Yes, life is a fire drill around here! Thank you very much. We had a *real* fire drill building evacuation exercise yesterday at work. One that was originally scheduled for Friday morning (yes, we even got an email in advance) but got rescheduled until Monday because it rained torrentially most of Friday. Believe me, when our fire alarms go off, we go OUT! They are LOUD and there’s an alarm directly above my cube. As we were standing out there in the parking lot, two vee-hickles containing men with cameras and floppy hats drove past us. We joked that the company was sending someone out to photograph our little exercise. Not. Of course they were *birders*! I wonder what they had spotted amongst the geese and ducks and herons and things in “our” pond.

Anyway, I hate when we’re down a vee-hickle but we are for the couple days it takes to fix the almost imperceptible bump in the Ninja from the little rear-ender a couple weeks ago. The one where I totally over-reacted and almost had a complete meltdown. Git me on to some o’ them thar happy pills pronto! Or not. I’ll save that rant for another day. Because of the vee-hickle-minus-one situation, my usual morning routine of walking at 0-dark-30, getting home just after the GG leaves for work, rattling around for about an hour before heading out myself included a new wrinkle, which was driving the GG to work. Which took just under a half hour and prevented me from doing some of my usual morning-type chores. And what the heck, that was okay! I had a good excuse for once!

Then I got home from work and I was doing my afternoon-type chores and futzing around with iPhoto and suddenly I thought, “Yikes, somebody has to pick up the GG from work!” Mouse was out and I couldn’t get hold of her, so I called the GG to ask when he wanted to be picked up. His reply? “I’m on the Broadway Bridge!” Sigh of relief. I had forgotten that he intended to walk home!

And that brought back memories. I have walked across the Broadway Bridge many many times. Way back when we were first married and *I* used to work with “them thar slackers over at the EPA”, *I* used to walk home from work. Every day. We lived in an apartment that was a mile or so closer to our workplace than the landfill and we would drive to work together and I would walk home. I can’t exactly remember how many miles it was but I think it was about four.

When we figured out that the Beach Urchin Lizard Breath was on the way, we bought our loverly landfill. It was about a mile farther away from work than our apartment but, up until about the end of the 7th month, I still walked home from work. It was summer and it was hot but I was still okay with walking but, in the end, five miles was just a bit too much. It wasn’t really the distance, it was just that it took away from the time I needed to settle into our new house landfill. So I quit walking home from work. But I didn’t quit walking. Nosiree. I still walked a few miles a day, I just worked out a circuit around the neighborhood. On the last day before the Beach Urchin Lizard Breath was born, I was still walking that circuit. It was a week or so before her due date but my Celtic 6th sense somehow kicked in just enough that I made the GG go with me. I can still remember walking down Alice Street wondering what those little shooting pains going through my legs were. Even though I had spent the last almost-nine-months reading every blasted pregnancy and early childhood book ever published. And sure enough, at something like 7:40 the next morning (I’m too lazy to look it up), the Beach Urchin Lizard Breath aka the Epitome of Cutosity made her first appearance.

Thanks for spacifying me, you guys (you know who you are). Today, I needed that.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.