Sunday Favorites: The Only Time I Get Asked Out...

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. Enjoy! This story originally appeared on August 30, 2010:

I went to a party in Southern Minnesota many many many many years ago. I was having a very nice time, thank you very much and so when the evening wound down I took on my usual role. You know, "crazy-girl-must-have-the-floor-talks-too-much-has-to-get-everybody's-attention". 

Suddenly, in a comedic fit of awesome amazingness, one of my stories lent itself well to the following:

"And here's what I thought of that!"...

...which is where I stood up, grabbed my ankles, and let out a HUGE fart. HUGE. Major. Very loud. Disgusting. I would normally explain that I don't normally do that, (promise), but you wouldn't believe me anyways. Of course I got the hysterical laughter I was looking for (think: that scene in Dumb and Dumber where Jim Carrey is dreaming about lighting the fart and everybody laughs and laughs). But that's not the point of the story.

The point of the story is that a couple nights later, some random dude that was there called my house and ASKED ME ON A DATE. Here's how it went down:

Dude: "so I was wondering if you wanted to go to a movie sometime."

Me: "OH. You mean like, on a date?"

Dude: "yah."

Me: "hahahahaHAAAHAAAAHA" (maniacal laughter)

And then, my memory is spotty, so I don't think I said this out loud to him, or maybe I did? But I was totally thinking, "why would you want to go on a date with a girl who farts in public?" And "why is it I only get asked out in situations like that?"

Overheard at Work. New Orleans

I was thinking lately about all the weird and strange and depressing things I overheard when I was working in New Orleans for Serco...

Warning: Depressing.

_____

One woman told me they had to evacuate for Katrina pretty quickly and thought they would only be gone for three days. So they decided to leave their dog behind. They left him a bunch of food and filled the tub with water. They said "goodbye" and "see you in three days." Of course they didn't make it back in three days. In fact, they didn't get back for six months. Turns out their thieving neighbor robbed them blind and in the process accidentally let the dog out of the house, at which time another neighbor took the dog in. When the homeowner finally returned to her home, she decided to just let the neighbors keep the dog because they had become so attached after rescuing him. Fortunately they're just a couple of doors down so she gets to see her old dog all the time.

_____

...Another conversation with a very nice guy in his sixties:

"Marriage these days only lasts about 10 years.  In my day, it was for the long haul."

"I don't get involved with dogs.  In my day, if a dog bit the neighbor's kid, their mother told them, 'that's what you get.  I told you to stay away from that dog!'  Today, mama calls doctor, lawyer, jury."

"My son was killed.  He didn't want to take my advice."

_____

...Another old black lady, while talking to me referred to George Bush as "your president."  I said, "why did you call him "my president?" and she didn't reply.  She just looked at me like, "duh."

_____

...Another woman told me that of her 9 children, only four are still living. One went missing for three weeks at Rita. Then he was found dead. Another died of cirrhosis of the liver, another had an aneurysm, and one was murdered. The fifth died in Katrina.

_____

SOME QUOTES FROM THE LADY WHO WAS TOTALLY HIGH, AND FORGOT TO TELL HER HUSBAND THEY HAD COMPANY BEFORE HE WALKED OUT IN HIS BOXERS AND THEN GOT VERY EMBARRASSED:

"I'm on more pain medication than anything.  But sometimes I don't take the medicine cuz I don't want to get addictive."

"I don't do drugs.  It's not my thing.  Crackheads.  That's not how you wanna look."

When her husband came out in his boxers (because he didn't know we were there) she told him, "That's what you get."  He replied, "I'm about to finish you right now."

Mean Mean Older Sister

There was a woman our family knew who had some sort of disability. (I don't know. I was probably six years old and it was the early 80's and there was no such thing as politically correct in those days).

Anyway, her name was Francis.  My little sister Kasey and I were terrified of her because she was in a wheelchair, which made her more 'our height' then other adults and her hands were all crunched up into fists and she looked about a hundred years old.  Kelly knew we were terrified of Francis and exploited that by cornering us at our house and saying the name "Francis" over and over in a voice sort of like the Wicked Witch of the West.

"Fraaaaaaaan-ciiiiiiiiiiiisssssss"*

*Remember, we were KIDS.

Of course, after a while -- it became less and less about being afraid of real-life Francis and more and more about being afraid of Kelly saying her name at us.

One day she took it too far. Our basement stairway had a door at the top, with the light switch outside in the kitchen.  So you could shut the light off on people who were in the basement and that's exactly what Kelly did to Kasey. She shut the door, turned out the light and taunted Kasey with the typical "Fraaaaaaaan-ciiiiiiiiiiiisssssss". For way too long. Pretty soon Kasey was screaming bloody murder for Kelly to let her out of the basement. And Kelly would have but Kasey was totally freaking out and so Kelly started getting scared of the retaliation Kasey was probably planning. Kelly kept the door shut a little longer, hoping Kasey would calm down a little bit. Finally, Kasey stopped screaming. Kelly opened the door. Instead of pounding her fists on Kelly's chest, Kasey just wrapped her arms around Kelly's neck and held her really tight and cried and cried and cried. And then...and only then...Kelly felt bad.

_____

YEARS later...Kelly called that story into a radio station who was asking for mean older sibling stories and they wouldn't air it because it was TOO mean.

These days I get my revenge by posting unflattering pictures of her butt. 

For me, I remember my brother Pete forcing my mouth open with his fingers and then farting into it. What's your mean mean older sibling story?

Overheard in Minneapolis, (Rated PG-13)

I have a very good buddy named Kasey who doesn't drive which basically means that he meets lots of interesting crazy people on the bus. We got together for a drink the other night and he told me some "overheards" that I had to share.

Forgive the language.

Just pretend it was you. Overhearing the language.

_____

A man on the bus, noticing a woman, not on the bus:

"Oh my GAWD! Look at those CANS!" (Scribbles on paper. Crumples it up. Throws it out bus window. Yells at woman with said CANS:) "Call me!"

_____

Man, talking to woman, whom he appears to not know:

"Woooooooooo-EEEEEEE!  For you, I'd get two jobs. AND a paper route. Then I'd come home. Give you my seed."

_____

Woman to Man-She's-With:

"You're just hidin' that money so you can buy some weed aren't you?"

Man:

"You shut up."

...(only he didn't say it that nicely.)

_____

Crazy man talking to himself:
(Kasey knew this because he wanted to believe he was on a Bluetooth*.  Nope. The man turned his head from side-to-side. No Bluetooth.)

"D-! That is one m-f-'n punk-a Spruce!"

...(As you can imagine, I am trying really hard to call Kasey "Spruce" from now on.)

*And then I said what I considered to be very funny:
"It was the world's tiniest Bluetooth...called Schizophrenia."

Kasey being Kasey...somewhere in Peru.

But Come On. Truthfully:  Can't we honestly say that the invention of the Bluetooth has given crazy people ten more seconds of "are-they-or-aren't-they" leeway that just wasn't there before?

Camp Chair

I was reminded to bring a camp chair to this weekend's MS 150 mile bike ride* from Duluth to Minneapolis by my team leader, Chuck:

"Lawn chair - Very Important - Drop your lawn chair [...] before 3pm on Friday and it'll be waiting for you in Hinckley - if you don't bring a chair, please don't assume that it's okay to sit in other's chairs in Hinckley. Danger!"

Ha! "Danger!"

This reminded me of a story: A few years back a friend of mine went on a huge 15-20 girl hiking trip up to the Superior Hiking Trail. One of the women on the trip was painfully shy and had never been away from her husband of several years, except for going to work and the occasional TWO HOUR MOVIE. Seriously, this was her first girls' trip, and a weekend one at that. 

Everybody was instructed to bring their own camp chair. The first night, as daylight started to dwindle, all the girls moved from picnic tables and smaller groups to one large circular group around the fire. It was noted that there was one chair missing. The picnic table was dragged up to the fire to accommodate everybody, and discussion ensued for some minutes about how one of their chairs must have gotten knocked over and landed in the weeds. Some even started feeling around in the dark to find the missing chair. The search was unsuccessful and it was decided that it was going to have to resume at daylight.

The next day, the chair was nowhere to be found. Speculation regarding it's fate began. Could it be possible that one of the other campers at another site STOLE it? Surely that couldn't be so. The chairs were counted, recounted and counted again. Someone had the bright idea that each woman should stand next to her chair so it could be determined whose was missing. Unfortunately a few of the girls were at the showers at that moment and so it wasn't determined.

The entire weekend went by with plenty of hashing and rehashing what must have happened to the missing chair. And when it was all over and cars were packed and miles were driven back to the city, one of the women dropped the Shy Girl at her home. As she was getting her stuff out of the back, her driver asked, "hey! Where's your chair?", when she breezed by -- briskly walking to the house, whispering over her shoulder: "I didn't bring one."


It must be mentioned that during the entire weekend: the fire the first night, the discussion at the fire, the search the next day, the "stand next to your chair" detective attempt...Miss Shy was always sitting in a chair (or standing next to one), not admitting anything.

Not her chair. She didn't bring one.

*(still accepting donations for my ride for MS Research here)

Garbage Can Feed and My Nephew is all Graduated

Want to feed 100 people? In the Redneck way?

Just take a simple metal garbage can, rig it up inside with the grill rack from your Weber, fill the bottom with water, load it up with delicious vegetables and meats and voila!  

It's actually probably the most delicious meal I had all month. My baby nephew Skeeter graduated high school way up north in Cook, MN and here's the meal my sister and her husband prepared for the masses. I didn't get to see it from start to finish unfortunately, but I watched them empty the can. So here it is from the middle to the end, backwards:

Garbage can, set up on some concrete blocks and a fire underneath. See where those bolts are on the side? That's where the grill rack sits, and that's about how much water to put in the bottom.

A close up of the fire.

Completely fill it up, and add a bunch of butter on top and a couple cans of beer. The butter will trickle down as it melts and eventually end up in the water and be part of the yummy yummy steam.

Let it cook over the flame for about an hour, then have two hefty men lift it off.

Remove lid.

Remove contents.

OK so here's kind of how it was layered, in backwards order, since I only saw it coming out:

Everything was added in order of how long it might take to cook, with the longest items near the bottom, and the quicker items near the top.

Removing more...to reveal potatoes.

And finally corn, husks on.

Keri and Kelly, fighting and racing as usual.

At the bottom is the water and the grill rack.

Can of melted butter to dip the shucked corn

Ok so as far as I could tell, you add all your corn in the husks at the bottom, top with potatoes, then carrots, squash, onions, cabbage and brats.  Add the butter and the beer. There's some turnips in there too but what the heck are they, even? Steam for an hour and then eat and fart for the rest of the night. Yah. That's right. Cabbage.

Other things you should probably do at these functions -- play some games...:

(Nice face, Karley)

...make a killer bonfire:

I'm pretty short, but still!

...and, if you're the Graduate, you could practice shooting your brand new bow from your awesome little sister Hanna:

Congratulations, Skeeter!

Ignore Hitler Some More

We've been doing some more ignoring of Hitler in my Draw Something games...and they're certainly not done as well as the master, but it's dern fun.  Want to try and guess what's being drawn? That could be fun. I numbered them and you can guess in the comments.

These drawings are sometimes mine, sometimes McShash, and sometimes Minty Wafflefarmer. (Not their real names.)

1

2

3

4

5

6

7. A Freebie.

8

9

10

Sunday Favorites: I Wouldn't Want to Hurt His Feelings!

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. Enjoy! This story originally appeared on February 16, 2011:


I don't really know how I get myself into these situations. And yet, they happen all the time. Take one night last summer for instance: I'm bartending at the Lodge in Northern Minnesota, sitting on a barstool, and some strange man is opposite me, rubbing lotion onto my stinky waitress foot, cradling it too near his crotch. It all started innocently enough, of course, earlier that evening:

I'm returning to the bar from outside on the deck. I have dirty dishes in hand, and need help getting the door open...which interrupts one male customer from bear-hug-cracking the back of another male customer. I decide against making a "that looks a little fishy" joke. Later, I find out the crack-ee is a doctor and I mistakenly assume the crack-er is a chiropractor. Nope. Massage therapist. One of the screwy kinds. I know this because four minutes later he's telling me that he has diagnosed cancers. Fast forward to me standing behind the bar. He's belly up. I'm serving him beers and he motions for my hand. He rubs it. It feels just OK. Nothing earth shattering. In an attempt to involve all of my customers in conversation, I decide to play “how old am I?", my favorite game because people are too nice to guess anything near my real age and I always win. (This may also be because I haven’t yet learned to dress my age.) He looks at my hand, rubs it some more, looks into my eyes, and guesses one year older than I am. The hands don't lie. Harumph. He asks me to take off my "mood ring".

NOW LET ME BREAK FROM THE STORY REAL QUICK-LIKE TO TELL YOU THIS RING THING IS A SORE SPOT WITH ME. Dude, you’ve already put me at 34, and now you’re calling my ring a mood ring? It’s not a mood ring. Who over the age of fourteen wears a mood ring? The stupid thing happens to have cost me $120. A virtual fortune for me, an unemployed person. I picked it up in Australia under duress. My travel companion was buying a wheelbarrow full of jewelry at this adorable boutique and I felt as if I too deserved a bauble. My one concern was that I wasn’t sure if it looked like it cost $120. If I'm going to spend that kind of money on a piece of jewelry I want it to LOOK expensive. The friend I was with assured me that it did, and so I bought it. A few weeks later I flew to New Zealand and accidentally left it behind in Melbourne. My hosts mailed it to my new address in New Zealand. On the envelope, the post office asked the sender to list the value of the goods enclosed, where "$20" had been scribbled in. Blurg.

BACK TO STORY. Now to add insult to injury this dude calls it a dern mood ring. I blow him off and decide I’ll forgive him since he’s totally massaging my bartending, 34-year-old hand. He asks if I can feel the warmth as his hand hovers close to mine, but doesn't touch it. I ask him what vibes I am sending him. He says, "oh it's not about what you're sending me, it's about what I'm giving to you." I feel nothing.

A few minutes later he's rubbing my neck and shoulders, which somehow leads to him asking about my feet. I can tell so much from a person's feet, he says. (Show me one waitress who would say no to that.) It's only as he's spreading the lotion on my foot, and his eyes are closed, lips pursed and head raised up to the ceiling that I wonder if I've made a wise decision. Still, I don’t know how to stop this crazy train and instead I ride it all the way to the same outside bear-hug-crack situation in which he had the doctor previously. It’s not until mid-crack, when he whispers in my ear that he's a little clairvoyant and he's sensing that I'm having problems with my brother that I realize that sometimes I let people get a little too close. Do I tell him I think he's full of crap? NO! I wouldn't want to hurt his feelings!

p.s. the guy looked like the guy with the cane above 

My favorite reader response comment to that post?

Mr. Red has said...

Can you help me with this couch? I can't lift it into the van by myself...

Kady - "Sure!!!! Should I go in to the van first? Duh, Of course I should, I'm shorter than you and won't hit my head."

Yet Another Baby-Related Unsolicited Confession

A reader's comment on this previous post reminded me of a story:

Once, when I was having a non-baby-related ultrasound, I insisted that the technician print me a picture of my empty womb. She shrugged her shoulders and complied.

And then I brought it to work and hung it on my cube wall - where it stayed for YEARS.

Not my uterus.

Ladies' Room, Mount Rushmore

After driving 11 hours to visit Mount Rushmore, I was so happy to finally see it in person.

Summer-isms, Vol. 33

"I heard a big fat fart."


"I don't think anybody has any complaints about my infertility."


"I think I should know better by now not to buy a button-up shirt."

"I need to get Cancer Insurance before I get Cancer."


"I don't believe in telling people what not to do. I believe in telling people what not to wear after they're already wearing it."

Motherly Love

I suppose if you're going to have seven kids you learn a thing or two about raising them.  Take my mom, for example.


She had an amazing ability to NOT play with us.  "Mom! Come here! Play with me!" (or whatever).  "I can't!" she'd reply. "I have a bone in my leg!" And then she'd make us feel her shin bone and we would feel so so so sorry for her with that bone in her leg.

Another thing she'd do is turn it around on the tattle-teller.  For example, if I came running up to her complaining that Pete had just hit me, she'd get super sympathetic and say, "Oh, poooooor Kaaaaady. Now you go and tell him you're sorry."  And I would!

And you know how when you hurt yourself, and you run up to your mom and say, "it hurts when I do this?" and then you bend your finger or whatever? She would always say, "well, stop doing that."

Now, THAT'S good parenting!

Hal-isms, Vol. 25

"The only goin' I'm doin' is takin' a leak."

"I only said some of the stuff in jest, it wasn't like it was reality or something. It's probably other people that act like this."

"I don't like to hear myself talk because I already know what I'm going to say. I just talk to keep the conversation going."

"You should be a therapist. I'd walk outta there feeling great."

"You only have 35-40 readers. They could be sending this around the world."

My Empty Womb

An Unsolicited Confession:

One time, when I was shopping for the 1,000,000th Baby Shower I threw for my 1,000,000th pregnant friend, I was standing at Target in the baby aisle and looking at the tiny little socks and feeling a little bit sorry for myself because I was single and childless and sort of fat that day.  I looked down at my belly...

"if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"

...then I rubbed it, like a pregnant woman should and continued caressing my unborn child while looking at the baby stuff.

Then I probably went home and had a beer.

Sunday Favorites: Advice for a Single Gal

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. Enjoy! This story originally appeared on April 12, 2011, when I lived in Brazil:


Meet Jacina and Aldo. I am renting a house in back of their place but they invite me for dinner all the time.  I love them.  They speak no English and I speak no Portuguese.  Tonight I pantomimed a story about how my dad wipes his boogers on his pants, and then later wipes his hands on his pants to clean his hands.  Aldo pantomimed back that nobody will want to marry a girl who wipes things on her pants.

Funny Stuffing

About twelve years ago, my sister Kasey had her ovary removed because of a gargantuan cyst that grew inside of it while she was pregnant with my nephew Miles.

When they removed it from her body, it looked exactly like this photo I robbed from Google Images: (We do have a photo of her ovary being wrenched from her innards, but it's a Polaroid and I couldn't be bothered to find it and scan it.)

No joke.  It was THAT big.  We called it her dinosaur egg.

Shortly after the ginormous tumor removal surgery, we went to Lund's grocery store. She was limping around like a darn fool (wimp). I convinced her to take it easy and use one of those wheelchairs they have for customers' use. She was weirded out by it but I kept telling her, "that's what they're for! You just had surgery!"

Ever the selfish caregiver I pushed her around the store and when she would reach for an item on the shelf I would SLAP! her hand.

Oh, how we laughed.

Friday Blog Love

Do you play Draw Something? OMG I love it. Of course I am impatient and have a ton of games going so I like to take the path of least resistance and use stick figures and basic draw skills to get my point across. But some people really get into it.

This Friday Blog Love post goes out to Ignore Hitler. It's this guy who plays Draw Something in a more hilarious way. 

I, of course, had never heard of his blog until my friend McShash hipped me to it by doing an "Ignore Hitler" of her own in one of our games:

Pretty good, McShash, Pretty Good.

Click here to see lots of awesome Draw Something pictures where you're instructed to ignore ol' Hitler.

Super Moon

My mom told me I have to change my facebook profile picture, but I won't do it:

Love me, love my butt crack.

CRACKS ME UP!

Bad Bad Bad Religion

One night at the now defunct club The Quest (opened by none other than Prince himself in 1992) while watching a Bad Religion show, I made it backstage because the drummer from the opening band Pennywise happened to walk by me. I gave him a "great show" and he waived me on back. I ended up getting a bunch of autographs and got into a conversation with Greg Graffin (the singer of Bad Religion). About who knows what, that's not the point. It was probably smart stuff I'm sure, as he was much older than me, and had his PhD (and happens to currently be a professor at Cornell University). Anyway, at some point during the conversation he asked me what I was doing later.

I was surprised by this question for three reasons:

1) I was supremely naive. 

2) This had never happened to me before.

3) He was thirty-six*, and I was probably 23 years old.

So I laughed -- typical Kady -- and said, "Why would YOU want to hang out with ME?" and sort of rolled my eyes. We continued chit-chatting for a little bit. Later he said to me, "and THAT'S why people want to hang out with you Kady. Because you have a beautiful smile and a great personality and blah blah blah." He went on for a while about my amazing qualities and I thought the whole exchange was SO weird, because I had forgotten that I made that comment. Then I shrugged my shoulders and went home.

I didn't get it until the next day, when I realized that Greg Graffin from Bad Religion asked me what I was doing later and I said, "why would YOU want to hang out with ME?", which he clearly took to mean that I was a depressed little punk rock kid saying something more along the lines of, "why would anybody want to hang out with me?" And he was trying to make me FEEL BETTER. 

It still gives me a case of the LOLs.  I actually meant, "aren't you a little OLD to be asking little girls what they're doing later?"

"Jeez kid, I was just trying to be nice."

*oh Gawd, I'm almost thirty-six. Is this how my twenty-three-year-old friends see me?

Fishing for Hipsters

A few weeks ago, on National Record Shop Appreciation Day, (or whatever they call it), I met up with my buddy Cash and we hung out at his place all day.  He happens to live above Hymie's, a local Minneapolis record store.  

Hymie's. Photo credit: C. Moore

They put on some festivities with in-store shows and a street show too.  My new favorite local band Night Moves played and we chilled out, opened the windows and enjoyed the scene from his gross boy apartment, complete with chairs whose cushions hide mouse poop underneath and secret disgusting things I can't discuss here and will pretend I didn't see.

And then I guess the boys got a little bored.  So they decided to go Fishing for Hipsters, using a record as bait:

If you catch a Hipster, you have to remember to feed it vegan,-gluten-free-dairy-free sandwiches and give it plenty of Grainbelt Premium beer. Or Hamm's. Also acceptable: PBR. In a can.