Heidi, Forrest, and the Independence Fairy

It’s after midnight here, and instead of sleeping, I’m up simultaneously contemplating a blog post, and being fitted for a milkmaid’s yoke*.

I can safely report to you, dear readers, that it is almost impossible to type while someone is pushing a pine 2 x 4 down on the tender vertebrae at the back of your neck,  and saying things like “Pretend you’re carrying pails of milk.  How does that feel?”

Well, it’s a little hurty, actually.

Just prior to the yoke fitting, the Formerly Bearded One was industriously (and loudly) creating mounds of sawdust with the saw in the garage and also alienating the few neighbors that still speak to us after all the after-dark lawn mowing that’s been going on around here.

I can tell it’s going to be a long night here on the cul-de-sac.  Just now he came in and asked me if “maybe a little naughehyde” would help pad the part where the neck goes.  Like we have a bunch of spare naughehyde lying around the house.  Like I know what naughehyde is.

Anyway.   To answer the burning question in your mind, we had a good Fourth of July again this year.  Hopefully you did too, if you live somewhere where you even celebrate American independence.

We have wonderful old (as in long-standing, not elderly) friends that invite us down to their house in Huntington Beach almost every year for the fireworks.  I know this has to be against their better judgment, because my family has a talent for creating unexpected complications at holiday gatherings. 

For instance, last year we walked to the beach from our friend’s house.  It’s about a mile, which is a nice walk, except for the gauntlet of drunk partiers peeing al fresco alongside buildings and calling out to you to come and look.  After we watched the fireworks over the Pacific Ocean, we headed back with the rest of the crowd. On the way up the street a group of hooting guys in a car hurled a water balloon out the window and hit the FBO squarely “in the nuts”, as he reported later.  Without warning, the FBO pivoted 180 degrees on the sidewalk, leaned forward on the balls of his feet, and sprinted off into the night.  We lost sight of him after he ran out into traffic and turned the corner behind the car in question.

So there the rest of us stood, in the dark, on the sidewalk, waiting for him to come back.  Which he didn’t.  Come back.

After some awkward and self-conscious chit-chat, we finally gave up and walked the rest of the way to their house.  Almost an hour later he appeared at the door, out of breath and still wet.  “What happened?? Where have you been?” we asked.

“Oh, nothing.  I just wanted to see where they went.”

This is all the explanation he has ever volunteered.  I still picture him running up Pacific Coast Highway like Forrest Gump.

This year my fourteen year old daughter and our friend’s son decided to walk to Starbuck’s to escape the adults.  Unfortunately they decided to jump the community’s security fence instead of going around to an unlocked gate. Then there was a panicky cell phone call summoning help to the fence.

This is the sight that greeted curious onlookers, and rescuing fathers :

  (Artist’s rendering.  Shoes have been subtly added.)

Somehow, on the way over the fence, my daughter got the leg of her shorts caught on one of the spikes at the top of the seven foot fence.  Unable to lift herself off the spike, and unable to jump down, she was forced to dangle decoratively from the fence**.  A few people approached, apparently with the intent of exiting through the gate, but as my daughter was, at the time, hanging from the gate, they rode their beach cruisers the other way.  Cars driving by slowed as they passed, faces pressed to car windows.  It was like seeing a Fourth of July fairy, I imagine, just hovering in midair.  I wish that sparklers were still legal.

Fortunately she was uninjured, and once she was removed from the fence they continued on their teenager way.

There have been other holiday incidents, but I don’t have time to tell you any more right now.  I’m being called to the garage for more yoke testing.  Pray that he doesn’t want to fill the pails with actual milk, because then I’m probably going to the store.

 

* The milkmaid’s yoke is a costume element he volunteered to make for the theater production  (Oliver!) here in town. I am just a milkmaid dress dummy. At least that’s what he claims and I need to believe him. The alternative is too frightening.

** You may have noticed that I don’t mention my daughter much in these posts.  That is because she is fourteen.  And a girl.  You will be happy to know she has graciously given me permission to share this story.  Also, I am buying her things, I think.