Good Busy Weekend, Except For The Vomit
We visited my pal Jaime in Bear Valley Springs this weekend to celebrate his youngest daughter’s 4th birthday. It was a cool party with lots of games, pony rides, crafts, cake and other niceties. I got to cruise around Jaime’s property with Ben in a little golf cart and you just know boys love driving before they’re 16; Ben was all smiles, all the time.
When the birthday party ended I hopped in the truck with Jaime and picked up some guys to celebrate a mellow but beer-rich bachelor party. We had our own little pool tournament and got to know every person in the bar before the evening ended. It was pure goodness.
Here’s the vomit part (again!): Sunday morning came with Abby looking listless and plain miserable. She ended up tossing cookies several times, mostly on my shirts. I use “shirt” in the plural because it seemed to happen right after I cleaned up from the previous hurl. We were in Jaime’s brand new house, construction just having been finished last Spring, so I wanted to be sure nothing hit the floor. It’s truly surreal to watch a 5 year old driving a porcelain bus. Praying to the porcelain god. Etcetera. I expect to hold my wife’s hair back while she’s puking in the morning but it doesn’t seem right to be doing it with such a youngster as Abigail.
We left early, at ~9:30am, so we could make it back to a little festival at Abby’s school. Kerri and I are supposed to work a booth but I think she’ll be taking my shift while I keep the kids home. And speaking of home, when I got there this morning I unpacked the car and headed to The Garage to check on my systems, mail, blah. I reached for a beer in the fridge (you know, to stop the shaking) and noticed I was all out. Since I had neighbor Darin take care of Sunny I figured he stayed for a bit and had some beers, played pool, watched TV and those sorts of things and so of course there wouldn’t be any beer left. I sorta lifted my head back and thought, “Darn it! I’m out of beer!”. And then I saw it… my TV was gone! I didn’t lock my place because I wanted Sunny to get in and out while I was gone. You might think I had been robbed but you’d be wrong. Instead of my 21″, 20 year old TV up on the wall I had a 26″, 3 day old flat panel, widescreen, LCD TV. Darin bought me a TV! And then he came over to install it while I was gone. And he did drink all of my beer. It was worth it and besides, I went to his place to steal some back so I’m really ahead of the game.
I realize that I’m a very good looking man, even drawing the attention of other local males, but this was just craziness. What was he expecting in return?!? It turns out, nothing. I had helped him one evening last week by doing some Flash editing, setting up a web site for him and that sort of thing. But it was only a couple of hours and certainly something I was happy to do for a good friend of mine. Our neighborhood rocks! No one ever expects anything for helping another (except for beer, but that’s just natural) but for some reason he wanted to go overboard. Besides, I think he was tired of watching my old P.O.S. for football every week. Whatever. I’m totally stoked!
I felt bad that Darin would do such a thing but I must admit that it is going to make my sports experience and general life a whole lot nicer. The rest of my family is not into sports so I try not to hog the Family Room TV for myself when something interesting is on. When I lock myself up in The Garage from now on I’ll be sitting in the lap of luxury. He figured that getting me a keg and a carton of smokes would be nice but they’d be gone in a week. A TV is something that will last, will be shared and certainly remembered. This is especially true because I never would have done it for myself.
The problem is, Darin has raised the bar for neighborhood help. If I go over to feed Matt’s chickens while he’s gone I might start expecting a new motorcycle or laptop in return. I don’t know how I’ll handle something as simple as “Thanks Tom, that was helpful” — I certainly can’t take *that* to the pawn shop when things get tight, can I? Darin may have turned me into a material girl… I’m pretty sure he did. And it feels pretty good. Gimme!
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