The Terrible Catsafterme

On the same day that this website turned two years old, the significantly more important event of my nephew Adam turning two took place. Since September 13 fell on a Saturday, we were able to have a party for him on his actual birthday. Denise and Aaron decided to hold the soiree at my Mom’s place in Franklin, only inviting the immediate family to celebrate. After running some errands – including getting Adam’s gift – I picked up my Grandpa that afternoon around 4:30 and we headed out to the Chandler estate, while I regaled him with the tunes of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.  

It was a great day to have an outdoor party and the typical festivities abounded – namely Bob at the grill helm and the continuous games of cornhole. After a recent losing streak in every game I have touched lately, I was finally able to secure a victory. Mom and Briana started a game against Ashleigh and Derek, but after a few tosses of the beanbag, Mom realized that she was actually supposed to be hosting a party and had to have me step in and take over. Briana and I soon came to be victorious – mostly thanks to my throwing – as I completely destroyed and emasculated Ashleigh’s boy toy Derek. Bwah hah!

The food was fantastic as per usual. I had skipped lunch so came with a hearty appetite. It was difficult to stick to my diet as Bob prepared baby back ribs, spare ribs, and chicken breasts on the grill. I naturally had all of them, along with Mom’s cheesy potatoes and banana bread. Aaron’s Mom returned with the world’s greatest baked beans and wanted to be sure that they still were living up to their reputation, as they have now gained some degree of fame after being mentioned on my website. Not sure if that is the kind of notoriety she is looking for.

 Ashleigh, Derek, Briana, me, and Denise chow down on the fabulous eats

 Ashleigh strikes her best pose

 Bob (in full cook regalia), Grandpa Murphy, Mom, Erine, and Bryan

 Aaron’s parents Barbara and Joe, and sister Maura

 Maura’s husband Micah and their little boy Ethan (the one on the left)

 Adam points to the coolest guy he can find. Too bad this wasn’t a 3-D photograph.

 Briana defeats the rib, and Denise the vegetarian shows her jealousy

I wish this had been my passport photo

It was cute to watch Adam open up all of his gifts as he got into the spirit of the proceedings. Of course, he really didn’t know exactly what was going on and probably came to think of his second birthday as ‘gift day.’ Denise assisted him opening the presents, and true to the form of most kids that age, he would be fascinated with a gift for exactly 11 seconds and then move on to the next one.

 Adam quickly shuffles through one gift before moving on

 Adam and his birthday shiner. A boy after my own heart, he took a tumble down Mom’s stairs.

 Denise explains to Adam how this green puffy item can be used and enjoyed

 Maura and Micah’s other little boy Jackson shows a bit of birthday envy

Adam takes his sharp new tricycle, the gift from Aaron’s folks, out for a spin on the open driveway

Once he had opened up all of his gifts in the dirty garage, which provided him the perfect setting to enter the terrible twos, I took him out to the trunk of my car and presented him with his new Radio Flyer wagon. He recognized the picture of it on the box and suddenly became the two-year old boy equivalent of a puppy under the table of a family eating Snausages for dinner.

I was placed in charge of putting the wagon together. Of course Adam was always right there to assist by placing the wheels against the wagon body and exclaiming “I did it!” But when he saw that this wouldn’t actually make the wagon roll, he would drop the wheels in my lap in a seemingly never-ending succession. Naturally, my victory at cornhole didn’t extend to the assembly of the wagon, as Ashleigh and I hammered on one piece too early and then I had to spend the bulk of the time getting it back off.

As I hammered away in the driveway, the others sang “Happy Birthday” to Adam back in the garage as he yammered to get back out to the wagon instead of concentrating on his cake. Finally by the time they finished, I had completed the Radio Flyer masterpiece and Adam was ready to get pulled around and then take his turn at pulling the wagon around. Overall, a very nice party of which Adam will have no memory. But he’ll always have the wagon. I took Grandpa back home amidst the sounds of the Statler Brothers.

 “Wagon, wagon, wagon”

 Hey, this is cheating

 Applauding Adam’s birthday wish…for Uncle Brad to get that blasted wagon put together

The test drive

On Sunday, many members of the Murphy clan had met at Ascension for another mass dedicated to my Grandma’s memory. I chose to forego the mass and take my standard walk around the neighborhood. It was sunny and little bit hot, but the nice breeze made it very pleasant. Little did I know it, but trouble was brewing right under my nose.

So around noon, Briana and I headed out for Marion’s where the family was meeting for lunch after the service. Ashleigh had quit Kroger the week before and was starting her training at Best Buy that afternoon, so she couldn’t go. Many of our family members were there – and although I thought it strange that every family seemed to be sitting at separate tables – I enjoyed being with them and getting to see Adam some more before they headed back to Columbus, taking Briana home with them. 

 Zac and Darlene. Zac is less lewd these days, and more bald

 Newlywed Debby, Baby Tori and her ‘yellow doll’, and Cathy

 Tom, Diana, Jan, and Grandpa. Tori and Yellow Doll sneak back in

 The Eds

My Gang

As I drove home alone, I noticed that it was inordinately windy out. In fact, just after pulling out of Marion’s, I saw a (thankfully) empty baby stroller being blown across the street. Then the winds really picked up. It was actually one of the strangest things I had ever seen. As I attempted to watch the Bengals game at home that afternoon, the picture went out on their station, so I just listened to it as I worked on the computer. They got demolished anyway, so I didn’t miss much.

Finally at about 5pm, my power went out as the intense winds howled outside. What had happened in the area was that Hurricane Ike which had just gone through Texas had blown into our area. The weatherman said that there was really no warning for this because the winds should have been so high in the atmosphere that we wouldn’t have felt its presence. However since it was so warm and sunny – and it didn’t rain as predicted – the storm was forced down and we saw the hurricane hit us, but without any rain.

I spent the evening watching Cheers and The Golden Girls on my laptop computer until the power died, then I shifted to the iPod. It was mildly inconvenient, but I was happy that our power got restored at about 2:30am that night. However, my boss called me to tell me that about 75 of our stores had lost power. The outages all over Dayton and Cincinnati were unreal – well over a million. I don’t know anyone who didn’t lose power – some for days…and some who still don’t have power as of the following weekend. There were trees and power lines down everywhere, shingles blown off roofs, and my Mom’s front door was blown off its hinges. Utterly bizarre.

That following week, I spent three days in the stores helping them to recover. I stocked frozen food, the dairy department, and ran register right alongside other division and general office employees. And talk about a blast from the past! I actually ran register at the Beavercreek store where it all began for me. Although the facility is different, many of the employees are still the same as when I worked there more than ten years ago. For a short time Hurricane Ike had really turned everyone’s world upside down.

2008 will continue – hopefully after everyone I know has power again…

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 20th, 2008 at 6:09 am and is filed under 2000's - Late, Family Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.