#18 flossing my teeth with my hair

once upon a time (the time being june 8 at approximately 8:07 pm), we ate corn on the cob at a family barbecue. now, i'm normally a cut-the-corn-OFF-the-cob kind of girl, but this time i decided to dive in face first and typewriter that cob into oblivion. 

which is why i ended up with corn stuck - nay, wedged! cemented! permacorned! - between my teeth. there was no floss in sight, and i hadn't packed any because we were on vacation and i don't work on vacation. flossing is work, don't you agree? stop judging me.

i asked my brand new cousins, chris and kendra, if they had brought floss. they hadn't. so we rifled through the drawers at the condo where they were staying. still no floss. 

i went a full three hours with permacorned teeth and played rummikub, which i'm now realizing i probably lost because of the distraction of the evil corn. by the time we returned to our hotel for the evening, it was driving me nuts. 

so i did the only thing i could think to do and flossed my teeth with my hair. gross? yes. effective? you bet. that anti-breakage shampoo and conditioner is starting to pay for itself. 

in conclusion: 

EVIL CORN ON THE COB!

p.s. i. love. corn. almost as much as winning. i do not really think corn is evil. i just like it best when it's in not my teeth. 

 

#17 rooting for a west coast team in an east coast sports bar

i.
love.
winning.


i have always loved winning. i don't know when that started in me, but i'm certain it comes from my father who is one of the most patient, gentle men i know but becomes a smidge crazy on the playing field. or court. or our front yard. my sister, jenna, and i most enjoyed it when he was playing tennis, made a mistake, and very seriously shouted at himself "COME ON, TIM!" i sometimes shout the exact same thing when i'm frustrated.


how convenient, therefore, that i grew up near a winning team. the lakers have won more nba championships in my lifetime than any other team. (the bulls trail by one championship: lakers have had seven, bulls have had six.) i was obsessed with them from 99 - 01, but then i went to college and i haven't lived with a tv with cable since, which has really hindered my game watching ability. 


last night, jenna and i decided to revive our laker spirit and watch a game at a bar here in virginia beach. she wore laker colors, i wore my 1988 nba championship shirt (those were magical times. ha.) and we boldly sat ourselves near the bar, prepared to defend the honor of derek, kobe, pau, luke, lamar, ron and those other guys that we don't know very well.


well, it turned out to be less than thrilling. half the bar was cheering for the lakers already. and there was very little suspense in the game - we were up by at least 17 the majority of the time. my favorite moment was probably when something like this happened (except there were befuddled celtics surrounding him instead of a king behind him): 

this guy almost makes shannon seem like an acceptable name for a man. almost.


in conclusion, rooting for my west coast team in an east coast bar was not as entertaining as i thought it would be; however, i still enjoyed all the winning.

#16 playing rummikub

on our trip to naples, jeff and i hung out with his cousin chris, chris's wife kendra, and their son jeremiah. i had never met them before and jeff hadn't seen them in 17 years, which is a shame because they are awesome. 


the night before jeff and i went back to virginia beach, chris taught us how to play rummikub. now, i had played with rummikub a lot as a child at my grandma's house, but never formally learned the game. i just liked this little guy:

what child wouldn't want to play with a tile that features a bald, wrinkly, sarcastic bitty moon man?!


turns out he's the joker. who knew? 


anyway, rummikub, much like scrabble, is a near perfect game: there's a delightful balance between luck and strategy. since i was new, i was pretty light on the strategy, and my luck seemed rather thin that night too, but i could see myself getting into this game. now i just need to buy it.  

#15 swimming in the gulf of mexico

jeff and i went to naples, florida for our second anniversary last weekend, and i experienced a veritable cornucopia of firsts. i plan to drag them out in several posts so i don't go three weeks without writing again. 


swimming in the gulf of mexico was a delight. it was a completely new experience - utterly different from swimming in the atlantic, where there are creatures that sting, or dipping my toe in the pacific, which tends to be approximately 13 degrees. 


the gulf's water was 83.5 degrees (i'm not exaggerating - there was a sign on the beach) and the color of my favorite mini cooper (that's a dusty light blue in case you didn't know). we swam out and sat on noodles and bobbed in the swells like little apples in a sloshy bucket. occasionally, i'd scrape my feet on the ocean floor and find sand dollars wedged in the fine white sand. living sand dollars! neat. we bobbed for so long that we got sunburned. less than a week later, jeff looks like he has a touch of leprosy with his shirt off.


i also saw a manatee from the shore. it surfaced twice. arabella informed me that the myth of the mermaid was rooted in people seeing manatees. i couldn't help but think of how fat that animal is - what if ariel had been obese? (i just googled "fat ariel mermaid" to see if anyone has drawn a fat ariel, and one of the pictures that came up was an ariel at disneyland. poor thing. she's not really fat, but who would want their picture to appear when "fat" is searched?) 


in conclusion, i loved this experience. a lot. 


an obvious note: bp's spill hasn't wafted over to naples just yet, so we weren't floating around in oil. 

#14 going to busch gardens

i went to busch gardens for the first time on saturday with jeff, arabella, and shep (and other fun friends for parts of the day). here are some highlights, many of which were firsts: 

• griffon: this is one of only two floorless diving machines in the united states and one of only six in the world. (i am not a roller coaster junkie, i just appreciate good trivia.) a diving machine is characterized by wide rows - the griffon has three rows of ten - and a vertical drop. it amazes me that these rides don't scare me at all (they tend to make me giggle uncontrollably), but you put me a few feet away from a strange man with a white face, painted smile, and oversized shoes and i freak out. 
• a bunch of other rides: none were quite as notable as griffon, though i do recommend alpengeist, which made me feel like i could fly and made shep feel like he was in a fighter jet. he even made sound effects. 
• celtic fyre: this show was like west side mamma mia story in ireland. it was a wedding reception in an irish pub, and then some american tap dancers showed up and they had a tap vs. irish dance battle. weird. but there were some good moments, and we had a snack break and air conditioning, so it was good.
• oktoberfest: we watched part of this show while we were eating our ridiculously overpriced lunch. i think i should have been german - i could totally tear up their dance floor. oy oy oy!
• more...pet shenanigans: well, we didn't make it to this show. but i'm certain it would have been a favorite and i am still bitter that we didn't see it. next time. next. time.
• sheep: there were sheep, and i heard one baa. i'm not sure i'd ever heard a sheep so distinctly say 'baa' before. thrilling. it was like 'babe: live' without the talking pig. 
• beer: i had one sip. i had never done that at an amusement park before. i do not understand the mix of alcohol and rides. it sounds pretty awful to me. 
• swings: this was neither new nor notable, but it was one of the only pictures we took. jeff is behind the camera, obviously. 

end scene.

soon: skateboarding and grape stomping and lying! 

#13 becoming an expert on an obscure historical event

war of the roses was interesting, and i started to learn about that. but then someone informed me that was not, in fact, obscure. so i decided to go with the invention of the zipper. many people know what a zipper is - i might even venture that most know what a zipper is - but few know its elusive history. without further delay, i present "The Creation of the Zipper," or "Why Elias Howe Was Kicking Himself From the Grave in 1917."


elias howe in 1851:
i. love. clothes. i love designing, sewing, and coming up with new ways to design and sew. i've been working most of my life as a mechanic, fixing machines that make wool and yarn and other such things, so i'm thinking i'd like to combine my passions of clothes and machinery and create a machine that helps with sewing. also in development are new types of clothes latches. i recently created one such latch, which i've patented as "an automatic, continuous clothing closure." it still has some snags, but i'm just too busy working on my machine for sewing to perfect it.


whitcomb judson in 1893: 
i have a pal who has a stiff back. poor fellow can't even bend over to lace up his boot. so last week he looks over at me all sad and in pain; he looks and me and says "judson, you claim to be an inventor, invent me up some laceless boots!" knowing that to be utterly impossible, i quickly created the clasp locker. the clasp locker basically is a device that makes hook and eye closures easier to connect. i am awesome.


gideon sundback in 1913:
i work at universal fastening company, the company that manufactured the clasp locker back in the day. i needed a bonus so my wife and i could throw a party to celebrate the passing of the seventeen amendment, so i invented a separable fastener. unfortunately the patent wasn't issued until 1917, so we ended up having a party to celebrate woodrow wilson beginning his second term as our president. 


b.f. goodrich in 1925:
i make boots. good, sturdy boots. and i'm always looking for ways to make them more modern. i'm a forward thinking man, you know. so i incorporated sundback's separable fastener into the design of my boot. they look great! i always tell the boys "zip 'er up!" when they're showing the new style to the crowds. 


bam. zipper'd. 


end scene.


tomorrow: learning to skateboard.

#12 getting congratulated for being pregnant

this wasn't a new thing that i brought upon myself. at least i don't think i did. i really don't think my shirt was that unflattering. i mean, pregnant women are beautiful (hi, erica!), but it's not fun to be called pregnant when you're not pregnant, especially when you love snacking as much as i do.


anyway, the conversation went like this:
"congratulations!" - unnamed person who was smiling so squintily that i wasn't entirely sure she was looking at me
"umm..." (look behind myself and no one is there.) "me?" - me, giving her chance #1 to realize that i don't know what she means and that if i was pregnant, i probably would know what she meant
"yes, you! congratulations!" - unnamed person, still confidently smiling
"umm...thanks. for what?" - me, giving her chance #2 to back out
"your pregnancy! aren't you pregnant?" - unnamed person, still confidently smiling
(i hide behind jeff.) 
"i'm never wearing this shirt again!" - me, slightly mortified


i realize i could have lived up to my middle name and handled that about 1000 times more gracefully since she was probably just mixing me up with erica, the wife of an actor slightly similar to jeff in the program, and she was just being nice. but my kneejerk reaction was hiding. i really am 12 sometimes.