Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

I was not the best student in high school.  I was never close to failing out and took Honors and AP classes, but I thought the whole grading scheme was bullshit.  Whether you did HW or not and how often you participated shouldn't matter.  Your grade should be based 100% on your test performance.  I remember some classes where you even had to turn in your notebook and you would get graded on how neat it was and whether you had the right dividers in there.  I should have just sucked it up and played there game, it wasn't like I was going to change the system.  But, I was even more stubborn and unwilling to listen to opposing view points than I am now. 

When it came time to apply for colleges, I noticed that you could apply to up to 4 State University of NY  (SUNY) schools on one application.  While most people were spending weeks and even sometimes months agonizing over college applications, I think I knocked it out in about an hour.  I believe I applied to SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Stony Brook and the SUNY Maritime College.  The first three were pretty typical large state universities with a large number of possible majors and your pretty typical college experience.  The Maritime College was different though.  Here your goal was to obtain a degree but also licensure as a third officer on a large commercial ship.  Kind of like the ship from Captain Phillips. 

It was the first school I heard back from, they offered admission and a full scholarship.  They had an admitted student's day where you toured the school, got to ride on the school's training ship and meet with various students already enrolled.  So my mom and I headed out bright and early.  As it turns out a bit too bright and early as we didn't realize that this was the day that the clocks move an hour back for Day Light savings.  Much like Clark Griswold's arrival to Wally World, we were the first one's there.  This was a while ago, but I still remember a few things very clearly.  First, it was a very impressive campus, lots of stately buildings and well maintained grounds.  Second, the school had done a great job of putting this weekend together.  There were lots of activities and it was all very informative.  Even though this was not a military organization, all students were expected to wear uniforms and there were a number of military customs like marching and saluting etc. 

Almost immediately, I knew, at least subconsciously that it wasn't for me.  Maybe it was because of my maturity level or something else, but I couldn't picture myself wearing a uniform for the next 4 years and choosing such a specific career path.  To my knowledge the graduates are typically employed, but generally you will working on a large ship.  Of course, there is some irony here that I did join the Navy - yet interestingly enough have never been to sea.  As the day went on, my feeling of unease began to become more of a panic.  Until finally at lunch it grew to be too much and I ended up just bursting into tears in front of my Mom and telling her that I didn't think I could do this.  She hugged me and told me it was OK and I didn't have to make any decisions right away and for some reason that was enough to change the whole experience.  Looking back it seems so absurd, of course I didn't have to choose.  But perhaps I had already told myself in my mind that I was going to go here, before even visiting the school because they had been the first to respond and had made such a generous offer.  It may have been because things can quickly grow inside your own head to such epic proportions because you don't have that objective outside voice telling you the one thing you needed to hear to put it all in perspective.  But, for whatever reason, the relief was instantaneous. 

The rest of the day was quite pleasant. The culminating event is a brief cruise onboard the school's training vessel and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  They told us that each summer we would take a cruise on this ship and gradually get more and more responsibility.

Of course, I did not enroll.  That day was my first and only day there and I trekked off to Buffalo to go to college and begin the next phase of my life.

 Looking back on it, perhaps it would have been fun. But it is a lonely life.  Generally you are out to Sea for six months at a time.  I am sure it would have led me to some adventures, but I have been lucky enough to have some wonderful adventures regardless.  Spending evenings playing games with the girls and thinking about the family I have now, I am so glad I could not make it through that lunch!

Game Time

On the weekdays, the girls have a pretty strict schedule.  Bella does her homework with varying degrees of protest, but I think she mainly protests just to be funny.  It would work with me, but T is not having it.  I get to hang out with Erin at these times.  True to form, I never know if she is going to be super nice to me and want to snuggle and get tossed around, or if she is going to give me the cold shoulder and act like she has a restraining order against me.  After Bella finishes her homework we head upstairs to play some games after brushing teeth and putting on pajamas. 

 

     There are 3 games that we have to play to completion.  The first is a sort of charades game for kids.  You draw a card and have to act it out.  The girls are surprisingly good at it, particularly when they have to act out an animal.  They don’t just sit there and mime it out, rather, they go full tilt around the room roaring their heads off or screeching like a monkey depending on the card.  Sometimes I have no earthly idea what they are doing, like when Bella had to act out taking a bath and all I could think was that she was having a seizure.  She sort of assumed the posture of a hunchback and did this weird one legged sort of dance.  My other favorite part about this game is that Erin never wants to be wrong.  So if she has a guess about what the other person is acting, she will say it extremely softly.  Barely above a whisper.  Once she finds out she is right, she of course shouts it like she has never been more sure of anything in her life!  My entire goal, in this or any other game, is to annoy T.  I feel like I always more than accomplish my goal. 

     Next, we move on to sequence.  In this game, you get dealt cards with various animals on them and try to make a line of 4 of your chips before someone else does.  Here the girls have learned that sometimes a good defense is as much, if not more fun, than a strong offense.  Bella in particular seems to enjoy thwarting my plans and blocking me at the last moment when I am one chip away from getting 4 in a row.  I have never been able to convince them to join me in an alliance to overthrow T.  Erin is very much a loose cannon in this game.  Sometimes she is intent on winning, other times she is intent on playing a particular card regardless of its effect on overall strategy.  Perhaps my favorite thing that Erin does in this game is after a couple of turns she starts ending every sentence with “and I win?”  So for instance if someone suggests playing a certain card, she will ask in her cute little voice “and I win”?  Perhaps even better than this is when she does win, because she stands up, and starts jumping around and celebrating like she just won the lottery. She has a huge grin and you can’t help but laugh along with her. T taught her good sportsmanship so both Bella and Erin will acknowledge those less fortunate with a handshake and a “good game”. 

 

 The final game is my least favorite, but I still love it.  It is called Disney Cupcake Factory, a game I never thought I would play.  Here, there are a bunch of plastic cupcake parts, wrappers, cakes, frosting and toppers.  Based on your card, you have certain colors and shapes that you are going after.  At this point, the girls have their favorite princesses, so there is no way that Bella will ever let me be Pochohantas (who I did not know was considered a princess) or Sleeping Beauty.  However, the game is pure chance.  You draw from a series of tiles and you either get to pick up a piece of your cupcake or you get the dreaded clock tower.  If you get the clock tower you miss a turn.  However, and this is not in the rule book, everyone gets to yell out “Wop-Wop-Wop” to the person missing a turn.  Erin, loves this.  She has no problem with missing a turn as long as we all give her a hearty “Wop-Wop-Wop”  Bella is the exact opposite.  If she gets a run of bad luck and misses a few turns she gets pretty angry and threatens to quit.  She never does and is always over it within 12 seconds or so.  For a little while Erin tried to pull a fast one by putting her face on the floor and trying to peak under a tile before turning it all the way over.  This may have worked if she was invisible, but she did it very slowly and deliberately so she was pretty easy to catch.  Once again, the highlight is the girls finishing their cupcakes because then they get to leave the bakery.  Again, not part of the official rules.  Both of them like to give lengthy goodbyes to all the Princesses that have not left.  Particularly Erin, it may take her a good five minutes to get through all her remarks!  I wouldn’t trade it for the world

Like an Idiot

I have started listening to podcasts on my commute.  I should probably listen to educational ones to make myself a better person, but I don't.  I choose comedy.  Two that I have been enjoying are "Topics" by Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter.  These guys are hilarious, they choose to discuss a variety of issues, or topics if you will, and are absurdly smug and over the top in pretending to be extremely intellectual.  They are so good at putting on the act that you sometimes forget that it is all a joke.  One of my favorite lines "You say that there are no grey areas, yet I see you creating grey areas left and right like someone shading in a pencil drawing!"  The other one that I have been enjoying is called "How did this get made" where a bunch of comedians discuss bad movies and the absurd plots and holes in the story. 

The problem is, this stuff is pretty hilarious and I cannot suppress a laugh or a smile, so I must look like a bit of a lunatic on the train either grinning like a moron or outright chuckling to nothing in particular! 

Another reason to be happy is that we finally sold our house!  This was the first and only house we had ever bought or sold, so it was all new to me.  Buying was a lot less stressful than selling.  I think our realtor was a bit of a snake oil salesman.  Some of the shenanigans that he employed:

1.  Every single e-mail that he sent me included his full signature, that was at least 20 lines.  A good 18 lines were dedicated to these bullshit awards that he had evidently won.  Some were really hard to interpret, like he had a four star rating.  I have no idea whether that was out of 4 or 20 stars, or who gave these ratings or what the criteria was.  Everything was cloaked in ambiguity.  In addition to his 4 star rating he was also rated a "platinum" seller.  Again, I have no idea where this falls on the precious metal scale of realtors.  Is platinum better than gold?  Is it based on the value of the metal or its conductivity?  Regardless, even if it was a 5 word reply, I had to deal with his monster of a signature.

2. There were certain e-mails that he sent me every week, canned status updates.  For whatever reason, he had programmed them so they were sent out at 2 am on a Sunday morning.  I guess the idea was that I would think he was a real go-getter and constantly working, that or a meth fiend.  The jig was up pretty quickly though because these e-mails were always sent at the exact same time and contained zero original content. 

3. He loved creating drama out of thin air.  I think he was upset that I did not use his recommended lawyer for the closing.  So, in his passive aggressive way, he would send me e-mails that implied the world was about to end because my attorney had not responded to his e-mail quickly enough.  He also loved throwing my attorney under the bus representing that she was not doing enough to move the deal forward even though this guy was getting a nice percentage of the sale price simply for setting up automated e-mails! 

4.  My personal favorite was how vehement he was that I not attend the closing.  In his typical flare for the dramatic he admonished me that he had seen so many sales fall apart because of the buyer saying stupid things at the closing.  I guess he thought I must be an idiot or have Tourette's and believed I would just blurt out absurd things like "Man that flood was a fun time"  or "Never thought I would see a house fire like that".  If I had been in the area I would have showed up at the closing just to spite him, but it wasn't worth the travel. 

The one thing that surprised me about the whole process is how attached I had become to the old girl.  Don't get me wrong, I am glad we sold her and it made no sense to keep paying the mortgage and utilities, but it feels a bit strange to know other people will be in there.  We lived in that house longer than we have lived anywhere else and it was the first home that either of the girls really knew.  I suspect that the nostalgia will fade, but probably never disappear completely.