Random Thoughts

…suddenly decided to raise their minimum payment from 2% to 5%.  In my case this meant that my monthly payment went from $303 to $744.  

I’ve never missed a payment, I’ve never been late…hey, I’m a model citizen.  This isn’t cz I breached any part of the agreement.

This is apparently because Chase is furious with us cardholders because, when several years ago they sent out balance transfer offers of around 3.9% fixed for life—-get this—-we had the unmitigated gall to ACCEPT! 

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An interesting sleeping position
(with Cracka the Turtle and an as yet unnamed sumo-wrestler sheep)

part 5 of 5 

Now what?  For fifteen minutes we’d walked in a circle.  Jay, who up to now had been content to follow along without question, was beginning to suspect that we might not know precisely where we were at the present time.  In fact, we might even be the L word.  He looked at me apprehensively.

I said, “Okay, I guess we got sidetracked somewhere.  But at least we’ve been here before, so we know where to go from here.”  And I headed confidently down the path away from the clearing.  Or at least I hoped it looked confident from the back.

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part 4 of 5

“Big deal,” I said.  “It’s a river.”

Jay looked at it with mild interest.

“It looks just like our river at home.”

Jay nodded.

We looked off to our right to where the brown stream suddenly disappeared over the cliff edge, plunging down out of sight onto the rocks below.  That was kind of interesting, one second there’s a wide stream, the next second, open air.  But other than that it was basically just another river.

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part 3 of 5

While kids have no time-sense, they compensate for this disability by having another sense; a sense that is lost when you become an adult, for the most part…the About-to-Get-in-Trouble sense.  I wasn’t very conscious of it, it wasn’t very developed in me, I’m afraid, but in the back of my mind I began to feel a vague nagging that we had been gone for a largish amount of time.  The significance of this feeling, however, was lost on me.  Besides, we had to be pretty close to the top by now!  To turn back simply because a lot of time had passed, was utter nonsense, and we couldn’t just stop and go back in disgrace.

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part 2 of 5

So how do you get to the top?  Off to the left I spotted a dirt trail, much narrower and less-traveled than the path that brought us here, which disappeared behind a line of trees.

This had to be the way to the top! we dramatically announced.  Only a few brave people had ever had the guts to climb up this mountain to get to the top of the waterfall; that’s why it was such a narrow and overgrown trail.  Well, if anyone can get there, it’s us—-I mean, who’s better qualified to find their way up a mountain than a nine-year-old and a six-year-old?

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A five-part Random Thoughts miniseries

part 1

I was nine.  My brother was six.  We were camping in western North Carolina, and my parents, intent on setting up our campsite, foolishly took their eyes off us for a minute, and we did what we always did when we found ourselves unattended in a new place:  we went exploring.

After a quick reconnaissance of the campground (game room:  good, mini-golf:  eh, looks pretty rickety), we quickly found a wide trail which sloped gradually upward into the woods.  We didn’t know where it led, but it was a trail—-and that was enough for us.  Besides that, when you’re in the mountains, up is always the direction you want to head. 

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Okay.  I was five when this movie came out.  I remember hearing about it later, when I was considerably older than five, and it was still THE horror movie, the most talked-about horror movie ever, the one notorious for having an X rating—-and NOT for sex. 

NOT for sex?  They give movies X ratings for things other than sex?  Really?  How many times have they done that?  Oh, just this once?  Ever?  Okay.

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This week:
Annalise learns to clap.

(The squealing she had down long ago.)

Play it fullscreen

All we have to do is yell ‘yayyyyy’ and she usually starts clapping.  I don’t really know where she got this.  We do say ‘yayyyyy’ a lot, especially when she struggles from lying on the floor to standing up, but we don’t really clap a lot.  The clapping was her idea. 

Oh wait!  I do clap practically everytime Sherrill walks by naked.  Which is a lot.  So there you go.