Sometimes Plans Change . . . For The Better

If you had asked 14-year old me what she thought 34-year old me would be doing, she probably would have snapped her gum, twirled her over-permed hair, and muttered something about ruling the universe, or at the very least some sort of big company. Through a thick North Dakota accent, she would have laid out plans involving wealth and world travel and the single life.

Sometimes 34-year old me thinks about those plans and wonders what the hell happened. Not that I have any regrets, because I most certainly don't, it's just that I would have thought that at this point in life I would be further along my career path, debt-free, and I most certainly thought I would have figured out a cure for split ends by now. Heck, I would have thought that I would have negotiated world peace, put an end to poverty, and prevented Carrot Top from becoming the world's scariest thing with a face. I kinda aimed high, if you know what I mean.

And I still do.

Somewhere along the path of life, I figured out that I'm here to make a difference, but not in the way I originally pictured. Rather that doing it all by myself, I feel like I'm here to make sure Alexis gets a chance to do whatever it is that she decides she wants to do.

I've always thought that the kid will grow up to do something truly amazing. I still think that. My job is to stay out of her way as she finds her way there. It's like I'm the bumper pads at the bowling alley, not really interfering with the ball, but making sure it keeps headed in the general direction of that strike.

This kid. She's going to do some amazing things.

When I think about 14-year old me, I realize just how far I've come and how much I've accomplished. I mean, I grew up in a house that looked like this:

(Not our actual house, but close enough in appearance to make me look twice.)

And now I live in this:

And I can safely say I moved on up all by myself, through a lot of hard work and stubbornness and a bunch more hard work.

Now I have the privilege of seeing just how far Alexis can go.

It's going to be amazing.

The Best Laid Plans Are Spoiled By Plastic

Let's play a game for a minute. Pretend that you have this big, fancy, elaborate thingamajig that you bought at IKEA. Let's say it has something like 213560987612 parts, give or take one or two. One day, you decide to buy a new house and you want to keep that thingamajig, but it won't fit in the moving truck fully assembled. So, you tear it apart, very carefully memorizing where each little bit and piece and part goes. You get to your new house and begin the process of reassembling the thingamajig, but alas! You seem to have lost one little tiny piece of the thingamajig! It's an important piece that connects the whatsit and the whosit together and you remember that it was sort of shiny, kind of a square but more of a circle, and it had this thing that went that way, but you have no idea what it's called. You realize that you're going to have to go to IKEA and ask them for help, even though you are basically going to be that idiot who has no idea what exactly the question is. You just know that you'll recognize the correct part when you see it.

Now, let's make our little game a little bit more complicated. Let's pretend that you *think* that the thingamajig probably came from IKEA, but there happens to be another store in town that sells almost identical thingamajigs. Yours might have come from there. Actually, it might have come from pretty much anywhere because it might have been purchased online. You still need that little part, but now it's harder because IKEA and the other places have totally different names for their bits and parts and you're really not sure which place you should check first.

Welcome to the wild, wild world of pond parts, otherwise known as my personal hell. I've been hanging out here for a bunch of weeks now.

So. First there was the drama with the digging. See, you kind of have to dig a hole if you want to have a pond. The problem is that it got to be REAL hard to do that digging when it kept raining every weekend. At one point, we completely gave up and started building a patio instead. When that was done, I used this space to whine about the weather, which, of course, immediately led to several days of clear skies. That's how it works, you know. The universe loves to prove me wrong so much that all I have to do is whine here and the situation changes.

Anyway, we finally managed to get the hole dug. A few thousand trips to the Lowe's later, the pond walls were reinforced with concrete blocks and the liner was in place. I filled my happy little pond with water, began placing all of the rocks, and got ready to plug in the pumps so we could have a waterfall.

The story should have ended there. But, it didn't.

As we lined up all of the filters and skimmers and pumps and UV filters and such, we realized that we were missing a piece. ONE PIECE. We were missing the thing that connected the hose to the filter, which pretty much meant the giant hole in the ground was nothing more than a giant hole in the ground. So, I set about trying to find that very small piece of plastic.

That's where the IKEA analogy comes in. Now that I have two weeks more experience in the Language of Random and Stupid Pieces of Plastic, I know that we needed a male threaded slip 2" to 1.5" reducer, unless you're shopping at a different store in which case it might as well be called a doohickey because I DON'T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF RANDOM AND STUPID PIECES OF PLASTIC.

Ahem.

I tried Amazon, but they didn't have pictures so I could see if I was getting the right thing.

I sent Mr. Husband to every single possible store in all of Pittsburgh.

I perused every online catalog for every pond supply store in all of the United States and Canada.

I couldn't find the piece.

Actually, I take that back. I did find it at one point and it only cost $.99, but they wanted $20 for shipping. NO, THANK YOU.

In the meantime, we decided to get the *other* side of the pond running (we're running two pumps). We ran all the pieces, connected it all together, and TA-DAH!

The mother trucker was leaking. A lot.

We put on our detective hats and tore the whole dang pond apart looking for the leak. We finally found it, only to discover that WAHOOO! It was another stupid little piece of plastic! A gasket or a whatsit or a whatever had gone bad, so then I had to try and hunt that sucker down.

And then! And then! And THEN! Two weeks later, I discovered something very critical. I learned that the places that install sprinkler systems at golf courses and baseball fields and such sell little pieces of plastic! They have their own names for all of those things, but armed with a lot of research, I marched my butt in there and bought the pieces we needed.

There might have been a party that night. A big one. A VERY BIG ONE.

So we installed the pieces and gooped the sealant in all the right places and waited. And waited. Because sealant needs lots of time to dry.

When FINALLY it came time to turn the whole thing in, I held my breath, closed my eyes, muttered a little *please*please*please*please*please* sort of chant, and did it.

Tonight. Tonight I had every single piece and bit of pond thingamajigs running, for the first time ever.

Then I found another leak. An easy to fix leak, indeed, but the sort of leak that requires sealant. It requires sealant that can only be applied to very dry and very clean surfaces, and then it needs 24 hours to cure.

I'm predicting that the pond will be fully up and running sometime next year. You just know that once I get the leak fully sealed, another bit of drama will pop up.

I'm pretty sure the frogs that invaded the pond are behind all the shenanigans. Obviously, they hate me.

I Need a Denture Cream Coupon, Please

I am very accustomed to always being the youngest person around.

I was the youngest in my graduating high school class.

I was the youngest in nearly all of my college classes.

I was the youngest manager at the department store I worked in during and after college.

I was the youngest consultant on nearly every project I worked on when I played the ERP consultant game.

I'm not consistently the youngest anymore. It's . . . weird.

As if I need reminded that I'm no longer the baby all the time, lately life has been smacking me in the face with the Dude, You're Old Stick.

First I spent Saturday night at the Secret Agent L reveal shindig. Within minutes of walking through the door, I was all, "OMG. I am OLD." It was easily 8213532423 degrees in that place. Or maybe that's how many beads of sweat ran down my back as I stood talking to some of my favoritest people. Either way, it was HOT HOT HOT HOT. Just thinking about it makes me think I should go take a nap. Because I'm old. And then there was the music. Wait, no, that should say and then there was THE MUSIC. It was louder than an army of toddlers smacking on an plethora of drumsets while screaming Wheels on the Bus. I complained about how it was too loud for me to be able to hear the people I badly wanted to talk to, the people who were standing RIGHT NEXT TO ME, at least 5,000 times. Because I am old. So GET OFF MY LAWN.

Then, on Sunday, Alexis decided it would be a good idea to turn me into a cripple. It wasn't that she took a hammer to my knees, but she probably should have. It would have been faster. Instead, she played and played and played in her pool. Her splashing poison of choice was to run from the yard and leap into the air, landing with a giant splash in her shallow little pool. Landing with a giant splash on her knees, that is. She did it over and over and over, laughing her little butt off every single time she smacked down hard on her legs. I swear I can't walk today and all I was doing was watching her have fun.

Then today. Oh, today. Taco Bell? YOU ARE NOT MY FRIEND. I've been yearning for a Taco Bell bender since Saturday when @JanePitt just had to go and mention the place. Today for lunch I finally found my way there. I rolled into the drive thru and ordered the same thing I've been ordering since I was in high school--a bean burrito plus sour cream and minus onions. I haven't had one in probably a year . . . or perhaps longer. There was a time when it was my go-to lunch of choice because it's really hard to eat that cheap. Except, it wasn't that cheap. I'm used to paying a little over $1 for my dreamy Taco Bell lunch, but not today. Today? $1.81. For a burrito. ONE BURRITO! I stared at the receipt in complete dismay that I had spent so much money on something so simple (and slightly disgusting). It turns out that while the burrito is still $.99, the sour cream now will cost you an arm, a leg, and $.70. $.70! Why, back in my day, that crap only cost $.25! And it was uphill! Both ways!

I'll never be able to afford my hearing aids, denture adhesive, and knee replacements if I keep spending a small fortune on sour cream.