People Of

The Devil In The Details

I called the tow company
  to find the car.
  No, it hadn't been towed.
Maybe it was stolen?
Thank goodness I waited
  to call the police.
Turns out, the car was where
  I told Birdie to leave it. 
The car was parked
  in the Jimmy John's
    parking lot.
But not at the Jimmy John's
  I knew existed. 
My hair turns gray
  and my heart flutters,
even when Birdie does
  exactly what she is supposed to.

What Daisy Wrote

Dairy Queen Birthday Girl

My guess was that Dairy Queen is older than Mom. I can't envision her agreeing to be born without the certainty of a small cone of Dairy Queen vanilla ice cream ordered up. Turns out, I was wrong. According to my source for everything Wikipedia, Dairy Queen is younger than Mom by a couple of years. Nonprofitable years, I'm sure. To celebrate Mom's 75th birthday, she and I road-tripped through Georgia. We kicked off things with her birthday party at Aunt Atlanta's digs. It was the biggest party Mom ever had and that was without dancing on the table. We stopped to visit Sis at the lake. Right on cue, her extended clan ooh'd, ahh'd and begged her to bake a Red Velvet Cake, obviously they don't know about my cake baking history. And we tracked down Bro to run our figurative white gloves over his multi-million dollar construction project. We swung by houses we used to live in, picked up some free pecans and argued over how low the gas gauge could fall. I won as the car never ran out of gas. One of us bought a peculiar bird house and tried a grits martini. Mom doesn't drink. One of us also ordered Wendy's French fries before noon and sprung for the cute key fob that allows for a free mini Frosty with purchase throughout the summer.  And every day was Dairy Queen Day.  I would order a chocolate-dipped vanilla ice cream cone; Mom would order a thoroughly modern Blizzard. She carefully made each bite of her treat last. I frantically tried to drive and gobble my ice cream before it melted. I have a lot left to learn from Mom, like when to drive and when not to. 

Royal For A Reason

Big Guy nixed the book-and-chair fishing plan. In its place, he handed me a fishing rod. He had one, too. In twenty minutes, he caught three fish. I was busy, also. I lost three fishing lures, tangled my line around the reel twice and caught a weed on the bank. On the drive home, the tip of the newest fishing rod inexplicably got crunched in the minivan's automatic window.  The best news: My fishing license is valid until February 2012.

Royal We

We are fishing this weekend. Big Guy will pull together the fishing gear, whatever that is. I will think about which hat to wear. Big Guy will figure out where we are fishing. I will find a level spot for my chair. And, I'll determine which book to read first. Big Guy will bait the hooks, cast out the rods and hand one to me. I'll try to juggle the rod and book without dropping either. Although, if one has to fall, it won't be the book. Big Guy will tell me when something might be nibbling. I'll tell him if I need another cold drink. Somehow we will muddle our way through. If we are successful, and Big Guy follows through with whatever nasty stuff is done to fish after they're caught, then he will cook the fish and we will eat. I hope Big Guy knows he gets to wash the dishes. That's where we fishing together stops. I'll need time to finish my book or start another one.

Bus Drivers

While a bus driver is a bus driver, not all drivers are the same. When I rode the bus to Carrington Junior High in Durham, NC, I discovered that the teenager who drove our bus wasn't a bit like the soldiers who had driven my elementary school bus at Fort Shafter, HI. For the record, I sat near the front of the junior high bus and the party was in the back. Our driver's only problem with the party was that he could only watch the fun in the rear view mirror. That still left plenty of time to stop the bus long enough to steal construction signs from the side of the road. In contrast, the soldiers who drove the school bus at Fort Shafter followed the rules and never revealed to us what the nasty words meant that were scrawled onto the bench at the bus stop. For them, every day on school bus duty was one less day spent dodging booby-traps in Vietnamese jungles. With all of that bus experience, I wasn't surprised to find that Greyhound bus drivers aren't cookie-cutter copies. Lady in Red--the prison blind dater--groaned when she realized who was driving our bus from St. Louis to Nashville. "He's slow," she said. And she was right. We'd pull into a stop; Slow Driver would suggest that everyone not leaving the bus, remain on the bus; then the entire back third of the bus, including the two "service" dogs, would pile off for a lengthy smoke break. That changed when I switched buses in Nashville. Mr. Efficiency set the rules. When his bus stopped, the only passengers who left the bus were ones not coming back. Except for one 10-minute smoke break. When 10 minutes passed, Mr. Efficiency closed the door and hit the gas. "If you're not on the bus, raise your hand," he said. By then, the "service" dogs were on some other bus. So were the Amish. Good thing as it was plain that no last-minute dog sniff, no bonnet crisis and no half-finished cigarette comes between Mr. Efficiency and his route. A bus change in Chattanooga left me with Miss I'm In Charge. As I handed her my ticket, I advised Miss I'm Charge that my checked bag would need to be unloaded at the very next stop. She told me to mind my own business concerning how the bus got loaded. Then she glared at me when I pointed out my luggage to the bus loader so he'd know it was coming off the bus soon. Twenty minutes later the bus arrived in Cleveland. I got off the bus. Then the whole bus waited as Miss I'm In Charge searched three compartments before finding my bag. Like drivers, bus riders come in all shapes and sizes. I was Miss I'm In Charge's Know-It-All Passenger. But I also go by Smugly Satisfied. I wore my I Told You So grin while Miss I'm In Charge dug through the bags to find the one that should have been loaded last.