Category: Funny Ha-ha

. . . laugh instead of crying.

My Failure to Abolish the High-Five

I declared twenty years ago that I do not high-five.

At the time, it was a matter of dignity.  As a woman of substance (that’s a polite way of describing my, uh assets) I was not comfortable waving my arms in the air, causing all sorts of jiggle and other unladylike happenings.  So, I said, rather haughtily, “I do not high-five.”  I may have even punctuated those words with the arch of my left eyebrow.  (I also emphasized that I also did not cartwheel, though I can’t remember exactly why I was so emphatic about that.  It’s not as if I was daily being encouraged to cartwheel.)

Alas, the trend of high-fiving has continued, unabated, despite my distaste for the gesture.  I mean, seriously, how many times does an intended high-five end in a lame, awkward joining of hands?  I know that I, personally, never anticipate a high-five and thus, miss slapping hands at the appointed time.  This is not festive, nor joyous nor celebratory.  This is stupid.  That’s right.  S-T-O-O-P-I-D.

I intended to start a world-wide campaign to Abolish High-Fives.  But then, I stumbled upon this wry website and I lost heart.  I mean, check out “High Five Style” here.  Clever, yes?  Amusing?  And so, I relented.  No World-wide campaign.  (What will I do with all these campaign signs?)

     

But still.  Do not high-five me.  I might, emphasize MIGHT, bump fists with you a la the germ-phobic Howie Mandel.  But I will not return a high-five.

A girl has to draw the line somewhere, and I draw the line at performing gestures best suited to the basketball court.  I am a Lady.  And ladies do not high five.  (I just said so, that’s who.) 

I mean it.  (Instead of abolishing high-fives, maybe I’ll do something easy like curing cancer or solving world hunger.  Or maybe finishing the laundry, but let’s not get overly ambitious.)

     

  

Extra Clean Teeth

When my husband came home last night, he was wearing a lei.  I said, “Hey, how was it?” and he said, “Oh, it was all right.”  I turned to look him in the eye and he shrugged and said, “I feel like on Survivor when the winner returns from a reward.  I don’t want to rub it in.”

Ah, well.  That good, huh? 

He reported that the dinner was fantastic.  Salmon, tiny potatoes, steak of some sort, blah-blah-blah (I didn’t hear that part) and five desserts to chose from.  The carrot cake was this high (and he spread his hands six inches apart), but he chose . . . I can’t remember.  But I would have chosen creme brulee’ and eaten three bites.  “I had egg whites and asparagus,” I told him, bidding for sympathy.

The conversation was terrific: college kids who actually turned to him (“the old guy” he called himself) and conversed.  He didn’t even mention the view of the Puget Sound.

So, I finally crawled under the covers, eyes burning from wearing my contact lenses way too long.  He was still reliving the night.  And then abruptly, I said, “I think someone put soap on my toothbrush!”  Which is clearly a ludicrous idea.  Who would put soap on my toothbrush?  At first I thought maybe the towel had a residual spray of cologne or something on it which I transferred to my mouth when I wiped my mouth after brushing my teeth.  

But then, in a flash, I remembered that day I rubbed my own toothbrush on a bar of soap until it was foamy and then brushed my teeth.  I was just a child, but I never forgot.  That taste was soap!

So, when I said with wonder, “I think someone put soap on my toothbrush,” he said, “Oh!  I did that!”

Hey, what?  He launched into this story about the soap squirting from the dispenser onto my toothbrush (which I leave on the edge of the sink to dry) and how he thought to himself that he needed to rinse it off and then . . . poof!  Vanished thoughts.  He left it all soapy.

I jumped up and attempted to rinse the soap from my mouth, but really, it’s not possible.  If only I had a taste of cream cheese frosting to cleanse my palate.  That would do the trick!  Alas, I went to sleep with the bitter taste of soap on my tongue–but laughter on my lips.  For some reason, that “Oh, I did that!” amused me.

(I posted again on my ClubMom blog.  Head on over and see.  But first, click on that red ClubMom banner over there, sign up for a FREE membership and then go read my deep dark secret.)

At Least I Can Spell “Anonymous”

My brother used to call me “Little Miss Perfect.”  This is the type of insult that is difficult to refute.  Argue against your accused perfection with examples of your imperfections and you protest too much.  Agree and you sound conceited. 

Mostly, I never really understood the insult.  Maybe the view from my set of eyeballs was vastly different from the view from my brother’s, but I somehow doubt it.  What was he really saying?  That he resented my tendency to follow rules and get straight A’s?  That he wished he, too, could play the piano and babysit on the weekends?  That my beauty was so stunning that he was half-blinded when he beheld my visage?

That old “you think you are so perfect!” insult is blatantly false.  Does anyone really think they are perfect?  Is anyone actually so blinded to their own reality inside their skin?  Where are these people who truly believe they are better than all the rest?

I ponder these questions because today I received the following message from a girl from Lompoc, California, in my inbox:  “Isn’t begging a little beneath your intellect and purported brilliance? And yes I choose to be annonymous [sic] just like you choose to be obnoxious.”  (She was referring to my recent post at my old blog address in which I implored my readers to come to this address instead.) 

And I have a few questions for her, so pardon me if you came here and you are not living on Ocean Avenue.

1)  Do you have me mixed up with someone else?

2)  Have I declared myself brilliant and of superior intellect?  (Because if I haven’t yet, let me point out that I did score a 31 on the ACT, the SAT alternative.  On the SAT I only scored 1240 (670 verbal, 570 math), but I had no idea you could study for those tests.  Also, have I mentioned that I was ranked fourth out of four hundred academically in high school?  No?  Well, I have been remiss.  But now you know.  I am smarter than you.)

3)  Did you realize that when you post anonymously your IP number is captured by most stat-counters?  And so I can tell who you are and from where you post?  Duh.

4)  Why do you torture yourself by returning to my blog time after time?  (Eighty-eight times–no, eighty-nine times so far.)  Is my obnoxiousness so riveting?

Well, that’s all for now.  I hope you have a swell day. 

Signed,

Little Miss Perfect

 

She Said

Yesterday, my daughter got a new dolly (because she only has a dozen dollies, maybe more, so deprived and all, but lucky for her, a church lady donated this really lovely and lifelike doll to my poor little girl’s cause).

So, I said to my daughter, “What is the dolly’s name?”

“Mrs. Zippy,” she replied.

“Mrs. Zippy?” I asked, confused. 

“Yes, Mississ-ippi!” she said.  I laughed and she said, “Just kidding!” 

Shoes and Shoe: A Mystery

As you can see, her outfit the other day wasn’t really complete until she added the scarf and gloves. She’s peeking out from the overgrown laurel hedge where the children like to hide.

 

 

 

 

 

 And here is a close-up of those authentically tacky 1970s shoes, size 5.5. Don’t you wish you could wear them with tie-dye and bell-bottoms?  Or a short polyester dress and “suntan” pantyhose?

Finally, I have to ask: Is this your shoe? It’s not ours! I’d never seen it before yesterday, when I uncovered it in a pile of stuff on the stairs. 

Remember when I found a pair of socks that didn’t belong to us? I can imagine how a boy could forget his socks at someone’s house. But I am mystified picturing how a boy might have left one shoe here. Did he hobble out without realizing that one foot wore only a sock?  Did his parent not notice?  To whom does this shoe belong?

This is the mystery I ponder.

Hats!

I have a big head. No, really. I mean the circumference of my head is unusually large, twenty-five inches–I just measured twice–which by anyone’s standards indicates that my noggin is gigantic.

I also have all this Cocker-Spaniel hair (“yes, the curl is natural, do you think I’d pay money to DO THIS TO MY HEAD?”), so all things considered, if I were a snowman, I’d fall over, head first, into a snowbank.

The huge-headedness of mine has only bothered me on the rare occasion, like when I was visiting Tahiti as a sixteen-year old and our new found Tahitian friends gifted me with a lovely straw hat to commemorate my visit. It perched awkwardly on my head until we boarded the plane and it’s never touched my hair again. I hang it in my closet, a reminder of balmy breezes and Tahitian brown eyes, but I can’t wear it. That hat is made for a girl with a normal head size.

Sure, perhaps I need an extra-large head to encase my super-sized brain, but that didn’t offer any comfort the time I went snowmobiling in northern Michigan and the helmet crushed my eyeballs into the front of the helmet and smashed my nostrils into my upper lip, causing my breath to steam up the helmet windshield (what is that thing called?).  Who needs to see anyways?  Inside that helmet I felt like one of my kids as a toddler who snuggled his head into a flowerpot. Nice and cozy. Also, I had to undo my French-braid to lessen the bulk and when we arrived at a restaurant for a little break (thank God, my head could expand to its normal shape again), my hair looked like the “before” picture in a shampoo commercial. Oh, so pretty! 

Even if I could shove my head into a hat, I wouldn’t because I have eight tons of the aforementioned Cocker Spaniel hair firmly affixed to my skull. (I would look like Bozo the clown.)

My hair makes me hot, causes me to swoon on a slightly warm day and is the reason that I bought a hundred hair bands last time which came on a handy key-chain-like ring. My supply on the ring has dwindled down to three, so now I dig my hands deep into whatever pockets I might be wearing in hopes that I’ll fish out a hair band. Right now, as a matter of fact, I am about to push aside the 307 broken pencils in my drawer to see if a hair band is handy. (It was. Oh, sweet relief!)

One time, I remember Oprah mentioning that she has a big head, though do you think I can find any proof right now through the magic of Google? (No.) And Rosie says her head is big, too, though she is fuzzy on the details. Perhaps I’m destined for television talk-show fame, if my head is any indication. Then again, well, maybe not. I suspect there are additional qualifications, like the ability to make small talk with random strangers and the willingness to wear super-high pointy high-heels and smile at a camera.

If I ever lose my hair, I’m doomed to a life of shiny baldness because even Bartholomew Cubbins‘s five hundred hats doesn’t include one in size Too-Too-Too-How-Can-She-Even-Balance-Herself-With-That-Bowling-Ball-Head-Large.

Post Academy Awards Show Blog

I know. I didn’t post for two whole days, which in dog years is uh, two weeks? That annoying thing keeps happening where a thought pops into my head and I think, A-ha! I must blog that! And then the thought dissolves like the bubbles in my kitchen sink just when I’m ready to wash a frying pan.

(Speaking of thought bubbles, twice today at church, I scolded my 12-year old son who was holding a piece of paper up above his head. You can imagine how distracting it would be to sit behind a boy with a paper sign hovering over his head. When I peered closely, I saw he’d drawn thought bubbles and a profound thought: “Mooo!”)

[I have to say: I told you so! Only, I probably forgot to actually tell you so, but I did predict that “Crash” would win for Best Picture (and it did) and that Reese Witherspoon would win for Best Actress (and she did) and that Philip Seymour Hoffman would win for Best Actor (and he did). I rock.

Oh, and how about Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell’s presentation for Best Achievement in Make-up? That presentation was rivalled only by Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin.]

Okay. Back to the post. Oh, first I have to say that the best way to watch The Academy Award show is to video tape it (unless you are lucky and have TiVo, in which case I loathe you because my jealousy has no rational outlet). If you tape it, you can fast-forward through the speeches, the montages, the tributes and just watch the presentations and the monologue. (Oh, and how funny was that opening?!)

What I wouldn’t give for a coherent, creative thought about now. Um . . . so . . . today was church but we had no lights in the sanctuary because last night, when some of the guys were at the church doing something or another, they smelled smoke. Smoke emanated from the breaker box when all the lights were on. So, no lights today. And the sanctuary smelled like smoke. My husband was a little stressed out about this, but I gave him some clever lines to use like this: (wait until the middle of the sermon and then pause and say) “Is it just me or am I ON FIRE today?” Or maybe point out Big Al, one of his close friends and say, “I don’t know about you, but Big Al is SMOKIN’!” Or even, “Repent, for even now, I smell the burning fires of hell!”

Oh wait. Was that sacrilegious? Okay, let’s move on.

I drove our new “old” van, the one nearly as old as my marriage yesterday. The interior is quite lovely, though the exterior shows minor lumps and bumps and flaking paint if you look closely. Kind of like me, I guess. Maybe that’s why I like it so well. (But we didn’t name it. We don’t name cars. Do you? Maybe we could name it “Daisy,” and then I could say, “Hey, I’m Driving Miss Daisy!” (Did you get that Oscar reference? Huh? Didja? See? I have a theme in this here blog.) I drove from going-out-of-business craft store to consignment store to thrift store to discount store to second craft store to Bed Bath & Beyond before finally drifting home.

The weather had been exquisite all day and I wanted to just pick up the kids and hurry them down to the beach, but first, we needed dinner. And then the sun slipped below the horizon and then my husband said, “Tomorrow,” and I agreed. But today (“tomorrow”) it rained and this afternoon, my 8-year old son cradled his head in pain and cried. Another illness?! (After his bath tonight, he declared this, “The WORST BIRTHDAY WEEK EVER!” I distracted him with a tale of a boy I once knew who was so sick on Halloween he couldn’t go trick-or-treating. Because really, what is more soothing that comparing yourself to someone worse off than you?)

My grandmother turns one hundred years old on Friday. And you know what that means, don’t you? That’s right! A mini-family reunion. She had six children and five of them are still alive. I have dozens of first cousins and we’ve all done our part to procreate. (Well, most of us have, anyway.) We’ll gather from around the country for a catered dinner in her honor and I will obsess all week about dressing to slim and about whether to call my colorist for emergency highlights and debating the merits of robbing a bank to hire a plastic surgeon to remove this double chin.

And I console myself this way: I say to myself, “Self, probably Grandma will live at least another six months and by then, you can be to your perfect size, just in time for The Relatives to see you again!” And then I remind myself that I am not fifteen and the world does not revolve around me and that people will not be noticing my appearance as much as I notice my appearance. That’s what I’ve learned in the past twenty-five years.

It would help if I weren’t related to the skinniest cousins imaginable–seriously, my cousin is tiny and wears a loose size 2 and my cousin, her brother, is Ichabod Crane-ish, and his wife, a girl who lived on my wing in college, is also slim and has never appeared in public without her perfectly applied lipstick and her oh-so-cool Southern composure.

But I can write. See how I comfort myself?

In other news . . . hello March? The daffodils around town are blooming. My crocuses are a happy little enclave of pure white, gold and purple, merrily coloring the drab flowerbed. They are tucked right behind the basketball hoop and seem hopelessly misplaced, but the basketball hoop was a recent addition, haphazardly introduced to the backyard by two men with no thoughts of Feng Shui or aesthetics of beautiful English gardens full of perennials. (As if!)

This is the time of year that I wish I’d planted more daffodils and I am full of regret. That is some kind of metaphor for life, isn’t it? You just have to plan ahead and be patient . . . and actually put the bulbs in the ground instead of just dream.

With that thought, I will wrap this up. But first, one final thought. About George Clooney.

Dear George, (May I call you “George”?)

I want to hate you. You are a cad. You are everything a thinking young woman should despise–your cocky attitude, your inability to commit, your failure to demonstrate your competence at marriage. You own a pig, for goodness’ sake, a pet pig! Your politics are liberal, you have that smirk, your belief in yourself bordering on narcissistic, and yet . . . I can’t help but think you are the Epitome of a Movie Star and tomorrow I’m going to buy a poster of you and put it on my bedroom wall. I don’t think my Republican husband will mind at all.

Oh, and congratulations on winning Best Supporting Actor.

Hugs and Kisses,
Mel