Stresscation

woodpecker 3
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

My staycation is so incredibly fun that I can hardly wait to get back to work, where hopefully I can rest and get projects done and not be freaked out all the time. Ha ha! Life is funny like that!

I have, among moments of quietly freaking out, been trying to help my daughter get through a rough patch in her life and simultaneously help my son buy a car. None of this is going very smoothly, alas, but I did end up yesterday in one of Swannanoa's more, um, picturesque neighborhoods, test driving a gigantic yellow Cadillac through a trailer park. Meanwhile, an entire bunch of strange and slightly scary teenagers were frolicking around this rustic village with their pitbulls and crack pipes and we were a bit concerned that Audrey's car would no longer be with us when we returned. The lady who was selling the car came along for the test ride and she was very friendly and talkative. I learned from her that she planned to keep the knocked off rim of one Caddy wheel as a souvenir (well, yeah, it is the kind of thing I personally would totally keep on the mantelpiece of my trailer too) and that her teenagers were driving her nuts but that she had cried when they went to preschool. Also, one time she raced her sister in this very Cadillac and left said sister in her Buick in the dust. Whooo eeee! The Cadillac was approximately the size and shape of the QE2 and had roughly the same steering ability and all in all I think just perhaps it is not the ideal car for my hilly neighborhood of narrow streets and sharp turns.

In other news, I've been having strange bird encounters. I was over at my daughter's old house helping her pack up the kitchen when I noticed a tufted titmouse sitting on the side mirror of my parked car. All was fine and cute until he looked down to discover that there was another bird inside that mirror and, worse, that that bird was clearly a nefarious enemy spy. For the next five minutes he waged furious war while Audrey and I laughed helplessly from the kitchen window. That was sweet, as is the woodpecker in this picture, who has taken to visiting my feeder once or twice a day, which makes me strangely delighted.

Audrey has gotten me addicted to Yahtzee. We've been playing a lot of games, which has given us the idea of starting a board game review blog. It will be beautifully designed and each entry will have a fantastically perfect moodily lit photo of a board game and a text entry which will read "This game SUCKS!" So far we have reviewed Life, Outburst and Scrabble, which doesn't suck but, hey, you have to be consistent.