The Junk Drawer

My pal Lee from Tar Heel Ramblings tagged me for the Seven Weird Things About Me meme. I’m not a meme person so much as I’m a weird person. Putting this list together will take all of five minutes.

The rules: Cite and link to your source (me), then enjoy writing about 7 Weird Things About Yourself, then tag some people and help spread the weirdness.

Here we go:

1. I once took my cat, Calvin (RIP), to a therapist for his anger “issues” and paid $200 for the pleasure. He almost bit her and I was secretly happy because she should have known better than to stick her hand in his carrier.

2. I microwave salads and ice cream before eating them. Twenty seconds for the salad, fifteen for the ice cream.

3. I purposely keep snack bags open so chips or cheese curls go stale. Mmmmm…..stale snacks!

4. I’m physically unable to burp. Not even after drinking a carbonated beverage. It’s not fun. It hurts. And it leaves me bloated.

5. I enjoy the most intense of amusement park rides, but I can’t cross a bridge by foot because I know I’ll pass out from being up so high.

6. To finish my bachelors degree, I voluntarily took the last 12 courses in 12 months, while starting a new job. It almost killed me.

7. As a kid, I almost threw up after eating homemade strawberry ice cream. I only ate it because it was served to me at a friend’s house and I thought it would be bad manners to decline. Later that night, I talked in my sleep and hallucinated a movie on the walls of my bedroom. My sister and I shared the room and she thought I was the devil.

Now, I’m not one to thrust a meme on anyone, but if any of my fellow bloggy friends want to join in the weirdness, consider yourself tagged. Hop to it!

No one has to tell me I’ve gained weight this year. Not that anyone would dare say that to my face, or they’d have a mouthful of Chicklets for teeth.

And not that I don’t recognize what happened to my body over the last 12 months. I see it every day in the mirrors I haven’t already thrown a drape over.

But as so often happens with weight gain, you tend to ignore the obvious and just buy bigger clothes. Last week, my butt decided to publicly and rudely remind me of just how big it’s gotten. It almost injured a person.

The date: Friday, January 4.

Where: In a seminar room at work. I was about to give a presentation to a group of graduate students, who had just begun filing in at the door next to the instructor’s station.

How it happened: As I was preparing materials and kicking equipment cables out of the way, I backed up into the line of students and my butt nearly jettisoned a petite, twenty-something woman past the coat rack, through a wall and into the next room.

I. was. mor-ti-FIED. One, because my body was capable of almost knocking someone to the floor, and 2) because SHE apologized to ME. Oh, please don’t say you’re sorry. I almost killed you.

For those of you who think I’m exaggerating, I swear on a stack of Twinkies I’m not. The scale doesn’t lie. I’ve gained 25 pounds since last December. Twenty-three of them went straight to my butt, and the other two went to my face: one pound to Chin #1 and the other to Chin #2.

This bizarre distribution is because I have one of those pear-shaped bodies. I’m two sizes bigger on the bottom than I am on the top. I look pretty much the same in my blog photo as I did when it was taken about a year ago. It’s the lower half of me that needs work.

So what to do? I’m not averse to exercise, but it’s much harder to get outdoors and walk in the winter. I prefer walking as exercise over anything else. My plan is to try and burn calories indoors, at work, so I don’t have to walk in the cold and darkness at night.

Here’s the plan I’ve devised:

1. I’ve begun to stand at my desk while working. So that I’m not hunched over while typing on my laptop, I stuck a box under it so that it’s at waist-level and easier to work. It looks stupid, but I’m considering alternatives.

2. A friend sent me some information about JARM-ing, (J)ogging with your ARMS, an upper-body exercise you can do anywhere. Basically, I’m flexing and flailing my arms around in the privacy of my own cubicle and burning extra calories while doing it. It looks a little goofy, but I’ll take goofy over fat any day of the week.

3. No more junk food, especially not take-out. My husband and I like to order take-out on Friday nights. And Mondays. And Thursdays. And weekends. When he asked yesterday if we could get cheeseburgers and cheese sticks, I replied “No. We’re not doing that anymore.” Simple as that. I’m pretty militant about my plan. He has no choice but to lose weight with me. He’ll thank me later.

Although this “standing while working” thing has its benefits (you burn about 100 calories an hour vs. 40 if you’re just sitting), standing so long will hurt you in some way. The first day I tried it, I did it for six of nine hours and started to get short stabbing pains in my lower back.

Tweaks to the plan:

1.  When a colleague saw what I was doing, he promptly yelled at me “You can’t do that in THOSE shoes.” So now I wear supportive sneakers when I’m not meeting with clients.

2. I mentioned my crazy plan to my sister, who promptly yelled at me “You can’t do that! You probably have a quarter inch of carpet over a concrete floor! You need a special mat for that!” A special standin’ and flailin’ mat?

So I’m off this weekend to shop for a couple things. One, something else to put my laptop on, so I can get rid of the cardboard box it’s currently sitting on. And two, a “special mat,” whatever that might be. I need to find something that a chair can roll over for times when I need to sit down and rest.

Is my plan working? Most definitely. I’ve lost three pounds this week. I’m not going for quick weight loss, although I know how to do that (I once lost 7lbs in one week on The Survivor Diet, eating nothing but rice and water. It works, but it’s unsustainable. Plus, I think it can kill you.) The loss has to be gradual, the way it went on. I accept that, despite wanting to get rid of this big butt by next Wednesday.

If you’d like to share creative diet and exercise tips that work for you, drop a comment in the drawer. I’m open to crazy.

——-

Humor-blogs has some fine butts, I’ve heard.

Last month I treated everyone to the product of my laziness: The Pumpkin Tree Display. Make sure you go look at it to see how nice it looked a couple weeks ago.

Here’s how it looks now. The day before I took this picture, none of these pumpkins looked that bad. They had mold, yes. But they were still round. And not oozing. And still pumpkins.

Somewhere between 7AM and 5PM Monday, the two orange ones simply gave up the fight. Actually, they had help.  Here in eastern PA, we enjoyed a 70+ degree day, blue skies and balmy. Me thinks this isn’t the best environment for three-month-old pumpkins to thrive.

Now, we had trash pickup day on Thursday. Do you think I’d be smart enough to take them to the curb? Of course not. Here they will sit for another week and God knows what they’ll look like then.

Since it seems that members of the pumpkin family have a built-in, self-implosion mechanism in place, it’s my hope that they will keep imploding and somehow they will disappear on their own and I won’t have to don a gas mask and hazmat gear to remove them.

I no longer go out to turn the Christmas tree lights on. I’m afraid of the pumpkins. But someday I’m going to have to face my fear and bag these babies up. It wouldn’t surprise me if maggoty things are living under them. I’m paying dearly for my laziness.

Pray for me.

I’m a good driver. Really, I am. I just can’t handle getting my car in and out of the garage. They never teach you that in driver’s education. Apparently I needed a special class for driving at .2 MPH.

Getting out:

There was the time I was in such a hurry to get to a hair appointment, I failed to wait long enough for the door to go up before I started backing out. The door scraped the entire length of my car’s trunk before I realized my mistake. It was a costly one: $500 to replace the whole hood.

Getting in:

Today when I returned from an errand, I decided to back my car into the garage. But I did it from the opposite direction that I’m used to doing it. I cut it way too close to the edge of the garage and my side view mirror ripped off half the garage frame’s molding. Nice.

The vinyl strip came down and wedged itself between the mirror and the driver’s side door. If I put the car in reverse, I’d pull more off the frame. If I pulled ahead, I’d scrape my car door. So I just sat there for a second or two.

Luckily I had my cell phone.

Ring… ring… ring…

"Dave?"

"Yeah?"

"I got in an accident."

"You OK? Where are you?"

"Um. The garage. Can you come help me?"

Click.

Dave gets to the garage and studies things for a moment, while I’m trapped in my car long enough to feel my stupidity weighing heavily on me. He shakes his head and figures out he can pull the molding down from under the mirror without too much more damage, but it has to come off the garage frame. Fine. Do what ya gotta do.

The molding can be tapped back onto the frame, but it won’t ever be right again. It’s all mangled and sad-looking. And I did scratch my car. I doubt it can be buffed out, and so now I’ll always be reminded of the degree of dumbness I possess. I’m really glad I’m not into the fancy, expensive car thing.

OK, folks.  Time for you to share your dumb driving experiences. You didn’t think I posted this for your benefit, did you? I’m looking for the dumb, stupid, idiotic stuff. Make me feel better.

Ready, set, go!

I know. It’s sad and it doesn’t make any sense. Welcome to our Pumpkin Tree Display. We never intended to leave our autumn pumpkin display out on the patio, but it just happened. OK, strike that. It didn’t just happen. It happened because we are the laziest people we know.

Then a friend gave me a small artificial tree to stick out there because we can’t keep a tree in the house. Our cat, Lucky has "chewing issues," and would likely eat the needles and puncture a necessary organ. This is how we still enjoy a tree and keep Lucky from using up some of his nine lives.

I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. I hope that Santa is good to you and better than he was to me. Today I woke up with a huge zit on my chin. So now when I have family pictures taken of me today and tomorrow, I will be instructed to cover up that thing or get out of the picture. Can someone please tell me when the pimples of my youth will stop showing up on the face of my 40-something self?

Happy Holidays to all my zit-free bloggy friends!

In that order.

I’m Forgetful

Last week I thought I’d run to the grocery store, order a fresh-made pizza and pick up a few items while I waited. The woman who took my pizza order said “Sure. It’ll be ten minutes.” I left and did some shopping, came back ten minutes later, and found another employee just starting to make my pizza… S-L-O-W-L-Y.

Fully-loaded with groceries, I had nothing else to do but stand there and wait while the guy finally put my pie in the oven. I decided to bide my time by reading all the little recipe cards by the international cheese section. Did you know there are over a dozen types of brie cheese? But only two can be called “true Brie?” I moved about the cheese area and ventured over to the olive bar to stare at the ten types they had available, all swimming in their olivy juices. They all looked disgusting to me. I then made my way over to the sausage and questionable meats section. I wondered if anyone ever checks the expiration dates on these things. Is that really sausage? Does anyone ever buy this stuff?

Bored out of my mind, I went back to my pizza moving through the exposed oven on a conveyor belt and counted down the seconds until it made its way to the end. The guy finally put it in a box and handed it to me with outstretched hands. “Gimme, gimme, gimme already!”

I couldn’t have been more excited to get through checkout with my pizza and other items. When I got in my car and drove away I thought “Oh, this pizza’s gonna taste just gr….” Oh, wait. Where’s the pizza? I’m officially brain dead and now I have to park my car again, walk back up the the cashier and reclaim my pie. “Um. Hi. I forgot this,” I say. “Yeah, we were about to eat it, it smells so good.” I try to avoid eye-contact, as I’m sure the cashier and customers can’t believe anyone would forget they bought something the size of an end table.

I’m stupid

My husband Dave and I aren’t big drinkers, but he did just discover a great new beer he likes called Magic Hat 9 and he keeps a few in the fridge for an end of day treat.

The other day, Dave asked if I’d grab him one out of the fridge. I obliged and thought I’d be super nice and pop the cap for him. Because I don’t drink beer at all, I didn’t even know if we had a bottle opener in the house. Searching through the silverware drawer, I came upon the only thing I thought would work: a manual can opener.

I yelled to the other room “Can I open it with this can opener?” Dave said “Yeah, that’ll work.” What I did next made him wonder if he married the stupidest woman on the planet. He wondered why things were taking so long. I had a lot of trouble opening the bottle. See, that big hook on the bottom works. That little indentation at the top does not work at all, no matter how hard you try. Even if you work up a sweat.

I’m old

There’s only one piece of equipment that makes you look older than your age and that is an eyeglass chain you wear around your neck so you always have your glasses handy. I’ve known only one person in my life who did this and I thought she must have been 100 years old: Mrs. Weinhoffer, my sixth grade teacher. She was the quintessential schoolmarm, if ever there was one. Her eyeglass chain was silver and antique-looking. I have associated old with eyeglass chains ever since. Having avoided the old people eyeglass accessories display case at my pharmacy for months, I realized I had to break down and buy one today.

I’m so tired of taking my glasses on and off when I want to read the newspaper, and then put them back on when I want to see something on TV or anything more than six inches in front of my face. I don’t know how bad I’m going to look, but I do know I’ll look older than dirt. Up next, a scooter, a hearing aid and a box of Depends.

God help me.

Question: What’s the safest way to carve a pumpkin?

Answer: Let your husband do it.

I am not good with knives. I don’t know who’s looking out for me, but I have thrice dropped knives on the floor mere inches from bare feet. My luck may not last forever. I see a missing toe in my future.

The last time I held a slasher-movie-sized knife was Easter Sunday circa 1981. I was hand-washing dishes after our holiday meal and I was cleaning a 10" long serrated knife. I somehow let go of the dishcloth while I was wiping the smooth edge of the knife, and the cloth slipped out of my hand.

The knife kept right on going. And so did my hand. Slicing through your fingers in warm water feels exactly like nothing. It wasn’t until I looked into pinkified water that I wondered what happened. Quite a bloodfest.

Because I cut my right index finger in an unfortunate place, right where the top section of the finger bends, I needed several stitches. Living so close to a hospital, I got sewn up in no time at all.

Since Dave and I don’t live across from a hospital, I leave all the knife work to him. He has his own issues with injuries, but he seems to have slicing and cutting under control. Yea! It means we get to enjoy at least one Mr. Happy Face Pumpkin Head for the season.

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I possess two amazing superpowers. First, for as long as I can remember, I’ve had bionic hearing. Even before Lindsey Wagner (pictured left) acquired hers. You know, the Bionic Woman, now world-famous spokeswoman for Sleep Number Beds. (I bet she never saw that coming.) My husband, Dave likes to call my special ability "dog hearing." Woof.

I don’t know of any other superhuman entity who can hear as well as I can. Someone should wire me up to a machine and study me. I would find it extremely gratifying to be listed as a freak in a medical journal. It may be the only way I ever get published.

Listen up. Here’s how my ears work.

I can tell if a television is on in the next room, even if it’s muted.

I can hear the ever-so-slight noise a VCR makes when it records a program, so much so that I made Dave go with me to Circuit City to buy not one, not two, but three different VCRs until I found one that taped quietly enough. The man is a saint.

Once while working alongside a technician in the computer repair shop where I work, I repeatedly asked "What’s that noise? I hear a noise." The technician kept looking around trying to find its source and he had a lot of trouble since he couldn’t hear it himself. After flipping random switches and turning assorted knobs, he found the machine that was causing the noise and turned it off. I breathed a sigh of relief. He looked at me, cocked his head slightly and then splashed holy water on me because he thought I was the anti-Christ.

I hear my DVR machine recording. A DVR is able to freeze-frame and play back live broadcasts because it’s always taping the current channel. I hear it doing its job, but nobody else can.

I once had a very unusual problem in my car where when I made hard turns, I could hear fluid sloshing around in the dashboard innards. I’ve had four people in my car at various times when this noise made itself known. Nobody but me could hear it. They asked if I was on medication.

I now know better than to ask people "Do you hear that noise?" because the answer will always be "What noise?" I haven’t figured out how I can put my special powers to good use. I know the Bionic Woman would always pull her hair back and point her souped up ear toward bad guys who were up to no good. Then she’d save the day because she overheard secret information and then used it against them. Yeah, I wanna do that. But I don’t know how to work that into my non-espionage life.

My other superpower is one that I have not perfected yet, though it has served me well when it’s worked. I can mentally cancel meetings I don’t want to attend. I do not always want to skip meetings, so I only pull this skill out when I really need it. My record stands at 8 out of 12 meetings successfully killed. And, yes, I’m keeping track.

Before you ask me if I can help you get out of meetings, don’t bother. The talent is non-transferable. I’ve tried, but it only works when I’m the one who doesn’t want to go. It’s a shame, because imagine the money I could make if I could stop one of the world’s biggest time-wasters on behalf of others. I’d be a millionaire.

Sure, there are other superhero women out there with special abilities, but can they hear inaudible sounds without bionic help and cancel meetings at will? I’m certain there is a place where these skills would come in handy.

If you can figure out how I can put these two talents together to save the world or something, drop me a line. I’ll get back to you if I’m not in a meeting. I’d like to hear about it.

There are a few pretty cool things you can do as a kid, and one of them is breaking a bone. All the better if you get a cast for your efforts. See that innocent looking swing set in the picture? It’s the reason I broke my left wrist when I was 10 years old. Why was it a good thing? Because it could have been my head.

The accident took place one Friday night when my parents were out grocery shopping. It’s the one time of the week they could get away from us kids for an hour or so. All they had to do was let an older sibling take charge and make sure nothing bad happened while they were gone.

As soon as they left, something bad happened.

It was wintertime and a blanket of snow covered the backyard hill. An excellent place to take the sleds out for a spin. We never settled for sledding on mere snow. We insisted the best way to experience high-octane thrills was to throw buckets of water down the hill to form a nice sheen and add 30 mph to our speed. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Sister Ann and I prepped the death slope with about six or seven good bucket tosses and waited until it froze up good. We grabbed our sleds and set off to fly down the hill with the greatest of ease. Until….

I sat down on my trusty wooden Flexible Flyer at the precipice of our freshly-made, glassy goodness and gave myself a mighty heave-ho. Heading straight down the middle, I must have leaned too far to the right and began to veer directly toward the left legs of the swing set. In a flash, I’m thinking I either stay put and crack my skull open when I hit that thing, or make quick work of leaning the other way to shoot toward the middle of the hill.

There is a 10 foot open swath between the swing set and an old rusty laundry pole. I’m shooting for left of the swing set, but overcompensate and now I’m heading straight for the pole. I’m back to square one in the skull-saving, decision-making department. Do I split my noggin on the pole? Or do I try and brace myself with my arm and break that instead?

I opted to save the skull and stick my arm out to protect my face and head. My hand hit the pole and snapped all the way back as the rest of my body followed behind and landed in a rumpled heap at the bottom of the hill. I saved the skull, but my wrist doesn’t feel too good. Not good at all.

I can’t remember who came running first or how I got back up to the house. I’m sure I was blubbering like an idiot and screaming how "Mom and Dad are going to kill me!!!" They apparently can’t go anywhere without some trauma befalling us kids. But at least we never set fire to anything.

Once in the house, I’m sobbing on the couch and my brainiac brother Michael is yelling at me.

"It’s not broken if you can move it. Here. Let me see."

He flops my hand back and forth, over and over.

"Oww!! OWW!! Oh my God, OWWWWW!!!"

"OK. Yeah, it might be broken."

"Idiot."

So we wait until Mom and Dad come home from the store and then promptly announce that now they have to take me to the hospital. The one thing that made our accidents so much more bearable was that the hospital was located only a block away. I wonder of Mom and Dad, knowing they’d someday have a houseful of imbecilic kids, told their real estate agent "We need a house next to a state-of-the-art hospital with a band of qualified ER doctors. We’re going to be spending some time there. Can you do that?"

As we trek over to the hospital, I’m getting really angry. Not because I broke my wrist. And not because I got in trouble for sledding in the dark on an ice-encrusted hill. It’s because now I was going to miss the Brady Bunch. Back in the day before VCRs and DVRs, you absolutely needed to be planted in front of the TV when your favorite show came on or you would miss it forever.

As I sat in the ER waiting room, I watched as it approached 8:00 and then 8:30 and then 9:00. I mourned the loss of getting to watch the fanciful antics of my beloved Brady Bunch kids. The only bright spot was knowing that none of the Bradys ever broke a bone and they don’t get a cast and they can’t show it off to their friends at school. So there, take that!

Here’s a lesson for the kiddies — if you have a choice between breaking your skull and breaking a bone, go for the bone. Brain is so much more worth keeping in good working order. Besides, having a cast on your head is just not as attractive.

My sister Marlene treated her daughter, Amy, and me to an afternoon at Dorney Amusement Park on Saturday. Every year her company gives its employees free passes, plus two for their guests. Excellent deal, since tickets normally go for something like 30 bucks. I know I’ll still pay a fortune on food, drink and at least one impulse purchase. But since I’m not starting out $30 in the hole, it’s all good. Plus, the park hosts "Halloweekends" in October, where they decorate every square inch for the fall holiday. Even if you don’t go on rides, it’s really nice to just stroll around and get into the Halloween spirit.

But I do go on rides. At least the ones I think I won’t die on.

We meet at my house and pile in one car. For the next half an hour, we complain about the extra weight we’ve put on, how we hate exercise and that we’re doomed until we get serious about weight loss. We get to the park, walk through the entrance, look around and the first thing out of our mouths is "Where do we want to eat?" What did we JUST SAY people???

We head down a pathway that leads to one of the park’s many Dippin’ Dots carts. Dippin’ Dots is (are?) ice cream molded into the shape of tiny beads. Strangest ice cream I’ve ever had, and difficult to maneuver, since half of those little buggers tend to escape and roll away with every spoonful. Whatever. We each pay $5 for a small cup. And I do mean small. I’m done with it in 2.5 minutes, but that could also be because half of the beads have jumped the cup and are now bouncing happily away.

We decide it’s time to consider going on rides. When I say "we" should go on rides, I really mean just Amy. I’ve appointed her the ride inspector and the "oh-come-on-you’ll-be-OK" motivator. It works this way — She picks out a ride she likes, or thinks I’ll like, gets on the ride and then reports back to me about how violent said ride felt. Then I decide whether I can handle it. She gives me the blow-by-blow account of each one, and then we determine how much I would cry and how embarrassing a scene I would make.

While discussing whether I’m going on any rides, Marlene whips out her digital camera and begins taking the first of several hundred pictures in the park. We shall refer to her now as The Sisterazzi. Nobody’s safe. "Look over here! Amy! Kathy! Stand in front of this! Over here! Just one more picture! Oh, wait! Come over here!"

We tolerate this because she loves taking pictures. But we have requirements. Our hair can’t look like any of the scarecrows dotting the park. Above-the-waist shots only. No rear shots. We think Sisterazzi complies, but I haven’t seen the pictures yet. It was too sunny to make them out on the tiny screen.

We head over to the one ride I’ll consider, Talon. It’s one of the best in the park due to its smoothness. Steel tracks are the best. Wooden ones will cause teeth to fall out of your head and you’ll be a bruised and battered mess when it’s over, assuming you survive at all. We wait for Amy to go on Talon once, alone. She’ll report back about how long the line is and whether the teenaged ride attendants look responsible enough to trust our lives with.

Sisterazzi is busy taking pictures of other people on other rides, while I’m getting my stomach in knots just thinking about going on Talon. What freaks me out most is not the ride itself. The ride is awesome. It’s having to walk the stairs to the platform where you queue up for seats. I have real trouble standing still in high places. I have no problem hurdling to the earth at breakneck speeds (possibly literally break neck speeds), but I can’t handle waiting in line up really high, long enough to realize that the ground is way down there and I’m way up here.

Amy returns from her quick trip on Talon and begins her motivational speech. She assures me she’ll talk me through the ascent and that I’ll love it as much as all the other times I’ve been on it. And, no doubt, we’ll ride in the front row. If you ride a coaster, the only good seat is the front seat. Totally clear view of the ground coming up fast at you. There’s no better thrill, except maybe bungee jumping or skydiving. Those I won’t do, because I can’t hang my life on a string. But I will fly through the sky if I’m nailed to a seat.

We decide around now it’s time to eat a real meal and head off to a pizza place. The line is very long, so we briefly contemplate going over to a Subway instead. None of us wants to eat healthy, despite our complaints about wanting to lose weight, so we remain in the long line and then pay a small fortune for a slice of pizza and bottled water, $10. Extortion pizza.

As soon as we sit down at a table in the shade, Sisterazzi is at it again. This time, taking pictures of Amy and me with stringy cheese hanging out of our mouths. Thanks for that. We feel better now that we’ve had food and gotten out of the sun. But it’s a record-breaking 85 degrees on this October day, and we’re suffering a bit from meaty paw syndrome. Amy suggests we could cool off more if we go on Talon and I’m back to stressing about whether to go on it.

We slowly walk up the hill toward the ride and I remind myself that the reason I want to do it is for the exhilaration of flying through the air for little over a minute. There are four inversions: a vertical loop, a zero-gravity roll, an Immelmann loop (whatever the hell that is), and a corkscrew.

Two things happen in this environment. You briefly cannot breathe (wheeee!) and your hair winds up looking like this. At least mine does.

I decide I’m ready for the climb up the stairs and onto the platform. Fortunately, the line is short and I don’t have to spend time standing still on the stairs. But I do need some encouragement from Amy. She distracts me from the reality of my situation by discussing a very boring topic. Routers and wireless access points.

She goes into a long discussion about what kind of network she has at work and talks about getting a wireless router for home. I ignore where I am for a moment and talk about a new laptop and wireless router I’m thinking of buying so I can blog anywhere in the house. I’m hearing all kinds of screaming from passengers already on the ride, but I ignore this. Amy also directs me to look at a spot on the platform full of people and that doesn’t overlook the ground below. I pretend I’m anywhere but there.

We are soon led like cattle into the front row chute. We are shocked that they’re sending the ride out without a full front row. What’s wrong with these people? The front row is the BEST seat in the house. I’m all cocky about it — until it’s my turn to get in the seat.

Blogger’s note: I’ve begun to sweat just writing this. The memory of front row seat lockdown is fresh in my mind and I’m very tense right now. My keyboard has asked me to stop pressing so hard.

So we are led to our seats and we get nailed in. I’m thankful that the ride operator clicks the metal harness into my lap even lower than I got it to go myself. This makes me happy for two reasons: 1) It tells me that my stomach is not as huge as I thought it was, and 2) I’m 100% bolted in. I no longer worry that I’ll somehow slip out of my chair and die a horrible, screaming, bloody death. Wheeeee!!!!

We begin our ascent up the 100+ foot hill and Amy’s still talkin’ about routers. I have my eyes closed because I hate the ascent. She asks me if I want to know when we get to the top, and I reply "No, I’ll know it when we’re about to fall off the face of the earth. Thankyouverymuch."

The ride is exceptional. Smooth, fast and breathless — exactly as I remember it. Since it’s hard to scream when you can’t breathe, I opt for the silent descent. I just smile a toothy smile the whole way through.

Without further ado, here’s how the ride went. It’s my one impulse purchase. The park used to offer still shots of riders screaming their heads off, but now they offer DVDs of riders screaming their heads off. That’ll be me on the left, and Amy on the right. We appear 30 seconds into it.

Amy wanted a picture of me when we got off because I looked like I’d just been electrocuted (sign of a great ride!). We don’t have a camera, but of course Sisterazzi does. She gets the shot and now we can relax a little because I don’t have to stress anymore about doing this ride. I’ve done the deed.

We stroll around the park for another hour or so, jump on a train that chugs throughout the park and decide we’ve had our fill and start thinkin’ about what to eat again. Everything we do begins and ends with food. Will we never learn?

So Saturday was the day I didn’t die on a ride. I’ll have to pencil this in again for next year and, with Amy as my co-pilot, I’ll do just fine.

I break stuff. It’s what I do. On Sunday I broke our toaster while cleaning the kitchen. This is not the first time I’ve damaged a fairly important piece of an appliance and it won’t be the last.

Here’s a rundown of all the fixtures I broke:

The victim: Toaster
When: Last weekend
How it happened: I picked it up by its pushdown button to move it to a cabinet and the whole thing crashed to the floor. The button broke off and cracked into two pieces.
Can we still use it? Yes, the larger of the two pieces slides back onto the metal lever quite nicely.

The victim: Vacuum cleaner
When: About 3 months ago
How it happened: No idea. The metal hook thingy just broke off from cord tension over the years, I guess. And now there’s nothing to wrap the cord around.
Can we still use it? Yes, but it’s only used in the garage because when you turn it on, it smells like an electrical fire. I won’t use it in the house. I shouldn’t even let Dave use it in the garage, but hey, if your husband will vacuum anything, you let him. Bought a new vacuum for inside that won’t spontaneously combust, because, you know, fire bad.

The victim: Carpet shampooer hose
When: Almost a year ago
How it happened: There is a knobby thing that connects to a thin tube that solution runs through. I over-twisted it and now it twists no more. FACT: Duct tape does not fix everything.
Can we still use it? Nope. But I keep it hanging in the garage because I’m too lazy to throw it out. New hose fixture is on the right.

The victim: Garden hose pipe
When: Last summer
How it happened: Ran the lawn mower into it. I’m a pretty spastic mower. I mow the grass about as well as a Flowbee cuts hair.
Can we still use it? Yes, but you have to turn the water on by the nub that remains. A rubber gripper used for opening jar lids does the job just fine. I don’t know why we keep the broken piece.

Because I’m trying to earn knob karma for all the ones I’ve broken, here’s one I actually fixed myself! The previous knob would never secure well enough to keep the door completely closed and our trouble-making cat Lucky would always run full tilt into it and push it open. Because it’s the door to the laundry room, I was always afraid he would chew through the dryer hose and get stuck in the vent (he has a very little brain).

I wanted to surprise Dave with my knob-fixing abilities and decided to install a new one myself. With some phone assistance from my brother-in-law, Dale, I was able to do just that. Lookie here!

p.s. It was fun to watch Lucky run headlong into a door that used to open real easily a minute ago. The skull that protects his little brain makes an interesting sound when it hits wood. Don’t worry, he’s OK.