Category: Humor

I can’t Believe I Did That!

Daily writing prompt
What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?
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I’d rather leave the house naked than to leave without my pocketbook. It’s my identity, my medicine cabinet, my first aid kit, my cosmetic department, and my husband’s glove compartment. I never leave home without it.

~Sandi

After the softball tournament was over, my husband and I grabbed a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant before making the two-hour drive back home. Ugh! It might as well be twenty-four. And after every ball game, my husband plays it, again and again, all the way home: He should have caught that ball! The bases were loaded, all we needed was one good hit! He was safe! What’s the matter with that ump?!

And I’m thinking, give it a rest. I’m trying to sleep over here!

But I can’t sleep. My head bobs like a silly bobble head, and my husband keeps interrupting my snoring. So, to keep my mind occupied, I envision how I’m going to rearrange the living room tomorrow or redecorate the den. Maybe I’ll wash the windows, and hang new curtains in the kitchen. I think I’ll paint my bathroom, too. It needs brightening up. And the cabinets. I’m tired of that beige color. I think I’ll paint them white, and then . . .

Finally! Two more miles and we’re home. I gathered my snack bags, sweater, and cushion, then reached down to get my pocketbook on the floorboard.

OH, NO!

I looked under the seat. On the back seat. Under the back seat. It’s just not here! It’s not here! It’s back there, three thousand miles away!

Moaning like a pair of sick cows, we turned around and raced back to the restaurant. Like a broken record, over and over, I prayed, “Please, God! Let someone find my pocketbook and turn it in!”

It was turned in! Nothing was taken except our precious time: two hours to the ball tournament, two hours back home, two more hours back to the restaurant, and two more hours back home. What a day! What a long, stressful, nail-biting, hard-lesson-learned tiring day!

How Would You Describe Yourself to Someone?

Daily writing prompt
How would you describe yourself to someone?
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How Would I Describe Myself to Someone?

Well, this is a tough one, because I can barely describe myself to myself. But I’ll try.

I’m like Pandora’s box that’s better left unopened. But, for those brave souls that have dared take a peek, they’re still by my side alive and well. The birds are still singing, the earth is still spinning, and life goes on.

So, Mr. or Mrs. Someone, on my lesser, complex side, I’m nice, kind, and considerate. I respect others and give one-thousand-and-one percent of myself in all that I do. I’m passionate, intuitive, and nearly think my poor little brain to death. I help people, whether I’m asked for it or not. Years ago, when I was out jogging, a young couple was having car trouble. So, while the wife slid behind the steering wheel, her husband and I pushed the car uphill about a quarter of a mile to their house.

I’m an expert at hiding my feelings, so you won’t know that behind my humor and laughter, I’m fighting a bloody war inside that I can never win. No matter how much I pray. No matter how much I cry. No matter how hard I fight.

To be completely honest with you, Mr. or Mrs. Someone, I have extreme anxiety disorders; about as many that have ever been written about. Well, maybe not that many; I do exaggerate a little. But, I am talking about Pandora’s box, remember? Therefore, I find it difficult to describe myself to you when I don’t know which self I am at the moment. Am I my real self, or my pretend self? Am I the tell-it-like-it-is self, or the timid, and shy self? Just pick one, because I don’t know, they keep me so confused.

It’s like this, Mr. or Mrs. Someone. I never know which self is going to wake up another self, and then another, till I’m in the middle of an all-out war with a legion of anxious selves that just won’t shut up and stop fighting! My brain becomes as confused as a rat in a maze, and my heart starts pounding like a team of runaway horses. And if someone, in the midst of all this chaos, stupidly decides to jerk on my chain, they better run because I’m one hundred percent positive that I will bite them.

No, Mr. or Mrs. Someone! Of course, I don’t like this about myself, and I judge and condemn myself harshly for it. It’s not like I sat on Santa’s lap eons ago and told him I wanted a cock-eyed brain for Christmas or begged my parents to buy it for my first birthday!

So, let’s just keep Pandora’s box shut. Let’s lock it, and throw away the key. I’m too exhausted trying to describe myself to you, today. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day, or the middle of never!

Nice talking to you, Mr. or Mrs. Someone. Think we’ll be talking again anytime soon?

If I Could Bring Back One Dinosaur, Which One Would it Be?

Daily writing prompt
If you could bring back one dinosaur, which one would it be?
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If I could bring back one dinosaur, which one would it be?

The Long neck. It’s friendly and has a sweet little face. It kind of reminds me of a giraffe with its long, graceful neck. I’d like to climb up on one, but I’m afraid of heights. Besides, it would probably take off like that bareback horse I climbed on eons ago and, left me flying through the air and landing on my butt. It was my friend’s fault. She dared me. But that was only a few feet, compared to a trillion-foot-high Long Neck. I don’t even want to think about that flight to the ground!

But, as much as I’d like to bring back the Long Neck dinosaur, I think I’ll just leave it at Jurassic Park. It’ll get bored at my house, and my dogs would get jealous. I don’t think the neighbors would like it too much, anyway, especially when all their trees would get stripped bare. When it comes right down to it, I’m glad all the dinosaurs are gone. Can you imagine coming face-to-face with a T Rex?

My go-to Comfort Food

Daily writing prompt
What’s your go-to comfort food?
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My go-to comfort food

My comfort food isn’t food. It’s junk. I know. I’m supposed to eat healthy, and I do, sometimes. But, I’m not much of a meat-eater, so there’s not much else out there but carbs. And of course, I go for the unhealthy carbs, like potatoes, rice, pasta; all those soft and cozy comfort foods.

But sugar is my true love. I have cut back a little. But the only way I can control it completely is when I do intermittent fasting for a few months. That’s how I get clean. And I feel so much better, more energetic and healthier that I promise my doubting self that I’m done with sugar. We broke up, and we’re never getting back together again.

But, like a persistent lover, sugar always manages to wear me down. It promises me that if I just cut back a little, that I’ll be fine. Just eat the recommended portion. Count out six little gummie bears, or eight malted milk balls, and you’ll be completely, one-hundred percent satisfied. Self-control. That’s all it takes.

Self-control? Is there even such a thing these days? I’m an all or nothing woman. Give me the whole bag of caramel chews, or I will go for the throat!

And did I mention ice cream? Don’t even get me started on dairiO Campfire S’mores ice cream. I order three big scoops each time, but I can eat ten. No shame here. I love ice cream. After a hot, sweaty day of mowing for two hours, I can’t wait to head straight to the freezer and grab my fix of whatever sweet little frozen friend is in there.

But I won’t dare mention that I ate a small Domino’s pizza, and an entire box of pull-a-parts, all by myself one evening while binging on Netflix. And I’m never going to mention that I finished all that off with a glass of soda, a box of Milk Duds, and a bag of sweet and sour gummie worms. But I will tell you, that it all came back up as fast as it went down. It was worse than that one time I got drunk just to see what it was like.

Now you know that I’m serious when it comes to my favorite comfort food. There isn’t just one, and I never do anything half-way. But, that last ridiculous, Miss Piggy, pizza and desert episode, made me realize that sugar and I need to break up for good. We need a divorce! But the only way I can see that happening is for everybody and their brother, cousins, aunts, and uncles, and neighbors and friends to stop shoving sweets in my face. And that would mean, no more dairiO! No more pull-a-parts! No more Milk Duds! No more anything! How would I sleep at night knowing all my sweet little friends are gone?

When Apologizing is like Eating Dirt

It was just an ordinary summer day when my brother Kenny and I were left home alone while our parents and youngest sibling were grocery shopping. Kenny was seven, and I was eight.

Long before video games, PlayStation, and iPhones, we actually had to sit and talk to each other or play pick-up sticks or ball and jacks or tinker toys or build cabins out of Lincoln Logs.

Well, that particular day, we wanted a little more excitement than that. We couldn’t go outside and play, and playing hide-and-seek in our tiny apartment was like looking for an elephant hiding under the bed.

While pacing the tiny living room floor, I glanced out the window and saw the landlord working in her flowerbed. For whatever reason, mom, and daddy didn’t like the landlords, so I didn’t like them either.

Suddenly, as if being poked with the devil’s pitchfork, I coaxed Kenny into doing something totally out of character for both of us. We raised the window, stuck out our pea-brain heads and yelled, “Hey, old lady Brummel! Hey, old lady Brummel!”

We lived quite a distance away, so I didn’t think she even heard us until she threw down her garden tools and stormed toward the apartment huffing and puffing and smoke pouring out of her ears.

Oh, no! She’s coming to chop off our arms and legs!

Like a cat with its tail on fire, Kenny ran downstairs and locked the door just in the nick of time before she started pounding on it and screaming like the big bad wolf, “Let me in! Let me in! I’m telling your parents when they get home!”

True to her word and to my horror, as soon as the car pulled into the driveway, the phone started ringing.

My mother was the warden at our house. A strict, religious warden that didn’t put up with nonsense and expected her brood to follow the rules or else. And that day “or else” meant that we march our little impudent behinds over to the landlord and apologize!

I’d rather have shoveled a pile of manure in the freezing cold stark naked.

Yes, she made me go, but I made her pay!

Like a bloody battle between the North and the South, I bawled and kicked and screamed as mom nearly yanked my arm out of the socket, pulling and dragging me across the field. By the time we got to the landlord’s house, mom needed a long nap and I needed a straight jacket.

I thought that if I danced around bawling and screaming long and hard enough, mom would give up and take me home. But, oh no! If it meant waiting for the rapture to take place, I was going to straighten up and apologize before I could even think about going home.

Like swallowing a ton of bricks, I finally choked up the words everyone was waiting to hear and never talked my brother into doing anything that stupid again.

But, I just remembered that other time when . . .