Rockets and a lot of Red Glares (part 5)

Posted in Humor, Parenting, Science, Space, Teens, writing by Shelley Sackier

This is it. The concluding chapter. The final phase of this fantastic tale Hopefully Not a Waste in Space. This is where our hero’s outcome and the outcome of her heroic journey are finally unveiled.

And in my attempt to liken this to a finely structured story, it’s broken down into bite-sized bits for ease of mastication.

We have had the Big Goal: This is where our protagonist—sweet child ‘o mine—launches her balloon—SkyHAB (sky high altitude balloon, carrying what I swear is nothing more than a giant cloud urinal) 100,000 feet upward, with fingers crossed, to capture space data – Episode One.

Next we came upon The Crisis: SkyHAB launched, but the GPS landlubbered. The balloon was untethered and unaccounted for. We petitioned the US Government for a reimbursement of paid taxes that went toward defective global spyware and are awaiting our refund which should arrive any day after the twelfth of Dream On – Episode Two.

Following that was the Recommitment to the Goal: WE LOCATED SKYHAB! … sort of – Episode Three.

At last we came to The Climax: The hunt for SkyHAB was filled with deadly peril. It ended with a heart-palpitating car chase and potential capture by Lizzie Borden’s grandson. Was this the end for the balloon and our young scientist with behemothic book smarts but space cadet street smarts? – Episode Four.

And finally, The Dénouement or The Reveal: I’d spill the beans, but then you may never read further then the end of this sentence.

So much tension you could practically string this story between two toothpicks and walk across it.

Ah, the makings of a tale that falls a few levels below Dreamworks, but a notch above your average 9th grade history newsreel. And one we can wrap up tout de suite. Because I’m sure many of you are wondering whether or not my child is still alive.

I was too.

For twenty minutes I sat staring at the phone willing it to ring, wondering and panicking at the thought that my daughter had been nabbed by a child snatcher who was following her as she attempted to recover her balloon, parachute and THE PAYLOAD in the middle of no-cell-hell. And every three minutes I phoned her with nothing but her snarky voicemail message to taunt me.

Hi, you’ve reached Chloe. Leave me your details and I’ll call you back … if I like you.

I paced. Did deep breathing exercises. Stared at Google Earth and its wretchedly slow updates. I made an award winning sculpture of the Hubble telescope with nothing more than plastic spoons and recycled tin foil.

Twenty-two minutes after loss of contact the phone rang.

“Hey,” Chloe said.

“HEY???” I echoed. “Hey? I was about to phone 911! What happened?”

“Oh, him? Yeah, he was weird. We may need a sizeable back up team. No worries. I’m on my way. What’s for dinner? I’m starvin’ Marvin.”

*face palm*

Two days later was the big senior project seminar. My daughter had to give a couple of presentations to explain her adventures and unveil her results. Well … no balloon equals no data, as all the data was in THE PAYLOAD. And THE PAYLOAD was somewhere in the Sandy River Reservoir. Camera footage, statistical calculations, motherboard bits and pieces that tell you the secrets of the universe were all gone. There go your hopes and dreams. Science shakes its head at you, tsking.

Still, the presentations were stellar. A lot of telling, but no showing–yet somehow still stellar.

THEN …

The next day I received a phone call from some wild woman screaming. I finally recognized the dulcet tones of my child and asked her to pull it down a few decibels.

Someone found the balloon!

And not just someone. She said his name was Papa Smurf.

My mind immediately envisioned a small pack of blue forest creatures that lived near the reservoir where SkyHAB went down, and somehow, purely in the interest of furthering science, they managed to break their cardinal rule of no contact with humans and phoned the Department of Natural Resources to report a spacecraft landing.

Not really.

Actually, Papa Smurf, aka, “Big Mike” is a Virginia fisherman who, in the middle of doing a little afternoon big mouth bass hunting, landed himself something a little less delicious but definitely fishy.

The writing on the side of THE PAYLOAD was smeared, but our last name was visible. Enter Facebook.

The rest of the story goes a little like this: My daughter ignores friend request – stranger danger – and Papa Smurf/Big Mike must get creative.

Facebook says my daughter interns at the university’s aerospace research lab.

Papa/Mike hunts down a professor.

Describes to professor the reeled in riches. Our professor texts his industrious intern. His intern explodes with exultation.

His intern calls her mother and begs for bakery goods to reward the fisherman with multiple monikers in exchange for THE PRECIOUS PAYLOAD. The trade is made. Strawberry pie is swapped for a lunch box full of cryptic clues to the cosmos and a few bits of water weed.

We are thrilled.

It is finished.

I am exhausted.

She is planning her next mission: Definitely Not a Waste in Space! Where one young scientist attempts to discover if Silly Putty can be used as insulation on homemade sub-orbital spacecraft.

Me? I might just back out of this next one quietly. I think it’s pretty clear that I ain’t no rocket surgeon.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all talked about down in the pub. Plus, you can see more of Robin Gott‘s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone.

The Hero’s Journey (http://thewritersjourney.com)
Bestselling Book Series of all Time (http://www.thedailybeast.com)
The 6 most mindblowing things ever caught by fishermen. (computer.cracked.com)

21Jun2014

Tireless teenage boys; the starter kit to lunacy and delirium.

Posted in Humor, Parenting, Party, Teens by Shelley Sackier

I cannot count how many times I have had a gaggle of girls at my house for a weekend and the leftover results has been the usual scattered sleeping bags, towels and the heady, pervasive smell of nail polish after they’ve all gone home.

This last weekend, I have had a barrage of boys file through the house, and although I’m fairly sure there were only five or six teenagers in total, the result of their visit has been the depletion of all of my towels, all of my dishes, the food, bed linens, blankets, pillows, ice cubes, Q-tips (don’t ask), Band-Aids, cough drops, room spray, batteries, matches, gasoline, chlorine, anything chemically created that is often labeled with a skull and crossbones, all of the electricity our family was allotted to use for the month, and acetaminophen. The last entry was entirely depleted by me in trying to manage the depletion of everything else.

After they vacated, the house was also left with a heady, pervasive smell … of dirty socks.

It’s been a wholly different experience.

I rarely had to worry about the girls doing anything stupid or dangerous. I just had to make sure they would all leave as friends.

EVERYTHING the guys do is stupid and dangerous, and I just had to make sure they would all leave.

Leaving alive was also a primary concern.

Girls spend a lot of time in bathrooms and bedrooms prettying themselves up, and helping one another do it, all in the name of self-confidence boosting.

Guys spend a lot of time—no matter what room of my house they’re in—tearing one another to shreds, all in the name of self-confidence bashing.

At least the girls have the snarky decency to bash one another behind their backs after they’ve all left.

Okay, that last statement might not be entirely true, because girls can whirl a barbed compliment and land it expertly in between the shoulder blades of any of their friends. And they can do it with the precision of a skilled marksman better than most hired guns trained in the fine art of assassination. It’s perspective.

Ultimately, I might as well forget about getting any work done.

With the girls, it was usually Come up and see how we’ve henna-ed one another with these flowery designs and geometric shapes. Except your daughter, who chose only to ink herself with math equations.

That would usually lead to a lot of girl talk and then baking of cookies.

With the fellas the distractions were more like:

Where do you keep the superglue?

Can we have more towels? And maybe a few shovels?

How fast can an ambulance make it here?

No one ever asked me to come up and see ANYTHING.

It’s better for all of us that way.

But it remains true that work is a luxury and realized in an odd grouping of ten seconds snatched here or there.

Apart from the face to face interruptions, which are plentiful, there is the cacophony of noises that draw my attention away from my words. Laughter is fine, giggling is good, thumping is nerve-wracking, but silence …

That is the scariest sound of all.

There are moments when I think the ceiling above me is barely holding the wannabe frat party from collapsing. I’m fairly certain that the vibration from the bass notes alone coming from the film score to the “Animal House Lite” reenactment upstairs can do some serious structural damage. If nothing else, the paint is peeling from the walls, but then again, there’s no need to dust the ceiling light fixtures this month. Again, perspective.

But when there is no sound, when there is the absence of sound—especially right after a very large and earth shattering one—I hold my breath and count to ten. I mentally go through the list of first aid treatments I can capably do and calculate the distance to the nearest emergency room.

Then I think about drafting an apology letter to the parents of each boy and wonder what is the most tactful way of saying, “I did my best and realize now I should have hired an onsite paramedic and triage station for the living room. Whoops. My bad.”

In the end—at least for this particular episode—everyone made it out with injuries that are, according to the surgeon, non-life threatening, and supposedly will heal in such a way that will allow them to pursue the eventual dream of finding a wife and having a child.

That’s all one could ask for, right?

So I’m off to the shops to replenish my supplies—and then stopping off at the printer’s to whip up a little something for the next shindig to spontaneously combust at my house …

A waiver.

~Shelley

14Jun2014

Humble Heroes

Posted in Family, Humor, Men, Parenting, Relationships, Wisconsin by Shelley Sackier

There is a guy I know—and I’ve known him for an awfully long time—who has managed to squish a plethora of memories into an area of my brain that surely should hold less than a plethora.

I am assured by doctors that this overabundance—due to the nature of said memories—is not taxing me to the point where they would create health concerns and elevate the need for antidepressants, blood pressure meds, or an overwhelming amount of double fudge ice cream.

In fact, they have advised I use these memories in place of other treatments in order to stabilize, recalibrate, and maintain a healthy weight.

So, in times of particularly high stress, like my weekly trips to the gas pump, instead of feeling the anxiety-ridden squeeze of my pocketbook as I press the gas hose handle, I play the game I used to play with this man on a Saturday morning getting fuel after my piano lessons. The bet was this: if he could stop the hose dead on ten bucks, I owed him a candy bar. Anything above or below was my win, and I got the goods. There was no slowing down, no easing off the pump, just full fledge pressure and then—WHAM!—let go.

I always won.

The game might have been worked in my favor so the other player could avoid seeing the welling of my tears.

So now, I do that same game with myself. Squeeze, wham, note the fact that I rarely nail ten bucks, and then carry on to somewhere around sixty. Then I pay the fee and glance toward the candy bars and wave hello. I can’t afford a candy bar these days after paying for gas. And no one there is particularly concerned with the welling of my tears.

Next up? How bout the countless times I find myself in a situation where I struggle to hold my tongue, hold my words and hold my breath from releasing negativity? Displeasure directed toward my kids. Impatience aimed toward the traffic. Or outrage at my finances.

At these moments I conjure up the recollection of this man who would toss four kids, a hound, and a woman desperately in need of a break into different compartments of a station wagon and release us all onto the sharply pine-scented shores of a Wisconsin lake no one else seemed to have discovered yet.

You were allowed to grab hold of his shoulders with the quick warning of, “Let go when you must,” just before he would immerse himself beneath the water and swim with you on his back. Deeper and deeper he would plunge, until you felt your little ears pop. And when you could hold on no longer, you’d panic, bob to the surface, gasping for breath–your underwater dolphin game over. But he … would not appear. For what seemed like hours.

You would scan the waters, heart pounding. Waiting. And worrying.

And then he would materialize, quietly, smoothly—in the middle of the lake.

I will practice holding things in with grace. And exercise a tranquil reentry.

There are myriad memories of walking into a room and finding this man with an open-faced book resting in his palms. It was his default position. I would need something. An answer, permission, a sip of his drink, but mostly just attention, and it would not be denied. My urgency was met with a raise of the eyebrow, a slipping in of a bookmark, but most importantly, nearly always with a smile.

As a writer I have learned the wisest way to pen a tale is to steep yourself in other’s stories. My love for reading was one of example, fueled by someone else’s insatiable hunger for words. My love for my children is one of experience. The feeling of not being brushed off, ignored, or set aside because of inconvenience is an impressionable one, and one that has me swivel in my chair to greet whomever has called my name.

These memories are the stuff of childhood, and yet they persist. Their tangible qualities are still felt, still practiced, and still admired. I have no idea what it’s like to be this man, but I have a million memories of what it’s like to be fathered by him.

Happy Day to you, Dad. Thank you for making so many of my days … Happy.

~Shelley

31May2014

Cap and gown; the costume of progress.

Posted in Education, Parenting, School, Teens, traditions by Shelley Sackier

GRADUATION

Gathering on long stretches of lawn, huddling inside church halls, or amassing in colossal gymnasiums, tis the season to honor and applaud young scholars who have climbed the slippery rungs of the academic ladder. Here they will be granted a view that skims the treetops toward their futures.

Racing across a platform to grasp the pressed woody fibers that hold an inked seal of accomplishment, we watch the students sail forward, a breeze billowing beneath the graduates’ gowns; a tease of the winds aloft they’ll soon face full on.

A speech is prepared, rehearsed and delivered, its words an urgent call to remember the past, but seize the future, grasp it with both hands, clutch it to your heart, embrace it with a fervor that will outlast the first, tiny taste of liberty.

Dozens upon dozens of bright, earnest faces listen to microphoned wisdom: sage insight pressed upon the young and energetic meant to spur on bravery, incite tenacity, and goad some grit.

Umbilical cords to home and school, friends and parents faintly snap as if the students, fidgeting for freedom in their seats, collectively give one last tireless tug to the tethered, fraying thread that holds them bound within a tapestry of the familiar.

An abundance of flashes populate the air; crisp time-stamped moments, trapped in hand-held boxes that years later, will release a rush of recollection that will be both reflective and wistful.

Tomorrow’s outlook is surmountable, and our cloth-draped cubs will rush on ahead, taking their place at the front lines of battle, determined, unflinching, valiant.

I study these children, these long-legged, adult-bodied children, and hold my breath—inhale with hope that they may remain clear-eyed, clear-headed and clearly driven to find a conduit that will express their yet unknown ambitions.

One day they will glance back to look at their younger selves, to study their pipe dreams, their castles in air, their pie in the sky, and they will know what it took to make them go from dream to possibility, from possibility to opportunity, and from opportunity to achievement.

Never again will they find this footing, nor pass over this platform, but perhaps instead they’ll burn these bridges in order to maintain a steady, confident gaze toward a horizon we hope they will pioneer with backbone and boldness.

Be brave, be hungry, become.

~Shelley

May Gotta Have a Gott winner

In January, Rob and I announced that his sketches will be available toward the end of the year in the form of a 2015 calendar! And our readers would get to be the judges and voters for which doodles they’d like to see selected for each month. We’ll reveal the winners one by one, and come November, If you’ve Gotta have a GOTT, you can place your order. Click here to see the cartoons in competition and to cast your vote.

10May2014

The Mother App

Posted in Humor, mothers, Parenting, Technology by Shelley Sackier

What is one thing absolutely every human being has from the moment they were born?

I know you’re tempted to say reflexes, or kneecaps, or a smart phone, and you’re close, but in this particular case, the answer is: a MOTHER.

I think we all know plenty of people with stories to tell of their mothers. Some of the anecdotes are fairy tales, but most of them are historical horrors that will curl your toes. Others will admit they have no memory of their mothers, no history with their mothers and were likely hatched in a Petri dish in a laboratory buried deep beneath the Swiss Alps.

I’m not here to argue, but I think we all know that the whole ‘babies hatched in Petri dishes beneath the Alps’ story to be totally false.

They’re beneath the Bernese Alps. Let’s be specific.

Regardless, if I were to hazard a guess, we’ve probably all spent a minute or two of our lives imagining …

THE PERFECT MOTHER.

And I would like to suggest someone in AppLand creates “The Mother App.”

There are bucketloads of “mother-like” apps available for purchase and downloading today. Assistance for the working mother, the single mother, and even the “Oh my God, I’m going to be a mother!” mother. Fancy apps will turn themselves into a baby monitor. They will track your phone, your purse, or your diminishing bank account. These apps can even wash and fold your laundry for you and keep it tucked up safe in cloud storage. They’re amazing.

But I think many of us dream about the day we can make our ultimate wish list on the mother menu a reality. Heck, Obamacare is all about tailoring our medical management and wellness programs, and we’ve got the options to modify everything from our choice in education to our online surfing experience, so why can’t technology whip up a workable version of exactly what everyone wants and needs? And then slip it into the palm of our hands for effortless access?

Easy peasy.

Some of us need The Coach. A constant slug of You can do it! slogans from the moment the alarm buzzer fires off to the minute the game is called, you finish the day and hit the showers. You’ll feel like a champ and likely complete the day with a medal around your neck.

Others require The Nudge. This app is for the individuals who without constant reminders will forget to have breakfast, misplace their gym shoes, waylay their keys and fail to keep appointments. They’ll even show up at the wrong address after work only to realize they don’t own a standard poodle, somebody moved the bathroom and the woman they just kissed hello at the front door was not their wife. They need that tiny tapping at the trap door to their brain that only a mother (the Nudge) knows how to access.

No one wants to feel like a total failure in this department so one would need an app that will fill your head not only with the necessary motherly memos, but also throw you a few bones in the format of Don’t you worry, honey. Your brain is filled with much more important things than recalling passwords and remembering birthdays. I’m here for you. Now eat some fiber like my good little tiger.

A few folks desire Dr. Mom. Do you feel like you’re continually right on the edge of coming down with something? Achy, stiff, potentially feverish? This would be the Mother App for you. Just by holding your smart phone in your hand, or keeping it in your breast or back pocket, it will effortlessly monitor your heart rate, body temperature, and bowel movements. It will remind you when you need your next dose of pain killers, suggest you take a nap, and write an excused absence note for you to take to the office the next day. It will care for you better than you care for yourself. And you will sleep better for it. Now go eat some fiber.

But maybe you’re seeking The Ear.

You don’t want any I could see this coming a mile away.

No thanks on the Here’s what I think you should do.

And a big fat nix on the I told you so, and this is the thanks I get for it?

Instead, you pay for silence. With the occasional Um hm thrown in along with a light sprinkling of You poor baby. Some people just need a place to unload and not have the eye-popping therapy bill to show for it.

There you have it. I know we can all think of gobs and wads more, but I’m going to suggest you have at it in the Chatty Cathy comment section. Let me know what would be available on your perfect Mother App.

And now folks, I’m off to attempt to be the best mother I can be, and will remember to send a huge hug of thanks to the best mother I model myself after—my own. There ain’t no app like her! (Thanks, Mom. ❤ )

Happy Mum’s Day to all our American mothers, but Happy Being a Mum Day to all the rest around our globe even if today isn’t the day you get served burnt toast in bed. (And if you’ve not seen this short and wonderfully special video yet, I promise you won’t regret it!)

~Shelley

Ten days left for the “Help A Teen Do Experiments in Space I Don’t Understand” fundraising campaign on Indiegogo. If you think space is cool, give it looksee! And a massive thanks to all of you who have already contributed to science. You guys are awesome. 😀