Lies, Lies, Lies, Yeah

I am so tired of all the lies, I'm just going to come right out with it. The second one (the one about the mustached lady and my daughter who couldn't keep her mouth shut) was fashioned from two nightmares, a constant worry that it will actually happen, and several most-embarrassing-moment-worthy comments made by said child. In other words, it was a lie. One of my most embarrassing moments is actually because of Samera, but there are certain things that I don't discuss on this blog. That is one of them.

The other two absolutely happened. Not only did they happen, but they happened on consecutive days: Cornbread Friday and Last Swimming Trip Ever Saturday, as we refer to them at our house. It was a humbling weekend.

Now, quickly, for the two people who guessed correctly, the first one to tell me who sings the song I quoted in this title, WINS (there's no prize, but you still win)!

But no googling.

Beach Bum

*Alas, this is the final installation of Truth or Lie. Vote at the poll to your right. You have until Sunday to cast your vote. Monday I will reveal the truth. Thanks for playing! And now, without further ado, I present:


I am not a swimmer.

(it comes as no surprise, right?)

I have a low tolerance for being cold, and water makes me cold.
I have an even lower tolerance for drowning, and water makes me drown.

Also, I look ugly when I'm wet.

Or when I'm wearing a swim suit.

My usual grace and ease (?) is instantly petrified into a great glob of self-consciousness when confronted with either swim suit or water, so put the two together, and baby, you have just whipped yourself up a perfect storm spelled, D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.

But my kids love swimming (they even love drowning), so I go.

On one particularly note-worthy occasion, we finished swimming without anything life-threatening happening, and retired to the small dressing rooms on the pool deck; Me and the girls in one, Ty and Sy in another.

I peeled the stubborn suits off the girls, dried their skin, and helped them into their clothes. Then I let them out of the dressing room so that I could have a little privacy (because there's nothing I treasure more than a little hard-earned privacy). I double-checked the lock.

I dried myself off. Then I triple-checked the lock, shuddering at the thought of the door coming open with me inside. With my back to the door I shimmied and wrestled around until my suit finally came off with a loud, sucking noise. I slipped on a t-shirt, but was still damp, so I dried everything else with a towel – you know the type of drying where you rub the towel back and forth across the back of your body? And I say to you now, no joke, that as I was doing this lovely towel waltz, I let my mind play a little game I play often, called, “what if.” This particular round, I imagined turning to find that the door had come open. It was such a terrible and far-fetched idea, that I shuddered, gave a terrified giggle, and quickly changed the subject with myself. Besides, I had more pressing matters to attend to, like the breeze I felt on my bare backside. (!!!)

You guessed it. The door was open. I shut it quickly, but not before noticing how many pool patrons were in my direct line of sight: five. All male. One was the lifeguard.

I was dressed in two milliseconds, flat. I speed-walked straight out to the car, hoping my family would follow. When Ty caught up with me, I was too deep into shock to explain what happened. I just stared at him, wide-eyed, and laughed in a strange, hysterical way. I told him that we could never, no never, no never go back. Ever.

And we haven’t.

There ARE worse things than drowning, after all.

The Great Cornbread Debacle

*The first installment for our little game.

I had a wedding to attend. Let me rephrase that: I had to get my children up and ready, get myself ready, get Ruth ready, take Ruth to a drop zone, drop off my children, and drive to Idaho Falls (45 min. away) by 9:30 a.m.

And for some reason, I was possessed early in the morning to bake cornbread for breakfast. Why I couldn’t just give the children their usual cold cereal is a question I have asked myself again and again since that day.

I slid the pan of batter into the oven, set the timer, and jumped into the shower. I have the cornbread/shower routine down to a science, and know that if all goes right, I can shower, have my hair dried, makeup done, and clothes on by the time the timer beeps. I cannot, however, shave my legs, too.

So I shaved my legs, and put a rush on the rest of my routine, hoping to buck the system.

I grabbed some clothes from my closet, and heard a faint, “beeeeeeep.” Unable to ascertain whether or not it was a “the timer just went off” beep, or a “the timer went off twelve minutes ago, and your kitchen is now engulfed in flames” beep, I decided I’d better get the cornbread out of the oven and THEN get dressed. It was barely 7:30, after all, and no one would be awake yet, so who cares if I’m wearing only my underclothing?

I ran down the hall, skidded around the corner and saw my brother-in-law (The youngest one. The one who is fresh off his mission. The one who has never seen a woman in her under wear. Not that it matters WHICH brother-in-law it was...) standing in my kitchen.

In the split second it took for the faux pas to dawn on the both of us, he gave a cheery, “hey!” I opened my mouth wide, gasped, and clamped my arms down hard over my bra, and he uttered a discernible moan of awkwardness as he turned away.

It seemed like minutes before my brain finally telegraphed the information to my legs to high-tail it back to my bedroom, where I stood in shock for a few seconds before breaking down in convulsive (but quiet) laughter, waking Ty from a peaceful dream wherein his wife never traumatizes his brothers into eternal bachelorhood.

Suddenly I was sober again, asking Ty what I should do. He was no help, having just awakened, and having just told me, “It’s not that big a deal. He’s seen you in a swim suit.”

But for some reason, a swim suit is one thing. If I had walked out in my swim suit, it would have been odd, and I would have still made a hasty retreat, but a swim suit is not under wear. There is something so EMBARRASSING about being seen in your UNDER wear. They belong UNDER things, where no one can see them.

The “beep, beep” of the oven timer blared in my ear, reminding me that I would have to eventually (in the next few seconds) go back out to the kitchen to face the fact: my relationship with my brother-in-law could never be the same. What would I say? How could I shrug it off? How should I ease the tension that was sure to make me blush every time I see him from now to eternity?

I didn’t know any of the answers. So I went back out to the kitchen to claim my by-then-very-brown cornbread consolation prize, and casually shoot over my shoulder some comment about how lucky he is that I had AT LEAST put on my underwear…

…and would he like a piece of fresh cornbread?