That's how we roll in the OV

We're about to close on our new house Monday, which means we will have two homes (and two mortgages) in the neighborhood known as Ocean View in Norfolk, Virginia. Rich has been exceedingly patient with me and my unreasonable desire to only look for homes within approximately three square miles of our current home. We have literally ruled out houses for sale while walking the dog because of their location. Rich: "What about this house? It looks nice." Me (warily): "I don't know. It's kind of far away." Rich: "You do realize we got here on foot from our current house."

Finally, though, we are both content because I have a house that is still walking distance from the beach I love so much and the parents I love so much and Rich has a two car garage and a yard large enough to hold our own camping events. (The site is wet; no original containers. Pets must be on a leash at all times.)

In an effort to explain that I'm not the only one who has this fierce commitment to a zip code, I started collecting vanity license plates that had an OV theme. It's starting to get out of hand, so I decided to post what I've amassed so far. There are several others that traffic (and stalking) laws have kept me from snagging, but I'll get them eventually. Vanity plates are only $10 a year in Virginia and what better way to show your "spirit" than with 6 to 7 cleverly arranged capital letters and numbers? Click the image below to see the entire set on Flickr.

OV OV OV

Oh, and as a special Friday night bonus feature, I offer you Double Dog: Vlog Challenge from Video Gum. I can't stop watching Gabe's resulting video because the lipsynching makes me laugh uncontrollably every time! I also should make a video response to Gabe because he makes fun of LiveJoural and I won't stand for LJ haters.

May is my favorite month

May is my favorite month. Cinco de Mayo is one of my favorite holidays, just because I like saying the name and drinking Dos Equis beer. There are May poles and May flowers from all those April Showers and it's also the month we celebrate Towel Day in commemoration of Douglas Adams. It's also the month I was born and I share this birth month with my father. I share a lot of things with my father, including the initials GAP (I've added an S to mine recently), significant height and extremely long toes, an overactive sense of worry and a healthy love/hate relationship with the Volkswagon Vanagon.

When I was about 12, my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Out of nowhere I told her I wanted a trampoline. None of my friends had one and I had only jumped on one maybe once or twice before in my life, but flying through the air like that seemed like the greatest thing in the world. My mother said she would take it under consideration.

A few days later she was asking Dad jokingly what he wanted for his birthday. Our family has never made a big deal out of birthdays so I'm not sure my parents have ever bought birthday gifts for each other. Dad pondered it for a minute and wistfully said he'd like to have a trampoline. I think you could have knocked my mother over with a feather as she wondered if she had anything to do with my birth or if it was all a dream since I had obviously sprouted from the same pod my father had.

Since the planets were aligned that my father and I would have wished for the same birthday gift despite the 36 year gap in our ages, it seemed only fitting that we should share a trampoline as our present that year. If our life were like a storybook, I could show you a photo of my father and I jumping on this trampoline in the spring sunshine. But our household never seemed to work that way.

CostCo happened to sell trampolines and we did manage to buy one and get it home to the backyard where it was covered with a tarp until we had time to assemble it. The bright blue tarp-wrapped gift sat out there for the month of May and June and probably July as well. I remember pestering asking my mother when we could put the trampoline together, but she would always patiently say that Daddy had to help and we was very busy at the time.

By the end of the summer, I had decided to take matters into my own hands. I dragged the tarp off and found snips to snap the metal bands around the water-damaged box that held our birthday present. The box was full of steel pipes, some springs and a mat. How hard could this be? I read the instructions and got a little disheartened at the illustrations showing two people assembling this structure, but still assumed a little extra time could make up for the lack of extra hands. Needless to say, all I managed to do was drag a bunch of pipes around the back yard and get really frustrated.

We never did get the trampoline assembled and parts of it are still probably in the back yard somewhere at my parents' house. When I was 12, I was grumpy that we couldn't just go out and buy something like the rest of the world, assemble it and enjoy it. I didn't understand why our lives had to be so much more complicated than that. As an adult, though, I marvel that my parents could manage to pick us all up from school and make sure we were all fed and happy between everyone's different schedules and obligations. I can only imagine the strain of putting other people's needs and wants ahead of your own for years and years. I don't think my parents have been to a movie together since the early 60s and they've never been on a vacation since their honeymoon in 1968 (nestled in the middle of Daddy's tour of duty in Vietnam).

I just spent nearly two hours on the phone with Dad talking about the house we're supposed to own as of Monday. He was calling to ask if he could talk to a plumber he knows about the best way to add this extra bathroom to the house we'd like to have. My parents only have one working bathroom in their house now and that one you have to hold the handle to flush the toilet and there's only hot water to the sink because the cold water line leaks. So while they manage with that, Daddy is talking to me about if we would want double vanities in our master bathroom or if one sink would do. It's hard sometimes for me to even talk about it with him.

I never talked to Dad about the trampoline, but I can only imagine he was frustrated about the whole thing too. He was working two jobs at the time and his youngest child was about to become a teenager, that age where they suddenly want nothing to do with their parents. He probably marveled at the coincidence that we wished for the same outlandish item for our birthdays. It had to hurt his stomach every time he thought about the tarp-covered box in the back yard as much as it probably broke his heart to see I'd opened it and dragged it all out only to abandon it in frustration.

So now almost 20 years later, we're buying a house only a block from my parents. I could tell you I've already bought a trampoline to assemble and enjoy with my dad but he'll be 67 this year and I'm not sure either of us need to deal with the aftermath of his breaking his hip in our back yard. My new wistful plan is that we might have enough money in our renovations budget to add a tin roof on a back porch for my father and I to sit and listen to the rain. Maybe that will happen by next year's April showers.

Finding a sapphire in the rough

well, crap
Well, crap. On Monday night while over at my parents' house showing them the remodeling plans for our new house, I looked down and noticed something missing from my engagement ring. Somewhere between the office and my parents' kitchen table the sapphire had popped out of the setting and has become lost forever.

I rallied to not get upset about it at the time and finished my plans with my parents. We looked around with a flashlight, but a few of you have experienced my parents' house and understand that finding a small dark blue stone within those walls was beyond needle in haystack comparisons.

I thought about Twittering my frustration or writing this entry as soon as I got home, but Rich was playing a hockey game and I didn't want him to find out from the Internet before he found out from me. When Rich came home he was obviously in a great mood, which can be such a crap shoot when hockey is involved. The Flyers had won, his own team had won and everything was coming up roses. When he asked how I was and I told him about the ring, it was like I had poked him with a pin and he just deflated right before my eyes.

But his look of hurt quickly turned into anger and frustration. He said it's one of the largest purchases of his life and it was something for me and he wanted it back together. I (stupidly) told him we could get another ring. He countered that he didn't want another ring; he wanted the one that he picked out for me and gave me on the beach by our house when he asked me to marry him. And then I felt like an ass for not being upset.

I was trying so hard to be cool about it for him and he was so absolutely furious for my sake that we were on totally different pages. When I first looked down and noticed it was gone, I was at Mom and Dad's and the atmosphere was just all wrong for me to burst into tears. My parents are practical to a fault and even had discussed not getting an engagement ring for my mother back in 1967 because they could have used that money to buy a used car. Daddy doesn't have a wedding ring at all, and he's still very much married and committed to Mom. They did decide on a ring for Mom after all because they said the car wouldn't last, but the ring would. Ironically, Mom's ring setting became loose eventually and it would have cost more to replace than the ring was worth, so it's in a drawer somewhere. Sitting between my parents and knowing how solid they are despite a lack of jewelry, it seemed silly for me to get upset about a stone.

Shortly after Rich and I were dating, Rich gave me a pair of sapphire earrings (notice a theme in my favorite stone?). We were in Richmond that evening and I slept in them so I wouldn't lose them. The next day when I drove home, I got a flat tire and had to change my tire on the side of the interstate. When I was almost home, I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed one of my earrings was missing, most likely somewhere on the side of the road near Williamsburg.

I called Rich and blubberred into the phone. I told him that he shouldn't ever bother giving me anything nice again because I would just mess it up or lose it. I was so happy that morning on a bright sunny day and so proud of myself for taking care of my tire on my own and seeing that missing earring knocked the wind out of me just like I had done to Rich Monday night. I just had a little more practice this time in losing sapphires and trying to keep perspective.

While waiting for Rich to get home, I thought about all those families earlier that day that had watched their homes destroyed in tornadoes or people who aren't married to the perfect person and I kept reminding myself that it's just a gem but everything that's important is still completely intact.

I understand Rich's frustration and I think I would have been far less calm about it had I not been at Mom and Dad's and had I not been doing so much soul searching lately about how unbelievably happy I am overall. The ring is damaged, but not lost. And really Rich is plenty shiny enough for me on his own. The smile on my face is an outward symbol of our love as much as any piece of jewelry.