The Ultimate Driving Experience

Headed to the beach for our 4th of July vacation, my 10 year old Expedition died.  No flames of glory.  No death rattle.  Just a silent giving up of the ghost and subsequent death on highway 64.  The official death proclamation was one week later when our mechanic called to give us the fatal news--she had metal shavings in the oil pan.  She had fought the good fight for over 200,000 miles and had left us for the great junkyard in the sky.  

After a decade of driving a vehicle the size of a third world country, which cost more to fill up than the GNP of said third world county, I knew I wanted a small car.  I grew up the daughter of an American muscle car fanatic, constantly surrounded by classic Corvettes and 60's era Mustangs and all their parts.  After driving a land yacht and before that, 4 cylinder vehicles which are the engine equivalent of hamsters on a running wheel, I was ready for some ponies under the hood.  And no, that's not a euphemism for something.  I wanted some unbridled horsepower.  This chick is no mini-van driving mom!  I'd be caught in a Pinto before I'd ever cast a second look at a mini-van.  To me, the mini-van is the vehicular equivalent of a tankini.  It just screams that you've given up and have settled into a life a mediocrity and PTA meetings.

Despite my previous disaster of a German engineered car (yes, I'm looking at you, Volkswagen), I was drawn to the BMW's.  We had done our research online, but had decided to wait until the sale of the shop was finalized before acting.  While busy goofing off making copies at the Winston Salem Open, I flipped through the pages of a newspaper in the media room and saw that Flow BWM was running some sweet deals on their 3 series.  Sweet deals that we simply couldn't refuse.

Tuesday night, we met with Flow's salesman Brent and despite his UNC alum status, we liked him.  I made it clear right off the bat that I was no "mirror and cupholder" woman.  I wanted to drive the daylights out of it.  Never before had I been on a test drive where the rep drives as you sit in the passenger seat.  When he warned us to sit tight and hold on, I knew he got it.  He had me at "brace yourself".

We had gone in knowing we wanted a black model.  I was as sure of that color choice as I am sure of my addiction to Starbucks and Sephora.  However, when we got back to the lot, I spotted the sweetest Duke blue 328i.  There was absolutely no way that I was going to leave that car on the lot.  My alumni card would have been revoked had I opted for the black.  After a mere 14 hours of paperwork (maybe it just seemed that long because I was starving--2 chicken McNuggets I stole from the Sound and the Fury do not a proper lunch make), it was ours to take home.

This is one sweet ride.  The suspension is so good, it turns the passenger cabin into the motorized version of Xanax--that smooth and easy.  It handles tight--no more breaking and slowing way down as I head into curves.   I wanted power & I got it.  I can actually pass people now with confidence, not  fear and doubt that the hamster would get too tired and call it quits mid pass.  I had to set the cruise control on the way home from the dealership just to be sure that I didn't speed--that engine purrs like a large jungle cat (just not a panther, because the Carolina Panthers suck and therefore that cat has been sullied in my mind).  I find myself longing for some backwoods, winding country road to really test her out.

Breaking it in right.

The most important interior feature--MP3 hookup.

Even I will admit that the cupholders are pretty ingenious--you press the button like a CD player to get them to "eject" from the dash.

I have threatened the Gruesome Twosome within an inch of their lives if they mess this car up.  I have drilled them like a drill sergeant.  I think I heard Pey mumbling about keeping her feet off the seat in her sleep.

You will never see the backseat this clean again.

Even the details that I have no idea what their actual function are seem cool, like this one of four things that appear on the roof:

Looks like a CD should eject from here too.

To paraphrase McD's, I'm loving it.  Thanks to Brent and the rest of the staff at Flow.  We'll be headed back your way soon to take advantage of the free Saturday car washes (and free oil changes and other free maintenance--how awesome is that?).  And by the way Brent, GO DUKE!

If you want to contact Brent for any car requests (he says he can sell them all in Flow's fleet, not just BMW's), here's Brent's email.  If you want to look at Flow's website, go here.  If you do talk to Brent, throw in a Go Duke! just for us.

Not Sew Easy

At only two days into my time of unemployment leisure, my husband has lost his mind.  He has forgotten to whom he is betrothed. Granted, my first name is Laura, but he has apparently mistaken my last name for "Ingalls Wilder" and thinks we live in a little house, waaaaay out on the prairie.  Last night he asked me if I could hem up his Page football slacks (Incidentally, when doofus Burdie met John Isner at the Winston Salem Open, the only words that doofus Burdie could manage were, "my husband coaches for Page".  Nice and classy, eh?).  I failed to realize that Manute Bol was on the sidelines for the Pirates, as he is the only person (other than Isner) who these pants could possibly fit with no alteration.  J stands 6'1" and I was faced with the task of hemming them up 8 inches.

I lied the other day when I said the only trait I share with my mother is the willingness to drive 2 hours for a really good haircut.  I learned from the best as I listened to her preach "I don't care what I have to pay someone else to do it.  I'm not sewing a blessed thing," when faced with the prospect of having to make dancing costumes years ago.  We don't craft.  We aren't artsy.  And most importantly, we don't sew.

My poor, abandoned sewing machine had the same patina of dust that my poor abandoned Buns of Steel videos do.  I  launched my lungs into a full blown asthma attack by inhaling it all.  Then again, I am out of shape and the hard breathing could have been due to the exertion of the excavation process of the machine.  I quickly realized that although I had taken approximately 3 sewing classes, none of them dealt with hemming, especially the kind of blindstitch hemming that these pants would need.  Not only that, but the manual which came with the sewing machine was buried in the avalanche zone of the playroom, currently reduced to rubble, courtesy of the ongoing Great Redecorating of the downstairs.  The mighty Casey was about to strike out.

I have never been one to allow lack of knowledge or any semblance of ability hinder me from plunging headlong into something I have no concept of how to actually do.  Necessity has made me a quick learner, but today I was stuck in remedial mode.  I won't go into details of what I did (heck, I couldn't recreate it if I had to).  The important thing is that I prove, without a shadow of a doubt, I am not a crafter.  If there was an anti crafters anonymous, I would be the first to stand and say "Hello.  My name is Burdie and I am NOT a crafter" and then go enjoy the refreshments.

Before--at least I look capable.  I had butterfly pins, even!

After.  I have effectively removed any fear that people will ask me for sewing favors.

My blindstitch was more like Braille.  Even a seeing eye dog could tell I'd screwed it up.  I also scorched the bottom of one of the legs, just for added effect.  I spent 2 hours of my unemployment leisure to get it this botched.  I may have sewn it badly, but I sewed it badly, very well.  That line of stitches ain't gonna budge.  He's gotta wear that crap for a whole season'; his own personal red badge of courage.

I met J for lunch and took him these pants.  His take on it?  "It's better than duct tape".  Yup.  He summed it up very succinctly.  That's my crafting ability.  Better than duct tape.

For my afternoon fun, I think I'm going to beat some clothes on a rock or make candles from the tallow kept in our larder.

My Eyes Are Burning!!

Today was my first day of not being tied down to the shop and in theory, I was going to be uber mom, cleaning house, washing clothes and cooking dinner.  In reality, I realized that I pressed pause on the housework five years ago, dinner was going to be fried bologna sandwiches and one more day wasn't going to make the courts call Child Protective Services on me.  So I did what any recently unemployed liberated woman would do.  I donned sweats and a tshirt, poured copious amounts of coffee and watched an entire season of RuPaul's Drag Race.  In order to convince myself that I was doing something productive, I decided to blog.  I knew the perfect thing about which to blog--an old family picture of my parents and me at my first birthday party that I found when we were moving furniture to storage in the Great Redecorating Marathon of 2011 (and possibly 2012 and possibly 2013--blog posts follow as soon as we finish in 2014).

A little help here.  Please?

Since I was too lazy to actually plug the USB cable AND the power cord up to the scanner, this is a pic of the original pic that I snapped with my phone.  I know a mere camera phone pic often mutes the subject, but this is a pic that insists on being heard.  Loud and clear.  This is the "Nobody puts baby in the corner!" picture of all pictures. This pic is maximum base and all frequencies (not sure what that means--it's in a Great Big Sea song and sounded appropriate). If this pic was an email, IT WOULD BE ALL CAPS!!!!

I'm not going to address how skinny my dad is or how dark his hair is.  I'm not going to address the fact that my mother looks the same now (why did I have to get my dad's gray hair and mustache genetics??).  I'm not going to address the forlorn look of helplessness on my face.  I think what jumps out and bites us all on the butt is the utter hideosity of the 70's patterns, SCREAMING for our complete and undivided attention, SCREAMING so loud that I'm impelled to invent words like hideosity to describe it all.  Maybe it was the acid the hippies dropped that influenced the patterns which came out of that decade.  I don't know.  I was a blissful toddler whose cones and rods in my eyes hadn't fully formed and thus, I knew no better.

Looking at this now, my poor eyes are on ocular overload.  I need my Ralph Lauren sunglasses to look at this. The drapes, the stripes on my dad's shirt and my mom's plaid are all yelling in a visual cacophony.   All those patterns, screaming--caterwauling actually--for ocular attention.

Go ahead and laugh.  At them, not me (I had better fashion sense, even at the age of 1).  I am going to take an Excedrin migraine and let my eyes rest.

Closing Up Shop

After almost 5 years of making chocolate, I ended my reign as the sovereign chocolate queen (given that I was the only chocolatier in town, I guess that by necessity I also reigned as the chocolate court jester).  I was ready.  I had visions of a handing over the scepter ceremony, complete with pomp, circumstance, confetti streamers, paparazzi and a pony.  No reason for the pony.  I figured since I was dreaming, I might as well dream big.  In that case, maybe I should have amended the dream and added  Ewan McGregor as well.  Not only did I not get pomp & circumstance, I didn't even get the mariachi band the new owners had promised me.  For all intents and purposes, it was just another day.  Bummer.

By owning this shop, I have discovered that I am not a people person.  The stupid questions.  The indecision and gut wrenching agony of choosing a $1.99 scoop of ice cream.  The being held hostage by the elderly gentleman discussing his sciatic problem.  UGH!!  Waiting on that counter made me want to chain myself to the sofa at home, with enough length of chain to make my way to the freezer for Ben & Jerry's, but not enough to ever let me out of my front door ever again.  Ever.  Not even for the combo of Johnny Depp AND Ewan McGregor, holding Starbucks and blasting Peter Gabriel out of an 80's style boom box, a la John Cusak.  I guess I must be a great actress, as I convinced some of them that I actually was nice. Customers showed up in droves to wish me well. I found that people wanted me to be sad,;that they were disappointed to learn I was actually happy.  I felt like I should go cut up an onion so I could have some tears in my eyes. Or at the very least, ruminate upon the cold hard reality that the only manner in which Johnny & Ewan would ever come to my house is via Netflix.  It's probably a good thing I'll never meet either of them, because doofus Burdie would just show up and I'd go into basic survival, brain shut down mode, as already witnessed this year with Marcos Baghdatis.

My mom and grandmother (the daughter of the real Mama Laura) happened to be in town for haircuts (the only trait I share with my mother--the willingness to drive hours for a really good hairstylist).  When Mama comes to visit every six weeks, she picks up the Sound & Fury from school, bows down in traditional grandmotherly fashion and takes them to McDonald's.  At first I told my mom to just take them back to the house and let them irritate her, on a blood sugar high from all the McD's junk food. Then I remembered that today would be the last day they could get all the ice cream they could stomach for free, so I asked her to bring them by.

For 4 years my kids have been the antithesis of the proverbial kid in the candy shop.  For fear of them ingesting  profits, I put the smack down early on and limited their chocolate intake to factory seconds and limited their ice cream intake to one small scoop a day.  They were always forced to look with their eyes and not their stomachs.  Today, all bets were off.  I gave them free reign to choose whatever they wanted.  As many scoops as they wanted.  In any cone they wanted.  Lulu even dipped her own,  They both opted for 2 mega scoops in a waffle cone.  That was fine with me.  I wasn't paying and I wouldn't have to burn the fingerprints off my phalanges trying to replenish the waffle cone stock.  Have at it!  I had been stocking up on my winter fat storage by cramming pounds of peanut brittle in all week, so shouldn't my kiddos have the same chance?

My mom and grandmother left with the gruesome twosome.  The shop was quiet, other than the sound of music from the dance studio next door.  I walked out with no fanfare.  No ceremony.  No tickertape.  And most importantly, no tears.

"Mild mannered chocolatier by day.  Crime fighter by night."  As if my Clark Kent glasses could ever fool someone into thinking I was mild mannered.

Seeing is Disbelieving

For years I threatened to start a blog about my misadventures in retail at the chocolate shop.  I had the name picked out "The Bitter(sweet) Chocolatier" (as the naming of the blog is often more interesting than the contents of it), but was just too lazy to actually start it.  My main goal was to write about all the jerks and idiots who darkened my door, getting the last laugh as I exposed their stupidity and/or jerkitude to the whole world.  I figured the majority of my clientele didn't read blogs and those who stumbled upon an entry would read it and be too out of touch to realize that they were the jerk/idiots about whom I was writing.

As fate would have it, for the first time since I've had this blog up and running, an opportunity to blog about an in-shop experience manifested itself and of course, instead of me writing about how I'm serving the jerk/idiot their just desserts (I know--bad pun), I'm writing about I got served.

Yesterday a teeny, tiny little grandmother (think garden gnome without the beard) came in with her granddaughter.  At first glance, I would have guessed the granddaughter was 5, but then I remembered that school had gone back and unless the garden gnome was flaunting her truancy, that would have aged her around 4.

Grandma starts to tell me how much she enjoys watching me on tv, referring to my recipe spots on our local Fox 8.  At this point, the 4 year old looked solidly at me and assessed the psuedo celebrity in front of her.  She wrinkled her even tinier garden gnome nose, tilted her head and all the time while keeping her eyes on me, said in a condescending manner (a manner typically reserved for use in comments from Mary Margaret, my best friend), "SHE'S on tv??".

There it is.  My ego was handed to me by a 4 year old.  She came.  She saw.  She assessed.  She conquered.  In three words.  I'm glad I had lipstick on.  Imagine the damage to my psyche she could have wrought otherwise.

Maybe I need to call that truant officer just in case.

The First Day of the First Grade (and Fifth too)

Between going to  the lawyer's office for signing of the papers to sell the shop and all the tennis action, we also threw in another milestone--first day of school, first grade for PeyPey & fifth for LuLu.  We are very well steeped in back to school traditions in our house and the festivities began a few days in advance.  The first tradition (ok, this year we were slack and it actually ended up being the last thing we did, but apart from my admission here, no one will ever be the wiser) is that we make the girls stand beside the school sign to get a picture to document their growth.  A bonus addition is that we get to document their growth from lovely sweeties into full fledged tweens with emerging adolescent angst.  The scowl on Lulu is quite advanced for her grade level.

After the annual takin' o the pic, the next thing up is the Night Before School Dinner.  Sounds fancy, but it's nothing more that dinner at the Pioneer.  Good eats, but no fancy silverware.  We don't know the genesis of this dinner, but we stick to it every year (and I look forward to another night of not cooking, but then again most nights I don't cook).  In theory we discuss our plans and goals for the year over a nice plate of sirloin.  In reality, we play "how many people in here do we know and how many know us?".  We lost this time, as somebody who knew us came over to talk and I had no idea who it was.

The morning of the big first day, the girls dressed in their matching Target dresses.  I was sad over the prospect of this being the last year that they will match.  Lulu will be heading to a new middle school next year  where she'll be too cool to dress like her sister.  Plus, this is her last year with her sizes in the kids department (juniors?? my nerves aren't strong enough to handle the juniors department).  We made them pause for obligatory pictures.  We even took pictures of them walking their own version of the funeral march to the car. You could almost hear "dum, dum, da dum, da da dum dum, dum dum dum" as they trotted out.

Go get 'em girls!  Let's make it a year with lots of fun memories and hopefully, lots of learnin'!

The Winston Salem Open, Final

Hurricane Irene was busy pounding away on my family down east, but here, 300 miles inland, we just had partly cloudy skies with a light breeze.  The Winston Salem Open surely wasn't bowing down to mere winds so I donned my WSO tee (er, uniform) for the last time and drove back to Winston.  I was officially working so I had to report to my station at the Media Desk before going in to have any fun.  Not saying that the Media Desk wasn't fun, just that my duties there consisted of the same thing I hated in college on my work study job--making copies.  I copied a zallion daily newsletters, to be distributed at the main gate.  Boring work, but at least I had the challenge of changing out toner.  Magenta even.  Not just the boring big black cartridge, but a colored one at that.  An advanced level of intimacy with a copier that a mere, ordinary volunteer could only aspire.  I was a top notch volunteer.

The media center was full-er than it was last Saturday.  There were a few reporters with laptops and some photogs with mack daddy cameras with lenses long enough to act as spy satellites from space.  I still have no idea where the "international press" I was promised were.  Possibly some of the reporters could have had an aunt who knew somebody from Canada, and that fulfilled the requirement, but that's just me, hazarding a guess. The draw sheet had only been filled in to about the second round--but then again, details are overrated in reporting these days anyhow.

This is on my Christmas list.  

Details?  We don't need any stinking details!

After making a bazillon copies, I delivered my stack of newsletters to the main gate and went off to find my lovely friend, Robin the Abandoner.

A perk of volunteering, skipping the line.

I met up with Robin at the Corona Bar and quickly staked out a claim on a bar stool.  Sitting in packed stands was for losers and Robin & I had figured out how to work the system.  We put on our best Norm and Cliff impersonation and drank Coronas while watching the match on the tv at the bar--20 feet away from the stadium court.  We debated for a while and it was settled that I am Cliff, given that I am a fountain of useless knowledge.  Since Robin had abandoned me in my time of need (snapping a decent pic with Baghdatis), I figured that my retribution would be drinking on her tab.  With beer at $6 a pop, that tab increased exponentially during the course of the 3 set match.  She won't be able to make her mortgage payment this month, so I figure we're even.

Norm would be proud.

We held down our end of the bar for the better part of 3 sets.  At the last changeover before match point, we ventured into the stadium and tried to find space.  Thankfully our t-shirts (er, uniforms) and creds allowed us entry and we got a semi-unobstructed view of Isner serving it out for the win.  I was proud of our hometown guy.  I didn't hold his defeat of Baghdatis against him.  Ok, I did, but not too much.  Isner is a really nice guy & I know his mama has to be proud of him.

It's hard to believe it's all over.  The months of preparation.  The steep learning curve of working the copier.  The stalking of my favorite player.  It was one heck of a ride!

Bring on the Winston Salem Open 2012!!  I am ready!  I'll just volunteer to hold a rope or something next time.