Spring Break Trip & The Caravan

Spring is not in the air. However, it’s on our minds. It’s almost time for our annual spring break trip to Gulf Shores. For six years we’ve made the trip south with sisters, kids and dad in tow. And the caravan there has taught us a thing or two about business. Three cars all traveling a perfect 72 mph in unison for 1,200 miles? Impossible. Yet it’s the aim every year. Kind of like topping last year’s sales numbers; we hope we can make it around the first bend before the proverbial wheel comes off.

The Boss
Whoever is leading the caravan is in a precarious position. As in business, he/she must foresee all problems and navigate all arguments. The first shake-up comes at noon. What to have for lunch? When? Where? And the dreaded: Stopping Already?

Here, the boss must take in all sides, consider each option, and declare a clear path, all without letting on that the decision was made 50 miles ago.
The trick is to appease all (mostly himself) just enough to keep this train on the tracks.

This is why it’s usually Dad’s job. He’s armed with a Garmin GPS (named “Wilma”) and the four decades of authority necessary to cow his three daughters. He will navigate the Southern states with a steady hand at a speed that produces the best gas mileage. And nary a word shall be said about when or where we have lunch.

The Pink Slip
We make it through Michigan, sometimes as far as Tennessee, before someone snaps. Usually it’s a son-in-law hell-bent on burning an extra tank of gas just to see the ocean and his own free will a few hours sooner. When the ex-pat makes his move, the boss becomes concerned. There is a phone call from one car to the next. Later, a text, a brief inquiry on what mile marker they are at. Finally, a concession. We will see you there. A small ripple goes through the caravan. A wheel has come off. As in business, you’ve gotta let some people go.

The Entrepreneur
This freed family car is now a heady mix of exhilaration and teen-age daring. For the first 100 miles. About then, the guilt sets in. Perhaps it’s time to pull over and meet up for dinner? Get a hotel for the night together?

Texts and calls start. The wayward son-in-law sees that The Corporation is a force to be reckoned with. His small start-up is floundering.

The Arrival
Come Day 2, one way or another everyone in the company arrives in Gulf Shores. There is a small reunion, a scuffle for the best bedroom and a staff meeting... over what’s for dinner. No one wants to cook. Everyone is sick of take out. The boss announces (and is craving) brats and hot dogs on the grill. The crew bonds over a small barely controlled cooking fire. It’s a good team-building exercise to keep the fire alarms from going off. It’s just another day of business.

Here’s to one more year of the caravan and the company...

Kids & iPods - FaceTime, Texting and Other Problems

My boys now have iPods. I held them off as long as I could. Then Grandma and Christmas coincided in a glorious gifting in December and our world was forever changed.

First problem: I had to create a fake identity for each child on each iPod so they could open an iTunes account. There are now two more Chapples born in 1974. Both of my children are about a month older than I am.

Next up, texting. I think this is adorable for the first 24 hours. I save every text. This is going in their baby books! That one too! And this one! OMG, an emoticon, they are brilliant, how did they figure that out! A smiley face! A heart!

Wait. A…smiling turd? I get 56 emoticons in less than a minute. In 56 separate texts. My phone goes crazy.

I am not smiley-facing anymore. I scream at the other room, “QUIT. TEXTING. ME.” (Three screams/SEND.)

Silence. My phone stops vibrating. A long silence.

“You’re mean,” comes the next text.

I switch to video mode. I am in my oldest bathrobe. My hair is half in a ponytail, mostly not. The backwards camera makes one eye look bigger than the other. The yellow of the kitchen is a nice contrast to the storm in my eyes.

I get it on the first take in my calmest voice, I don't want them to ever forget: “I am always mean.”

It's so good it scares me. It’s a masterpiece. SEND.

Ground rules, I need them. I ask (text) my friends. What are their rules? We are all on the edge of iPod puberty. No one knows the rules. We finally find one mother who has experience: No texts after 7:30 at night. No texts in the morning. No texts after school until homework is done. I set up the “Do Not Disturb” settings as she advised. Life is good.

The following day, prior to 7:30 p.m. and post-homework, I’m getting out of the shower. I hear a girl laughing in my house. I think it’s the TV.

“Turn that down!” I bellow (remember, mean).
When they don’t reply, I grab a towel and go on the hunt. “Are you deaf????”

Only to discover that Kendall is on FaceTime with a friend from his class. Forget Big Brother, I am felled by nothing more than the view from a tween girl’s iPod. I dive to the floor.

“Oh my God,” I hiss. “Can she see me?!”

I crawl by my elbows into the bedroom. I am in horrors. I dress, fix my hair like it’s a night on the town and approach my lovely son in my lovely home in a lovely manner.

“Excuse me, darling, could you possibly wrap things up so we may share this homemade meal as a perfect family?”

When he ignores me, I get on the other side of the iPod and start making threats, lots of hand movements, swats, countdowns, bone-breakings, you know the drill. Finally, he relents and hits END. I pounce on the iPod.

“Give me that. Did she hear me? Did she see me? What if her mother saw me? Her father? And this house, our house is a pit!”

He is unconcerned. He is 10; all he knows is that his mother is always mean but that her hair’s looking pretty good for a Wednesday afternoon.

My $1,500 cat

We now have a gold-plated cat.

The 66-cent eagle (give or take $1500).

The problem began when Happy, our 4-year-old kitty, started puking. I didn’t panic. Cat puke and carpet cleaner is standard issue around here. But on Day 4, she didn’t come out to have her morning milk. I knew this to be her first serious symptom. By 10 a.m. she was under an x-ray machine.

“This is the happiest cat ever,” I told the vet. “She never stops purring.”

“Ever,” the vet confirmed, taking her temp.

The x-ray showed some inflammation in her intestines.

“Looks like there could be a blockage,” the vet said. “Could she have eaten something unusual?”

Happy likes to chew — plastic, rubber, foam. I figured there was a Nerf bullet battalion in her stomach.

The first course of action, to the tune of just 20 bucks, was to give her “magic beads” — metal ball bearings in a dissolvable capsule that would travel her digestive system to be revealed by x-ray the next day.

The boys with Happy post-surgery.

All I could think was “50 Shades of Grey.” To which one (male) friend pointed out that my cat was indeed grey.

However, we weren’t home two hours before I watched her puke and roll metal balls across the linoleum floor. Very sci-fi.

But, come morning, one bead had remained in her stomach proving the (financial) worst: There was an obstruction.

“We’ll have to go in,” the vet said grimly.

I’d braced my wallet for this very conversation. OK, I’d told myself: it might be $500, $600 tops. I could do that. It couldn’t possibly be much more. I was confident in my worst-case scenario decision as I carried my sci-fi cat into the office.

Now, though, the vet’s face showed a figure much higher than my initial estimation.

“It’s a lot,” the vet warned. “At least $1,200. Maybe $1,500.”

I had a crisis of character for a split second. Was I the kind of person who could put down her cat? Not a chance. Was I the kind of person who had $1,500 to spare? Not a chance. The room got very small and very hot in a matter of moments.

Happy looked up at me, soft, weak and purring.

“We have to do it,” I said.

I beat a hasty path to the minivan. I climbed in and cried. I wasn’t sure if it was for the cat (who, they’d assured me, would be fine) or the fact that Christmas was just around the corner and the old Christmas Club savings account (and then some) had just set sail.

Four hours later I got the verdict: a hard plastic figurine in her small intestine. A one-inch tall eagle. A 66-cent toy.

(If you read my column, you know that my son Nelson loves his eagles. You might also guess that the eagle worship around this house took a swift and serious hit.)

It was duly noted that the bill came in at $1432.66.

At first thought, there is no way you would guess a cat could eat something so big and unbendy and plastic-y. It seems far more likely that I would have come home to find her tapped-out under the Christmas tree with a true Heimlich rescue at hand.

But no, she had probably spent the better part of a day proving that nothing was off limits. First the corner of my yoga mat, followed by a Nerf bullet and then, the crème de la crème — the tiny yet regal eagle on the narrow shelf in the living room. Getting to it would be half the fun.

“Why?” I cried to anyone who would listen.

“Because it’s a bird,” was the resounding answer, my gold-plated cat purring all the while.