Farewell to a mentor

My friend and former neighbor, Connie, died last week.

She was a longtime school teacher with a sharp sense of humor who survived throat cancer and went on to live many (productive) years after that. For nearly 20 years, she and her husband, Lee, lived kitty-corner to our house. I house-sat and plant-sat for her when she would go on vacations, and I would fix meals for Lee, who had MS all the time that I knew him and was bedridden for most of that time.

Connie, we'll all miss you.

Shake-shake, shake-shake-a-shake it!

So ... we spent Friday night at the Tower West bar, catching up with a lot of Matt's classmates, including Travis, who drove through an ice storm with a broken heater to get home in time for Christmas morning; Chris, who's shipping out to Iraq in April; Michael, whose wife is expecting kiddo No. 2; and a few others whom I knew and a lot of others whom I didn't ... and as we stood there, catching up and enjoying much good beer and trying to talk over the not-so-dulcet tones of the house band, another fellow was apparently enjoying the music so much that -- with or without a dance partner -- he was going to dance ... and dance he did.

Shake-your-money-maker, gettin'-jiggy-wit-it dancing.

Nobody in the group I was talking to knew who he was, but I spied him chatting it up with a few others later on. And I caught the grooviness on video.

"Do you happen to know who that is, Sarah?" one girl asked curiously, because I was about to pee my pants laughing while I taped it.

"No, no ... it's just totally cracking me up," I answered, trying to hold the camera steady.

This morning, as we chowed down on eggs and toast at Perkins, I saw Mr. Shake It in the back dining room, looking much more subdued (and a bit sleepy) in a red hoodie and trying to maintain conversation with what I assumed was his family. No jive going on in the earlier hours of a Saturday morning, apparently ...

Bottom's up

As I waited in the Albertson's liquor store to buy my share of holiday happiness, I marveled at the line, which began at the registers and went to the back of the store, around the back of the store, down the far aisle and almost back to the door.

"There sure are a lot of alcoholics around here," one guy in line behind me observed.

I turned around.

"There are a lot of in-laws around here," I said.

He nodded sagely. "The two go hand-in-hand, I guess."

I agreed, then plunked my liquid happy on the counter and was promptly rung up.

"Did you need my ID?" I asked. They always need my ID. I'm perpetually 12.

"No," the lady said wearily. "And if you decide to turn me in for that, it means I get out of here a little earlier today, which would make my day."

Merry Christmas

Snow Angel

As much as I complained about the cold and snow over the weekend in Gillette, it was exactly a year ago when we were having Mom and Dad's anniversary party there, and it snowed that weekend, too, much to Molly's dismay.

Molly hates Wyoming and blames her spite on Wyoming always being covered in a layer of what she's convinced is permafrost and rarely getting above zero before the wind is factored in. I think this is unfair, but I do dislike the wind in Wyoming.

This weekend was special, in that Mother Nature got back at me for not getting my car stuck once last winter.

Oh, it got stuck. And good. At night. Outside of town. I was wearing a dress and high heels and had left my snowboots conveniently in my coat closet in Laramie. My only option besides my very cute black heels was a very cute pair of black dress boots. Better than the heels, but by the time the ordeal was over, I was pretty sure I wouldn't have any feet left to worry about needing shoes or boots ...

I had gone out to visit Brooke and Colin and the kids and wound up staying for dinner and a recorded episode of "My Name is Earl." And then at 8, when Colin said he was worried that I might not be able to get back out of the driveway, I decided to try my not-so-superior drift-negotiating skills.

They're still not very superior.

The ironic thing was that, should stuck come to tow, I was stuck behind the very vehicle we needed to do the towing. Hah. Hahaha.

So Brooke had a go.

It was a slight improvement -- after pulling forward too far and nudging her SUV with my front bumper, she pulled back, the car floated in the drift ... and wound up stuck behind a tractor, with mere inches between the tractor tire and the front of my car. I couldn't hear what she shouted at the dashboard, but I can imagine, and I was glad the kids were in bed, whatever it was.

So now I'm in the "boots," black tights and a short dress, and I'm shoveling snow from around my car as fast as I can. It was frickin' cold.

And then Colin, who just thought he was going to get to go to bed, wound up pulling on his full-body coveralls and work boots and had his own go at getting it unstuck. He managed to get it stuck in a convenient enough position that Brooke was able to get the SUV out of the garage, and then it was a good ol' game of wintertime tug-of-war, SUV vs. tiny little sedan.

In the meantime, Brooke and I maintained a steady stream of apologies.

"I'm so sorry you guys are having to help me get out."

"I'm so sorry I asked you to come out here ... I should have known."

And so on ...

And every time my car found a new and deeper drift or a deeper, muddier rut to get stuck in, I apologized all over again.

While it was getting re-stuck, it was also kicking out quite a bit of mud, quite a bit of which wound up on me -- my clothes, my coat, my hair, my glasses. It didn't matter where I stood -- my car was determined to give me a spa-quality mud bath. Joy.

"At least it wasn't manure," my dad said when I told him the story the next morning.
At least.

To make a long (and cold) story a bit shorter, after much tugging, swearing, steering, revving, more apologizing, shivering, swerving, charging and more tugging ... the car was free, and my numb feet managed to press the pedals and my numb hands steered the wheel and my numb mouth asked for warm, woolly socks when I got home ... and then I lay on the floor in front of the pellet stove, my feet suspended in front of the blower while Mom and I discussed life and the crazy renters in her house.

Once I got the feeling back in my feet, things were pretty good.

But I think I've more than paid my dues for not getting stuck last winter. I hope it doesn't happen again this winter.

Matchmaker, matchmaker ...

Note to the world:

It should always concern you when your mother calls and asks whether you can look up someone's page on "the myface, facespace thing" without them knowing about it.

If there's a stalker gene in our family, I now know which side it came from.

The reason for this anonymous spying became quite clear:

Since I won't consider getting a job in Gillette, she has decided to sieze on the potentially amorous route of bringing me back up north. Despite my not wanting to live back in Gillette. At all.

She just met the nicest guy, the girls at the police department absolutely rave about him (that's a completely different story -- why she was at the police department), and then this super-nice guy was at church on Sunday, and he's tall and real cute and polite and just loves her pastor ...

So she wants me to cyber-stalk this fellow. Or to just move back to Gillette.

La Chaim, Yenta. La Chaim.

Wyoming Weekend

Actually, it was a Gillette weekend. A good weekend.

Mom and I spent Saturday garage-saling. I haven't been to a garage sale in years, and I was proud to have honed my scavenging skills among the racks of Nu2U, Goodwill, the ARC and Savers, because these skills helped me make a haul on Saturday. I came back to Laramie with considerably more than I left with.

That includes three boxes of books that I was ordered to clear out of the storage shed. In the whole scheme of the storage shed, three boxes (four, if you count the box of stuff I didn't want back) don't take up that much room, but ... I was really glad to get my original-edition Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden books back. I'd been wondering about those.

I'm scared for the next trip home, though. I think I'll have to tackle the bags (and bags and bags) of stuffed animals, and I'm not quite sure that I'm up to it.

Sunday was church and a potluck and lots people who I don't know but who apparently know plenty about me. It kind of makes me uncomfortable to have a conversation about my hopes and dreams with a person whose name I can't remember. When they get into boyfriends, I really get worried. How come they know so much about me, and I can't even remember their name?

I spent pretty much all of Monday with the Springers.

I passed along the joy of twirling to a 2-year-old. I got to get in hours and hours of baby talk and baby grins and baby squeals.

I tried to share the joy of Fat Tire with Brooke, but she said she doesn't like it as much as the lime-flavored Bud Light. I think she's crazy.

And I learned that some guy at Brooke's church was just dumped by his girlfriend and that this one fact ought to be persuasion enough for me to move back to Gillette. But she couldn't remember his name. Guess I'm staying in Laramie for now.

I also learned that 2-year-old girls, given a box of raisins at 9 p.m., will be mesmerized by "13 Going on 30."

I just need to get her to learn the phrases "I'm reading Jane Austen," "I need more shoes, Mom" and "Michael Phelps is awesome." And then my portion of Amelie's education will be complete.

But twirling was a good start.

Spent time with the folks, who still think that, despite a perfectly good and usable college degree, I should drive a truck in circles at a coal mine. The money's definitely better, but .... it would be in Gillette. We all know how I feel about that.

I attempted navigating the length of Highway 59. In the rain. On a weekend. I offered a fervent prayer of thanks that I arrived back home alive, physically unscathed, with my sanity intact. I also managed, after almost 30 years of calling Gillette "home," to take a wrong turn on my way home, because the orange cones were set up in a totally confusing way. Can't wait 'til it snows on that one.

Spent time with the dog, who is still terrified of traffic and practically wrapped himself around my legs for the hour-long duration of our walk in the rain. If not for the paranoid clinging, I think it might have been a considerably shorter (drier, warmer) walk. But who knows. Charlie (the dog) met his first bunny and his first herd of antelope, and he couldn't understand why neither wanted to be best buds with him. He looked a little hurt when they all just ran away from him. And then he went back to wrapping himself around my legs.

So yeah -- good weekend. I was sad to have to come back today. I'm ready for another vacation.