I woke up to pouring rain this morning.  I deliver Meals on Wheels on Tuesdays, so I decided to wait as long as I could to go out into it.  I usually leave the house at 10:15, but this morning I waited until eleven o'clock, hoping the rain would stop by then.  It did, and I didn't get wet.

What I did do, though, was lock myself out of my house.  I have a standard routine whenever I leave the house.  I get my keys and my wallet from the dresser in our bedroom, and I get my cell phone from my desk in the study across the hall. Well, I got my cell phone this morning, but I forgot my keys and wallet.  When I went to get into my car, I realized my keys were locked in my house.

We have a hidden back door key, and I was able to find it with minimal effort.  I got my wallet and keys, and I was good for the day.  I really felt dumb for doing that, though.  When I told Beth about it this afternoon, she confessed she's done that several times, and she always feels dumb when she does it, too.  So, for two days in a row I've felt dumber than dirt, but I'm really not all that dumb.  Usually.

ED

Last night (Sunday) Beth and I were invited to a dinner party in honor of a friend's 66th birthday.  When his wife invited us, she insisted there were to be no presents.  Beth, of course, had no intention of honoring that request, and she told me to buy him a bottle of his favorite whiskey, Crown Royal.

Jump back a week to Liza's birthday party on October 18th.  In getting ready for Liza's party, I noticed that we were almost out of Crown Royal.  I went ahead and bought a new bottle, and I put it in the liquor cabinet.  I put out the bottle we had with about two inches of whiskey in it, and I figured we'd open the new bottle during the party if we needed to.  At some point last week, I noticed that there was a new bottle with only a little missing, and I assumed somebody had opened a fresh bottle.  Next to that bottle was a Crown Royal box.  I assumed we had already had a bottle stuck away in the recesses of the liquor cabinet and that the box contained the new bottle I had bought for Liza's party.  Instead of buying a third bottle, I decided we'd just give our friend the bottle we already had.  We put the box in a gift bag, gave it to the birthday "boy," and didn't give it a second thought.

This morning we got a call from Judy, the birthday "boy's" wife.

"Did you mean to give Larry an empty whiskey bottle?" she asked.

"No, of course not," I said.  "What do you mean?"

"Well, I was going to put what you brought last night away this morning, and the bottle is empty.  We thought that maybe you did that as a joke because we had said no presents.  Then I got to thinking that maybe you had bought that at some liquor store and it was an empty bottle when you bought it," she said.

After laughing our butts off, I figured out what must have happened.  Whoever opened the new bottle at Liza's party put the old bottle back in the little velvet sack and put the empty back in the box.  I'm sure there must have been a difference in weight, but I didn't pay any attention to that.  I'm not really used to handling that stuff, so the weight difference went unnoticed.  This afternoon I took him a fresh bottle.

I think it's all very funny.  The only thing that would have made it better is if Larry had opened the box at the party and discovered the empty bottle.  He didn't though, but I think it's a great story nevertheless.

ED

Ten or so years ago, Beth and I made friends with a Canadian, who's actually an Australian native.  Since then, he and his wife have "wintered' here, and our friendship has grown over the years.  They're roughly our age, and their two kids (a boy and a girl) are roughly the ages of our daughters.  Ken is an international educational consultant (for example, they flew home to Toronto today, and he flies out tomorrow to Bahrain and Katar tomorrow morning; they spent three months in Australia and New Zeland earlier this year visiting Ken's family and friends, and him doing educational consulting and presentations at international education conferences).

They brought a beautiful teddy bear for Liza from the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 (which they will attend for three days), and a jug of authentic maple syrup from some little town in Onterio.  I took Ken a used book I had told him about and that he had expressed an interest in. 

Ken and Marilyn have had so many incredible experiences around the world, but they wanted to talk mostly about their grandchildren.  It was more than a little ironic to me that a man whose second edition of his most recent book (it's now in it's third edition) has sold more than a million dollars' worth wanted to talk about the kinds of down-to-earth family things Beth and I deal with.  At one point I told a joke:

Question: What do you call a twenty-something cancer victim who has full health coverage?

They didn't know, of course.

Answer: A Canadian.

They both laughed hard, but then we launched into a discussion of the present health care reform debate in this country.  Ken was amazingly well informed on the details of the debate in this country, and, I was ashamed to say, I know almost nothing about current political events in Canada.

Ken and Marilyn are very good friends, and it was wonderful to see them this morning.  I think Beth and I pride ourselves on being well-informed citizens, but having breakfast with people like them lets us know there's a world out there that we're not really in touch with. 

ED

Catherine and Mike had Liza's birthday party at our house Sunday afternoon and night, and she had a wonderful time.  I've got some video of the party that I'll post tomorrow or the next day.  There were about a dozen kids here around her age, and they most reminded me of a litter of puppies all trying to get to the mother dog at one time.  A friend described them as a wheelbarrow full of frogs, and that's a pretty good image, too.  There was much crying from a few kids when it was time to go home because they didn't want the party to be over, and that's pretty much a mark of success of a party: the guests cry when they have to leave.

I'm sure Liza was asleep five minutes into her ride home.  She and her guests jumped and tumbled in the bouncy castle her parents rented for a good two hours, and I'm sure they were exhausted when they left our house.  If I had done that, I would be dead.

I hope to get some video up tomorrow.

ED

Today is Liza's fourth birthday, and nobody loves a birthday more than a kid that age.  Her mother told us how excited she was last night and this morning, and she's going to spend Friday and Saturday nights at our house.  Her birthday party will be here on Sunday, and the forecasters promise beautiful weather for the weekend.  The party will be mostly adults (I know: beer, wine, booze), and there will be some wonderful food for the adults, too, courtesy of Liza's parents.  Frankly, I'm pretty excited about the whole thing, but I'm not as excited as Liza is.  Nobody could be.

ED 

My friend, Art, celebrated his 80th birthday today, and we went to a party in his honor tonight organized by his wife of more than 50 years.  The hors d'ouevres were plentiful and delicious, and the meal was more than delicious.  I had some great conversations with some older guys about local issues, and I really enjoyed that.  Art's daughter, who lives in Minneapolis, asked me about Iron Knee, and I told her it was well and good.  She said some things that made me think she actually reads this thing, and that made me feel good.

Happy Birthday, Art.  80 years old?  You've got another 20 years coming your way, at least.

ED

The last stop on my Meals on Wheels route this morning was a new client.  I had a little bit of a problem finding it at first, but I finally did.  Most of the clients in that neighborhood live in houses that I would charitably call "run down."  Actually, most of them are what less sympathetic white people would call shacks.  This house was new, and it was definitely something I would live in.

There were two old black men sitting in rocking chairs on the porch.  One of them had a cane because of some paralysis, and the other one was a neighbor from across the street.  They greeted me profusly, and I took the meals into the house.  Afterwards, I hung out on the porch with those two guys for about a half hour.  That was my last stop of the day, so I had some time to spare.

Those two guys were so friendly.  We talked about all kinds of things.  My client had been a lab technician for Raytheon in Massachusetts for thirty-three years.  He told me he had helped assemble the first microwave oven, and he also said he had worked on sonogram machines.  This man has made a major contribution to our technological culture, and there he was, sitting on the front porch in the middle of the Black ghetto of Panama City, Florida, swapping stories with his neighbor and with me.  He told me he had grown up on that block, and he pointed to a shack across the street and said that was his boyhood home.  I wanted to hang out with those guys for the rest of the day, but I had promises to keep. 

I asked if he kept the place up himself because the lawn and edgings were really neat and well cared for.  He said his nephews did it, but he grew his garden himself.  The garden was about knee high in weeds, but the neighbor clipped a bag of okra for me.  It was fun for me and the client spotting the okra for the neighbor to clip.  We laughed hard.  A lot.  There was obviously deep friendship between those two guys, and it was also obvious they wanted to be my friend.  I just might have to go back there soon and hang out with them on that porch.

He said he and his wife have three kids, but they all live in Massachusetts.  His granddaughter recently won a scholarship to Amhurst College.  Whoa!  What you won't find in a poor Black neighborhood delivering Meals on Wheels!  Is there any wonder I love it?

ED 

Friday afternoon Beth and I took granddaughter Liza to see Disney Playhouse on Tour at the Marina Civic Center.  That place is a big theater that hold about 2,500 people, and it was full.  There was a second show of the same thing at 7:00 Friday night, and that one actually filled up before the three o'clock show.

Liza absolutely loved it.  She was between Beth and me, and she grooved to the music.  She stood up and danced, as Beth and I did, too, and we had a great time with all the Disney characters Beth and I grew up with:  Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofey, and Pluto.

One character was Handy Manny.  He was a Mexican construction worker, and he lives on Sheetrock Mountain.  There was a little ethnic variety in the show, but why not a Mexican doctor or a Mexican teacher?  I had never heard of Handy Manny as a Disney character before.  Beth and I were talking about the stereotype during the intermission.  I said I thought he should be Handy Andy because of, you know, the rhyme and all.  The woman seated in front of us turned around and said, "His name is really Handy Emanuel or some Italian name like that."  I said, "His name is probably Manuel."  She agreed.  Still, Handy Manny isn't a good rhyme.  And I don't know that featuring a Mexican as a construction worker is all that good an idea without counterbalancing him with an educated Mexican professional.

We took Liza to see a Sesame Street live show last year, and I absolutely loved it.  Sesame Street was a daily visitor to our home when our children were little, and there were times in that Sesame Street show that I had reminiscent tears streaming down my face.  Last year at three years old Liza could sing all of the Sesame Street songs, and I could, too.  This year Liza couldn't sing any of  the Disney songs, and I couldn't either.  She's watched Disney all her life, and I have, too.

ED   

Wednesday is usually a down day for me.  I ran some errands for the Silent Auction the Council on Aging is going to have as part of their Fall Festival on November 7th, and one of the places I went to get a donation was Starbucks.  There's a new one in my neighborhood, so that's where I went.  The thirty-something manager was as nice and friendly as he could be, and he said he might bring his kids to the Fall Festival (I kind of got the impression he has those kids on the weekend as a single father, and he's looking for something to keep them entertained.).  He implied that his job involves his going to a lot of things like that, and, ironically, that's not what you'd really expect from the manager of a coffee shop.  That place is new, and I've been in it twice (both times to beg; never to drink coffee), but it was pretty crowded each time.  There were a couple of tables that had people talking, but most seemed to be singletons working laptops.  I guess the heyday of the coffee shop of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and the other 18th Century London literary notables has changed, but probably not really.  Although I doubt Johnson and Boswell had WiFi connections in their coffee shops like Starbucks does (what with no electricity in the 1750's), they would have welcomed them.

ED