i think i'm going to need some new shirts... red ones, with an "A"

so today . . . rollie went a little crazy.

rollie is not the one in our family who goes a little crazy. i go a little crazy. diandra has been known to go a little crazy. even the dogs go a little crazy! (ok, the dogs go a little crazy all. the. time!) but not rollie. rollie is the calm, rational one...

well, we can't say THAT anymore!

this afternoon, i got this text from my calm, rational husband--"i am at angels stadium trying to get tickets to take mike to a game on may 28." ok, this was not exactly news to me. mike's birthday is really close to rollie's, and the last couple of years they have gone to an angels game to celebrate. even though mike has moved a few hours north, i knew they had been discussing trying to make it happen again this year. so why he was texting me this information was a mystery... unless he was standing in a long line with nothing to do... which seemed highly improbable to me... how could there be a long line for tickets when the season doesn't even open for another month? apparently i don't understand the fervor of angels fans. yet.

and then i got this text--"how would you feel about season tickets?"

HOW WOULD I FEEL ABOUT SEASON TICKETS?!?!?! ARE YOU INSANE????? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH SEASON TICKETS PROBABLY COST???????

that's what i was thinking. that is not what i texted back. because the truth is, i love to go to angels games. and even though i knew it definitely was not in the budget, i wasn't quite ready to kill the dream just yet. so, being the supportive wife that i am (stop laughing!!) i merely said, "why? are they making you an offer you can't refuse?" and he said, "i'm not to the window yet. i was just wondering."

rollie was standing in line at angels stadium, contemplating season tickets. the only thing i can compare it to is when i am in the shoe department at nordstrom rack. it's like, suddenly everything seems possible...

we continued to debate, by text, what to do. this is something we had sort of talked about possibly doing one day... i just didn't think today was that day. so i said, "well, it wouldn't hurt to check it out, but don't get them today! you need to think about this. if we do it, there will have to be budget trade-offs i'm sure." what i didn't say was, "and i'm not sure i am willing to go without home improvements, a vacation, or food, to make it happen!"

he finally got up to the ticket booth and told them he wanted two seats for the may 28th game. the ticket seller clicked around on her computer and said, "i only have two seats left for that game." ONLY TWO SEATS LEFT FOR A GAME THAT IS ALMOST THREE MONTHS AWAY?!?! "and," she continued, "they are in the very back row, clear out in center field, and the view is obstructed by a pole."

ok, now this was a problem. who is going to want to sit in those seats? certainly not rollie and mike for their birthdays! so after waiting in line for 45 minutes, rollie got out of line...

... and went in search of the season ticket office. (i choose to think that at this point, he was following my advice to just check it out. i choose to think that he had not yet made the decision to actually buy season tickets. i may be wrong, but let me just live with my delusions...) he walked in and was greeted with, "do you have an appointment?" you need an appointment to buy season tickets? really?? he obviously didn't have an appointment, but they allowed him to wait for the first available season ticket seller. when he was finally seated in the conference room, the season ticket seller said, "so, what do you want out of your season tickets?"

what kind of a question is that?!? if we are going to get season tickets, we want a world series win! duh!!

but rollie handled the question with a bit more tact than that, and said, "well, i have a budget..."

something you may not know about rollie is that he is a hoarder. i know, i know, you thought i was the one who was in danger of being buried by my stuff, but rollie is a hoarder too--he just hoards something a little smaller than most of my stuff. he hoards $20 bills. whenever he can, he puts $20 bills in a stack somewhere (somewhere where i can't find them, obviously!) he calls this his fun money. he saves it in hopes of some day taking a dive trip somewhere or skydiving or something else he thinks would be ridiculously fun that isn't in the budget. i think he also dips into it when we go to the swap meet or the outlet mall. but the truth is, he hasn't had time to do a lot of fun things in the last year, so his fun money stash has been growing...

the season ticket seller went to work. they discussed his choices. they went into the stands and checked out the best options. he sent me a picture of what our view of the baseball diamond would be. and in the end, he signed on the dotted line.

my calm, rational husband went a little crazy.

so we are season ticket holders for the angels, at least for this year. rollie is deliriously happy. if he was the sort of person to make a bucket list, this would definitely be on it. and i'm happy, because he is happy. and let's not forget that since he is married to me, i am pretty sure i am going to be sitting right next to him for most of those games :) he has assured me that this will not affect our budget at all. we will still have food to eat. my home improvement projects will not suffer. we may even still get to go on some kind of vacation...

... although, now that we have 82 games to attend, our vacation may have to wait until after the world series...

... because, you know, a world series win was part of the deal... wasn't it?

san diego=fun!

so today . . . was our bonus day in san diego--a whole day to do whatever we wanted to do.

"what do you want to do?" rollie asked me. "i don't know," i said, "what do you want to do?"

you see, this is how our conversations go. it doesn't matter if we are discussing where to have dinner or what movie to see. it isn't that we don't have preferences, it is just that we are both so nice that we will agree to whatever the other of us wants. but knowing that, neither of us wants to impose our preferences on the other one . . .

"well," rollie said, "we don't have to go do anything if you don't want to. i would be happy just hanging around here and reading." reading is probably our favorite thing to do, so normally that would be a great suggestion. but we can read at home! we are in san diego today, and i thought we should go do something, i just didn't know what. it was not a lovely sunny, warm day--it was cloudy and damp--not the best weather for going out and doing anything! but after a little more discussion, we decided to brave the weather and go visit the u.s.s. midway. i put on as many layers of clothing as i could get on under my sweatshirt, and off we went.

i was driving, rollie was navigating. except he couldn't get the gps in his phone to find us. he turned it off and then back on again. he had me pull over and wait for it to catch up. he rolled down the window and stuck his phone out into the open air . . . meanwhile, i pulled out my old magellan and found the directions :) and off we went. again.

i am fascinated by aircraft carriers. i am amazed by their sheer size, by the fact that they are like small cities, and that airplanes can actually take off and land on a ship! so i was pretty excited. they gave us headphones and digital players with explanations of all the different parts of the ship and it's airplanes. for free! (of course, we did have to pay to get in. and to park. so maybe 'free' is overstating it a bit.) it made a huge difference in enjoying what we were seeing, to be able to listen to all that history.

i took a few pictures, and then my camera batteries died. that was it for me. i was pretty sure i was done having fun if i couldn't take any more pictures. we started through the labyrinth of passageways, and then i saw it--a store! "look," i said to rollie, "i will be able to buy batteries. what luck!" but when i reached the front of the store, i saw that i was still going to be batteryless for a while longer . . .
there were mannequins all over this ship! and it isn't that they looked so lifelike up close, but seeing them out of the corner of my eye, they kept tricking me. it happened again when we entered the mess hall. i saw the food line and thought, "yay! i was just thinking i would like something to eat . . . "(of course, my brain quickly corrected itself, but those pesky mannequins creeped me out all afternoon!)

soon we found the cafe (because what tourist attraction would be complete without serving seriously overpriced food?) and ate delicious mushroom cheeseburgers for lunch. actually, we ordered mushroom cheeseburgers for lunch, but they refused to make any modifications! so when we got them, we performed surgery--i gave rollie my mushrooms, tomatoes, and extra sauce, and then i added ranch dressing to mine, cut it in half, eliminated half of the bun, and stacked the burgers together. the result was sort of messy, but delicious!

after lunch we walked through the gift shop--because they put the cafe on the opposite side of the gift shop, so we had to walk through it to get to the food! and i seriously looked at souveniers, because you know how anything touristy and overpriced draws me . . . thankfully they had penny-munching machines, so i pressed a few pennies to satisfy my need to buy something, and then we moved on to the flight deck and all the airplanes!

this is where i lost rollie. i was going from plane to plane, in an orderly fashion, and obediently listening to the information about each one from my headphones. rollie was darting about, in seemingly random order, and he was TOUCHING THE PLANES!!! (we were sooo channelling each other--usually rollie is the methodical one and i am the totally random one.) when i tracked him down, he said he was only interested in the fighting planes, so that is what he was looking at. i kept waiting for one of the docents to smack him across the knuckles for playing with the aircraft, but apparently it was ok, because they completely ignored him.

my favorite part of the day was meeting tom casenza. he is a world war II veteran, and he was there talking with people today. and when i say talking, i mean TALKING! but he didn't talk much about his military service. he talked about his construction business, and about where to get the best italian food in san diego, and about dancing--that is when his eyes really lit up--when he was talking about dancing . . .before we left, rollie wanted to ride in the fighter plane simulator. it was a two person ride, so he said to me, "do you want to drive or shoot?" i wasn't sure i wanted to do either, after watching these things in action. it was a little pod on a swivelling arm, and it would roll and move according to what the driver did. i was watching the one ahead of us twirl and toss and go upside down and all around, and i was pretty sure driving was not what i wanted to do. but i was also pretty sure rollie was going to want to shoot something down. we decided he should drive, and i should shoot. and it was a wild and crazy ride! we flew upside down, we flew sideways, we did a nosedive, we flew straight up--and this was with rollie driving. can you imagine what would have happened if it had been me driving?!?!?! fortunately we survived, but it was a good thing they had us empty our pockets before we got in . . .

the museum closed at 5:00. by the time we left, the sun was shining. we put the top down on the car and headed back to our dorm room. it was just as we had left it :)yeah, i'll bet you can guess who sleeps where . . .

so, who decides what is funny?

so today . . . was fun--even though there were spiders.

it started before i even got out of bed. it just felt like a play day. rollie was immediately on board--today was his day off and he had already completed his "to do" list before my eyes were even open. diandra was home trying to prepare for our trip next week, because she is going to be working at the fireworks stand for the next 64+ hours, and then we leave for portland. and of course, i have my list to complete before i head out of town as well. but we all felt like doing nothing, and the dogs were doing their very best to distract us from our work, so we finally decided to work until 12:30 and then break for lunch.

rollie headed off to the man room, because his work was done. diandra was cleaning her room, and i was working downstairs. and then i heard some of my favorite words--"mom, do you want this?" i looked upstairs, and there she was, holding the orange dress with the turquoise beads on it that i wore when she was in texas. "YES!" i said, "that is one of my favorite dresses." "well," she said, "it is brand new--i've never even worn it. in fact, you have worn it more than i have...and here is that top you said you liked. do you want that too?"

i knew her clothes would come home to me . . .

i was pretty excited about these new additions to my wardrobe, so of course i updated my fb status--Diandra is cleaning out her closet. My favorite part? "mom, do you want this?" It's like Christmas in July for me! :) which would have been fine if i hadn't felt compelled to reply to a response by one of my friends with these words--that is the beauty of having a daughter who takes me shopping with her. i SAY "oh get this diandra--it would look really cute on you!" but i am THINKING "oh get this diandra--it would look really cute on ME!" hehehe. sometimes i forget that everyone (including diandra) can read what i write to someone else . . .

i knew she had read it when i saw her face at lunch. we had traveled in separate cars to rubio's and she and rollie got there first. when i walked up to their table, i could tell by the look on her face that she had read what i had written. i tried to convince her that i was just being funny, but she wasn't buying it.

we finished lunch and went to old navy. old navy is not her store of choice, but it was close, she needed shorts, and we had stuff to do today. we walked in and immediately saw cute tops. i went right on by, because i had all those new clothes from diandra waiting for me at home. she, however, noticed the tops. "what do you think about this?" she asked me. "i think it is very cute. you should get it," i said. she looked at me, her eyes narrowed, and then she said, "you just want me to get it, because i don't need tops and you think one day i will give it to you."

and that is how our afternoon went. she was so suspicious! i was afraid i was going to have to resort to telling her that everything looked awful, just so she would start believing what i said! i think we have never shopped so long and purchased so little.

but that is ok, because it really wasn't about shopping today. diandra could have just gone to american eagle by herself, bought shorts, and come home. but where is the fun in that?!? today it was about having some fun. and we had fun when rollie was teasing her about spiders (well, rollie had fun then--diandra, not so much,) she had fun teasing me about coveting her clothes, i had fun when she gave me her clothes, we all had fun eating lunch together, and i am pretty sure she had fun taunting me all afternoon about my shopping motives.

one day i was in the car with diandra and i was laughing at something she had said. i said, "you are so funny!" "i'm not sure it is a good thing that you think i am so funny," she replied, "because when you say that so often, i start to believe it. so now i think i am funny. . . but i'm not sure that everyone else agrees."

i find that hard to believe. i think all three of us are hysterical! maybe it is just that we know how to tell a story to make it funny. maybe it is just that we know how to push each other's funny buttons. or maybe we are not really funny at all and are just deluded . . .

i don't know, but it doesn't really matter. because the important thing is that we can make each other laugh!

a perfect day for a field trip

so today . . . schooooool's out. for. sumMER! (that's a song, in case you don't know . . . )

yes, today was my last official day of school for this year. i am going to be helping out a couple of days with the summer program next week, but my duties as kindergarten/pre-k teacher are over for this year.

it has been a busy week. i am exhausted.

and yet, i blog.

i just wanted to share a few photos of our field trip to adventure city yesterday. we had a nearly perfect day. the weather was awesome. there were only four large groups there, instead of the usual 20-25, so there were no lines for anything. the kids were really good. and we had a wonderful day together!

i didn't know how the kids were going to do with the rides. i have a couple that i thought would probably spend a large part of the day standing in line saying, "i don't think i want to do that." so we started off slowly with the small ferris wheel-like ride and then went to the airplanes. i almost lost one there but after convincimg her to give it a try, they couldn't get the the next ride fast enough! they were fearless!!

i like the balloons, so we rode those a few times.
i taught the kids how to ride with their hands in the air to enhance their riding experience.it enhanced it all right! their little bodies were sliding all over the place and they laughed and laughed.because our resident professional photographer was unable to come with us today, i had to do all the picture taking. as we were sitting in the balloons, i realized that meant i was not going to be in any of the pictures. so i handed my camera to the girls and said, "take a picture of us!" and so they did.because there were so few large groups today, there were NO LINES! in fact, the roller coaster operator just kept letting the roller coaster go around and around and around. a normal ride is two times around the track, but one time he let it continue 8 or 10 times!! after the fourth time i looked at him (because i was not riding that thing! the kids love it, but it is too herky-jerky for me!!) and he said, "hey, there is no line. as long as none of them look sick, i'm just going to let it keep going!"i could not believe they were able to take it! but every time they came around, they were laughing even harder . . . and let me just say, it was HARD to get a picture, it went by so fast!!

finally i made the kids stop for lunch. usually we arrive at the park around 10:15 and by 10:45 the kids are starting to ask about lunch. because, you know, for a field trip the moms pack all sorts of delicious food for them. but this year i couldn't get them to stop to eat. finally at 12:45 i just said, "it is lunch time--let's go eat." when we were done, one little girl said to me, "you need to drink some water. you didn't drink any!" i always tell the kids to bring water, because i know it will be warm and they will need to hydrate. but i had an unfinished soda from breakfast (i know, but graduation was the night before and i needed the energy,) so i had finished that. i just looked at her. and then i said, "what? are you my mother?!?" without even batting an eye, she just looked straight at me, handed me my water bottle, and said, "drink this!"

i love her! she is going to be a great mom someday!

when we finished and went back into the park, they immediately wanted to go to drop zone. i thought that might be a bad idea, in light of what we had just consumed. so i made them ride the carousel. yes, i know it wasn't very exciting after the morning we had, but it is always a good photo op . . .we ended the day at drop zone. by this time most of the groups had left, so the operator just let us ride and ride and ride . . .
i know i whine about my job. there are times when i get very frustrated by some of the things i cope with. but i am very lucky to get to spend my days with tiny little humans who, at the end of the day, just want to have fun. and today we did. we had tons of it! i am really going to miss them . . .