Moments

Life is full of moments. The older I get the more I realize this and wish I would've appreciated some of them more. Moments with my father who I miss so much and moments with my son. His childhood is almost over and I wish I could go back and gather all the moments and slowed them down. That little boy with the active imagination who'd run up to me and hug me. I miss that boy. I love the teenager, but I miss the boy.

This evening I was in the grocery store looking for spaghetti sauce when a woman and her little boy came down the aisle. I didn't look at them, but I could hear them talking.

The little boy said, "I found a penny! This is my lucky day!"

The mom said, "Please keep your voice down."

That upset me. He really wasn't that loud and he just sounded so excited. But I couldn't judge her, because I could remember that voice. That was the voice I'd use when I'd start tuning off the chattering and the whining. When I stopped truly listening.

I wanted to go over and say, "Let me see your penny," and enjoy the moment with him. Childhood seems long, but is really so short. I wished I'd thought about that when my son was young. But I didn't. Not always.

I'm not sure what the point of this blog is. For once I don't really have one.

Just make sure you always appreciate your lucky penny. They don't stay around forever.

Class of 2012

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Tuesday night I took my son to his Freshmen Orientation. On the way to school, we had this conversation:

J: "So now that we live closer to my school, does that mean you can drive me everyday?"

Me: "I don't think so... There's no time."

J: "School starts at 7:30."

Me: "And....?"

J: "You leave at 9:00."

Me: "Your point is....?"

Doesn't he know morning is my blogging time? Silly boy.

We get close to the school and immediately there's a problem. Unbeknownst to me his freshmen class has 200+ kids in it. And I think all of their parents and relatives were there that night. I was at this stop sign for like 10 minutes trying to go straight across to his school.

We finally cross over. Thank God! Wait... Not that kind of crossing over... I mean crossed the street...never mind.

By the time we find a parking space, it's 6:00 (the time it starts). And we left early! (For a change). As soon as we walk up to the high school, I remember something I'd forgotten. High schools are BIG. What door are we supposed to go into??? We start following this one kid and his mother who is asking everyone where the orientation is. And when I say, ask, I mean YELLS.

"HEY, ARE YOU GOING TO THE FRESHMEN ORIENTATION? WHERE IS THE FRESHMEN ORIENTATION?"

Yikes! Everyone kind of ignores her for awhile until she accosts some teenage girls coming out of the nearest door. They are nice enough (or scared enough) to direct her to the correct door.

As soon as we get in, me and J lose crazy lady and her kid and go our own way. We pass the auditorium and I'm like, "Hey, J. I think we're supposed to go in there." He mumbles something and keeps walking. Umm...k. We walk to the end of this loooooong hallway, and there's a lady giving out maps. Sadly, though, they don't have a arrow pointing down saying, "You are HERE." I also thought about doing the Joey thing where we go into the map, but was afraid I might embarrass J. And as fun as that is for me, I thought it wouldn't be kosher in high school...before he even starts. I'll wait until at least 10th grade before I drive up there in my sock monkey pants and heels.

So we turn around and I steer him into the auditorium. It's freaking huge! It's like a professional stage! Or maybe I just don't get out much. We walk down the left side and keep walking and walking. We finally pick some seats at the front. On the stage a older man in a red suit is talking. Yes, a red suit. Apparently the school colors are red. Awesome!

The older man is the principal. He starts introducing members of the staff. Then he introduces the police officer who is stationed at the school during the day. The whole audience goes deathly silent like he's going to arrest us if we speak. There were a lot of guilty people in that audience. I'm just saying...

He starts by telling us his wife wasn't speaking to him. He forgot her birthday! There's a huge, "Oooooooo..." from the audience.

He continues: "She told me to make up for it, she wanted something that goes from 0 to 200 in less that 6 seconds in the driveway...."

In my mind, I'm thinking, "Oh no he isn't! Is he really passing off a old recycled joke-one that has been forwarded to me at least a hundred times-as a true story?"

Oh yes, he is. Everyone starts laughing at the punchline. (A bathroom scale...har!). I wanted to stand up and yell, "Citizen arrest! You sir, stole that joke! And it's not even that funny!"

But I don't. I just roll my eyes...a lot. That showed him!

The presentation goes on and on.... And on. The principal is back and he introduces the THREE vice principals. What happened to a principal, a vice principal and that's it? Now they have one vice principal assigned to certain students in alphabetical order. Craziness!

Just when you think it's winding up and the students will finally get to pick up their schedules, from the back of the auditorium, we hear, "Hold on!"

Everyone looks back and there's this guy running down the left side, wearing a red shirt (of course). He runs on stage and takes over the podium. He's the "activities director." (And apparently has a flair for drama). He starts running down the rather long list of activities they offer and winds it up with a strong finish, yelling, "Now lets show our some school spirit for... *school name*!" Which leads to.... Cheerleaders!!! They come running up to the stage and start cheering! Oh, this is just so awesome! I haven't seen cheerleaders in so long! (Unless repeated viewings of Bring It On count).

They finish the cheer (which was a little more provocative than the cheers in my day...Oh hell, did I just say that? *sob*). Finally, they tell the students to file out, so they can get their schedules. That leaves us with the red-suited principal.

He starts out saying, "I bet all of you feel like your kids just started kindergarten." Yes, he got me. Because it really does! Not only that, it feels like "I" was just graduating high school. It's just sooo wrong.

He starts talking about policies, etc, and this is what I got out of that:

Students...

-Must respect the teachers. I don't think J will have problems with that.

-Can't say the "F" word. Hmm....well, I don't think J says that. They aren't talking to the parents, are they? ;)

-Can't show a lot of cleavage or they will be forced to wear an ugly smock. Hmm...no cleavage issues that I know of. Are they talking to the parent-uh, never mind.

-Who do show disrespect, or have any wardrobe malfunctions, will get detention, which is on Saturday morning. Dude... Yes, my mind went straight to The Breakfast Club. Immediately I wanted J to get detention so he could meet Judd Nelson! "Hey, smoke up Johnny!"

-Must go to school...uh, blah, blah. (Yes, that's all I remember right now. So what?)

He finally finishes up and tells us to go find our kids! Whoo-hoo! Er, I mean, good speech! I learned a lot.

They encouraged us to walk around the school, but that place was a madhouse! There was no way I was going to leave when everyone else did and have to fight my way out of the parking lot. Call me a bad parent if you want, but I wasn't getting stuck there all night. We needed to get our drink on! (Ha, just kidding. Stop dialing child services).

My boy is going to high school. How did this happen? No, seriously, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN??? I'M OLD!

A Quick Trip to the Store

Me and the grocery store don't get along too well. Oh, sometimes we're okay. I'll walk in, buy groceries, and just leave. But sometimes...

Tonight I needed dinner so I thought I'd just pick up something. Just dinner, mind you. Nothing else. Nothing.

As I'm walking in the sliding doors of Giant, I realize my dress pants have come unbuttoned. Well, not unbuttoned, but the metal clasps had come undone. My pants are still up, but they are loose. Hmm...well, I'm not going to embarrass myself fastening them, so I'll just hope for the best. They are still zipped, right?

I grab a hand basket since I'm just picking up a couple things and away I go. That's when I remembered...I don't cook. Well, not without a recipe. What exactly am I going to just pick up?

That's when I start the roaming. The roaming is never good. Suddenly I'm seeing things I really need (but not really).

As I'm walking past the bakery section, these frosted cookies just wouldn't stop pestering me to buy them. I'm serious! I walked past these suckers twice. They were yellow and had sprinkles. They were happy cookies! Finally, I picked them up. Just to make the voices go away, of course.

Now my basket is getting heavier and that for some reason makes my pants start falling down a little. So there I am...walking through Giant, heavy basket on my left arm, my right hand trying desperately (and surreptitiously) to pull up my pants. My sweater is probably long enough to cover it but still. I get to the frozen food section and decide to pick up some meals for lunch. The only microwave meal I'll trust is Marie Callender and her meals come in these big boxes, which are now on top of my other crap.

This can't be good. And it's not.

Marie just won't stay where I put her. I'm walking kind of bowlegged down the aisles, and BANG, there goes another box. I stop. Pick it up. Pull up my pants. Keep walking. My arm is killing me. BANG. Stop. Pick up meal. Mumble out loud while inner (and just slightly more sane) voice reminds me that I am talking OUT LOUD and to please stop it. Pull up pants. At this point, I should just button them right? This is insane. But no, I can't do it. There are cameras. (Which, if someone was bored enough to watch, would have pretty entertaining tape, I'm sure).

Then I remembered J wanted snacks. I have no room in this basket. Marie is getting pissed again. She's about to jump. What am I going to do? I shuffle over to the snack section, and it's an entire aisle. My God!! What to pick? Pretzels. They work. So now I have a bag of pretzels teetering above Marie, who has just had it with me and the basket. She jumps once again.

Finally, I make it up to the front just to discover there is only one live cashier and the rest are self service registers. WTF? How many people got fired for these gadgets?!? And there are lines at every single one.

But the real problem is that I still have nowhere to put my basket and pants are at the critical level. Although, I did see one woman shopping in a pair of shorts with the word "EAGLES" plastered across her ass, which did make me feel a bit better. But I still wasn't enjoying the image of me looking like a teenage boy with my pants falling down.

Finally, this really nice woman tells me that one of the self service registers is open. After picking up Marie for the final time, I walk over to a smaller version of the self service registers but this one doesn't have the conveyor belt. It just has a place for two bags to fit. I start ringing up my stuff and bagging them. Well, soon the second bag is filled and I need to a new one. "HALT! DON'T TOUCH THAT BAG!" the machines says. Actually, it says something like, "Please do not pick up the bag until everything has settled to the bottom." Umm...WTF?

I soon realize you need to leave the bags where they are since they are being weighed. Of course I realize this when it tells me I made an error and that assistance will be on its way. Oh crap... I'm busted! The grocery cops are coming! I'm so glad they are doing away with cashiers.

Finally, some boy comes over and eyes my stuff before scanning something in. That's it. He doesn't say anything. Maybe he'd heard me talking to myself and didn't care if I stole something. When I go to pay, I use my credit card instead of my bank card, but I don't care. I just grabbed the first card I found in my wallet. I'm lucky I didn't try to scan in my insurance card or something. I even forget to use use my Giant Bonuscard! Who knows what kind of discount I could've gotten! But Marie is yelling at me from my bag, and it's just time to go...

I swear my arm hurt for hours after I got back from the store. The bad part is that all of this could've been avoided if I had just got a cart like a normal person! Oh, and buttoned my pants.

For me its the things in life that should be easy that give me the most problems. Do you need a report created and completed in two hours? No problem! You want me to pick something up from the store? Hmm...I don't know if I can do that. You might need to ask someone else.

But we did eat dinner and that's all that matters... Oh and I got cookies! Cookies make you forget everything.

Don't you hate when...

You take all kinds of pictures of your picnic then get inside and realize there was a smudge on your camera lens??? It was so bright outside I could hardly see the screen, much less tell how good the picture was.

Dammit! I'm hoping I got some good pictures anyway. We shall see!

Can I borrow a boat?

We have rain. Lots and lots of rain. I drove home from my parents house last night and at one point hit a pocket of water so high, it went over my SUV and I couldn't see a thing. It was like surfing.

So this morning I get up to drive my son to school. We're running late, so when we get to the bus stop we assumed we missed the bus. I turn the news channel on the radio, but there's nothing about school closings that I hear.

I drive my son to school (which is at least twenty minutes away) and just when we're about five minutes away, I switch channels, and guess what? Yes, no school. Flooding.

That's an hour round trip (I had to get gas) wasted. Now I have to drive another hour to work.

Put that in the Melly Moments file.

Don't you just hate when...

glitter-graphics.com

You leave your flash drive at work? The same flash drive that has all your writing documents on it? Yeah, that one. Definitely a Homer Simpson moment.

Proof that doing dishes is dangerous

I was putting a knife in the dishwasher when it sliced my finger. Most of our knives are dull, but this was a knife out of a new set we just bought not too long ago. Oops! It's not a deep cut even though it's bleeding like crazy. I really need to invest in some band-aids.

I should really stay away from doing the dishes. Obviously I'm not qualified for this position...

How You Know You've Totally Lost Your Mind...

This morning I pulled up to work and started gathering my stuff together. (This takes awhile and involves many bags). Once I was done with that, I looked in my purse for my work badge. It wasn't there. WTF? The one thing I always do before I leave home is make sure my badge is in there. So where was it?

My mind starts racing. Was I going to have to get a temporary badge? What if they didn't have any? Would I be forced to have people come with me every time I went in and out of the building to smoke. WHERE WAS MY BADGE???

Then I looked down again.

Oh.

It was around my neck.

Of course. I knew that!

I know I have blonde hair, but I kind of hoped I could rise above the stereotype. I hoped I'd be the one blonde who proves all the bad blonde jokes wrong.

Silly, silly me...