For Your Entertainment

Well, I laughed.


So when people talk to me about my blog the thing I hear most often is that it's really funny. Apparently I missed my calling as a stand-up comedian or something. And I feel like I haven't been very funny lately and that I ought to apologize for that. And excuse myself in the future by saying that I'm discovering that 4th and 5th graders are generally not as cute and funny as smaller kids . . . mostly they're just obnoxious.

Anyway, to make amends, I present you with three (hopefully) amusing stories. At my expense. Enjoy. :-)


1 ~

So back when I'm trying on my Elizabeth Bennett dress and discovering I suddenly have the shoulders of a . . . whatever football position it is that people talk about having big shoulders like . . . well, my first thought for alternatives was my other formal dress.

You see, back when I was in high school, my mom was in some ways a perfect Mormon Tiger Mother. Meaning her oldest daughter (me) was going to go to every formal dance ever and would need the most fabulous dresses ever and so we bought four over the course of time at massive blow-out sales that meant I got 4 rather expensive dresses for two-figure prices. Which is pretty awesome.

I got pity asked to junior prom a week before (good thing I got a dress so far in advance, eh?!) and didn't go to another formal . . . ever. Except for one semi-formal, the only dates I went on in high school were girl's choice. Same goes for college - minus the semi-formal. As Mormon Tiger Daughters go, I was an epic failure.

On the plus side, I have this lovely burgundy-ish formal dress that I've never worn. I was planning on wearing it for Valentine's Day, which Ellis also does up in epic style, but I figure I can wear it twice. So I try it on.

The good news: It still fits, ten years after buying it. And possibly even better than when I got it. Woot!

The bad news: I can only assume this is because it's just been sitting in a closet for a decade, but as I get the zipper nearly all the way up - it snaps. As in the flippy thingy you grab onto snaps off the part that does the actual zipping. And as I try to use the little piece of flippy thing that's left attached to the zippy thing . . . it crumbles into dust. I kid you not.

So here's your lovely and amusing mental picture: it's, like, 10:00 on (I think) Friday night. I'm stuck in a formal dress, the zipper of which will not go down now that I have no flippy thing to grab on to. Luke is at work and won't be home for a couple of hours.

I'm sure you can all picture the look of "oh crap!" on my face. Go ahead and giggle for moment. I'll wait.

Okay, long story short I'm not really sure how I did it, but I got the zipper down and the dress off, although there was at least ten minutes there where I thought I was just going to have to wait until Luke got home to help. And now I'm pretty impressed with the way I can contort my arms when I really need to.

Also - is there anyone out there willing/able to replace the zipper sometime in the next three and a half months? I'd still like to wear it for Valentine's Day.


2 ~

So Monday. When I was doing the scaring. I had to crouch pretty far down to get all of me behind that bench. I was pretty much curled up in the fetal position, both so that my cat ears and tiara wouldn't be seen, and also so my head would be down to the part of the bench it was easier to see through to know when the perfect moment to jump up was.

However, in order to jump up quickly, I kept my right leg up. And put most of my weight on it. And jumped up rapidly on the one leg. Repeatedly.

I'm too old to be doing that.

You know the muscle in you thigh? Not the quadriceps, the one in the front. I think I pulled my right one or something, because, holy crap, I have been feeling that since . . . well, shortly after I posted my last post. I'm fine when I'm moving, or when I'm still - but starting and stopping the motion . . . yesterday I thought I was going to die. Okay, maybe not that bad, but I have been limping. Not a lot, I'm sure no one else has noticed. But dangit, I have!

And . . . I may or may not have exaggerated it a bit at home for a little sympathy. :-) Not that it's really necessary, I've discovered I married a man who jumps to wait on me hand and foot if I so much as sneeze. Which kind of makes the fact that he's the one who gets sick the most often a little frustrating, ya know? :-) I'm feeling better (but still stiff) today - yesterday morning I could barely bring myself to get out of bed. Clearly I'm just not . . . ummmm . . . 26 . . . anymore? I mean, seriously. This sort of thing isn't supposed to start happening, like, another FIVE years at LEAST, right? This story? Is the story of my life in a nutshell.


3 ~

'Kay, so among other things I do in 5th grade, I do fluency timings. Basically, a fifth grader should be able to read about 150 words a minute and I time them on passages to see how close they are to that. A couple of the timings aren't passages, but lists of phrases - mostly things commonly seen on road signs or other signs out in the big blue world. (ten points unless you're Eric, lol) Things like "no passing" or "construction zone" or "pedestrian crossing" or whatever. Anyway, one of them is "no minors" which (Phillip) reads as "no mirrors." So afterward I tell him to look at it again, and he gets it immediately because his problem was, as I figured, just going too fast and misreading. But then he asks me what it means. So I explain the minor is the opposite of major and means something smaller or less important or lesser or lower or whatever, and then I explain that in context it meant someone younger than 18 and that he is a minor. This look of excitement and light bulbs clicking on comes to his face and he says all pleased with himself, "And you're a major!"

It may not see as funny when you're just reading it, but I cracked up. And through the giggles (this kid is used to me laughing at him, he's pretty quirky) I stumble out with something garbled like "well . . . yes and no . . . sort of . . . I guess . . . kind of . . . " and I'm thinking something like well, yeah, TECHNICALLY I guess, but the word is . . . wait . . . what is the word? What am I? Seriously? Did I seriously just ask myself that? I'm an . . . adult . . . is that word? Adult? Wait, yeah . . . yeah?

Or something like that. I hope my explanation was clear, because I get the feeling that this kid says he gets things even when he doesn't quite get them. I think I said something about how major wasn't the opposite of minor in this case and people over 18 are just called adults. Or something. I was giggly and a little flustered.

So . . . here's hoping this was funny enough to hold people over for a while. I'm certainly laughing at two of them. And I'll probably be laughing at the other one in a couple of months. :-)



P. ost S. cript
So . . . I totally should have posted this Monday and saved the monkey for today. But here's a little bit of late kitty Halloween fun. :-) We watched this last week, and it's seriously still kind of scary!