Coffee Talk

This will be my half  (or three quarters) of the coffee talk conversation I would be having with you if you were here,  and if you were real.  Like physically in the room and able to talk.  And drink my coffee.  So I am definitely NOT  talking to myself, or to an imaginary friend.  I’m not old and senile enough to be doing that yet.  Really.  Come on.  If you’re thinking weird thoughts like that, you need more help than I do.

I totally miss the  daily blather of our chat board which seems to have gone belly up in the last few months.  Too much facebook, too many busy things going on in the summer.  Work, weddings, camping, vacations, gardening (shudder).  Personally I’ve been very busy tending my imaginary farms (farm town and farm ville) (two stupidly ludicrous names thought up by someone who lives in a big city) to have time for coffee talk unless it’s solitary and involves some sort of planting and harvesting and chalking up experience points and coins.  So much like real life.  Perhaps that’s why I’m finding it such a lovely substitute.  You are rolling your eyes EXACTLY like W. does.  Gawd. 

Is it really the 7th of July already?  I leave for camp in less than two weeks.  Flying out with three grandchildren, meeting W. in Winnipeg;  the rest of the family arrives a week and a bit later.  I should be preparing like crazy, but so far I just have vague ideas about what we’ll do.  There will be a treasure hunt.  There will be swimming.  There will be tents.  Barbeques.  Bugs.  Three dogs, last count.  Two extra large and one small.  I’ll be gone for a month! 

Right now a month away from work sounds ridiculously incredibley insanely wonderful.  I need to practice a mantra – ‘respect for the individual’ or some such equally nice crap.  And get those visions of choking idiots out of my brain.  Too bad that image is now going to be with me all day.

HEY!!  I can tell you my boring car story!  On my way up to spend the weekend with two grandsons while the rest of the crew went away for the weekend, my new car went tempermental on me.  It’s a dream to drive, by the way.  Lots of power, smooth riding.  I was turning the corner north of GP on the home stretch when I heard a clunk.  Clunks are generally ominous in some way or other.  The power steering went, and I could not accelerate.  I said a few ugly swear words, which always seems to help in these situations.  Pulled off the road, searched for my emergency-only cell phone.   Had a hard time getting through to AMA but finally got W. on the phone.  Like he’s going to be a huge help five hours away, but he’s always good to dump on, so I did that.  Felt better.  Got through to AMA, who asked me a LOT of extremely HARD questions, like what is your exact location and what number can we reach you at.  Seriously.  I don’t know what my cell phone number is.  Well, I do now, but I think perhaps I gave the AMA people a good story for their stupid-people-I-have-talked-to book.   W. phoned me back because he had my number programmed into his phone, and gave me Jen’s number, which I SHOULD have had programmed into mine, or at the very least written down somewhere.  Both of which are done now.  Hind sight is a beautiful thing.

Got towed to a little mechanical shop in a small town, and picked up, and driven to my destination by daughter-in-law with five children.  Like she needed THAT in her busy day.  Corey really liked my truck.  Big flat bed tow truck.  He could not be convinced that it wasn’t mine. 

So now we know that the serpentine belt came off.  Some kind of plastic guard piece was missing from the bottom of the engine, which is supposed to keep debris from flying up off the road and dislocating the belt.  But there was also the problem of a dangling block heater cord swinging around and that could have been what popped the belt off too.  It cost me 97 dollars to have the belt put back on but the poor guy also had to put up with many phone calls from W., so he earned his money. 

Then when I got home I was brushing crumbs off the passenger seat and got stabbed in the palm of my hand with a shard of glass.  Man, did that ever hurt.  And bleed.  It’s still wickedly bruised.  Mental note to self to not eat a muffin in the car again, and to vacuum thoroughly after the windshield has been replaced.   All these things I have to learn the hard way.

Other than all that, the weekend was lovely.  Just me and the boys.  I gave Kale my DS game card with 41 games on it, and we hardly talked.  Don’t tell his mom.  Well we did have a lot of  Mario Cart discussions.  And we played some Wii and went for walks and watered trees and fed animals.   Corey is a delightful child when it’s one on one – what child doesn’t bask in total attention?  He asked constantly in the kitchen ’what are we having?’ and no matter what it was, told me ‘I don’t like it.’  It’s good to be inquisitive and voice your opinion.  He generally ate whatever it was anyway, as long as you called a smokie a hot dog, and dried cranberries red raisins, and kiwi green strawberries.  Couldn’t think up a better name for potatoes, so they were shunned. 

Can’t end the coffee convo without in true Canadian fashion commenting on the weather.  It’s pouring rain, and therefore delightful, no sarcasm intended.  I love a rainy day.  The world smells clean.