this is why I can’t have nice things

Hazy.

Hazel is my playful, energetic 9-year-old ball of fur with big brown eyes and a cute little underbite. At night, Hazel likes to either shimmy her way under the blanket and sleep down by my feet, or lay on top of the blanket and chew 3,234,583 little holes in it which drives me absolutely nuts. I have no idea why she does it but she pretty much always has; it’s the reason I always have a needle and teal thread on hand so my bed doesn’t resemble swiss cheese.

So the other night around 3am, I woke up to her wriggling around under the blanket by my feet. I gave her a little nudge which usually quiets her down or gets her to move over, only this time she kept wriggling. Wouldn’t move over. Wriggling. Wriggling. It was not what I needed at 3am and I could feel my blood pressure start to rise. So I sat up, reached under the blanket to bring her up so I could snuggle with her, and……yeah. This is why she wasn’t budging.

 

The dog chewed a hole in the blanket, stuck her head through it and got stuck.

And this is why I can’t have nice things.

how not to fish

Friday night, I packed up myself and the doggies and we hit the road with my friend to a lake house in Wisconsin. We drove through a beautiful sunset and a torrential downpour in a span of an hour and a half but we made it in one piece.

Thanks to a safe arrival and a little Redbox, that night, Paul Blart made an appearance on the tv as I watched it through the back of my eyelids and snored on the couch.

The next day was beautiful. Hot, sunny, big white puffy clouds in the sky, the perfect kind of day to do some wave running and paddle boating. So we hit the water, I got a fun 30mph splashy tour of the lakes, and when we got back to land we decided to take the paddle boat out to a pier to fish.

Even though I told him there was no way I was catching anything but algae fish like I always do, he guaranteed me that I would catch a real live fish this time. I had my doubts. But I tried. I cast, I waited, I saw the bobber move, I pulled, I lost it. I tried again, and of course I reeled in an algae fish. I cast again, but then, wait, was that a nibble? I pulled back, quick little movements, and I did it! I finally reeled in my first fish. I made my friend take it off the hook, a little blue gill, and he threw it back in the water. I was proud of myself after years of fishing and catching nothing but seaweed, I finally got my hook in a real live fish.

We climbed back into the paddleboat and started slowly making our way back to shore. It was absolutely beautiful out on the water just floating along slowly as our legs twirled in circles like riding a water bicycle. We decided to cast our lines a few more times from the paddleboat in the hopes of catching something worth cooking up for dinner. We threw light casts as we were 2 feet away from each other and then all of a sudden something slapped me hard in the back of my arm. I looked down…AND THERE WAS A FISHING LURE STUCK TO ME. A little plastic fish with 2 treble hooks was lodged in my skin.

My friend had hooked me.

source

Neither one of us could believe it and I would have absolutley panicked if I had been the hooker, but as the hookee I stayed calm as we paddled back to shore. As we floated past the neighbors out on their pier, he yelled, “heeeeeeeey there, is anyone a doctor?”

“No, but she’s a nurse!” one of them yelled back as they scrambled to meet us at the dock.

We were met by 3 neighbors, one who had run in to grab a pair of rusty wire cutters with good intentions.

“Can I do anything?” another one asked.

“Alcohol,” my friend said.

“All we have is vodka, what would you like?” she asked me.

“Vodka.”

In the meantime, they had managed to cut the plastic fish off of me but I was left with 2 hooks lodged in the back of my arm and a cup full of vodka and ice that went down a little too smoothly in the moment of crisis. I told them to yank them out, YANK THEM, I didn’t want them in me.

“We might have to push them through the other way, they have barbs,” my friend said.

“I don’t care, I have a high tolerance for pain, I’ve had piercings and a freakin baby, I can take 2 hooks being pulled out of me, JUST YANK THEM OUT, JUST DO IT,” I said.

They tried to cut the extra hooks off so there would just be one at each site that they could push through but they pinched skin with the rusty wire cutters which made me flinch, the first real pain I felt, and as soon as I said “ow” they stopped.

I told them again to just pull and as the nurse half-ass yanked for fear of hurting me, the other neighbor standing in front of me asked if I needed something to bite on for the pain. He offered his fuzzy freckly arm and told me to just bite it, “bite my arm!” and he offered it to me as a sacrifice of sympathy. I declined. Because as weird as it was to have 2 people pulling hooks out of my arm, the thought of biting down on a stranger’s forearm like a bullet seemed even weirder and I probably would have drawn blood.

As they tried to pull, I could feel one of them was right at the surface but the other one, it just wasn’t budging and they knew it, too.

“Oh, I have an idea!” one of them said. “Do we have any toothpicks? We could stick the toothpick in the hole, get it under the skin and push the skin up and over the barb and….”

“Take me to the ER,” I said. It was getting a little too experimental-doctor-like for me, plus I had a hunch none of them had a tetanus shot in their back pockets.

Honestly, it still did not hurt at that point. Maybe I was in shock. Maybe fish hooks really don’t hurt. Maybe the back of the arm is a much better spot to get hooked than say the face, or neck, or chest or back. Who knows. All I know is that I was able to slip a shirt on over my bathing suit…

caught in the wild – the elusive Jaime fish

…take a car ride to the ER, calmly check in with the front desk, and then get numbed up by the doc. He grabbed a pair of pliers (shiny and sterile thank god), and he yanked those suckers out. A tetanus shot and an antibiotics prescription later, we were out of there.

6 days later I’m happy to report that I have 2 little bruises and the worst part was the recovery from the tetanus shot because those suckers hurt like a mother fucker for days. At least I’m covered for the next 10 years. Or you know, until the next time I’m out on a boat, get hooked by a fishing lure, find myself in the ER and can’t remember when my last tetanus shot was.

Karma. I put a hook in a fish and I got hooked back. And that, my friends, is how not to fish.

patrik

Now that I’m back in writing mode, I have so much to catch up on – I could tell you about my Portland friend staying with me for a weekend in April when we roadtripped from here down to Indiana then all the way up to Wisconsin just so she could say she’s been to 3 midwest states, or I could tell you about how I finally bit the bullet and got botox in my armpits, I could write novels about the FABULOUS <cough> life of online dating, or I could tell you about preschool face painting day when I picked up Summer and realized that her teacher has the artistic abilities of a blind monkey.

But instead, today I will tell you the tale of Patrik.

Patrik is a sweet older Croatian man with a thick accent, soft spoken, probably early 60’s, married with grown children. He has kind eyes that crinkle in the corners when he smiles his warm smile at you, a face that any grandchild would love. To give you a visual, just picture this guy, only 10 years younger:

Patrik is head of maintenance here at the apartment complex and has been working here for the last 30 something years. At one point he and his family actually lived in my exact apartment years ago where he grew a beautiful lush garden, which I’m proud to say I am meticulously maintaining. Yep, tomatoes should be coming up any day now…

Patrik has always been super friendly, chatty with a bit of a nervous stutter, and this one time, at band camp, he went out of his way to replace the rusty bolts off of my car that my rear license plate was dangling from with shiny new ones. Then he did my front plate for good measure. He gives me his “friendly discount” on my carpet cleaning and told me not to worry about the 8 holes I drilled (fine, 13 because tape measurer what?) in the bottom of my cabinet to hang my wine glass racks even though it clearly states in the lease “DO NOT PUT ANY HOLES IN KITCHEN CABINETRY”. Psh. He said he’ll take care of it for me when I move out. What a good person to befriend, right?

So one random morning about 4 months ago, Patrik knocks on my door and hands me a paper bag and says, “these are for you!” Inside was a bottle of his homemade wine, a plate of his homemade prosciutto and pork belly, a few cheese sticks, a jar of hot peppers and a sleeve of bacon flavored ritz crackers. Fuck yes, I would have been happy with just the bacon ritz as a Christmas present. He said in the 30 years he’s worked here he has never brought any of his homemade goodies to someone until now, then he left. It was very sweet.

Seriously, put that red flag down, you’re distracting me from story telling time.

So I stuck everything in the fridge to snack on later and went back to whatever it was I was doing. A few hours later I got a knock on my door. Patrik. Apparently when he brought the food and wine, he was planning on sharing it with me which made me really happy that I didn’t smell like pig meat and bacon ritz while wiping the last remaining crumbs off my face as I opened the door, as I had not gotten this memo. So I let him in and for the next half hour we stood in my kitchen snacking on mouth watering prosciutto and sipping the sweetest red wine I’ve ever had while sharing stories about work and family and hobbies.

He thanked me for letting him share his treats with me, smiled his sweet grandpa smile and then he left.

About 3 weeks later, same thing. He came by in the morning, dropped off a bag full of deliciousness, then came back a few hours later where we stood in my kitchen for a half hour and chatted away about life – I showed him the quilt I’m making and he showed me how he gets the top wrapper onto his wine bottles with boiling water – it was my very own kind of convoluted Tuesdays with Morrie. It wasn’t a bad deal – I kept an old man company and he brought me meat.

Stop it.

Purely innocent, the only difference this time was that as he was leaving he gave me a hug. Mkay, I’m a hugger, so yeah no big deal.

3 weeks after that, same thing. Meat in bag, company in kitchen, talks about life. This time when he left he gave me a hug. And a kiss on the cheek. Derp.

3 weeks later, meat, convo, the usual. But. This time he went for the hug. I hugged back. He went for the cheek kiss. Meh. Then as I was backing up out of the er, ew embrace? He. Leaned. In. For. A. Mouth. Kiss. And I leaned waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back.

“No,” I said.

“No?” Patrik asked.

“Um, NO.”

And as he stepped away embarrassed, I shit you not, his old man hand grazed my side-boob and he left all red-faced with his tail between his legs.

For the rest of the week my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night was, “Stupid, stupid Patrik.” I still shake my head every time I see him which is almost daily since I work from home and, you know, awkwardly he works here, too. But really. It is kinda sad that a thirty something year old woman can’t befriend a little old man without him thinking he’s gonna get some because of a little pork (stop it). Needless to say, Patrik has asked numerous times since then when I might be free again for “the good stuff”. You can keep your good stuff, you dirty dirty meat creeper.

So sad that I will never be able to hear the word prosciutto again without thinking about side-boob. And now you won’t either, muah ah ah.

window number four

My friend gave us an advent calendar last night. It’s nothing fancy, no hidden chocolates or anything exciting behind each window, just flaps numbered 1-24 counting down the days until Jesus’s birthday. We hung it on the closet near the front door so we would remember every morning to open a new window. And this morning we started the countdown. Except after we opened the window marked “1”, Summer wanted to open more. I gave her the option – either she can close #1 and open #24 making the countdown the same only backwards, or we could wait until tomorrow to open the next one. She chose to go for #24 simply because she wanted to open another window, because opening #1 and leaving it at that wasn’t enough. And after our countdown was officially reversed, she wanted to open #4. I told her we can’t open #4 yet, it’s only the first day.

You would have thought I shot her puppy, cancelled her birthday party, and peed in her apple juice all at the same time.

My girl cried. Hard. With tears rolling down her face, she curled up in a ball on the floor and bawled her eyes out almost to the point of me giving in and letting her open #4 because she is that good. But with the clock ticking and a 30 minute drive to daycare calling, I ended up putting my purse on one shoulder, a backpack on the other, keys and travel mug full of coffee in one arm, and a weeping 3 year old like a sack of potatoes in the other as we walked out the door and probably woke up every neighbor in the process with crying screams echoing down the hall. Window #4 stayed closed.

The whole way to daycare I thought about how I want her to know that there are rules. That there are certain things we do for a reason. That patience is a wonderful thing. But at the same time, she’s 3. She’s been in daycare since she was 16 months old. She has a pretty structured day with scheduled snack time, and naptime, and potty break time, and reading time, and plenty of important rules. Don’t hit your friends. Throw away your garbage. Don’t wipe your snot under the table (a lesson learned last week). And obviously she has rules at home that are worth enforcing. Brush your teeth. Put your toys away. Don’t hit the dogs. Bedtime at 8:30. Potty before bed. And with all these rules that we have to follow, in the grand scheme of things, does opening window #4 on day #1 on a silly paper advent calendar really matter? Is it hurting anyone? Will she even care about the calendar by day 8? Is it really a rule worthy of enforcing?

It’s really not.

So after I got home from dropping her off, I decided that while it was good that I didn’t give in while she was tantruming on the floor, maybe I should just open up window #4 for her… you know, to show her that if she wants to open the silly little paper flaps in whatever order she chooses, I’m completely fine with it.

And then I thought that maybe I should open one more since it is technically the second day of Advent and all.

And one more just to let her know that really, it’s her Advent calendar, her way.

Aaaaaaaaaand maybe just one more to really drive the message home.

I think you see where this is going…..

Shit. Luckily the only one who saw me do it was Hazy and she’s not telling.

 

psycho critter (cont’d)

Taunted.

I’m being taunted.

By this guy.

Yesterday started out like any other day. Up at 5:40am, out the door by 6:40am. So far so good. We drove the half hour to preschool only to walk in and be greeted by Summer’s teacher telling us that the building was closed.

“For how long?” I asked.

“We’re not sure….,” she said.

10 minutes later I got the email.

Squirrel=2  Me=0

You little fucker.

froggers

She asked for her froggy pjs…

I call them her “froggers”…

apparently she calls them something else.

To view directly on YouTube, click here

life lesson – learned!

It takes but one time for me to do something stupid or embarrassing before learning my lesson and never doing it again. Like the one time I decided to get a little sun on my shoulders while hand washing my car in the driveway of my Wildwood house and I waved to my neighbor as he pulled into his driveway. Then I realized my boob was hanging out of my bikini top. And now I only wash my car in a full jumpsuit. In the dead of night. With 5 bras on and one of those glasses/mustache disguises.

I’ll never forget my sophomore year roommate, Michelle, busting through our dorm room door after a class throwing down her book bag laughing. And the words that followed, “why didn’t you tell me I had a huge glob of conditioner in my ear? IT LOOKS LIKE A GIANT BOOGER,” made me start laughing, too. And ever since, I check my ears every time I get out of the shower for fear of walking around with a huge conditioner loogie dripping out of the fold of my own cartilage.

I’ll never forget the high school sleepover at my friend Kate’s house where we had a bonfire in her huge backyard and we roasted marshmallows over the fire. And as I stood up to go into the house, I felt a sticky string of melted sugar pull me back to my chair by the seat of my pants like a lasso. I had sat on a marshmallow and melted it with me bum. And now, almost 20 years later, I always check my seat before I sit down just to make sure.

And in my 35 years of doing stupid things, I have developed a sort of checklist of a few things worth checking before walking out the door everyday –

Bladder empty?

Check.

Nothing hanging out of my nose?

Check.

Fly zipped?

Check.

Flat iron turned off?

Check.

Boob in shirt?

Check.

Keys, phone, purse, gloves?

Check, check, check, and check.

And this morning, after being at work for 4 HOURS, I looked down and realized I need to add something to that morning checklist….

Matching shoes?

This will never happen again.