Here is something to laugh about on a Monday – Jack and I had a crazy trip to Target that I have been meaning to talk about.  This took place in the week between Jack’s birthday and a Bar Mitzvah that Luke attended.  I spent the better part of a week shopping for dress clothes for Luke, by myself, buying and returning and comparing prices.  I went to two Targets, Nordstrom Rack, Macys, and the J Crew outlet.  What I found were suits that were either heinous or really expensive.  I bought some dress shirts, and ties and shopped for dress shoes.  Dress shoes in Luke’s size don’t exist.  Kids sizes stop about a half size below his size, and adult shoes start a half size up.  Dave had to finally take Luke to get fancy tennis shoes when we ran out of ideas.  He ended up in a suit we borrowed as a costume two years ago, and dress tennis shoes (vans) and a shirt and tie he already had.  He looked great, and I had a stack of stuff to return.

Jack, meanwhile, had birthday money burning a hole in his pocket and a “mommy’s mistake” present to return.  He was also very jealous of Luke’s dress tennis shoes.  And I agreed that he could use a new pair of shoes.  So off we went to Nordstrom rack to return a dress shirt and dig through the piles of kids shoes.  As I parked I said, “Ooooooh no. I forgot my wallet.  Oh well, let’s go in anyway and see if there is anything worth coming back for.  Otherwise, we should go home and then go straight to target.  Plus, maybe I can return this shirt without my wallet.”  Jack was THRILLED.  Who doesnt love window shopping for shoes?  But then a miraculous thing happened.  We found a great pair of shoes that were the exact price of the shirt I was returning.  Even exchange, two errands done, easey peasey lemon squeezy.

But before we could go to target I did need my wallet so we headed home, and on the way, I noticed that I did have my wallet.  After essentially a giant trip around the block we were back at Target returning the build your own catapult set I had bought Jack, not noticing the “age 14 and up” on it.  Target asked if their was anything wrong with it I said, “No.. I just didn’t notice the age suggestion.  Plus my husband has a masters degree in engineering and he found this very frustrating and hard to follow so…”

Jack and I were finally in the toy aisle when I noticed that I didn’t have my purse and Jack had left his birthday money in the car.  (We had gotten distracted trying to use the puncture the airbag/cut off the seatbelt/crack the windshield/set up a flair/multi tool my mom bought me after she thought I was going to drive in to the creek.  Click here for that story. We were trying to use the tool to get the zip tie off the shoes.  It didn’t work.)

Back out to the car, and back to the toy aisle.  Jack picked out a giant box of giant star wars figures and we paid and left and went home.  When I opened the trunk and handed the box to Jack was surpised to see a target shopping basket.  How did that get there?  Dave and Luke were laughing – the toy Jack got was way too big for the shopping basket, so what was a carrying in it?   I had to said, “I guess just my purse.”

Next time I went to Target, I returned the basket, despite Jack’s fear that I would be arrested for theft on my way into to store.  This all took place before I started my Christmas shopping, so I think you can understand why people are still receiving gifts from me into the middle of January.  

  
I took this picture at 8:00 am at the grocery store when I headed there straight from the morning school drop off. Turns out, that’s a fun time to run into people you know and chat, but not a good time for shopping because they were low on food.  By “low” I mean, the produce section was empty. 

Later in the day, I can find fruits and veggies, but that doesn’t mean they are easy to get to.  There will always be someone stocking something, and an abadoned cart, and a giant car cart with two kids and no parent around.  So I have gotten trapped in certain sections before.  But this particular time, the problem was that the produce guy was 100% blocking the avocados.  I figured this was actually a win for me because I could just ask him to hand me a ripe one.  Save myself some time and trouble.  I said, “Hello.  Can you please hand me the ripest avocado?”  He said. “Well, none of them are that ripe. But here, this one is the ripest one here.”  I said, “Oh, thanks!  Maybe I’ll just wait to use this tomorrow.”  Or something else totally cool and normal.  And then, for reasons that cannot be explained to this day, I jauntily tossed the avocado in the air and tried to catch it.  Tried.  Tried and missed, but knocked it back into the air.  There was nothing cool and jaunty about me anymore, because I screamed when I missed the avocado.  Well, screamed might be a bit exaggereated.  It was more like a really loud yelp.  I didn’t catch it on the second or third try either,  but maybe by the fifth time, when I had gotten the attention of the entire produce section with my yelping and my juggling, I finally grabbed ahold of the damn thing and then I had my big finish.  I raised both hands in the air, one holding the precious avocado and I said to the 8 or 9 people staring at me, “I caught it!!!!  Wooohooo!!!”  And I looked around for high fives, but everyone quickly looked away in fear, dismay, and maybe embarrassment.  Possible pity.  I think I saw one person staring intently at a tomato and laughing.  At me, or with me, I will take what I can get.

This is the first intallment of my Monday series designed to brighten your week with a light story about something embarrassing I have said or done. Let me know if it helps you get through your day and I will try to keep it up.  I have a quite the backlog of stories.

I’m in a hurry today, as I barely have time to wash all the camping laundry before our next trip.  I have a treasure trove of stories to share, but I want to give them all some time and effort, and since I am committed to one post per day this month, I turned toward the NaBloPoMo daily writing prompt.  Today’s question is:  What kind of fish are you most like?

And to that I say, I have no idea and I don’t know anything about fish.  But it does remind me of goldfish and summer.   Jack scored a pair of Sports Illustrated Binoculars from Gramma’s house, which the two of us have agreed to call binocks.  And when I tried to insist that we couldn’t possibly take them, what would they do without? etc, Gramma said she had a pair of much better binoculars.   And I had a flashback to the air show, when I was about 5 years old.  We were sitting on a pier in downtown Cleveland and I asked to use the binoculars.  My dad put them around my neck and said, “Don’t drop them in the water or you’ll have to go in after them.”  I looked down and there was an enormous goldfish, dead, floating on it’s side below us.  I knew there was no way I was going to drop the binoculars, but the thought of that fish made me lose all interest in whatever I might have seen through those binoculars.  But hey, that kind of dedication to your binoculars is what keeps them around 33 years later, so you can gladly give a random pair away to your grandson.  We had lots to look at through those SI be-knock-lee-ars this weekend, they came in handy spotting Dave on the course.

But binoculars and dead goldfish are forever linked in my mind.

And I can’t talk about dead goldfish without remembering the time I was washing the breakfast dishes, in my pjs, and bare feet one morning, shortly after the Fourth of July.  You knew it had to be shortly after the Fourth, because this is about goldfish, and we always won goldfish at Bay Days.  (Here is where I would link to the awesome site about Bay Days if there was such a thing.  But Bay Days is the best, trust.)  So, I was in the kitchen, and I stepped on what I thought was a grape, and shook it off.  Literally, I shook my foot until the “grape” detached itself.  I’m not one to investigate a crushed grape on the floor if I can help it.  My chore that day was to do the breakfast dishes and I wanted to be done as fast as possible.   But the second time I stepped on the grape I decided to handle it.  I lifted up my foot and looked at my sole.  And stuck there, was a goldfish.  My sister’s goldfish.   She wasn’t too happy that I had stepped on her goldfish, and I was pretty wrecked.  I was sent to the shower to cry inconsolably while I washed fish guts off my foot.  Meanwhile, my mom consoled my sister.

There is just something about dead goldfish that remind me of summer.

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Oh, hello, I didn’t see you there.

Well here I am back in business and already thinking of New Years Resolutions with 3 full days left in 2010. I am going to ease back into blogging because I already have a full plate consisting of organizing my entire life, doing something a little different at work, starting a new exercise program, training my dog to be absolutely perfect, crafting, becoming an expert baker and cook, finding a religion, making more time for my family, keeping track of my camera, phone, glasses, ipod and wallet for an entire year straight.

I’ll keep you posted!

>Subscribers, did you notice that you didn’t get an email from me for weeks and months? Well, someone mentioned that to me, and I tried to fix it, but I made it worse. Then I tried to fix that problem, and I accidentally deleted everything. Now I am down from 1000 (ok, 13) email subscribers to 0. And I was going to do a big post about it, and how you can now resubscribe, but guess what? You won’t know that because you aren’t getting the emails!

Then I got sad, boo hoo hoo. For two and a half years, I have slaved away, a few days a month, building my readership to almost 20 people a day and now this. It’s back to just me. I googled, “feedburner sucks” and that didn’t solve my problem. I just found a blog that lost 1000 subscribers for real and then she gave away diamonds to get her readership back. I mean, it is comment month, but everyone knows the winner is just going to get a shot glass or something.

So, I think you can now resubscribe, or re-follow or whatevs. Let me know if you don’t see this post. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha sob.

** Wondering about the subtitle, “Kids, Puppy, Food, Bikes, Work”? I threw that in there because I thought maybe having that section blank was causing my feedburner woes. I don’t think it was, but I haven’t tried taking it out. Or making it better. I don’t really like it because, well, where’s the Dave? But Kids, Puppy, Food, Bikes, Work, Dave? Or Dave, Kids, Puppy, Food, Bikes, Work? Kids, Dave, Puppy, Food, Bikes, Work? Argh. I need a new subtitle. Version 2.0, Coming Soon! Or something.

>I’ve never had a list of things I want to accomplish without one of them having something to do with “getting in better shape”, so I am sure you won’t be surprised that MetaMegan 2.0 comes with an exercise plan. Or, the idea that an exercise plan should be developed at some point in time.

(Long boring section about how/why I never have time to exercise edited out. )

Today, I decided my best bet was to shower, get dressed for work (jeans/camisole/blouse) but throw on tennis shoes instead of heels and then take the puppy for a walk.

Where is this formerly long boring story going? It’s going on a 3.48 mile walk/jog. I’ve been contemplating walking around a big trail near our house, but I never felt like I had time to do it because I didn’t know how long it would take. Today I decided, what the hail? How long could it possibly take? Well, I knew it would take longer than I had time for, so I just decided to jog. In jeans and a blouse. No big deal, I just pretended it was the 80’s and I was Ally Sheedy jogging over to Matthew Broderick’s house in War Games. (Except I just googled “Ally Sheedy War Games” and it turns out she was wearing SWEATPANTS in the scene I was remembering. People jogged in jeans and kangaroos in the 80’s right? Or was that the 70’s?) Then I saw someone else and I thought it was my friend Jen. How embarrassing! Jen is going to make fun of me! What a relief when I figured out it wasn’t her. Except whoever it was still gave me quite a disparaging look! How dare you jog in jeans and a blouse in Boulder, CO! Haven’t you heard of Title 9, Prana, REI, Athleta, or Patagonia? What is wrong with you?!

But I did get exercise today! And a shower, and that is a rare combo. (Yeah the shower was before the exercise, but not daaaays before.)

In the end it was totally worth it because today Lucy looks like this:
Instead of this:

Or this: