The Burning Heart

by | Leave a comment

I was cleaning out last year’s school supplies in preparation for the new school year, when I found Sonny’s old Language Arts notebook.

It contained exactly one page of spelling words and…this drawing.

I’ve mentioned before that my son is obsessed with zombies, right?  He kinda – loves them – while hating them.  As a result, he’s become somewhat of a world expert on zombies.  And this picture typifies EVERYTHING there is to know and to love/hate about zombies.

First off, the zombies only come out at night.  It’s not clear where they stay during the daytime (Under the bed?  In a poorly lit closet??  California?!?). 

But come nighttime?  They can ALWAYS be found.  In your bedroom.  Standing quietly.  Right beside your bed.  Where YOU are, enjoying a good night’s sleep on your weird, round bolster pillow.  Haahhhhnk zhoooo.  Haahhhhnnnk zhooooo. Zhoooooo.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzhhooooooooo.

You are off in La-La Land, completely unaware that a zombie has been drawn by the smell of your rancid snoring and your…no, not brains.  All the experts know that zombies don’t eat brains anymore since the whole Mad Cow Disease thing a while back.  Instead, the zombie is drawn by the smell of your…HEART!

WHAM!!!

What?!?  Wheeeeee!!!    GAH?  Guhhhhhhhh!  Gulllulululululululgggggg.

And just like that, the undead has its arm elbow-deep in your thoracic cavity, rummaging around in there for your burning heart.  It’s curtains for you; Curtains I tell ya! 

See??  What’s not to LOVE (ok, hate.  Mostly hate.  Well…all hate, all the time actually) about that?!?  But?  I fear my story has become tiresome.  In which case, now is ze time vhen ve dance!

So many 80’s songs, which one should we dance TO?? 

We’ll settle on the blatantly obvious one: Survivor’s “Burning Heart” (which appeared in the 1985 movie Rocky IV and on its soundtrack album).   

In the burning heart just about to burst
 There’s a quest for answers an unquenchable thirst
In the darkest night rising like a spire
In the burning heart the unmistakable fire

This round of the “80’s song for every moment in life” goes to…ME!  I know, I know: Eat your heart out. 

Heh, heh, heh.  Or better yet, have a zombie do it.  In the middle of the night.  While you’re off in La-La Land.  Nummy, num, num.  ME LOVVVVE HEARTS!  <–That was the zombie talking, not me.  But that part where I said ‘not me,’ that WAS me talking.  But this isn’t really about ME, it’s about you.  And how you never, ever win any rounds in our “80’s song” game.  Just sayin’.  And yes, that WAS me sayin’.  But I’m really done sayin’ stuff now.  

Hand Jive

by | Leave a comment

We’ve already discussed how that one softball mom thinks I look like Mary-Louise Parker, which I find absolutely mind-boggling.

But then just recently?  Recently I was poolside at the country club where I met the husband of a tennis teammate who told me I look like that actress…

At which point I chimed in with “Mary-Louise Parker!  You wanna buy some weed?!  Har, har, har, harrr!!”

Turns out the guy I was talking to was campaigning for State Senate at the time.  And he was looking at me warily, like I might be on the verge of producing some paparazzi to take our picture in front of a Pot R’ Us step and repeat.  So he had to get ready to…run.  Quick like.

After an awkward pause where he’s scooting back a foot or two to a safer location in case the cameras start snapping, and I’m trying to explain about “this softball mom I know,”  he begins again with, “You look like that actress…whatshername?  Stockard Channing.”

For a bizarre, heart-stopping moment, I thought he meant CHANNING TATUM and was horrified.  Yet oddly flattered.  I guess if I’m being offered young, buff dude lookalike, then I’ll TAKE young, buff dude lookalike.

But then I realize I’m being offered Rizzo, the leader of the Pink Ladies who’s a good twenty-five years older than I am in real life; not to mention a smoking, drinking, swearing toughie with a “reputation.”

Uhhh…gee, thanks.  Somehow?  Selling weed to Magic Mike seems a little more appealing.

But, coincidentally, in highschool I was actually IN “Grease.”  This is how I know alllll about Rizzo.  Of course I was in the total cringeworthy highschool play version of “Grease”; not the made-for-the-silver-screen version with big name stars like Stockard Channing.

I played Cha-Cha DiGregorio.  They call me Cha-Cha ‘cause I’m the best dancer at St. Bernadette’s.  I was the one who went to the prom with Kenickie, but when Rizzo stole him away from me, I ended up partnering with John Travolta and we won the Hand Jive dance contest.  Yay!

But you know what all of that means, don’t you?  It means I know me some Hand Jive, Baby!

So while I may NOT have been born to sell weed, or be an actress.  Or even be a buff dude.  I was…BORN TO HAND JIVE BABY!  Slap, slap, clap, clap, over, over, under, under, fist thump, fist thump, thumb back, thumb back.  Born to hand jive, BABY! [big finale] BOOOOORN TO HAND JIVE, BAAABBY!!! 

WhadoIwin?!?

Speculoos

by | Leave a comment

Hey, don’t get me wrong.  I love Trader Joe’s as much as the next guy. 

Ok, maybe not QUITE as much as those of you who would be willing to skin it and wear a Trader Joe’s shrug around town.  (“It rubs the lotion on its skin!) 

But who DOESN’T love liver and fava beans served with a nice bottle of their Two Buck Chuck Chianti?!?  Sllllewllllssssllelelww.

What?  Why are you looking at me like that??  Did those Silence of the Lambs references veer into Creep Factor Five Thousand Territory??!  Well you shouldn’t be looking at me like that because YOU’RE the one who started it!  With your good bag and cheap shoes, Clarice. 

I?  I was NOT trying to go there.  Instead, I was simply trying to say that Trader Joe’s “crisp, caramelized cinnamon spiced Belgian cookies” are delish.  DELISH! 

But their name?  Speculoos?!  Awful.

Speculoos…

I’ll just let that sink in for a sec.

Speculoos…

Now you see it, don’t you?  And in the three times I’ve typed “Speculoos” (now four) in this blog, the system has tried three (now four) times to change it to “Speculums.”

I rest my case.

Two final words: Loose cups.  Your anagrams are showing, Doctor.  YOU STARTED IT!!!

To Chicken Out

by | Leave a comment

My sister – who I’m pretty sure has met me a time or two (and knows I’m deathly afraid of heights) – gave my family a Heights R Us, Heightstravaganza gift certificate which provided us a set of high-up, hyperventilation-inducing activities at a facility called Cave of the Winds located in Colorado Springs.  [And no, this is an UNPAID shout out…up ‘til now hopefully.  I’m lookin’ at you here, Cave of the Winds.] 

What did these activities include?  The Windwalker Challenge (ropes) Course and The Bat-a-pult (two-person zip line).

Except during a call-ahead-for-more-information, we found out that the Bat-a-pult was down, had been down for a while, and was most likely NOT going to be fixed before they closed for the season.  So they were willing to “trade” our Bat-a-pult tickets for tickets to their newest attraction, something called The Terrordactyl (a freefall “ride” out into the canyon beside which Cave of the Winds is located).  Terrordactyl is  a great name, by the way.  Doesn’t strike fear into the heart or ANYTHING.

So we discussed among ourselves and decided we’d take the trade.  

The only hitch in the giddyup was that Terrordactyl has a weight restriction.  Max of 220 (Hubby was out by a hair) and minimum of 100.  Since Sissy and I were in grave danger of not weighing ENOUGH to partake of the terror (and when I say “Sissy and I” I mean “just Sissy”), we decided to stop at A&W Kentucky Fried Chicken (and no, STILL not paid and now I’m lookin’ at YOU, A&W) for lunch on the way there so that Sissy could drink at least five pounds of rootbeer and thus achieve the weight limit.  This is a completely safe approach to death-defying feats which include weight limits so SHUT IT!

For my part, I ordered two mini chicken sandwiches.  One to eat for lunch.  And one to save for later, after I blew the first chicken sandwich all over the canyon.  Except I forgot about my brilliant plan and ended up eating BOTH chicken sandwiches in one go.  This made me feel worse than ever about the upcoming “adventure” while forever linking chicken sandwiches with fear in my mind.

When we finally got to Cave of the Winds, we decided to “calm our nerves” by going on the Windwalker Challenge Course first.  The theory was that this would buy us some time to screw our courage to the sticking point for the Terrordactyl. 

What exactly IS a Windwalker Challenge Course you ask?  If you picture tightrope walking over the Grand Canyon in gale-force winds then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about.  Yeah, yeah, you’re strapped into a safety harness, blah, blah, blah.  But you’re still on a ropes course three stories tall and cantilevered out over a sheer-drop canyon. 

All this causes my Chicken Sandwich Plan to begin…repeating…on me.  So while Hubby and the kids go up all three flights of rickety rope hell, I go up one flight of stairs, across a beam thing, then go back down the stairs, all the while yelling, “Who is shaking the STAIRS??  STOP SHAKING THE STAIRS!!!”  To which the ropes course attendant politely replies, “Uh, ma’am.  No one is on the stairs with you.” 

SHUT IT! 

Hubby and the kids were up there for an additional 45 minutes after I had abandoned hope (and decided that I now HATE chicken sandwiches).  When they finally came down, it was…duh, duh DUHN!  TIME time, time for the DACTYL dactyl, dactyl of TERROR!  TERROR! TERROR!!!

The plan was that Sissy and I would go first.  Sonny would watch us and see that it was super fun and that we didn’t sheer off and plummet into the canyon and/or accidentally crash into its opposing face and would then ride with either Sissy or I after that, depending on who was up for MORE fun after the first go-round. 

So Sissy and I get strapped in to what I can only describe as a bumper car but without the car.  We’re sitting in non-padded bucket seats and are secured with a total crap shoulder strap in preparation for having the base of the bucket seats pulled up and back until we’re facing straight down INTO the canyon before being released into a freefall that would last until we ALMOST hit the other side of the canyon.  At which point the operator would start winching us up again as we swung back and forth over open space.

Fun, right?

So I’m pantomiming “this is gonna be fun” and “I’m so excited” to Sonny while holding my blow-hole closed so the chicken sandwich doesn’t accidentally come out.  It’s about this time that I realize the ride is shaking in a weird, impromptu earthquake sort of way.  So I look over at Sissy to see if she feels it too.

And when I do, I realize she looks like a Littlest Petshop Puppy.  Her eyes are HUGE.  Huger than the rest of her face.  She’s shaking her head back and forth rapidly.  As I’m wondering how did you DO that;  how did you make your eyes five TIMES bigger than their regular size??  Sissy starts whispering, “No.  Nooo.  [then louder] Noooo! [until finally shouting] NOOOOOOOO!!!!”  Her fear is vibrating the entire ride.

Apparently “someone’s”  courage wasn’t screwed up…quite…high enough.  That elusive rat bastard sticking point!!!  So the ride operator let us out. 

After that, Sonny wouldn’t even LOOK at the contraption, much less go on it.  And me?  I must say that once I’ve screwed my courage to the sticking point, and that point has come and gone?  It never comes again.  Sayonara, Sticking Point.

So Littlest Petshop Puppy and her family left with their tails between their legs.  We did get a new gift certificate and we’ll be back to do the tame(r) Bat-a-pult next spring when the ride reopens. 

I will not be eating chicken sandwiches again.  Ever.  I have discovered a whole new meaning for the phrase, “To Chicken OUT.”

Thanks, Sis.

Bad Feet Seat

by | Leave a comment

Over the Labor Day week-end, we went to see that new X-Men movie, Days of Future Past.  This is the EXACT type of movie I hate.  I don’t know ANY of the characters (not to mention they mostly all have English accents and/or are blue – as in the color blue – not “blue” in a sad sack, don’t-it-make-my-brown-eyes-blue sort of way; Although they have every right to be blue because their mutant race is on the verge of getting wiped out). 

And?  They travel back in time.  Gaaah!  I HATE time travel in movies-where-I-don’t-know-any-of-the-characters because it brings a level of math to the entertainment which makes the whole thing extremely unenjoyable.  Not to mention that the characters are endlessly smiling smug smiles at eachother over their remembered past, future, past/future-but-not-right-now, future together.  Annoying.

You know what else is annoying?  The fact that my movie theater seat SMELLED!  It smelled so BAD I spent most of the movie trying to figure out what it smelled like.  Other theater goers may have gotten the impression I had a sniffing tic:

Sniff.  SNIFF!  Sniffsniffsniff. 

Sniff.  SNIFF!  Sniffsniffsniff.

Good Lord!  Could it be FEET??  Bad, bad FEET?!?

I leaned left to ask Sissy if HER chair smelled like feet.  She replied, “No, my chair doesn’t smell like feet.  Just your chair smells.  In fact, you can pretty much assume it’s always, always just gonna be YOUR chair that smells.”

Wow.  Ok.

Then I leaned right, whereupon Hubby confirmed that no, no one else’s chair smelled like feet.  Just mine.  Then he added that my chair smelled because I’m a bad, bad girl.  Who DESERVES to sit in a smelly chair.  That smells like feet.  In the Bad, Bad Feet Seat.

Well, ok then.  In which case?  I’m gonna tell you about the WHOLE movie without so much as a Spoiler Alert.  So there! 

It’s set in the future and the X-Men mutants are on the verge of being wiped out.  I don’t know any of these future mutants’ names.  Because, instead of introducing eachother to the audience, they spend the whole time avoiding complete annihilation which is being doled out by a bunch of robot-y fellers.  But one mutant looks like the guy from that mid-90’s movie The Crow.  And another looks like the main chick from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  One even looks like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club and on the advice of an English accented gent from Star Trek, she helps Wolverine travel back in time to 1972.  And let’s pause right here so that I can say, “Uh huh.  Hugh Jackman?  Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.  Nummy num num.  We aren’t to the theee ay tuh yet, Hugh, but when we get there, don’t stop picking MY seat.” 

There’s even this one part where Hugh Jackman as Wolverine has to show us FULL BACKAL NUDITY GGGGRRRROARRRR! track down Katniss Everdeen.  It gets super confusing here so stick with me.  Katniss is one of those blue people I was talking about earlier and for her part, she’s trying to track down Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. 

Ultimately, that guy who drank the spit bucket in the wine tasting room in the movie Sideways saves the mutant population past, present and future by dressing up like an über homely Nixon and putting the kibosh on the robot-y fellers program (which would have destroyed all the mutants in the future unless the mutants had gone back in time E equals MC squared minus negative one). 

Then?  We’re back in the future where the half-fairy chick-with-the-gap-in-her-teeth from the True Blood series has a skunk stripe in her hair and says hi to Wolverine.  Phew!  There you have it, folks.  The end. 

Except for that part where I give Hugh Jackman a smug smile based on our completely non-existent past/future and say, “Hey Wolverine.  Are those some adamantium claws in your pocket?  Or are you just happy to see me?!”

Hmmm, maybe Hubby WAS right.  Maybe I AM a bad, bad girl.  ggggrrrroarrrrrr.

Driving Age

by | Leave a comment

As I was driving Sissy to her softball practice, we were listening to a “That Chick Be CRAZY” segment on the radio.  One caller was talking about that phrase: Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.  Well it turns out the caller DID break her mother’s back.  By accidentally running her over with the family car!!!!

Whaaaaaaa??  That’s AWFUL.

But the story perked Sissy right up and made her start scrutinizing the car control panel as we’re driving along.  What exactly are you planning, Sweetie?

Her: Why does the speed thing go up to 140 miles per hour if you never GO 140 miles per hour?

Me: Good question.  But how do you know I DON’T go 140 miles per hour?!

Her: Mom!

Me: Ok, ok.  I don’t necessarily go 140 miles per hour.  But it’s there so that I have a good chance of outrunning the mafia if they’re ever after me.

Her: Mom! pause 2…3…4…Really??

Me: No, babe.  Because of the mafia’s actually after me, I’m hosed.

Her: Why?  Is the mafia really fast?!

Me: It’s not that they’re necessarily fast.  It’s more that if I’m trying to outrun the mafia in a 12-year-old minivan, I’ve got WAY more problems than just car speed.

Her: Oh, ok.  But I didn’t think it was fair that girl’s mom didn’t let her drive again until she was eighteen.

Me: The girl who broke her mother’s back?  By running her over with a car??  You think not letting her drive for a while after that was too harsh of a punishment?!?

Her: No.  Of course not.  It’s just that the mom lived.  It’s not like she died or anything.  But how do you even run someone over and they live?

[At this point, both of us are looking at the undercarriages of cars in front of us in traffic.]

Me: I don’t know.  ‘Cause some of that stuff hangs pretty low.  But I guess if the person falls down lengthwise so they’re in the center of all four wheels, so that the wheels don’t run them over but go on either side of them, then maybe they just get a broken back.

Her: You’re right, some of that stuff DOES hang pretty low.  [Sizing me up out of the corner of her eye.]  So you’d probably have to be pretty skinny to live through that.

Me: Yep, probably pretty skinny.  So don’t ever run me over and we’ll be fine and you can drive at the normal age.  Ok?

Her: Ok.

Me: Oh, and don’t ever get involved with the mafia.  That’s bad news.  ‘K?

Her: ‘K.

First Day of School

by | Leave a comment

Because I’m helpful like that, I spend the final week of summer vacation announcing each ‘last’ day as it arrives until finally, “This is the LAST SUNDAY of summer vacation!”  [said in a voice that sounds very, very similar to the Monster Truck Announcer mixed with the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge’s dead business partner.]

This is the LAST Sunday, SUuuunnnnDaaaAY of Summer VACAaaaaTIONNNNNN!!!

See?!  Helpful.  I’m a helper.  Doin’ some helping.  Helping those in the house taking a trip to the guillotine going back to school on Monday feel better about the death of their summer the start of an exciting new school year.  It in NO WAY gives ANYONE a sick feeling in their stomach. 

OK, I LIED!!!  I totally, TOTALLY!  LIED!!!  That whole “announcing” thing doesn’t make ANYONE feel better about ANYTHING!  It makes EVERYONE feel bad.  Me included.  The TRUTH is that I’M actually the one with the sick feeling in my stomach.  And since misery loves company, I try to pass that sick feeling on to others so I don’t suffer alone.  You’re welcome.

And why do I even HAVE this sick feeling??  I’M not the one going back to school, afterall. 

Maybe not, but I do vividly remember how really, really hard it was to be in 5th and 7th grades: the academics, the social difficulties, weird hair sprouting from weird places, suddenly smelly bits.  Ugh.  And that “smelly bits” comment made you think of an onion-y sub sandwich at the Italian deli too, didn’t it?  So now YOU also have a sick feeling in your stomach…and this sick feeling might, at this very minute, be moving rapidly into your throat.  FAIR WARNING:  if you start chumming in your mouth, we’re done here.  

I remember those grades in particular being awful.  Really, really awful.

So awful in fact that the last Sunday Sunday! of Summer Vacation resembles for me the eve before a battle.

I picture my little babies facing the new school year across an open field.  The new school year is lined up in regimented rows, wearing suits of armor.  Sissy and Sonny, barely visible waaaay across no-man’s land, have their faces painted blue and are wearing kilts.  Sissy’s got some cute braid thing going on in her hair and Sonny just lifted his kilt to show off his assets.  They are not armed with a single, solitary war cudgel; only dry erase markers and a box of colored pencils.  And their hope. 

Their hope that this school year will be the best one yet.  And that?  Right there??  That scrappy, rebel hope thing is the reason I would STILL want to know these two beautiful people even if I lived some other version of my life where I wasn’t lucky enough to be their mother.  That hope is a powerful thing.

Taught ‘em everything they know.  Thank you and good night. 

Chiropractor Survivor

by | Leave a comment

Here’s the funny thing about school supplies: you can buy your pencils the old-fashioned way, unsharpened.  Or – if you’re a big spender Hey, Big Spender! – you can buy your pencils PRE-sharpened for the low, low price of two dollars MORE than the cost of the old-timey unsharpened pencils.  Ha, ha, ha!  Isn’t that FUNNY??

But I prefer to go cheap or go home and throw some manual labor into the mix for good measure so I bought our pencils UNsharpened, then spent the next two hours sharpening them with a plastic, total crap, “prize box” fish-shaped pencil sharpener. 

Aha!  Two dollars SAVED!  But for some odd reason, my painful ‘tennis elbow’ started actin’ up.  So then I had to go see the chiropractor-who-helps-with-tennis-elbow for the low, low price of FIFTY dollars.  Hmmm.  If I’m being honest here, that DOES smell just a little bass ackwards.  Saving TWO dollars to spend FIFTY??  Maybe, just maybe, I shoulduv PAID the extra two bucks, Chuck, just to have the pencils already SHARPENED! 

But that’s where you come in…ALWAYS with the math.  ENOUGH with the math!  What I really wanted to say is that my trips to the chiropractor seem to turn into some version of Chiropractor Survivor – Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.  Heavy on the “Outlast.”

Every time I’m there, I find myself thinking, “The doctor can only hold my arm in that painful position for so long before I pass out.  And IF I pass out?  Surely he’ll stop.  But until then, I can outlast however long he needs to hold my arm in that painful position by comforting myself with the fact that if I pass out?  Surely he’ll stop.”

While I have never actually tested this theory by passing out, it’s good to have options.  Yes, you have options and stop calling me Shirley!  heh, heh, heh

And in keeping with the painful-to-the-point-of-passing-out chiro appointments, my latest ‘tennis elbow’ visit was no different.  RAT BASTARD PENCIL SHARPENER!!!  Perhaps the kids coulduv sharpened their OWN bleepin’ pencils?!!!  The doctor shot my elbow full of buckshot and sent me out the door. 

Ok, I lied.  It wasn’t buckshot; it was a bunch of BB’s.  And I have the picture to prove it.

When I asked what they REALLY were, he said they were “like medicine.” 

I say they’re “like peppercorns with tape over them.”  But who knows.  So instead, I’m pretending they’re actually radioactive pellets that give me superhuman powers on the tennis court. 

Or at a minimum, they let me live to sharpen another pencil another day.

Stay gold, Ponyboy (Subtitled: Don’t forget about the robots)

by | Leave a comment

Because Sissy is A-Number-One Citizen, she has already read her two Summer Reading Assignment books and is wrapping up her essay on same.  Need I mention that it’s still actually summer vacation?  And the assignment isn’t due until the Friday AFTER school starts?!  Yes, I need mention that, because then you’ll agree – God bless A-Number-One-Citizens!

But because the assignment was written in a confusing way (Two sets of paragraphs, one for EACH book?  Or one set of paragraphs, to cover BOTH books??  See?!  Confusing.) Sissy called me into the computer room where she was typing her assignment for a clarification discussion.

Once that discussion was over, we moved into a conversation about the setting of one of the books.  She had been going down some path where she was trying to place it in time (mid-1960’s) and actual mid-Western state (implied but unnamed).  But she revised it slightly once I started asking my usual insightful questions, “Was the name where the book took place mentioned?  If not, WHERE did it take place – in the country, or a city?  A big, wealthy city or not??  Were there any clues about the time of year when it happened?  Summer?  Winter??”

Then, because I’m a fun and pretty mother – and just a teeeensy bit mean (ok, a LOT mean) – as I’m walking away I say, “And don’t forget about the robots.  I think you should definitely mention something about the robots.”

…processing…processing…processing

“WHAT??!!?!  I DON’T REMEMBER ANYTHING ABOUT ROBOTS!!!!  HOW CAN I MENTION ABOUT ROBOTS WHEN I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THERE WERE ROBOTS?!??!!”

I suppose it would be helpful if you knew which books I was talking about, right?  One was uglies by Scott Westerfeld.  Published in 2011.  Never heard of it.  Never read it.  However, it looks intriguing: “A world where everyone’s ugly.  And then they’re not.”  Hmmmm…

But the other book?  The one with the robots??  The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.  Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’bout.  Read it.  Lived it.  LOVED it!  It was the book of my generation.  Well…more like the movie of my generation, but still.  Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and released in 1983.  It starred all those hot boys from back in the day – C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio.  Oh my GOSH!  And?  It introduced robots into the mainstream.  It doesn’t GET any more 80’s than that, who’s yer daddy?!  Except when I mention that the movie popularized that song “Gloria” by Them.  G-L-O-R-I-Aaaaa.  Glooo-ria!

Turning book reports into winning strategies for the “80’s Song for Every Moment in Life” game we play. 

And now that I’ve won this round, all I have to say in closing is: Stay Gold, Ponyboy! 

And no, there aren’t any robots in the book OR the movie.  I was just funnin’ ya.

Don’t Hamper the Celebration

by | Leave a comment

It’s my parents’ Fifty-SECOND wedding anniversary today!  And because I love my parents and I’m the middle child and therefore am endlessly in some sort of competition-in-my-head to attain “favorite child” status which will never happen because I’m the middle child and therefore exempt from the title despite my best efforts, I decided to have a gift delivered to them on their special occasion.

‘Cept they’re in Scotland right now, which adds a unique twist to the gift-giving effort and also shows that I am completely committed to winning this competition, even if it IS only in my head.

Now it just so happens that there are many, many options for giving a gift across the pond.  And something called a “hamper” seems to be a key component to all of this.  But the word alone makes me think that whatever the gift is, it will most likely come nestled in a bunch of dirty laundry.  Which is an awful possibility.  So no.  No on the hampers.

Although there was that one thrilling Hamper Experience where I got all the way to the “Please Deliver To:” phase online.  In the U.S., the “title” options would have been your standard: Mr. and Mrs.  But in the U.K. the title options were actual…TITLES: Baroness, Commander, Lord and Lady, Reverend, DAME!!!  <–While that particular title sounds like a misogynistic Frank Sinatra song, it makes you want to purchase something from the U.K. online just so you can snap your fingers while sing-speaking, “Hooky Dame.  What do I care for a dame?  Every old dame is the same!”

But again, “hampers” were out, so Hubby and I spent yesterday sitting beside the local pool discussing other gift options with squiggly L price tags.  To a bystander, it mustuv sounded like we were discussing the weights of all the swimmers in the pool.  “Yes, but how many POUNDS would THAT be?!?”

To add to the effect, one gift option under discussion was squiggly L 50.12.  Squiqqly L is ‘pounds.’  But what the heck is point 12??  I thought it might be ‘shillings’ but then again, I’ve read too many Regency Romance Novels in my life, so maybe not.  Hubby thought it was pence.  Which I laughed at because it made him sound like he was trying to order a tankard of ale.  Even though he’s probably right about the pence thing, I prefer to laugh at him and never admit he’s right (I’m gunning for my OWN fifty-two years  of wedded bliss with this tactic), so I decided to call the point 12 a ‘partial pound.’  And see?  We’re right back to judging the swimmers based on their weight.

Eventually we decided to have a bottle of champagne delivered to my parents’ hotel room in the late afternoon of their special day.  So this morning at 7 a.m. Rocky Mountain Time, I spoke with the Team Lead at Hotel Reception and placed the order.  And I know!  Team Lead?  Hotel Reception??  I’m talking with a fake English accent in my head now too!  Also?  What IS the time difference between Colorado and Scotland?  I’m hoping it’s seven hours difference?  Or eight??  I wish I could ask my mother.  She’s great with time differences in the Atlantic Ocean.

Whilst speaking with Hotel Reception Come on!  Give this one to me.  What other time in my LIFE will I EVER be able to say, “Whilst” in casual conversation.  With a fake English accent.  Never, that’s when.  So you GOTTA give this one to me.  I was informed that for one pound extra I could have ten pounds of chocolate delivered WITH the champagne.  Or…maybe it was for ten pounds extra I could have a pound of chocolate delivered with the champagne?  Who knows.  It’s confusing when people with accents call their money by my country’s weight.  It’s almost like math.  Actually…it’s TOTALLY like math.  In other words: Confusing.  Like I just said.

Anyway, that’s done.  Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.  I love you!  And by a quick show of hands, who’s your favorite child??  Still no?  Well at least you’re always glad you had me, right?!  RIGHT??