Tag: funny stuff

Growing Up Is Hard to Do

I went to a bridal shower for one of my sorority sisters this past week-end.  The bride-to-be is one of the youngest of my sorority sisters from my pledge class.  We used to joke her that she was the baby, that we were bringing her up, bringing her along.

At her shower the other day, I noticed that she, her sister, and her bridesmaids are still in their twenties (late twenties, but twenties nonetheless).  Other guests included her mother, her aunts, her grandmother and other family and friends that were older than me.  Two other of my sorority sisters, one the same age as me, the other slightly younger, were also in attendance.  Talk turned to weddings, parties and receptions.  One remarked that if she were to do it again, she would love to have another big wedding.  The other said that if it were her, she’d keep it small and quiet.

“Why have another big wedding?” I ventured.  “Let’s just have a big blow out party just because. Or let’s do it for the next big birthday.  What’s that going to be anyway?”

*Pause*

“Thirty-five,” we said in unison.

Wow.

I don’t know if my other two sorority sisters felt what I did just then. It was this odd sense of being in an age limbo. Not quite as young as the bride to be and her attendants, but not quite as mature as the mother of the bride and her guests.  Maybe I’m over-thinking, building up that mountain out of nothing.

I never have given much thought to how old I am.  I don’t feel old. I don’t look old (at least not according to the bartender at McCormick and Schmick’s).  And yet, discovering that my next big birthday number is 35 was jarring.

Fact: I’m closer to 35 that I am to 30.  
Turning 30 wasn’t a big deal for a several reasons. 

1. Like I said, I’ve never given much thought to how old I am
2. Now that I share my birthday with Coever, truly, it’s her birthday, not mine.
3. 30 for me fell on the first day of school for the girls and my priorities were elsewhere.

When I turned 25, I had a big blowout at our house.  We hired a DJ, had it catered, had all manner of friends and family.  Truth be told, I liked the planning and the execution of the whole thing. I love getting together with family and friends; I wish we did it more often and on such a large scale.  I’d do it again for 35, but I think it would be more poignant for me because I, in fact, would be turning 35.

When you’re mistaken for 17 one day and then realize you’ll actually be twice that age in a matter of months, it’s easy to see how your nose can get out of joint.
What do you see here? 
 I’ve been blessed with good genes that will serve me in good stead as I mature.  My parents are into their late sixties and are often mistaken for being at least 10 to 15 years younger than they really are.  My brother, well, he’s 9 years older than I am and yet, there have been times when I’ve been mistaken for his older sister. I swear, he’s got a portrait of himself squirreled away in his attic. 
I do have to laugh at myself, though, because I’m sure I’ve lead to you believe that I’m going to be 35 this year.  
Not quite. 
More like in 2013.
 But hey, I’ve always been a planner. I’m just thinking ahead.  You know, as you get older, the mind’s the first thing to go. 
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IN: ON: February 7, 2011 TAGS: , , , BY: Hilary
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My First Wedding


So word of my photography skills has gotten out.  I was recently tapped to shoot a wedding for a lovely young couple.  Their officiant of the ceremony is a friend of mine, so I was happy to do it.  Given the word choice of the officiant, I’m thinking it was her first wedding, too.

And the lady crying throughout? They said she’s a flower girl, but  I’m thinking that’s an ex-girlfriend or something.


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IN: ON: October 2, 2010 TAGS: , BY: Hilary
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Word of the Day

Morgan has a cold, so she came home early and spent the remainder of the day lounging on the couch in her pajamas, sipping tea, and thumbing through books.  The child simply refused to nap.  I figured that when bed time came, I’d draw her a nice warm bath, fill her up with some warm milk, top her off with some ‘tussin and tuck her in tight.

Our after-bath routine consisted of slicking her and Coever down with some lotion, followed by a healthy slathering of Vick’s VapoRub on their chests and soles of their feet.  FYI — apparently, putting the vapo on the the bottoms of your feet and covering them with socks helps reduce, if not eliminate, coughing during the night.  I’d have to say the success rate on that is about 60-40, but we keep trying.

I get Morgan squared away and turn my attention to Coever, who is happily dancing naked on her bed.  I stick my fingers in the Vapo and begin to apply it to her little bird chest, when she declares, “It smells vagina-mated!” She twists up her face as I rub circles into her skin.

“What?”

“Vagina-mated!” she says again, and her tone is a chock full of  “duh”!

“Um,” Am I really going down this road? Yep.  “Coever, what does that mean?” I ask, slipping her night shirt over her head.

“It means your hands smell!” And she and Morgan break out into peals of laughter so rollicking, I really think I’ve walked into a set-up. 

I’m just counting my lucky stars that she stopped with the word “smell” and left off any type of examples.  I don’t think my heart could take it.

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IN: ON: September 27, 2010 TAGS: , BY: Hilary
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Staying Motivated

So, I’m still in the throes of this P90X.  I want to stop, but it’s like I’m conditioned to get up and get working now.  In part, I’m afraid of what’ll happen if I stop. I know, I know, I’m too hard on myself and I’m being ridiculous. A lot of people say that doing DVDs and tapes at home gets boring after a while and I do think I’ve hit that point. Still, I like the results I’ve gotten.  Plus,  I do have a tendency to “belly up to the trough” at dinner time, so I have to balance things out.

I was finishing up the legs and back routine this morning, seriously contemplating just stopping mid- exercise when I thought, “Well, I did eat that bag of Sweet Moments last night. . and I don’t want to end up like the Juicy Woman”.

Ahhh, the Juicy Woman. I know I’ve told some of you this story shortly after it happened, but it’s a classic and bears repeating.

About a year or two ago, my dad and I had gone out to Target to pick up some odds and ends. My dad was still relatively new to the area having recently moved down from MA. He insisted on driving so that he could get a lay of the land and learn the routes from his house to various points of interest and so forth. So, we are leaving the Target and he’s behind the wheel, hands firmly at ten and two.

In the shopping center, there are a lot of speed bumps to slow folks down, but they are spaced about two feet apart, so getting from the parking lot to the main drag can take a few minutes. We’re creeping along, shoppers are circulating in the lot and in and out of the shops, life is humming all around us.

My dad pulls up to a speed bump just as a person emerges from Party City carrying an enormous bouquet of balloons. So many balloons, in fact, all you can see are her pink sweat-pants and sneakers hanging out of the bottom. We pause to let her cross in front of us and as she makes her way to her car, she turns her back to us. She’s built like a pear — narrow waist, with wide hips and buns. Written across the back of her pants are the letters, “J”, “U”, “C”, “Y”.

My dad hunches up over the wheel to get a good look, his nose all but touching the windshield (*smh*). He turns to me and asks, “What is jew-kee?”

I look over at the woman, now bent in double trying to jam the mass of balloons into her car without popping or losing any of them. The letters are jiggling with her motions, and I can’t help but laugh.

“It’s not jew-kee, Dad,” I tell him. “It’s says Juicy. Her crack just swallowed the “I”.

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IN: ON: July 23, 2010 TAGS: , BY: Hilary
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I Wanted an Alpaca, but my dad said, “No!”

 Last week, while we were on vacation, we took the girls to Island Alpaca, an alpaca farm on Martha’s Vineyard.  For $5 a person, you could take a self-guided tour through the farm, then head into the barn to see some alpacas.  You finish up your tour by visiting the alpaca gift shop where they had all things alpaca and all things made from alpaca parts — well, from their fur.  Or is it wool? I forget. Whatever it is, it’s super plush and uber warm.  You can make all kinds of things out of it, from mittens and scarves to neck warmers and hats — as the girls were kind enough to model.

I had heard of alpacas before, probably as in, “I’m going to need a Sherpa and an alpaca to get all this crap from here to there”.  Or maybe I made that up the first time I hauled our daily dose of crap from the house to the car.  But I digress.

We lucked out the day we went because one of the alpacas had given birth just hours before we arrived.

 I swear, I thought that thing was dead.  The owner of the farm was on the phone when we came through the gift shop.   She stopped chatting long enough to tell us about the newborn and said she’d be out in a sec.  Well, she took her sweet time, and as Mo and Co wait for no man, so we moseyed outside.  Thankfully, I went out first because when I saw that limp noodle, I thought, “Oh, how in the world am I going to explain this?”  I mean, well, look at it!  It was just laying there!
I didn’t expect the mother alpaca to be cuddling it or  reading “Good Night, Moon” in a gliding rocker, but I expected a little bit of levity or something.  My relief came quickly, however, because the lil’ baby sat up a few minutes after we arrived.


Awwww, so cute.  And surprisingly, un-smelly.  At least, not as smelly as the one’s in the barn.

This one was particularly fragrant and Morgan wasted no time telling us just how stinky he was.

 I think her face actually says it all. . .

Alpacas look a lot like llamas and spit like llamas, too.  Two of them actually got into it while we were there.  They had their necks twisted ’round each other, they were braying or whatever sound an alpaca makes, they were doing it.  And the spit was flying.  I opted not to get any shots of that.  Gotta protect the camera and all.  One of the signs on the tour said that they were “cousins” and from the camelid family, so I guess the camel is up in their family tree, too.  Yeah, I learned quite a bit in our brief little encounter, but the best part was yet to come.

Morgan was really taken with the experience and she talked about it for the rest of the day.  She talked about it for the rest of the week, as a matter of fact.  She even made up a song about alpacas and how she wanted one for a pet.  The song has had many revisions since the first version (see below)

“I went to the farm to get me an alpaca as a pet. 
The farm was closed, so I stole it anyway 
and I brought it to my house. 
But then the police came 
and said, ‘Hey do you have an alpaca as a pet?’
And I said ‘Yes, I do.’
So they took me to jail, but I got out
and I brought the alpaca back to the farm.
And the lady gave it to me anyway.
So now I have an alpaca as a pet.”

There wasn’t any discernible tune, but she made it work.  By the time we got back to VA, she came up with another version.

I’m sure there will be a remix featuring Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj by the end of the week.  Look for it on iTunes.

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IN: ON: June 30, 2010 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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Lunch Special #7

This story was related to me by my mother, but oh how I wish I could have been there.

So the girls are having lunch with my parents, Yia-Yia and Pop-Pop the other afternoon. Usually lunch with the grands involves Chinese food, since the girls are big fans and so is Pop-Pop. The girls are die-hard fans of chicken with broccoli and fried rice.

More often than not, they do a bang up job scarfing it down, occasionally saving me the trouble of doing the dishes by licking their plates clean. Of course, like with everything else, there are days when they have to go against the grain and just get buck like their mom (They come by it honestly).

Evidently, Coever ate all of the chicken off of her plate, most of the rest and kind of shuttled the broocli from one side of the plate to the other. Yia-Yia, with her slick eyes, got hip to the game and reminded Coever that she needed to eat her lunch, post haste, and stop fooling around.

“I don’t wanna!” came the terse reply.

“Coever,” chimes in Morgan, “you can eat your lunch or you can have some air pie!”

My parents look at Morgan while Coever adamantly refuses that offer. Says Pop-Pop, “Morgan, what’s air pie?”

“A big slice of nothin'”, she says, and proceeds to lick her the last of her fried rice off of her plate.

Check please!


P.S. – Thanks, Ginny, for encouraging me to keep it short and sweet!

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IN: ON: April 20, 2010 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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Why I Am Going to Install Hand Dryers at Home

It’s after breakfast and I’ve herded the girls upstairs for their morning toilette. They race each other upstairs, while I collect the toys, slippers, pajama tops and bottoms and other flotsam and jetsam they jettison from themselves as they hit the bathroom. Seriously, random pieces of crayons, stickers, and Cheerios follow in my children’s wake like dust clouds around Pigpen.

In the bathroom, the girls have successfully relieved themselves without any assistance from me, which is a nice surprise. Co, naked from the waist down, is reaching up to re-hang the hand towel on the rack, one foot precariously perched on her potty chair, the other on the floor. Mo flushes the toilet and begins to dance a little jig while singing, “We went potty, we went potty!”

Applauding, I come into the bathroom to put toothpaste on their toothbrushes and to saturate washcloths. I wash my hands and grab the hand towel that Co has abandoned to the floor and begin to dry my hands.

“I wouldn’t use that if I were you,” says Morgan eyeing me warily.

“Why not?” I say, hanging up the towel and turning to inspect my face in the bathroom mirror.

“Coever used it to wipe her buns.”

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IN: ON: February 5, 2010 TAGS: , BY: Hilary
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