The Adventures of
Rubber-Man

Rubber-Man and the Missing Monkey
(January - May 2003)

Yes. You heard me right. A BOYFRIEND. It all began last summer.... Rubber-Man had picked up his favourite Gal in Green after work and we came home to the Townhouse of Solitude for a well-earned cup of tea only to find Roo-bear sitting outside. "What's up, Roo?" we ask. "I'm locked out," comes the reply. "Where's Colleen?" we ask (assuming big-sister had locked her outside after an argument). "Off with Reese," comes the reply. (Roo-bear is starting to realize the hot water gathering about Spazhead's knees at this point and the pique in her voice is beginning to mix with a certain malicious glee.) It turns out that the two of them had been off riding their bikes that morning when they bumped into Reese, with whom Colleen had gotten along quite well the past school year (they had started walking home together and playing RISK at lunch etc.)  Reese and Colleen started talking. Reese followed them home. Reese and Colleen played RISK. Colleen had Reese in for lunch. Rachael went out for an after lunch bike ride and when she got back, Colleen and Reese had gone out too, prudently locking the door behind them (but not bothering to check where Rachael was and "forgetting" she had no key).

Rubber-Man and Zehr's-Woman are ardently exercising their super powers of Dad-rage and Mom-fury by this time. We had run out of fingers and toes counting up the infractions; unsupervised boy in the house, negligent little sister abandonment, criminal stupidity... the list goes on! Fortunately for Spazhead, she took so long getting home we had had a chance to calm down (tea has many uses). When she finally got home Roo-bear announced quite cheerfully "You're dead meat!" She wasn't quite dead, but for what was left of the summer Reese and Spazhead were usually sitting on the front steps playing a board game when I got home.

Once school started he usually followed her home and they'd hang out until we had to remind him it was time to deliver his papers. It interfered with Spazhead's homework once and we threatened to limit visits to weekends if she didn't get a grip. He wasn't an awful boy, although he had terrible table-manners; he'd have half his dinner in his face before we'd said Grace. He thought my miniature soldiers were pretty cool and Spazhead showed him how to paint some Warhammer figures (a miniature wargame featuring Goblins, Elves  etc. which is very popular with the teenaged wargamers) he'd bought, so he had his good points. They were pretty quiet one afternoon and I came down into the basement to find Spazhead with some pretty mussed up hair, so he obviously needed watching.

The cleverer among you will have noticed the past-tense in the last paragraph. Spazhead dumped him just after Christmas. Ripped out his poor little heart and stomped all over it in her size 5 boots. He was starting to get pretty boring (even the kissing) and just way too insecure and clingy so she "Just liked him as a friend." Ouch. Having heard that many times as a youth, I could sympathize. But the clincher was Christmas; Spazhead spent her meager money and a lot of thought getting him a Christmas present, whereas he got his mom to pick out something at the store she works at. Spazhead still wears the hat he gave her (it's a nice hat, it came with matching gloves). Reese gave away the watch she gave him. Oh well,... I was doing a lot of head-shaking during all this.

So the New Year didn't really start off very well around here. I had come home one Saturday afternoon after being in London at a friend's mother's funeral only to be told another friend had had an heart attack. Mikey is one of my miniature wargaming buddies and is usually in my basement on a Saturday evening (unless he's off camping with the Boy Scouts) pushing about small lead soldiers, rolling dice, eating cheezies and telling incredibly corny jokes. The message left for me said: "Bernice called (that's Mike's wife), she says Mike's had a heart attack and won't be able to game tonight." I shouldn't think so.... Mike has pulled through and is back to work on half days (he works in the office at one of the other Cooper-Standard plants in town), but it was scary while it lasted and I have pious thoughts of riding my bike more. I've gotten it down from the hangers on the garage ceiling... that's a start right? Mike kept his corny sense of humour right through the whole ordeal which I'm sure helped a lot (I'm sure the morphine helped a lot too). A couple of weeks of nausea followed by hospital food helped him lose a lot of weight, so he's trimmer and has had to cut way back on the cheezies (nature's most imperfect food, they've probably got less nutrition than bamboo), but the corny jokes are still pretty thick on the ground.

The rest of January and February were pretty boring judging by the Milk Calendar in the kitchen. A lot of work and kid activities. We did get to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets finally to celebrate Spazhead's birthday. Then Zehr's-Woman turned 40. She had the whole weekend off to celebrate so for Friday night we got some chinese food and a video. Decent Chinese restaurants are pretty thin on the ground around here since The Golden Bamboo closed up, so we tried the frozen entres from M&M Meat Shops. But the Powers of Not-So-Good were up to their nefarious tricks and slipped some Kryptonite into the Kung-pao Chicken and Zehr's-Woman spent the weekend sick. We've decided she gets to have another try at turning 40 next year. I then drove Spazhead off to a Pathfinder campout which got buried in a blizzard. The girls camped out in the snow though and the storm was done by the time we had to pick them up.

The week after Hotlead Spazhead was off to the Science Fair in Seaforth again. We were all surprised since her experiment was pretty bland and put together at the last minute. Her methodology, control of variables and presentation were pretty good though which is why we think the teacher picked her to go to Seaforth. We knew she wouldn't win anything since it seems only projects with a direct application to agriculture ever win any prizes so we arrived for the last half of the awards ceremony and packed her up. It sounds cynical, but all the speeches are insufferably BORING and one can't expect too much out of two jars of water and a coffee can. Spending two evenings driving back and forth to Seaforth (about 45 minutes away) was an incredible headache.

And speaking of headaches, I think Lex Luthor has been beaming Death Rays into my sinuses lately, and he may be turning his infernal machine on to Roo-bear as well. Whenever I work Midnights there is usually one day during the week where I wake up with a totally KILLER sinus headache (if it weren't for that I could almost like midnights). But some Sudafed, Ibuprofin and lots of quality time with the heating pad has me ready to go into work at 10 PM. It's gotten to the point that I can detect some of the warning signs either before I go to sleep or when I get up mid-day for a trip to the potty; then a proactive Sudafed before going to sleep will do the trick. But the week after the Science Fair I had one of these things and wasn't shaking it, and when I drove Spazhead to choir practice the light from the sunset made me nauseous. I can call it a migraine when it makes me yak my lunch monkey right? On Monday (it's been a couple of days since I wrote Chapter 3) I was lying under the heating pad when Roo came home to join me, poor thing, but she's been home sick a lot this year. Fortunately I was on the mend and handed off the heating pad to her, but at this rate we're going to have to invest in a family set of heating pads and Magic Bags (a cloth bag filled with whole wheat; you heat it up in the microwave and then apply it to where you ache. They're great for the sinuses because they will conform to the shape of your face and apply a nice even pressure. Trouble is you can't re-heat them until they've totally cooled off otherwise you may set the wheat kernels on fire! I think I need to get a few more).

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in the Forest City. A bright hard sun. The kind of sun that bathed the city in its warm glow and encouraged all the idiots to go for slow meandering drives in the country-side and clog up the highways. Spazhead was in London (the Forest City) at the Math Olympics. Rubber-Man had been working overtime until about 3:30 in the AM and Zehr's-Woman was at the mighty Z herding packers and taming wild robo-cashiers. So the plan was that one of the other kids dad's (Ed) would drive the three girls (Spazhead, Ed's daughter and the Romero girl) down in the morning. But Ed wanted to take his kids out for dinner and a movie afterwards so the Romero's and we would have to retrieve our own off-spring once they were done competing in the 100 meter Calculus and Free-style Algebra. Too easy right? So after being held up in traffic all the way to London we get to the school to find no one there but one teacher and the janitor. Panic ensues. The janitor let me use the office phone to call the other kid's parents but of course no one was home yet. We start driving home figuring somebody misunderstood and took Spazhead with them. Then the thought hits me "What if she's in the bath-room?" We double back. Nope, the janitor has already checked all the bath rooms. "OK" says I, "she's definitely not at the school... unless the janitor is a secret psycho-killer and Colleen is already dead in the dumpster." "Thanks for putting THAT idea in my head!" says Zehr's-Woman. Being avid mystery fans, Rubber-Man and Zehr's-Woman are now replaying in their heads every murder mystery they've ever seen or read, with Spazhead starring as The Body. Rubber-man mutters many Hail Marys.

We stop at the Masonville shopping mall and I jump on the pay phones to call the other parents. I talk to the Romero's son. The Romeros are from Mexico and their English is only slightly better than my Spanish. I thought the boy had said that Mom and Dad had Colleen and were on their way home. We calm down and drive home at a more sedate speed while contemplating whether to use bamboo splinters or hold Spazhead's toes over a fire. We return to the Townhouse of Solitude and see a whole lot of "long distance unavailable" on the call display. Could be someone's cell phone, could be telephone solicitors. So we look up the Romeros and go over to retrieve our errant off-spring. They aren't there. A quick thinking teenaged daughter immediately puts me on the phone to mom and dad. Mr. and Mrs. Romero are still in London. They got the message through their son and immediately panicked, thinking they had misunderstood and were actually supposed to pick up Colleen. They rush back to the school. They check all over the neighbourhood. I drop a now thoroughly upset Zehr's-Woman and Roo-bear off at home. Roo-bear is now thinking "Great! When I go to school on Monday I'm going to get fast-tracked into the Rainbow program with all the divorced kids!"

At the Stronghold of Mordor, locally known as Cooper-Standard Stratford Sealing Systems R1 Facility, the previously mentioned Ford F150 Sealing Package contract is ramping up to full production. Whereas in March a 40 hour week was rare as snakes with arm pits, now there is overtime. Now there are the first new hires on the floor in almost 10 years. Now there are also new job postings opening up as folks move over to the new contract. So Rubber-man is no longer a Packer. The Pack line is getting changed into a continuous feed operation with the precious 'one piece flow' of parts through the system. That means relieving each other for breaks. No more extending lunches by 5 or 10 minutes if we're ahead that day. Time to get out of Dodge. So I signed a posting for Ransberg and Extrusion Operation since the guys on that job don't normally break into a sweat. So far I've just been trained on the Ransberg and I solo next week. For those of you wondering "What in the Seven Circles of Hell is a Ransberg?" I'll explain.

Zehr's-Woman has been having an increasingly frustrating time at the Supermarket of Mordor. Her boss is an Acolyte of Chaos, known to Dilbert as a Sea-Gull Manager. She swoops in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything and then swoops off without actually doing anything. Instead of being out on the floor doing her job, she delegates everything and hides so Zehr's-Woman has less time to get her work done because she's too busy doing jobs that her manager from heck really could take care of better. They have pop-psych training courses with titles like Customer Rage and What Leadership Style Are You? Zehr's-Woman and her cell-mates bemoan the fact that these course are never on anything useful like How to Hide the Body. So on Friday I was hoping to have a late birthday celebration involving a video and some cheesecake. Nope. Z-Woman comes home in a rage and a 50 cent cab-ride from quitting. I got the movies and something greasy in a bag. We watched Bollywood/Hollywood, a musical Romantic comedy with boy meets girl in the Indian community of Toronto, a lot of fun, and Welcome to Collinwood which has William S. Macey and George Clooney among others in a heist gone farcically bad in a suburb of Cleveland. Also highly recommended.

So things are pretty good here at the Townhouse of Solitude. We're employed, reasonably healthy, haven't lost any children in at least a week and we aren't living in Baghdad. So far, I think we're winning. Things are incredibly busy as everything wraps up for the summer break. We just had the year end Girl Guide Potluck Dinner. For some reason I like these things; eating some food, watching the girls get awards that they probably won't care too much about in 5 years and making pleasant small talk with the parents sitting next to you. Perhaps it's my inner-hobbit, but I usually end up eating too much as I try to sample everything. Roo-bear got a fist full of badges to cover her sash with and a certificate declaring her an "Outstanding Girl Guide."

The next hurdle is getting a dress for Spazhead's Piano Recital next week, which will hopefully also be wearable for her Grade 8 Graduation. She's doing very well on our sticky-keyed old piano; having finished both the Beginner and Grade 1 levels in one year. She's suspicious that the piece from The Lion King that she ended up learning to accompany a group music project at school was maybe a Grade 3 or 4 level (she tried to talk the other girls into the Sesame Street hit Rubber Ducky, but they wouldn't go for that. I think they passed anyway).

So it's now Mother's Day, I'd better finish this. We made it to KW to buy the dress yesterday and all my women came home very stressed out. I had to buy them medicinal chocolate. The dress is lovely though and Spazhead looks all growed up; now we just have to get the shoes.... sigh. Happy Mother's Day to all the Mothers in the audience and would Barb or Shari pass this along to my non e-mail receiving mother? (Don't worry I'll call her too, but she never wants to stay on the phone long enough for all the details... besides it'll give you something to talk about when you see her next). I hope one of the Americans in the audience is in touch with Jeffrey in Minnesota and can pass this along to him too.

I'll close with something Colleen wrote at school and the local paper printed it in a special Mother's Day advertising section;

Proud
Canadian

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