BEDA Day 16: Grocery store adventures

I went to the grocery store with my dad and my sister tonight. My sister, who is hoping to get her driver's license soon, drove, and we car danced to ALL CAPS most of the way there. My dad made a bad classical music joke about our shopping Liszt as we were walking in. We picked out roses for my mom, who has been through some really awful job-related crap lately. Then we decreased worldsuck by picking up the pieces of a flower pot that had fallen off a shelf and shattered. My dad walked in circles in the bread aisle while my sister and I were choosing loaves of bread. My sister made a really good geometry joke about circles being pointless. My dad and my sister spent five minutes artistically arranging the containers of yogurt we bought in the cart. My sister just about got high in the laundry detergent aisle. I was disappointed by a candle that claimed to smell like the rainforest, which definitely did not hold up to its claims, and my sister accused me of being a "rainforest dropper," which I didn't deny. My sister also ran around taking pictures of all of the items that had been left in incorrect places, such as the bottle of soy sauce left on the taco chips shelf and the box of Junior Mints left in the display of children's cough syrup. (This is a standard practice of hers. I'm hoping she turns it into some kind of deep, meaningful art project about the disorganization and lack of motivation in our society or something.) We got strange looks just about everywhere we went, and it was awesome. I love going places with my family!

BEDA Day 15: Pancakes!!

Tonight when I got home from work I was very tired and hungry (as usual). My dad had picked up dinner on the way home so he could get outside and mow some of the lawn while the weather was good, since the whole job takes 8+ hours. My mom came home long enough to drop off my sister and then headed back out to a meeting, and my sister didn't feel very well. No one could go out to eat with me and I didn't want to go alone, we didn't have much in the house, and I didn't feel like eating Ramen noodles.

So I made pancakes! Real pancakes, from scratch, using the recipe from the red and white Better Homes and Gardens cookbook my grandma gave me last year for my birthday. I didn't burn any, my first pancaked turned out pretty well, and there were only two that had a slight layer of uncooked batter left in the middle. This was actually a major accomplishment for me, because I'm not much of a cook.

My sister has this, like, sixth sense about cooking, where she can just grab some random ingredients and throw them together without a recipe, and they're guaranteed to be pretty good if not amazing. It's nice when she gives me food, but it's kind of annoying too. (I won't lie, I often get annoyed when the random-and-impulsive method turns out better than the carefully-following -directions method. I'm such a Ravenclaw.) My parents are both pretty handy in the kitchen with anything moderately fancy, and my grandma can cook anything under the sun, and she taught herself everything she knows after she got married. I can make most things that come in a box with instructions for the microwave, and I can make one really good but really easy chicken dish that includes Swiss cheese and cream of mushroom soup. I can make pretty good banana bread, and I've finally mastered halfway decent scrambled eggs. I'm such a wuss that I'm pretty nervous to try frying an egg. So I was pretty pleased with my pancake dinner!

BEDA Day 14: Best friends forever

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my friend Mel getting married. She's not the first of my friends to get married, but she's the first of my friends whom I see on a pretty regular basis to get married. Even though she went to college in Missouri, we always managed to hang out on a pretty regular basis. In particular, I recall long hours driving around the county in her car, softening my aversion to most country music.

Needless to say, I didn't quite know what it would be like to have my best friend suddenly being a married woman. (I do have to say, it's been amusing to hear her stories of adjusting to married life and how no one told her that everything about your routine, including the way you brush your teeth, would change!) It's been pretty normal at work, of course, since we just do work things and deal with the kids and it's essentially the same every day. We've only really done one non-work-related thing since the wedding, but that was really pretty structured since we drove all over creation to get gifts for a baby shower for our friends Tawni and Nate, then went to Mel's mom's house to wrap our gifts, then went to the baby shower. So I didn't know what it would be like when we were just hanging out.

Mel came over tonight after work and had dinner, because Derek was working till, like, 10:30. Also, my sister cleaned a bunch of clothes that don't fit her anymore out of her closet, and because Mel is tiny and has been borrowing my sister's clothes for years, she wanted to see if anything would fit her. We sat around and watched TV for a while and were just generally silly, and then we went upstairs and she tried on a lot of the clothes, and we were just generally silly, and everything was totally normal. I always knew that Mel getting married would mean some big changes, and I always knew that we'll be best friends for the rest of our lives, but it's nice to have some reassurance that the one thing hasn't had an enormous impact on the other.

BEDA Day 13: Doctor Who!

I'm currently watching Doctor Who with my mom. We're on episode four of Season 1 (meaning that which started in 2005, since that can be slightly confusing), the one called "Aliens of London," and I told her she's not allowed to judge the show till after this episode, so she'll have seen one set in the future, one set in the past, and a good one set in the present, since "Rose" is kind of a lame episode in my opinion. (I haven't told her that this one is a two-parter!) My mom isn't usually one for sci-fi or fantasy (it took me almost 10 years to get her to read the Harry Potter books), but she seems to at least be interested in it so far. Mom makes the fourth person I've gotten to watch the Doctor since getting the Season 1 DVDs for my birthday in June. The other three are my dad, my sister, and my friend Carie.

I keep forgetting that I've only been a Whovian for seven months, because in that time I've watched all of Seasons 1-5, thanks to my lovely friend Annika, as well as the first half of Season 6, which began in April and returns in 13 days! This all began because of Annika. When we were first getting to know each other last fall, she asked if I'd ever seen Doctor Who (she's absolutely obsessed with it), and I said no, but it was next on my list of things to get into when I had time, because I knew so many people who loved it. Then I asked if she'd ever seen LOST, which I love, and she said no, it had looked intriguing when it was first on and then it just looked weird. We knew we wouldn't have much time during the rest of that semester, so we decided to introduce each other to our respective favorite shows over Martin Luther King, Jr., Day weekend. We did, and she, unfortunately, thinks LOST is pretty dumb, but she's determined to finish the show one of these days. I, obviously, love Doctor Who!

I think I've always kind of harbored this hope that aliens were actually real, just because I love learning about and meeting people from different cultures, and I've always been really interested in outer space. When I was little, I really wanted to be an astronaut for a while. That idea disappeared when I found out how much math and science would be involved in that career path (I find scientific concepts interesting on a basic level, but I usually don't enjoy studying them, and I really love math up through Algebra 2, but not much beyond that). However, now that a handful of regular people have traveled into space, I can't help thinking about how awesome it would be to go as a civilian!

BEDA Day 12: Out of the mouths of kindergarteners

Some of my kindergarteners at work have really gotten into knock-knock jokes, one format in particular. The one version that gets told over and over is "Knock-knock." "Who's there?" "Interrupting cow." "Interrupting cow wh--?" "MOO!" Riley, Gabriel, and Jayden have taken to modifying this to any interrupting animal or other being that suits their fancy. I did NOT appreciate Riley's version from earlier in the week, when I was sitting next to him at lunch and he was eating Cheetos, of course leaving his fingers coated in a thick film of orange "cheez" dust. This was the first time I'd encountered the new obsession, so I didn't know what I was getting into. Riley looked at me and said, "Miss Madeline, knock-knock!" I said, "Who's there?" He said, "Interrupting orange spider." I said, "Interrupting orange--?" And he proceeded to grab my face with his sticky, orange fingers. Oh, the joys of working with children.

Other versions of this joke were much more amusing yesterday at the pool. It was only about 80 degrees out, so the water was pretty chilly and we had a number of kids sitting on their towels near my co-worker Mel and me. Gabriel told the cow joke about five times and then moved on to other ideas: an interrupting cat who said "meow;" an interrupting bird who screeched; an interrupting apple who crunch-crunched; and my favorite, an interrupting old man who yelled, "I'M TIRED!" Jayden got out of the pool after a bit and joined in the jokes with gusto, although he was mostly repeating ones Gabriel had already said, since he doesn't quite have the grasp of linguistics that Gabriel has so far. Mel and I tried hard to remember some good jokes, knock-knock or otherwise, from when we were kids, but we could only think of a few, which made me sad. Ahh, to be young again...

BEDA Day 11: Mixing truth and fiction

I'll just announce it at the beginning: This is going to be another cop-out post. However, if you follow the included links, you're guaranteed to get a few good laughs!

The Leaky Cauldron, my favorite Harry Potter-related news site, posted a link today to a brilliantly written article that gives serious (Sirius?) suggestions for fixing some of the world's major human rights and foreign policy issues, but the entire thing is written as if the authors are witches and wizards. Even if you don't know much about Harry Potter, it's still a fantastic read, and most of the important wizarding references are explained.

That article contains a link to this article from Slate.com, which is all about Rupert Murdoch's desire to purchase The Daily Prophet, the main newspaper in magical Britain. Again, it's hilarious, especially with its insinuations that Murdoch's best friend is Rita Skeeter, everyone's favorite sneaking, spying, mud-slinging, yellow journalist witch.

Enjoy. :)

BEDA Day 10: In Memoriam

I can't believe it's been five years since my grampy passed away. I think about him every single day, and I miss him like crazy. Because I'm completely exhausted from a day at Sports Ohio with my kids and because I haven't gone back to read it in a while, I'm going to post the words I spoke at Grampy's memorial service.

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My grampy was a lot of things: a father, a teacher, an author, a baseball fan, and a friend. But all those things made him something else: an adventurer. He wasn’t one to sit back and let life pass him by.

As a teenager, Grampy saw Babe Ruth hit a home run at the very first All-Star Game. When he could see that America was going to get involved in World War II, he joined the army. His teaching took him around the world, to exciting places like India and Nigeria. And Grampy’s adventures certainly didn’t end after he retired. In recent years, he flew in a 1920s biplane and a 1939 Ford tri-motor, and he joined my cousins on a HumVee ride through the Arizona desert. He continued to travel as well, visiting friends and family around the country, as well as voyaging overseas. “Boring” was one word that never described my grampy. How many people do you know that flew to China on their 89^th birthday?

In addition to all the important, exciting events in Grampy’s life, he had the ability to turn the smallest things into adventures. My first memories of Grampy are at his house in Virginia, which was filled with fascinating things to see and do. The marble roller was probably the highlight of the house, followed closely by the cuckoo clock. I loved to watch Grampy wind it. My cousins and I could be entertained for hours by watching Grampy’s model trains and riding with him on the garden tractor. I even loved to sit in the kitchen with Grampy and watch the neighbor's cows.

He always managed to turn dinnertime into an adventure too, often by arguing with my dad for the check. Once, he ordered clam chowder for an appetizer and liked it so much that he ordered it again for dessert! And then there was the super-strong airport coffee...but that's another story altogether. Of course, if you spent more than five minutes with my grampy, you were sure to be treated to some great, or terrible, puns. He made sure to pass his love of wordplay on to his children and grandchildren.

Grampy made learning exciting for everyone, from his college calculus students to my first grade class. When we studied Antarctica, he came to show slides and talk about the trip he and Grammy took to the bottom of the world. Even when my classmate's father brought a real penguin to our school, I thought there was nothing cooler than the big, red parka Grampy showed.

Shortly after Grampy's death, one of my friends reminded me of something said by a character in the Harry Potter books: “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” I think we can all agree that my grampy had a well-organized mind, and I am sure he was not afraid to leave this earth. I know he was looking forward to seeing Grammy and his parents and his Savior. We can only imagine what adventures he's having right now!