Adventures in Bike Riding....

Note to (almost) 40 year old self:  It is most unwise to get a new bike for Mother's Day and attempt to keep up with one's six and eleven year olds.  Especially if you haven't owned a bike since you got your driver's license back in 1988.  I found this out the hard way.  I also found out that the older your butt is, the less happy it is about sitting on a bike seat.  I have more ass-padding than I did at sixteen but I still think I bruised the bones in my rear end every time I went over a bump.  I'll be walking funny for a few days but it was a blast.  On the upside, sixty minutes of bike riding equals five Weight Watchers activity points so I'll be pedaling my aformentioned padded ass all over the neighborhood....that's what I'd do for a Klondike bar....pedal like mad.

OH!  The bike shop was awesome!!!  They had one of these --->video game bike and I think this is the best invention since the smart-phone.  It has this little screen and the controllers are in the hand grips.  While it's busy monitoring your heart rate, you can play Black Jack and a few other games.  The best part is the faster you pedal, the easier the game gets.  It's a win-win.  Either I excersize my brain or my (padded) ass.  Something is always getting a workout.  How cool is that?  Now, if they could figure out how to make it do the laundry...or at least let me read my E-books on the little screen...I'd get one.  I might still get one.  Any workout that lets me sit on my butt and play video games is my kind of workout.   Did I mention I'm a tad lazy?  I don't like to sweat.

Getting back to my point, though, after 30 minutes of riding my new bike, I was thirsty, gasping for air and two blocks behind my little darlings.  I barely made it home and the kids?  They were barely warmed-up and neither of them were breathing funny.  They were crestfallen.  Evidently, there is some ironclad rule out there I didn't know about.  It's the "We can't be done already, it's not even dark outside, yet" rule.

Finally, having not ridden a bike in over two decades, I found it awfully easy.  I would have thought it would take a little time to get my balance but the old saying about how you never forget how to ride a bike?  Yeah, it's totally true.  I didn't know this until I got the bike home from the shop.  Apparently, I was supposed to try it out at the store BEFORE we purchased it but I didn't see the point.  It's a bike...you pedal...it moves.  Simple.  The salesperson was a little impatient with me when I declined his recommendation (which was a great 'starter-bike' and built for comfort) which happened to look like something out of Pee-Wee Herman's Big Adventures.  Also?  It was low-rider metallic blue with bubbles painted on it.  Even the 'saddle' (it's against the rules to call it a bike seat even if it is so tiny you're in danger of needing it surgically removed from your large intestine if you hit a bump just right) had bubbles on it.

He kind of smirked when I selected  the bike I liked, which was prettier, and that should count for more than comfort. I might have been offended but then I remembered he was the one stuck selling bubble bikes to moms like me for a  living so really, what did HE have to smirk about?  Oh wait.  He KNEW me and that 'saddle' were going to have problems, didn't he? 

Saddle, my ass....

Lazy-Ass Alert! Mom's On A Soapbox...

I was driving away from DD's school this afternoon and a tween girl went past my car on a little blue scooter..  I see this kid everyday.  She seems like a nice-enough girl.  I'm sure her parents are loving and attentive.  There is something about this kid that grates on my nerves...every single day.  I couldn't put my finger on it until today....when my daughter glanced over at the bike path and said, "I'd love a scooter like that."

It wasn't the girl that grated on my nerves.  It was the scooter.  First of all, when did it become okay for 10 year olds to ride motorized vehicles to school?  Isn't this illegal?  What parent would buy one for their kid?  Risk of bodily injury aside, can you get any freaking lazier?  Scooter girl's feet never touched pavement from the moment she zipped out of the parking lot until she hit the first crosswalk a block away.  She probably gets more exercize taking a shower than riding that thing.  I only hope she doesn't ride home to find fast food for dinner or she'll have heart disease before she's eligible for a real driver's license.

Okay..I'm off the soapbox, now.  Am the only parent bugged by this?  I don't know.....

Girl Scout Cookies: It's A War Out There...

You want the truth?  You can't handle the truth. (Seriously.)   As a consumer, you are pleasantly surprised when you discover the local Girl Scout troop has set up shop in the grocery store parking lot, right?  You have a sudden craving for Thin Mints.  Do you buy the cookies now?  Do you wait until after you finish your shopping?  What if they run out of Thin Mints?  You've heard stories of addicts, desperate for a fix, chasing down cookie booths all over the state in an attempt to buy that last box of chocolaty goodness.  Someone  told you about the hijacked cookie truck and the subsequent bidding war on EBay.  Your co-worker bought a case of Do-Si-Dos on Craig's List, once.  Urban legends or the truth?  Only the parents of a Girl Scout knows for sure....

Do your remember that news story about the mom who tried to put out a hit on the mother of her daughter's cheer leading rival?  Yeah, Girl Scout cookie sales are kinda like that.  The second your troop leader passes out the order forms it's game on, no holds barred.  Last one to the finish line is a rotten egg.  Kill or be killed.  It's like roller derby and the Amazing Race all rolled into one.  Friendships are tested, threats of violence are whispered, accusations of cheating abound....not amongst the scouts--among their parents. 

It all starts every February with 'Cookie College', where the scouts get a crash course in cookie-selling etiquette.  The leaders focus on concepts like 'cooperation' and 'working together' and 'team building' but they're preaching to the wrong choir.  It's the parents who morph from well-adjusted, normal citizens into the equivalent of drug dealing used car salesmen.  The turf wars begin before a single dollar changes hands.  Woe to the scout who ventures into a corner of the 'hood that's been claimed by another troop member...unless one happens to be looking for a rumble between the troop moms...in which case, it's game-on.

When a little girl scout from another troop showed up at my front door this year,  I nearly chased her down the street like a rabid dog.  I saw her dad out by the street and I was tempted to start flashing gang (read "troop") signs and calling out my 'homies' (all of whom were at home supervising homework and fixing dinner for their munchkins). My neighbors were MINE.  (I politely declined to buy the cookies and when I closed the door, I whipped out my cell phone and speed dialed everyone in a three block radius warning them not to buy from the little interloper if they knew what was good for them.)

Girl Scout moms (and dads) will go to extremes to ensure their little darlings get those cookies sold.  Don't believe me?  Check this out...a couple of dads in our troop got creative (in the rain, as I recall) just to ensure their girls met their sales goals.  Talk about dedication...

There's a highway construction project somewhere missing it's "Slow For The Cone Zone" sign, I think.  It's been hijacked by the dads of Troop #ABCD...I wasn't actually a part of this, nor were my kids, but only because I didn't find out about it until after the fact. 

Just remember, the next time a little girl in a sash knocks on your door wanting to sell cookies, there's a mommy out there beating the crap out of another troop mommy, to ensure her daughter's success.  There's a dad putting blood, sweat and tears (and possible CALTRANS) into getting those cookies out to you.  Now if that ain't teamwork, I don't know what is.

Now...anybody want to buy some Thin Mints?

Don't Touch My Junk Bro! - Interview With John Tyner

Computer geek goes into an airport and stands in the security line for however long (it's rarely less than 10 minutes), gets to the front of the line and decides to object to the full-body scanner, process. No big deal because the security guards have an alternative.  They can pat you down.  Understand, though, if you suddenly (and possibly without explanation) object to the scanner, you've just waved a red flag at the guard.  Before you opened your mouth, you were just Average Joe.  After your refusal, the guard got suspicious (and I, for one, am so glad that he did) and you got a one-way trip to the 'in depth' search.  In other words, you had the pleasure of being felt up (or down) by another male. Your response?  Threaten to have the  guard arrested! Give me a break.

First of all, Jackwagon, there is no law that says you are entitled to get on an airplane.  Follow the rules, get on the plane.  Don't follow the rules, find another method of travel...really, it's just that simple.  If you were opposed to the level of radiation your body would be exposed to by being scanned, I wouldn't find you as incredibly irritating and annoying as I (and doubtless, countless others) find you.  Your reasoning for not allowing the scan?  It shows (gasp!) an outline of your body.  Seriously?  You're making a stink over the scanner because you're bashful?  Worse?  You couldn't handle a patdown?  You had to threaten to have the security guard arrested if he touched your privates (oh, excuse me...that's right, you-Oh Bashful One- cannot possibly say 'privates' or 'penis', you have to be cool and call it 'junk'. Oh yeah, 'you're pretty fly for a white guy'.)
Would it be wrong to wonder what, exactly, you are referring to when you call it 'junk'?  Because from my viewpoint, you've got the balls of a mouse.  In fact, you're likely hiding a va-jay-jay where the 'junk' should be.  (Yes, I went there.)  Most women have bigger balls than you do.  You have a problem with a security guard getting to second base with you?  Be very friggin thankful you aren't a woman.  By the time I'd given birth to my first child, I'd been poked, prodded and felt up by every member of the medical community with the exception of the janitor and the cafeteria staff, and nobody bought me dinner, first.   I am routinely violated by said medical community annually to ensure that I'm cancer free.  Be thankful, Oh Bashful One, that you will never give birth.  Until then, shut your damn pie-hole and go through the stupid scanner or allow yourself to be molested, it's your choice.

Frankly, I don't want your whiny ass sitting next to me on a plane.  I have a problem with terrorists.  I find it far more traumatizing to be blown to smithereens at 30,000 feet than I do being felt up by a guard, male or female.  Remember, he's been feeling people up all day...you're not that spectacular.  He won't even remember your name after the fact.  How's that for the old ego?  Would it have made you happier if he agreed to cuddle with you when it was over?

Granted, the security procedures available at our airports aren't perfect.  They may or may not work, I don't really know, but its all we've got at this point and you look like a buck-toothed jackass complaining about it.  The truth of the matter is, I suspect, that you knew exactly what you were going to say when you reached the front of the line.  You knew you would be searched and you wanted to make a point by threatening to have the poor man arrested if he happened to grab you wrong.  Suck it up.

And just so you know, you were holding your cell phone, which is what tripped the metal detector and likely set you up for the full body scan in the first place.  As a computer geek, I'm quite certain you were aware of this fact, which means  you set the whole thing up.  As a result, you have now been added to the BlackHart Wall Of Shame. Congrats on the 15 minutes of fame, did you have to out yourself as the biggest wussy on the planet when you did it?   Nice job, asshat.

Dear Telephone Stalker:

Dear Telephone Solicitor, Salesman, Survey-Taker,

I realize times are tough.  Sometimes, we all have to do things we'd rather not.  I'm sure it was never your lifelong goal to cold-call innocent people and browbeat them into subservience, but we all have to make a living and you take the jobs where you can find them.  These things I understand.  What I do NOT understand is why you insist on making your job harder than it needs to be.

For example, when you start calling my home at 9:00 pm and my husband informs you I am not interested, that I am up to my eyeballs in glitter while helping my child finish a school project, just let it go.  It isn't appropriate to cold call anyone at that hour on a Sunday night.  I'm guessing you must have children, otherwise, you'd have chosen a more lucrative and far more socially acceptable career (like armed robbery or prostitution) so you should understand how such a phone call can be disruptive.

Furthermore, when my husband tells you to stop calling, he isn't implying that you should call me at six the next morning.  He means:  Don't call.  Ever.  Thank you very much.  Instead, you ignored him.  You called at six.  You called at 8:00 while I was trying to load the kids into my car.  You called me at noon.  You called me at five that evening.  Really?  Are there so few people in the United States that you actually had time to call me half a dozen times?  I've had stalkers who called me less than you do.

When I tell you I am not interested, I mean it.  I don't want to participate in your survey, buy your life insurance or refinance my house.  In fact, if I did want to do any of these things,  I would be more inclined to seek out someone who's phone number does not come up as 'Out Of Area' on my caller ID, someone who introduces themselves, belongs to an organization that sounds at least vaguely familiar and can tell me how they obtained my home phone number in the first place.  When I ask you to remove me from your list, do not tell me "Let me see what I can do.  It's not really my job."  Yes, it is your job.  While it isn't my job to show you the ropes, I feel compelled to offer you some help in this area.  When I said "Lose My Number" that was your cue (which you missed) to highlight my listing in your database and press the delete key.  Really, it isn't rocket science.  A trained monkey could figure this out.

Have a heart.  Your job sucks, I get that, but it would suck a whole lot less if you didn't wake up my sleeping five-year-old, interrupt me in the middle of dinner or while I'm watching the whole first season of Glee on my DVD player.  Then I would not have to yell at you.  I would not have to hang up on you.  I do not enjoy these long-distance rendezvous...I just don't. 

Don't go away mad.  Just, please, please...go AWAY.

Thanks.

Lady Blackhart