Thursday, November 30, 2006

Leaving to go to dinner...

Jake's sister, TooTall, and her husband, Vroooooom, were getting ready to take Jake out to dinner for her birthday. (Yes, send a card. ) Jake remarked on how freakin' freezing it's been the past few mornings, and how she uses Asimovian as a timer for the heater. ("It's cooooold... go turn on the heeeeeater... then the shooooower... then come back to bed so I can put my cold feeeeeeet on you!")

And now, back to our program already in progress:


TooTall: Well, you could get a thermostat with a timer on it.

Jake: Well, we rent, and it seems awfully complicated.

TooTall: No, it's actually really, really, REALLY easy. I mean, Vrooooom put ours in...

Vroooooom: I'm starting to feel a little insulted here.

TooTall: But, you put it in and it works great.

Vroooooom: You're not making it any better.

TooTall: But what I'm trying to say is...

Vroooooom: Nope, still feeling insulted....

TooTall: [to Jake] He could HELP YOU. He could help you install it is what I'm TRYING to say!

Vroooooom: Uh, no.

Jake: Uh, hey... how's about some dinner?


No marriages were harmed in the making of this scene.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

In which our heroine loves her glasses...

Another quick tale from the aforementioned grocery trip. Also, a little background:

I wear prescription sunglasses. I choose to wear glasses instead of contacts because I think I look better in glasses, and my prescription is primarily for astigmatism. I keep my sunglasses in the car, and sometimes I forget to switch from my sunglasses to my normal glasses. If you see someone walking around the store with their sunglasses on, chances are that it's me, and I'd look all squinty if I took them off.

However, I always feel a bit self-conscious when I wear my sunglasses indoors, so when the grocery trip turned from long to epic, I decided to take off my glasses and try to get used to looking around without them. My evil nephew, BP (Bottomless Pit), turns around and looks at me with surprise. He says, "Aunt Jakey! You have really dark circles under your eyes!"

Me: "That's because I have allergies kid. You have allergies too, right? You're looking at your future, buddy!"

BP: "Yeah, but they came up really suddenly!"

ME: ::puts back on her glasses:: "So, did they disappear?"

BP: "Ohhhhh!"

I guess it didn't help that I was up until 3:30am the night before, but I never miss an opportunity to make my nephew fear for the future. I figure I'll tell him about how guys have to trim their nose hairs the next time he's truly rotten.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

In which our heroine terrorizes the local supermarket patrons

Thanksgiving is this Thursday. You may commence to sobbing. I, however, decided to be a grown-up about it, so I wiped away my tears and made a shopping list in preparation for my Fakesgiving celebration (that would be making a big dinner on Friday instead of Thursday). I called my sister to ask her something and we ended up deciding to go grocery shopping together. We used to do it more often, but she lives a couple of towns over now, so it's no longer convenient. However, this is a special occasion, so we figured we'd get it done together and spend some quality time (gack!) together.

So, we're moseying around the supermarket. My sister, Jo, has her infant daughter (
Babyzilla) in the shopping cart and my 11-year-old nephew, Bottomless Pit (that's BP to his friends), is helping us shop. Well, let me back up. We weren't moseying. We were on a mission. It may have looked like moseying to the untrained eye, but we're hard-core bargain hunters. We were moseying like a motherfucker up in there.

Seeing as how we're both cooking much of the same food, we needed many of the same ingredients. If Jo grabbed olives, she would ask me if I needed a can while she was at it and vice
versa. She'd then have BP grab an extra can and put it in my basket. After a while, Babyzilla got a bit impatient with our shopping, so Jo started carrying her while BP pushed the cart. We were in the dairy aisle, and I found that butter was on sale. I checked with Jo that she needed a pound of salted butter, then grabbed it and dumped it in the cart BP was pushing while saying, "Here ya go, kid."

Then
BP said, "Uhhh, Aunt Jakey?" I look up and realize that I've put the butter in the wrong kid's cart. There was some random kid passing by, and I stopped him, told him, "Here ya go, kid," then put butter in his cart. The poor random kid was about 10, and looked appalled and confused. I said, "Uh, oops. Sorry. I thought you were my nephew," and took back the butter.

When I saw poor random kid with his mom, I told her that I was sorry I terrorized her kid and tried to put butter in his cart. A random lady passing by laughed and said, "Been there, done that." That was the best time I've had in the supermarket EVER. I'm finding random people and putting stuff in their cart from here on out.

Oh, and the best part: we were shopping at a store that tells you how much money you've saved. Turns out my sister, who taught me my bargain-hunting ways got a 27% discount, and I got a 34% discount. That's right, the student has surpassed the teacher. HA!