Happy Birthday to Chuck

Today is my friend Charlotte's birthday. I routinely forget birthdays but I have the advantage of my friend Jenny's birthday coming exactly one week before Charlotte's birthday. What happens every year is that the day or two after Jenny's birthday, I'll remember that her birthday passed. Then I'll call (this year she called me) and then I'll wish her a happy birthday. But because that happened, I'll remember to call Charlotte. But I'll have to remember for a whole week or a scant 4 days like this year, and I'll typically forget on the day but remember the next day.

So in honor of Charlotte's birthday, I'll write down some obscure references that only she will know and you all can be puzzled by.

1. I just want to crawl with you and nibble grass.

2. I still think it was a ghost in the auditorium. Serious chicken skin.

3. A serenade from a guy whose calling card was a Playgirl magazine. Surreal.

4. Can't stay mad at a person if she kisses your nose.

5. Especially special.


Bon anniversaire ma cherie!

The Wedding Planner

Yesterday evening, on the most auspicious day of 8/8/08, at 8:08pm, my friends Julie & Joe got married. Thousands of people (especially Chinese folk) got married yesterday because of the number 8 which means good fortune (wealth) in China. Joe and Julie aren't Chinese, but I think the idea of all those eights, especially since this is the 8th year of them as a couple, they thought it a great idea to get married on the day.

And it is all my fault.

I didn't introduce them or anything like that. What I did do was nag Julie to the point of annoyance which all came to a head last week Sunday at the beach. I struggle with this because I've been told many times by people who love me that I have no tact. Because self-loathing is something I'd like to rid myself of, I embrace my tactlessness. Anyway, back to the beach. I said to Julie, "So, are you two ever going to have a ceremony?" Which led to a discussion about the 8/8/08 day. When I told Julie about its meaning in the Chinese culture, I think it really captured her imagination. The following day, she called me and my co-conspirator Sharon with the news that her friend Lissa was going to host it at her fabulous waterfront property and the wedding was a go.

You didn't read that wrong. There were 4 days to plan and do this wedding.

I've reflected on that idea a lot. People always say that you need a good year to plan a wedding. I think that is a whole lot of hooey. See, it is all about expectations. If you have a year to obsess about how a wedding should look and how people should dress, and what the favors should look like, and what color bows to put on the chairs -- YOU WILL OBSESS ABOUT THE MINUTIA, simply because you can. When you have 4 days to put together a wedding, you get to be much more big picture. This was a big picture wedding.

The invitations were sent out by email. Of the 80 people invited, about 70 showed up. Remember, that was on 4 days notice. The bride's father and the groom's parents who live out of town, made it to the wedding. It was amazing. Friends and family, even the best friend of the bride's father made it to the wedding. It was truly magical.

The minister is a friend of Joe & Julie's. He's a total hoot! I talked to him on Thursday to get some music figured out for the wedding ceremony. I also suggested what I think is the perfect wedding song, but the few couples that I've suggested it to in the past have nixed it. It is Grow Old with Me by John Lennon, covered by Mary Chapin Carpenter. Thursday at 10 pm, I checked my email and found that Mark had decided that I should sing the song while he accompanied me on the guitar. A perfectly balanced person would balk at that idea especially with no rehearsal time.

I am not perfectly balanced.

I wrote Mark back and told him that sounded great. And since I would be singing, then Sharon would do the reading during the service instead. Turns out that it was a joke. Mark was not ready (in one day) to get that song in performance mode so I called his bluff. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to sing it but should I ever attend another wedding where Mark is officiating, I'll be sure to sing it then.

I ended up herding cats all evening long. Getting the kids to stick around for the formal pictures, getting the guests to gather for the actual wedding, getting people to gather for toasts, making sure the couple had champagne in hand to have the toast... truly, it was challenging. There is the fact that you cannot legally use a cattle prod on guests at a wedding. Nor can you taser the groom so that he'll stay in one place while we're taking pictures. (No, Joe, you may not go back to the car to get something.) You cannot tastefully use a megaphone at a wedding. You cannot yell at people to get moving or they'll miss the wedding. And yeah, Minister Mark, I get to tell you to start at 8pm, and it was a gift that I gave you 8:08pm. I get why real wedding coordinators get paid so much.

And the other cool thing about weddings is seeing people you totally don't expect to see. I got to catch up with a college friend whom I've not seen in about 17 years. We didn't even know we had Julie in common. Amazing.

All in all, it was really great. One of the guests brought fireworks to set off. When they were announced as Mr. & Mrs. they had the fireworks overhead. I cried a little during the vows and couldn't believe that I had forgotten the rule to always wear water proof mascara to weddings. I didn't raccoon too much. Sharon stole my napkin to pass to the bride to wipe her tears leaving me defenseless. Bah.

It was a good day for romance.

I don't care what you say, it's not my fault

My husband has been losing his wallet lately. Okay, twice in the past 2 months. This simply has to stop. Here's the wondrous thing about marriage. What we have is ours, not just his and not just mine either. Ours. So when one of us misplaces our wallets, both of us need to get new credit cards and new ATM cards. Both of us need to be hawkish about watching the credit card statements and such. So when he lost his wallet three days before I left for San Francisco, I was understandably annoyed. (read "pissed off")

The last place he remembered having the wallet was Rite Aid. He paid for something and then we went directly into our car. We thought that he dropped it in the parking lot. I contacted every store in the shopping complex and asked if anyone had turned in a wallet. No such luck. To put a cherry on top of the whole 3 days of preparing for a trip to San Francisco, my son lost his retainer. Great. And to put all the planets into alignment at once, I was PMSing. Dude, it is amazing that I didn't commit murder or start eating puppies I was in such a bad mood. We ended up throwing caution to the wind and didn't cancel our credit card. ATM was canceled so I had no access to cash on the trip. We changed the credit card when I returned from SFO. This turned out to be the right thing to do because the wallet did show up eventually.

I hired some landscapers to take care of the lawn. With Hubby's punishing work schedule lately, yard maintenance (which has never been all that diligent in the first place) has gone to sh*t. The day that Hubby lost his wallet, he played with the girls in the backyard. When the landscapers cleared the knee high growth that was our "lawn," they found Hubby's wallet.

That was last week.

It's like that movie, "Highlander," when they say, "There can be only one." My husband can't have more than one wallet in his possession at one time. Some kind of cosmic thing.

So two days ago, we went to the grocery store after dropping Princess off at gymnastics. When we got to the grocery store, my husband announced that he had misplaced his wallet. He remembers picking it up but when buckling Lil'T into her car seat, he thinks he put it (this is the part that isn't funny to me yet but might become funny in a couple of weeks) on the roof the car.

Are you kidding me?

But here's the best part. He says to me that maybe he didn't put it on the roof of the car. Maybe he put it down when he was putting on his shoes. The reason why he didn't put it in his pocket is because (this is the part where it all becomes my fault so brace yourself) the shorts I bought him don't have pockets. Yeah. My fault.

So we get home and he can't find the wallet. I'm envisioning combing the sides of the roads we drove. I'm thinking that we should cancel the credit cards and ATM cards AGAIN!!! Luckily, he doesn't have to get another license because the recovered wallet still has a valid one in it. To make matters worse, he had taken out about $100 in cash because we had the babysitter coming the next day. Kiss that good-bye immediately.

So we get a phone message on the answering machine from a lady in the next town over. She says that she found a wallet in her newspaper recycling bin and can't figure out how it got there, but if this is Mr. Haddon, please call back. Miraculously the wallet was undisturbed. All the money was still in there. All the cards were still there. Hubby gave the woman a small reward to thank her for her trouble. Here's where it gets weird though. She lived nowhere near where we drove. Not on the same road, not even in the same town. Totally strange. The best I can figure, somebody who was taking a bus probably picked it up and then decided not to bother with having to return it to us directly so put it in these nice people's recycling bin.

I'm still watching our credit card statements and making sure that no erroneous activity is going on -- but if the stranger who picked up the wallet was going to steal from it, wouldn't s/he have taken the cash out of it first?

So, here's the bizarre thing. My husband blames me for the losing of his wallet. You already know how it is my fault that he put it on the roof of the car. Here is how it is my fault that he lost it in the yard. The shorts he was wearing that day have the pocket on the wrong side and the pockets are shallow. Because I bought him the shorts, it is my fault on both counts that the wallet got lost.

Never mind the fact that if I didn't buy him clothes, he'd still be wearing what he wore in college. Threadbare and all. He's got this one pair of shorts that has the butt completely ripped out of it yet somehow it still manages to be worn from time to time.

Grill me up some puppies, will ya?

Update: This is a quote from Hubby, "Those shorts are still good." See what I live with?

Colors in low light

Yesterday we took the kids to go mini-golfing and then stopped at the grocery store on the way home. Just your typical Saturday with the Haddons, really. But this time we were taking our new car. We're still trying to get accustomed to it. There are all sorts of bells and whistles on the car we need to figure out. What a great thing to know that the kids can listen to their DVD while we are listening to the radio or CD because they've got headphones. Joy. We spent at least an hour in our driveway adjusting the driver's seat and programming our remotes. The car is just cool.

Yesterday evening, it had already gotten dark by the time we were leaving the grocery store. The kids and I were walking back to our car. Hubby and Lil'T were still in the store but I figured they would catch up as soon as Lil'T decided it was time to leave. You know, terrible twos and all. I walked up behind the Odyssey Touring and pressed the remote to unlock. Nothing happened. I pressed all the buttons and nothing happened. No way. So I stood there dumbly for a moment when That said, "This isn't our car."

"Yes, it is," I protested, "See, it says 'Touring' on it."

"No mom, I know it's not our car because it is playing Thomas the Tank Engine in the DVD player."

When I finally looked up and paid atttention, I discovered that not only was it not our car, but it was occupied and the driver was waiting for me to move so she could back up.

Doh.

A New (to us) Car!!!

I always loved that announcement on the Price is Right. For every other prize, the announcer would use a fairly upbeat and perky voice but there was fanfare for a new car. Imagine, "in this prize package, you'll receive a washer and dryer set, a ironing board, an exotic ceramic tiger and (pregnant pause) A NEW CAR!!!" You know what I'm talking about. Then there was the trumpet music and the close up shot on the contestant's face where (s)he would be overwhelmed with joy at the thought of a new car.

My friend Julia has called our accident a blessing in disguise. As far as accidents go, we've been incredibly fortunate. We've got a newer model of our old car with better fuel efficiency. Hubby gets to rebuild his computer and a couple of his camera lenses because he had them in the trunk of our car. It is time consuming to buy all that stuff, but how great is it that we are able to replace those broken items. Additionally, I think we've been allowed to have a redo of a really difficult learning experience in buying our first new car 9 years ago. (We were young, naive, and paid too much money. They really took advantage of us and I'm still smarting from the experience.) This time, we walked out on 2 car dealerships when we even suspected mind games -- making us wait to give us a counter offer or even an angry speech from one manager about how we were calling him a liar and how he needs to feed his kids too. It really felt empowering to leave and have them scrambling to get us back to talk. Yay on Hubby. Once he left, we never went back.

We ultimately didn't get our car from a dealership. We got it from World Peace on the Internet -- Craigslist.

After we were just about worn out from visiting a total of 5 dealerships in the span of 3 days, we met up with the sellers who were a husband and wife. They were selling their 2007 Honda Odyssey Touring. We met them with all our 3 kids in tow (something I swore I would never do again: shop for cars with the kids with me). The sun had already gone down but we met in the parking lot of a Target store. It was pretty dark so when I was asked the next day about what color the van was, I said that I thought it was gold with tan interior. It actually turned out to be silver with gray. Oops. It was clear that this couple really loved the car. The husband recounted how he and his boys (5 & 8 years old) would sit in the back seat and play video games on the DVD screen while waiting for his wife. She told me that the DVD player was one last bastion of sanity if the kids were being loud in the back seat. I asked her why they were selling. I suspected the rising oil prices and all. She told me instead that she became ill in the last year and was forced to stop working. She said they've had to change the financial obligations that they can meet.

We chatted more and commiserated about buying a car from a dealership. We talked about how she really raked the dealership over the coals when they bought this car so I had a little vicarious thrill that she made that dealership squirm. When we got down to making our offer, Hubby offered our max and then a little more over that because the car was absolutely pristine. They called us on our way back home and told us that they'd accepted our offer.

Today we went to pick up the car. My mother wants me to have the car blessed by our priest, but part of me feels a little uneasy doing that. I'm not sure my hubby would approve. Instead, I carried the bottle of holy water from Lourdes and Fatima that my mother brought home from her pilgrimage. Mom got the water from the Lourdes spring and house well water of the children of the Fatima apparitions, and mixed them for me. I figured I could sprinkle it on the car before we rode in it.

We met at their house. Her husband was working so it was just her and her 2 boys. She brought us inside the house to sign a bill of sale. Lil'T was fascinated by their little French bulldog. It was clear when we went back outside that her boys were very disappointed by this transaction. I invited her older son to go inside and say good-bye. Instead he kind of shook his head and walked away. She said that she thought she might cry. She said that her husband was reluctant to put the car mats into the sale because he knew he wanted to buy another Odyssey when all of this (her illness) was over.

At that point, I knew that if I didn't do this, I would regret it later. So I reached into my purse and pulled out my bottle of the Lourdes/Fatima water. I said, "You might think I'm a kook but here goes anyway. I'm Catholic and I don't know what religious community you belong to, but this is water from Fatima & Lourdes. This water has healing properties and I know that you've been ill. Could I bless you with it?" She consented. I hope that I wasn't too much on the crazy side, but I just thought that if anyone would understand what it must be like for a mother to be faced with losing the chance to watch her sons grow, it would be our Blessed Mother, right? I pray that our Blessed Mother will intercede so she will be healed of her illness. I hugged her afterwards and assured her that this all will pass and she'd be tooling around in a brand new Odyssey in no time. I admit, I cried as I drove away. I cannot imagine what they're going through.

And so we have a new to us car. And I am grateful for it. And I'm happy to have spent the money for it because I know that this family was helped by it. And maybe I was meant to go there with the bottle from Lourdes & Fatima to bless her so she will be healed. It feels good to have bought the car from that family.

Hey, do me a favor. Keep this family in your prayers. Thanks.

Can't get enough of That

That: Hey Dad, it says here that this gas is 10% rum.

Hubby: What? Where did you read that?

That: It says right here, "At least 10% Ethanol. Isn't that rum?"

A little more of That

I posted the slide show of our trip to San Francisco. You might have wondered why I had a picture of the "Old Timer" stall from the San Francisco Zoo. Well, here's the story.

My kids and my mom were walking through the barn at the petting zoo. There was a stall to the left labeled "Old Timer."

My son said, "Look Lola! It's an Old Timer. Just like you."

My mother, after peering into the stall she said to me, "Your son is calling me an old goat."

Someday he'll want for better skills at talking with people of the opposite gender. That day has not yet arrived.

Although, over the weekend he made us all proud with some fabulous theatrics.

We were playing a game called Werewolves. It is a good party game very similar to the game Mafia. In a nutshell, you are either townsfolk or you are werewolves. Some townsfolk play special roles like Cupid who picks 2 people to be lovers. Should one of the lovers die, the other dies instantly of heartbreak. In our group of friends, we had 1 eleven year old girl and 2 eleven year old boys. It never got old to pair up the one girl with one of the 2 boys because they grossed out so much at being one of the lovers. Anyway, on one such occasion, the poor girl was picked first to die and we waited to see who would join her in death. At the perfect moment, my son cried out, "No!!! Why her! Please, not her!!!" He fell to the floor in one of the most dramatic death scenes I've ever witnessed. The rest of us were totally cracking up and applauding such a great interpretation of his role.

I need to get that kid into acting lessons.