Day 26

Prompt 26 from "the list" is a (true) funny story. I would have saved the "leg watch" story for today had I looked ahead. So instead, I'll tell you one that involves my sister.

(Here we are at my surprise graduation party - seeing her there got me all confused. I think I asked her like 3 times, "how did you get here?")

I have always loved baby white seals. Animals don't get much cuter than that. I even have a "baby white seal" face that you can ask me about after I've had a glass or two of wine. So anyway, until I was about 23 - if I saw a stuffed baby white seal or a postcard or anything really, I would get it.

One Christmas - probably 12ish years ago, I unwrapped a present from my sister. They were the most precious baby white seal slippers. They looked something like this:


I tried them on and they were a little snug. Jessica said, "they should fit, they are one size fits all!" So I turned them upside down, and there on the bottom, it said:

SML

She said, "See? Small, medium and large - one size!" Somebody said, "Or it stands for "SMALL!" and we all cracked up. I still crack up about it.

Just because I can't resist it, I will add on to this story. 2 years ago, all five of us kids decided to go in together and get my parents a new TV. They were given a giant (and I mean giant - like 4 feet tall) TV, which is what they used. It was so huge - and since my parents don't really watch that much TV, it was just a bit much. So we got them a 32" flat screen.

I didn't arrive until later in the day, but apparently when they opened it, Jessica said something like, "Sweet! A V twelve ten! "
Translated: V-12-10..... or Sony "Vizio." Ha!

victor's

We are in Milwaukee!* It is like 60 degrees and perfect. We did the usual - checked into the hotel and then immediately found a little corner market so we could purchase our happy hour sundries for the week. (We like to save money by having wine, cheese, crackers, etc. every evening on vacation so that we don't have to spend lots on dinner.) And - WOW! They weren't kidding when they said there was a lot of cheese! We got some goat milk cheese, some 1 year old aged cheddar, some Wisconsin muenster and a smoked provolone. So far, they are all delicious.

The hotel I chose is an old one - it is in the National Registry of old buildings or whatever. I wanted something with character and this definitely fits the bill. Maybe I'll do a different post on the differences between modern hotels vs. hotels with "character." But anyway, turns out that the hotel is actually on my campus! There are dorms next door to us! Pretty fitting for my graduation weekend, don't you think?

Larry wanted to watch a little bit of the basketball game, which is why I have time to write this ditty. But I am so excited to go to the bar that is 2 blocks from us... Victor's. You know why? BECAUSE IT IS COLLEGE NIGHT! We missed the complimentary buffet, but you better believe we are going to get some $2 miller lite and free pizza after 10! I am a college student here for 3 more days, so I'm gonna milk it for all it's worth.

That's all for now.

* I shouldn't broadcast to the entire universe that we are out of town, but we live next to a Colonel in the United States Marine Corp and I have no doubt that he WILL shoot you first and ask questions later. Plus, we don't have anything to steal - so don't get any ideas.

your instructions until I post again

I want the sun to hit my face
Through oak trees in the open lot
Forget about the things you want
Be thankful for what all you got

(Goin’ Home – Dan Auerbach)

picture by Sarah

basking

You know that feeling when it just feels like everything is right with the world? I'm basking in that feeling right now.

Everyone knows that I like to throw a party. I like playing hostess and picking up after people. It's in my blood. But I told Larry that I wasn't going to plan my own graduation celebration. I thought we would do something once we got back from the graduation ceremony - maybe sometime in June.

Well, Larry and his crew had different plans. They have been meeting secretly for over a month, planning my party. Larry was the boss and the major investor. The Ninjaneer was in charge of the logistical stuff - I hear he had a spreadsheet and drew detailed drawings of how the tables and chairs would be set up. Mixmaster LL was in charge of all decorations and ambiance. Sarah was in charge of invitations and getting me out of the house. Let me tell you, they all knocked their pieces out of the park!

I thought that I was going to do some girly errands with Sarah on Saturday morning and we were going to go to lunch with our main squeezes. When we headed back to my house around noon, I didn't even think twice when I saw a bunch of cars parked in the the street in front of my house. (I thought that maybe the across the street neighbor was having some people over after a marathon or something.) I told Sarah not to park in the driveway because it would be hard to back out without hitting one of the cars. She said, "I'll just have one of the boys do it." As we got out of the car, I saw a light blue balloon tied to one of the hanging plants. I said, "Why is there a balloon?" But it STILL didn't register. As I got out of the car, I saw Larry standing in the yard and I think I said something like, "Wait a minute.... is this a party for me?!?" It was.

I'll post pictures and whatnot later - if you really want to see them, you can go to my facebook. There are also some funny stories about close calls. Sarah has a wonderful summary up at her blog. But for now, I just want to bask in the memory. I felt so much love - I swear, the whole next day, I teared up every time I thought about it.

The theme was "Rachel Behnke Graduates." Larry even had buttons made.



You'll get the reference if you were a religious follower of 90210, otherwise, watch below. (Or type "Donna Martin Graduates" into youtube.)



Thank you a million times to everyone that helped or was a part of it. It truly was more than I ever could have wished for!

new trend

So, don't you hate it when you're about 3/4 of the way through writing a post, save it for the night, and then blogger crashes and it all disappears? Boooooo! Blogger, that is going to have people switching to wordpress and all those other platforms that I'm not cool enough to know about. But fortunately, I have lots of extra time these days, so I'll just REWRITE the whole thing.

I am basically a catalog co-worker's dream. You know, the person you can always count on to order gift wrap or cookie dough from your kid's fundraiser. But not only that...

Pampered Chef? Yes, please! I love my pizza stone!

Southern Living at Home? I'll take the casserole dish on page 44.

Avon? Sure, I'd like to see if that Skin-so-Soft stuff really does keep mosquitoes away.

CAbi clothing? I apologize for saying it looks like old lady clothes because OHMYGOSH everything is so cute in person and it all seems to magically look good on me and yes I want to host a party of my own.

Mary Kay? I actually need some bronzer....

Silpada jewelry? If I don't eat for a few weeks, I can order that watch I want!

Which leads me to the point of this story..... I did order a watch from a jewelry party. It has a black leather band that wraps around my wrist three times, like this:
(I liked the face on the brown one better, but since I wear black pretty much every day, I went with this one. The brown one is on my wish list though...)

When I'm not wearing the watch, it lays on the counter like this:
One day, Larry randomly out of the blue asked me something about my leg watch? I was like, "I have no idea what you are talking about." He pointed in the direction of my watch on the counter and said something to the effect of "do you wear that on your leg while you work out or something?" I guess he thought I wore it like this:
I admit, it would be very convenient if I was riding a bike or on an ab machine or something.... I could just glance down and check my pulse or whatever. A leg watch..... HA!

hymleck

I got to visit with a good friend from college (and her precious 2 year old) this past weekend. She is about to move far away to join her husband, who has been a Food and Beverage Director for all sorts of major hotels. He recently got moved to a giant resort in a place that I won't name. (But that I do plan to visit.) (And if you are my youngest brother and/or his wife, you went there on your honeymoon.)

While she was visiting, she showed me an email that her husband shared with her. It was a customer complaint. Keep in mind, he has been doing this a long time and has seen a lot of complaints. But this one might trump them all.... (in order to maintain some sort of confidentiality, I am re-typing it instead of giving a screen shot - but capturing it exactly as it was written):

WERE EXPECTATIONS MET? No

STAFF RESPONSIVENESS: Below Expectations

COMMENT REPORT

“OTHER” PROBLEM: Wife choked on a piece of meat

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Even though the lady who took care of the incident did all she could to fix the issue. I don’t know if it is an issue that can be fixed. When someone chokes on a piece of meat and is without oxygen until the hymleck can be performed it is hard to make the situation correct. The incident ruined an expensive vacation for my wife and has left her scared of eating steak. It has truely altered the way she lives her life and left her pretty emotional with this incident being the only memory of her family vacation.

Moral of this story: If you are employed in food service, apparently you are now required to cut a customer's steak into an appropriate sized bite. In addition, should you perform the "hymleck" on a customer, they will still say you performed below expectations and forever be scared of eating steak.

(And I suppose it goes without saying that I am glad this woman did not choke to death. But SERIOUSLY.)

"Samantha"

Since it is Teacher Appreciation Week, I figured I would pull out a "when I used to be a teacher" story:

As you know, I used to teach high school. You may have not known that I was a "Home Ec" teacher. (The correct term is Family and Consumer Sciences.) I remember one time in college, I was somewhere with my mom and somebody asked what I was majoring in. I guess I kind of apologetically said that I was "just going to be a Home Ec teacher" and my mom said something I'll never forget. She said, "Don't EVER apologize for doing what you love. You are good at what you do, and those classes you teach can make a major difference in the lives of your kids. Be proud of the career you've chosen." I have carried that with me and know without a doubt that my classes changed some people's lives for the better. For example, I had a Child Development class for awhile. The boys (who got stuck in there) would actually tell me at the end of the semester that they thought "every boy should have to take this class." But I digress.

In Child Development, we had to send those stupid electronic babies home with the kids. You know, the ones that are programmed to cry.
They had to take it from Friday after school to Monday morning before school. (For the record, I hate those things. It does the job for most kids... shows them that it stinks to be woken up every 2 hours in the middle of the night, adds an extra level of responsibility in the car - if you don't secure it properly and it gets too shook up, the baby dies - , etc. However, it totally backfires for those kids that are starving for attention. They start having people come up and talk to them while they are in the mall. They start getting attention and think, "Hmmm. If I had a baby, all these people would continue to talk to me." I was also the Teen Parent coordinator on campus, so I actually kind of know what I'm talking about.) So ANYWAY. I had a student in one of my Child Development classes named Samantha.

I'm not going to lie, the first day of school, I was like..."Wow, this girl has had a hard life." She looked a little worn and rugged. Pretty, but tough. Always wore sweat pants and a ponytail. She made a 100 on every single paper/test she completed and had very neat handwriting. She never spoke up in class and while always polite, she never really interacted much with me, even when I tried. She showed up on time the Friday afternoon that she was assigned to take her "baby" home. She returned it on Monday morning, and her computer showed that she had tended to it every single time it cried. She scored a 100 on it. Didn't think much more about her - it was a semester class, so once January hit, she wasn't in my class anymore.

At the end of the year, we all got quite a surprise.....

She was 35 years old and an undercover cop! (And obviously her name wasn't really Samantha.)

Apparently her colleagues got quite a kick of her toting around that stupid baby. I would have to say that this was a pretty memorable moment from my teaching career. Yikes.

Night #1

Today is my first "free" weeknight without any school obligations. So far, I have been very productive.

- stripped the guest bed sheets
- went to the gym
- went to the grocery store (but only for dinner ingredients)
- cooked dinner
- unloaded the clean dishwasher
- loaded the dinner dishes
- started a load of laundry
- took 3 pairs of my shoes to the closet
- poured a glass a wine and sat down at the computer
- wrote this blog

Last night, I managed to resize a few of my concert photos. I want to do a blog post for each event, but it is just going to take so long and I don't feel like doing it tonight. So instead, I will show you why it is important to be careful when you are photographed wearing a puffy blouse:

Fortunately, the stranger who took the picture said, "you might want to look at it and make sure you like it." When I said, "Oh my gosh! Look how puffy my shirt is! Can you take another one?", she said, "Yeah, I thought you might want another one." What a difference an arm around the waist can make!
These were taken at the Citizen Cope concert. If you haven't heard him, you should give him a try. He wouldn't be the best person to invite to a "Just Say No to Dope" event, but he puts on the best acoustic show I've ever seen. (Especially from the 2nd row, what-what!) Lifeline and Bullet and a Target are a couple of my favorites, Hurricane is Larry's. But really, I could listen to him all day, doesn't really matter what album. He is one of those artists.

Larry says he reminds him of Jim Croce. I'll be honest - I don't know jack about Jim, but Larry says it is because his songs tell a story. You can decide for yourself.