Out of the Box

I wrote a book.  Seriously. That happened.  My cousin Dawne had this beautiful idea and being the brilliant artist in the family, she showed us exactly what she was thinking and then asked me to add words so people like you could hear what she was thinking too.  And, because paper and binding is oh so confining, Jordan (and a lot of other really talented people) helped us make it into an interactive app so you can not only read, see and hear this book, you can also touch every wiggling giggling bit for even more jam packed fun.  

Currently it is available here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/out-of-the-box/id492809326?mt=8 but will be available on amazon soon for all of you non-apple product users.  

I'm so incredibly excited to be able to share my very first published book and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it! 

Singular Secret

Hi Friend,

I stole “Hi Friend” from Debina, so now, when I call her and she answers, “Hi Friend” I just want to giggle and then I forget why I called her.  And before you say, “You can’t steal ‘Hi Friend’ from someone, that’s just a normal greeting,” let me tell you, it definitely isn’t when she says it.  And I believe in giving credit where credit is due.  Sorry (Arda) if sometimes my memory prevents me from doing that.

Last Monday, I had the day off (like the rest of the country).  We kicked it off with a farewell breakfast at IHop for Nater, followed by hanging out with Dawne, Zach and Luke (because unlike the rest of us, Jordan had to work).  We took bags to goodwill to make room for Christmas presents, took down the tree, and basically did chores while watching the rest of “How I Met Your Mother.”  (While I was gone, I missed 5 seasons, but the house is done watching, which is kind of the same thing.) We started watching Coupling, on the suggestion of Shane – turns out he can suggests good TV sometimes.  :P

Me: How does this new Apple TV system work?

Zach: It’s too complicated to explain to you.

Me: Will you teach me how the new Apple TV system works?

Luke: Sure.  You press these two buttons. 

(Thanks for the confidence, Zach.)

Tuesday, pink roses showed up on my desk and I refuse to tell anyone who they are from, which is driving everyone nuts at work.  Is this what keeping secrets feels like?  If it is, it is delicious. 

Rollie: Welcome.

Me: Hi Sunshine! I can’t chat I’m late for a date.

Rollie: (said things I won’t repeat)

Me:  He's read my blog so he already knows my good material.

Rollie: Does he know he’ll be in it shortly?

I do wonder why I don’t have people sign a waiver when they talk to me – you know so they know about the “It’s less of a circle of trust as it is a line of trust, straight into my blog.” 

Mom: What is your plan tonight?

Me: I have date.

Mom: What?

Me: A date.

Mom: A what?

Me: You know when a woman spends time with a gentleman caller for the express purpose of getting to know one another? 

Mom: Oh! A Date!

Me: I need to get out more if my own mother doesn’t recognize the word when it comes out of my mouth.

Mom:  Well, Be nice. 

Me: I will be!

Mom: And don’t be sarcastic. 

Me: Be reasonable.  Frita would never ask that from me. 

PS: I had a similar conversation, almost word for word, with Jen – sans the to-do list. Not a good sign. Know what else isn’t a good sign?   Someone who I chat with on a regular basis at work thought that I was married. Maybe I should put on my to-do list: Act more needy, insecure and desperate for a man then loudly announce “I wish *I* was married!” whenever there is a lull in the conversation. Honestly,  I have no idea where to put this information in my brain, so I’m writing it here hoping it will disappear from my consciousness.  It’s either that, or try to convince myself it’s good that I exude a sense of established security in my life and therefore am not confused with the average single lady but that won’t help with “A What?!; A Date!!” issue.   

I was telling people at work that I think my back pain is actually stemming from my chair at my desk.

M: That could be.

Me: Thirty really is the new seventy.  

M: That’s not true.

R: Maybe it is to a woman. 

Me: Too close to the truth, dude. 

I was on my way out of the office holding a box of books for an author signing that was happening later that evening.

M: I’m going to head out early.  I need to run home and put these books into a bag because this box doesn’t match my outfit.

Boss: hehe  Seriously?

M: Ha. ha. Kind of, yea. 

Later, when I showed up to the signing, I had transferred the books into a wolf bag.  Like a bag, with a wolf on it.  It really did match my outfit much better than the unwieldy box – which just made my boss make fun of me more.  Guess what he’s getting for his birthday?

In our house, when it is your birthday, you get to choose where we go for dinner. Naturally, Lucas chose to celebrate his 16^th birthday at IKEA, which also meant that when Cori (German) arrived on Friday, she got to enjoy the joy and wonder that is IKEA with us.  That’s where you bring international guests yes? 

Lucas: Now that we have foreigners with us, it’s not as fun to make fun of the names. 

After talking to our visitor about professional extreme sports and hearing stories about hanging out with other pro’s in the biking world, Lucas said to me, “It’s weird to think that any of your friends are professionals.”  Which is true when thinking of Pro Sports people for sure, but I think it’s also true of my non-athletic friends.  Seriously, I can’t believe we, and especially some of you, are “Professionals.”

Last night Zach turned on True Grit, an Academy Award winning movie, for around 15 minutes.  He then declared that it was not for him, and put on Jackie Chan’s “Project A.”  Let’s keep that in mind next time he suggests watching something.  Also, he was complaining about the lack of choices on Netflix.  I’m starting to think that it might be impossible to make Luke and Zach happy at the same time.  Individually, sure, I think I can figure that out, together? Impossible.  Add in the happiness of two dogs and my week has gotten very complicated.  Even after two trips to the park yesterday, the little dog was still complaining that I wasn’t playing enough with her.  Doesn’t she know that *I’M* supposed to be the high maintenance one?

I had lunch with Rach yesterday, which was amazing.  I had asked her to go Ice Skating with me, but after a Mimosa/Coffee lunch and taking a look at a crowded rink, we opted to go for a walk instead.  Maybe Ice Skating is a “Once a Season” type sport.  (Who am I kidding? For me that’s kinda of the definition of every sport.  Do I really think I’ll be playing Racquetball again this year?) 

And finally, I’ll leave you with this interaction I had last night:

Lucas: I think the traces of Peanuts are starting to affect me. 

Me: Why would you even try to eat a Luna bar?

Lucas: They said it was for women and I wanted to prove them wrong.  I better take some Benadryl. 

Age Appropriate Cohorts

As you well know, I am a fan of traveling.  However, my vacations are rarely relaxing, with the exception of Christmas at in New York.  I don’t have to think about what I’m going to wear, because my mom just bought me all new clothes.  My nieces and nephews are home, so my siblings and I can totally be the 10 year olds that we want to be – with age appropriate cohorts.  I don’t have to change my schedule (my parent’s decided they could adjust to waking up at 10 and going to sleep at 2.)  And in a freak accident, my work password expired and I couldn’t change it remotely.  Boosh! (I learned that from Kevin.)

Monday I went down to Sean’s to play with Bailey, Jackie and Morgan’s new games and toys. Started with some Twilight Trivia, then we played Head Bandz (where you put a card on your head and then have to guess what you are) while Bailey made us her awesome pizza.  Finished up with Mario Kart and Glee Karaoke.  (Okay, Twilight trivia was my Christmas present and Bailey was straight up quoting passages, but still a really good time was had by all.) 

Then came “Disappointing Tiffany” Tuesday, in which I was doing all the disappointing.  Long story short, my plan to have some QT with Eva in the car on the way to Hershey Park, to hang out with Julie and Nick got messed up and everyone was disappointed in me.  I even tried to fix it on Tuesday morning, but failed miserably.  I even disappointed my parents because they wanted me to go play bingo with them, and I didn’t want to.  (Momela: Why don’t you want to hang out with us?) On the upside, I did get to hang out with Lisa (and her 3 year old son, and 2 adorable 3 month old twins) and Do and her kids at Mo’s house.  Lisa said at least I didn’t disappoint her.  Maureen decided that having twins would be so much fun because you could test things out on them.  Then she proceeded to put Chase on a white towel and Gavin on a spider-man towel, and then she put their pacifiers in front of them, to see which towel encouraged them to crawl.  They weren’t quite up for crawling, but Gavin did pull the spider-man towel until the pacifier came to him, so my baby won.  I hung out with Briana Tuesday night and while she was a delight, and hilarious even, I can’t share any of the stories with you. 

Wednesday I decided it would be a great idea to go Ice Skating.  I may have made a wild claim that it took 2 hours to get to the Palisades mall earlier in the week.  I was proved wrong when we drove to Bear Mountain (the 2pm session was already filled) then drove down to the Palisades and the entire trip only took 45 minutes.  Fine, Maureen. I get it.  But sometimes there’s traffic and parking is impossible… :P  Back to the story.  We went Ice Skating, and as we were leaving the boys were all complaining, which Mo summarized simply, “Kevin broke his hand, Kyle broke his butt, and Patrick broke his Spirit. Wanna go to Dave and Buster’s?”  On our way home:

Me: I’m a lil sleepy.

Mo: That’s because you didn’t have a red bull smoothie.

I honestly had no idea that was available to me, but makes perfect sense after surviving the winner’s circle.  Some of us had some tickets to exchange:

As I mentioned last week, I got a box of stuff from 5^th grade from my dad this year.  Here are some highlights:

Thursday, Kevin volunteered to help take all of the Christmas decorations down with Maureen and rearranged the furniture.  When they were done, and Kevin was on his way to clean his room when he said, “Um Mom?  I don’t mind helping, but is there a reason why I have to work and Kyle and Patrick have been able to play all day?”  Maureen told him that no, there wasn’t, but she made a deal that if he cleaned his room, Kyle and Patrick would have to fold the laundry.  Kevin then looked at 5 huge loads of laundry on Mo’s bed and said, “Deal.”  Maureen later told me that her boys are the only ones, who can get hurt, not once, but three times, folding laundry.  When they were FINALLY finished with chores, I came over so we could play laser tag outside.  (Super fun.  Seriously.  I think, perhaps, Mo and I had the most fun though, because eventually we needed to replace my nephews with neighbor kids when our boys got tired of playing. )  Then, I went to dinner with Debina at Chili’s, came home, and then went back to Chili’s with Mo, Do and Sue.  Can’t get enough of two for one beers I guess.  Sue was telling us they had a mini-meltdown in their house during Hanukkah.  Day one, the girls were given their big gift, and then on day two, they opened up sweatshirts.  Sue said that her daughter Stephanie started crying, and when she asked her what was wrong, she said, “It’s nothing.  I’m just crying about a dream I had.”  To which we laughed and Mo said, “Yea.  She dreamed you got her a sweatshirt.” 

Speaking of shirts, I noticed that my 6 year old nephew was wearing the soccer jersey that I got him in South Africa nearly 5 years ago.  He said he thought that it might be the last time he could wear it because he can no longer fit his head through the hole.  All-in-all, a pretty good run. 

New Year’s Eve morning started out with a text from Mo asking if I wanted to play racquetball.  Clearly, I was going to say yes, but then when Mo got my reply she realized how comfortable the couch was.   But I had already agreed so we were locked in.  Picture the WORST racquetball players, and then imagine that they have the skills to teach us how to play.  At first I thought we just had to play us against the wall, but Mo assured me that was not the case.  Then I suggested we play zones, I would play front, she would play back – this was terrible idea.  I just hope the guys we kicked out of the court so we could play didn’t look back to see the travesty we were making of the sport.  As you can imagine, Mo and I were giggling for all 30 minutes and then it was someone else’s turn.  (The next morning, I noticed a HUGE and very deep bruise on my upper thigh.  As I pondered this, Mo suggested it was probably when I got hit by the ball.  That makes sense – but I totally need to go see a doctor because there’s no way we hit the ball that hard.)

After that, we all went down to Sean’s for lunch and then both his family and Mo’s joined me on a walk around Tea Town Lake.  It was gorgeous, and I didn’t even need a jacket, on the last day of December (not that global warming exists or anything.  And not that I really understand what global warming is.)  At the end of the walk I snapped this picture, because signs are cruel (and funny.)

On our way down to pay a visit to Robin down the street, I took a picture of the neighbor’s house.  Earlier I had commented to my parent’s, “That’s a lot of crap on that lawn.” They didn’t think I was quite the right holiday spirit, but seriously, ammiright?

I had a totally low key New Year’s with take out and games at my parent’s.  Then I started 2012 off on the right foot.  It only took me ten minutes to check in and go through security at JFK on a holiday weekend AND I didn’t feel sick on the plane thanks to Mary’s suggestion of ginger pills!  I had so much extra time I checked out the book store in T5.  I don’t think they understand what “Children’s” means.  (But it sure is nice to see something I worked on on shelf!)

Kev-ooooo

My favorite present this year was from my nephew Kevin.  Tell me he isn't the cutest: 

Presents from Pop-Pops

Last week was filled with the usual holiday cheer. I saw Cinderella with Rach and Laina on Wednesday night.  We grabbed dinner beforehand, and when the waitress came over to us Laina called her by name (she wasn’t wearing a name tag), mentioned that she remembered her from when she worked at the Starbucks down the street and the usual pleasantries.  I was marveling at her memory when the waitress walked away and Laina said, “Yeah.  She’s the worst.  She is the only person that I have actually complained about to a manager.”  Just who you want serving you when you are running late to see a play. 

I flew home to New York on Thursday night and on my way home from the airport; Frita was telling me about teaching religious ed the night before.  Apparently he had been told that he would only have the students for ten minutes, but then suddenly he had them for 45 minutes with no lesson plan.  The night before he had “found” a book about Christmas and asked my mom if she had seen it before.  She explained that yes, she had seen it before because it was hers.  I had actually giving it to her last Christmas.  Anyway, with 45 minutes and a classroom full of 8^th graders looming in front of him, he pulled out this hardcover book about Christmas, ripped it apart and handed a couple pages to each of the students.  As he was relating this story again at Sean’s, my niece Bailey, who adores books, was shocked into laughter as she tried to process anyone, ever, desecrating a book like that.  When my mother complained, Frita said, “What, it only cost 3 dollars.” When he handed me back the dust cover (which was basically all that was left of the book, I pointed out that it was in fact a 15 dollar book, but whatev’s right, Momela?  

In Patrick’s (9) religion class, he actually volunteered to sing Silent Night (and he did know all the words without music) in front of the entire class.  I’m not sure his teacher knows what to do with him because she told Maureen that, “I try to trip him up all the time, but I just can’t stump him.  He’s a pain in the ass, but he sure does know his religion.”

We headed to my Brother Sean’s house to celebrate his birthday Friday night.  He arrived home wearing his traditional red corduroy sport coat.  Friday was also his second day at a new company, and the number two guy saw Sean in his holiday jacket and said, “You might not know this, but we have a policy here of not looking like a Jack*ss.”  Sean shrugged this off, but then as he was about to go down to the floor, the boss said, “You aren’t going on the floor like that are you?”

Sean: Yeah.

Boss: Don’t you want to put on a different jacket?

Sean: No.

Boss: Do you want to take your company badge off?

Sean: No.

Boss: Okay, fine.  Just don’t go on TV like that. 

Jackie showed us one of her soccer trophies that was super cool with color changing LED lights.  As she was excitedly showing off, Handel's Hallelujah Chorus

And Morgan looked at me and said, “Isn’t this the perfect song.” 

We also learned more about Bailey’s baby-sitting techniques.  She first told her younger sisters about someone who fell asleep and their sibling shaved off their eye brows.  Then every time her younger sisters bothered her or didn’t listen, she would just wipe her finger first across one eye brow, and then the other. 

Before we left Sean’s, among the Happy Birthday’s and See you tomorrow’s (we open presents at my parent’s house on Christmas Eve), Jackie announced, “If you don’t see me tomorrow, call 911 because someone has locked me in the basement.”  

I spent a couple hours Saturday morning making sure that not only would each person have their presents in a pile in front of them, but also when you looked at the presents as a whole they just looked like a big ole pile.  Then everyone arrived, and I was, as usual very anal about everyone getting into the room at the same time, and sitting in their assigned (by me) seats, and starting at the same time.  We go around the room one at a time.  On Kyle’s (6) 2^ndturn, he picked up a box that said, “Love Pop-Pops”.  We forgot to warn him about the “Love Pop-Pops/Dad” gifts, and before you knew it he had opened up a box of tissues.  The look of utter disappointment and anger rivaled those of the Jimmy Kimmel Kids

We tried in vain to explain that Frita wraps up odd gifts, but it was too late.  As my dad was opening a can of Cashews, Jackie said, “I wonder if this is Toilet Paper,” which is funny because that’s what Kyle has promised to get his Pop-Pops next year.  I got a box of stuff from 5^th grade (in an Always Maxi-Pad box).  Sean got an address book from when he was younger.  He read several entries and tried to put it away until Stacey called out his self-portrait.

Before we even sat down to open presents, Maureen taught Kyle how to get her beers from the keg outside.  Much later in the evening, when Maureen said, “Kyle!” he said, “Mom, it’s freezing outside.”  He still went out to get her beer, though he returned saying that the keg itself was frozen.   While Maureen was still shocked by this news, Sean went out, untapped the keg, cleaned out the frozen beer from the tap, then re-tapped the keg.  When she had finally gotten a beer in her hand, Maureen said to me, “Sometimes, I’m not sure about my brother’s love, but then he cleans out the keg for me, and then I know.  He really does love me.” 

I don’t want to brag, but I think he loves me too because look what he got me for Christmas:

I better get working on round two to catch up.  Happy New Year!