Then my husband says, “Kim is coming over to hang out with me tonight after you and the kids go to bed.”

ME:”Um..WHAT?”

HIM: “Kim is going to hang out with me tonight.”

ME: “No she’s not!”

HIM: “She? I said KEN. KEN is coming over to hang out with me tonight.”

Me: “Ohhhhh KEN ha ha ha ha ha!”

Ken is one of hubby’ best friends.  He only lives a few blocks away, and they often hang out after their wives and children have gone to bed.

Hubby does NOT hang out with women he works with after I go to bed!

Just goes to show you how easily things can get out of hand when someone says ONE thing and you HEAR another!

The makers of Alka-Seltzer and my friends at the Motherhood.com asked me to post on this subject (how did they know I’d have a story?  How?) because Alka-Seltzer has a great Said/Heard Mishaps Contest going on over at their Facebook page and you could win big by telling your Said/Heard Mishaps story!  DO you have a funny story to tell?  I’d love to hear it in the comments!  Or you can go over to Alka-Seltzer’s Facebook page and tell them for a chance to win!

The winner of the Said/Heard Mishaps Contest will receive:

• A trip to New York City to star in an Alka-Seltzer online video featuring their entry
• The winning spot will premiere on the Alka-Seltzer Facebook page!
• Plus $5,000 to spend toward whatever they wish.

Woot!  You could get paid for your funny story!  Now read the fine print and go ENTER!

Note

The makers of Alka-Seltzer want you to remember that while miscommunication can be funny and entertaining it can also lead to stress. And when stress gives you heartburn with headache, Alka-Seltzer Original gives you relief fast. Use as directed.

Abbreviated Contest Rules

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Legal residents of the 50 United States (D.C.), 18 years or older. Contest ends 2/25/11. To enter and for Official Rules, including prize description, visit http://www.facebook.com/AlkaSeltzerOriginal?v=app_7146470109&ref=sgm.  Void where prohibited.

_________________

I was compensated for this post by the Motherhood.com and the Alka-Seltzer brand.  The mishap story was just the stuff of my life!

Happy anniversary, honey. I love you more than ever.

That’s right, before Beyonce was Beyonce and Jay-Z probably went by the name Chester or something cool like that, I met a boy named Bobby Rapson in the sixth grade.  He was the new kid.  And he liiiiked me.

I thought he was nice.

But he was persistent, and after a couple years he captured my heart.  And then he ripped it out and stomped on it.  (He doesn’t like it when I talk about that part.)  And then a couple of years later, he captured it again.  This time for good.  And then a few years after that, he put a ring on it.  A very nice ring!  And then another.  And now, it has been, I can’t  believe I am writing this, ten years.

Ten years ago today, Bobby and I took our vows in front of God and everybody.  TEN YEARS!  We’ve been married for ten years.  We were kids playing house, but somehow we transitioned into adults living life and even giving life to our own children.

Inside Bobby’s wedding ring, I had the French phrase Vous et nul autre engraved.  This is partly because I was a French minor in college and thought French was cool, but mostly because it translates “You and no other”.  It was sweet, and romantic for me as a 22-year-old bride to put a ring with that saying on my new husband’s finger.  But  it was also serious and intentional.  And every day that we are together, it becomes more so.  Our marriage has been about so much more than just the one day.  It has been about, with God’s help, choosing each other, and only each other, every single day.

Bobby has chosen me again and again when I have not been the most lovable, beautiful, or sweet girl around.  And I have done the same for him.  Because we said we would.  And it has been so very worth it.

I love you, Bobby Rapson!  Let’s choose each other again tomorrow.  After we celebrate tonight!

Yesterday was an anniversary of sorts for Bobby and me. Not the anniversary of our first date or wedding or the day we got engaged or anything like that, but still, a day we remember every year.

It was the day he cut his thumb off.

At school.

Romantic, yes?

September 29, 1995 Bobby and I were seniors in high school. We weren’t even dating but we were close friends, and had been since he’d ripped my heart out and stomped on it our freshman year (you’re welcome for that one, honey.) Yes, we’d been a couple our freshman year, but then he had the GALL to break UP with me! And somehow, we remained good friends after that. Weird, I know.

Anyways. Bobby was in 2nd period Junior Achievement class making I don’t know, wooden checkerboards or something with a saw, and the board jammed, and fast as lightning drew his hand into the saw, taking off a good part of his right thumb.

Did I mention he had a substitute teacher in class that day? Poor girl!

(Of course we had a group presentation in Personal Finance 3rd period that day and Bobby was in my group. Since he was um, indisposed, he ended up getting the same “A” the rest of us got, you’re welcome again, honey!)

Anyways, fast forward through sirens, lights, EMTs, and emergency surgery, and all the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men cannot put Bobby’s thumb back together again. My mom and I went to visit him in the hospital the next day. When we were saying goodbye, my mom gave him the “thumbs up” sign and said “Hang in there, Bobby!” The THUMBS UP sign, people! It’s a legendary family joke to this day!

To make a long story short, after this incident, Bobby and I started spending a LOT of time together. He missed about three weeks of school and since he was in three of my classes, I brought him all his homework and helped him with it. Since he couldn’t write and he was on narcotics, you know, he needed a “hand” (ba-dum-bum-SHHHSSHH!) He was bored out of his gourd being home all the time so I took him to the mall and the Family Bookstore to buy Christian rap CDs in my ’87 Toyota Camry station wagon. Those months, despite the giant bandage on Bobby’s hand, were some of the most fun of our lives.

And after my long-distance boyfriend of the time broke my heart, Bobby was there to pick it up. Homeboy made his move on December 16, 1995 and we’ve been together ever since.

So, Bobby cutting off his thumb was kind of one of the best things to ever happen to us, because it brought us together.

Half a digit? A small price to pay for a lifetime of love!

I love you, Bobby.

“I’m having trouble regulating my temperature today,” I remarked to my husband.

“Today?” He said incredulously. How about every day for the past thirty years?”

“Now, that is not true,” I retorted. “Usually I’m just cold. Today I’m hot and cold.”

He rolled his eyes.

“This is just a preview of how much fun we’re going to have while I’m going through menopause,” I joked.

“I’m not worried about that,” my darling husband shot back with a grin. “You’ll be all alone. The kids’ll be grown and I’ll have moved on by then.”

Well. At least he gave me a heads up so I can plan for the future.

And by “plan” I may or may not mean that for a guy whose wife gets double the life insurance if he kicks the bucket in an “accident”, he sure is awfully cocky!

We started off the evening at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, Margaritas, and then we were ready to head to the concert. We stepped out on the sidewalk to hail a cab, when Andy said “You know, we could just walk. It can’t be that far.”

“Look, we can see Kentucky.”

He was right, and after a few margaritas big dinner, it sounded like a pretty good idea.

So off we went.

Let me provide some visual aids so you can in fact see what geniuses we are.

Here’s where we were:

And here’s where we needed to be:

So, here’s what we should have done:

But here’s what we did:

As you can see, we walked across the wrong (and completely terrifying, I might add) bridge, and then walked in a GIANT circle around the fine city of Covington, KY, before winding up at the foot of said terrifying bridge once again.

At that point, I sent this text message to my good friend and Northern Kentucky native Emilie:

“We thought we could walk to the Southgate House from Margaritas on 5th St.. We’ve been walking in bleeping circles around covington and we are still miles away.”

Her response?

“Oh no! if you’re in covington you’re a long bleeping way from southgate house. Hope u wore comfy shoes”

Grrrrreat.

By this point we decided that a cab was the most prudent choice for the remainder of our journey, but since they aren’t found in abundance in the fine city of Covington, KY, we had to stop and ask a nice hostess at a neighborhood restaurant to call one for us. As we waited, I got a call from Amy asking where the heck we were. I told her the truth – we were waiting for a cab in Covington – but failed to mention the sojourn that had gotten us there.

Oh, and the best part? All this time I had the brand new Garmin my dad had given me just hours earlier in my purse. Of course, that did not occur to me until the following day.

Finally, our cab came and we arrived safely at the Southgate House. We went upstairs to find not only Amy and her husband but also Shannan, who had no idea who Todd Snider was but wanted to hang out with me and Amy enough to give up her Friday night anyway.

Before long, though, the story of our hike through the hills of my old Kentucky home came out.

Shannan said “I feel so bad – Amy told me you are staying in Covington. I could have picked you up – I drive right through there.”

“Well… we’re actually staying at the Hyatt. We just thought we’d walk over here, but then we ended up taking a cab once we got to Covington.”

Shannan looked at me quizzically. “You tried to walk here from downtown Cincinnati?” she said slowly, as though she were trying to process completely illogical information.

“Yeah,” I said. “We could see Kentucky.”

“Hahahahhahaha you could see Kentucky!” she burst out laughing. “Oh, you cute northerners.”

Cute, dumb… take your pick.

Anyway…we had such a good time. The Captain Morgan music was great, but the company was better. I just love those girls. I wanted to squeeze them. I get all oogly when I think about it – it was just the greatest night.

I had warned Amy earlier in the day that I was likely to get tipsy really excited and express my undying love for her.

I don’t think she or I either one anticipated that the expression of love would be found on the bathroom wall.

So Jenny? In terms of the list of things I should do during my 30s? You can mark “tight rope walk across the Ohio River” and “Deface public property” off the list.

The day we got engaged was really fun. Bobby told me we were going to go out that night and he took me shopping and bought me a fancy dress. Then, that evening he took me to our favorite restaurant, the Peasant Stock, which was right downtown on the river. After that we went to one of our other favorite downtown spots, Samuel Johnson’s coffee house, at First & Main. After we ordered our coffee and sat down, Bobby got down on one knee and proposed. I proceeded to bawl for about 45 minutes (saying “yes” somewhere in there), and then we went home and told my parents (who already knew it would be happening.)

The following March, we had a wonderful wedding, preceded by a wonderful rehearsal dinner at the Happy Palace – a Chinese restaurant that had long been a favorite of the Rapson family. They had a huge buffet for us and even made steaks for my dad and my brother, who don’t like Chinese. It was the YUM! A really great night.

A couple of weeks after our honeymoon, Bobby and I returned to Samuel Johnson’s coffee house to celebrate the one year anniversary of the day we got engaged. We were a little late getting in the door – it was close to closing, and the guy working let us stay late when we told him why we were there.

It was the last time we ever went there. Shortly thereafter, the coffee house closed.

For our first wedding anniversary, we got all dressed up and went to the Peasant Stock, the restaurant we’d eaten at the night we got engaged, to celebrate. We both noticed that things there seemed a little different.

It was the last time we ever went there. The Peasant Stock, which had been in Dayton for years, closed about a month later.

A couple of years after our wedding, the Happy Palace Chinese restaurant changed ownership, was repainted about a thousand times, and finally, closed down. The building isn’t even there anymore. It was demolished a couple of years ago.

Needless to say, Bobby and I had to find some new favorite places to eat and hang out. For our fifth wedding anniversary, we went for the first time to Dominic’s, an Italian restaurant that had been in Dayton for 30 years. I had been there before, but Bobby never had, and I knew he’d love it. And he did! We also went there for our sixth anniversary, and several times when Bobby’s mom was visiting, and with friends to celebrate their pregnancy. When Sophie was 4 months old, we went there for our seventh wedding anniversary.

That’s the last time we went there. A few months later, Dominic’s, which had been in our fair city for THREE DECADES, closed down.

I’m sure you’re getting the picture.

In order to do as little damage to our city’s economy as possible, Bobby and I try not to have any “favorite places” to frequent anymore. It’s just too dangerous!

For some reason, places of business associated with our marriage don’t seem to do so well. Rapp Jewelers, I’d be a little nervous if I were you!

What can I say? The marriage is good. If a little commerce is all that had to be sacrificed, well then, I think it’s been worth it!

“Well shit,” he replied.

We’ve had our federal, state and school district returns done for ages and have already gotten our refunds and everything (yay for too much withholding!), but we’ve failed to complete the return for our city taxes.

Again.

We decided that we still had a good 26 hours to get it postmarked, so we’d just deal with it tomorrow… but it got me thinking about my long and sordid history with local taxes.

We currently live in the town in which I grew up. In order to protect the innocent (or guilty, as the case may be), we’ll call that lovely little town Germanville.

Years ago, on one unsuspecting summer night, the Germanville police pulled into our driveway. We all happened to be outside, and my dad went over to see what was up.

“Is this the home of Emily and Anna Burns?” the officer asked my dad, who replied in the affirmative.

“I have a warrant for their arrest,” Barney Fife told him.

My dad, always able to remain unnervingly calm in such situations, said “Oh really. What’s the charge?”

“They haven’t paid their taxes to the city of Germanville,” the officer said.

“Well, there they are,” my dad said, pointing to the eight- and ten-year-old versions of me and my sister as we rode our bikes around the cul-de-sac. “Take them in.”

The officer quickly realized that there was a mistake and fortunately he didn’t cuff us and throw us in the slammer.

But it turns out, he wasn’t wrong, per say, just a little too early.

About 13-ish years later, my husband and I were residing in Germanville but decided we had had enough of big-city life… it seemed we were always stuck in a line of at least three cars at one of the two stoplights in town, and longed for a place with no stoplights at all. So we packed up and moved down the road to Farmerstown.

Despite the fact that we had purchased a home, paid utilities, and were regulars at the town bar bakery, we apparently failed to alert the proper authorities of our residency, because they never sent us any local tax forms. For the entire four years we lived there.

So, we figured that maybe they just didn’t have local taxes in Farmerstown, and we didn’t pay them.

(Now would be the appropriate time for that arrest warrant).

Until about a year and a half after we moved back to Germanville. Then, and only then, Farmerstown sent us income tax forms.

“We didn’t even live there in 2007,” I said to the nice village administrator (who sat in front of us in church every week), “How can we owe taxes?”

“Hmm… you have a point,” she said as she looked over her records. “But you did live here in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006.”

Crap.

So last summer, long after the April 15 deadline (and long, long after April 15 of all those previous years), we had to suck it up and pay all the back taxes we owed. And you can bet I booked it down to the city building in Germanville to file our 2007 return with them, too.

So really, you’d think we’d have learned our lesson. Judging by our revelation tonight, we clearly have not.

But it’s cool, we still have 23 hours before the deadline. We’ll make it this time, I’m certain of it. I would really hate for Kate and Sam to have to bail us out of jail.

The marinade for our raspberry chicken. Yum!

Orange marmalade pork chops ready to go in the freezer:

Pizza roll-ups, before & after baking. They smelled and looked so good we wanted to eat them right then & there!

Bobby manned the griddle and cooked our chocolate chip-rapsberry pancakes:

We had originally planned to do 3 recipes in our morning session and 3 in the evening, but everything went so smoothly in the morning that we got four recipes done!! Woohoo! So that night after the kids went to bed, we started on the Baked Chicken Fingers and Mandarin Orange Chicken. We made 3 meals of each, and it only took us about an additional 2 hours of cooking and clean-up!

Here are our finished chicken fingers. We had these for lunch today after church and they were really yummy!

And here’s our Mandarin Orange Chicken, ready to go in the freezer:

All in all, we cooked 22 meals in about 5 hours, including clean-up. And since I only spent about $70 on all the groceries for this endeavor, that means our meals cost us $3.18 each. Pretty darn good for 10 dinners, 9 lunches, and 3 breakfasts! And I can’t even imagine how much time I am going to save this month since I won’t be cooking nearly as often!

Bobby and I had such a great time cooking together. I don’t know if all married couples could stand to do this together, but Bobby is a MUCH better person that I am, which enabled us to have a successful & peaceful cooking day. We still loved each other at the end of all that! Here we are about 11:00 at night, after we finished cooking.

We really LOVED the once-a-month cooking experience, and we hope to be able to do the FULL menu and FULL cooking day in April! There is a really yummy menu from Once A Month Mom here and lots of things on sale for it this which, which Tricia posted about here. So get a partner, get a plan, and get once-a-month cooking! Tricia and Cortney have all the resources you need at Once a Month Mom including printable menus, grocery lists, and grocery store sale match-ups.

(I also submitted this post to I am Blissfully Domestic! Head over there and check out all the great posts!)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I crossed that line today.

I really, really wanted to have a fish funeral. But only so I could blog about it.

You see, about a week ago, I was putting Kate to bed when I noticed that Swimmy, her fish, was laying sideways on the bottom of the bowl. I came out and told Andy that Swimmy had met his untimely demise. Thinking we would break it to Kate gently and then have a Cosby-esque fish funeral, I went back to her room to finish the insufferable Berenstain Bears book we had started and waited for Andy to come in. Except when he did come in, he tried not to interrupt us and instead swiftly whisked away the fish bowl.

He was going to flush her fish without even telling her. And without a proper fish funeral!

Before we got to the long and painful moral of the story, Andy was back. And so was Swimmy, in sparkling clean water.

“What just happened?” I asked him when I left Kate’s room.

“He wasn’t dead,” he said. “I went to flush him and he started moving so I couldn’t do it.”

Swimmy apparently had incredible will to live.

Until about three days ago, when he really died. For real. But to make sure he was good and dead, Andy and I left him in the bowl until tonight. (Ok so really we just didn’t get around to doing anything with the dearly departed until I became concerned that our house was going to start to smell.)

Once again, I started planning the fish funeral in my head. I was imagining what Andy would say, what cute and touching things Kate would say, and if it would be an over-the-top breach of her privacy if I surreptitiously hung my Flip camcorder from the bathroom mirror so I could capture it all on video.

And blog it. It was all about the blog.

So as bedtime neared tonight, I told Andy I thought it was time to break the news to Kate.

“We can have a fish funeral!” I said with a little too much excitement.

“Well, we could, but I flushed him earlier while you guys were at Target,” Andy replied.

During my stunned silence, he explained to me that he figured it would be easier for Kate if he just took care of it.

Surely, surely, there are a million and a half child development articles about using such opportunities to introduce the idea of death and dying to kids, but I haven’t googled it. Unfortunately for Kate, her learning experiences went right down the drain. Literally.

And, dammit, I wanted to blog about a fish funeral!

So despite the fact that the physical evidence was gone, I still thought we should clue Kate in before she noticed the empty fish bowl in her room, so Andy called her out to the living room and gently explained to her that Swimmy had gone to the Big Bowl in the Sky.

“I don’t care,” she said.

Not exactly the response either of us had anticipated.

“Well, next time we’re over by the mall maybe we could stop at the pet store and get you another fish,” Andy told her. Because, you know, she was obviously so attached to this one.

“I want a different pet,” she said.

“You could get a different color fish,” Andy offered, hopefully.

“No, I want a different kind of pet,” she said patiently. “Maybe I could get a hamster.”

Andy looked over at me and fortunately for everyone involved he correctly interpreted my “if you consent to that idea I will flush you down the toilet” look and said something about waiting until Sammy was older before we get any more pets. And then I put a stop to the whole conversation by offering to read her a blasted Berenstain Bears book.

Later, as I thought about the missed opportunity of a fish funeral, I began to wonder if the fact that I was staging my life for the sake of a good blog post was a problem.

But I googled it, and it’s not.

*************
Here’s the gold standard in fish funerals. Apparently the emotional bonds between children and their fish haven’t changed in the past 25 years.