I know it's not Friday, and I don't normally post anything except on Friday, but I've been feeling yucky and laying around. With all this extra time spent on my tush, I figured I might as well get another blog post squeezed in this week.
Let's take a trip back in time, the year is 2008, and it's a few days before Christmas. For Christmas, Hubby and I decided to get the kids a dog. We didn't really want just any dog though, we wanted one that had been previously loved/house-trained and tested with irritating children. By a huge coincidence, my sister had a black lab mix that fit the bill perfectly. Score! So Goliath began his journey to come live with us. The grown-ups decided the best way to acclimate the dog and the kids to each other was with a "visit". There was no mention of him coming to live with us in case he decided that Monster didn't really need all ten fingers, or Monster decided that a large black dog was not in his best interest either. Instead, my sister brought her kids, a family friend, and Goliath over for lunch. Of course, the dog had to go out, so my sister, me, and the family friend took him around the neighborhood. It was a quick walk. I think my sister brought her phone in case Hubby couldn't handle all 6 cousins, and I brought nothing, not even the house keys because there were people still there to let us back in. Like I said, it was a quick walk. No muss, no fuss. Until the trip back home.
We were walking back down the main road through the neighborhood, which also connects two pretty decent sized roads. We get a lot of through traffic because of this. We also have a lot of really irritating speed bumps. Wait, let me clarify, the speed bumps aren't irritating, the people who don't know how to drive over them without slamming on the breaks are. Anyway, a car pulls up beside us with 5 rather large adults in it. They slowed way down, and I was expecting them to do the whole slam on the breaks for the speed bump thing, but instead the passenger rolled down her window. Now, we don't know very many people in our neighborhood- my allergic reaction to the trees in our backyard (and all over the neighborhood) keep me inside most of the time, but I do have "How 'bout this weather" conversations with a few people I see regularly. This car did not contain any of those people.
The passenger, an older lady, started the whole we need gas money conversation. Normally, I believe what's mine is yours, and I will share just about everything I own to someone who needs or even just really wants it. But, like I said, no one had anything in their pockets. We were out taking the dog for a walk. The lady in the car didn't want to believe that, and started muttering stuff about needing to take her kids somewhere, and some people were so rude. At this point, I started having indignant thoughts like, your children all look more than old enough to get a job, and on top of that those "boys" look big enough to push the car down the street if the need arises. So I clamp my mouth shut, because I knew something would come out that I would regret. One of my eyebrows started sliding up my forehead, too. The pursed lips and rising eyebrow usually forewarn my kids that Mommy's gonna let loose, so knock it off, by the way. The lady could see that she wasn't getting anywhere with begging, so she hefted her quite liberal bosom and upper body out of the open window, stuck her finger in our faces, and shook it while yelling, "DON'T LIE TO ME, IT'S CHRISTMAS!" And that's when I lost it. My sister and I looked at each other and started laughing. I'm not really sure if she said anything else as they drove off, but that one phrase has become part of my Christmas memories. One day, I may write a Christmas Carol featuring that line. I'm partial to the melody from Carol of the Bells, but it may be difficult to come up with enough words to match.