It’s been almost five years ago that we moved to this city of TWO MILLION people, and I’m constantly surprised at how often I run into familiar faces here and there.  Just last week, Arle, Grammy and I went to lunch at California Pizza Kitchen and one of my closet clients was seated at the table next to us.  A couple of weeks ago, my friend Jessie and I were out shopping when we randomly ran into our friend, Kristin.  Each year at the Plaza Art Fair, it never fails that we run into all sorts of acquaintances among the thousands of people there.  I regularly bump into peeps I know at the grocery store, pediatrician’s office, Starbucks, and all sorts of other places. 

So, it really shouldn’t have surprised me yesterday morning at church when I suddenly realized I recognized the face sitting in the seat directly in front of me.  My attention was drawn to her as she turned to whisper something to her husband during praise and worship.  I saw her profile and it seemed familiar to me.  My brain immediately started flipping through my internal Rolodex of faces to try and place hers. 

Suddenly, it hit me.  My stomach did a flip-flop. 

She’s the girl that does my bikini-waxing. 

Not eyebrows, not mustache…bikini. 

The only other person I would have been less excited to see would have been my gynecologist.

To many of you this may not be that big of a deal.  To those of you who are modest-minnies like myself, this is mortifying. 

I was raised by, possibly, the MOST modest woman in the entire world (in fact, if it wasn’t for her love of fashion and her fabulous hair, I’ve always felt she would make a fantastic Amish woman).  Much of her modesty was imparted into her daughters and I’ve always considered it an admirable trait. 

I’m actually sitting here in Starbucks writing this and nervous about even mentioning the fact that I get bikini-waxes.  I assure you I’ll be receiving a phone call about it from my mother and will probably be scolded, not only for writing about it, but also for just getting them in the first place. 

Bikini-waxing is one of those things that took me quite a while to even muster up the courage to do.  I justified it by telling myself, “The benefits will totally be worth it and, outside of the salon, it’s not like I’m ever going to see the person doing it.” 

But then she shows up at my church.  In the seat directly in front of me.  Notice how I say it’s “my church?”  As if only those I give permission to are allowed to enter the building? 

Needless to say, I avoided eye-contact and high-tailed it out of there as soon as the service was over. 

Knowing my luck, though, she and her husband will probably join our small group.

I attempted to run with the “wild” crowd in 6th and 7th grades, but soon realized that I wasn’t very good at being “bad.” 

My older brother was the rebel in the family and watching him make his mistakes was probably the best medicine for me.  I’ve always said he was a great role model for me, because I pretty much knew that, as long as I did the opposite of what he was doing, life would be much easier.

So, here I am at age 31, and I’ve rebelled and done something I never thought would do.  I’ve done something irresponsible and crazy.  Something looked down upon by the masses.  Brace yourselves, because your perception of me is about to change….FOREVER. 

I’ve dropped out of school.

That’s right.  I’m officially a Ju-Co drop out. 

Last night I went to my third cake decorating class.  Half-way through, I decided I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I have now officially wasted six hours of my life on this class, and I refuse to waste anymore time on it.  I looked over at Kristin and told her I didn’t want to come back next week for the last class.  She jumped on board with my plan ASAP.  We’re dropping out together, which somehow makes me feel better about the whole thing. 

I’m trying to remember the last time I actually quit something, but am having a hard time coming up with any examples.  I’m sure there’s something I’ve quit, but it’s just not a normal thing I do. 

And I’m not giving up on cake decorating all together, either.  I’m just giving up on this ridiculous class.  Kristin and I are convinced that we can be fantastic cake decorators, which is bizarre because we truly were the worst students in the class.  We couldn’t make icing roses if our lives depended on it.  I really tried, too, but just couldn’t get it.  Kristin pretty much put threw her piping bag down and gave up after her first failed attempt.  We just keep telling ourselves we only stink at that style of decorating and that we could do our style SO much better. 

We’re totally going to have cake decorating sessions on our own and I’m sure our creations will end up on the pages of Martha Stewart magazine.  Just wait and see.  Martha will probably even want us to come on her show and demonstrate our innovative skills.  I should probably start interviewing nannies now, because I can just see my life getting pretty busy and hectic once Kristin and I hit the road for our book signing tour.  You will all be able to say you knew me before I became a star. 

Lucky you.

Now…onto more serious matters.

A couple of months ago my crafty friend, Kristin, and I discovered the local junior college offers a cake decorating class.  Our fabulous husbands overheard our conversation and decided to enroll us in the class as a Christmas gift.  Kristin and I were both ecstatic about the surprise and finally went to our first class last night. 

This is where things started going downhill. 

Kristin and I had visions of learning how to create really chic, cool cakes like this:

We quickly realized we were going to learn to make cakes like this:

I’m not quite sure why we weren’t a bit more suspicious of a junior college decorating class.  It’s as if we thought we were signing up at a French culinary school. 

We sat for two hours listening to the instructor go on and on and on about us learning to make roses out of icing…I’m not exactly an icing-rose-kind-of-gal, ya know (no offense to those of you who are)?  She’s also a huge proponent of buying your cakes at the grocery store and then decorating them (even though she told us over and over and over that these cakes were probably baked 10-30 days prior).  I know not everyone enjoys baking like I do, but come on.  If I’m going to spend this kind of time decorating a cake, it darn well better taste good once it’s cut into. 

I know, I know.  I’m a big fat snob. 

I’m determined to get something out of this class, though.  We’re going to continue attending and, by golly, I’m going to bake Arle the best birthday cake EVER.  Well, maybe not the best one ever, but it will surely look better than the one I made for her first birthday. 

Can you tell what it is?  I’m guessing the answer is no.  It’s OK, most of the guests at the party couldn’t make it out either.  It was supposed to be an elephant.  I found this great elephant cake pan on-line and thought that if you bake the cake in that pan it would look like an elephant.  Well, it did at first.  But then I slathered it up in green butter cream frosting and it suddenly looked awful.  A bit phallic, actually.  I panicked.  I had purchased the white M&Ms to make polkadots because the invitation had a white polka dotted elephant on it.  During my last minute panic attack, I decided to just trace the elephant “parts” with the M&Ms.  Not exactly what I had in mind, but the party was in an hour and a mommy’s gotta do what a mommy’s gotta do. 

So, like I said, I’m going to learn how to do something in this class.  Even if it’s something as simple as how to keep the cake crumbs out of the frosting during the spreading process.  Wish me luck.

Last night, I may have outdone myself.

Travis and I have been tossing around the idea of taking a vacation sometime in the next few months.  This all came about because our friends, Kent and Traci, actually approached us about possibly going somewhere together again (we went to Vegas with them last year).  So, I’ve been perusing some travel sites to try and find a fun and somewhat inexpensive getaway.  Last night I received an email from Luxury Link, an auction site much like ebay, but instead of bidding on a ceramic mule statue, you bid on fabulous vacations.  I’ve always loved looking on this site and daydreaming about the gorgeous destinations they offer, but I’ve never actually bid on anything. 

Until last night. 

I came across a package that seemed to good to pass up.   Not only did I bid (the minimum bid, none the less) I also won.  Here’s what our $750 will get us:

A 5-night package for 2 in Florence, Italy that includes:

Click here to check out the hotel we would stay at.  Pretty fab, eh???

The other thing that makes this whole thing fantastic is that Trav and I have enough American Express points for two free round-trip tickets to Europe!  How could I NOT bid on this?  

I received an email this morning saying I had won the trip.  I called Trav to tell him and let’s just say he’s not exactly thrilled with me right now.  He is the exact opposite of me and likes to put loads of thought into each and every decision.  Even though he was sitting right next to me when I put in my bid and seemed (to me) like he was fine with me bidding on this steal, he insists that he did nothing to give me the impression that he was behind me on this deal.  He’s claiming that I should have never assumed he was totally paying attention to me since he was in the middle of watching an OU basketball game.  I’ll admit that was definitely a mistake on my part.  Trav takes OU basketball VERY serious. 

I’ll also admit, I didn’t read the fine print to realize that bidding entered me into a “binding” contract.  Of course, my attorney husband seemed to find this info quite easily when I called him this morning to tell him we won.  I thought that if we decided not to go, we just wouldn’t give them our payment info in the 24-hour time-frame required and we would be out of the deal.  Evidently that’s not how these things work.  I’ve apologized to Trav for being so irresponsible and am hoping he’ll find it in his heart to forgive me. 

The other kink in this grand plan of mine is that I was pretty much the worst friend EVER.  I completely forgot about Kent and Traci during my bidding madness and now I feel like a big jerk because we didn’t consult them about it, but we’re hoping they are going to brush off their best Italian shoes and hop on a plane with us.  We’ll see.  I’ve also apologized to Traci for being such an awful, inconsiderate friend and am hoping that they also will find it in their hearts to forgive me. 

So, for now we’re trying to work out all the logistics in order to make this trip happen.  Who knows, though, we could be putting this trip up on ebay right next to the “unusual heart shaped potato.”

On the first day we were in New Mexico, we went to visit my grandparents.  We were all sitting in the living room talking, when suddenly Arle walked to the middle of the room and started pulling her shirt up with one hand and pulling her pants down with the other.

I said, “What are you doing?  Do you want to go potty?”

Since she’s never gone “potty” before, I never expected her to make a beeline to the toilet, but that’s exactly what she did.  I immediately got up to see what she was doing and by the time I made it to the restroom, she was peering inside the toilet with a very determined look on her face.  I decided to just see what would happen, took her pants and diaper off, and sat her up on the throne.

She didn’t even flinch at the odd feeling of her tiny hiny hanging over a hole filled with water, but instead just dangled her little legs and had the most serious face on.  I was squatting down in front of her with my hands on her knees when whe noticed a kleenex in my hand.

She immediately grabbed it from me and reached behind herself to wipe, then promptly brought the kleenex to her nose to wipe it, then back to the bum, then back to the nose, then opened her legs and wiped in the front.  At this point (through my laughter) I told her we needed to throw the tissue in the toilet, but she refused to do it until I pulled her off and she could turn around to see what she was doing.

I finally got her to let go of it, but then she immediately stuck her hand INSIDE the toilet to pull the tissue out!  I was completely grossed out by the entire thing, but trying to be the encouraging supporting Mommy at the same time.

Do you cheer for your daughter when she wipes her nose with the same tissue she just wiped her bum with????   I explained that you do NOT do this, but gave her a hip-hip-hooray for attempting the entire thing.  Luckily, Arle doesn’t mind if you laugh at her, because my mom and I were laughing throughout the whole process.

She actually seems to enjoy entertaining us and I guess she saw this as one more opportunity to do just that.  She asked to go potty a few more times while we were there, but has yet to deposit anything into the toilet other than tissue.   Unfortunately, I have no pics or videos to show you from our potty adventures.  I figure someday Arle’s going to be mortified to find out I’ve shared this story with the world and I’m afraid posting photos might really upset her.

Over the past month, Travis and I have made a concerted effort to try and convey to Arle the real reason behind all the Christmas hoop-la.  We’ve told her over and over again that Christmas is for Jesus.  We sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus.  We talked about the Nativity scene in our home.  Day before yesterday, she showed me that she realizes Jesus is definitely someone special. 

Over the course of the week at her grandparent’s home, she lost her appetite for most of the food she usually loves and developed quite an affection for candy canes.  She’s rarely allowed to eat sugar, but we didn’t mind since they only come around once a year.  Sunday evening, I was packing up all of our Christmas loot and visiting with my Mother when Arle came in saying, “Bite? Bite?” and holding up a candy cane.  Being the kind Mommy that I am, I took it from her and told her she couldn’t have it because it was almost bedtime and she had refused to eat hardly anything all day long. I expected her to challenge me, but she simply turned around and walked off.  I looked at my Mother with such pride and said something like, “Wow!  What an obedient daughter I have.”  Mother replied, “She knows where the rest are and she’s going to get another.”  She and I immediately followed Arle’s trail to see if she really was being sneaky, and sure enough, she already had another candy cane in hand.  When she looked up and realized she was busted, she simply lifted the candy to me and said, “Bite for Jesus?”  Mother and I both died laughing.  We couldn’t believe she would come up with that at 18 months old.  I’m quickly realizing that she’s going to be quite the handful! 

It had been a super hot and steamy summer and I had not wanted to drag my teeny tiny baby out just so I could be a bronzed beauty.  I hadn’t really thought much about it until a couple days before we were set to fly out.  I suddenly became extremely self-conscious about my pasty white skin and decided that drastic times called for drastic measures. 

I called the Tan Van. 

The what???? You read it right…the Tan Van.  It’s fantastic.  No, it’s Tanfastic (that’s the actual name). 

I had heard about it while working at the ad agency I was with before Arle was born.  The Tan Van Lady would come to the office for a day and people would sign up to go strip down in her van, get airbrushed, and then come back in with a glorious glow.  I was intrigued, but not brave enough to ever put my name on the list. 

So, when I suddenly decided I absolutely HAD to have some color on my body, the Tan Van came to my rescue.  Originally, I decided I would drive to her in order to save $10.  Since conversations between Trav and me are so comical to all of you, see what you think about this one:

Me:  Honey, can you be home by 6:30 tomorrow night?  I have an appointment to be at.

Trav:  Nope.  Tomorrow night is the Royals Dugout Suite Party. 

Me:  I’ve been asking you when that is for weeks and you never could tell me.  Now I make an appt. and need you to be here and suddenly you know when the party is???  (note:  I’m SUPER perturbed at this point)

Trav:  What’s the big deal?  What kind of appointment is it? 

Me:  (with a very loud voice and tears welling up in my eyes)  I have to drive out to Olathe to some lady’s house, get naked in her van, and let her spray me down with a fake tan, OK????!!! 

Trav:  Well, I absolutely forbid you to do that.  Are you crazy? 

Me:  (laughing) Hmmm…it does sound pretty crazy, doesn’t it? 

So, I decided to change my plan.  I forked over the extra $10 to have the Tan Van come straight to my front door.  I planned it when I knew Arle would be napping, locked the door to the house, took the monitor outside with me, and got into the Van.  I stripped down to my undies and got my first airbrush tan.  Yes, it was awkward, but it was worth it.  I looked like I just returned from an island vacation.  The Tan Van Lady was my new BFF. 

We were re-united night before last (yes, the toilet fiasco night).  Trav’s office Christmas party is tomorrow night and I, once again, decided my bod could use a tinge of color.  This time, Trav was home (plunging our toilet) and able to watch Arle, so I drove out south to TVL’s home.  Just when I thought things couldn’t be more strange than stripping down in a van and getting sprayed, I went into her home bathroom and entered the black tent and was sprayed.  I prefer the van. 

Once again, I’m extremely happy with the final result.  For some reason, I always feel skinnier when I’m tan and that, my friends, is worth every second of awkwardness and the $35 that it cost.