the t-shirt

We were shopping in Macy's yesterday and Owen found a tshirt that he would not leave the store without. No tantrums, really, he was just completely enamored with it and was desperate to add it to his wardrobe. (yeah, that's code for Tantrum) Anyway, it's red with grey long sleeves sticking out and there's a huge yellow dump truck on the front and huge obnoxious letters that say, "Ask Me About Trucks." He wore it to school today and showed all his friends.

"The worst job ever"

Usually I play this game in a very hypothetical manner. Like, a nightmare job for me would be scraping road kill or manning a toll booth. But since I seem to complain about the lovely, irritating, life-saving, soul-sucking bittersweet job that is managing these apartments more often than not these days, Doug and I got into a great conversation about who's worked the worst job. While he was in grad school, I was an Admitting clerk in a hospital from 5:00am to 1:30pm. I chose those hours so I could pick up sophie from preschool at 2pm and we wouldn't need all day daycare or a nanny. Unfortunately, my internal alarm wakes me around 8am, you can imagine how much i really loved that job. The hospital and the ghettoplex have to be my worst jobs EVER. Oh, wait. There was that marketing group that locked me in when the left because it was in an unsafe neighborhood in Vegas. And this is choice, one of my duties as their receptionist was to give dental referrals like 1-800-dentist. The only problem was these guys never got any dentists to sign up for the service after they put an ad in the yellow pages, so I would literally pick some random dentist out of the phone book and fake referrals like i knew all about them. hello, crazytown. Anyway, that's me. All legitimately crap jobs, I believe i've earned the right to complain.

So then we started going through Doug's jobs that span about 2 of our early marriage/student years. Ditch digger, camera salesman (you really have to know doug to get how truly hilarious/painful this one is) , unloading 50 foot trailers full of cabinet in july heat, reposessor for a Rent-to-own store, dental lab assistant, warehouse guy in a photo lab, server at Tony Roma's, busboy at another restaurant (even after every last freshman in his training group was promoted, he, at 25, remained a busboy.) There are more, I'm sure and yes, it's a bad list, but everyone works bad jobs.

There is one more, however, that takes the cake. Doug worked at the Tropicana Casino in Vegas taking photos of all of the lovely people who come to see a show. You know, think Disneyland in front of Cinderella's castle. They'll take your pic and then charge you 50 bucks if you want to take it home. Well, there's Doug working two shows the 7 and the 10 o clock show in a really bad white jacket/black pants tux with a red bow tie and cummerbund snaping photos of people sitting in their booths during dinner. Then he'd go back into the showroom later and try to sell them back to the folks. What I didn't realize was the 10 oclock show was a topless show so what he was really doing was selling crappy photos in a sleaze-bag casino to a bunch of pervs. He won. That's the worst. I'd rather listen to helen in 111 in her phlemy NY accent complain about leaky faucets and running toilets any day.

Our Hank

Henrietta Jordan, or Hank as she likes to be called, lived 2 doors down from us in our old apartment complex for about 3 years. She's 87 years old and had a career in working the business of animation. Not the creative side, she reminds us. She worked with the execs. She had no children but absolutely loved all the kids living in that complex. Every week she would bring us popcorn that she got from the farmers market on Sunday morning and would just hug and kiss my kids until they wanted to run away. She's a great lady.

When we moved away, we said, "oh, we'll definitely keep in touch. We'll have you over for dinner and swing by whenever we're in the neighborhood." Cut to 2 years later and we haven't seen her, talked to her or even sent her pictures of the kids. I know, nice on us. Anyway, we all went and had lunch with her yesterday and she told me the most amazing stories about how she met her husband and what he was like before he died in 1976. It was really sweet. Her favorite story was that he was gone for two years during WWII and when he got home he told her that he slept with a girl while he was in Paris. She said "Well, Eddie. I didn't expect you to not do anything for two years...a person could get sick going that long without fooling around." Hmmm. That's one perspective, I guess. His buddies told him it would be crazy to tell her about it, but he said he knew he could tell her and it would be ok. Apparently, he was right. I've always had the feeling she was a very progressive lady in her day. Real spicy if you know what I mean. She didn't mention what was happening on this side of the atlantic during his two year stint.

A little family competition

We had a dance off tonight after dinner. Sophie danced to a song from "High School Musical" her new favorite soundtrack, I got a little funky with a song by Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, and Owen's was the best of all. He had an air battle with his red light saber and an invisible foe for the entire duration of the Star Wars main theme. It's no 3 minute version either. It's the full blown 8 minute Main Theme version from the original film. Fantastic. He ended with both arms holding his light saber straight up in the air to the ceiling. His cheeks were getting squished between his elbows and sophie was laughing so hard she nearly wet her pants. At the end of the dance off, we all deemed ourselves the winner and Owen asked if he could do it again.

The Real Beauty Shots

parallelograms and trapezoids

Have had a bit of deja vu tonight. Except in my earlier experience i was at the table spouting on about obtuse and acute triangles.( i'm certain my family can attest to how angles of all kinds consumed me as a child.) That was 1983. This time around Sophie was at the table and i was in the kitchen making dinner and she asked, "Can a square and a rhombus ever be congruent? ummmmmmm. "Let's see, what do you think, Soph?" That moment I had two thoughts. Thought #1: It's really sad that I don't know this. Where's my computer, i need to google. Thought #2: Do I really have a child old enough to be learning geometry? And if the answer is yes, when did this happen? About 2 seconds ago she was 4 and learning to swim in the kidney shaped pool in our old apartment. Actually, if you want to know the truth, about 2 seconds ago, I was running down the driveway of 1411 Cordova Circle in a white pioneer dress, wool knee socks and black patten leather shoes chasing our crazy dog Bucky who would take off like a rocket if we cracked the door to his pen even the tiniest bit. What's great is the only way to get him back was to lure him with a trail of white bread. Once he took off running you could hear us all yelling, "get the bread" and someone would come flying out the front door with the Wonder bread bag in hand ready to assist the dog home. (In case it isn't obvious, the sentimentality begins to ooze just after midnight at my place. Especally when Doug is gone and I'm left with my own brain for too long.) Anyway, what do you do, it's not 1983. Sophie is mastering her multiplication tables and this summer Owen will be 4 and ready for swim lessons. Don't tell the kids, but maybe it's time for a dog.