Monthly Archives: February 2012

Varmint comes home from school today, excitedly chirping, “Mom! Mom!  Will you please do the Rockville Run Amuck with me?  Please?”

Her eyes were sparkling and full of hope.  Her smile was huge.  Her hands were clinging to me in a very pleading and pathetic way.

“I don’t know,” I eyeballed her warily, “What is it?”

“Not anything you couldn’t do, well,….with a lot of help!”  (She has confidence in me, obviously.)

Turns out it’s a 5K obstacle course with mud and rivers and string mazes and costumes (if you want to wear costumes).  She then informs me in very impressed tones that “you have to duct tape your shoes to your feet or else they’ll come right off in the mud!”.  Golly! There’s a selling point for ya!

Sure, sign me up.  ‘Cause when I think of things for a middle-aged, overweight, ventral-herniated, arthritic-kneed, whiner to do, the first thing that springs to mind is a mud-filled 5K obstacle course.

So I did what any other loving-mother-who-doesn’t-want-to-disappoint-her-child would do.  I encouraged,

“Ask Troy, dear.  He’ll do anything if you promise him a beer afterwards.”

Her email to him is already sent. Do you think he’ll be a good step-dad and take her up on this bonding experience?  We’ll just have to wait and see.

Personally, I think it would have to be a damn good beer.

I love the fact that despite all of our collective endeavors to grow civilized behavior, despite all of our attempts to subdue the basic primal urges that live within us, or control impulses that would drive us, despite all our protestations to the contrary….we are still not much more evolved than feral animals with base instincts.

Oh sure, you may think that because we wear a suit and tie, or a nice dress with perfectly coiffed hair, or sip a cup of $5.00 coffee from time to time, that we are now civilized, controlled, mature, and enlightened.   But we kid ourselves.

Case and Point:  Whack-A-Mole.

Now, it’s easy to see why kids love the game.  What’s not to love?  For the duration of their childhood, kids are commanded not to hit, not to hurt others, not to be loud or aggressive unless in sports…. or unless they are playing Whack-A-Mole.  I mean, come on.  The entire premise of the game is to see how many moles you can whack on the head with a mallet!

And man is it fun!

But it’s one thing to watch a kid let it loose, to let their savage natures breathe.

It’s quite another to see a grown up do it.

That is the part I love.  The next time you are at Hershey Park, or a Carnival, or the Boardwalk in Rehoboth, I urge you to sit back and watch the grown ups play Whack-A-Mole.  It’s quite a part different from watching them play any other rip-off carnival game.

You’ll see flailing.  You’ll see leaping.  You’ll hear growling, yelling, and maybe even cursing.  You’ll see a lot of laughing.   And when its done, you will observe that the players walk away happier and more relaxed.

Every. Time.

Apparently there is something very cathartic to us humans in whacking the crap out of something.

I wish Whack-A-Mole games were as ubiquitous as Starbucks in our society.  I guarantee you the number of violent crimes would go down.

And don’t even get me started on the psychological implications of pinatas.

Awesome stuff!

I’ve had a few readers ask if the pictures on the headers of Mamaboe.com are mine or simply pilfered from the internet.  I’m very happy and proud to report that they are mine entirely.  They ARE the real deal! (The photos INSIDE the posts are mostly shamelessly pilfered, thank you very much.)

You should be able to discern that from the crappy quality of the photos.

Most of the pics are from various trips to Montana.  When My Captain retires, and the kids are away at college, we are moving there.  Like, the next day.  Maybe even the minute after his last shift is over.

Why?

Aesthetics.  My soul is FILLED with contentment when I’m surrounded by land that is not tamed by human hands.  That sounds so artsy-fartsy dramatic.  But you all know me…I am a lot of things, but artsy-fartsy dramatic I am most emphatically not.  I just hate pavement and concrete with a passion.

Concrete aside, I’m happiest when I’m there.  I feel like I am where I belong.   My whole life I have felt like I was just waiting to get where I am supposed to be.  And then ten years ago I went to Glacier Park Montana for the first time, and I KNEW it.  I knew that was home.

But by then I had started a family, and my husband had a career that was firmly entrenched here.  I couldn’t just pick up and move.  But OH LORD if only I could have moved with them in tow.  But it was not to be.

So I honor my love and commitment and responsibility to my family here and I stay.  I stay until Troy retires, my kids are off to college, and my mom is too senile to realize I’ve moved her across the country.

Obviously I’m a planner.

It’s hard to wait sometimes, but some things make it easier.  My friends here, (all two of them) keep me happy.  My garden and my kid’s community fulfill me.  And I believe my kids are in an extremely good place to grow up.  The Ag Reserve here in Montgomery County is about as wholesome as you can get, considering we are not far from a major metropolitan area.   Here in the Ag Reserve, my biggest concern for my kids is that they might decide to go cow-tipping when I’m not looking.  With Critter, anything is possible if it would evoke laughter from his friends.  I have to keep his options limited!

I don’t kid myself…I’m sure drugs and crime are everywhere…including here.  But it isn’t prevalent.  Or if it is, I’m blissfully ignorant of it.

Montana.  Why the heck couldn’t I have been born there?  I would have made the awesome-est Rancher’s wife.  (Except for I can’t stand killing, and I don’t like mud in my house, and I don’t look all that good in a cowboy hat…. Other than that I would have been a shoe-in…er, boot-in).

My Captain, thank the Lord, shares my love of God’s Country.    I’ll give you a few more peeks at why:

See what I mean?

Yes, Yes, I know….”Bloom where you are planted.”  Right.  Gotcha.  And I am doing that as much as possible while I’m here.  I do subscribe whole-heartedly to “Be Here Now”.  I will not live with nothing but ‘Montana hopes’ on my mind.  I am firmly planted here in Maryland for now.

But I do have a dream.  I have a vision of where my retirement will be spent.

And my more short-term dream is to take my Varmint and Critter on vacation to Montana and show them the beauties there. The wild, primal-ness of it there.  That will take a buck or two.  And right now I’m short that buck or two.  (Blame the damn Dollar Store).

My friend Peggy moved to Whitefish, Montana a couple of years ago.  She has not looked back ever since.  I will promise you another fuller post on Peggy…she’s amazing and worthy of a post or three!  But she moved, uprooted, went through all the hardship of detaching and re-attaching relationships.  And she is ….well….amazing.

That’s going to be me someday.  I’m going to be Peggy.  Only I’m fatter, and lazier, and whinier.  But otherwise I’ll be just like her.

I can dream, can’t I?

Several years ago, when I was volunteering at Fire Station 29 in Montgomery County, MD, I met a terrific guy who was just starting his career as a firefighter.  May I present to you:

Jerry.  (That’s him on the right after a working fire.)

Jerry went on to become a Paramedic as well.  Smart guy, this Jerry.

Jer has a fetish that he makes no bones about.  He’s pretty proud of it.

Bacon.

His wife, Susie, puts up with it admirably.  Not that she really has a choice.

She is a woman of patience and understanding, our Susie.  Because, you see, Jerry loves Bacon more than is normal.  More than is healthy.  More than is, well, rational.

He likes it in his salt.

He likes it in his vodka.

He likes it in his candy canes.

He likes it on his chocolate.

Once he brought me some chocolate covered bacon.  I will tell you, dear friends, that though I sincerely appreciated his offering, I never, never, never want to taste that nastiness again.  Ever.

Susie informs me that he likes it in his mayo, he likes it on his band-aids, he has bacon-flavored envelopes, and he’s currently begging her to put bacon in her chocolate chip cookies.

As I said….excessive.

As a Paramedic, and knowing what the evils of pork fat can do to an artery, you’d think he’d be all about moderation.

Nope.

But there is one time of year when he can abstain from bacon totally.    Lent.  Jer is a devout Catholic, and he takes Lent very seriously.  So Bacon, his biggest love, next to his dear Susie and two beautiful children, is what he gives up for Lent.  I guess that makes sense, because he doesn’t want to give Susie up for Lent, and Children’s Services won’t let him give his kids up for Lent, either.  So bacon is the sacrifice.

Like any other devout Catholic, he gorged himself on his love before it started.  I’ll be surprised if his blood can move at all by the time he’s my age.

Then again, maybe by the time his arteries occlude entirely, they’ll have bacon-scented Oxygen at hospitals, and he’ll enjoy the ride.

Bacon.  As Jer would say, “It’s a Meat Hug from God.”

I stopped by the firehouse last shift because my ex-husband had Critter and Varmint for the night, and I could either put away laundry, clean dishes, and sort filing, or I could go hang out with people who make me laugh.

I’m not known for being extremely disciplined.

And I wasn’t disappointed…it was an entertaining visit.

Joe….God Bless Joe!  Joe is a highly trained, extremely talented Paramedic.  Trust me, if you are in a dire medical or traumatic emergency, you want Joe there.  But he is not only very skilled, he is also one of the funniest medics.  He’s always either 1) in trouble or 2) getting someone else in trouble.  You just have to love Joe.

Apparently Joe has not been feeling well over the past week.  He got some kind of food poisoning.  It hit him during the night a couple of shifts ago.  They were all in their bunks, the alarm bells went off, and everyone jumped out of their beds to hustle to their apparatus, except Joe, who went to the bathroom to puke his guts out.  Poor Joe.  😦

He suffered for a couple of days between one end or the other.  But last shift he was back, almost good as new.  Everyone was pleased to see him….that is, until it started.

His intestines had apparently not entirely rid themselves of whatever bacteria had ahold of him, for he was, er, stirring the wind with great volume and stench.

I knew something was wrong immediately upon walking into the station.

The smell.  Oh Dear God, my friends, the smell.  It was the combination of rotting eggs and poo.  It was horrendous.  And it was everywhere.  Some places were denser than others, but you could not escape it.

I went to My Captain’s office to find Joe sitting at the Lieutenant’s desk, and My Captain sitting across from him, with his nose tucked under the collar of his uniform.  Joe was grinning.

I started mouth-breathing immediately…there was no time to lose.

He got up and wandered into another room, where almost immediately there were loud exclamations, some not appropriate to be printed here, and everyone but Joe left the room with great alacrity, looking rather ill themselves.

Joe was so proud his new superpower!  He had control of any space around him, or any space he might care to walk through.  He was a human crop-duster.  If he hadn’t been so dagnab funny about it, I would have called him downright evil.

Especially since he was driving Paramedic Engine 731 that night…and every poor soul in that cab was at his mercy.  Or rather, at the mercy of his sickly bowels.

This is My Captain’s Lieutenant, Tom.  Tom doesn’t like the smell of Joe’s entrails.  He also doesn’t like to have his picture taken.

Eventually Brett, one of My Captain’s favorites, took matters into his own hands.  He armed himself with the only thing he could find that was 1) aerosolized and 2) more pleasantly scented than the current air. (which, at that point, could be virtually anything.)  He crept up and generously sprayed Joe’s lower half, concentrating on the crotch area, with whatever was in this can.  The room immediately started smelling lemon-fresh, with a lesser undertone of rotten eggs.

It was furniture polish.

Brett had liberally sprayed Joe’s crotch with lemon-scented furniture polish.

Unorthodox, yes, but that’s the hallmark of a good rescuer: being able to adapt, improvise, and overcome.  Brett has been well-trained.  He’ll make a good officer one day.

Tough times call for tough actions, and sometimes you just gotta do what you just gotta do. You deal with the consequences later.

In this case, the consequence was that Brett was treated to Cheesecake Ice Cream from My Captain.  He likes to praise a job well done.