Tag Archives: adventures

Feb3

TODAY is the best day of my life!

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TODAY is the best day of my life!

Well, maybe you’ve heard that the Superbowl is coming to Indy on Sunday?

It’s just a little football game.

But you know what the BIG news was?  THE TODAY SHOW WAS BROADCASTING FROM DOWNTOWN!

Guys.  I love the Today show.  It’s, like, my favorite.

One of the things on my Bucket List was being in “the crowd” on the Today show.  For serious.  (And now that I’ve written it down I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it.)

So last week when they announced they were broadcasting from Indy this week on Friday – Monday, we were SO in.  In fact, this is how in we were: Joey took the morning off to make this happen for me.  He is a rockstar.

THANKS, JOEY!!!

A couple days ago, Angel’s husband Chang also became a rockstar because HE took the day off so she could come with us!

And that’s how it became a party at my house at 6:00 a.m. this morning.

Should I mention that I was so excited last night that I couldn’t sleep until after 1 am?  So when the alarm went off at 5:30, it felt super lame.  But we got up, we got ready, and we got in the car.

We drove down and parked in one of the garages near the convention center.  I am not going to disclose how much we paid for parking because it was a shameful amount of money, but I know from a Very Reliable Source that the cost for that same garage has increased by $20.00 in the last 4 hours.  I think that makes me feel less bad?

Angel brought her carrier and we loaded Analie up.

Analie was fully dressed in an undershirt, leggings and socks underneath her PJs, was also wearing a hoodie and covered in several blankets.  Oh, and a hat.

Poor girl was so tired and confused.

But she was a champ!  She didn’t fuss at all the entire morning; she just looked around sleepily at everything.  YAY ANA!

We ran upstairs and walked the two or three blocks to the broadcast site, and I think half of Indianapolis had beaten us there!  It was packed with screaming people waving their signs.  We didn’t get very close, but that’s OK.  Just being part of the crowd was so fun.

See that big gray post in the right third of the shot?  And that cute little lady in the white jacket?  That’s ANN CURRY, guys.

We heard buzz in the crowds behind us that Al was going to zipline at 7:30, so since our spot wasn’t very good for watching the broadcast, we moved to see if we could see Al go flying above our heads.

Sure enough, we did!  (That’s him in the top right of the photo.)  He totally looked right at me.

We lined up on the street by the end of the zipline and waited with a small crowd for a few minutes while Al did the weather from up in the tower.

Ana did all the beautiful coloring on that sign herself.  (And she got it all over her foot in the process.)

AND THEN AL ROKER WALKED PAST US.  (Also some IMPD officers.)

After that we decided to walk through Superbowl Village and over to Monument Circle and see the big Superbowl letters.

That’s when we realized how cold it was outside.

And by this point, our Miss decided she’d really rather not be in the carrier for awhile.  She wanted to be able to actually see what was going on.  (She’s too short to see much over the carrier.  Poor thing’s going to be a midget.)

Superbowl Village was OK, I guess.  It probably would have been ten times cooler if things were open.  But it was 7:45 am, and most visitors were probably still having their coffee in their hotel bathrobes at that time of day.

IF they were awake at all.

Analie was getting to the point where she was wondering why SHE was awake.  (We did not pose her like this.  It was hilarious.)

We made it to the Superbowl letters just as the sun was coming up!

And you’re wondering what Angel’s sign says?  Uh…”Chang is the Baby Ninja”.  I was really tired last night when I made it and it was the best thing I could come up with at the time.

After Monument Circle we all realized we were starving.  So we hit up a Panera and got bagels and tried to warm up some.

Have you ever seen a more sleepy pair of eyes in the entire world?  (I even put her to bed at 5:30 last night knowing we’d be getting her up an hour early!)  We’re going to have another early night tonight, I think.

I am so glad we were crazy and got up early to do this.  Sure, you’d need a magnifying glass to find us on TV (we found ourselves!), but just being a part of the spirit of everything was so worth it.  It made me feel like I was part of something in my adopted hometown.

Now I need to feed an early lunch to my exhausted baby girl so I can put her down for an early nap.  Then Angus needs a bath.  You don’t want to know why.

And we’re back to  business as usual.

Sep4

Back in the Day …

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Back in the Day …

A couple of weeks ago, much to my chagrin, Chang and Angel stumbled upon a DVD on our shelf and made us watch it.  I’m not even sure what this particular DVD was doing on our shelf in the first place.  I think it technically belongs to the Parents, but at some point which I do not remember, we must have borrowed it from them. Why, I do not know, as I do not tend to enjoy subjecting myself to the kind of torture that is watching that DVD.

You see, it is a home video from the year of 1995. You know, the year of big hair, leotards, and stirrup pants.  It was also the year I turned thirteen and suffered from all of the above.  That was the year all of us kids got together with our childhood friends, Nicki and Dustin, and produced a play based on Adventures in Odyssey’s episode “The Vow.”  For years, it had been our favorite radio drama, but this was the year we were going to turn it into our very own production.  I, however, was entering the teen years, and it wasn’t necessarily “cool” to listen to radio drama anymore.  My younger siblings hadn’t caught up with the trends yet and were still obsessed, so they spent months writing the scripts (and trying to understand what terms like “fade-away jumper” and “documentaries” were), building the sets, and rehearsing parts.  Nicki and I were roped into playing the parts of Donna and Jesse and grudgingly went along with it.  In the end, we invited our parents, grandparents, and a lonely neighbor down the street to our live performance.

In the moment of putting stuff like that together, you have no idea how humiliating it will be years down the road. The movie is probably not as embarrassing to The Brother, as he rocked in his Lakers Jersey, or to The Kid, who was five and Just. Plain. Adorable in his walk-on role.  But for me, it’s one of those movies that makes me cover my face and watch through my fingertips due to my bad hair and oldschool fashions.

However, it is good for one thing, and that is comic relief.  So, despite the fact that I said I never wanted anyone else to see this again, I gotta admit it is Highly Amusing and may be worth the humiliation I may suffer in order to share it with the rest of you.  It won’t be winning any awards, but it always gives my family a lot of laughs every time we watch and reminisce.

Kids, don’t try this at home. Unless you want to be subject to blackmail at some later point in your life.

Jul6

This Is About The Time I Crushed Up 13 Boxes Of Black Snakes And Lit Them On Fire

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This Is About The Time I Crushed Up 13 Boxes Of Black Snakes And Lit Them On Fire

Did you grow up doing Black Snakes on the Fourth of July?

I totally did.

I think they’re amazing.  Joey thinks they’re super lame.  (Sometimes I think JOEY is super lame.  I told him this in the fireworks store when he was making fun of me for freaking out about the black snakes, so don’t worry.  He knows.  And he’s cool with it.)

Anyway, I happened to be talking to The Brother about a totally different topic on Sunday afternoon, and he suggested that I try something one of his compatriots grew up doing.  Smash up 10 boxes worth of black snakes and put them in a coffee can and light it on fire.

Um, YES PLEASE.

So yesterday, I bought 13 boxes because they were on sale for super cheap.

And we don’t buy coffee that comes in cans so I used a diced tomato can, which is a little smaller and I figured would intensify whatever happened with the crushed snake powder.

I put the 78 Black Snake pellets into a freezer baggie (for extra durability) and took them out to the driveway and crushed them up very good by walking on them.  It’s the one time in my life that I have found it convenient that I weigh over 100 libs.

Then, I went inside and informed Joey how many snakes I had bought.  I didn’t think he would care about my experiment so I’d planned to do it while he was at work because:

a.) he had told me black snakes were stupid

and, b.) he had told me black snakes were stupid.

I didn’t figure he’d want to waste his time on watching something stupid.  HOWEVER.  When I informed him how many snakes I’d bought, he was all, “Wow, that sounds really stupid.  Uhhhhh, you’d better wait until I get home to do it.”

Yeah.  He obviously think it’s really stupid.

(How many times can I use the word “stupid” in a blog post?  LOTS!  and LOTS!)

I also invited Angel to come over, because she had seemed skeptical that I’d really try this and she kept being the voice of caution, suggesting I could blow and arm or eyeball off.  (That’s obviously why we moved so close to a hospital.  Safety first.)  At 6:00 yesterday evening, conditions were right to light my can of smashed up snakes on fire.

It was my favorite.

Angel’s commentary in the background was totally worth the $3.00 I spent on the snakes.  It’s pretty much the 2nd best part of the video (hi Angel!), a close second only to the erupting mound of flaming snake.

And of course we had to destroy the flaming mound of, um, Black Snake after its fire was extinguished.

Jun4

Why can’t we just launch rockets like normal people???

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Why can’t we just launch rockets like normal people???

We’ve been in the Iowa for something like a week now.  Last night and tonight, we launched rockets.

Last night, I wore my bermuda khakis, a shirt from LOFT and some of the barn boots (a pair which was only slightly too big) to haul about a half mile out into the recently planted soybean field (uh, sorry Randy) with The Kid and The Brother on Launch Recovery Team.

They’d have been a lot more efficient if I didn’t go along.  But I insisted.

At the point where we retrieved the rocket, I realized the barn boots had rubbed my ankles and heels raw, and I now had to walk all the way back up to the house with bleeding feet in boots that’s sanitary qualities were more than questionable.

I was even slower going back up to the house.

(Incidentally, I just looked at my heels and noticed they’re oozing and about to drip on the carpet.  That is just a delightful sight, I tell you.  Appetizing, even.  Somebody pass the cupcakes.)

So tonight, I wasn’t going to repeat the same horrible experience.  I dug up Joey’s athletic shorts, a t-shirt with a hole in it, some of Pops’ socks calf-length socks, and Mom’s gardening shoes.

Y’all.  I looked smokin’.

But I was much more comfortable and that’s what counts.

When The Kid saw me, he said something to the effect of “Lady, you look like a complete idiot”.  And he took a picture.

We loaded the rocket with bigger engines today than we used yesterday.  There seemed to be barely any wind, so we thought we were golden; the Launch Recovery Team (LRT) expected an easy recovery in the middle of the soybean field.  Unfortunately, when the rocket went up (WAAAAAAY UP) we realized immediately that we were way off.  The rocket blew south, right into our old neighborhood and a bunch of trees.

The LRT burst forth with shouts of “I THINK I’VE GOT IT!” and “IT’S IN THE TREES!” and suchlike.  The Kid, The Brother, Jess and I took off running down the front yard and across the street (which is further than it sounds to you city people) and were puzzling our next steps when we noticed Pops whizzing up the street in the van, packed with Laura and Joey.  Pops was all, GET IN!  GET IN! and we drove down the street we thought it had landed on, yelling out the windows to people in their yards, asking if they’d seen our rocket.

Everyone just looked at us super weird.

I’ll fast forward to the part where we did find the rocket, about 8 inches from our neighbor’s house.  The same neighbor who made us get rid of our dog growing up.  (Not that it was any skin off our nose, we didn’t like the dog.  But the point is: they don’t like things messing with their house.)  Joey’s hypothesis was that the rocket had hit their roof and bounced off into the grass.

Good thing we were in and out like assassins, our neighbors never saw us (actually it was Joey) coming or going.  Unless if they randomly read this blog.  Then, hi unnamed neighbors: I just ‘fessed.

After our first launch, and its questionable success, we re-aimed the launch pad and tried again.

There was a serious delay between the pushing of the button and the ignition of the engines, because just as Pops was about to go inspect the problem, the rocket went WOOOOOOSH! and took off into the sky.  It scared us all half to death because it had been so long since the launch button was pushed that we all thought this attempt was a scrub.

We were wrong.  The thing went up in the sky and pretty much everyone screamed and/or jumped a mile.  Good thing Pops didn’t get his face blown off.  That’s why it’s important to practice launch safety techniques.

The rocket went up, up, up and was looking PERFECT…until the wind stopped blowing.  Pops, Joey, The Brother and I all ran pell-mell across our side yard down to the barn (which, again, is further away than it sounds to you city folk), across the street, and into Pops’ uncut alfalfa field.  Joey was a few dozen yards ahead of us and suddenly we heard, “I GOT IT!”

Normally we yell I GOT IT if we actually hold the rocket in our hands.  Joey yelled that because he saw the rocket.  In the tree.  ”Four feet” off the ground.

May I just say it was many more than four feet off the ground.

I saw that rocket in the tree and I immediately flashed back to the events of the last month: a tennis ball to Joey’s eye, a volleyball to his left cheek, a water bottle to his mouth.  The rocket in the tree is immediately flashing DANGER! DANGER! in my wife brain.

The next thing I know, Joey has climbed up into the tree as Pops, The Brother and I look on.  The tree looked like a mulberry tree, so it has spindly, thin branches that sprawl out over a large area.  The rocket was at the edge of the tree’s plumage, so Joey had quite a ways to go before he could actually reach it.  Within no time at all he was as high as the rocket, and inching out on the tiny little tree branch.

“PLEASE think carefully about what you are going to do!” I yelled.  What I meant was: please, please don’t do anything stupid.

The tree branches rustled.  Dollar signs flashed before my eyes.  They rustled some more.

“Uhhhhhh, I think this branch isn’t sturdy enough to support my weight,” Joey said.  ”So I’m going to try the Lemur Approach.”

I wasn’t sure what the Lemur Approach was, but I was positive I wouldn’t like it.  Suddenly, Joey swung down from the branch and hung from it by his hands.  The leaves rustled and bent toward the ground, Pops and The Brother scrambled to get the rocket as Joey bounced gently on the branch.

Then, I heard wood splitting.

“HONEY!” I screamed.  The dollar signs in front of my eyes grew much, much larger.

“I’m OK,” he yelled.  ”Another tree branch caught me.”

As if that was reassuring.

Fortunately I couldn’t see what was going on, but I did hear a few more smaller branches break and then Joey emerged from the woods, sticks stuck to his hair and leaves on his shirt.  But he was alive, intact, and it didn’t even look like he’d torn or stained any clothes.

The dollar signs I had been seeing disappeared.

All’s well that ends well, because as soon as we got to the house Pops and The Brother started stuffing toilet paper in the rocket again so they could relaunch it.  (What.  Don’t you stuff toilet paper in your rockets before you launch them?)

And now I realize I should go work on my feet.  They’re still oozing.

 

Apr12

Just when I said nothing ever happens to me anymore…

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Just when I said nothing ever happens to me anymore…

This morning was cool and bright and beautiful, just the kind of morning I like to take Analie out for some of her doctor ordered 10 minutes of sunlight every day.  I was holding her and talking to The Kid on the phone (get ready, Indianapolis, he is coming next weekend) while Henry ran around behind the house, so we followed him.

That was when I noticed we had forgotten to take in the grill and grill tools after using them last night.

Analie is almost sturdy enough to sit on my hip, so I hoisted her to the side and began picking up a few things at a time, making about four trips inside and then one around to the garage to open the back door so I could put the charcoal chimney where it belonged.  Then, I went back for the grill.

It seemed easy enough to wheel it under the eaves, out of the rain (if we were to get some), so I shoved the phone between my ear and shoulder, shifted Analie to that same side, and used my free arm to grab the handle of the grill.  I lifted and began to pull it toward the house; slowly, because it something didn’t feel quite right.

That’s when the leg fell off the grill.

“THE GRILL BROKE!” I hollered to The Kid, as if that would make him come a week and a half early so he could take the grill off my hands.

“I’m not sure what you want me to do about it,” The Kid said.

I wasn’t either.

Except maybe come a week and a half early so he could take the grill off my hands.

“Maybe you should hang up the phone,” suggested The Kid.

So I hung up the phone. Which wound up being not as easy as I thought it would be, since one hand was holding the broken grill and the other hand was holding the baby.  I shifted down to kneel on the ground, supporting the grill on my leg and trying to decide if it was safe to put Analie on the concrete sidewalk so I could deal with the grill.  Which would be catastrophic if it fell.  Almost as catastrophic as if I dropped my baby.

Wait, that would be so much worse.

While I was kneeling on the ground, weighing my options, I realized that if I propped the grill up on the step it might (just might!) stay  in one place long enough for me to let go, run inside and put Analie in her swing, and run back outside before it slid to the ground and spilled ash and charcoal everywhere.

So I did just that.

Surprisingly, it worked perfectly.  NOTHING EVER WORKS PERFECTLY!  Except for that.

Once everything was safe and back where it belonged, I called Joey to inform him that there had been an epic failure of the grill leg.  His response?

“Yeah, one of the grill legs is a little shaky.”

A little?!

A LOT.

 

Mar18

We support Uncle Andrew!!

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We support Uncle Andrew!!

My brother has a life goal.  That is: SEE THE SHUTTLE LAUNCH!!  April 19 is the last launch and he’s trying to go.  Again.  I think this will be the third attempt to see the thing blast off.  They always scrub or break or something evil like that.

Today, tickets go on sale.  He’s all nervous and stressed, and so am I now.  Jibbly jibbly.

So Analie and I wanted to make sure that he knew that we are his cheerleading squad!  GOOOO UNCLE ANDREW!!

Once Analie got up from the World’s Longest Nap Ever (and was still super sleepy) we got her dressed in her spaciest outfit.  How does one pick a spacy outfit?  Well, we went for her most out of season outfit, since today it’s freezing.  What could be spacier than that?  It wound up being Analie’s panda romper, so we got her Panda blanket and decided to take some motivational pictures in Uncle Andrew’s honor.

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Dec23

10 1/2 years later…

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10 1/2 years later…

In the fall of 2000, I was a freshman at Iowa State University.  I had just turned 18 and decided that DAGNABBIT, I was cool and I wanted to get my nose pierced.

I had recently gotten a cell phone also.  This is noteable, because literally as I was walking out the door to go pierce said nostril, my father called.

He was all, what’s going on college freshman?

And I was all, I’m off to get my nose pierced, Pops!!

There was a bit of silence before he said, You do that, young lady, and that’s the last you’ll see of your college money.

So, while I was a young and immature college freshman, I knew enough to realize that money talks.  As my high school history teacher used to say, I “followed the money trail” and as I did so I saw that it led to massive student loans and the poorhouse.  I didn’t think that a $60.00 statement of my independence was worth a life sentence to the poorhouse, so I wisely opted to skip the nose piercing.

I believe my Pops was pleased with my decision.  (Actually he would have been more pleased if I’d never considered piercing my nose in the first place.  But details.)

When I was finally financially independent from my parentals, married, and graduated from college…I was also a Baptist.  A member of a very conservative church, too. And how many Baptists do you see running around with pierced noses?

I didn’t think so.

Once we quit being Baptists, we moved to Texas and I got a job working for a hedge fund.  Nobody working for a hedge fund (at least not mine) had a pierced nose.  I don’t think it was considered The Thing To Do, as it were.

Now I am living in Indiana.  Joey’s a youth pastor, and youth pastor’s wives generally are hip and cool.  I am not exactly hip or cool, but I figured if I had a sparkly bit of bling in my nose I might be edging towards hip.  Maybe even cool.  Unfortunately, I have been pregnant since we moved here, and pregos can’t get themselves pierced.

Today, at 4:30, Joey suggested we go pierce my nose.  Because I am no longer pregnant, you see.  I can do it now.

I was like, SERIOUSLY?!

So we got all three of us in the car.

We drove down to Broad Ripple.

We crossed the street and tried not to get hit by a car.  (Success!)

We walked into Metamorphosis and I got all nervous.

The tattoed and pierced woman behind the counter told me that HECK YES I should pierce my nose!!!

So I handed over my driver’s license, selected a stud, and waited nervously for my turn to get stabbed.  It took her for-FREAKING-ever to get back to the front of the store.  By that time, I had myself worked into such a state of nerves that I wasn’t sure I could go through with it anymore.

“You just had a baby,” Joey said.  ”You can do anything.”

Yes, yes, I can.

I laid down on the soft, kooshy table as the lady swabbed my nose off with a strange-smelling solution, marked a big black dot where she was going to stab me, and inserted a long, metal tube on the inside of my nose.  I have no idea what the tube was for, but as soon as she did that I started flipping out all over the inside of my head.

“Breathe deeply,” she told me.  ”I’m going to talk you through this.”

And just about the time she said she was going to talk me through it, she’d slammed the post through my nose and – whamo! – the whole thing was done.

It hurts about 5 bajillion times less than a Progesterone injection, or spinal block for that matter.

PIECE OF DAIRY-FREE CAKE!

“Is it over?” I asked her.

“Yep,” she said, putting a long pair of wire-cutters up to my nose and clamping off the remainder of the post that was longer than my nostril, poking out and looking weird.

“Wow…not bad,” I said.  ”I’m pierced!”

My nose was a numb and throbbing at the same time.  It was a weird feeling, Internet.  Truly weird.  I sat up and looked in the mirror at my blingy nose.  The stud sparkled a bit in the dim lights of the room and I thought it was cool.  (I may not be cool, but my nose certainly is.)

Joey, Analie and I walked back to the front of the store where the cleaning instructions were explained to me.  Maybe they should have done that first, because I have to soak my entire nose in salt water for 10 minutes a day, every day, for SIX WEEKS.

I have to SOAK MY NOSE.

That is so weird.

Some (perhaps even my Pops among them!) would say it’s poetic justice for me stabbing something metal and sparkly into my nose.

I say it’s just weird.

(This picture makes me think of some sage wisdom I learned in college: You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose.)

Nov15

I don’t know how old people drive those carts

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I don’t know how old people drive those carts

I’ve gotten pretty good at using those motorized carts like they have in Walmart, Target, Lowes, and Central Market.  (Also a whole bunch more places, too, but those are the ones that come to mind.)  It all started a year and a half ago when I was bored out of my gourd laying around on my couch after a surgery, and my Mom was babysitting me.  I was like “Mom, surely it’s safe to go to Central Market…we could buy a chocolate bar?”

And Mom was like, “Uh, I doubt it, have you noticed how you can barely walk to the bathroom and back?”

But I just said, “Psssh, chocolate is a way better incentive than the bathroom.  It’ll be fun!  I CAN DO IT!!!”

Poor Mom.  She agreed only if I would ride in the old-people motorized cart.  I think she was ready to get out of our apartment by this point too.

So off we went to Central Market, and you want to know something?  I was so awesome at driving that cart.  Even through the produce section!  (And, those of you who know a thing or two about the produce section know that is a feat worth being proud of.  It’s like…a maze.  With lots of annoying people in it just standing around staring at the tomatoes, trying to decide if they should buy the Brandywine, Early Girl, or Cherokee Purple tomatoes for the Black-Bean and Tomato Quinoa they want to make.)

We got our chocolate, probably plus a few other things we didn’t really need, and went back home.

After that, I went to a whole lot more stores because I could just say, “Oh, I’ll sit down and ride in the motorized cart the whole time.  NOT TO WORRY.”

I did get a lot of weird looks, though.

So fast forward to last night.  We had to get groceries because we were down to dijon mustard, ketchup, and apples in the refrigerator again.  I don’t understand this.  I buy tons of food and then a week later it’s ALL GONE.

We’d gone to Lowe’s to buy more outlets and switch covers (did I mention we’re replacing them all because one of the ones in the kitchen started shooting sparks/fire?  Yeah, we are…good thing, too, ’cause we found some others not wired correctly.)

Again with the digressions.  Apologies.

On the short drive from Lowe’s to the evil empire of Walmart, Joey looked at me and said, “Uh, you don’t look like you are feeling so good.”

I wasn’t.  My morale was about -3 on a scale of 1 to 10, and it was super hard to move my appendages.

“I’ll drop you off at the door and you get one of those cart things,” Joey said.

“I’ll be embarrassed if you’re not there,” I said.

Joey just looked at me with a look of you really aren’t feeling good, are you? and said “Yeah, you’ll be fine.  I’ll be in after I park the car.”

So I shuffled into the evil empire, unplugged a cart and, feeling suuuuuuper self-conscious for some reason, drove it over by the wall and waited for Joey to come in.  He took FOREVER.  Finally, he came in and we started on our list.  Everything was going fine, JUST FINE, until we were putzing down the soup aisle.

First, I need to mention that I’ve never run into anything in one of these carts before.  Second, I need to state that Walmart is evil, naturally, and they put the controls on their little motorized carts backwards.  VERY CONFUSING.

Therefore, none of you will be surprised when I tell you that somehow, I ran into a wall full of soups while trying to turn around.

First I was just shoving them further and further onto the shelf as I frantically got more and more confused and kept driving the cart into the shelf, over and over again.  But then, some started shooting off the end and Joey started panicking.  I never see the man panic, Internet, but after the first five soups went flying to the ground, he kept shouting “BACK UP, BACK UP!”  and his face was super pale.

But I couldn’t remember how to get into reverse because, as I mentioned before, Walmart is stupid and puts their controls on on backwards.

Fortunately, the aisle was mostly empty.

Please picture this, Internet.  Me on a cart, whipping my head around trying to decide how to back the cart up, and Joey scurrying around on the floor trying to pick up the soups I have knocked off the shelf.  Clearly he is traumatized, which is really the best part of the whole story.  (I can’t remember traumatizing him this bad ever before in my entire life.)

Just when I was about to give up and get off the stupid cart and let HIM figure out how to back the thing up, something started working properly and I successfully disengaged myself from the soup shelf.  Joey looked more relieved than I have ever seen him look, and he hissed, “We have to get out of this aisle NOW.”

So, we did.

And in that whole big mess, we forgot to buy pumpkin.

“These controls ARE backwards,” I told Joey as I glided down the next aisle with him, safely away from any of the products on the shelves.

“Yeah,” he said, “And do you see the little picture directions right here in front of your face?”

Uh, no.  I hadn’t seen those.  ”Those kinda help…” I said.

“But you’re right, it’s not very intuitive,” Joey admitted.

Aug12

Will Mow For Food

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Will Mow For Food

When I was at my parents’ house a week ago, I mowed the pasture and the lawn because Pops said, “Go mow the pasture, while I find where the hotwire grounded out.  IT’LL BE FUN.”

This morning, after having coffee with the sibs at 7:30, Joey and I started rolling towards Des Moines.  We realized we were going to get in really, really early and there wouldn’t be anything to do, so we diverted to his parents’ house instead.  About ten minutes after we arrived, Joey came over and said, “If I weed whack, will you do the riding lawn mower?”

Uh, sure.

I mean, I WAS clean and my hair was done, but let’s be honest: it wasn’t looking so good anyway.  So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to redo it later.  I said yes, fine, sure I’ll do it and thirty minutes later (because I was chatting first, I’m a girl and it’s my prerogative) I was outside sitting on Joey’s pop’s red hydrostatic lawn mower.  I think it is a Toro, but I cannot confirm this since I am unwilling to go back outside just to look at its brand name.

ANYWAY, Joey showed me the basics of how to operate a hydrostatic mower, because I was looking at it kind of like it was an alien of some kind, like from Vermont or something.

An hour later, I had almost figured out how to efficiently use the strange lawn mower.  I wasn’t too confident on reversing, or really going fast at all, or even turning sharply because I could never be entirely sure how the mower would respond.  So I was being kind of chicken.

Then, as I was just about to finish up the back of the sideyard of the house, I lost control of the dang thing while trying to mow down a hill.  I slammed on the brake and it didn’t work (I forgot about how the little speed control lever would have been a handy feature to use here) and narrowly missed an Arbor Vida tree before winding up in Joey’s strange neighbor’s yard.

I say “strange neighbor” because Joey has told me stories about experiences he had with them during his formative years.  Plus, I’ve been around long enough.  I know they’re strange.  For instance, I’ve never seen them standing up (Joey says he hasn’t either),  only sitting down, and always on their front porch.  I don’t know how they get to the front porch, but I don’t think they actually stand up to do so.  Maybe they roll?

So when I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly deposited in a very marshy low spot in their back yard, it was quite shocking.  And it was then that I decided I should probably be nearly done mowing the lawn.  First of all, I lost control of the mower and I didn’t think it was a good practice to very nearly wreck one’s father in law’s lawn mower.  Second of all, I was sweating through my shirt.  Third of all, I had worked up a very ravenous pregnant-lady appetite.

This is why, thirty minutes later, I managed to stop the hydrostatic lawn mower (because after I almost knocked over that Arbor Vida I did decide it was time to figure out those kinds of things) and I told Joey I was pretty much done.

“Saw you lose control over there,” he smirked.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

After that I went inside and ate copious amounts of Ruffles chips with AE Party dip.  I figured I earned them.  Also Cinnamon Toast Crunch because I like it a lot and Joey thinks it’s disgusting, so when I saw it on the counter I siezed the day (and the box) and made myself a huge bowl.  Now I think is time for more chips.

Nutrition.

Jul24

I knew better

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I knew better

Two years ago in Branson I  gave Joey his vitamins with a glass of orange juice and he turned gray and upchucked all over the place right before we were heading to go out to do whatever we had planned to do that day.  He brings this up regularly.  Like, as in, once a month or so.  It’s usually something like, REMEMBER THAT TIME YOU MADE ME THROW UP?

In our Bradley class last week, we discussed nutrition.  And the benefits of citrus and orange juice, in particular.  (For the building up of membranes so ones gums don’t bleed, among other things.)  I usually drink cranberry juice in the morning, because I love cranberry juice so much I’ll even drink the straight up unsweetened stuff that makes most people pass out.  But last night at Whole Foods, we grabbed a quart of OJ and thought, heck, we’ll just drink this with our breakfasts and get more citrus in.

This morning, we were up early because we had plans to go to a farm in Russiaville to pick corn and shoot skeet.  I dragged Joey out of bed and went to the kitchen where I whipped up a delicious spinach shake, which does not taste disgusting contrary to how it might sound.

I was sipping my OJ as I finished blending my shake, and I slammed back my vitamins before switching gears to start drinking my shake.

It was a super good shake, too.  I had used probably more strawberries than I needed, so it was very tasty.

Twenty minutes later, as I was standing upstairs holding Henry, drinking my shake, meeting some new people, and everyone was getting ready to walk out the door, I began to feel really strange.

And one minute later, I began to feel STRANGER.

I sneaked off into the bathroom off the kitchen and took some deep breaths trying to figure out WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO ME ANYWAYS? when I realized that, doh!, I had taken my vitamins with orange juice.

The deep breaths weren’t cutting it.  So I ran downstairs, hoping I could at least make it that far.  Fortunately, I did.  And I will spare you the aftermath, but let’s just say I went the way of Joey two years ago.  A significant portion of my spinach shake was wasted, because I had almost finished it.

I went back upstairs, drank a few more drinks of my shake, then loaded up in the car with everybody else and we all drove off to pick some corn.  Upon further consideration, drinking more shake after that was probably not the smartest thing I’ve done all day.  (Well, it was smarter than tossing back a bunch of prenatal vitamins with a glass of OJ though, right?)

And now, twelve hours later, Angel and I have processed about 200 ears of corn and they are now happily resting in our freezer waiting for us to eat them.  Nom nom nom nom nom.  I tell you what, being back in the Midwest sure is awesome.  Corn, soybeans, cows, mosquitos…wait, scratch the mosquitos.

Now it is time for dinner.  I need to take more vitamins.