Archive for the ‘Worth Reading Again’ Category

• The time I forgot the date and it was my birthday

  Date: 2009.05.31 | Category: I'm just saying, Worth Reading Again | Response: 2

  On June 20th I’ll 40 years old .

  I’ve never been afraid of my birthday, in fact it’s just the opposite. I embrace my birthday. It’s always been a day that I look forward to. 

  I almost always have the day off of work. Especially due to the fact that my birthday falls within the first week that Zoe has off of school, and for three years now we’ve (my husband and I) taken that week off so that we can decompress after the hectic school year and ease into the rhythm of summer. We usually go to Door County during that week, but not this year, instead we are staying home.

  One of my best birthday’s ever was in Door County. My husband and Zoe went kayaking that afternoon while I had four hours all to myself. I lounged around Fish Creek, had lunch at my favorite coffee shop The Blue Horse, and had a massage.

  Another memorable birthday was my golden birthday, when I turned 20 on the 20th. My parents gave me a jewelry box. It was what I had wanted, but it wasn’t exactly the one that I wanted. It was tall and had hooks to hang necklaces on, and I wanted one with drawers. On my birthday, I took it back to the store and exchanged it for the jewelry box that sits on my dresser to this very day. It’s made of teak wood and the drawers are lined with red velvet, and the bottom drawer is a music box which plays Edelwiess from The Sound of Music.

  The price on my new jewelry box was $125, which was more than what the box was that I had returned, so I had to write a check for the balance. I was at the cash register, writing my check when I asked the clerk what the date was.

  On my birthday.

  She said, “June 20th.”

  And then I admit that it was my birthday and that I was there for my birthday present, and I couldn’t believe that I had to ask her what the date was. 

  Let me assure you that I’ve never had to ask what the date was on my birthday ever again. 

  Anyhow, 20 years later and feel like I’m supposed to feel the need to do something drastic, or spaz out that I’m getting older. Yet I don’t feel that way at all.

  At least not yet.

• Mission Impossible

  Date: 2009.05.17 | Category: Prior to March 2007, Worth Reading Again | Response: 2

  Remember when I cleaned out my dresser drawers? Remember how messy they were? I think I got that from my mother because I’ve found that ALL of her kitchen cabinets remind me of my dresser drawers …. before I cleaned them out.

  (Crank up the Mission Impossible music: Dunna nunna, dunna nunna…..)
  
  Indigo, this is your mission should you choose to accept it. You are to completely clean and reorganize your mom’s kitchen cabinets by midnight on June 29th. This message will self destruct.

  Mission? Moi? Okay, I’ve got nothing better to do.

  Last night I cleaned out two of the kitchen cabinets. I tossed out anything that had expired, she forgot about, or I couldn’t identify, filling two brown paper bags in the process. There is now an entire shelf dedicated to tea! My mom has enough tea that she could safely not buy it for a year, or she could just open a tea house. It’s her choice.

  I ask you, what would a mission be without saving some one’s life in the process?

  In the midst of cleaning out the cabinets my mom decided to vacuum the pool. I’ve vacuumed that pool my entire life, and my average for falling in while doing so is about 1 in 25 times. As I’m in the kitchen, I hear the familiar splash as my mom fell in, and I gave a little chuckle and smiled to myself.

  Then I heard her holler out for help.

  I turned and saw that her upper body was hanging into the pool and she was struggling to keep her head above the water and pull herself upright.

  I ran out to her and grabbed her shoulder and helped pull her up, the entire time wondering to myself why she just didn’t let herself fall all the way in, and then climb out. It was then that I saw that her leg had slid between the pool and the deck, it was jammed at her knee and twisted upwards, while her body was facing down into the pool. Yikes!

  I got her out, and her leg didn’t appear to be broken as it caught at the joint. She was lucky that it didn’t catch at her shin, because it would have snapped right in half. There was a gash about 4″ long and just to be safe we took her up to the medical clinic, where a doctor assured her that she’d be okay.

  We came home, Zoe and my mom snuggled up on the couch and I got back to my Cabinet Mission. Then my dad came home and we told him what happened.

  My dad said to my mom,”Your daughter saved your life.”

  (Dunna nunna, dunna nunna, dunna…..)

• It’s Dirty Little Secret Day

  Date: 2009.05.12 | Category: Prior to March 2007, Worth Reading Again | Response: 2

  It’s Dirty Little Secret Day!

  By reading this post you are agreeing to the “Blogging Act of 2006″ which mandates that you have to spill your secret in my comments or else a hex will be placed on your blog. Sorry dude, it’s the rules!

  My Dirty Little Secret is ……..

  I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a very, very, very small possiblity that I’m a pack rat. Why you ask? Well, it seems that every single one of my dresser drawers is lined with trinkets, paperwork that I want to save, cards that my family has given me, old make-up, old credit cards, bottles of perfume, pictures I’ve cut of magazines of haircuts that I like, an old TV Guide (the one with Sarah Jessica Parker on the front and it has all the descriptions of all the episodes of Sex & the City in it), etc….

  I think it’s been building up over the last nine years.

  Okay! Fine! Whatever!

  So I know it’s been building up over the last nine years. Ugh.

  This weekend I’m going to battle the task of cleaning out all of my dresser drawers. This will entail actually folding all my clothes and putting them back into the appropriate drawer too. Not that I don’t do that already, but sometimes it’s easier to just shove some of them back in and slam it shut before clothing spills out.

  My husband better not be reading this entry today because I’ll die before I admit to him that I’m a pack rat and my drawers need to reorganized. And if he thinks I’m giving up that TV Guide …. well, he’s got another thing coming to him….

  Now that you know my Dirty Little Secret, what’s yours?

• Mother’s Day Memory: 2007

  Date: 2009.05.09 | Category: Worth Reading Again, family, the kid | Response: 0

  On the eve of Mother’s Day I bring you a 2007 Mother’s Day memory, Shhh it’s a Secret.

  I live in a house with two people who cannot keep a secret to save their lives. Should the CIA get a hold of them, they both would spill the beans about any top secret mission they were on before the agents could whip out their secret agent badges.

  On Thursday there was a long conversation in the car between Zoe and my husband regarding NOT leaking any Mother’s Day information to me.

  On Friday I came home from work and was instructed NOT to look in the back of my husband’s car because my present was in there. He drives a Mazda Tribute and the windows are tinted, so I would have had to press my face to the window in order to see what was hidden inside, and while I’m not above doing that, I resisted the urge.

  On Saturday morning my husband blurts out the following, “you need to act surprised tomorrow because Zoe picked out the most beautiful hanging flower basket.” I still don’t know why he told me this, maybe he sensed that the CIA was on their way over to the house to interrogate him and felt that if I knew this information I could stop them before they got up the driveway.

  It’s a hanging flower basket! It’s in the back of the Mazda! Please leave my husband alone!

  About 30 minutes later Zoe is asking me what my favorite topping is, because she’s going to put it on my Mother’s Day surprise.

  Chocolate jimmy sprinkles.

  Uh, mom, that wouldn’t be good on this.

  And then she whispered in my ear that her and dad were going to make me toast for breakfast and I could choose between butter or cinnamon. But don’t tell Dad, it’s a surprise.

  Twenty-four hours later, I’m snug in my bed, I mean in Zoe’s bed because she snuck into my bed in the middle of the night and I was too smooshed between her and my husband, so I moved to her bed. I can hear the conversation in the kitchen as they are whipping up my breakfast, she wants to serve it to me in bed, and he wants to serve it at the dining room table.

  Zoe came into the bedroom and told me that my breakfast was ready, I couldn’t eat it in bed because it would be too messy. But I could go eat it in my bed.

  At her resistance I ate at the dining room table, where I was served orange juice, bacon, french toast, and a fresh cup of coffee. I got the entire newspaper all to myself too. The flowers are beautiful, and Zoe also gave me a glass globe to hang outside in the flower beds.

  To all the mom’s out there, Happy Mother’s Day!

• Re-screen

  Date: 2009.05.05 | Category: Worth Reading Again, family | Response: 0

  Here’s a reprint from July 29, 2005, it’s by far one of my favorites.

  The silent screen

  One day Hubby found himself locked out of the house, so he cut two small holes in the screen window in our dining room, slid the screen up, and crawled in. He took the screen off and put it in the basement so that bugs couldn’t get in through the holes. Somehow it became my responsibility to take the screen to be repaired. Don’t ask me how, but it was, and since I’m all about procrastination — the screen sat in the basement for quite some time.

  One day he hands it to me as I’m walking out the door to go to the Y. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t even look closely at the screen. I just grabbed it, and dropped it off hardware store.

  The next week he picked it up. As he walked into the dining room with it, I eyed up the screen, and then the window, back to the screen again, and then back to the window.

  Uh oh, he had the wrong screen.

  Our dining room windows are tall and narrow, like 42”x 20″, and the screen he had was more square, probably 30″ x 30″.

  Me: That’s not the right screen
  Hubby: Sure it is.
  Me: It’s not going to fit.
  Hubby: Yes it will, just watch, you don’t do it right.

  So I sat and watched as he tried to jam this square screen into a rectangular window.

  Me: it doesn’t have the clippy things to slide the screen up and down in the window
  Hubby: Hmmmm maybe this isn’t the right screen.

  We went down to the basement, and sure enough, leaning against the cement wall was the dining room screen, holes and all.

  Do you want the know what the most hilarious part of this story is? When we brought back the screen from the hardware store the second time, it was also the wrong size to fit the window. Thinking we were going out of our minds, we accepted defeat and put it in the basement, next to the other new screen.

  Months later the hardware store called to ask, when will you be picking up your screen window?

  What? It’s still there?

  Of course it was. We had someone else’s screen. We still can’t figure out what window that first one belongs to.

  We’ve since moved out of that house, but when we cleaned out the basement we made sure to leave the odd screen, just to drive the new owners absolutely crazy.