Deal with the dentist

Thursday night, we had just gotten back from vacation, and Dearra and I were rushing to get to her high school orientation. The light we were at turned green, but nobody was moving. Some idiot was jaywalking against the light. So I said a few choice words, and then started driving as he was finally out of the way. As I get closer to him, I see that something looks familiar about him. I take a closer look and tell Dearra, "it's our dentist". We laughed so hard that the "jerk" was somebody we knew.

This morning I have a dentist appointment. When he gives me the usual lecture about flossing, I'm going to make a deal with him. I'll start flossing more if he gives up jaywalking.

whaddya think?

Does your worry have a purpose?

Of course you passed the test... so Dearra just texted me. That Spanish final that she had to re-take? She passed it. Well duh, of course she did. It would have been incomprehensible to me if she hadn't. But still there's always that small little worry, especially since the test they gave her on Monday was not the exact same final that she took in middle school last semester. She got slightly better than 90%.

And then today in class they all took the same test so her teacher could see what everybody remembers. So she had to take the silly thing twice. How dumb is that?

Anyway, there's always the silly little irrational worry. What if she gets nervous and messes up? What if the material's different? What if the pencil was too faint? What if the school counselor eats the last pages?

OK, a lot of those are silly worries. But when your mind gets racing, strange things can pop up. Worry has a purpose, after all. If you're driving, and you see a narrow curve coming up, you worry that if you don't slow down for it, you will be in trouble. So you slow down. Or you worry that you will fail a test, so you study. Or you worry that you will fall off a cliff, so you don't get near the edge. But sometimes you worry about things that couldn't possibly happen.

Have you ever worried about something that even though you knew it was silly? Or worried about something that other people thought was silly, and then it came true?

Does your worry have a purpose?

Bad habits

You and your stinking bad habits!!!!! OK, we all have our bad habits. And we all have bad habits of other people that annoy us. But how many of you are annoyed by something even though you do the exact same thing? Here's an example of one that I find myself doing. I ask the kids a question, husband butts in and responds for them, and I get annoyed and say "I wasn't asking YOU". But I do the same thing sometimes.

OK, your turn. Go!

The girl kept staring at her!!!!

We were at Home Town Buffet on Saturday and there was this other family sitting near us. Dearra told us later that a girl in the family kept staring at her. She was trying to ignore her, but I guess it really creeped her out. Later she went online (her favorite site, Wizard 101, has a forum) and posted about it. People said things like, "maybe she thought you were pretty" and "maybe you should have stared back at her".

I guess it would bother me too if I was out eating and caught somebody staring at me every time I glanced in their direction. What would you do?

Christmas surprise gift wrap

There was the friend who gave me a Christmas gift in advance, and told me I should keep it in the freezer until it was time to open it. Turned out, it was socks. hahaha

The same friend gave me a gift that was wrapped in something like 100 layers of wrapping paper. It wasn't only a gift, it was an hour's worth of entertainment.

Then there's the sister-in-law who used to put lots and lots of confetti into gifts and cards, so that when you opened things it would fly at you. This continued until her grandmother sent a whole envelope full of confetti back to her.

I myself used to wrap teeny, tiny little gifts in huge gift boxes, so that the person had to really hunt for them.

I think the funniest one that we got was from Richard's sister. It was a shirt and a really heavy wooden rhino with a broken horn. He liked the shirt, but we thought the rhino was kind of odd. Then one day his sister came over, saw the rhino, and wondered where we had gotten it. "Oh haha, I used it to weight the shirt down. It wasn't really part of the gift." So we gave her the rhino back, so that she could cause more mayhem with it.

I used to work in a Hallmark store, and pick up the prettiest wrap on discount. I especially liked the reverse-a-wrap. You could do cool things with it. Now, I pretty much can't be bothered. No time.

OK, so do I win for the funniest gift wrap stories? Or can you beat them?