Thoughts for the day, 1-26-17

When I shop at Target, I often hear an announcement letting the clerks know that a customer needs assistance in one of the aisles. When I hear, “Help is needed in the diaper (or whatever) aisle. Who is responding?” I swear, I have to do everything in my power to restrain myself from shouting, “I am! I am!”

 

I feel really bad when I decide to delete an app from my iPhone. All the apps start shaking as my finger slowly hovers over them, getting closer and closer. It seems like the one I’m about to tap wants to scream, “No! Not me! Delete that Starbucks chick! She’s not as nice as she looks! Or, how about The Instagram? You don’t even know how to use it!”

 

iphone

 

I feel kind of guilty, but I know it’s ok because the apps aren’t, in reality, being deleted; they’re going up to hang out in the groovy, puffy cloud I decked out for them. Plus, they’re not up there all alone, because all of the other apps I’ve deleted are up there, too!

I’d like to believe that all of my deleted apps are having a great time playing shuffleboard, volleyball, or reading a good book. And, when I pluck a few apps to re-download, the space thins out making it “partly cloudy,” so the remaining apps can sunbathe, if they’d like.

 

My method for cleaning out my purse is to dump its contents onto the quilt on our bed. I purposely bought a quilt with a colorful, complicated pattern in order to hide dog hair, and muddy paw prints. The drawback is that I don’t always see everything I’ve left behind after putting things back in my purse. As we were getting ready to leave the house one night, Richard discovered a Bobby pin, a AA battery, and a paper clip on the bed. He looked at me and asked, “Who are you, MacGyver?”

 

Somehow, Richard and I began talking about the games we played when we were growing up. I loved KerPlunk, and still do. Richard said, “Yeah, you really are a KerPlunk kind of person.” I took that as a compliment.

Richard told me he and his friends often played The Game of Life.  He said, “The pink pegs represented our wives, so we’d always dump them in the river. We’d try to avoid having children, so, if we accidentally had them, we’d dump them in the river, too.” He saw the look of horror on my face and said, “I’m just not whimsical.”

"The Pink Pegs Represented our Wives"
“The Pink Pegs Represented our Wives”
"We'd try to avoid having children..."
“We’d try to avoid having children…”

 

 

Whenever we go out to dinner and Richard orders a steak, he always asks for plain horseradish on the side. At Belows, our waiter, Leo, warned him that the restaurant’s horseradish is so hot, they refer to it as “No Joke Horseradish.” Personally, I prefer horseradish with a sense of humor.

 

I like Rap Music, and I cannot lie, but what’s with those giant parkas? While watching Rappers singing and busting-some-moves under the hot stage lights on TV shows, such as SNL, I start sweating.

Chris Brown and Tyga
Chris Brown and Tyga

 

Richard’s title for a Country & Western song:
“You Can’t See my Tears When I Text you.”

 

 

When you’re driving in your car, and a song comes on the radio that you used to listen to over, and over again on your groovy stereo in your rad bedroom, don’t you remember exactly where it skipped? And, don’t you expect it to skip every time you hear it? Just me? Oh. Ok.

 

#WhatHappensInVegasStaysInVegas

Las Vegas sign

While we were in Vegas, Richard went to the hotel gym at 6:00 AM. At 7:30 AM, he called to tell me he’d lost his key to our room, apologized for waking me up, and asked me to let him in when he knocked on the door.

This man hardly ever loses anything, or screws up in any way. He lives by credos, such as,”Being on time is being five minutes early.”

So, when he does something out of character like that, I cannot begin to tell you how happy it makes me. A feeling of profound joy inhabits my entire body, sometimes causing me to burst into unrestrained interpretive dance. First, I danced around the room in my underwear. Then I danced in front the windows in our hotel room in my underwear. We were on the 27th floor, so, hopefully no one saw me, but hey! It was Vegas!

The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas really is, “the right amount of wrong.”

The three-level Chandelier Bar, strung with 2 million beaded crystals
The Cosmopolitan’s three-level Chandelier Bar, strung with 2 million beaded crystals*

 

The lobby of The Cosmopolitan
The lobby of The Cosmopolitan

 

The hotel houses The Wicked Spoon, the best buffet on The Strip, in our opinion.

The Wicked Spoon

News tickers scroll around both inside, and outside the hotel, offering clever, eye-catching definitions of either real, or made-up words and phrases. The news ticker that scrolls around the dessert area of The Wicked Spoon served up the following:

Flexitarian:
A vegetarian who sometimes eats meat or fish.

Buttering the Phone:
A prank a Head Chef plays on a new, less experienced Chef. He or she butters the earpiece of the kitchen phone, and then asks someone to call the kitchen. When it rings, the Head Chef asks the new Chef to answer the phone.

Bacon Stretcher: A fictitious contraption the Chef asks the newbie to find because the restaurant is running low on bacon.

My favorite phrase and definition must have been thought up by someone with a brilliant imagination and sense of humor. As we walked around The Strip, I saw it scrolling around on the ticker outside The Cosmopolitan. I watched the ticker scroll through several times, to be sure I copied it correctly, so I could save it in my iPhone’s Notes.

Here it is!

Stilletus Wobbleus: the difficulty women have while walking in high heels after being over-served.

Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen! Leslie has left the building!

 

 

Photo courtesies: iPhone: apple.com, Chris Brown and Tyga: www.rap-up.com, Country & Western Clothing: Libby’s Country and Western Wear, The Red Shoe, and The Wicked Spoon: www.bunchesofjoy.com

*Source: lasvegassun.com

 

Woman who dislikes shopping suffers retail injury!

The_Real_Reason_Women_Hate_Shopping_How_To_overcome_Hating_Shopping_Style_Tips_For_Women_Over_The_Age_of_40

Throughout history, the females in my family have had a genetic predisposition for shopping. They were also blessed with strong constitutions allowing them to stand for hours examining their reflections, looking for perfection. And then they’d go out to lunch.

The love of shopping and going out to lunch skipped a generation. With few exceptions, I don’t enjoy either. But my daughter Veronica does, so, don’t worry Mom! There’s hope.

target

My method of shopping is launching and flinging items I need, (and some things just because they’re shiny) into my cart, whipping out my Target REDcard, going home and taking a much-needed nap.

Eventually I return what doesn’t look good, keep what does, and, almost always keep the shiny objects.

Last Saturday Richard asked me to accompany him to Macy’s because he needed a few man-things. Here’s where I make an exception: if it means spending time together, I’ll do it. Am I great, or what?

As soon as we walked into the store, I came to an immediate stop in my super-cute, glow-in-the-dark Asics. My eyes glazed over and I felt “that hippy vibe” I sometimes get. Richard knows that look. He’s seen it many times, and knew it meant one of three things: a Free People sale, an Eileen Fisher sale, or an immediate need to find the closest ladies’ room.

freepeopletag

eileenfisherlogo

gottapee

The vibe was strong that day, my friends. I knew I was in the vicinity of a Free People sale because I became a combination of a truffle-sniffing pig and a drooling, German Short-haired Pointer closing in on a pheasant. It’s a gift. It’s not pretty, but it’s a gift.

Yes, I know I went with Richard to spend time with him, but as he saw the drool begin its slow descent from my mouth to the floor, he said he’d be fine on his own and would come find me when he was finished. 

Being the gentleman he is, he handed me a tissue doused in Purell so I could wipe away the drool and look presentable as I ascended the escalator.

As the escalator arrived at the second floor, I almost squealed with joy. There they were: racks and racks of flouncy, feminine, ”Leslie-style” Free People clothing….all on sale!

I didn’t waste time. I went from rack to rack shoving items into the crook of my right elbow for an hour straight. After a while the items became heavy and my arm was stuck in a permanent bicep-curl, but I wasn’t going to let a little pain deter me from my mission.

Without dropping a single item, I even army-crawled my way beneath racks of Calvin Klein plus-sized jeans in search of “misfiled” Free People merchandise. Hey, I’m a professional.This wasn’t my first time. I know what people do.

I’m not accusing anyone of anything, but honey, if you think you can hide a garment from me so you can come back tomorrow with the coupon you left on the kitchen counter this morning, you obviously have no idea with whom you are dealing. 

Not a single salesperson was roaming the floor to stop me from bringing more than six items into the dressing room. Score!

womans-arms-full-of-clothes

After lugging 100 pounds of clothes into the fitting room, nearly tearing my right tricep muscle, I only fell in love with two tops. I hung everything else up on a rack in the fitting room area  because, as my mother always told me, “Clean up after yourself when you go shopping because one of the salespeople might be one of my friends.”

If the mood strikes, and I can use my right arm again soon, I might go back to look around again. 

Or, I’ll just go to Target and launch and fling things into my cart using my left arm, which I can do because I’m semi-ambidextrous, a nice perk while my right arm heals.

I never really had a good reason to explain why I don’t like shopping, but now I do: it can be dangerous.

girl-w-broken-arm
Thankfully, I’m mostly a lefty!

My sister, Beth, keeps telling me I have to add her to my posts, so here you go, Beth:

Beth is the prettier one. Beth is the prettier one…

You Must be Joking

`photoI know. It’s April Fool’s Day so you’re probably sick of jokes, pranks, and being on the receiving end of a donkey while holding a shovel.

Before I share A Few Good Jokes (how different would that movie have been if that were the title?) I thought I’d share one of my most embarrassing moments, and there are many.

Richard was an Assistant Director at Camp Kawaga for Boys, where he had previously been a camper, CIT, counselor, and later a founding member of the Alumni Association. All four of us went to camp for most of the summer once or twice until it became obvious that Richard’s plan to be an assistant director did not involve being there with an assistant family.

But, I did get to hang out with his camp buddies, who I love, when they’d come up to camp for a weekend here or there. And, yes, I still love you, Woogie, even after I totally believed you when you told me, “They took the word ‘gullible’ out of the dictionary because it was too hard for people to spell.”

That’s enough humiliation at my expense for one day. Let the blogging commence:

I unloaded paper towels, toilet paper, granola, and two three-pound bags of Gummy Bears from my cart onto the conveyor belt at Target one night. Then I handed the checkout woman, Loretta, a Mountain Dew, and a chocolate chip Clif Bar and told her, “I’ll just take these with me to go. Ya know, it’s the Dinner of Champions.”

Loretta laughed and said, “You’re funny!”

I hadn’t had a particularly fun day, nor was I in a particularly funny mood, but Loretta made my day not because she said I was funny, but because she could tell I needed to hear a few jokes.

She told me she had just heard these jokes from her daughter. After she told me the first joke I asked how old her daughter was, thinking she was probably six. She said that she was 21, which caused us each to expel a few chortles.

As if on cue, her daughter who also worked at Target, walked up to the cash register and said, “Mom, you’re not telling those jokes, are you?” Loretta and I burst out laughing.

After her daughter left and Loretta was bagging up my purchases she told me the other two jokes, but could barely get them out because she was laughing so hard she was having trouble talking.

Loretta and I laughed out loud after each joke, and I had to wipe tears from my eyes by the time she was finished. I thanked her for brightening my day and told her if I couldn’t remember the jokes I’d be back so she could repeat them so I could write them down.

I left the store in a much better mood than when I got there but as I loaded up my car I realized I could only remember one of the jokes. I really wanted to know all three jokes so I decided to go right back in the store instead of coming back another day hoping to find Loretta.

I locked the car and pushed the “notes” icon on my trusty iPhone as I walked back into the store. Whenever someone says something I want to remember, which happens at least three times a day, I write it down and keep it saved for just the right moment.

When my friend Liz used the phrase “she had a bitchy resting face” to describe a saleswoman at a shoe store, I said, “Wait! Wait! Don’t say another word until I write that down!”

See? Aren’t you glad to know that phrase?

Anyway, I walked back into the store and saw a long line of people waiting to checkout in Loretta’s aisle. I just kind of slid in and waited at the end of the checkout lane next-door to hers so as not to interrupt her while she was working. But she saw me behind her and immediately laughed so hard she bent over and grabbed some Kleenex to wipe the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I can’t believe you came back,” she said between giggles.

I told her I didn’t want to disturb her while she was working. The last thing I wanted was for Loretta to get in trouble either with customers or her supervisor. I was very aware that it was nine o’clock on a Wednesday night and the people in line probably just wanted to buy their paper towels, toilet paper, granola, Gummy Bears, and go home.

Like two spies speaking in code, she bagged up the items people had purchased and I kept an eye out for anyone who seemed to be getting impatient. When the coast seemed clear she quickly and quietly repeated the jokes and I tapped them into my iPhone. No one seemed to notice or was bothered by our covert operation. I got the goods, thanked her, and left. I heard her laughing as I exited the store.

So, without further ado, or not telling you at all and playing a really crummy April Fool’s joke on you, here are the jokes:

1. How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?

10 tickles.

2. What does a nosy pepper do?

It gets jalapeño business.

3. What do you call a fake noodle?

An impasta.

Maybe those aren’t the funniest jokes ever, but they sure got me laughing and kept me laughing for days as I repeated them. Of course I had to check my iPhone notes because I couldn’t remember them, but that’s nothing new. I forget things all the time.

But, I’ll never forget that the word “gullible” is still in the dictionary because I looked it up back then at camp…and again tonight, just to be sure.

Have a great day, and don’t believe everything you hear!