I think I was on the same wavelength as the DJ on Classic Vinyl today. As I was driving home from today's adventure, I heard the news that everyone was talking about, whether they cared about it or not. I started singing the first song from Tommy (the movie version), changing the name from Mrs Walker to Mrs Windsor. An hour into my drive, there I was with the radio cranked, rocking out to the French horn heavy Overture to the same "opera." It might be time to dust off that particular DVD, just so I can cure myself of the earworm that has been stuck with me ever since. It's a boy, Mrs Walker, it's a boy...
As I predicted, today was much more exciting than yesterday. Close friends of our are vacationing in North Carolina. I couldn't manage to arrange dog boarding to join them, so we compromised and met at Myrtle Beach. I haven't been there since I was in preschool, so I had no idea what to do or where to go. We decided that since it was such a touristy town, we were going to pull out all the stops, and go full tourist trap. "Margaritaville" fit that bill. It was like a campy mini-amusement park: over the top themed restaurant, giant swarms of fish that crawl over each other for the bits of fish chow they sell for a quarter, carnival rides, souvenir shops, funnel cake and snow cone carts, and a hundred year old mechanical pipe organ playing the score from Star Wars. Our friends have young children, and they ate it up. Our table at the restaurant was a modified fishing boat, with an ok view of the Sharknado that has a little animatronic show every hour or so. (It's supposed to be a hurricane, but thanks to the TV movie a couple weeks ago, I'm sure it will forever be viewed differently.) The kids got balloon creations from the pirates on stilts who cruise around the dining room--the boy got a sword and the girl got a mermaid that was very well done. After lunch, we rode rides, fed fish, and bought kitschy souvenirs. What a great time!
On the way up, I thought maybe my navigation system was finally over our very heated argument from May, and had started to work with me. Apparently I was wrong. My morning route surprised me, with the car sending me up through a ribbon of earth borrowed from the swampy national forest on either side of it. I thought the nav system was just trying to avoid Mount Pleasant, the scene of our epic fight, and I enjoyed the scenery. But maybe it had more margaritas than I did (just one, and I waited well over an hour before I drove, for the record), because the car sent me driving in circles, in dodgy neighborhoods, telling me to continue going straight on roads that ended in T junctions half a mile before the map said it would, and generally acting like it had no idea how to get me back to the highway. So maybe we aren't past our difference of opinions after all. At least I wasn't trying to find a Whole Foods this time.
I made it back in time to get the dogs outside before the carpets suffered, but apparently in my haste to get inside, I failed to secure the door to the garage, and I had left the garage door to the outside open since I planned to go back out for gas later. The old man cat is deaf as a post, but he must pay attention to the change in pressure of the house, because he can sniff out an unlatched door the instant you walk away from it. I got a call from my neighbor that he was taking off down the street. Three cats were still in the garage, and ran in as soon as they were discovered. The old man was caught fairly quickly. But the big black cat eluded me at first. I caught sight of her heading to the other neighbor's open gate, and I picked her up. Right at that moment, a man we'd never seen before came around from the back of the neighbor's deck, pushing a running lawn mower. The cat lost her mind. It was all I could do to hang on to her long enough to get inside the garage. I'm now damaged in several places, and trying to work up the nerve to clean it all with peroxide so I don't get an infection. And the new shirt I bought last Wednesday is now ruined, with four giant toe-holes in it that can't be fixed. But, as I said, today was way more exciting than yesterday, no question about it.
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