Just One of Many Times I Was Feeling Really Beautiful, BUT...

I've been using a Corporate plane to get up to see my Dad. Not my Corporate plane, mind you, but the Corporate plane of a well-known Minnesota Company that flies it's muckety-mucks from Warroad MN to Minneapolis MN and back on the daily and Lucky Me! They let any-old-Joe ride on this plane for a mere $100 donation to a local Warroad charity. (Bless 'em). My parents live 11 miles from the Warroad International Airport and I live 5 miles from the MSP. Only, these planes fly out of a tiny little airport located between MSP Airport Terminals 1 and 2 (otherwise known as Lindbergh and Hubert Humphrey). This little bitsy in-between airport is called "Signature Flights" and you have to call on a little phone from your car to get into a parking lot which leads to a smallish building but then after the building you can literally walk right onto your tiny little plane. There's no removal of liquids there's no taking off your shoes there's no seeing if there is liquid "medical marijuana" in your purse (even if you are a totally type A good girl who would never use such an  "illicit drug" but only secured it clandestinely from your hairdresser because she seemed like somebody who would know something about such things and also because your mom has cancer and she's dying and you will do anything including committing what you're pretty sure is a felony to ease her pain).

ANYWAY:

It feels so FANCY!

Imagine during the Super Bowl (!) - all those famous people (!) flying to this exact airport (!)- and though I've never seen a famous person there, I'm sure they have been and that makes me feel...really...really...famous myself. 

So, every time I go through there I sort of hold my head higher than I normally would (because normally I'm just a girl, picking a booger with her thumb). One particular time, however, and this time is the subject of this particular story, it was a Monday morning and it was 5:30 and I was the ONLY. PERSON. ON. THE. PLANE. 

FANCY!!!

So - imagine how I felt. Walking in to this exclusive airport - just having gotten off a PRIVATE. PLANE. Just me (!) and the pilots (!) 

And I was wearing my cute jeans and my cute down jacket that's only 18 years old but I bought it in Austria so, you know, it's pretty cute, and my slouchy beanie hat that all the cool girls wear and here I am, and people are LOOKING. 

They are flipping their heads around to see WHO IS THAT GIRL? and I feel so gorgeous and rich! and exclusive!

And then I went into the bathroom (the one with really really thick napkin-y hand towels in a basket). And:

It's no wonder they were staring.

Doppleganger

You ever been scrolling through a famous person's Instagram and found a picture of yourself? I mean, not really YOU, but like your doppleganger??

Check this out - doesn't that totally look like ME with Carrie Brownstein from Portlandia????!!!?

It's not me.

The Unconventional Toilet Strikes Again

A couple of summers ago - I got invited to go on a boat trip with some good pals, their parents and friends - Zach was working in Vermont unfortunately, so I went solo.

It was as epic a day as you can imagine. We zoomed down the St. Croix River, between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The weather was perfect, the conversation dynamic, the drinks were flowing. There were other boats to wave at. I may or may not have mooned them. Anyway, it was SO FUN.

At some point on a boat, as a woman, the question will always be: "where do I pee?" and usually the answer is, "in the River", but I could NOT resist this strange contraption and decided to use it just because I was probably under the influence of alcohol. 

Bathroom?

WHAT?!?

Anyway, I did my thing and it was just as weird and fun as you would think. Then it came time to flush the toilet. 

Even though you can clearly see in these photos that there are instructions on how to do so - I didn't figure that out. At the time. 

I just kept pumping and pumping that pump thing. But nothing happened. 

And so I LIFTED THE LID to investigate, and then found a different lever to pull. Pulled that lever.

Got splashed. In the face. With my own pee. I screamed like I was in the middle of being murdered and the entire boat of people came running to find out what happened. 

"I have my own pee on my face".

And THEN jumped in the River. The end.

Chipmunk Cheeks

Hanna got her wisdom teeth out while visiting my sister in Belize.

 

 

 

You Can't Take Me Anywhere

I've been flying back-and-forth to Warroad MN to visit my parents on the Marvin Windows corporate propeller plane since May. It's fun and I feel fancy every time and I love getting there in an hour and 15 minutes vs driving 6.5 hours.

Last month and for the first time I got to ride their jet. No propellers. Leather buttery seats. Fancy fancy. Oh man it goes fast! The same exact trip takes 45 minutes. But let me tell you the take off is terrifying. I have never felt such speed in my entire life and I have ridden the fastest train on earth (Shanghai Maglev China). Anyway it goes one million miles an hour and you go straight up. STRAIGHT up. Seriously. When we got up to cruising altitude I turned to the woman next to me and asked her "are we in space?". I was seated across from her children (this jet had a four-seat-face-each-other-thing) and they giggled the entire time and that was the only reason I didn't bawl my eyes out from sheer terror.

But that's not the point of my story. The point of my story is that when I first got in the jet I noticed that same woman in the very very back of the plane with one of her kids. She looked like she was confused and didn't know if she wanted to sit way back there with him and I am nosey and so I already knew from eavesdropping that she was traveling with her husband, two little boys and giant pregnant belly (which was filled with twins as I was to find out later). So I stuck my nose in even further and offered to take the way back so she could sit in the four seat thing with her whole family. I smugly went to take my hero's position all the way in the back. (Seat change explained below). I am SUCH a good person. Ask anyone. I couldn't find the seat belt though? I searched and searched.

Then a man came and sat right across from me and we were sitting so close to each other that our knees were intertwined. Face-to-face. I was like, "oh man I hope I like this guy because this is AWK.WARD." He had a book which was a good sign just in case. But his seat for sure had a seat belt. I stood to look better for my seat belt, which meant he had to stand too to let me look and turn around and stuff. Finally it dawned on me that the seat was probably flipped down and I needed to flip it up to find the seat belt.

NOPE. TOILET.

se kak in her han

This is how to say "She pooped in her hand" in Afrikaans. In Espanol: "se kaka in su mano". Swedish: "Huite hannen". I used to collect how many languages I could say that in. I was up to five at one point.

My most embarrassing story: Or, one of them. (I have learned to tell my own embarrassing stories, otherwise Kasey will tell them and not put the proper spin on it. As we know, she "likes to expose.") Anyway, one day, after getting home after having run a half marathon (brag), I took my shower and decided to air out and not get dressed immediately. So sue me. I wanted to check my online class or something and so I got in front of the computer. Now, and this is very important: I do not sit on chairs whilst naked. Especially on a fabric office chair EWWWWW. (FYI)

I was sitting on my foot.

Anyway again, I felt somebody knocking at my back door if you know what I mean and realized kind of urgently that I had to go number two. But, I knew that my computer takes a while to perform certain functions. And so, I decided to wait for the urgency to pass (like it allllllways does) and just click a few more times before running down to the bathroom. And then it hit me even more urgently. I had to go. Like right now. I started running. If you've been to my old house on Lake Nokomis, you know how long a distance it was for me to get from my room to the bathroom. It's like a mile. And --  so I ran and ran and ran and ran and squinched the entire way. I almost made it too, to the foot of the stairs. And then. All I could do was hold out my hand.

I mean I was trying to win and everything - who has time to "wait for the toilet"?
Getty images

How Do You Get Little Kids to Warm Up to You, the Foreigner?

You give them your camera, that's how. Works every time.

Step Kid Pride

You know I'll be honest - when I married Zach and two teenage boys fell into my lap, I was terrified of the homework/attendance/schedule crap that comes along with kids. But through some stroke of luck Zach got them into a fabulous community school where there IS no homework, and the boys actually like going. I'm so thankful for PPL and LNAS.

 

Check out this video, in which Micah (misspelled in the video as "Micha") is interviewed at 3:01 and 4:27!

 

LNAS student film from Project for Pride in Living on Vimeo.

Zach-isms, Vol. 5

Zach told me that I snore a lot. But only when I drink. (But I drink a lot. So anyway that was the conversation we were having and I was mortified.) And so he consoled me: "I don't mind your snores at all. They're like a bouquet of decibels."

 

Hal-isms, Vol. 72

"I don't shower at night. I wake up curly haired."

 

"I'm in a pissing match with a skunk."

 

"I ain't cookin' I'm just gonna eat hard tack and mushrooms."

 

"If you're in denial, it helps!"

 

"You tell them to get some Clamato juice or close their doors."

 

 

The Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

Occasionally, at my fancy lady business job, I am asked to speak to prospective recruits to convince them that our Company is the best, and the way we do things is the best, and they should really, really come and work here!

 

A few months ago, I had an appointment with one such man, and might I add he was very sharply dressed and even maybe a little bit on the handsome side. Of course I was embarrassed of my outfit, but that's not the point of my story. The point of my story is that during the appointment, he and I sat across from one another, with no desk in between us and we chatted and chatted and I crossed and uncrossed my legs eight hundred times and this went on for about 30 minutes. And then he left, and I considered the meeting a success.

 

Later, and I don't remember why (I probably dropped an M&M) I saw/felt in my crotchal area and was horrified to discover a two-inch GIANT hole at my upper upper thigh.

 

 

(*&*&^$&^%$&^%$(&^%^)(&)(*&

 

 

 

 

 

Later still, I was running late for softball, and so I quick quick quick changed from the above outfit into my softball outfit really fast, and that included an underwear change. I threw the above outfit plus underwear into my gym bag which is just an old tote bag and RAN into my boss' office for a quick commiseration about the hole in the crotch story and then off to softball.

 

While I was in there, the cleaning gal for our office approached me with her gloved hand outstretched. "I think these are yours", she said and instinctively I put out my hand, into which she dropped my DIRTY UNDERWEAR which must have fallen out of the tote in my haste. In the middle of the office hallway.

 

**What a nice human. I was glad for two things: 1) she was a woman and 2) she had gloves on.

 

And then at softball later my windshield got smashed by a softball. The End.

Sunday Favorites: A Cryptic Message

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 26, 2011:

Summer arrived in New Orleans just two days before me.  I got a text from her that said, "btw I have a piece of info about some of our neighbors.  I'm worried you might die."  I was like, "what?" and she said, "It's too good.  I wanna see your face."

When I arrived, Ashley and Summer took me into our bathroom and had me look out the window.  "Over there is the convent.  There are real nuns living there."  etc.  "And, see that pink house?  With the green shutters?  OK.  See that little grey one to the left of it?  With the black shutters?..."

She wasn't getting to the point fast enough and so I was like, "who lives there?"

Summer looked into my soul and asked, "who would make you die?"

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR.

I am living less than one block away from the Jolie-Pitts.

I don't even know what to do with this information.

I think Summer was pleased with my reaction, as I hyperventilated and collected myself and then hyperventilated some more.  Here is a photo out of our bathroom window.  Their house is the little gray one in the center.  With the two dormer windows.

I swear I saw Brad watching me go pee last night.  What a creep!  (Just kidding.  They're not home.)

Here's a picture of the front of their house, which I walk by every morning and every night when I go to and from my car.  I stole it from another website, since I will not be caught dead photographing their place (in the open).  I only keep my face straight ahead while my eyes stare the whole way by, looking for signs of life.

Photo stolen from bittenandbound.com

If you know me, you know that I think of Brad and Angelina as personal friends and frequently have daydreams of running into their family by Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, asking them "what are you doing in town?" and then inviting them over for dinner.  Of course they come.  In my imagination, we laugh and talk.  The kids get a kick out of my made-up-on-the-spot poop songs, such as Fishing in the Toilet for Poop and Pee.

LOOKS LIKE MY DREAMS ARE ABOUT TO COME TRUE, FOLKS.

"The View! The View!"

I hope this story is as funny typed out as it was in real life...

My mom's been having a rough week. My dad and I had to get her out of bed together the other morning and help her into her chair. And when she was settled, she used what little breath she had to ask my dad to get her "my-hearing-aid-my-phone-my-whatever-else-is-on-the-nightstand!" 

I knew he could never possibly remember all of that and so I followed him into the bedroom to help. Because of the way my mom said all of that, and because it was almost 10am, I added "The View! The View!" to indicate that in addition to all that stuff we better turn on her show too.

Well my dad didn't get the joke, obviously because he stopped dead in his tracks, squinched his butt and put both of his hands in front of it. 

He thought I was telling him his robe wasn't covering all.

Oh, how we laughed.

Said robe. Also --- what the heck is he eating for breakfast? A giant chunk of cheese that's what.

How We Cool Down with no A/C

Sunday Favorites: Flush and Brush!

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 1, 2013:

In Kathmandu, Nepal, Summer and I contacted some friends of friends and were invited for dinner. We hit it off and stayed up laughing and talking way too late and ended up spending the night. In the morning, we had to get back to our hostel and get Summer off to the airport for her flight to London.

But somebody was knocking at my back door. Hard. I didn't want to use their toilet, because their bathroom had a one foot space on top of the door and so even with the door shut, it was technically open. And everybody was just outside the bathroom finishing up breakfast. But, I had no choice. It was urgent.

Actual photo of their bathroom.

 

I did my best and deepest squat and against my preference proceeded to make embarrassing toilet noises. (When that happens to me my defense strategy is to laugh, in case anybody heard and then at least they'll know that I thought it was funny and am not trying to hide it.)

Then I flushed. The slow trickle of water was no match. Nothing.

I flushed again.

At this point I had no choice but to yell out to my hosts: "What do I do? It won't go down!"

Their response, in unison: "FLUSH AND BRUSH!"

I looked in the corner and saw the blue brush next to the toilet. (You can see it in the above photo.) I flushed. And I brushed. And I washed the turd down.

Sunday Favorites: Bathroom Incident

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 10, 2009:

So, I will try to describe this incident as hilariously as it happened in real life. Keri, Nancy, Andrea and I had dinner at The Fish Market in San Diego. We had a great time. Believe me. We ordered a bottle of wine, there were Bloody Marys, Gin and Tonics, sushi, Wahoo, incorrectly placed plastic trees that tickled my hair all night, the works. Everything you need for the perfect dinner out. So we leave our table, happy and smiling and ready to pee our pants. We head single file up to the restrooms. I'm in the lead and Keri is behind me. Andrea is behind her and Nancy is in the rear. As we approach the bathroom door, another woman comes up from a different direction, and looks as though she may split our group by going in behind me in line. And so I say, "After You!" She looked at me a little strangely and said, "Thank you!" a little too much like I was doing her some big favor. So I said, "Well there are four of us...hahahahaha HAHAHAA HHAAA!!! AHAH!" Like I do with strangers. And so she went into the bathroom and I went in behind her, followed closely by Keri and Andrea. Nancy was yelling "NO!" in the back and then I saw why. The three of us were SMACK DAB behind this woman, almost pushing her into a ONE. STALL. BATH. ROOM. As soon as I saw the toilet, sink and garbage, and realized this was not a multiple stall room I looked at her in horror. She looks at us like we are crazy and then says,

"I'll just be two minutes."

image stolen from the "internet"

The Bathroom Door

Hexums. We don't do doors. We don't shut doors. Everybody who has ever been to my parents' one room shack of a cabin of a home knows you don't go in the bathroom without calling out ahead. And if you're in there and your modesty is compromised and you hear footsteps you call out "I'M IN HERE". That's our "door". Most of you "privacy" people from much smaller families will struggle to understand this.

Anyway, tonight my mom and sister Keri and I were watching a movie while my dad push-mowed his couple-acre yard, me knowing at some point he was going to need my help getting under the pine trees my mom refuses to allow him to cut the branches out of the bottom blah blah blah...anyway, I knew this, and I saw it coming and so I yelled outside to my dad that I fully planned on helping him mow under the pine trees, but not until after our movie was done. So anyway I also, for good measure yelled "your belly is big" (it is) and then I ran to the bathroom for sanctuary, knowing my dad would NEVER NEVER NEVER go into the bathroom if I were in there. So I sat, (peeing, yes) but also afraid to not be peeing because I was in TROUBLE, and then I looked up to see my mom's biggest butcher knife, brandished, around the corner. 

A warning.

Hal-isms, Vol. 71

"I'll have a cup of coffee...try to say something to your mom before she tells me to shut up."

"My God, I can't take my hand off your shoulder without hitting your butt on the way down. I gotta swing wide. Like gettin' off my four wheeler. Swing my leg wide."

"Is everything in China about sitting on a stump somewhere, meditating?"

"Do them Irish people ever stop singin'?"

"When I get dementia and start wanderin' up by Sheriff Gary Fish's place and you guys'll hafta put out an LMNOP on me."

Sunday Favorites: Chewing Gum

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 4, 2015:

The resort where we stayed in Cancun had a fancy Italian restaurant where we ate most nights. After a long day of reading books and doing nothing on the beach, we'd all head up to our rooms, shower and meet back downstairs for a delicious meal and drinks. There were eleven of us, and so we had to be split up at two tables.

We wore our best dresses and drank wine and were very, very fancy.

Look how fancy!

After dinner the first night, I stood up to go and chat with the other table. We discussed what they ate and how good it was. An older man who worked at the restaurant came up to me and grabbed my arm and dragged me back to the table where I was sitting, to the spot where I was eating. He seemed very agitated when he said to me, "PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR GUM UNDER THE TABLE CLOTH." 

The staff were changing out the linens and sure enough, at my spot, under the table cloth was a piece of gum.

YOU GUYS. It was NOT MINE.

We were eating fancy! I would never put my gum under the tablecloth! It was seriously way up underneath, so whoever did it had to pull up three yards of fabric and shove it up under there, on the pad underneath. 

I said, "Sir, that's not mine."

He poked it and said, "FRESH."

I poked it. 

It was fresh. 

But you guys!!! It was NOT. MINE. I repeated myself. "Sir, I am telling you that gum is NOT MINE."

He was so disgusted with me and so finally I just shrugged my shoulders and walked away.

Does this look like somebody who just shoved GUM under her fancy tablecloth?

The story doesn't end here, unfortunately.

The next night, I was nervous to go back there, but I decided to get over myself and just do it. I sat down and out of the corner of my eye I noticed the man. Out of the corner of my other eye, I noticed one of my friends putting her gum on a little plate next to her dinner plate. I didn't have any time to warn her.

Here comes the waiter (not the same man, but he came straight from talking to the man). He handed her a paper napkin and said, "please put your gum in this paper napkin. And anyone else at this table *here he looked STRAIGHT AT ME* needs to put their gum in a paper napkin right now."

ENOUGH!

I threw my cloth napkin down on the table and half stood up to say to that poor innocent waiter, "OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! I DID NOT PUT MY GUM IN THE TABLECLOTH! YOU TELL THAT MAN I DIDN'T DO IT! AND WILL YOU PLEASE ALSO TELL HIM I AM 37 YEARS OLD!!!!!"

He looked really hurt and said, "yes, I will tell him". 

And then he came back later to take our order and I said, "I'll have the seared tuna. With extra gum."

And then the poor innocent waiter said, "please. I am on your side."

And then I really felt bad. 

But for Pete's sake, can you imagine being accused of a heinous crime? Twice? When you were 100% innocent of it? Now I know how Cameron Todd Willingham felt.

Hidden Treasures

Look at the sweet wallpaper we unearthed in one of the bedrooms at the House Across: