I'm in a bit of limbo here as Chuck ponders the financial ramifications of a trip to New Yawk.  As self-admitted cheap bastards go, he ranks among the more adventurous, so I'm not going to count him out yet.  Any day now, the Gnomes of Atkinsland will be passing a note up through the floorboards with a yea or nay.  It's a tough call, to be sure, one I understand well since Chuck and I share roughly the same circumstances with a wife and a young daughter each of which requires feeding and stuff like that.  In addition, Chuck has a manly SUV (he calls it a truck - pure denial) that has its own needs right now, so it would be no surprise if he decided this is not a good time to go to Manhattan for an incredible adventure, thrills aplenty, in the company of your congenial host.

*****

In other news, I got a call the other morning from my Alpha Nemesis.  She is a woman from my past, my very distant past.  Like when I was a toddler.

She is my cousin, my father's sister's daughter, and her high school afternoons were spent with me in her house while my parents were at work.  The conflict in our lives centered around the television.  This was the Fifties, when some households didn't even have tv's, and this household had but one.  One that I insisted be tuned to Channel 13 so I could watch Felix The Cat.  My cousin demanded that the set be tuned to Channel 7 so that she could watch American Bandstand and get lost in doing the Mashed Potato.

Since high school girls and toddler boys have exactly the same amount of selfishness, our battles were fierce.  The whining and crying  often spilled out into the street.  I'd go at her with a diaper pin and she'd break a Nehi bottle and start jabbing.  Damn but those were sweet times.

Then I started school, didn't see her anymore, and went on to become a very very very famous online journal writer.  

She married an Army guy, moved away, had kids.

I've seen her maybe four times in the last 35 years.

Then last week she had to put her mom in a home.  You know.  A home.  Her mom had been staying with my parents for reasons which are so utterly bewildering that it all makes me want to lie down in the woods and wait for snow to cover me up.

And last Saturday I'm sleeping like a baby when the phone rings.  It's a quarter to nine in the morning, barely light out, and it's my long-lost cousin calling to see how I am.  She tells me she was here to put her mom in a home and she's late for the airport but how am I and I immediately growl into the phone some evil curse on Dick Clark and she counters with a cruelty aimed at Felix and it's 1959 all over again.  

She's living in Las Vegas now, a place I haven't seen in over 30 years.  It might be time for me to mosey on over there to have me a little look-see, dontcha think?  Yep, time for a trip.  Maybe crash on a relative's couch for a day or three or ten.  Watch me a little Felix, do me a little gambling.  Come back rich.  

Rich enough for a suite at the Plaza.

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Strike a blow for wackiness today.