Hypotheticals

Yes. Tonight, Emily and I jogged two miles. I know you were just dying to hear that information.
Or not.
But it's important. Because tonight, on our two-mile jog, we stopped at my grandma's house.
This is a ritual--we usually stop and catch the last few minutes of "Wheel Of Fortune" with her before heading on our way home.
But tonight, when we came through the door, the news was on.
The news!
"Why aren't you watching Wheel of Fortune?" I tried to ask, trying not to sound too devastated.
She looked at me blankly. "The coverage of the Southern California fires has been the only thing on all the stations since four o'clock this morning," she said.
Oh.
Fires. What fires?
I quickly noticed that the TV screen was only two colors: orange and black.
Black because it's, uh, night.
Orange because there's fire.

Of course, I did the only logical thing to do in such a situation: I whipped out my cell phone and called Jay, breathless, to tell him about the fires ravaging the state.
He listened patiently, then said, "Yeah, I'm logged into the incident website and there are thirteen fires statewide. I'm on top of it."
Like I said before: oh.
I guess I was the only one in Southern California who didn't know about the fires.
Well, I take that back. Emily didn't know either.

My grandma mentioned that a homeless man, and his dog, had been killed by the fire. That led to a very involved conversation on how it would be possible for a homeless man to die in a fire (not to mention his dog. We'll get to that later.)
Think about it: it's not like the fire could overtake him in a house before he had a chance to escape.
He'd be in the middle of a street and would see the fire coming towards him.
Right?
Grandma had a suggestion: Maybe he was asleep under his blanket.
Well, Emily and I made quick work of that one; she suggested that he would smell it, and I suggested that he would think it was awfully hot for an October day.
Grandma countered: Maybe he was high on drugs and thought it was drug-induced psychedelic hallucination until it was too late.
That was plausible enough to give us a short pause.
That is, until we started thinking things through more carefully: what about the dog?
Wouldn't the dog run?
Emily said, "Maybe the homeless man was the arsonist, and he stayed around to watch the fire."
That still didn't answer the question of the dog.
"Maybe," she said, "the dog was on a LEASH."
Oh.
"Or maybe," she said, "the dog had no legs."
Yes. You read that correctly.
My own blood sister had the audacity to suggest that the dog of a homeless man who died in a fire perhaps had no legs!

We all burst out laughing.
I know it's not supposed to be funny. But it was. What a visual.
We went home and related this story to our family;
Jay was a killjoy and made a comment like, "This family is morbid," and went back to his computer.
Dad said, in a perfectly normal voice, "Maybe it was a lapdog."

So. What do you think? What plausible explanations can you think of for why a homeless man on the street would perish (with his dog) in a fire?
And, no, you may not consult any legitimate media sources for the answer to this question.
Use your imagination.


And, while you're at it, please pray for the fires. Apparently, it is a very, very serious situation.
Not that I would know about that -- I just found out about the fires.
But still.
I have a somewhat informed brother. Which helps.

I did it. Again.

Well, dear readers, I did it again.
I had another culinary tragedy.
You'd think that, based on simple odds, I've experienced more of those in my lifetime than a normal human should be subjected to, but apparently there are no rules of fairness where things like this are concerned.
I was even doing a good deed when it happened, but apparently that didn't help anything either.

See, I had called Elizabeth McCauley.
For those of you who have not had the extreme pleasure of meeting Elizabeth, (you would remember it if you had. Trust me.) perhaps her nicknames would best describe her -- two of my favorites are "Bubbly" and "Firecracker" which seem so synonymous with her personality that they feel natural to use as proper nouns.

On this particular morning, I had decided to multitask: call Elizabeth while making breadsticks for dinner (we were having lasagna--and what is lasagna without fresh bread? [Lasagna, you say, but that's beside the point.]) We were deeply engrossed in an edifying conversation concerning Google Reader when I used one of my God-given senses (i.e. smell) to determine that my breadsticks were ready to come out of the oven. Balancing my cell phone on my shoulder, I got a towel in my hand, deftly opened the oven door, and pulled the pan of breasticks out.
I admit, I impressed myself.

That is, until the whole pan went flying.

I maintain that it must have been some sort of conspiracy. I mean, it sounds perfectly safe to pull a large, heavy pan out of the oven with one hand and a kitchen towel, right?
Right?
The next thing anybody heard was my frantic, "Mooooooooooom!"
My mom is always good at rescuing me. Before I could hang up with Elizabeth, she practically had the whole thing cleaned up and had a bucket of water cleaning up the garlic and parmesean cheese remnants from the kitchen floor.
(Yes, of course the breasticks all landed upside-down.)


In cheerier--much cheerier--news, yesterday my mom had the extremely helpful idea of going into our storage shed (in the backyard) and getting out all of the costumes that Jay and I used to wear as children.
You're probably wondering: what costumes?
Well, see, we have this very creative mom, who, unlike her daughter, is a domestic wonder and who can randomly wake up one morning (probably before 5:00 a.m., too) and decide to do something like, oh, say, design and execute the production of a lion costume.
Yes. You read that right.
Lion costume!
Or rabbit, or squirrel, or Moses-in-Egypt, or Laura Ingalls, or anything else she sets her heart on. When we were kids, all we had to do was:

a. come up with an educational reason why we needed to have such-and-such costume
b. sort the laundry and sweep the kitchen floor, plus any other bribery tactics that seemed appropriate at the time
c. watch mom make the costume
d. use
e. repeat next time we wanted a costume made

By this method, we acquired quite a collection of very creative costumes when I was young. And, now that Daniel and Mally are into their years of formal education, my mom doesn't need to make costumes, she can simply go out to the shed and get them.

Today was the day they came out of the shed. And as soon as they came out, my mom promptly disappeared on a trip to every grocery store, bank, and other retail establishment within, oh, say, a dozen miles, and, since I don't like shopping, I stayed home.
But I'm sure she planned it that way, because when the little kids woke up from their naps, they spotted the infamous "costume bucket" in the living room, they mobbed me and wanted to try the costumes on.
I told them, "Actually, those are mom's special costumes. Wait until she gets home before you use them."
Ha.
So the kids waited, and once mom got home, we had a big costume-wearing party. Don't let Whitney's smile deceive you: she was terrified of the costumes. She takes after her big sister, I guess, because when I was a child, one of our neighbors, who was about 5'5" but seemed about as tall as Goliath came over in a large pink rabbit suit on Easter, intending to amuse me, and I screamed, pitched a fit, hollered for an unreasonable amount of time, and, I think, permenantly scared her off.
Come to think of it, in the years since, I've never actually seen her wear anything pink again. There has got to be some correlation there.

Anyway, Emily lined them up and took pictures, and they were just so cute that I had to post them for you.

And yes. Like I alluded to earlier in this post, my mom made all of these costumes. And there are lots, lots more where those came from.

Note: Apparently I have some technical difficulties with my links, as several of my pictures aren't showing up. I'll try to fix them when I figure out what the problem is. :-) Thanks!

Playing Dead

Uh, guys --  the cemetery has visited my blog again.
The cemetery has visited my blog post about the cemetery.
The cemetery visited my blog nine times since I posted about the cemetery.
And still, no fessing up.
How do you like that?

Freaky Friday, or, "The Post That Couldn't Wait Until Halloween"

Okay. So.

(Do all of my blog posts start with, "Okay, so"? I'll have to conduct a survey on that.)
I planned to post this on Halloween, for three reasons:
1. Halloween falls on a Friday this year, and "Freaky Friday" is just such a....cute title for a post!
2. The post was, well, freaky. (Am I repeating myself?)
3. I don't remember the last reason. But I'm sure there was one. I'm really sure there was.

 

Regardless: this post couldn't wait for Halloween.  I just had to post it before.

 

Note: Oh, yeah! I just remembered the third reason: what if I posted it on Halloween and nobody believed me? (Maybe something along the lines of April Fool's—only, Halloween Fool's. Catchy, isn't it?)

 

Because if you think I'm making this stuff up, I absolutely am not.

Wait.

I guess I haven't told you what stuff I'm talking about yet.

 

Let's fix that.

 

Remember last week when I wrote that I read my blog more than anybody else, and am therefore entitled to post whatever I like?

 

Well, that was a little, itsy-bitsy tiny white lie.

 

Because I don't read my own blog more than anybody else.

 

And before I tell you who does read my blog more than anybody else,  let me back up.

It all started when I got a site meter. A site meter is an internet "tool" that ends up becoming an obsession; it gives stats like: who visited your blog, how often, what kind of web browser they were using, and, most importantly, their map coordinates.

 

Yeah. Map coordinates.

 

And, okay, yes.  "Hesperia, CA" had a lot, lot of hits.  I'm not the only one in Hesperia to visit my blog – there are eight people (five computers) in my household and, with our busy schedules these days, my blog probably has better information about me than they know "in real life".

 

But "Hesperia, California" doesn't show up as the number one visitor to my blog.

 

Do you want to know who the number one visitor to my blog is?

Well, I did, too.

I had map coordinates. (34.0416, -118.2988)

I had a general location. (Los Angeles, California)

So all I needed was a map.

 

Enter Google.

Here's what I found.

 

Go ahead and admit it: you're speechless.

I know you are.

 

So was I.

So that's the news that couldn't wait for Halloween.

Wait.

I forgot.

I don't believe in Halloween.

 

Whoops.

Forgot that little matter.

Still.

I'm sure it's just a mess-up; a cemetary can't really be connecting to my blog.

That only happens in, you know, Steven King novels and stuff.

 

Note: If you live somewhere near or around the cemetary and if you think maybe my site meter is off just a little bit and you're actually the number one faithful visitor to my blog, send me an email (nrhearn@gmail.com) and I'll collaborate on a future post with you. Provided, of course, that you are, uh, alive.

The Guys Who Weren't Very Good At Hitting On Girls, or, "A Scary Incident"

Okay.
So.
Tonight Emily and I were out on a nice Sunday walk, minding our own business and going to visit our grandmother.
It was fairly uneventful on the way there-- we did pass three rather large people standing next to their car texting on their cell phones. Anybody who ever said that texting is a silent language obviously never got to know these guys--they were liberally using audible expletives while texting. We didn't pay much attention to them (but they'll be important later, so listen up.)
We made it to grandma's and watched her play "Freecell" on her computer for a little while.
(Yes. I do know that watching someone play Freecell screams, "get a life". We only watched one game, honest.)
It was a very nice time.
But. On our way back, when we were going past an intersection, a little red sports car went past and the two occupants of the vehicle, uh, said something. Actually, it was quite evident that they were trying to cat-call, however, I can't say that they actually did, because their attempts were rather lame. It came out sounding more like a dying animal of some sort.
We crossed the intersection, and Emily commented, "They just slammed on their brakes."
"Don't worry about it," I said, "they're just trying to be nice."
"That isn't nice!" Emily protested.
"They probably thought it was," I insisted, "Don't worry about it."
And so I didn't worry about it.
Until they turned around.
And turned onto the street where we were coming.
And pulled up alongside us.
In the dark.
Their window was rolled down so we could get a good look at them, and there is no other way to say this: these two guys were ugly.
Not just slightly-distasteful-ugly--no. These guys looked like they had just returned from a photo shoot for the Megan's Law website.
If we could have held them for the law, the Smithsonian would have probably given us millions for bringing in the missing link for evolution.
They were hideous.
"Hey girls," the closest one to us said, in a voice that I assume was supposed to sound smooth, "Are you out exercising?"
No, we're having a tea party!
I looked at one and said, rather blandly, "Yes."
Several things were going through our minds at that moment, Emily and I discussed later. She was thinking, "I wonder which of them likes which of us?"
What was going through my mind was: Why, why, didn't I bring my cell phone tonight? And, These guys obviously don't have very much experience hitting on girls.
Because, after that first brilliant come-on line (the one about the exercise) it took them awhile to collectively come up with a second conversational subject. They had clearly had plenty of exposure to Jack Daniels, Elmer's White Glue, antifreeze, Timbisha Shoshone Peace Pipes, and prescription drugs within, say, the past five minutes or so. Their reaction times were just a little behind.
I know the driver launched his next talking point, but I didn't hear it because traffic was backing up behind these two, and at the obvious encouragement of a huge U-Haul truck behind them, they sped up.
"I will be grateful to U-Haul for ever'n'ever," I said, under my breath.
But that wasn't the last of it.
Thing One and Thing Two had obviously decided to come back for another try, so they had pulled off the road and had turned on their left blinker--they were going to do a u-turn and give themselves some more face time. 

At precisely this time, we were coming up upon the texting wizards from earlier, who were apparently still wrapped up in their cell phones. I saw that left-blinker ahead of us go on, and decided that most men (even tough men who use audible expletives while texting) will usually become sympathetic when girls appeal to their protective instinct, and made a quick decision: I was going to go up to them, apologizing for bursting in on their gathering, and ask them if they would let us stand there a little while until the guys stopped bothering us.
But Emily, ever quick, had a better suggestion.
"YOVANOVICHES," she said.
That name might not be significant to you, but the Yovanoviches are good friends of ours, who just happened to live across the street from the scene we found ourselves in. A contributing factor to Emily's reasoning must have been the rumor that once Mrs. Yovanovich yelled at a man who was going through her backyard, "If you do that again, I'm going to call the police!"--only to discover that the police were right on his heels with guns drawn. He was some horrid criminal and we never did find out whether or not they caught him, but Mrs. Yovanovich hollered at him all the same.

The car was turning around. We had to act quickly.
Yovanoviches it was.
We broke into a run, reached the front door, banged on it, and basically let ourselves in.
"What is it?" Mrs. Yovanovich asked, just as the car was slowly passing by the house.
We explained in abbreviated terms, and Mr. Yovanovich regarded us calmly, held up a dish in his hand, and asked, "Would you like to have a pistachio?"
Mrs. Yovanovich asked if we would like to call our dad, which we did want to do so very much, thank you. I told dad a few pertinent details, ending with, "So, if we're not home in an hour, you'll know that we've probably been abducted."
"Okay," he responded, cheerfully, "Preach the gospel to them, sweetie."
You've got to love my dad.
I tentatively agreed and we set out on our way, thanking our hosts for the pistachios and haven, then proceeded on our way.
We thanked God--of all the places for something like that to happen, it was on the only part of that dark, unlit road where there were any people, where there was a house we could run to!
"Nicole?" Emily asked, "Um, where would you, uh, punch somebody like that?"
It was quite a question.
See, the two guys weren't, by any means, small.
In fact, if someone told me that their momma was an elephant, I would believe them unquestionably, science notwithstanding.
They were very, very large.
(A bright spot is that they probably wouldn't have been able to fit us in the little sports car with them if they had actually been interested in hauling us off.)
We pondered that they had probably found our disappearance to be somewhat miraculous, and tried to imagine the post-incident conversation after having seen us, and then turning around to see an empty street.
"Or maybe they thought you were angels unawares," Dad suggested, once we got home, but Emily and I concluded that they were probably unaware of that biblical passage.
We called the Yovanoviches assure them that they didn't need to send out a search party.
We were safe.

Quote Post

Some people post "quote posts" with really stirring, thoughtful quotes from ancient patriarchs and foreign dignitaries whose names are hard to pronounce. They tell us that Whatchamacallit Gandhi said "be the change you want to see in the world"—or was it John Waldo Emerson who said that? Or Ralph F. Kennedy?

Touching, regardless. Those kinds of quote posts are nice.

Really nice. Sweet.

But my quote posts are never touching or particularly inspiring.

They're not by famous people. The names are easy to pronounce. (i.e. "Scott". How can you mispronounce "Scott"?)

But!— they're funny. At least, they were funny when they happened, so they are fun to repost even if everyone reads them and thinks, "Whaaaa?"

After all, it's my blog, and I visit it more often than anybody else, so I'm entitled to post anything I want to. Right?

Come on, now, folks. Let's get some audience participation.

I'm entitled to post anything I want to. Right?

There. That's better. Thanks. *curtsy*

 

With that in mind, here are a few quotes:

 

Collin: It's not a touch-screen.

Scott: Yes, it is. It just doesn't do anything.

 

Scott [walks in the room]: As you were, men.

 

Jeff [smells my new perfume]: That's heavenly!

Roland [smells my new perfume, later]: What does it smell like in here? Lysol?

 

Don: Since you've started attending that church, has church membership gone up—all of those eligible guys following you around wanting to marry you?

 

Nancy [sees Mark after he got back from cooking for employees on vacation]: Hey, Chef Boy-ar-dee!

 

Nancy: I see she's cut her hair short this time. [She's gone through every phase under the sun….except cute.] And she can't help that.

 

Jeff: Mark Blair can ride with me. I have duct tape.

 

Scott: In Nevada, it's always about the girls and the silver.

 

Nancy: I'm going crazy. Do you want to go with me?

 

Scott [looking at the back of a Polaroid picture]: That's Hesperia at night.

 

 

 

Shore 'Nuff

My mom was busy getting supper ready for a party the other night, and was evidently flustered because she said, rather authoritatively, "Grandma's watermelon may or may not be cut when she brings it."

Dad stared. "You're kidding!"

When grandma arrived, her watermelon either had been cut or hadn't (in this case had), and mom crowed, triumphantly, "See?"

"Sure enough," dad said.

And it was sure enough.

A Great Quote

"We may be earnestly desiring to be obedient and holy.

But we may be missing the fact that it is here,

where we happen to be at this moment

and not in another place and another time, that we may learn to love Him –

here where it seems He is not at work, where His will seems obscure or frightening,

where He is not doing what we expected Him to do, where He is most absent.

Here and nowhere else is the appointed place.

If faith does not go to work here, it will not go to work at all."

~Elisabeth Elliot

F For Effort

So.
This morning, when I was minding my own business, Mally came up to me and said, "Nicole: stink."
I won't dazzle you all with my deductive reasoning and logic skills, but let me just make it clear that I had no problems interpreting what Mally was trying to tell me: Whitney needed a diaper change.

I placidly walked Whitney to the back room, and then forgot about her, because Jay distracted me and made me laugh. (It was his fault. Honest, it was.)

When I finally remembered my somber errand, I called out, "WHITNEY!"
"Yeh." (More translations necessary, I know. Whitney says, "Yeh" to say, uh, "Yes.")
Turns out, she'd been amused by Jay, too.
She was hiding under his chair.

We reunited, I did what needed to be done, and while I was trying to wrap things up (quite literally) she kept squirming and laughing and creating a general brouhaha. It took me three or four tries to get her pants back on, but I finally plopped her down on the ground so she could run off and play, while I cheerfully went to dispose of the evidence. I noticed that, as I left, Whitney toppled and fell on her face.
"Be careful!" I admonished smartly.

While I was outside at the trashcan, I heard my mom laughing.
Let me clarify.
She wasn't laughing: she was LAUGHING.
When my mom laughs like that, I know something is reallyreallyreallyreally funny.

Well, turns out, it was. When I came back inside, she could barely talk she was laughing so hard.
"You get an F!" she said.
She was talking to ME.

She held up Whitney.
It seems that, somehow, I managed to put both of Whitney's legs into the same pant leg.

If you've ever read C.S. Lewis' book, "Voyage Of The Dawn Treader", picture Whitney appearing as the perfect likeness of a monopod.

It was embarrassing.
Even if mom did find it wildly amusing.

Sweet Dreams

We –meaning, the Public Works Department where I am employed—have quite a few people traveling—meaning, going to business-related trips—this week and through the end of the month.

Like, almost thirty people.

 

Thirty. People.

 

This is significant to me because I made all of the travel arrangements.

Think sixteen thousand calls to hotel reservation hotlines.

Well. Maybe not sixteen thousand.

But something awfully close to that.

 

This is also significant because I'm just so worried that they're going to get there and something's going to go wrong.

Sooooooooooo worried. (Is that enough "o's" to get the point across?)

 

I can just imagine the check-in disasters that could possibly happen:

NOTE TO ANYONE WITH AN ACTIVE HEART CONDITION: These are not actual situations. These are hypothetical situations.

 

·         The guys get down to San Diego, and the night clerk there smiles and tells them that there will be a seven hundred dollar surcharge for the San Diego Support The California Budget Deficit fund.

 

·         The confirmation numbers were all one digit off, and therefore our pre-paid check accidentally pays for a cute little couple from Singapore to have a stay free-of-charge.

 

·         The folks in Las Vegas claim that there was never a check sent to cover the costs. Check? What check?

 

·         The guys get collectively locked out of their hotel rooms (for the sake of this situational scene, let's pretend they all forgot them at the conference that day). Patrons see fifteen guys in a hallway and mistakenly assume it's a situation involving gang violence. Someone rings the fire alarm, thinking that it will be a reliable way to summon law enforcement personnel. Paranoia breaks out in Reno, NV. The city goes into lockdown. The City Attorney is contacted on his personal cell phone to negotiate terms for bail.

 

·         Between the time when I booked the hotel and when the guys showed up, the hotel is converted to a City Zoo.

 

·         The cute little couple from Singapore gets to their room and doesn't like the color of the carpet, so they tell the clerk thanks-but-no-thanks and head across the street to the Sheraton, so the taxpayer dollars from our City are completely wasted!

 

 

See? Aren't all those possibilities totally frightening?

Can you tell I'm nervous about all the travel happening this week?

 

Wake me up when September is over and everybody's home, please.