BloggingDangerously

Searching for Love...

On Valentine's night my 6 year old realized she had lost Ollie's ring.

She was certain she'd taken it off at the kitchen table after school when all four children had opened 25 Valentines (that's 100 if you're counting.)

My kitchen table was a catastrophe so my husband told them to clean it up. They threw out half the stuff, recycled half the stuff and put the rest (yes I'm a math major) back in their "mailboxes" (aka decorated paper bags.)

I feared the worst - that the ring had been thrown out.

To find it I moved EVERY SINGLE thing from the trash to another trash bag - this includes EACH greenbean that my husband threw out today - maybe 100 of them. At one point, as I was digging through garbage my 6 yo said to me, "I feel SO BAD FOR YOU right now." I glared at her and dropped a green bean.

"Can you get that?" I asked. "NO WAY." she answered. I glared again so she went over, grabbed a paper towel and picked it up using the paper towel as a shield. She is a diva. The ring was not in the trash.

My husband had had the kids put the newspaper (and valentine card envelope) recycling into paper bags to be taken to the paper recycling place. There were 6 of them. I dumped each one out and wen through every scrap of paper. The ring was not in the recycling.

I swept EVERY SINGLE Lego/crumb/crayon/etc out from under the baseboard in my kitchen. The ring was not in the kitchen.  

Nor was it in my daughter's school bag, the bathroom, on the kitchen counter, etc.

My Aunt Edie (great aunt actually) always had a knack for finding things. She died in 1982 but whenever I need help finding something I ask her for help and it works. So I did. I looked up and said, "Can you PLEASE help me find Ollie's ring?" Then I walked into the living room and it was shining in the middle of the floor.

My husband thinks that I should have walked in there before I dug through the trash. I think that I had to earn the right to find it by being willing to do almost anything.

I dont know which one of us is right but it doesn't matter.

To tell you the truth I didnt look for Ollie's ring for my daughter. I looked for it for Ollie. I didn't want him to think that he had been that sweet and she hadn't cared enough to keep it safe.

Now I dont know if I should give it back to her!

Dear 17 Year Old Me, He's Not That Scary

I spent the last couple of days in New Jersey. Stop it! Don't be jealous.

I was supposed to go down on Monday but delayed my trip a day due to the blizzard. (I keep meaning to tell you about my amazing weekend but then my life gets in the way.)

Anyway, I flew down Tuesday night and immediately started feeling sick. At first I thought it was Newark airport - which should be it's own level of hell - but as time went by it became clear that I really was getting sick.

I refuse to acknowledge illness because I feel it means that it has won, so I cranked the heat in my hotel room to 75 degrees, put on THICK wool socks and fleece pajamas and crawled into bed.  Then I covered my body with the extra pillows on my bed and fell asleep.

I woke up around 2am drenched in sweat.  I feel back to sleep and woke up healthy.  I don't know why it works but it does.

I had a meeting from 8:30 until 3 - I was EXHAUSTED when it was over - but I had to hustle back to the airport.  I'd already missed my 3:30 flight and rebooked on a 5pm.

I got to Newark, returned my car and raced to security.  It was PACKED.  I appealed to the TSA agent - "my flight boards in 10 minutes."

He looked at me and shook his head, "You're never going to make it."

Those TSA people really are helpful.

I ran to the next gate and begged the first class agent to let me through their line.  He agreed.  I made it through the SLOWEST security lane ever and raced to my gate.

When I got there I saw a guy on the other side of the gate who looked very familiar.

Then I realized that he looked like someone I went to high school with.  But really, what are the odds that someone I went to high school with 24 years ago would look similar enough that I would recognize him? - so I didn't say anything.

They boarded my zone and when I got to my (middle) seat, guess who was already in the window seat?

You guessed it.

I thought I might ask him where he went to high school.  Or less creepy, ask him if he went to my high school but the truth is that back in high school he was super popular (in an athletic, party-boy sort of way) and I was popular in a "who's that junior in the AP calculus class" sort of way (or, you know, not.)

Back in high school I barely knew his name - but I remember thinking he was HOT.

And the guy sitting beside me was attractive - but the guy I remembered had gorgeous blonde hair and this guy was totally gray.  And the guy I remembered was VERY attractive and so was this guy, but WAY, WAY shorter than I remembered.

Anyway, I was sure it both WAS and WASN'T him.

And then he pulled out his boarding pass and I almost popped my eyes out trying to read his name.  

BINGO.  It was him.

So I said, "Want to hear a funny story?" and he said, "Sure."

And I said, "I saw you in the terminal and I thought 'that guy looks like someone I went to High School with' but I figured it couldn't be so I didn't say anything.  But when I saw you sitting here I thought, "Wow you really should ask him if he went to XX High School."

(At the mention of our high school he smiled.)

Then I admitted seeing his name before I decided to talk to him.

He was VERY, VERY nice and we enjoyed a lovely 90 minute conversation back to Boston.  I can HONESTLY tell you that in 4 years of high school we never exchanged 5 minutes of conversation so it was funny to talk so easily about everything from work to family to blizzards.

We said goodbye at the gate in Boston, promised to see each other at the next reunion and went our separate ways.

When I got home I had a nice email from him via linkedin saying how nice it was to chat.

 I wish I could go back 24 years and tell myself that he wasn't half as scary as I'd imagined.

Actually I wish I could tell myself that about a lot of things.

And, HOLY FUCK! 24 years?

The Cutest Valentine's Day Story Ever

When I got home from my business trip last night my 6yo daughter showed me her "new ring."  

"I love it!" I told her and asked, "Where did you get it?"

"At school." she told me.

This morning I got the details.

"So where did you get the ring?" I asked her.

"From Ollie." she told me. (Note: Ollie was her best friend in preschool for 3 years and is now in her kindergarten class.)

"Was it wrapped?" I asked her - wondering if Ollie had lifted it from his sister's jewelry box.

She nodded.

"How did he give it to you?"

"He said 'This ring is for you.'" she told me.

My husband jokingly asked, "Did he get down on one knee?"

She nodded!

"Wait, WHAT!?" we both said.  "Tell us what happened."

So she told us how Ollie had asked her to come into the bathroom with her (their kindergarten class has a single person bathroom that they share with the neighboring classroom.)

Then he pulled the box out from behind his back, got down on one knee and said, "This ring is for you."

Then he stood up and she hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

Then I died from the cuteness.

Here is a picture of her new ring...

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love you. That is all.

Antidisestablishmentarianism

I'm working on a long post about our weekend but for right now this is the best I can do...

We got home from snowboarding on Sunday afternoon to find 30 inches of snow on our front yard.

THANKFULLY I had had the presence of mind to call my neighbor and beg her to send her plow guy over to our house so the driveway was plowed. Honestly after the weekend I'd had snowboarding I could NOT have shoveled all that snow.

Even with the driveway plowed there was still a lot of shoveling to be done before we could get into the house and the kids weren't dressed to be outside so I decided to take the kids and drive over to the beach house to make sure it was ok while my husband shoveled a walkway into the house and made sure everything was okay inside.

When I got out of the passenger side and walked around to the drivers side my husband opened the door to the back seat to kiss the kids goodbye.

I saw my opening and I took it.  I grabbed a chunk of snow from the ground and lobbed it into the backseat.

It arced over my husbands head, sending slow down onto the back of his neck and sailed across the three kids in the back seat, landing in the far child's lap (my DARLING daughter.)

My son yelled, "Give me the snow!" to my daughter so that he could fire it back at me.

"No!" she objected making sure he couldn't retaliate.

"HIPPIE!" he yelled.