Monthly Archives: October 2007

Oct31

Un-ground Me!

Posted on by
Un-ground Me!

OK, so, I was checking out The Kid’s blog on my Google Reader since I’m not allowed to talk to him until Friday. (I was going through withdrawal!) ANYWAY, apparently The Kid saw a bunch of llamas loose on campus at his college. (One was even in a building!)

Fortunately he took pictures. You too can see the pictures of the llamas at Cedarville if you go to his blog. (He’s linked on the right.)

I haven’t seen anything that cool recently and I am dying to discuss it with him.

Things I need to ask The Kid:

  1. Were the llamas part of some exhibit or were they just loose from some llama farm nearby?
  2. Did any spit on you?
  3. Did any do their business when they were inside the building?
  4. Did you pet them?
  5. If so, were they soft?
  6. Which one was your favorite?
  7. Did you chase them?

OH MY GOSH UN-GROUND ME RIGHT NOW! I can’t take it anymore!

Oct31

I Think That Truck Is Alive…

Posted on by
I Think That Truck Is Alive…

Joey and I went to Target last night to look for a wig for me to wear as part of my costume tonight. No dice. Unfortunately, I think all wigs were sold out sometime last week.

As we were walking back out to our car I noticed a large, ugly truck that hadn’t been there when we first went into the store. Just as I walked past the passenger door, the truck began coughing, sputtering and making sounds that could have been mistaken for an engine turning over.

It completely freaked me out. There was no one in the cab.

I began having flashbacks to that one Strong Bad email where Strong Bad and The Cheat are watching the scary show on TV about the truck that’s alive and The Cheat gets so scared he loses it and goes nuts.

“Um…..Joey?” I asked, “Something’s wrong with that truck. It’s starting all by itself.”

I vaguely remembered hearing ads for remote starting systems last Christmas, but that was back in Iowa and, seriously, who needs to remote start their car to warm it up when it’s already 65 degrees outside? Obviously that was not what was going on. People don’t need remote start systems down here, it never gets that cold.

Joey flipped on the lights and, disturbingly enough, at the same moment the lights from the truck, that I was beginning to think was alive, also turned on.

I whimpered. “It’s alive.” The truck coughed and sputtered again, but still did not turn over.

“No,” Joey said half patiently, half not patiently “That is the reflection of our lights in the truck’s headlights. They did not just turn on by themselves.”

“Yes they did,” I insisted.

We backed out of the parking space (and got further away from the truck that was scaring me) and noticed that the truck’s headlights were not dimming as we pulled out. THEN we noticed some rag-tag individuals walking up to the alive truck and getting in.

“Oh.” Joey said. “They must have done a remote start with it or something. You’re right, those headlights did turn on.”

“That stupid thing scared me a lot.” I said.

Joey just shook his head and drove home.

And the exciting part was that when we got home we walked, jumped, and rolled up the new pillows we got earlier in the evening. (We were breaking them in; the guy at the store told us to do it!) Joey is a serial pillow-killer and had destroyed all of our pillows but one – mine, which I won’t let him touch. (We had nine pillows in our house up until I threw three of them out last night, seven of which we’ve purchased just in the time since we’ve been married!) Poor Joey was consistently waking up grouchier and grouchier because his neck was hurting because he was sleeping on a mauled pillow.

So, we think, we got a Joey-proof pillow this time. At least it comes with a three-year warranty…

Anyway, it was kind of fun to jump on a pillow. It burned off all the stress from thinking that truck was alive.

Oct30

The Kid Detox Is Going Well

Posted on by
The Kid Detox Is Going Well

So I’m still grounded from The Kid, but I must congratulate myself in that I’ve done very good job abiding to all the parameters of my grounding . I haven’t called him, emailed him, sent him any IMs, and I’ve pretty much quit walking around the house muttering “The Kid” and crying.

THE KID, however, is not quite so amazing.

On Sunday night we were mostly asleep when that Kid called Joey’s cell phone. (On The Kid’s behalf, it was only 9:30. But we did have to get up disturbingly early so we could both be in our respective offices by 7:00 the next morning.)

I heard muffled sounds coming from Joey’s phone. Then,

“What? You need her to proofread an outline for you? And it’s due Tuesday? What did you do, wait until the last minute?”

A pause.

“Oh, youth in Asia? They have a pretty severe plight; that’s pretty depressing, I’d put it off too.”

Another pause.

“The Kid, I know you said ‘euthanasia’ and not ‘youth in Asia’. Duh. But the problem your sister is STILL grounded from you. I’m not sure she’s allowed to proofread your outlines, even if they are due on Tuesday.”

I perked up. Maybe….

“OK, fine. I’ll make an exception. You can send her the outline and she can proof it for you. You can even have two chat sessions to discuss the outline. But she’s still grounded until Friday night.”

I smiled. However, I was determined to see this grounding through…there would be no chatting coming from me.

Joey handed the phone to me to say something to The Kid about something I’d mailed him, but I yelled, ‘No, no, I’m grounded I can’t talk to him!” and buried my head in my pillow.

See how well-behaved I am? I’m even better at being grounded now than I was when I was in high school.

And when The Kid sent me his paper about euthanasia (which was depressing, he was right), I edited it and sent it back to him with the words, “I’m grounded, man.” And, thus, I have 4 days down and 3 more days of grounding to go.

I hope that Kid is enjoying his birthday present. GOSH.

Oct29

Getting Kicked in Kickball

Posted on by
Getting Kicked in Kickball

First of all, it’s pretty much mom’s fault that I don’t like games that involve balls. Of any sort. Large, small, flying, rolling…I don’t know how to handle them and they generally scare me. (Especially when they’re flying through the air at my head.) Mom’s the same way only way, way worse; I figure I inherited from her.

Our SF group challenged another SF group to a game of kickball this last Sunday. Unfortunately, 4 of our key people weren’t able to make it. That meant there were 6 of us against the formidable 10 from the other SF group. (And I don’t really count, so it was really more like 5 on 10.)

Our odds were not good.

I managed to avoid kicking the ball entirely the first time we were up. This was done rather easily because I had made the mistake of bringing Henry to the park. I couldn’t very well just leave him while I kicked the ball, because odds were good that he’d jump in my way, make me trip, and then I’d fall and be out.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to leave Henry with the other team when we were in the outfield because we were barely up to kick for 5 minutes together. (We kept getting out.)

So I took him with me.

He sat there and cried as he watched everyone have fun but him. I stood there in the vicinity of 2nd base (but really not on 2nd base because who can hang on to a dog and watch a base at the same time?!) and watched Laura and Luke catch/chase all the balls that came my direction.

Danny kept yelling strange phrases that I didn’t understand like “Any face, any base!” and “2 down!”

I’d stand there and try to figure out what in the world he was talking about. Two down? Does that mean there are two outs, or does it mean that there are two runners on base? (Both were true.)

And about that time a ball would go flying past. A ball that, had I been paying attention, I’d have caught. Well, OK, that’s maybe a little bit of an exaggeration. I’d have tried to catch it.

I’m still not sure what “any face, any base” means. I’m open to suggestions.

I probably should mention, in all fairness and in a spirit of positiveness (is that a word?) that I did get to 2nd base, even though I couldn’t find it. (We didn’t have any bases which meant we were all running around like drunks trying to find the little dusty circles on the ground where the bases should have been, had we gotten the bases.) I think 2nd base is further than I’ve made it in a long time. Stop laughing.

Becca was a complete trooper at 1st base, about a million foul balls got kicked her way and she had to chase them down. I was kind of glad I wasn’t at 1st base. (It probably helps that she’s a 1st grade teacher and her students probably always kick foul balls.) She gets the Good Sport award.

Laura caught way more than her fair share of balls in the outfield. She was standing in my vicinity and I didn’t catch any. So she definitely gets the Good Game award for picking up my slack and being awesome.

Luke and Becca get the award for Good Newlyweds. Between Joey and I, we took 6 pictures of the two of them posing all cute and newlywed-like. Nice job, guys. Additionally, Luke gets an award for having to be in the outfield and look directly in the sun. He gets the Good Eyesight award.

Danny gets the Good Organization award for organizing the entire thing. I was trying to think of some award I could give him that had something to do with using phrases I didn’t understand, but I gave up on that.

Joey pitched for us every inning and I was quite impressed that not only could he make the ball get all the way up to the plate, he pitched it straight! (Two things I can’t do. I’ve tried, but really not very hard.) He gets the award for Good Pitching.

And these are some pictures from the event that we took with our new camera! We had lots of fun…even though we lost. Really, really badly.

Like, as in we never even scored badly.

Danny cheering Laura on
Joey pitching
One of the many cute pictures of Luke and Becca that we took…
Our team!
Sad we lost…And a kiss to make us all feel better.
Oct29

Pumpkin Carving!

Posted on by
Pumpkin Carving!

Joey and I are pumpkin carvers extraordinare. OK, well, maybe not that good. But our pumpkins are killer sweet this year.

Joey, after much deliberation and painstaking selection, decided he would carve a bear holding shark into his pumpkin.As you can see, it turned out very much like one would think a bear holding a shark carved into a pumpkin would look.

“Joey, is that bear wearing a scarf around his neck? Or are those his teeth,” I asked when he showed me his work of art.

He sighed. “Bears holding sharks do not wear scarves. Those are obviously teeth. How can you not tell that?”

I giggled; I could totally tell, I just wanted to rile him up. It always works, too.

My pumpkin design was a little bit more difficult.

“Can I carve The Kid into my pumpkin?” I asked/whined. “I miss him.”

“No, you are grounded from The Kid. You cannot carve his face onto your pumpkin; try again.” Joey said. I think he was trying not to laugh at me.

I thought. And thought.

If I couldn’t annoy one brother, I’d have to annoy the other brother. I tried to think of what would annoy Andrew the most…

We ruled out Henry’s tongue because it would be too un-annoying once carved into a pumpkin. I decided to go with Marshie the Marshmallow. (From Homestarrunner.com?!? Come on, guys, seriously. How can you not know this?)

I found a pattern online and traced it onto my pumpkin, then began to carve using these fantastic tools that we got at Target.

Much, much easier than using the butcher knife, Pops.

This is my finished product of Marshie the Marshmallow. It’s a real bad picture of me.Take that, Andrew. So annoying, huh?

And these are our pumpkins together. Aren’t they quite fantastic?

Oct26

Elevators Are Lame

Posted on by
Elevators Are Lame

This morning I was in the parking garage waiting for the elevator to arrive to take me up out of the dungeon. I had pushed the “up” button and, quite suddenly, two “up” elevators arrived at the exact same time.

What’s a girl to do? I picked the nearest one and the two other people who had also been waiting for an elevator got on with me.

The doors shut suddenly and I realized I’d made a mistake. The elevator was malfunctioning and, while it said it was going up, it was really going down. And stopping at all the other floors between us and the bottom on its way.

“Nuts, the elevator is broken!” I said, by way of explanation to my two elevator buddies who were looking at me oddly and trying to figure out why I was staring at the row of buttons.

One of them happened to be an acquaintance of mine. I looked at him, sighed, and said, “I’m going to have to send in a ticket to Support about this elevator being broken.”

He looked at me with a very worried look on his face. I could almost read his mind: Doesn’t this girl know that sending a ticket to Support will do her absolutely no good since the elevator we’re currently on isn’t anywhere near our office? And even if it was, she’d have to put in a maintenance work order and not a Support ticket…

“Are you serious?” He asked me gently.

I cracked a smile. “No,” I said.

He sighed a very great sigh of relief.

And the elevator finally stopped going down and began going back up to the ground floor like it was supposed to do the entire time.

Oct25

Grounded From The Kid

Posted on by
Grounded From The Kid

Last night on the way home from youth group I decided I needed to call The Kid to get him to tell Joey to buy me some marshmallows. I left him a voicemail that sounded something like this:

“The Kid. Call Joey and tell him him to buy me some marshies so I can roast them over the fire I want him to make us this evening. He probably won’t get any if I ask him for them, so I need you to tell him to do it. OKFINE. Bye.”

Joey pulled into Target anyway and we purchased one bag each of big and little marshies (2 bags of the Target brand were the same price as 1 bag of Kraft) and a pumpkin carving kit for Saturday. As we drove out of the parking lot, my phone rang.

“It’s The Kid!” I crowed.

Joey snatched it out of my hand. “Give me that!” He said, then flipped the phone open and said to the Kid, “The Kid, you are not allowed to talk to Jenna again until your birthday. She can’t call you, email you, IM you, or figure out any other way to contact you between now and then. She is grounded.”

“What?!” I wailed. “But….The Kid! I need….The Kid!”

“She obviously needs help on this codependency thing. So you get 9 days off from talking to her,” Joey said to The Kid. He sounded rather triumphant.

“Noooooo!” I moaned. “How can I make major life decisions about whether or not to get cookies or soda!”

I heard some muffled noises coming from my phone. I couldn’t discern what The Kid was saying, but whatever it was probably wasn’t good.

“You’re welcome, The Kid. It’s my birthday present to you.” Joey said into the phone. Then he hung up.

“You can’t talk to The Kid until you get to Indiana. He said it was the best birthday present I’d ever given him.” Joey said with an evil grin on his face.

I squeezed the bag of marshmallows for comfort. I continued pouting.

“Here’s what you have to do. You have to write down every time you want to talk to The Kid between now and November 2 and then give the entire packet to him. I think that’ll probably be seriously annoying,” Joey pulled the car into the parking lot and we got out.

“But…The Kid…” I said, forlornly.

“You’ll be OK. You are obviously addicted to The Kid.”

He has a point.

For the next 10 minutes I wandered around the house pathetically asking deep, important questions to no one. Questions like,

“The Kid, how are you doing?”

“The Kid, can I get a Pepsi?”

“The Kid, can I get a cookie?”

“The Kid, is Ernie cooler than me?”

And suchlike.

Joey just laughed his wicked little laugh at me as he started the fire in our fireplace.

Being grounded from The Kid is so shocking! I was totally not expecting it, and I didn’t even do anything bad to deserve such a thing! Hmm, I wonder what I can ground Joey from… His lappy? MacGyver? Sleeping? Mt. Dew?

I think sleeping.

Joey, you are grounded from sleeping until November 2, 2007. So go stock up on the No Doze.

Oct24

In Which Jenna Gets Yelled At By The Dallas Police

Posted on by
In Which Jenna Gets Yelled At By The Dallas Police

Last night was a very nice, cool evening. While I was on my way home from work I determined that nothing would please me more than to take Henry to the dog park at White Rock Lake after I’d cleaned up dinner and while Joey was working on homework.

This plan did not go over very well with Joey who informed me that he was not going to sit at home and read while I took Henry to a dog park; that was absolutely unfair.

Several minutes later Joey’s phone rang. He talked to his friend for a few minutes and then put the phone down, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

“Jordan has a free ticket to the Mavs game tonight and he’s wondering if I can go.”

“But what about all that homework you said you had to do?” I asked.

“I’ll take it with me!” He said. He seemed to think this was a good solution. “Besides, it’s not due until Thursday.”

Since there was nothing standing in his way, he told Jordan that, yes, he could go to the game with him. I was very jealous. I like watching basketball and, since we don’t have a TV, it’s a very rare occurrence. (And soccer, which I spent every Sunday afternoon watching with FIL#1 during my Senior year of college, is not the same thing.)

It was only 6:50, so I decided now was a good time to leave for the dog park before it got too dark outside. I bundled up, made myself some tea, grabbed my copy of Mansfield Park, and harnessed Henry. Joey was sitting in the study doing homework mostly, I think, to convince me that he was actually going to get something done tonight.

I pretty much knew better.

I gave Joey a kiss and Henry and I headed out the door. Henry was all giddy as we went to the car, he loves going places. When we got to the dog park, the sign read “CLOSED”. There were about 20 people and as many dogs in the fenced in area, though, so I figured I might as well join them.

The gate was locked, but there were two plastic lawn chairs next to the fence that people were using to climb over. I figured I might as well be a joiner as not, so I did the same.

I unclipped Henry’s leash and left him to sniff around with the other dogs. He was real traumatized at first, but shortly decided he would have more fun if he chased the larger dogs. I found a vacant chair in the middle of the park and sat down with my tea and my book. Henry ran about and played very nicely, something that pleased me quite a bit. (He’s rather socially awkward.)

About 10 minutes passed before I heard, “HEY! IT IS ILLEGAL TO JUMP THE FENCE; IS THAT HOW YOU ALL GOT IN?”

I whipped my head around and there, in the parking lot standing next to a Dallas Police car stood a policeman. A very angry policeman.

“ALL OF YOU GET OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW. WHAT YOU ARE DOING IS ILLEGAL! THE DOG PARK IS CLOSED.” He continued to yell.

Oh great, “Dallas Seminary Student wife gets busted at the dog park for being an illegal ,” I thought to myself. I can see the headlines now.

I grabbed Henry, my book and my tea and waited in line to climb over the fence to get back out.

“Do you think he’ll give us all citations?” People whispered worriedly as they passed me.

I certainly hoped not.

We made it out without incident and the policeman didn’t seem like he was handing out tickets. I slunk back to my car. With all the excitement, Henry was completely keyed up and going crazy. He still needed exercise, which had been the entire point of going to the dog park in the first place.

So I decided to take him running. He didn’t really like it.

Oct23

Like Parents Like Daughter

Posted on by
Like Parents Like Daughter

Whenever I’m at my parents’ house I wake up really early. Usually it’s because I’m excited that I’m home and figure that Pops’ cow sprayer has broken again and he needs help fixing it. (It conveniently breaks a lot whenever us kids are home, there are rumors floating around that it might be rigged).

So I usually go find a pair of Mom’s old jeans and one of her t-shirts and make my way to the kitchen where, inevitably, I find my parents sitting at the kitchen table having their devotions and eating their breakfast.

“Want to join us?” Pops will ask. I’ll look at his breakfast, a bowl of plain yogurt mixed with strawberries All Bran Buds and maybe, if I’m really unlucky, there will be some bananas cut up on the top.

“Sure! But I am not eating that,” I’ll say.

“Come on, it’s good.” Mom will try to convince me, and then take a nice big bite.

“No way; it’s positively disgusting. I tried it once,” I maintain.

I hate everything about bananas (but mostly the smell) so I usually sit as far away as possible from whichever of them has bananas in their yogurt mixture. And I’m sunk if they both have bananas.

I’ll get myself a granola bar or munch on dry cereal while Pops reads out of Our Daily Bread and we pray together. (Usually the bananas are all consumed by this point.)

Then I go tag along with Pops and “help” him fix things. If I’m very lucky (and usually I am) we have to stop for Pepsi and sustenance sometime in the course of me helping do whatever it needs to get done.

The problem with this whole otherwise idyllic scenario is the yogurt thing my parents eat for breakfast. (It’s even worse when mom dumps in a quarter cup of wheat germ…) For about 10 years now I have been giving them a hard time about their disgusting breakfast of choice.

I’m not sure what happened when I turned 25, but shortly thereafter I began looking in the dairy fridge in the morning thinking “I should have some yogurt.”

Two weeks ago, I finally did it.

I poured half a container of plain organic yogurt into a bowl and cut up a whole bunch of strawberries and raspberries. I mixed them in until they were throughly coated and then….then I went to the cupboard and dug out a bran-type cereal and dumped it on top of the yogurt covered fruit.

Realizing what I had done, I stepped back and stared at my bowl. This can’t be happening.

One of my associates came up beside me and looked at my breakfast. “That looks really…different,” he said diplomatically. “I would never have thought to add the cereal.”

I surprised myself when I replied, “Well, it’s actually pretty good.” And took a nice big bite.

And I have eaten yogurt, fruit and cereal almost every morning since then. Not only do I look exactly like my mother, but I eat breakfast like her now too! (And follow around poor Joey picking up the things he’s currently using and putting them away just like her.)

I might as well not fight it any more.

Oct22

Posted on by

Suddenly I notice that my hair is getting really long. (Well, OK, it’s getting really long for me.)

It touches my shoulders when I wear it down and, sometimes, I like to think that it even passes my shoulders.

But I know that’s not true.

Goal: To grow some seriously long hair
Current Status: Getting there. Slowly.