Memory Lane

I have NO idea why I haven't blogged about this sooner. I kind of forgot about it, I guess. That is, until my sweet little boy reminded me of it tonight.

BJ and I got married in Vegas almost one year ago. We were fortunate enough to have lots of family and friends fly in and celebrate our wedding with us. After the wedding, we took everyone (about 30 people) out to a wonderful dinner that was quite away from the strip. The food was great, the wine was great, and everyone had a great time.

Afterward, the best man thought it would be a good idea to rent a van to take us all back to the strip thinking that it would be cheaper than several taxi's. We all piled in the van which had seating in a U shape.

It's important for the story that you know the seating arrangements. On one end of the U, there was a driver. The other side was a movie screen. I sat between my (new!) husband and my youngest son, and sitting directly across from me was my oldest son. The rest of the van was a bunch of BJ's friends. All guys.

The driver asked if we wanted a movie, and everyone yelled "yeah!" "bring it on!" etc.

The movie starts, and what do you know... it's PORN. On the big screen. I am not a watcher of porn, but have to admit that rather than be shocked or offended I was practically on the floor laughing. I was laughing at how my poor boys (and new husband!) were turning inside-out from embarrassment. In addition, the rest of the guys were whooping it up and pretending to spank the "actress". Everyone was looking and laughing, except my two boys and my husband. They were looking at the ceiling, at the floor, out the window, pretty much anywhere but where the action was.

Of course I couldn't let it go. I kept asking the boys if they needed me to explain anything and asking BJ if he was taking notes.

I think the phrase of the night was from my oldest son. "There's not enough alcohol in the world to make me forget this......."

That's right, honey. And in case you do forget, you can thank your brother that the story is now permanently in cyberspace for all the world to see.

Muah ha ha ha ha ha ha

Mike over at Senior Thinking wrote about his dog-like cat and it reminded me of my son's cat, Jimi Hendrix.

We got Jimi at the pound and knew he was the cat for us the moment we laid eyes on him because he had a lot of spunk. He kept sticking his arm out of the cage as far as he could, trying to grab us all while practically screaming at us. He wouldn't shut up. When we decided to take him, they let us have him in the office while we filled out the paperwork. He got into EVERYTHING and kept knocking the phone off the receiver and knocking papers off the desk. Eventually the pound worker took him back to the cage until all the paperwork was done because he was such a pest. He totally sealed the deal with his antics.

If I were to compare Jimi to a human, he'd be James Dean. He is a tough and cool cat. Even though he was neutered at a very young age, I'd feel sorry for any cat OR dog who was on the receiving side of Jimi's rage. Jimi even had a spiked collar, which fit his personality to a "T".

Jimi had some weird idiosyncrasies as well, and I'm sure he'd hate me publishing it for all of the world to see but I'm going to do it anyway. Jimi liked to maintain the "bad boy" image in public, but he's a big softie when nobody is looking.

Early on, he adopted one of my son's stuffed bears that was twice his size. It was clearly his bear because, he'd nurse on it (loudly, I might add!) which was always funny. But the most funny thing was that he used to bring 'offerings" to the bear. Thankfully, they weren't the type of gifts that most cats bring (dead mice, dead birds, etc.). He would steal makeup and leave it next to the stuffed bear.

My sister was living with us when Jimi started doing this and we'd regularly have to sort through the pile of mascara and lipsticks around the bear when we had to get ready for work in the morning. One morning, we found a tube of mascara that didn't belong to either one of us. That's when we discovered that Jimi was also a cat burglar (get it? ha ha) It was during the summer, so it was apparent that he was sneaking into open windows and stealing makeup to bring to the shrine of the bear. The funny thing was that it was always makeup.. nothing else.

Jimi also liked riding in the car, so he'd try to sneak in whenever he saw us leaving. If it was just to go pick up the kids from somewhere, I'd let him come along because I enjoyed seeing the strange looks I'd get from people who noticed that there was a cat in the back window. It got to be a problem once when the neighbor was having a garage sale, because apparently he tried to go for a ride in EVERYONE's car. Someone actually drove off before they noticed him in the car. Funny cat.

I miss Jimi. He's living with my son's ex-girlfriend right now because my son can't have cats where he is. I can't either because there are a lot of wild animals where we live and Jimi is not a cat that can be kept indoors. I've tried it and he's miserable. He likes to be inside to sleep, but he's beyond cranky if he can't go outside as he pleases. You know that saying, "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy"? Well, let's just say that Jimi is 'mama'.

I'm a dog person. I'm not even a little bit of a cat person. But Jimi was definitely the exception to the rule.

UPDATE:
I finally located a picture that I wanted to put in this post. We all wondered if Jimi was sending us a message when we found him laying next to a headless bunny on our front porch.


Yikes.

BJ and I are going to the symphony tonight after work. We got box seats to my most favorite concerto EVER; Beethoven's Emperor. Sigh.... Beethoven's music is just so...so..passionate, so much that I told BJ I was glad we got box seats because they'll provide a little privacy so we can make out during the concert. Oh yeah baby, THAT's class!

Sure, other composers will be represented (Mozart, Smetana and Janácek) but I'll be in a foggy, post Beethoven haze if Emperor is first. I'll admit it- Beethoven is like a drug to me.

Prior to the concert, we'll be going to a restaurant that brings back funny memories for BJ. Memories he'll tell anyone that'll listen. We'd been dating about three months and BJ had asked me to plan a date. I planned an evening at the symphony and dinner at the restaurant we're going to tomorrow and let him know the plan. When we showed up, the Maitre d' asked us if we had reservations. BJ nodded in my direction to signal to the Maitre d' that I'd handled it. Instead of confirmation, BJ got the deer in headlights look. Ummmm, that'd be no. I did not make reservations.

This is an upscale restaurant and there wasn't a seat available for at least an hour. Since we had concert tickets we couldn't wait and ended up eating in the bar. He loves to tease me about this every chance he gets. My excuse? He's the guy. He should have made the reservations, right? That's my story anyway.

I'm just not sure how I'm going to work out what I'm going to wear. I'm going to have to go directly from work, so I either will be WAY too dressy for work, or under dressed for the concert. I'll probably opt for the former and let people wonder why I feel it necessary to have cleavage at work.

Heh. Heh...

Follow That Star posted about how his mom used to dress him in clothes and shoes that were always two sizes too big.. It's pretty much how all of us lived back then. Apparently I was much easier on my clothes than he was and I have proof.

Here I am somewhere between 4 and 5 months old (the date on the picture is May, and I was born on the last day of January)


And here I am at about 2 and a half. SAME DRESS, two years later!


So unlike FTS, I could make my clothes last two years.

To be fair to my mom, she really didn't dress us in clothes that were way too big for us. The rule of thumb was there needed to be about a finger's width room to grow in the shoes. Since I mostly wore dresses as a kid, they just started out long and got shorter. One of the benefits of being a girl, I guess.

Thanks for the fun memory FTS!

I've mentioned in a previous entry that I was in a gang. Yeah, you read that right.

Ok, I fess up... it was a gang of 40ish year old women. My gang name was Snoop Lori D., we also had S'mores (long story how she got her name and I'm not sure she'd like the information spread around the internet), RTR (for Ready to Rumble) and Blanca. Our gang name was "chicas de rojo", because we all had red hair (at the time, anyway) except Blanca. She had blond hair, hence the name.

Our gang activities included things like shopping for make-up and going out to lunch. You know; real dangerous stuff. The closest thing we had to a gang symbol was matching lipstick.

So, on to the purpose of this post.

I have a friend who is a bank branch manager. His branch had been robbed three times within a month and I had mentioned that to my dad in one of my letters. His reply?


As for your friend's branch that keeps getting robbed. I have an idea. Why don't you and your gang hang out there and act like customers and then when some robbers come in you can jump them. When word gets out I know they would leave that place alone.

I wrote back,

If you think having the robbers stunned senseless by beauty would be of help, then yeah, maybe we should offer our services.

I mentioned this idea to my friend, but he never took me up on this offer. Hmmmph.