Tag Archives: writing

Kitty and the Snowman

Shirtless Shane and Kitty Cate circa 2010.

I wrote this as a Christmas tale for my kids in 2010, at the time my son Shane was 5 and my daughter Cate was 2, I read it to them before bed on Christmas Eve.

While they were still young enough to endure (possibly enjoy) my bullshit storytelling I wrote a couple of additional tales. There is a possibility that will share those tales during the next couple holiday seasons.

~

Kitty and the Snowman

At five Shane was a bit tall and scrawny, a healthy kid who could run all day and sleep hard all night. He referred to himself as Shirtless Shane. Even if there was a chill in the air, the first thing he would do as he was running out of Miss Sweeney’s kindergarten class into the waiting arms of one (or both) of his parents is take off his shirt and declaring “I’m Shirtless Shane”.

It did not matter who was meeting him after school his 2 year old sister Caitlin with her blond hair and big blue eyes was always there. She loved her big brother, her smile and the way she yelled his name “Ayne” never failed to delight Shane. Shane loved to call her Kitty, she would often run around meowing. At night when she slept, she almost sounded like a tiny kitten purring.

The last day of school before Christmas break was an especially blustery day. It was snowing lightly, but the cold wind was howling. The weather forecast was for an all out blizzard to start later that night and not stop until Christmas day. Three feet of snow was predicted.  

That day Shane’s mommy did her usual bundling up of her and Kitty to walk to Shane’s school. Three jackets (at least one of them with a hood), long johns, two pair of gloves, two pair of socks, winter boots and big hats. It was a short walk, but with that howling wind, Shane’s mommy wanted to stay warm. Even with all of their preparations it was a very chilly walk. The bell rings at 2:15, they arrived just on time, which was great, they would not have to wait too long in the cold.

Miss Sweeney, standing at the door to the classroom would let the children leave as soon as she saw that their mommy or daddy was there to meet them. When Miss Sweeney noticed Shane’s mommy she pointed her out to Shane. Shane went running, like he always does, he tore of his winter coat, then his long sleeve shirt and finally he took off his tee shirt and started to say “I’m Shirtless Shane” but all of the words didn’t come out, he only got to “I’m Shirtless…” before stopping mid-sentence and mid-step.

At that moment Shane was turned into a SNOWMAN!

His mommy was freaking out. The wind was picking up and the snow was getting worse. Kitty was shivering and starting to cry. It was so cold and no one seemed to notice that Shane was now a popsicle. Miss Sweeney’s classroom door was shut, the lights were out. With the cold and snow all of the other parents were scattering off and disappearing into the haze of the snow.

Panicked now, Shane’s mommy was trying everything she could think of to save Shane. She tried picking him up, in an effort to move him to a warmer spot so that he could thaw out. However, he was just too heavy and with the accumulating snow he was getting heavier by the minute. She tried hugging him figuring that her body heat would melt him. That didn’t work, it only made Shane’s mommy even colder than she already was.

Kitty, still in her mothers arms, was kicking and screaming. Her mommy had no intention of letting her down, she feared that she would end up with two snow children. Kitty kept screaming the same thing over and over. It sounded like ERT, ERT, in a very high pitch. Her mommy had no idea what she was trying to say. She didn’t really even think about it, she just figured that Kitty was also freaking out.

She had to do something. Fortunately she had her cell phone with her, she called Shane’s daddy at his work, Shane’s daddy is usually very calm in stressful situations like this. Not this time, he too was freaking out, which only made things worse. He said he would get there as quick as he could and suggested to pour hot water over Shane in hopes that it would melt enough of the snow so that Shane’s mommy could carry him home and thaw him out in their cozy warm house. This plan backfired, by the time Shane’s mommy went home, with Kitty in her arms all the while screaming ERT, ERT, ERT. She fetched a bucket full of hot water and high-tailed it back to the school. By the time Shane’s mommy and sister got back to the school not only did Shane the Snowman almost double in size because of the now blizzard conditions, the bucket of hot water, with the freezing outdoor temperatures, had turned into a giant bucket of slush. Shane’s mom was out of ideas so she figured she would give it a shot anyway. She dumped this big bucket of slushy water over Shane’s head instantly turning Shane into an Icicleman, he was one big snowman shaped ice cube.

Shane’s mommy was now way beyond panic could do nothing but sob. Kitty was still screaming ERT, ERT, ERT. What happened next is still somewhat of mystery. Kitty with all of her kicking and screaming somehow escaped her mothers grasp and hit the ground running, immediately disappearing into the blizzard.

Her mommy, now gone wacko thinking she not only had an icicle for a son, she would not find her daughter before she suffered the same fate. She looked for her as much as she could but he snow drifts were now taller than Kitty. All she could do is stand next to her… uhm icicle Shane and hope that when his daddy got there he would be able to find Kitty save Shane. Every so often she thought she could here Kitty ERT, ERT, ERT, keeping her hope alive. Time passed, it seemed like an eternity ERT, ERT, ERT…

After what seemed like way too much time Kitty came into mommy’s view carrying something and still screaming ERT, ERT, ERT, mommy’s eyes full of tears took a few moments to figure out what Kitty was carrying. Finally she realized that Kitty was carrying Shane’s coat, long sleeve and shirt. Now she understood in Kitty’s two year old pronunciation ERT meant shirt. She was trying to tell her mommy to put Shane’s shirts on him to thaw him out.

Kitty’s mommy was doubtful that this would work but figured she had tried everything else, so why not. Fortunately, Shane liked his shirts very large, with his newfound snow and ice girth the shirts and coat would not have fit otherwise. Shane’s mommy slid his tee shirt over what was once his head. Nothing happened. She pulled his long sleeve on next. She thought she saw a little bit of thawing, like when you take lick of a popsicle and it gets shiny. She grabbed his coat, slid his icicle arms into the sleeves. That’s when she noticed a few drops ice melting. She tried to get the coat zipped up, but Shane was still to big. Kitty ran over and with all of her little might held the bottom of the coat together while her mommy held the top. Hoping that they could hold it together long enough, Shane the Icicle would become Shane the boy again. He was melting, it was working. Just a few minutes later mommy was able to get the zipper started. It was a slow process, but every little bit that mommy was able to zip up Shane would melt even faster. As they finally got the coat zipped all the way up Shane rapidly thawed the rest of the way.

When Shane and Kitty’s daddy finally arrived he was a bit confused, mommy was crying, Kitty was mumbling something about an ert and except looking a bit like an ice-cream cone in the August sun, Shane appeared fine.

After Shane thawed out he seemed to be the same happy kid he always, with one big exception, he no longer had any interest in being shirtless. From that day on he was never again seen with out a shirt on. If he had to change his shirt he would put one on over the one he had on and somehow slip the one he had on under it off, like how you sometimes see girls do it. He would wear a shirt on the beach, in pools and even in the shower.

Christmas was only a few days after Shane’s thawing out, the only Christmas presents that Shane wanted was shirts and lots of them.

The End

Kitty and a Snowman circa 2015
The tales of an urban snowman may be another tale to tell.

Za Photos : Muddy Buddy

This photo is of Buttercup, AKA Butter, Butters, Buddy, Mr. Buttercup, Bubs, Cutterbut and probably a lot more than a handful of other names. He is our dog, we got him, or rather he got us, in 2015 from the North Shore Animal Shelter in Salem, MA. Colleen and the kids wanted a dog, I did not. Poop, fur, stink was my mantra. Colleen and I had a beautiful Golden Retriever, Ginger, for 12 years, so I knew what it took to take care of a dog and I didn’t want to take on that responsibility again, especially because at that point I was sill working a ton of hours. However, after much badgering and reassurances from the kids of how they would help in caring for a dog, I gave in; after all I was out voted 3 to 1.

It was decided that we would get a dog from a shelter. The other prerequisite that I had was that we would name the dog Butter. Why? I’m not really sure, except that I wanted his name to be food related and who doesn’t like butter?

Off we went to the shelter to see what they had. There were several dogs looking for the right family, one of them was this happy, energetic, cute, slanty-eyed mutt, he already had the name Buttercup. We were all, including me, immediately smitten. We walked him around the grounds of the shelter and decided he was the dog for us. Shelters don’t just let you come in and grab a dog and go, there is a vetting process that you have to go through, which took 3 days. When we went to pick him up, the staff had us wait in a room away from where the dogs were kept and they brought him to us. When he came into the room he made a bee-line to me, jumping and wiggling right onto my lap, keep in mind he is not a lap dog. So much for the “poop, fur, stink” mantra, I was done, he was ours.

As for this photo, which I took in October of 2020, my brother-in-law and great friend Dan and I went for a moderate hike near Squam Lake in Holderness, NH. A good excuse for getting us and Buttercup out for a while before watching football, drinking beer and grilling some meat. As part of this particular trail there are some elevated platforms to get you over the wet and muddy areas. Butter, with his dog common sense, decided he wanted to jump in, so he did, no hesitation, just jumped right into the muck. This photo as well as the few others below are from that day and show the dirty dog results.

After he jumped in, in an effort to clean off some of the muck, Dan and I spent the next hour or so trying to get him to jump into the lake. It was a futile effort, he dove for the mud, but had no interest in the lake. We where traveling in Dan’s almost new, very clean truck, so as much of the muck that we could clean off beforehand the better. We ended up having to hose him and Dan’s truck’s floor mats down when we got back to our shared vacation home in Moultonborough, NH.

Muddy Buddy

The above photo of Buttercup was enlarged and hung at Za soon after I took it. He enjoyed his mud bath a lot more than Dan and I enjoyed cleaning up after it. Whenever I look at this photo it brings a smile to my face, so the clean up was worth it.

Buttercup is a bit older now, he still sometimes shows his puppy spunkiness, but for the most part he’s chill. Most days he gets out for a couple of miles walk, he is a great companion.

He loves the kids and I, but he is in love with Colleen, he follows her around the house, lies down in the office when she working. He gets up when she does, I could be up for hours and he won’t show his face until Colleen does. I get it, she is quite lovable.

This probably doesn’t need to be said, but the kids never did live up to their promises of taking care of the dog, no surprises there. They do give him lots of love, however rarely do they walk him and have never cleaned the yard of poop.

Doing the Atlantic, Chapter 3, Navigating Iberia Airlines check-ins was more challenging than navigating the Atlantic.

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Dennis and I are on the second leg of our trip from Madrid to Lanzarote, it’s a very full flight. 

What a cluster fuck getting out of Boston was. Both Dennis and I arrived at Logan Airport early; Dennis via a bus out of Portland, Maine. I was lucky enough to have my wife Colleen and our son Shane drop me off. It was really special, Shane was obviously anxious about my leaving on this adventure. He followed me into the Airport, waited with me for a while until it was time for him and Colleen to leave, they had to pick our daughter Cate up at dance and bring her to gymnastics. I really appreciated the extra time with him, he may actually end up okay.

Shane and Cate on our friends boat Glory.

Back to the cluster fuck, Dennis showed up right after Shane and Colleen left. We went up to the Iberia departures counter and presented our passports to the attendant, who was going through the process of checking us and our bags in when she asked us “When are you returning to the United States?” Our response was truthful- we didn’t exactly know. We explained that we were sailing from Lanzarote to Guadeloupe and our exact day was not known, we knew approximately when we would return, just not the exact day. This put a stop to our check in process. The first attendant handed our information off to her, unbeknownst to us at the time, supervisor. A short-round-bitchy faced-beastly wench, I am not going to be nice when describing her, she seemed to not be paying attention to anything else but her cell phone. 

She asked us if we had any proof of our planned return to the United States. I produced our Capitan’s Letter, a letter written by the captain of a yacht describing the planned itinerary of a vessel for this exact reason. I have used such letters in the past, specifically in Bermuda, twice, where the customs officials knew exactly what the letter was, and it quickly fulfilled their requirements. Well, the beast, an airline employee, not a customs official, said that she couldn’t accept the letter as proof of departure and that we had to buy return tickets if we were going to be allowed to get on our planned flight to Spain. Just like that, no help or understanding in trying to help us out. She just went back to banging her Knockwurst fingers on her cell phone. 

Mary’s fingers

She was just ignoring us, that was not going to work. After a bit more ka-bitching, Dennis reminded her of what he thought her role as a customer service professional was. While I was just fuming, I don’t think I could have said much at the time, though I did ask her if she was doing something to help us on her phone or if she was purposely ignoring us; she grunted. Dennis told her that we were trying to figure it out calmly and that she should be helping us. After asking to talk to her supervisor, with no luck, she said she was the supervisor, which she may have been. But what she really was, was a stubby, overzealous queen wannabe with a Napoleon complex, on a power trip. Dennis asked for and got her name. She told us, spelling it out: “Mary Pama”. Yes, she pronounced it Mary Palmer, I hope her 4 sisters were more palm worthy than she was. (I said that I wasn’t going to be nice, she really infuriated us). We also asked for the phone number for customer service, and we were dismissively told to “look on the website”. 

We stood in front of the check-in kiosk. Dennis phoned the customer service number, went through the prompts and eventually got through to a representative who only spoke broken English, tried to explain the situation. He was asked for our confirmation code, after about 6 attempts in English and Spanish he put Dennis on hold, and subsequently hung up on him.

Meanwhile, Mary-the-Beast-Pama, asked if we had a Sea Log or a Crew Identification Card. So her chunky little digits were, in her own special way, looking into how to help us out. However, Sea Logs and Crew Identification Cards are for paid crews on ships, not things that an unpaid crew member on a private yacht would have. I explained this to her while Dennis tried to get through to the customer service number without being hung up on again. It didn’t work, he was hung up on again, even quicker this time.

In a moment of desperation I asked Mary-the-Beast-Pama if we bought return tickets from Guadeloupe would she let us board, and surprisingly, she said yes. While Dennis started making his third try at customer service, I used my handy Expedia app and bought 2 tickets from Guadeloupe to Boston on February 26, a somewhat arbitrary day, we will probably be in Guadeloupe by then, but, you never know. I bought tickets that I can cancel within 24 hours or we can change fights if we decide to. I figured- get through customs in Spain and just cancel the tickets, no one would be the wiser. Mary-the-Beast-Pama can go fuck herself.

Once I showed Mary-the-Beast-Pama the proof of purchase for the tickets on my phone she let us check-in. All this because the dimwitted 5X5 didn’t have any common sense. What is the point of having someone buy a ticket from a different country than the one that you are entering, the proof should have been for as she originally asked- when are you leaving Spain, not when are we leaving Guadalupe. Her lack of real logic was dumbfounding. The Captain’s Letter was our proof, she claimed that she wouldn’t allow it, however in a way, I guess she did.

~

So we got through, and had a few Maine Beer Co. Lunch IPA’s at the airport lounge before boarding. Dennis had the pleasure of handing his ticket to Mary-the-Beast-Pama his boarding pass. It was an uneventful flight to Madrid, when we went through Customs, where there are real customs agents, we explained to the agent what we were doing, within a minute he was waving us though, welcoming us to Spain.

It was too much unnecessary stress caused by someone who’s only responsibility should have only been to very nicely direct us to the proper official for any clarification on our planned trip. Even better would have been, to address any customs issues when we purchased one-way tickets.

Our brother Steve met us at the Madrid Airport for coffee during our layover. During which time I went back on the Expedia app and canceled our return flights.

Often times the best solutions are the easiest ones.

On to better experiences.