(my phone rings at work...its my husband)
Rachel: Hi Honey!
Andy: Hey...do you have a second?
Rachel: Sure...what's up?
Andy: So I was separating the laundry and wanted to know if you needed me to throw away some of these shirts.
Rachel: (pausing to process) Whose shirts?
Andy: Yours.
Rachel: Which shirts?
Andy: You know, just some of these shirts of yours in the laundry. I was going to help you throw them out.
Rachel: Are they shirts I currently wear.
Andy: (silence)
Rachel: Andy?
Andy: Yes, they are in the rotation.
Rachel: Crap, he's onto my weekly shirt rotation.
Andy: I'm not trying to say anything...its just that some of these shirts have lost their...um.
Rachel: (defensively) Their what?
Andy: Spunk.
A Letter from Lola
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Dear Mom,
Hi, it’s me…Lola!
I hope you’re having a super fun time on your trip. You will be happy to know that I haven’t tried to sneak out once while you are gone. No parties. No boyfriends over. I haven't even worn my collar that you called "skimpy". It’s been hard, but I want to make sure that you know you can trust me so that when I go backpacking across Europe myself when I’m 18, you won’t worry. Also, I am not interested in other dogs since the “surgery”. I'm still kinda mad about that.
I’m having fun with Aunt Rachel. She’s into all the girly stuff. She must wash her hair twice a day with your Wen products. I like her.
Cousin Sam has insisted on changing our names to Rojo and Gwenfripp the Super Dogs. I told him my name was Lola...but he told me that it wasn't.
Help.
Do I look like a Gwenfripp?
Anyway, Bailey is getting on my nerves. He won’t let me sleep in the bed. Aunt Rachel and I chatted about it over Pumpkin Spice coffee and she said it reminds her of the time when you were kids and you made her sit in the back of the tub at bath time and wouldn’t plug up the drain so she could get water. She said she used to sit in the back of the tub freezing and dirty. Man, mom...you were a bossy little girl.
Well, anyway. I’m having a blast…except for the part where Cousin Sam won’t stop calling me Gwenfripp. I hope none of my friends try to come over…I’ll just die.
Toodles,
Lola
A Letter from Bailey
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Dear Mom, Dad and Cece
Aunt Rachel says you are far away on a trip. That sounds fun. I wish we could go too. I know that you are having a good time. Lola and I miss you guys. Aunt Rachel is nice, but she doesn’t really understand dogs, I think. She keeps putting us in time out. I’m not really sure what it is, but when she tells cousin Sam to go there, he puts his hands on his hips…which I think is weird that she asks us to do this since we don’t have hands (duh).
Things here are fine. Aunt Rachel says it must be nice to be able to flit off to Europe on a whim. And that we were staying home because we were just the “little people.” Obviously we are little…but people? Aunt Rachel isn’t very smart. Also, I’m not sure what “flit” means, but it sounds fun. She also says its okay though because it gives her a chance to wear your clothes, play in your makeup and drink all your wine. Oops, she told me not to say that.
Anyway, don’t worry about us, we’re fine. We are spending a lot of time under the bed hiding from Cousin Sam because he’s…well he’s 4. He keeps calling me “his dog.” It’s really starting to scare me because instead of Aunt Rachel setting him straight, she just sort of sighs and says, “whatever you want.” I don’t want to be Cousin Sam’s dog.
Bring me back a Waterford Crystal dog bowl!
Bailey
A Post with Chapters
Sunday, September 18, 2011
The Part Where I Bit It At the Marriott
The Part Where I had to go to Bagdad, KY
The Part Where My Sister is a Freak of Nature
The Part Where Buffalo Flavored Bugles Suck
At 7:30 AM bright and early on Friday, I went to checkout of the hotel I was staying at in Chattanooga. I had a 5.5 hour drive ahead of me as I was headed to Bagdad, Kentucky for work (more on that later). I was staying in a two story Marriott with no elevator (I feel like someone didn't think that one through).
As I was coming down the stairs with all of my luggage, my ankle, which apparently couldn't handle one more step, rolled and I tumbled down the stairs onto a landing. I'm sure it looked cool. It felt cool. In addition to the awesome points I was earning, there was a disconcerting popping noise that came from the general vicinity of my right foot.
"This weekend is going to be excellent." This was my first thought as I was lying on my stomach in the stairwell of the Courtyard Marriott and waiting for someone to find me.
No one heard me fall, however. Apparently there were no other guests at the hotel that day.
I was that tree that fell in the forest with no people. Only I was lying on the landing in a stairwell at the Marriott in Chattanooga...and I'm not a tree. Other than that...its exactly the same thing. I was poking my hand into my right foot in the hopes I could self diagnose and was doing that Blair Witch Project breathing that you do when you hurt something as an adult and are trying to keep from screaming like a child.
And I waited.
And no one came.
Because other people stay at hotels with elevators.
So I did what every survival expert does…I called information. I did this to get the number for the hotel in whose stairwell I was currently lying in.
I spoke to a nice lady in reservations named Nancy who put me on hold for five minutes after I told her I was lying in her stairwell.
She transferred me to Nicole at the front desk and Nancy felt no need to let Nicole know the reason she was putting call through. Fifteen minutes after my fall, a nice employee named Ben helped me get my bags, found a wheel chair and parked me in the lobby of the hotel as I tried to figure out what I was going to do.
Option 1: Call family member to come get me.
Option 2: Live in Chattanooga.
Option 3: Update my Facebook status.
Option 4: Wait it out and see if I could still make it to Kentucky since I'm so tough (or I'm afraid that someone will be mad at me if I don't show up).
In the end, I wrapped my foot really tight in a bandage, took a lot (a lot) of Motrin and cruise controlled it to Kentucky to a scary campground located in a city that shares its name with the scariest place on Earth.
Which leads me to…
The Part Where I had to go to Bagdad, Kentucky.
I rarely blog about work because, well…I’d like to keep my job, but in this case, I feel like it is my duty to educate the people in my life about a place known as Bagdad, Kentucky. I had to train some Peer Leaders in the great state of Kentucky at their annual training conference this weekend. This conference was being held at a facility that, to help you put it into perspective, was where you would go for church camp or to film an installment of Friday the 13th.
Got a visual?
Now, I have stayed at similar facilities, in the middle of nowhere for miserable, long weekends where all I wanted was a Starbucks and a bed that didn’t make me want to sleep in my car. Those places, however, were all in Georgia. Driving in remote locations in Georgia, for the most part, doesn't scare me. I’m not sure why. Maybe I feel like if I ran into some scary country people, I could flash some red and black at them and they’d let me pass in peace.
But when I had to leave the state of Georgia, cross over Tennessee and wind my way through Kentucky…it was a different story. I mean that’s several different college football territories and honestly, I’m not even sure which ones. I am liable to flash the wrong colors in an attempt to make friends with the natives and get myself shot.
Also, Kentucky is where the Bourbon trail is…enough said.
I wound through back roads ignoring my GPS and instead using a set of directions I was given. GPS is an amazing invention…most of the time. The problem I have with GPS is the fact that this instrument will lead you down roads you could be on…not necessarily roads you should be on. I kind of wish GPS came with a feature that factored in the level of creepy or the likelihood that you might disappear forever when making its road recommendations.
For this reason, I used the handwritten directions I was given once I got off the highway.
A few times, my GPS, which fully understood that I wasn’t following it, would recalculate, not with routes, but with messages like…”You got me…I don’t know where we are either” and “It’s been a pleasure knowing you.” It was a little unnerving. More unnerving was the fact that these messages corresponded with passing places like Buffalo Lick Baptist Church and mobile homes with do-it-yourself-with-plywood additions that had signs posted in the yard that read, “I’ll shoot first and then ask you what you’re doing on my property later” and “Beware of the angry white man with gun”.
It was that type of drive.
I locked eyes with my GPS several times as if it were a person who was in this with me. GPS responded telling me I was on my own with this one since I chose to go rogue.
GPS's are extremely sensitive.
GPS's are extremely sensitive.
To sum up the ending, I found the campground, put in my 24 hours of talking to teens about sex, downed 13 more Motrin and drove home.
Which leads me to…
The Part Where My Sister is a Freak of Nature
When I arrived home late last night, I went directly to my sister’s house, who is in England (it's like a whole other country), which is nothing like Bagdad, Kentucky and where she saw my best friend Nicky (Nicky is English).
Well, first I got O’Charley’s curbside to go then I went to Anna’ house, poured a humongous glass of New Age wine (it’s a wine people, not a religion) to help combat my bitterness and unwrapped my foot that looked nothing like my other foot in size or shape (perhaps I should be going to the doctor at some point).
Since my sister is out of town, I am taking care of her Westies this week, seen here:
For 72 hours before she left town, she obsessed over whether or not I understood how to open and close the kennel door since she had not shown me how to do it. I mean she obsessed. She left me detailed instructions on my voicemail, drew me pictures and even demonstrated it at a restaurant using knives and forks and sugar packets. Obsessed.
I assured her that I could handle it…or I could Google it…or I could call in a professional. Yet, this continued to be thing that stressed her out before leaving out of town.
I assured her that I could handle it…or I could Google it…or I could call in a professional. Yet, this continued to be thing that stressed her out before leaving out of town.
I ignored her. She was acting like a freak of nature.
Friday, I got this texted to me:
Which leads to…
The Part Where Buffalo Flavored Bugles Suck
I have nothing else to say about this. Buffalo flavored Bugles just suck.
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