Monday, September 08, 2008

Things You Don't Want

Something you don’t want to have happen to you three days before you leave for a cruise:

To be in charge of the fun, exciting, smiley-face rainbow concession stand for PTO Skate Night, which means you will spend an hour moving heavy boxes of soda and candy from the storage room at the school to your car. You will be sweating like a pig from the manual labor and then you will drop one of the boxes on your ankle because the cardboard was cheap and flimsy and I swear you will think you have broken whatever that top part of your ankle is called and you will seriously consider renting a wheelchair for the cruise because my God how much do those Airheads weigh anyway and did the school kids in the cafeteria hear me cussing????


Something you don’t want to have happen to you two days before you leave for a cruise:

To realize one of the bags of ice that you had in the back of your van for the not-as-much-fun-now Skate Night Fundraiser was forgotten, and melted, and now the back of your van smells like an animal died and rotted in it. And not a teeny tiny sweet-smelling animal, either, like a cute little chipmunk or bunny rabbit. I’m talking big, stinky, gut-rot odor like you would get from a dead yak. And you’ll have to run all your last-minute errands with that stench filling your nostrils and you will wonder if there is enough Febreze on the entire planet to help.


Something you don’t want to have happen to you the day before you leave for a cruise:

To realize that when you were unloading (see above) bags of ice out of your deep freeze in the garage for the )#($*#(%&#)* Skate Night, that you accidentally left the freezer door cracked, and all your meat thawed and is now dripping down the inside of the deep freeze. And you will beg your husband to brown all the hamburger meat, and boil all the chicken, and separate the meat out and put it in freezer baggies so you can re-freeze all of it, because my GOD you are leaving in less than eight hours and you haven’t even finished the laundry, let alone started packing, and I swear if you have to stand here for two hours cooking all the meat you will have a nervous breakdown and never be ready for your 5 am flight tomorrow…..whimper.


Something you don’t want to have happen to you on your first day of vacation:

To discover that the hotel you are staying at, while very nice and pretty and happy, apparently can’t handle the electrical demand of dual-hairdryers, because while you are blow-drying your hair in the bedroom, and then your mother turns on *her* blow dryer in the bathroom, you will blow the fuse in the room and every outlet except ONE will be non-working, so you will then flat-iron your hair while sitting on the mini-bar because good grief, birds will try to nest in it otherwise.

Something you don’t want to have happen to you on your second day of the cruise:

To be sitting in the beautiful atrium on the ship, enjoying Wi-Fi internet, and the breathtaking scenery, and listening to the strains of the wonderful string quartet before dinner, only for the musicians to break into a haunting rendition of the theme to Titanic.

Seriously?????

That doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

PS. Grandma J, are you here????

PPS. Going on a float plane in Ketchikan with my mom today ..... if that doesn't promote mother-daughter bonding, I don't know what will!!!

15 comments:

Wonderful World of Weiners said...

Laughed my ass off at it all (sorry, but it's funny!) until the Titanis music. That shits nothing to joke about!!

Btw, why did ice melting smell so bad?

Hallie

Melissa said...

Ugh, I imagine the melted ice caused stinky mildew back there. I've forgotten a load of wet clothes in the washer before for a couple days, and they have to be thrown out because the smell will never leave. The Titanic thing would make me nervous too! When my brother married his 2nd wife, she had music from 'Titanic' playing during the wedding and processional. We knew that was a bad sign since the Titanic sank, and so did the marriage 5 months later! Hope you fared better! The freezer thing could be worse. We went on vacation once and returned to discover that our freezer had stopped working while we were gone, and the meat inside was rotten and full of maggots. Needless to say, we had the whole thing hauled off to the dump..

Anonymous said...

Aaarrrggghhhh....small planes! Please! BE! CAREFUL!!!!!! From someone who has worked at Boeing for 30+ years and doesn't trust anything smaller than a 737.....

Anonymous said...

I hope you're having an otherwise wonderful time! What's creepy to me, though, is why the melted ice was smelly. I've seen news documentaries about the germs in some ice dispensers. That's scary!

Claire in Indiana

Anonymous said...

Sorry things were so hectic before your trip. You are so funny. BTW Grandma J is there, she blogged today!

Have a great trip,

Postcard Cindy

J-Quell'n said...

LOL dead yak...LOL

Libby said...

Kristie --

Thank you, thank you, thank you! That may be your funniest post ever! Definitely brightened my day! It's obvious you're enjoying yourself - keep it up!

Libby

Anonymous said...

I know you're off galavanting while some of us stay home and WORK, but had to tell you this, guess who just joined the Memorial board? Think about it... wait for it... ah, Steve V. of Sonic fame! And, yes, in case you're wondering,I told him we are friends:) Have fun and we'll see you when you get home!

Stacia said...

Ok, you have me convinced that you deserved this cruise. I hope things go smoothly from here on out. Enjoy!

Diana893 said...

Ugh nasty with the ice!

So I just noticed on the sidebar that you're reading The Bell Jar... me too! Technically it's a school assignment for psych nursing, but I'm finding it very interesting thus far. Would love to hear your take on it!

Hope the rest of the cruise goes smoothly... have fun!

Anonymous said...

omg! the Titanic theme? On a CRUISE SHIP? Who's the genius (said very sarcastically) who came up with that brilliant play list?!?!

Missy K said...

Sorry but I read "Theme from Titanic" & I started laughing my butt off. Who else but you...*shakes head*...LOL!

Have a wonderful trip.

Anonymous said...

BTW - I just purchased one of those adult trikes ("ship to store" option) now. Thanks for the inspiration! -dq

Musings from Me said...

You and your van... didn't you discover a maggoty filled bag of pool supplies this summer as well?!? Not that I would know anything about smells...

A couple of years ago we noticed--and by noticed I mean it hit us square in the face--a rotting, dead animal type smell. Could not figure out what it was. Then made the connection that a mouse or mice had climbed in to our heating system and promptly died. Never found the carcasses, but did set a trap in the car and caught a mouse. How gross. I never saw a mouse, either, just tons of mouse droppings. With lots of car deodorizer the small faded...however I despised the van after that. Yuck.

Anonymous said...

That thing that happened to you with the freezer door? I've done that. Except I wasn't bright enough to think to cook the hamburger, chicken, etc... and I threw it all out while I cried. It was our BIG freezer, the one I put all my make-ahead meals in, all the bought-on-sale meat, all that jazz. I cried big fat tears over the money wasted, the time spent buying the food and packaging it for the freezer.

And now I'm ticked at myself for not thinking of cooking the food!! I could have done that with at least some of it, saved myself a lot of heartache. Ah, well...