The Great Catch-Up

While most folks make resolutions to do this or that, I've spent the first few weeks on 2009 just trying to get caught up on 2008. Logging LTC finds, going thru my logbooks to get those missing logins logged, and trying to find my craft room again. Well, the first two were easier than I thought they would be. The third - not so much. And to make this job even harder is the fact that I have kids that demand my time.

Who would complain about the idea of putting aside cleaning to spend time with your kids. I'm convinced my teenager used this very tactic to get me to do something I absolutely deplore. Go clothes shopping. The 'Come on Mom, it will be fun.' followed by the pouty lip - and I was suckered into a day that makes walking through a tornado seem easier for me. More about that in a moment.

Like I said before - I've been trying to catch up on 2008 to sweep up enough room for 2009. So I do need to catch up on a couple of December adventures. When I last wrote, Teacup and I were off to have dinner with HappyDaze and a few other friends. While I'm sure Teacup is still looking for oxygen over the fact that there would be no stamps - and our pre-dinner boxing walk was a total wash - but we made it there ahead of Team DazzlingKoko and a few others (fearing we would have been respectfully late) and settled in for some friendly banter and some tale telling about Live and Breathe. Some remarks were made that while humorous - if I posted, my friends would banish me to the great white north (though they do have boxes there as well.)

But I am still wondering how Alice can keep one whole room in her house untouched and if Dave had to sleep in the doghouse for not knowing which sheets he slept on. Though I'm convinced my husband couldn't tell you what ours look like - but he could tell you the make and model of the motorcycle that zooms down the road in front of our house on one wheel doing 90 during the summer. And I think he knows the name of all of the fireworks that were set off by our neighbor on New Years morning. But I digress. The games were side splitting funny - and Scott is tragically competitive! The only thing I'll compete about is... well, nothing. You want it first - go get it, you need to be there before me - have at it. Life it too short to worry about being first. But he's good natured about it. And as a turn of events - Jiffy was driving that night... so Scott - while wanting to be first - was definitely not in the best form for performance.

HappyDaze did a great job at making us all welcome for having a bit of non-boxing fun. And while there was no rubber to be inked up - we all managed to survive. I'm still trying to catch my breathe! Can't wait for the next time!

Moving later into the month... Beans never really got busy. While we worked weekends - it was mainly because of Mother Nature as apposed to commercialism. So to support the lack of income from overtime - I did something I haven't done for 15 years - I catered a Christmas Party in the middle of Peak. To make things more challenging - we lost power for a little more than a day right before the event - making me have long days followed by longer nights trying to bake to catch up. Thankfully I have a very supportive family who likes to help cater... especially when I pay them! LOL.

Well - to make long stories shorter - I managed to survive the catering event. They were beyond thrilled - and I was even more thrilled that I was able to use their kitchen to clean up! Ron didn't end up leaning over the bathtub washing catering supplies for two hours! I came home with everything clean! Yippee!!! And for a few hours of work - I made a decent profit which made up for the loss of overtime hours - and was much more rewarding!

Christmas marched closer - and the work never really did pick up. On the Monday before Christmas Team MudCup we decided we were going to run out of time to get Nolanbear's Christmas series if we didn't get to Gorham soon. And we know we never spend nearly enough time in Gorham! So on a bitter cold evening after work we bundled up Christopher and headed down to Gorham... and mud actually drove! Wow! We pulled into their driveway and parked and headed up this trail in search of the boxes. The path was too cute and recently plowed so we could get to the boxes without trudging thru the newly fallen 12" of white stuff.

They boxes were still a bit off the cleared path, and unknown to us - on the other side of a small dip. We found this out when Christopher stepped in to grab the first box and sunk up to his waist in short order! We managed to pull him out with the wind whipping at our faces. Thankfully Koko had made the designs simple and not requiring excessive coloring. The second box I attempted to 'toss' Christopher over the dip to the box. Tossing a wiggling snowsuit bundled 60 pound sack of kid is not easy wearing mittens! So all I managed to do was throw him back up to his waist into the dip again. Oh well - so much for bright ideas!

Teacup and I grabbed the rest of the boxes after that - well, Christopher would go after them and when they were all repackaged up again - he would toss them back into place... sloosh... the new snow giving them a soft landing and allowing the plastic to slide back into their hidey holes. At the last box, Koko had placed the series from 2006 for those of us who didn't get it previously. Those we took back to my car to color and stamp up as Teacup already had them. Just getting out of the bracing wind made it easier to manage. It took us about 60 minutes to do the whole thing and we were once again heading home. Another set off Tea's list!

We all made it home safe and sound - and after all of that 'exercise' in the wind - even Christopher was more than willing to hit the pillows early. I woke up a couple hours later to tragic news. My 28 year old niece had died unexpectedly while being prepped for emergency surgery at Eastern Maine Medical. This hit Ron very hard. Kristen and Heather (his daughter) are the same age and they were always together growing up. The news put our whole house in a blue funk. I managed to work through part of the next day and at noon finally told my boss that I couldn't 'play happy' any longer and that I needed to leave. We were off from Wed through Friday but were going to work on Saturday. I told him I wouldn't be at work because I was sure the funeral would be on Saturday.

So all of the seasonals that I worked with over the previous few months I said goodbye to - wishing them a Merry Christmas - while not feeling very merry myself. To not drag this out too much - we made it through Christmas. Though with every passing year - it just doesn't seem as joyful to me as it had in years past. I spend way to much time worrying about work and everything else - that by Christmas morning I'm spent. And with Kristen's death still fresh on our minds - it just wasn't easy being joyful.

The funeral was on Saturday and we drove to Lincoln, Maine - a three plus hour trip in freezing rain and icy snow. The funeral itself was also longer than any one I had ever been to. Touching and sad, members of the family, community and friends all spoke about Kristen. Ron was still almost silent during this, tears freezing at the edge of his eyelids, not wanting to fall. My heart broke for him and his family. More because they either wouldn't deal with the reality of death or because it ripped them apart. Kristen's dad - who in the eight years I've known him has never said more than 25 words collectively and is famous for standing in a doorway and falling asleep, got up and spoke about his daughter. He spoke for nearly fifteen minutes and every words sounded like it was ripped from his soul.

The ride home was even more harrowing than the ride up - but by this time Ron was emotionally drained. He drove part of the way on slushy frozen roads before finally pulling over at a rest area to have me drive. While I hate driving in the winter, I know when my driving skills are not strong enough to be tackling the job. I was driving on sheer ice. Managing to stay approximately 10 car lengths away from the car in front of us, while going at a break neck speed of 30 miles an hours, we knew at the rate we were travelling - the 3 hours drive up would be crushed by the almost 4 hours drive home. I was almost okay until we saw the blue lights ahead of us...

As we approached, there were two cars off in the ditch on one side, two more off the road on the opposite side and just past a section with guard rails on either side of the road - you could see where the two more stopped vehicles had played pinball with their vehicles up against the guard rails. My knuckles were now beyond white. Thankfully - we have friend who lived at the next exit and we stopped and visited them for about an hour - long enough for the state trucks to get out and sand the roads ahead of us. And long enough for me to convince Ron to drive once again. By the time we made it to Augusta, the roads we wet - but not slippery anymore. Our driveway was a truly welcome sight!

So the holidays over - there are boxes over the border that were just screaming "You have to go get them." I'm sure many of you heard it... I heard it in my sleep! But the problem remained - how does one get Teacup over the border while she still has boxes on her Maine list? Guilt her into it! LOL! Actually - it helped that she got a brand new logbook from Gargoyle Girl JUST for boxes she procures while over the border. And an empty logbook is a sad, lonely logbook. One that is just itching to have stamps in it. So what better way to do that than to head to MA for the O Christmas Tree series. So on Tuesday the 3oth, Team MudCup with Christopher in tow, headed south to grab some boxes. We had to stop along the way to get a couple in NH. Our first stop was slated to be at the submarine - but a persistent police officer would not pull out of the driveway. So off we went to seek out a tiny little bear hidden but Gollygee. This wasn't too bad - and we only managed to get snow up to our ankles - and since it was in a sheltered area - the wind was minimal.

Feeling optimistic - we decided to head back to the sub for another crack at the three boxes there. The police were gone - and the museum was looking like it would open - so we pulled in and stepped out - onto a skating rink - barely hiding about an inch of water. Now mind you - knowing that we were seeking out drive-by boxes - we were all wearing sneakers (except for Christopher, I put boots on him) so the thinly veiled pond was a little intimidating. And we hoped for the best as we navigated to the walkway. Approximately 30 minutes and two pictures later we were good to leave... we had to walk past the lobster exchange that had set up in the parking lot... but made it back to the car, again feeling pretty good that we now had 4 finds under out belt.

Further south we ambled, stopping at a rest area for another box. Then began the long section of our drive. The traffic wasn't too bad - but the wind decided to pick up. And pick up did it! By the time we made it to Bellingham we were in dire need of a cemetery. Now I had failed to mention that Ron bought me a Magellian for Christmas... and I had it set for Travelers Four's house. So every time we did a side trip - it would promptly speak up and tell us we needed to make the next available legal U-Turn. Tea and I were convinced Maggie was going to have a nervous breakdown. Because - if you've read any of our other trips - you know we are nothing if not a side trip. And if there's a cemetary near by - you KNOW we are all over that!

Then there's the side stops for Sweet Tea, and today - nuggets for Christopher... this all working on putting Maggie over the edge. And when we did find one cemetery - we surely could find another one! The second one high atop a hill smack dab in the middle of wind central! But we found the two cemetery boxes we were seeking out - missed the point that a series was at the same hilltop cemetery until after we left it and headed off to T4's house. We managed to find T4's house and pulled in and parked. The wind whipped around us... and as folks ran to the toppled tree and back to their cars - we also did the same. Gathering up about 6 packages to stamp into the car and then run back to the tree for more.

Ellen came out and visited by the car door before she went off to visit a friend nearby. This impromptu mini meet came to full swing - when we all briefly braved the cold long enough to do exchanges at the picnic table. We waved at folks we already knew who stayed huddled in their cars to finish inking up. Ellen warned us that it would take approximately 2 hours to get all of the images. What she didn't tell us was we would have a 4 year old who would have a bathroom crisis while we had approximately 15 boxes in Tea's car. But a crisis it was - so off we drove to the closest Dunkin Donuts for a bathroom break, coffee and donuts. I even picked up two pounds of coffee for my mom since it was 2 dollars cheaper than the sale price in Maine! Now we never hijack boxes from their home unless a dire emergency arises - but we felt if anyone was truly worried - they could see we hadn't gone too far - the DD was the next building over on the other side of the intersection - and we could be seen through the treeline!

We made it back with the boxes and reparked. By that time - the rest of the boxes we handed off to us... we now had them ALL in the car. Everyone else had a head start on us - and they were all heading back to CT. We moved the car into the sun as it was dipping below the treeline - and even being in the car - the wind felt like it was leaking through to us. we finished up all of the stamping - trying to sort out the boxes at our feet... with Christopher wanting so badly to help - and us wanting just as badly to just finish before we lost the rest of the daylight hours. All boxes bagged up and placed back in T4's foyer...we headed towards home.

Now don't expect Tea to log those boxes any time soon - they are all safely tucked away in her 'over the border logbook' for easy logging once all of the boxes in Maine are found. But the way we spend so much time visiting Gorham - don't expect that to be any time soon! But this was Team MudCups last adventure for 2008. And a grand time we had. Wind and all! For us - it was almost Extreme boxing!