The Big DumpTruck

I just wrote a really intense and scholarly sentence to start this paragraph but I erased it because I am about to talk about Gilligan’s Island and I don’t think you can use intense and scholarly sentences to talk about Gilligan’s Island. It forms a black hole that sucks all matter into itself and then you can’t talk about Gilligan’s Island any more. And I don’t want to be in that kind of world.

So I’m sitting here, eating leftover snack foods from our trip to the movies yesterday (more on that later) and pondering the meaning of life. That happened after I wandered through the back yard with a shovel picking up dog crap. Dog crap makes you ponder the meaning of life. It also makes you ponder why you didn’t pick it up while there was still snow on the ground because, dayam, it would have been MUCH easier to do on the snow.

So anyway, what I was thinking about it my favorite moments from Gilligan’s Island. The scenes that I consider the best. In no particular order, I give you:

• When they were sitting there dialing the phone trying to call someone for help. I’m not sure why they were dialing random numbers, but I guess all that time on the island had given them all phone number amnesia.
• When Gilligan is flying around with the jet pack. That’s cool. Jet packs are cool.
• When they were all bad guys/spies and the makeup compact and the soup ladle were communications devices, and Gilligan had the special lip protectors so the poison lipstick couldn’t hurt him. That episode rocked.
• Radioactive veggie seeds. So many different reasons this one rocks, there isn’t enough room to list them all.
• The episode where they make the silent movie. The image that sticks in my head is when the tripod holding the camera sinks lower and lower and they all just crouch down to stay on camera.

And your favorites?

I’m a bad dump truck driver. I have been scarce this week, busy trying to figure out if I spelled scarce properly. I think I did. It looked funny to me, but everything does.

Why do I feel like I haven’t had a moment to myself? I really have had a few, I just haven’t been using the computer in the evening, and I barely have time to pee at work. (Okay, I have time to pee, but you know what I mean.) So what fills my time? Sick boy, Sudoku and Animal Crossing. This is my whole life. I know you won’t believe me, but I am even backed up on reading my People Magazines. So you know it’s serious because that just doesn’t happen.

I am a Sudoku addict. I had let it go for a while, but picked it back up again, and now I am working on doing Fiendish level puzzles. I’m not great at them, but I have finished a couple without cheating. No, really! My current level, if I had to pick one, is “Difficult”. Mild is too easy, I need to at least be slightly challenged. I guess when I finish the current book of them, there isn’t a book 4 so I’ll probably slow down or stop with the Sudoku for a while. But I know I won’t be able to give it up entirely.

As for Animal Crossing: Wild World – now Mr. Dump is hooked on it too. The only sound you hear in my house at night is the whistling sound of someone catching a fish. I’m still waiting for someone out there reading this to let me know that they are playing so we can visit each other using WiFi…I can show you how I decorated one room of my house all in the Snowman furniture. I actually think I might have almost completed the set. I may be missing a piece or two, but I’ve got almost everything, including the floor and the wall. I’m also looking for the Lovely Phone, so if you play and you have the Lovely Phone, you will be my best friend forever.

Junior is feeling better, not 100%. He missed 2.5 days of school (he went home early yesterday) so cross your fingers that he makes it all the way through today. He really can’t afford to lose any more time!

Junior had perfect attendance at school this year…until today. Poor kid has had a low-grade fever since I picked him up last night. It’s not like he wasn’t going to blow it when we go to Florida in April anyway, but I have to tell you, I can’t BELIEVE he hasn’t missed a day of school since it started! The last day of January!

What a difference a few years make. Remember, this was the same child who needed ear tubes because he had so many ear infections as a baby (I’ll have to find the actual number…I think like a fisherman I keep embellishing. I want to say 23 by the time he was 15 months old, but that seems high. Then again, he had a lot of them. He was my little snot-nosed boy. Still is, actually, but a lot of it is allergies. And we’ve just been incredibly lucky this year as far as illnesses. Nothing so bad that he had to stay home. But he’s home with my mom today until I can get out of work. He did seem better this morning, but he still had a slight fever and you’re not supposed to send them to school like that, so I didn’t.

Oh, and as a hint of the weather to come, tonight we sign him up for the 2006 Little League season. C’mon, spring!

Skiing Saturday didn’t go as well as it had the week before. At Nashoba, the only beginner hills they have are the bunny slopes with tow ropes, so I went up the lift to the intermediate slope where they take the kids taking lessons. Very very steep. Way too steep. And I was having an impossible time controlling my speed. I don’t know why this was so much harder than last week, but I felt like my skis were sticking in the snow, so I couldn’t turn, etc. etc. etc. Which put me in a panic. Which didn’t help me at all.

The trail felt WAY too narrow and too steep for me, so I didn’t feel like I could traverse…every time I turned I’d start flying down again, so instead of lazy S’s down the mountain, I was going across, then stopping. Back and stopping. No fun. I just felt completely out of control…I hated hated hated it. I made two runs, fell down a total of 5 times, including one slide that made snow go up my back and down my snowpants. I was not a happy camper. (Even less so the next day when every part of my hurt – especially my hips and butt).

I will try to go back to Wachusett in the next week or so, and go on their easy run so I can get my confidence back. I was just not ready for the intermediate trail, and as it stands, I won’t be skiing again at Nashoba until I figure out why I was having so many problems. I swear, I did really well the previous Sunday, you can ask Mr. Dump.

I think it’s time to come clean with everyone. You have a right to know. It’s hard to talk about so I’ll say it quick, like ripping off a Spider-Man bandage.

I took up a winter sport.

Don’t hate me, okay? I know that my pudgy out-of-shape self has been an inspiration for legions of Dump fans across this great, illegally wire-tapped land of ours. I am famous for my love of curling up by the fire and ignoring anything that requires me to venture outdoors from November through March.

So I apologize.

But I have always been unable to handle peer pressure (okay, that’s a lie but go with me here) and I was forced…FORCED…into this. And I didn’t hate it. I didn’t hate it at all. And I will probably do it again tomorrow.

I took a 1.5 hour ski lesson last Sunday, and lived to tell the tale. Not only that, but I did pretty well. [James Frey Embellishment Alert!] And my instructor, an ex-navy seal on a booze bender who’s legs were both amputated at the hip, recommended me to the head of the ski team. They made me their captain and at the end of my lesson I participated in a giant slalom competition, where I placed 2nd. I would have placed first, but as I was coming down the hill, a small child was chased out of the crowd by a wild boar, and I had to save her before I could cross the finish line. [End Embellishment.] So it was a good day. Wish me luck tomorrow!