Tag: It’s Supposed to Be Funny

I’ve been on a soap kick lately. Usually I don’t go in for bar soap. I like the scrubby gel stuff. But I was at the Body Shop the other day and saw they had a bar soap version of my favorite face wash and I figured, what the hey. So I bought the soap. And I used it, and it was good.

But then my tiny little bar of soap ran out. I suspect it wasn’t designed for full-body use. It was just a little two-inch bar. But it ran out, and I was already in the habit of using a bar of soap in the shower. So I looked down and I saw this other bar of soap that I’d had for a while and decided that it would do.

Bad idea.

I think it was originally some kind of bathstuff gift to Valerie that somehow got to my place and never got used… um, because she doesn’t usually take baths at my place. But I figured somebody had better go ahead and use the stuff or we might as well throw it away. So I used it.

It was some kind of “moisturizing” hand-made stuff with giant swirls of purple that smelled like lavender. But it lathered and got me clean. And then I stepped out of the shower and my first thought was, “wow, I need deodorant.” My second thought was that maybe lavender swirls and male body odor were never meant to go together.

So I plastered the deodorant on thick this morning, and considered pasting the stuff over every inch of my body that I had previously desecrated with lavender swirls. I decided against it on the basis that two wrongs don’t make a right. And contorting my body around in front of the bathroom mirror while lathing deodorant on parts of my body where normally it would never go definitely counts as a wrong in my book.

As a result, today I smell like a purple flower, and I am carefully avoiding any kind of activity which might incite me to sweat, thereby forcing me to smell like purple flowers draped on a stinky horse. With any luck no one will stand close enough to me today to notice either way.

I have also sworn off ever again using any kind of soap which has been clearly designed for a woman.

First: my dearest one wrote a blog last night. You should go read it.

Second, my mom made a funny:

“Winter weather is something to be avoided — if possible by moving to Florida… I’m convinced it came as a result of the fall. “

Third, my mom has recently discovered the internet. She’s been all over the place, browsing movie previews, and reviews, and reading up on her favorite ministers’ daily publications… and forwarding this info to everyone she knows. She even got a Xanga site. The great irony is that, she has no problem sending out mass emails, but she has never—in however many months she’s had this thing—she’s never posted anything. The same goes for my dad. They both got weblogs purely for the sake of posting comments on their own children! I think this is a travesty. My dad can be forgiven on the basis that he really isn’t the broadcasting type (he could post jokes or something, though. My dad likes corny jokes). But my mom—that’s a lady who’s got a lot to say. And she’s saying it. You try having a conversation with her that only lasts 5 minutes. But not on her weblog. I think everybody should go comment on her site and force her to say something. But that’s just me.

And now, the news in brief.

Actually, I’m not in my briefs. I’m in my nice work clothes, ready to go nowhere. I’ve had a job for two days and they already sent me home. We had a record-breaking snow last night. 14 inches. That’s the most in one night that I ever remember (Obviously, I’ve never lived in Montana). I left yesterday at 3. I was supposed to stay till 5 (the call-center must go on, regardless of weather), but the police and the national guard and the secret service were all apparently escorting a bush down by our building and they had to shut the road down from 3-6. I had the option of leaving at either 3:00 or 6:00. Since my trainer had been stuck in the mountains since I started working, I wasn’t exactly accomplishing anything, so I went ahead and left at 3.

Then it showed another 10 inches. So now I have time to write a blog.

Actually, it’s a pretty great story. The day before there was all this “winter weather advisory” stuff going on. I didn’t believe it. You know how the south is. They announce that there’s going to be a few inches of snow and everybody storms the grocery stores, stocking up on milk, water, bread, and frozen TV dinners. No, I’m serious. I always wondered what they were going to do with frozen TV dinners when the power went out. Now I know. What if the power is just fine, but you can’t drive your car?

Anyway, we got this email at work that day saying that, no matter what, even if the rest of the company closed up shop and went home, we’d be there. Because we’re the response center. We have to respond to people who don’t have nice cushy excuses like a foot of snow to keep them from calling in prayer requests and book purchases. The only thing that’s going to stop us is if the power goes out. No problem for me. I don’t think it’s going to snow. So I get up that morning, and fail to make a lunch for myself, knowing that my job is only 15 minutes from my house and I can always come back for food. And I go to work. And it starts snowing just as I hit the roads. And it keeps on snowing. And I get out of morning devotion (I love a job that has morning devotions) and they’ve blocked the back route to my building because somebody might slip on the stairs, because there’s an inch of snow. Wimpy southerners. An inch of snow.

And it keeps on snowing.

Come lunch time, I realize I’m in trouble. I didn’t bring a lunch. My car is covered in 3 inches of snow. Getting the car cleared is not the problem. Getting home through the snow and panicked drivers and back again in less than an hour is the problem. So I am reminded of the cafeteria in our complex, two buildings over. OK. I’ll just eat there. It’ll ruin my budget, but I’m really hungry. And even the best budged cannot stand against the pangs of hunger.

So I go outside, and it’s snowing. Pretty hard. Maybe 3 inches of snow already cover the ground. I’m wearing loafers. No problem. I’ll drive my car two buildings over to eat, and then drive back. Of course, I don’t clear off my car or anything. I’m just driving within the complex, not even going on a real street. I just get in the car, turn on the wipers, and go. So I’ve got bad tunnel vision. So what? Nobody else is driving in this stuff. They’ve all gone home already.

I get to the place, which is miraculously still open, have myself an amazing greasy cheeseburger, and head back to my car.

It’s been snowing for half an hour so thick you can’t see through it.

After I find my car, I attempt to get back to my office the same way I left. I turn on the wipers and go. It’s just 2 buildings over. Yeah. If you turn right instead of left. I thought there were only three buildings in our complex, all lined around a little U. Well now I know that there are at least 7. I’m not sure exactly what I did. Well, actually, I do know what I did, but I can’t describe it to you any more than I could do it again. If I turned right, I would have gone back to the main street, which I did not want to do. But apparently I took the wrong left. All I know is that when I went there, it was all over level ground. But when I went back, I suddenly found my self sliding up a hill covered in snow. I couldn’t do it.

I got out of my car, cleared a few windows and looked around. I was on a hill. There was a building far off to port. And I was not in Kansas anymore. I had no idea where I was, or how to get back. I had only driven maybe a tenth of a mile.

So I backed down the steep slope and pulled into the parking lot of the unfamiliar building. I trudged through the snow, up a flight of steps, and walked inside. I was very pleased to see that this building had the same doormat as mine. It meant I wasn’t in wonderland or anything. Then I looked up. The sign said ‘Wells Fargo delivery entrance.” Scratch that. Back in wonderland.

I wandered around to the front of the building, found somebody by the door and said, “Hi. I’m lost. Can you tell me where I am?” It was two ladies, I guess housekeeping, waiting for a ride.

“Well, you’re at Wells Fargo,” they said.

Thanks.

“Where are you trying to get to?”

“Well, I’m trying to get to Billy Graham. Can you tell me the
quickest way to get there on foot?” Great. Now I sound like some
kind of wacko. I’m seeking the great Dalai Lama.

“On foot?”

“Yeah. My car’s a little stuck.”

“Well, you turn left on *&^, and then go across to…

“No wait. Then he’ll be going across a busy intersection…”

Intersection? Now wait. I may be lost, but one thing I know is that there is no busy intersection between me and where I want to go. Then it hits me. Two streets over is the Billy Graham Parkway. Named after Billy Graham, whom I work for. Trust a famous evangelist to put his offices in the vicinity of a street named after him. Not that I blame him. I think the road actually goes on land that used to be his property.

“No no, wait. I mean the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association,
where I work.”

“Well where’s that?”

“Um, buildings one and two?”

“Wow. You really are lost. You’re in building seven.”

“Excuse me, sir. If you’re going to be in this building, I’m going to have to ask you to sign the guestbook.”

I’m lost and I’m going to be late for work and the big guy in the black uniform with a gun wants me to sign his guestbook? There are so many things wrong with this picture. But the housekeeping ladies explained to him what I was doing there and that I was lost and stuff, at which point the security guy insisted that he was the only one who was authorized to give directions to stranded wayfarers. Which is fine by me. I don’t rightly care who directs me as long as I get where I’m supposed to be going. So he says, you head out the way that you came and you find the road and you turn that way, and stay on the road and you’ll come right around to building 1. I think he was more focused on me heading out the way that I came than making sure I got to the right place, since I didn’t really understand which way “that way” was, but I can follow the road just fine.

Except that every road does at least two ways. The right way and the wrong way. I walked back to my car, and then up the way that my car had gotten stuck and kept on going. I figured out pretty quick that I was still lost, since I was suddenly surrounded with trees and farming equipment. But it was snowing thick and I was on a road that was sure to have people on it sooner or later, and I didn’t want to go back to the Guestbook Gestapo. So I trudged.

And I trudged

And eventually I came to a street. The sign said Yorkmont, which is the street that you come down to get to the BGEA every day. Heading one way was a long line of cars heading back to the main road, which is where you come from when you are heading to work. Since all the cars were obviously driving home early from work, I figured I was found enough to know that I, who was going to work should go the opposite way. So I trudged.

And I trudged.

All this is in my brown penny loafers, mind you. I had a good thick coat on, but my shoes were slip-ons, and we’re up to about 5 inches right now.. So I trudged in the street. In the median that had been created by cars driving only in the ruts of previous cars. And I trudged. Finally, a kid my age who was driving my way, stopped and asked me if I wanted a ride. Heck yeah.

So I hop in, and he’s asking me where I’m trying to go, and I’m explaining that I’m totally lost. Finally I said I was trying to get to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (as if he actually will know where that is), and he says, “Well that’s behind us.” I looked up, and sure enough, in front of us is the Farmer’s Market, a landmark which I have never before seen. Once again, I had turned left when I should have turned right. The kid was nice, and offered to turn around and drive me over, but I could tell the nightmare that would be, for him to turn around. There were no driveways on the right side of the road, and turning left meant getting traffic to stop for us. Twice. I thanked him and said not to worry about it. I can trudge much faster when I know where I’m going.

Actually, I jogged. The “median” wasn’t that deep, only an inch or so, and traffic was moving very slow. I passed maybe 15 cars on my way back. It was maybe a quarter mile before I saw a familiar building. From behind. Across an open snow-covered field. It was either walk around the street way, an extra quarter mile or so, or shoot straight across a field with 5-6 of snow. Heh heh. My feet were already wet anyway.

So clomp clomp clomp to the back of the building, then hedge between building and shrub, around that narrow spot where the only space between the corner of the building and the 2-foot deep fountain is the 6-inch ledge of the holding tank, and on to the previously referred to blocked-off sidewalk. Under the yellow tape and into sweet warmness. My lunch was only an hour and 20 minutes. Pretty good time for getting lost, I think.

But the great irony: Now get this. When I came back in and apologized and told me story (in brief) to people in charge… My team leader. Bless her heart. She told me they had food provided for us, in the bad weather.

I have a very important message to bring you about Dairy Queen: They’re evil. Evil I tell you. Temptation central. And it’s only compounded by the fact that there are so few of them left in the world.

I’m a very neat eater. I’m not finicky, but I almost never have to use my napkin. I feel like a failure if I have to clean up after myself. I’m prone to eating restaurant french fries with a fork. Yet I have a weakness for Dairy Queen. And not just any kind of Dairy Queen treat—dip cones. Yes, my friends, dip cones. The most vile form of consumable malfeasance known to man. See, it happened like this:

I was out on an afternoon jaunt—nothing really, just a tireless quest to find a real Christian bookstore in Charlotte. I heard that the Family Christian Store had a place in Charlotte, on the southside, and I set out to find it. Only took me about 2 hours driving up and down the same street, searching every shopping center. When I finally found it in the last shopping center on my list, I suddenly realized that it was Sunday, and all good Christian stores are closed on Sunday. I was reminded this by a neat little “Closed” sign on the door at Family Christian. As a result, I am still unaware if there is a real Christian Bookstore in Charlotte. From the outside, it looked disturbingly like your standard taffeta flavored Christian Boutique.

So, there I was, driving off, distraught as could be, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a Dairy Queen. Dairy Queens have dip cones. How could I resist? Immediately, I pulled back into the back access, and drove all the way around to the store. I checked my wallet. Two Dollars. I went in and checked the prices for dip cones. A small was $169.

I knew it was wrong. I knew that Dip Cones were the messiest method humanly possible to consume ice cream. I knew that messy eating was anathema to everything I stand for. Nevertheless, I could not resist. I was weak. So I patiently stood in line, and when it was my turn, I asked that question:

“What flavors of dip cones do you have?” And came the answer:

“We have chocolate, cherry, and butterscotch.”

Butterscotch, the rarest of rarities, barring toffee crunch. The Cheap-o DQ’s I was used to only ever had chocolate.

From here, the events were inevitable.

I bought my Dip Cone, knowing full well that the car I was driving had no power steering, and a tendency to die at stop lights. Knowing full well that I had to make at least two right turns from a full stop to get home. What I didn’t know was that a “small” dip cone at this particular DQ was “only” seven inches tall, including the actual cone. It was raining outside. My clothing didn’t have a chance.

DQ has soft-serve ice cream. Really soft-serve. A Wendy’s Frosty is thicker than a DQ ice cream cone. And Wendy’s is so messy I refuse to ever eat there. I had a drop of ice cream on my pants before I even got in the car.

I set myself straight to work, backing out of my parking space and licking frantically. I cleaned up the between the hard shell of and the cone and started biting down the top. You have to get to the ice cream immediately, or by the time you get through the hard shell, it will all be liquid. But I was too slow. Biting the top caused the shell to , releasing leaks all over the cone. Just as I was pulling on to the highway, I made the bite, and three huge pieces of hard shell broke off. One fell on my shirt, one on my pants, and one flipped up onto my nose and all over my mouth. Each piece had it’s own coterie of thoroughly melted ice cream. I couldn’t do anything about it but to continue merging onto the highway.

The rest of the trip home consisted of attempting to get the cone under sufficient control so that I could reach down and try to salvage the hard shell all over my clothes. I had to eat the remaining pieces of shell that stayed on the ice cream in precisely such a way as to avoid getting another nose-barrage. When I finally go to the hard shell on my shirt, it wasn’t hard any more.

It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya. DQ is out to get me. But I’ll show them. Tomorrow, when I go to Family Christian to apply for a part time job (and if that fails, there was a used bookstore next door), I’m going to sit myself right down and order another dip cone and eat it right there in the store. I’m going to prove that I can eat it without dripping a single drop.

I will not be conquered by nothing more than cream and sugar!!