Sick

I have been sinus/allergy sick over the weekend. We celebrated Jenn and Ricky’s wedding and Leah celebrated Elliott with the Carters today. I am a really pathetic person when it comes to being sick. Leah can attest to that. So that’s all the celebrating I could handle this weekend.

Dance Like a Chicken Day

Kim Landrum has been waiting for this day all week and even though this probably isn’t what she expected, I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Sorry about my interrupting laughter, but it was really funny watching my wife turn my son into a little bobble-head doll.  You also might have noticed that his attention is directly on the tv.  We found a youtube video with cartoon chickens dancing through the entire song.  He was absolutely mesmerized.  I took a try at getting him to dance as well, but between my total lack of rhythm, inability to dance, and continually forgetting how the dance went, it looked like I was just flopping my son around and was a bit more disturbing than it was entertaining.  Hopefully he will have my dancing ability so I won’t have to worry about him ever wanting to go clubbin’.

Happy Dance Like a Chicken Day!

It’s Frog Jumping Day

This day has been set aside to commemorate Mark Twain’s short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.  So, I found the short story and I read it.  A little bit odd, but pretty entertaining.  I mean, you gotta feel pretty good about a story that includes a reverend, a dog fight won by a two legged dog, the dog he killed named Andrew Jackson, and a frog jumping contest won by the frog that didn’t get stuffed full of quail shot.  Not a bad story at all.

I also decided that I should celebrate in at least one other way.  The name of the holiday is fairly ambiguous and therefore allows for the day to be celebrated by frogs that are jumping or by people who jump over frogs.  It’s a very similar situation to the phrase “one eyed one horn flying purple people eaters.”  I mean, is the song about a monocle-wearing unicorn monster with wings of a purplish hue that eats people?  Or is the song about a monster that eats flying purple people with a cyclops beneath their horn?  Anyhow, since I don’t have a frog to make jump, I decided to jump over a frog.

And that’s how I celebrated Frog Jumping Day.

There Once Was a Day For the Limerick…

On the day the world celebrates nurses
And Arizona is the home to lost purses
Well we got all stressed out
But we tried hard not to pout
I am sure glad we didn’t resort to lame curses.

Oh beware the Ministry Of Women’s Affairs.
It takes a password to access their lairs.
Don’t be fooled by the smiles on their faces.
Or the quilts they make with ruffles and laces.
At the end of the day they’ll attack you in pairs.

Well I guess that this one is it
I hope Limerick Days been a hit
Tomorrow is Leprechaun Day
Those green munchkins sure know how to play
And are a bit scary, I have to admit.

The Adventure of the Purse

Sorry I didn’t get a blog post up yesterday, but it was a bit too dramatic around here for typing.  I don’t remember most of yesterday, but Sunday we had leftover food and so I told Leah we could have some people over to eat some of it on Tuesday.  Monday I got a facebook invitation to about 40 people from church.  So, we had about 20 coming over for dinner.

About five o’clock, I get a call from Homeland that my wife has lost (or got stolen) her purse and she was on her way home.  I immediately began trying to cancel credit cards and deactivate her phone.  Over the next hour, we began calling everybody who could shut down anything related to anything that was in her purse.  To people who carry purses, here are five things you should know:

1. Purses left alone in shopping carts in parking lots won’t stay there long.
2. It’s a bad idea to write your online banking password on the same piece of paper as all of your account numbers.
3. It’s a good idea to require a password to access your iPhone.
4. It’s a bad idea to keep the keys to your husband’s truck in your purse when you fail to follow the instructions included with #1 above.
5. When you take pictures of everything valuable in your home for insurance purposes in case a tornado hits, don’t leave your camera somewhere where it can be taken by somebody who also has your address.

We managed to get everything closed while our friends started arriving from church.  I should also mention that we have amazing friends who just made themselves at home and started cooking, grilling, and having a great time.  It was perfect.  So once we were done closing everything, we got to go have a party with our friends and put our anxiety on hold.  It was so much fun hanging out with everyone.  Also, it was “eat what you want day” so we had burgers with friends.  It was such a blessing to have everybody here on a difficult evening.

Eventually everybody left and we went back to stressing about the purse.  Leah was very nervous and paranoid so she programmed the house alarm (we have lived here four months now and didn’t even know the alarm code until last night).  We somehow managed to cram the truck into the garage.  We spent some time in prayer together.  And at some point we went to bed.  I actually went to sleep immediately while Leah stayed up all night scared of every noise.

This morning we went and replaced her driver’s license, closed all of our bank accounts and opened new ones.  This was actually kind of nice because we had just kind of thrown our accounts together when we got married and had one or two I couldn’t access and one we didn’t really use any more and all of our checks had old information on them, so we finally have all of our bank accounts managed well, so that’s kinda nice.  We then went to the apple store and replaced her iPhone (not cheap) and she came home filed a police report and started putting fraud alerts on all of the credit monitoring groups.

While she was doing that, I am finally at work and get a phone call from a Hawaii cell phone.  She says she doesn’t really know who she is calling but she just found a bag with stuff in it at a Chevron in Arizona, about an hour west of Gallup, New Mexico.  I tell her it’s my wife’s and ask what is in it and it still has the phone, the camera, the keys, chapstick, the billfold with cards, her license, and most if not all of the money.  I asked her if she would be willing to overnight the purse back to us using the money and got her phone number and address so I could send her a reward/thank you for returning it (which I will send upon receiving the purse).

So to review, 24 hours after the purse is snatched it has traveled, relatively undisturbed, about 15 hours away where it is found by somebody from Missouri who is going to California who will send it back to Oklahoma (hopefully) tomorrow.  Meanwhile, the Brown family goes crazy and tries to turn their entire life into a vault to keep out the bad people who know own our lives.  I think Leah actually danced when I told her and then she went and took a nap.

And now you know The Adventure of the Purse (minus the part where it actually gets back home).  Happy “Eat What You Want” Day.

Clean Your Room Day

I thought about cleaning my office but the power went out before the storms came through. So I decided to clean my room. Since it was already clean, I consider today celebrated.

Mother’s Day and Sock Memorial

Five ways we celebrated Leah’s first Mother’s Day:

1. Leah and a good friend went to get a massage at a spa yesterday.
2. Mother’s Day breakfast at church.
3. Baby Dedication service where the church prayed for Carter and us.
4. Leah’s family (about 30) came over for lunch, which was really fun.
5. Carter and I got Leah a card that I signed and he kinda scribbled on with a pen.

Now that I have covered that, on to the real celebration.  Today was, most importantly, Lost Sock Memorial Day.  You know how frustrating it is when you somehow lose one sock and get stuck with a few extras in your sock drawer that are just there forever.  Well today is a day to remember and memorialize those lost socks.  I originally thought it would be a good idea to have a little sock funeral and bury my old socks, but that didn’t seem environmentally friendly and making a little sock coffin just felt silly.  So, I decided that I should find all of my unmatched socks and have a memorial service for them in which they would be cremated.

You would think that socks would be very flammable, but I actually had difficulty igniting them originally.  But once the firestarter was under the pile, things progressed more quickly.  ”I spent a few minutes eulogizing my three socks, thanking each one of them for their faithful and loyal service.  It felt significant that I had one black athletic sock, one white ankle sock, and a single black dress sock with red spots.  The diversity really seemed to enrich the entire experience.  I had a prayer and then had three congregational songs, of which ‘I’ve Got a Mansion’ nearly brought tears to my eyes.”  Okay, I admit it.  Everything in this paragraph inside of the quotes is actually a lie.  I really just sat outside and set three socks on fire.  But here are the five things I learned about burning socks on Lost Sock Memorial Day.

1. Dress socks burn fastest and black athletic socks burn slowest and white ankle socks burn just right.
2. Burning socks smell about how you would expect them to, which is not very good.
3. Socks aren’t as cotton as I would have thought and leave a plastic carcass of ash or something.
4. Burning anything you aren’t supposed to is fun, even socks.
5. Something in socks my be a little toxic when set on fire and inhaled.  I am a bit woozy…or buzzed…not sure.

In the end, Happy Mother’s Day…and socks, I will never forget you.