What Are They Going to Do With All That Snow?

I grew up in Ohio. We had plenty of snow in winter. When the snow plows came through, the snow would be piled up high on both sides of the road. Sometimes four to five feet or higher. It's enough to make a child ask "What are they going to do with all that snow?"

"They're going to burn it" said Mom.

I was about six and at that age, my mother spoke nothing but gospel truth. It seemed reasonable to me. That's what you did with stuff you didn't want. I'd never seen a pile of snow on fire, but we lived inside the city limits and you couldn't burn trash or leaves so why would snow be any different? So when a neighbor's mom was driving us home from school and Sharon asked "What are they going to do with all that snow?" -  I had the answer.

"They're going to burn it." I said.

"Who told you that?" Sharon's mom demanded.

"My mom."

"You can't burn snow. Your mother is full of shit."

I knew that wasn't a nice word. Saying that would be even worse than saying "shut up" at our house. So it was a good thing we were almost home because I didn't want to listen to Sharon's mom talk like that and I really wasn't assertive enough to ask to get out and walk the rest of the way. But I was fairly sure that if anybody was full of anything it was her, not my mom. But I said nothing. I got out of the car in their driveway and walked the rest of the way to my house.

I was sure to let Mom know what Sharon's mother said when I got home. Mom didn't seem too upset. I don't think she ever thought very much of Sharon's mom, anyway. But she did not admit that you actually can't set fire to snow. Perhaps she meant that the sun would burn it, much the way it burns off mist and fog. That's almost certainly what she meant.

The First Lie My Mother Told Me

I'll be truthful. Mom may have told me other lies before this one, but this is the first one I remember. That makes it special.

But first a bit of background. I think I was fairly observant at age three. I was able to look around me and draw conclusions. (They may have been wrong, but hey, I was three.)

I observed that my mother, as well as some of her friends and some of my aunts got pretty fat. Then they went to the hospital and they came home with babies. There had to be some relationship there. I mentioned this observation to my mother who helped me clarify my thinking on the subject.

She couldn't tell me the stork brought babies. I'd already observed that they seemed to come from the hospital - so finding babies in cabbage patches wouldn't work well, either. Did she tell me the one about how "daddy planted a seed in mommy"? No. Way more original than that.

She told me that you had to eat a lot of food so you could get fat. Then you went to the hospital and they rolled you over a barrel until you were thin again, and as a reward they gave you a baby.

Admit it, that is a doozy of a story! But at the age of three, I believed it. Why wouldn't I? Everything my mother said was gospel truth.

But that tale conjured up some visuals in my three year old head. I didn't really remember being in a hospital (I still had my tonsils at this point). I may have seen one on TV. I'd also never been in a warehouse, but again, may have seen one on TV. The image in my head was half hospital and half warehouse. There were barrels of flour stacked up all around the room. (You might ask, Why flour? Flour is white and anything else would have stained the nurses uniforms and back in those days nurses dressed in white from head to toe.) So in my mind, Mom was in the room with two nurses who got one of the barrels out and put Mom on it and then they rolled it back and forth for however long it took for her to get skinny again. Then she went into a room with a bunch of babies on the shelf and picked one as her reward.

So when I broke my arm at the age of four and was told that I'd be going to the hospital, I was thinking that they might actually want to roll me over one of those barrels even though I didn't have an ounce of fat on my body. But that was okay, because at that age, I thought it would be great fun to have a baby. Way more fun than any doll I had. (Clearly, I had no clue.)

When we arrived at the hospital and the nurse was helping me out of the car I asked if I'd be getting a baby. A perfectly reasonable question in my mind. I had no idea why the nurse was laughing. Worse still, my mom seemed to be in on the joke. "Not this time, sweetie." said the nurse. I told my mom that I was perfectly willing to be rolled on the barrel. The nurse looked at Mom, who offered no explanation. Mom told me "not this time" and that was pretty much the end of that. I still didn't realize it wasn't the truth.

The Longer I Think About It

Sometimes, the longer you think about something, the angrier you get about it. Not really what I want to be doing, but here I am.

We had a busy day yesterday. We were both up before dawn to try to get the work done because we had a very full schedule.

And since where we were and what we were doing isn't relevant to what happened, we'll just skip that part. Let's just say that we were both exhausted, it was nearly 11 pm and we decided to go home and skip the party.

When we turned onto our street, we saw the flashers turn on behind us.

"Were we speeding?" I asked Mark.

"No."

"What do you suppose he wants? Surely the tail light isn't burned out again."

"We'll just have to see."

The officer come up to the window and asked for driver's license and insurance. Mark's driver's license was easily accessible, but a search of the glove box was only turning up Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupons - no insurance card. The officer didn't want a coupon but agreed to look up our insurance info online.

He came back, after what I thought was a lengthy absence to tell Mark that he hadn't stopped "on the white line". Apparently your wheels are supposed to be on the white line if there is one at a stop sign.

Then he asked us where we were going. We told him we were going home and he returned the driver's license along with a warning and we were free to go.

Okay. It all sounds benign. But if he was behind us, how could he tell whether our front wheels were touching the line? It was dark and it was raining. We'd made a full stop, not a rolling stop. I don't know whether we stopped "on the white line" or not. We stopped where we could see if anything was coming - which is particularly important when oncoming traffic doesn't have to stop. And "I don't like where you stopped" seems valid if you stopped in the middle of the intersection, but that wasn't the case.

But then he asked us where we were going. How is this any of his business? I told him because I wanted to go home and go to sleep without any drama. But seriously, if I'm not doing anything wrong, why is it any of his business where I'm going?

This is probably how a lot of police stops go wrong. Would he have issued a ticket if we'd been teenagers instead of grandparents? Probably. And what might have happened if we'd told him it wasn't any of his business where we were going? (Because I don't think it was, and if he really wanted to know, he could have followed us. We were only two blocks from home.) Surely he didn't stop us to make small talk. And would it have been different if we'd been black instead of white?

I'm tempted to call the police department and complain about him. But that would probably just result in him being on the lookout for my car and waiting for me to stop an inch past that white line again so he could throw the book at me and I don't want any unnecessary drama in my life. I'm in favor of cooperating with the police. Even though I have nothing to hide, I shouldn't have to report to them where I'm going. I just can't figure out how that particular stop was part of "serve and protect".

The Difference Between Rude and Stupid

Quite frankly, I'm not sure I can spot the difference between rude and stupid. Tell me what you think.

There were two guys taking some selfies in front of a "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign at the airport. They took seven or eight photos. It was a popular spot for photos because people were lined up to take a photo. When these guys were done, did they move? No. They didn't. They continued to stand there and look at the seven or eight photos they'd already taken. Stupid or rude? You decide. I wanted to say "Dude. You've taken at least half a dozen pictures. One of them must be good and if not, suck it up and go back to the end of the line."

When we landed in Dallas we went to the baggage carousel to pick up our checked bag. Everyone just sort of stands around waiting for things to start moving. Sometimes your bag isn't in the ideal position to just pluck it off the conveyor belt in a single smooth motion. Sometimes that movement can be a bit jerky (it can be bunched up with other bags or the wheels catch on the edge.) So why would a man allow his children to stand ever so close to the conveyor belt - close enough to get them slammed with a bag or stepped on by someone struggling to control their bag? Stupid or rude? We were fortunate that Mark could swing the bag away from those three kids, even though the motion was awkward and a wee bit painful.

The last time I was in Home Depot I wanted to look at paint colors. But there was a man there with a cart and two or three kids who also wanted to look at paint colors. Between him, his cart and his kids, no one else could get close to the paint chips. Stupid or rude? Again, you decide. I gave up looking at paint colors. I can always go back when kids are in school or I can go to to Sherwin Williams to buy my paint. You rarely see kids in there.

And then when we were in Florida we went to the beach. We paid our money for a cabana and chairs just because we're not big fans of sunburn and the cabana provides more cover than a beach umbrella. The cabanas are adjustable but not movable. Right after we got settled in, a large group (a dozen or more) of French Canadians turned up and where did they set up their base? Right smack in front of us - at least ten big beach umbrellas. Plenty of other space on the beach, but they chose to block our view. We packed up our gear and moved further down the beach. But wait, there's more.

We were good for an hour or so and then along comes another group. Not Canadian but at least four families - with sulky teenage girls, whiny toddlers, and a few in-between boys. The moms were yelling at all the kids. They had their own cabana (not a rented one), a cart for their coolers, soccer balls, and the piece de resistance - a volleyball net! Before they set it all up, the dads had a good look around. I'm pretty sure they saw us so I have to assume they deliberately set all their stuff up directly in front of us. Alrighty then, I can just twist my neck a bit to look in a different direction. That strategy worked until the volleyball net went up. Mind you, this volleyball net, was smaller than regulation size. But once that was set up, how long do you think it took before they knocked the volleyball into our cabana?

Before I answer that let me note that apparently it wasn't enough that I had to listen to the moms yelling and the kids whining, now they've got the teenage girls playing volleyball, which they are incapable of doing without shrieking. I had been enjoying the gentle sound of the waves lapping the beach until this gang showed up. And just so you know, they didn't knock the volleyball into our cabana. They hit the top of the cabana and knocked it forward so that instead of our faces being in the shade, our feet were in the shade. They managed to wreak this much havoc in less than 15 minutes. We decided it was time to go. It was just more rude and stupid than we can stand and one of the reasons we typically vacation when kids are in school.

But rude and stupid doesn't necessarily involve children. We encountered rude/stupid at the cancer center. The cancer center basically consists of a room full of recliners and side chairs. Many of the people receiving treatments sleep through them. There are signs asking you to silence your cell phones and even if there weren't signs, you would think that common courtesy would prevail. But there was one patient who was not sleeping. Her phone rang several times - we know this because it wasn't on silent. And not only did she talk for most of the half day we were there, she had it on speaker so that everyone around her could hear both sides of the conversation. And to add to the misery, the man who was sitting with her (I don't presume to know their relationship) kept sounding like he was going to cough up a lung. I thought they might be giving the treatment to the wrong person but I couldn't bring myself to turn around and look because I thought my chances of NOT breathing contaminated air were better if I kept my back turned to him. His primary crime was that he was trying to cough up a lung in a cancer center where people have compromised immune systems. I think he should have dropped her off and come back for her later. She wouldn't have missed him, she was too busy on the phone. But they both qualify for rude or stupid.

Seeking Warmth

I was starting to worry that it wouldn't be warm enough for Mark and we'd have to stay inside the entire time we were away. It was cold when we left home and it started raining and stayed cold for several days. It was so rainy that first day in Lafayette that we didn't leave the RV. And it was cold, too.

It was still cold when we got to New Orleans. I had to buy a wrap to keep warm and we both bought hats. It was warming up a bit by the time we reached Gulf Shores but it still wasn't time for short sleeves and shorts.

Those first days in St. Petersburg, Florida were cold. The wind came off the bay blowing plenty of cold air. But on the third day it got warm. And then warmer. And then it got hot. It might have been too hot except for that wonderful sea breeze. It cooled down at night but didn't get so cold that we couldn't sit outdoors and enjoy the evening - something it's been far too cold to do at home.

And fortunately Dallas was past the cold snap by the time we got back.

A New Discovery

This trip we discovered Gulf Shores Alabama. There's an RV park a short walk to the beach and I think this might be the perfect place to visit in late May or mid-September - when kids are in school and the water is still warm. It's probably just a bit too cold for winter, although it's may be warmer than Dallas but even if it isn't, it has a beach.

It was pleasant and sunny the day we visited.

The French Quarter

This was our first trip to New Orleans and we had no idea what to expect. We actually found an RV Park that was a 10-minute walk to Bourbon Street and another 10 minutes to the riverfront. We noticed that they had the hop-on/hop-off buses so we looked to see where they went to determine where we wanted to go. (We didn't want to buy a three-day ticket when we were only going to be there for one full day.)

We determined that everything that was on our "must see" list was in the French Quarter. In addition to the French Quarter the bus goes to the Garden District, but from the description I read, this is just where the rich and famous live - Angelina Jolie, Nicholas Cage. I've never really cared about where the rich and famous live, so we didn't bother to go there.

We did go to Bourbon Street, because you have to. It's much like Beale Street in Memphis. We went to Frenchman's Street because that's where the "real" music is. We went to Preservation Hall and St. Louis Cemetary 1 - future home of Nicholas Cage and eternal resting place of Marie LeVeau, the voodoo queen. (We took the tour and found out that they can put as many as 81 people in those vaults. Who knew?)

Bourbon Street

Preservation Hall

A vault in St. Louis Cemetary 1

Tomb of Marie LeVeau

In memory of Joan of Arc

St. Louis Cemetary 1

We also went to the riverfront where we saw a steamboat coming in.

We ate at Antoine's and when we were finished, our waiter gave us the grand tour of the property.

A good overview, but plenty of reasons to visit again. I just think I'll steer clear on Mardi Gras.