"I've never liked you"

I had to call our neighbor yesterday to ask her if I could use her shed for a film project so I wrote down a few things I wanted to remember to say and then walked away from my note for a second. When I came back, there in scrawly handwriting, on my "script" were the words, "I've never liked you!" I looked over at my brother, who looked rather guilty, and said something like, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

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Of Sports and Bibles

I’m watching the Winter Classic on TV with my brother and right now, it’s still 0 to 0. Besides being sick of the Rose Parade ("Look!!! This float’s decorative scrolls are made out of two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand white amaryllis!!!" That gets old after about two seconds. :-D) I think it’s pretty cool that they’re playing hockey at Fenway Park (can you tell I’m a Red Sox fan?) and it was even more cool when Daniel Powter sang “O Canada.” (I don’t want to sound all fannish but I admit that having him sing was a nice touch on the event planner’s part.) Another random note... When I asked my brother if he knew why Daniel Powter always wears a hat, he said, “Hezes zald?” My brother was putting his rubber bands on his braces at the time, so he was a little hard to understand. (And that’s not the reason Daniel Powter wears a hat.) And we’re waiting for the announcement about which NHL players made the USA Team for the Olympics. (That’s very important. :-) ) Anyway, the commercials are the same as baseball season... especially that one by Budweiser where they say, “The difference is drinkability.” Hearing that slogan reminded me of something that happened last summer. Our church decided to change our pew Bibles from the New International Version to the English Standard Version and to ease us into it, they had the ESV salesman come and talk to the congregation. I was unimpressed and a little annoyed by his speaking during church...not only do I prefer the NIV but there’s just something wrong about sales pitches in church. I kept thinking about the time Jesus overturned the tables in the temple and wondering if the deacon and elders would tackle me if I tried the same thing. Deciding they would, I just tried to tune out the salesman but that’s easier said than done. About halfway through the spiel, when the salesman said, “The ESV is so readable...” I leaned over to my brother and whispered, “The difference is readability.” We spent the rest of the service trying not to dissolve into fits.... :-) I think I’ve been watching too much baseball and hockey.

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Hoth

Yesterday, after church, when my siblings and I were putting on our coats and waiting for our parents to exit, I saw an older lady with her back to us in an enormous, shaggy white fur coat. (It wasn’t mink…frankly I’m not sure what it was...I've never seen one like that before.) “Yikes, look at that coat.” I whispered to my brother and sister. (We’re obviously such kind and sweet people.) My sister made a face and then my brother calmly said, “She looks like a Wampa!” And you know, she…um…actually kind of did. :-D



P.S. If you’re not Star Wars nuts like me and my siblings, then you might not know that, “Wampa ice creatures were carnivorous predatory reptomammals indigenous to the Outer Rim Territories ice planet Hoth.” (According to http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wampa anyway... And what in heck is a reptomammal? :-D Who comes up with this stuff?)


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I Could Have Danced All Night

At the wedding reception last night, I danced. No really, I did―I grabbed my brother and pulled him out to the dance floor and discovered that I love dancing. I always thought I would like it but I’ve never really had the chance to try. My sister had already asked my grandpa to dance and my great aunt and uncle were swing dancing―they were really good and I never knew they could dance like that! Before long, we had my first cousins (ages 9 & 13) in on the act and were doing what I’d call demi-swing because we knew a few things and then made up the rest. :-) (Unfortunately, only one song out of three was worth dancing to―that’s the way it goes these days―and not many songs were exactly the swing type. :-/) It was great…especially because the boys soon figured out how much fun it is (and they were really good) and kept asking my sister and I (and my grandma and aunt) to dance. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen my brother demi-swing dancing with my great aunt! (Check out the introverted, un-socialized home-educated kids! :-D) We also did line dancing and waltzing. Towards the end, I was waltzing with my nine-year-old cousin (so fun!) and then, I nearly fell over in a heap. Why? Because my parents were on the dance floor and, get this, they had never danced before last night. Never. My dad hates it so much that they didn’t even have dancing at their wedding. It was truly a miracle. As we were leaving, Thriller came on and we all started groaning because we didn’t get to dance to it…even the boys were sad. :-)

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Starting a Panic

As I was typing in my room, Mom called “dryer,” from downstairs because I washed my sheets today and was drying them. “What did she say?” asked my brother from the next room. “Dryer,” I said. “Oh, I thought she said ‘fire’.” When I went downstairs, I told Mom that she could have started a panic. Dad once told me that it’s illegal to yell “fire!” because it might start a panic and someone could get squashed. After Dad said this, my brother said, “Then we should yell “No fire!” :-D

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Evil Cookware

I had just fried an egg for lunch and was turning to get something else when I heard a loud hissing noise and my brother went, “Ahhh!” “Something wrong?” I asked, turning back to him. He had a kind of creeped out look on his face and said, “I was reaching over the pan and it hissed at me.” “Pans don’t like you.” I said. Maybe they don’t because he smashed one finger and burned another (not badly) while he was making his lunch.

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Take a Sad Song and Make It Better

Last night we were on the way home from dinner (just me, my mom, and my brother…my sister had to work and my dad had a meeting―on my birthday! Miscreants! :-D) and were listening to my new Beatles CD. No, I didn’t get the re-mastered mono box set *sob* *sob* but I did get #1 which has all of their number one hits. (Can you believe that Twist and Shout, I am the Walrus, and Sergeant Pepper weren’t #1 hits?) Anyway, Hey Jude came on and Mom, who had been singing along with nearly every song (I never knew that she knows the lyrics to so many Beatles songs!) told us how her swing choir danced to Hey Jude at the junior high to recruit the kids who would be moving up to high school. Apparently, they had to go out into the audience of 6th, 7th and 8th graders and try to get them to dance too. My brother and I thought this was extremely funny…I mean, Hey Jude is one of my favourite Beatles songs but it’s not the first one I’d pick to dance to…. We had trouble breathing when Mom said, “But they didn’t really want to dance and so it was like being in a Brady Bunch episode where nobody else had the script.” (That really does sound like a Brady Bunch episode from the later seasons…. :-D) By that point, I was laughing hysterically but managed to say, “Is that your memory of Hey Jude?” “Yes, I guess it is.” Mom laughed. “That’s really sad.” My brother said. “Take a sad song and make it better,” Mom said, which only made us laugh harder. “And, it’s kind of a slow song so you can only do a few moves to it…” Then, while driving, she demonstrated the dance…kind of grooving her shoulders and then clapping her hands together… which made my brother and I laugh so hard that we didn’t even care that her hands weren’t on the steering wheel. Though…I did have a vague feeling that we were driving on the wrong side of the road…. :-D (Just kidding…we weren’t.) Ah, Beatles music. It brings out the best (I hope) in all of us. :-)

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Today

Right now…I’m going to focus on the annoying things that happened to me today…which are almost always funnier than the nice things...right? :-)
This morning, I awoke from a dream that it was next week and the day of my cousin’s wedding. I’d miscalculated the time and was running around trying to get ready but kept getting hung up somehow. My hair wouldn’t obey or I lost my skirt or my top had a rip…and so on. Very annoying. (Next week though, I will remember to start getting ready way ahead of time. :-) ) I also had a dream that I could play the guitar…which I want to learn so I was mad when I woke up from that one and found that I still can’t play the guitar. How typical!
The book I inter-library loaned though Ick, by one of my favourite biography authors, was an utter waste of time. I skimmed though part of it last night and first, it’s supposed to be in Tudor times but the characters don’t speak with “thee” and “thou”… they speak like they just came out of the supermarket in Ohio. Second, (and much worse) it’s all mushy and kissy. Blecck! I hate mushy books! So now, I’m reading Wind in the Willows to soothe my injured feelings and the other book is going to be returned. I’m really quite surprised at this author…I expected better…especially since she wrote in the 50’s and 60’s. If she were still alive, I’d write her a letter expressing my sentiments.
We cleaned the entire house today (because the family is coming tomorrow for my birthday and oh my goodness! The house absolutely must be clean, clean, clean or they might slonk over dust bunnies and sue us! :-D) and moved the tree into the living room. We went out in the frozen cold yesterday to buy it but it wasn’t that cold and I do love real trees (you can’t make a fake tree smell real). I cleaned the bathroom (my job around here―yeah, fun, I know, but I keep them in top order) and asked everyone to not slime up the sink before tomorrow but we’ll see how well they do.
Tonight, when I took off the band-aid that I'd had on my finger since last night, the place where the band-aid had been looked all weird and shriveled like a corpse. (In short, the rest of me is alive but I think my finger died.) It was helpful though because later when my sister grabbed my hand and cooed, “Your hands are so soft!” I held out my middle finger and said, “Doesn’t this look like a corpse?” She let go quickly and I don’t know what she was squealing about…. :-)
My brother and I played Lego Star Wars (my one decidedly “non-academic” weakness) and he kept cheating me… I don’t know how he does it but he always steals my points! I build something and he takes all the studs or he hops in front of me and grabs the blue studs (1,000 points) before I can get there. *grrr* And worse, we have invincibility so my character can’t shoot his! When we get too mad at each other or bored, we turn off invincibility and have duels. Mouse droid races are also fun. If you don’t have a knowledge of Lego Star Wars you’re probably lost by now…so I’ll move on. :-)
I found old pictures of me at nine years old in a Bible study folder and oh my goodness, I looked fat! I have never been fat but people always manage to snap pictures of me looking like I’ve eaten nothing but pop tarts my whole life. *sigh* *groan* And, I wanted to throw the photos away but Mom wouldn’t let me and said they were cute. Cute!!? Oh well.
Lastly, something I’ve always noticed… when your birthday’s coming up people yell things at you like, “Don’t come in here!” and do things like stop talking when you walk into the room and then stare strangely at you. Happy Birthday. I guess the presents make up for the shunning beforehand…well...mostly.

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Strange Tastes

I’m in the middle of finals work (talk about nightmares for final exams you have taken!) and thus, my creative ability has been significantly diminished of late. I have a phone interview with the college that I really want to go to tomorrow night. I’m sure it’ll be fine…. *gulp* (Pray for me…please.) Anyway, as I drove home from Ick today and was trying not to think about finals, I remembered something I did back in the day which amuses me now. When I was three or four, Mom had a small Christmas tree on a card table (I think to keep the presents off the floor and away from little fingers) and I think there was a tablecloth over the table too. In any case, I remember taking a fresh package of cream cheese out of the fridge, getting a knife, and crawling under the card table to eat it. I know I got the foil package open and ate some of it with the knife…but I don’t remember how much I managed to eat before Mom looked under the table and found me. :-D As if that isn’t all… I used to eat frozen raw bacon from the butcher shop too. (I guess it is cured or smoked…but still….) My sister and I actually got away with that a few times before Mom caught us. My brother is also known to have tried to eat a stick of butter in a similar way to my cream cheese episode…. My poor mother… :-) (Don’t worry we weren’t habitually rotten. :-D) Ah, childhood. It’s a wonder anyone survives it.

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What it was… was Hockey

My brother and I went to a pro-hockey game last night and I have to say it was pretty entertaining. I like hockey―though I prefer to watch the highlights on TV―but it is fun to go to a game once in awhile―especially since our team won. :-) However, I was very amused by the behavior of the season ticket holders seated nearby. (We know someone with season tickets and they got us seats about five rows from the ice. Sweet huh? :-) ) Its strange how the fans think that the players can 1: hear them and 2: care about what they say/yell. At one point, our team had a power play but they weren’t doing anything with it, and this one huge jersey wearing season ticket holder, who heretofore had been quiet, yells at the top of his lungs, “IT’S A POWER PLAY!” If I’d been holding anything at that moment I certainly would have dropped it but thankfully I wasn’t so I just giggled to myself. Our team finally scored and everyone jumped to their feet; then, the season ticket holders went around and high-fived each other and even embraced―I mean, you’d think that they’d been the ones to score and not the players. It was really funny. :-D So then, we’re in the 3rd period, a player swings a little too close to the referee, and jersey guy decides that it’s imperative to yell, “HIT THE REF!” And I’m sure the ref. heard it…the season ticket holders seem to hate the refs. Other season ticket holders yell at the players, and some of the things they say are kind of nasty…. I think the players must decide to be deaf or are so into the game that they don’t hear the things people yell at them. Though it was amusing when the jersey guy yelled, “THE PUCK IS RIGHT THERE!” and I’m thinking, “Yes, I’m sure the player is well aware of that since he's the one pushing the puck along with his stick.” Oh and having people yell “SHOOT! SHOOT!” as if the players need their advice is extremely funny too. The mascot came down by us―I detest mascots―and my brother and I sat there whispering, “Don’t come near us, don’t come near us…” (He didn’t come near us.) We also saw a fight…and the season ticket holders were yelling “FIGHT! FIGHT!” You know…I wonder why the players beat each other up… if I were them… I’d go after those season ticket holders. *evil smile*

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April Day

My siblings and I deliver May Baskets every May Day to friends and neighbors; we’re way too old now but the people around town would miss them if we didn’t so I’m never going to stop. :-) Anyway, this note is dated May 1, 2007 and is something that my younger brother said: “We could have April Day! Only instead of flowers we could use ants… and we’d only give them to people we don’t like!" I wonder how well that would go over? :-)


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Notes from the Desk Drawer

I inherited a writing desk from my great-grandmother and it has quaint little drawers in the fold-down part. When I write bits of things down, I stuff them in one of the little drawers―waiting for the right moment to use them, of course. Well, as the Walrus said, “The time has come!” So here’s something I’ve pulled from the drawer…expect more of these from time to time.

A conversation with my younger brother… dated 3/11/07.
Me – “Your face is always dirty…why don’t you wash it?”
My brother – (In a highly offended/dignified tone) “Just what do you think I am?”
Me – “A slob.”
As I recall, he tried to look offended―but cracked up laughing and gave himself away. He’s older now so he’s not a slob anymore.

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