Hello Summer You and I are About to Meet Again

Tomorrow is the last day of school...I mean work. I can hardly contain my excitement. And, it's a holiday weekend. So I've got plans that will keep me from this keyboard.

I plan to hang with my BWFs and sip cocktails and toast what was a great school year--after the bell rings and we all wave good-bye to the buses.

I plan to BBQ and swim with family on Saturday. Because working on that summer tan and eating foods cooked on an open flame is the best way to start off the summer.

I plan to celebrate twenty-three years of wedded bliss to King Ralph on Sunday at a winery that over looks the Mississippi River. While I sip my wine I will be listening to my co-worker's hubby's band play.

I plan on Monday to celebrate the silencing of the alarm clocks and sleep till my body says it wants to wake.

Then I'll be back on Tuesday.

Till then....

My Day of Lasts

It seems like I blink and the days of firsts become the days of lasts. I stand in the middle of the kitchen screaming AMEN!, as I pack the last lunches of the school year. I have a break from the worry of do I have enough sandwich baggies.

Three more days. Just three more days.

For me those three days are full days, for the girls short days. Short days filled with stressful test taking. M is a more relaxed teenager than D haven taken three AP test a few weeks back. To which I really holler an AMEN! because I am not sure I could have handled much more of M's stress level at that point.

Today also marks D's last piano lesson with her (and Princess A's) long time music teacher. I have been scurrying across town for nine years to make lessons on time, giggling at there rewards of a single Pez for a lesson well performed and staring at the giant pine tree suited for a Rockefeller Center Christmas tree [that consumes the entire front yard] for nine years and today...today that all ends. Bitter sweet. Fear not the piano will not be silenced as we meet a new teacher next week.

So I say...good-bye school lunches, till we meet again. Good-bye Mrs. Johnson, may the silencing of the piano in your home and idle parents parked at your curb bring you a joyful retirement and mostly in honor of the kids, good-bye 6th hour, may your finals' questions be kind and easy.

Opening Day

The next best thing to opening day at the ballpark is opening day at the drive-in-- Skyview Drive-in.

We like to treat the drive-in like it is our dinner theater. We opt for a more gourmet pallet of pre-show foods. Sure we have the standard fare of M&Ms, Mike & Ike's, Raisinettes and popcorn when the sunsets, but....we like to start things off with a meal that turns heads green with envy. For this opening day we had a menu of teriyaki pork tenderloin, hash brown casserole, Zia's salad and bakery bread.

Now we still relish in the scents that make the drive-in the drive-in--concession stand grease, bathrooms that have lines as long as Texas is wide (that sometimes can't keep flush up with the patrons needs) and the smell of wet gravel road dust; which is drowning in years of mystery scents. All the things that make the drive-in feel like going home again.

So I present to you: "how we roll"

The Klopeks Unveiled

The evening air has a feeling of a summer family camping vacation, warm but with a cool slight breeze-- the kind of cool breeze that welcomes a camp fire and a cocktail. This comes on the heel of a rather hot spring afternoon.

While no fire is blazing I took to the deck for a Cinco de Mayo celebration for uno. Just me, my margarita and my book. The peace and tranquility it offers is a nice ending to a busy work and mom day.

And.

The view of the Klopek house is even more alluring with a margarita glass in my hand. Maybe the fact that the landlord and an accompanying neighbor made an inside visit to the mysterious closed up house yesterday makes it more bewitching to stare. Since I am the farthest thing from a Mrs. Kravitz I miss out on all the sudden dramatic events that happen footsteps from my front door. I am told there was a screaming match as the landlord defended herself from the harsh words of the Klopek.

While no illegal activity was spotted we aren't ruling out that there may still possibly be a little girl tided up under the mountain of crap that lines the walls to ceiling and floors of the house. Who knows there is probably a lone pot plant in there vying for sunlight. No furniture was spotted except for a trundle bed that the little Klopek sleeps on. It is noted that the poor kid didn't even have sheets on his bed. There is no couch. There is no kitchen table. Which in all honesty I would think nothing of that if it weren't for the fact that there probably isn't basic furniture pieces in the house due in part there is no room for it amongst the crates of crap. I guess one would say it is an episode for A & E's Hoarders. Nicey Nash wouldn't want them, there is nothing to sell in a yard sale. My favorite is the collection of trash bags the Klopeks had lining the backyard. Clever hoarder he is brought in a small trailer with high plywood sides, loaded the trash bags to the top in that ghetto rig to hide them. Really?! How about paying for a once a week curbside trash pick up? Last week he ran out of gas (I think) for his mower and the back yard looked like an alien ship landed. You know like a crop circle, except not as detailed and artistic as a martian can make. I would place a bet that a martian did land, walked in the house realized the single path way through was to narrow for his beefy martain physique, scared to death at the sight of what earth presented, trail blazed it back to his ship high tailing it back to Mars. Yesterday the landlord sent in a landscaping company to cut the yard properly.

You know my dead azaleas in my front planter are looking better and better to the neighborhood.

There you have it...the Klopeks exposed. They are genuine hoarders!