a way to save face and hooked up a framitz to the squiggly thing and ta-da, the water was gone!!  

           But municipalities are not like elephants. They do not have long memories. In fact, it could be argued they don't have memories at all. Recently, the village totally forgot about the mess they caused by raising the grade a decade ago and allowed three more new houses on the other side of the block to do virtually the same thing. Only worse. These houses were not only on higher ground, which is like grade elevation on steroids, but these McMansions with their three-car garages, industrial-sized driveways, and immense patios have covered over 50% of the properties with concrete. A perfect combination for runoff of biblical proportions.  

           Since construction finished on these homes, our backyards have never seen so much water. Not only is there runoff, but the pipes from their sump pumps are adding to the deluge. The problem is that there's only one place for the water to go after our yards get filled up. Into the house. Twice, water has poured through the window wells into the basements. Twice, it has overwhelmed the sump pumps whose principle job is to keep the ground water under control. Twice, it has flooded out the furnaces and knocked out the hot water heaters. 

           Very big mistake. But naturally, the village wants us to pay to fix the problem -- by hiring people to build berms and swales, re-routing our gutters and sumps, putting in fancy drains from the backyard to the front, even installing new window wells, and on and on and on. The people whose houses have caused the problem don't have to do anything. And, to this point, the people at the village who keep making these mistakes think they don't have anything to worry about either. 

           But Mrs. Linklater thinks that with a little effort, we may soon have another episode of Jobs in Jeopardy. 

           Is this a great country or what?

I WANT MY FREE RIDE!

When disgraced Governor Blagojevich was running the state, he declared that forever and ever [during his administration at least] SENIORS WILL RIDE ON MASS TRANSPORTATION FOR FREE. He might have added, "unless I'm kicked out of office and there's a special election and the next governor caves in to all the people who keep complaining that millions of dollars in revenue have been squandered in the name of old people." But until September 1st, SENIORS RIDE FREE.
          Of course, FREE is relative. With government mandates, you get bureaucracy. And bureaucracy is always set up so you have to PAY when an elected official declares that something is FREE.
          That means, instead of just using your driver's license to get on a bus or a train FOR FREE, which is easy, you have to go through a PROCESS, which is almost always about hard cash.
          This is Illinois. There were jobs to be created out of Blago's magnanimous gesture to the bifocal crowd. The process meant that anyone 65 or older had to go online [more work for a web team] or to a designated location [more offices to open and people to staff the windows] to fill out the paper work [more paper to purchase and printers to buy], bring a driver's license [and if you don't have a driver's license you have to get a state ID, which could mean hiring even more people if there's a run on state IDs] and provide a passport sized photo [somebody's going to make money off that]. Then, after all that, you had to wait five weeks to get your RIDE FREE card in the mail. Five farking weeks.
          Funny how you can get a driver's license or a state ID with your picture on it the very SAME DAY, but it takes FIVE WEEKS to get a FREE RIDE card, a process rendered completely unnecessary if you could just use your driver's license. Or go to a driver's license facility and use their set up to create the FREE RIDE cards.
          Which brings me to my first predicament. I don't usually use public transportation, but my daughter just moved close to a commuter train station, so I realized that being a SENIOR, I could get to her place and back on the train FOR FREE, and not spend a dime to gas up my car.  As long as I got my FREE RIDE card.
           Which brings me to my next predicament. The ALL SENIORS RIDE FREE is ENDING on September 1 -- just five weeks from now. On September 1st, unless your income is low enough, SENIORS can only get a 50% discount on the fare.
            Meanwhile there are still five weeks left when ALL seniors can supposedly ride for FREE. All except me. Because you need a FREE RIDE card to ride free. But if you don't already have a FREE RIDE card, you can't get one any more. Catch-22. So there's five weeks of free rides that I am eligible for, but I can't use. Because I don't HAVE a FREE RIDE card. All because I can't GET a FREE RIDE card.
            Instead of letting all seniors -- me me me me me -- ride free for the last five weeks of the program by simply showing their MEDICARE cards or their driver's licenses, we now have to pay.
            A full fare train ticket from my town to my daughter's stop is $8.00 round trip.  The senior fare will be $4.00 on September 1st. For the next 37 days that ride is free for anyone over 65. Except ME.
And anyone else who can't get their FREE RIDE card.
            Did I mention I can't get my FREE RIDE card?
         
 

Without the Cookies, Girl Scouts Have No Reason to Exist

I was never a Girl Scout. I never liked being around groups of girls. Too girly. The real reason I eschewed this bastion of Goody Two Shoes Americana was because I had been faced with a choice: be a Girl Scout or join a bowling team. Easy. For me, bowling was a no brainer. They kept score, people won trophies, and I didn't have to wear a green dress. I suppose you could make a bunch of jokes about balls, too, but don't. 
          On reflection, I actually enjoyed being in Brownies, but when I got to sixth grade in a new town at a new school, Girl Scouts seemed lame. However, having my own female children brought me back into the fold. My younger daughter caught the bug. When I realized I would have first crack at the stash of cookies, I embraced her choice as any supportive parent would. 

          Recently, I found the green sash she used to wear over her uniform, the one that displayed the wall-to-wall merit badges she'd earned. I returned it to her when she was in town for the holidays last year. It seemed to me she was rather surprised and quite pleased to see it again, judging by the look on her face. Either that or she was thinking, "You saved THIS, Mom? It's been 25 years. Are you a hoarder?" 

          However, finding this last remnant of her days as a cookie shill also brought back memories of my experiences as a volunteer mom on a couple of field trips with The Scout Leader from Hell. 
          My naive impression of scout leaders has always been a stereotype. The men are talented, thoughtful fathers with infinite patience. They're the dads who can pitch tents, build fires, make pancakes from wood shavings, and know every campfire song ever written. Or they're pedophiles. Not too much in between. 
          The women are moms who could make Martha Stewart look like she's not trying hard enough. These are the babes who can rewire the house and adjust the carburetor on the lawn mower while simultaneously making lasagne and red velvet cake with homemade frosting from scratch, wearing an apron they whipped up just for the occasion. I'm sure the GSA [Girl Scouts of America] counts on these kinds of women to step up and run their be-all-you-can-be operations. But after what I went through with the scout leader who ran my daughter's troop, I am not so sure how how well their quality control checks are working. 
           The first field trip with my daughter's Girl Scout troop was for an overnight in Wisconsin that required sleeping bags. The girls bunked in two large tents. The Scout Leader and the volunteer moms were housed together in another big tent. Fortunately nobody had to sleep on the ground. The tents were more like a large canvas room set up on a raised platform, with one side open to the elements during the day. 
          Having been camping many times, I already knew that when you're outside, even in the summer, nights can be cold. Expecting the temperature to go down to forty degrees, I had brought a down sleeping bag that was good to twenty below zero. My daughter had one, too. The Scout Leader brought something from Disney Outfitters, based on the cartoon characters on the outside.  
          Needless to say, by morning, our Mickey Mouse leader was suffering from hypothermia. She was shaking uncontrollably from the cold, so I got up, got dressed, and told the other mothers to wrap her in my industrial strength sleeping bag to warm her up.
          While the moms were tending to the patient, the girls were already up and wandering around, wondering who was going to feed them. Since our inexperienced leader was clearly indisposed for an indeterminate amount of time, I organized the girls to start a fire, put them to work mixing up the batter for the pancakes, got out a pan for the bacon, supervised the start of some scrambled eggs, and did what is known as taking charge of the situation. Without too much fanfare and some lessons in cooking outdoors, the girls were eating breakfast by the time the sun was over the trees and the temperature was climbing. 
          After about forty-five minutes, the hypothermia that derailed The Scout Leader had subsided, thanks to my very helpful sleeping bag. It didn't cost $250 in 1970 for nothing. Now she was up, dressed, and proceeded to walk over to the cooking area where I expected her to thank me profusely for making it possible for her to live another day.
          Instead she looked around and asked rather pointedly, "Who said you could make breakfast? I didn't say it was time to start making the pancakes."
          What? No "thank you" for possibly saving your life? No 'thank you" for teaching camp cooking and feeding a group of very hungry Girl Scouts while you were rendered incompetent? Ah, clearly she was not only inexperienced as a Scout Leader, but she was an unmitigated control freak who couldn't or wouldn't delegate tasks to other people. The girls and I just stared at her. 
          My next experience with this woman was a trip to visit Abraham Lincoln's home in Salem, Illinois. It's about a five-hour bus ride down to the Salem area. We arrived too late at night to swim in the hotel's pool, even though a dip in the chlorine had been promised to the girls. Since it was already 10:00 PM and we had to be up by 6:00 AM to start sightseeing, the logical thing would be to get the girls settled down in their rooms. 
          At this point, for some reason, The Scout Leader simply disappeared. According to one of the other moms, she suddenly left to go visit some friends in the area. Huh? Did she leave any instructions? No. Did she say ANYTHING at all? No. But she'll be back. Aha. The Scout Leader is obviously insane, spelled a-s-s-h-a-t. The girls were running all over, buying candy and soda, playing with pinball machines in the lobby, laughing and giggling, and getting bleary-eyed. At 11:00 PM with The Scout Leader nowhere in sight, I filled the vacuum and took charge. I got the girls up to their rooms and into their p.j.s, so they could get settled down and be rested for the 6:00 AM wake up call. 
          At 11:30 PM, The Scout Leader returned with no apologies -- heard what I had done, got the management to open the pool, came upstairs, looked at me with daggers, and told the girls they could get up, put on their bathing suits, and go swimming. She would show me who was in charge. 
          Finally at 1:30 AM, they fell into bed. Who knows when they went to sleep. And they were zombies the next day.
          But the piece de resistance was the trip to the farm in the country. I stayed home. Not because I wanted to. But because I was not allowed to go on this trip. The Scout Leader decided to mandate a two trip limit for the volunteer moms. Quelle surprise. When the girls returned home from their weekend communing with the cows, the entire troop was suffering from food poisoning. Apparently the well water was contaminated with campylobacter, a bug that thrives in cow dung. Good times! And the farm in question had not been approved by the GSA for field trips because of problems in the past. But The Scout Leader took them anyway.
          How bad was the food poisoning? The NIH called me from Maryland because there were reports that other family members were getting sick, which was the first time campylobacter had spread from human to human, not just animal to human. In fact, after chatting with the investigators tracking down the source of the contamination, it seemed like the scouts were being treated like part of a gigantic lab experiment. 
          My daughter didn't have the stomach cramping and diarrhea most of the others did. She had a fever so high that she began to talk to me in gibberish and I had to rush her to the hospital to get her temperature down. Naturally, The Scout Leader never suffered any consequences for her latest example of poor decision making.
          The only highlight of an otherwise dismal year in this wacky world of scouting was that I was given permission to supervise the acting/drama badge. But only because there were no other volunteers. However, I was allowed to have just five girls, despite the fact that at least ten girls wanted to participate. Nevermind, that I had basically assumed control of the entire troop when The Scout Leader was abdicating her responsibilities. She actually told me that I wouldn't be able to handle more than a group of five.
          Along with my daughter, the Scout Leader's daughter was one of the chosen few. I'm sure she was expected to rat me out whenever possible. I got them free tickets to a show, starring a friend of mine. We made puppets, acted out a radio script, did some improv, and auditioned for a commercial. For the makeup portion of the badge, the girls sprayed my hair gray, gave me wrinkles, created a pair of hornrimmed glasses, and at the age of forty, turned me into a creaky old lady. Somewhere there are pictures. 
          Maybe I should have had them dress me up as a drama queen. But there's already one too many in this story. 
          Which brings me back to my original premise, however roundabout it may seem. Given the questionable state of local leadership -- from food poisoning to sleep deprivation -- if it weren't for their cookies, in fact, if it weren't for Thin Mints and Samoas specifically, would there be a reason for Girl Scouts to exist? 
          

          

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: The Opinions Expressed By This Blogger May Be Hazardous To A Couple of Friendships

I have a couple of longtime friends who feel that our relationship allows them to tell me when someone in my family doesn't conform to their ideals of perfect behavior. [I am not inclined to this type of nitpicking, as shocking as that may seem.] 
          "You know," they start out, "Your [insert brother, sister, daughter, son, father, mother, aunt, uncle, adopted cousin] is very difficult," they inform me. This momentous piece of information is proffered, using the carefully modulated tones of a conspirator who fears that he/she might be overheard by the subject in question. The kind of difficulty they refer to isn't illegal, unethical, or immoral. It's the type of difficulty one experiences when dealing with someone who is edgy and occasionally rude. [Not that Mrs. L would have the slightest clue what that entails.] 
          What's more interesting is that these same allegedly concerned and caring friends don't have any actual examples of this difficulty, only what others have told them. And, in one instance, a less than stellar moment they witnessed. Regardless, neither one of them has been on the receiving end of this so called "difficult" behavior. Which, like all imperfect behavior, tends to overshadow the preponderance of otherwise impeccable decorum. 
          So why tell me something I already know? They're talking about a relative of mine. Someone I care about. Someone I have spent holidays and vacations with. And been around most of my life. Don't they think I'm already aware that the subject in question can be "difficult" from time to time? I like to think it's part of their charm.
          Which brings me to my half of the equation.
          Have you two looked around at your own families lately? 
          As I recall, one of you has family members who had difficulty graduating from high school before they were 19. Or was it 20?  And how quickly we forget that the cops had to be called out to the house this year because somebody became extremely difficult, or more accurately, dangerously violent, when he drank more than he should. 
          How grateful you must be that times have changed so we don't have to fudge the number of months between the babies our relatives make and the wedding dates they celebrate. I remember when 8-pound premies could be difficult to explain. 
          Of course, when it comes to years of difficult and shockingly rude behavior, topped with drug abuse and an underage girl's cherry on top, this decade's gold medal belongs to the black sheep of somebody else's family, not mine. 
          Like I said, my difficult relative in question has not done anything illegal, unethical, or immoral. Having a personality that can feel like coarse sandpaper is not a crime. Nor has it prevented a successful career, rewarded more than once for good performance.  
          Recently, I also discovered that one of my two friends has had a history of crushing the spirits of young teens, brutalizing their self esteem with cruel personal attacks. Even doing this to her nieces and nephews. Usually this happens by taking the unsuspecting youth aside for a personal chat when no one else is around. I can only assume it's a control freak thing. Apparently, it turns out my family has also been victimized by her. Years ago, I just found out, she noticed that one of my spawn and one of hers were becoming more than just friends. So she took it upon herself to make sure that my child knew, in no uncertain terms, that she was not good enough for her child. 
           Yes, I know what you're thinking. How come we're still friends? I didn't find out about this event until recently. Over twenty years have passed. Perhaps the right moment to deal with it has also passed. But it occurred to me that I have a blog which might be a good place to start the process. If she reads this and wants to talk, the rest can happen offline. 
         

Schadenfreude Tastes Better Fresh

Once in a while you meet someone who leaves you wondering. 
          I wonder -- do they know how much baggage they’re dragging? I wonder -- did they pack up all that crap by themselves or did they have help from Mom and Dad?

          Tonight, with my car on the fritz, I got a ride to rehearsal with a new member of our barbershop chorus who lives in my town. Even though I’ve seen her at our practices for the last couple of months, I’ve never spent any quality time with her, because we sing different parts.  

          Since, unlike me, she isn't prone to making class clown remarks between songs, I had no clue whether she was funny or smart or even the least bit interesting. But I found out what she was pretty quick.

          About a minute after she picked me up, my mobile started ringing. After fishing around in the bottom of my purse trying to find some reading glasses, I just asked if she would mind reading the name on the caller ID. I wanted to screen the call. Okay, I wanted her to screen the call for me.

          Holy crap! You would have thought I asked her to cut off her left nipple and wear it as a nose warmer. Not only did she adamantly refuse to look at the caller ID, but, she proceeded to lecture me about using a cell phone while driving, with a side order on the evils of texting.

          So I took that as a NO. Just to be sure I thoroughly understood her position, she reiterated her take no prisoners stand. “Sorry, but I can’t help you out. I’m driving.”

          Naturally, I was a little taken aback by her vehement refusal to help. In fact, I’ll even suggest that she had overreacted just a tad.

          Since we were STOPPED AT A STOPLIGHT.  

          That was the first piece of baggage -- a little Samsonite overnight carry-on.

          Which begged the question -- what life experience had turned her into such an obnoxious, anal-retentive bossy pants?

          Before I had time to conjure up a theory, she had already volunteered that her parents were divorced fifteen years ago and her dad was a jerk. The good news? He was dead. Stopping briefly to take a breath, she told me her earliest memory as a child was her first birthday. She remembered that she was worried the burning horsey candles on the cake would start a fire as her parents were screaming at each other in the background.

          Okay then.

          I wonder how much more luggage she’s got on board? Our singing practice passed uneventfully. She’s a lead and I’m a bass, so we don’t sit anywhere near one another. But on the ride back, the baggage began to pile up again.         

          This time she was packing a couple of those Hammacher Schlemmer microfiber bags with all the zippers and pockets. We had gone only a couple of blocks when they arrived.

          A storm cell had been making its way along the lake. As we left rehearsal, the skies began to unleash wave after wave of pounding rain, but luckily, not until we were safely inside her car.

          I wasn’t particularly concerned, since most cars come equipped with windshield wipers to insure visibility. So I was unfurling a bunch of snappy patter about how the practice went, when she suddenly raised her voice and told me to stop talking.

          Huh?

          "Please don't talk."

          Apparently she can’t walk and chew gum. Holding a conversation while driving in the rain is too difficult for her. The effort requires too much concentration, so while she tried to soften her request with a “Don’t take this the wrong way”, clearly my job was to keep quiet until further notice.

          That little episode filled up most of a North Face dufflebag, which I just threw into the back with the rest of the luggage.

          The rain was gone almost as soon as it started. So I ventured to ask if it was safe to talk again. I smiled when I said it, but there was enough sarcasm to launch her on a defense of driving safety, which I tuned out and cannot share because I just don’t give a shit.

          I was still trying to think of some small talk when she volunteered a story about how her pet hamster [she's allergic to everything else] escaped from its cage on the same day her husband’s grandmother died. Which segued into how he left his suit for the funeral in their closet at home, so she had to find her 6’3” hubba bubba something to wear down in Buttf**k, Indiana. SHE had to handle it, because HE was too stupid to find a pair of slacks, a sweater, and a tie that matched by himself. 

          My only thought was, “You’re married?” 

          Even though she grew up in my town, I had the nerve to suggest the fastest way to get to my house. She ignored my suggestion and took a route I avoid at any cost. Why? Because there is a railroad crossing that attracts slow freight trains like wasps on watermelon. I decided not to say anything in case this would be the one time I was wrong.

          Oh look, here comes a freight train. That was fifteen minutes of painful silence I never want to spend again.

          How bad was this going to get I wondered, shoving a hatbox and a makeup case into the trunk. 

          Turning left onto my quiet, traffic-free street, we were only four homes from the safety of my house. In anticipation of my impending escape, I did something I rarely do – removed my seatbelt in preparation for getting out of the car in thirty feet.

         “The car is still moving, you shouldn’t take your seatbelt off!” she shrieked. At 10 MPH, was she planning to drive onto the parkway and slam into a tree?

         I didn’t say anything because I was thinking, “The bitch is insane.”

        At this point in my tale, I must stop to say that what follows next is the best example of schadenfreude I have ever experienced. [Schadenfreude, for the uninitiated, is the uniquely German word for the pleasure one gets from the misfortunes of others, one of my many human failings. However, here I choose to embrace it without apology.]

        Meanwhile, let me set the scene for the final act of this car ride from Hell. And the matching bags that came with it.

        My neighbor, Viktor, a certified a**hole who lives across the street, insists on parking his hemi-Dodge pick up directly across from my driveway. Basically I’m at risk of playing bumper cars every time I back out. He has parked this way for the last three years, even though he has a driveway big enough to accommodate six cars. Meanwhile, he is well aware -- because my neighbors have pointed this out to him -- that it would be more thoughtful to park his car somewhere else.

         But there it was, the big black Dodge Testosterona-mobile, taking up half the street and positioned perfectly within the designated target range, directly across from my driveway.

         Just before pulling up in front of my house, I told my ride that she didn’t have to turn into the driveway. She could just drop me at the curb, since the street she lived on was only a block ahead. But no, she turned into my driveway so she could back out and go the exact opposite direction. I have no idea why she wanted to do that, except that I had suggested doing something else.

          I am sure you know what happened next. So let me confirm it.

          First I jumped out of her car, said "Thanks for the ride," and ran into my house.

          Did I know what was going to happen next? I’m not sure. Did it cross my mind? Yes. But ever so briefly, since my subsequent thought was, "No, that couldn't possibly happen."

          I wasn’t inside the house more than five seconds when there was a thump/crunch outside and the loudest car alarm I have ever heard began screaming into the night.

          Instead of turning on the lights and running outside like a caring, concerned person, I peeked out through the shutters from the privacy of my darkened kitchen and prayed she wouldn't ring my doorbell. Yep, she’d slammed into the truck backing out. And there was Viktor racing out of his house. 

          Honestly, this moment couldn’t have happened to two more deserving people.

          Just a personal observation, but I think if the alarm hadn’t been set off, she would have tried to make an escape, since her car was stopped way down the block.

          They both surveyed the damage [it didn't look like much from my vantage point], went into Viktor’s house to exchange information, and she was on her way within five minutes. Dragging a 65-piece set of monogrammed Louis Vuitton luggage behind her.  

          One of Karma's finest hours.