Monday, August 16, 2010

A blah-g for you!

Sometimes my life is just plain boring. Like a beige kind of boring. I go through these periods where nothing interesting or noteworthy happens. I know that's normal. But the problem is that I need things to blog about so boring is not good for me. I mean, y'all don't want to hear about my life when things are boring, do you?

You do? Really?

Ok! Great! Well, have I got a blah-g for you!!

The latest in my work life . . .
I was reading a file the other day at work and ran across a statement from a TDCJ guard who was reporting a fight that had occurred on his unit. He explained how the fight broke out, who was involved, and how they "used chemical agents to quail the disturbance." I tried to figure out why they would use chemical agents and throw quail at the offenders - that seems like it might border on cruel and unusual punishment. Especially for the quails. But then I realized that he meant "quell" and then I laughed. And breathed a sigh of relief for those poor quails.

Then I read another file that had a statement by an offender. Apparently he felt that he was being set up to take the fall for something because he explained that he "was used as a guinea pig to accept blame for the offenses." I thought to myself that if the offense was "criminal misuse of common phrases," he was definitely guilty. But, hey, it's a common mistake to make: "scape goat" sounds JUST LIKE "guinea pig." So I get it.

The latest in my home life . . .
My air conditioner died last week. In August. And the worst part about it was that it died on Tuesday and they couldn't come replace it until Friday. So that meant that my roommate and I had to live in the sweltering heat. For three days.

Did I mention that it's August?

It was miserable. My dog just laid around, refusing to move, and I spent the entire time sweating like Ashley Judd in A Time To Kill . . . it was horrible. But it's funny how your perspective can change so quickly when something like that happens to you. On Tuesday, when I came home from work, my house was 82 degrees and we were BURNING UP. It felt like hell had been temporarily relocated to my house. But then when the new A/C was installed on Friday and the house had finally cooled down to 82 degrees, we each grabbed a blanket and called everyone we knew to tell them how cool our house was. But now our house is back down to a glorious 72 degrees so life is good. And if it ever goes back to 82, I'm moving.

The latest in my quest to be cool . . .
This week I had a major set-back in my search for street cred. I've been doing pretty well lately, earning my street cred bit by bit. I've been listening to Top 40 music, throwing around names like "Jaz Z" whenever I can, and saying phrases like "don't be trippin', yo" just for good measure. I've felt pretty proud of the progress I've made and was ALMOST ready to declare myself "hip-and-with-it" . . . until this week . . . when I had to use dictionary.com to look up the plural of "ho." My street cred plummeted at that moment and I found myself back at square one, feeling strange urges to say things like "gee golly" and "my, that sweater set is lovely." It's really quite distressing.

The latest in my social life . . .
Today we threw a shower for my friend Tracy (Jill's sister). She and her husband Brian have adopted two boys from Ethiopia and they get to go pick them up at the end of this month. And let me tell y'all - these boys are BEAUTIFUL. It's been so exciting to follow the adoption process with them - they are going to be GREAT parents. These little boys are so lucky to have been placed in their home.

As these are Tracy and Brian's first kiddos, we wanted to throw them a baby shower to give them all the goodies they need for when the little guys get here. Jill and I were co-hostesses with Tracy's mom's friends, Carol and Peg. My job was a pretty simple one: order a cake, pick it up, and bring it to the shower.

Simple, right?

So I got the cake from a local bakery called Nielsen's Bakery and it turned out really cute. We had them put two little blue baby buggies on it and a caption that read "They are yours!" because that's what the Ethiopian judge said to them when she finalized their adoption. It was all very cute and sentimental and I was so excited to get it to the party so that everyone could see how it turned out.

But before I headed over to Carol's house with the cake, I had to decide what I was going to wear. I've been opting for capris as of late but today I decided to wear a skirt instead. Plus, I had these super cute new shoes that I wanted to wear and I knew they'd go perfectly with the skirt I had picked out. So, the decision made, I got dressed and got the cake and headed to Carol's house. When I arrived, I decided to not park in the driveway so I just parked my car in front of their house, just along the curb by their front yard. I got out of the car and walked onto the grass to get to the passenger side where the cake was. I carefully got it out and began to walk across the grass to the driveway. Just as I was stepping onto the driveway, my right foot landed in the divot between the grass and the driveway. That's when my ankle rolled. Aaaaaaaaand I went down. Cake and all.

I swear it took me 30 minutes to fall. It was like super slow motion. I was trying my best to regain my balance but that only resulted in me doing this weird ankle-roll walk that could NOT have looked graceful. My eyes bugged out and I held my breath for the big impact. My ankles finally said "I quit!!" and stopped trying to regain balance and I went down. While my skirt flew up. I finally hit the driveway with the force of a fallen tree but somehow - miraculously - I managed to keep the cake completely level as I fell. Unfortunately, that meant that I didn't have my hands available to break the fall. Which meant that my knees broke the fall for me. And since I was in a skirt, that hurt like a . . . like a . . . well, it just hurt REALLY bad.

I hopped up as quickly as could. Pulled my skirt back down and looked around to see if anyone had seen me. As far as I could tell, I was in the clear so I bent down, and picked up the cake and tried to walk in as if nothing had happened. Aaaaaaaaaaand then that's when I saw that my knees were bleeding. So I spent the day playing hostess at a very nice shower with a bunch of lovely women . . . aaaaaaaaand the knees of a 6 year old tomboy. Should have worn the capris . . .

But I SAVED THE CAKE, thankyouverymuch.


So that's it. That's what's been going on with me lately. Boring? Yes. But that's what makes it so blah-gtastic. But now I have to stop writing so that I can put some Neosporin on my knees, nurse a twisted ankle, and get under my covers because it's COLD up in he-ah!! Shoot.

Yep - my street cred's comin' back . . .

3 comments:

Phyllis Eddings said...

I've fallen running up stairs at work, and it DOES hurt. Also had a cranky A/C unit, but got quicker service. Of course the unit was ok, just frozen up, so we had to leave it off for 24 hours to unfreeze.

Mary Abigail said...

"blah-g" is the best word I've heard in a long time. I have some "blah-gs" saved to my favorites that I need to delete. Yours is not one of them!!!

Anonymous said...

TOO FUNNY! So sorry about the knees! DRS