Two things you should know about me:
1. I hate coffee
2. I love options
They are seemingly unrelated facts, but they'll both be important in a minute. The first one is self-explanatory. I don't like coffee. I think it's gross, and it stains people's teeth brown. Ew. I do love the smell of coffee. I can get some of my best writing done when I settle down at a Starbucks or a Barnes and Noble cafe, but I don't actually want to taste it.
The second fact is that I love options. I don't like being told what to do, and I don't like having things decided for me. I'm always one to "keep my options open," and I usually try not to commit to something until the last possible second because I always want to consider everything else (the obvious exception here being my husband, since I got married when I was ridiculously young. Whatever. Rex is the best guy on earth, so I had to lock that down while I had the chance). My parents have told me a zillion times that one of the first full sentences I learned to say was, "I can do it myself."
The other day Rex and I were over at his parents' house for a game night, and Rex offered to make coffee. He asked who wanted to have some, and then he said, "but Christine won't have any because she hates coffee." Um, ExCUSE me. You cannot say whether I will or will not have coffee, Rex. That choice is mine! I want the option to turn it down myself! So then I obviously said, "Actually, I'll have a cup, please," and then, a second later, "a half of a cup. I'm not actually that thirsty." Or I actually hate coffee. You know, whichever. But I'd already said I'd have some. Rex looked at me like I was nuts. "Seriously?" he asked. "You seriously want coffee?"
There was no going back now. "Yep," I said nonchalantly while shuffling some cards. "Why not? Coffee sounds good right now." He looked at me as if I'd just sprouted antennae, but then he shrugged it off and went back to getting the coffee ready. If there was a thought bubble over his head at that moment, I'm sure it would have said, "Women are completely nuts."
Rex brought over the cups of coffee, and we all started playing Phase 10. Everyone enjoyed their coffee, and I considered drinking mine. After all, I'd asked for it. I did like the smell of it, so maybe the taste wouldn't be too bad. I took a tentative sip that was probably equivalent to about 1/4 teaspoon.
Ew! Gross! What was this disgusting brown junk defiling my tongue?! It was bitter and sharp and was probably burning my taste buds right out of my mouth. I tried not to grimace and considered spitting the coffee back into the cup, but that seemed rude. I swallowed the sip and decided not to ever try that again. Suddenly, I had an epiphany. The cup was only half full. I didn't actually have to drink any of it. I could just pretend!
I lifted the cup to my lips and tipped it backwards, but not far enough for any of the coffee to reach my mouth. I pretended to drink and then put it back down. "Ahhh..." I sighed. "Nothing quite as good as a hot cup of Joe." Rex looked at me, baffled, and I just played my cards. Everyone else continued to enjoy their coffee and Phase 10, and I periodically took a "drink" of my coffee to look like I was fitting in. I mean, it's not like someone was going to come measure to make sure the level of the coffee in the mug was going down.
I really thought I was getting away with it. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for thinking of this brilliant plan. After a particularly long sip, I put the mug down. Rex leaned over and whispered in my ear, "It's really interesting how your lips are never wet after you take a drink of your coffee." I stared at him, mouth agape, and he laughed. I was so caught. His family asked what was so funny, but we certainly weren't going to tell! I offered to go get coffee refills, and I surreptitiously dumped the rest of my coffee down the drain when I went into the kitchen. I felt kind of bad to waste it, but I would have felt a lot worse if I actually tried to drink it.
Next time I think I'll make it easier on myself and just back down if Rex tries to make my drink decision for me. After all, the guy's been with me for eight years. He knows me pretty well. Maybe it's okay to let him nix my options when it comes to coffee.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
The Weekend Where Nothing Went as Planned, and Everyone Had a Blast
Yesterday was my birthday. I'm twenty-six...only four years away from thirty *cue hyperventilating and lamenting about all I haven't done.* Birthdays are really fun when you're a kid, but as you get older they get kind of ominous. Still fun, but also a little creepy. You're one year closer to the mysterious and nebulous line called "old."
To celebrate my birthday, my parents, Rex, and I decided to go to our cabin in northern Michigan. My friend Elle was flying in from Las Vegas, and we thought this would be a perfect Pure Michigan commercial kind of weekend. Backwoods log cabin, fluffy snow, warm fires and hot chocolate...you get the idea.
WELL, I don't think I've ever been more confident in saying that nothing went as planned. The only thing that actually went how I planned it was that everyone had a great time. Seriously. And when you hear what happened you might doubt me on that, but it's true. We had a blast.
Plans started changing even before we left. My friend Katie from Dayton, Ohio started texting me on Friday about my birthday plans, and I mentioned we were going to the cabin. I invited Katie and her husband to come join us, but I figured they wouldn't accept. After all, it's a six hour drive from Dayton to our cabin, and we were only going for a night. To my surprise, she accepted! How spontaneous and awesome! I was so pumped that she and Chris would be joining us.
A few hours later, Rex walked into the living room and told me that his friend Jake (whose birthday is the day before mine) suddenly had his birthday plans cancelled because his family couldn't go see him in Lansing anymore. Now he had nothing to do for his birthday (which is an obvious atrocity), so Rex invited him to go to the cabin with us. SWEET! So my small weekend of family and one friend had turned into a veritable party within just a few hours. Cool!
I wish I could say that all of the changes to our plans were that fun and positive, but I warn you: things start to go downhill from here. My family drove up to Walhalla, where our cabin is located, but we couldn't get through all of the deep snow to get back into the woods to the cabin itself. We had to get out of the car and trudge through the snow for about a quarter mile to get back to the cabin. Then I grabbed a sled and pulled it back up the giant hill to the car to pull all of our stuff down. Our dog Elvis rode on the sled too. He was a little confused about the process, but he was excited to be outside.
Once we actually got to the cabin, we were in for a new surprise: the furnace was broken. The cabin was freezing, and it looked like it was going to stay that way. I could see my breath as we discussed what to do. I was wearing my knee-length down-filled parka, and I was still cold. We couldn't just turn around and go home...we'd already driven two and a half hours to get there, and my friends were descending upon us in a matter of hours. To add insult to injury, the pipes had frozen too. That meant no running water (and no toilet!). We had to do something. We decided to split up: Dad and Rex would trek back up to the car, go into town, and try to find a furnace repair man who would be willing to work on the weekend. My mom, Elle, and I would stay in our igloo of a cabin and try to warm it up by building a fire.
We built a fire, but most of the heat went straight up the chimney. We sat by the fire and tried to keep warm, but it was really cold. I declared that I will officially never become an eskimo. I wanted things to warm up faster. That's when I had the idea to turn on the oven. After all, the electricity was still working. I checked to make sure it wasn't a gas oven (I didn't want to kill us all), and then I turned it on and opened the door. Surprisingly, this was pretty effective. I'm sure it's not the best way to heat a cabin (actually I'm sure it isn't), but it was better than waiting for the fireplace to work.
After waiting for about an hour, my dad and Rex returned victorious. There was a man willing to come look at the furnace! When he arrived, Rex had to go pick him up and show him the path through the woods to walk down to our cabin. Let me interject a moment to say that if I was the furnace man and some bearded guy in a giant hunter orange coat said, "Follow me through these dark woods to a cabin that I promise you is back in there a ways," I would probably say no. Apparently people are trusting in northern Michigan, though, because he said okay. I'm certainly glad he did, because he was able to fix the furnace. Hooray! Three cheers for the furnace guy!
By this time all of my friends had arrived, and they were all good sports about the freezing cabin. Thanks to furnace man, the cabin would now be not-so-freezing, but the pipes were still broken. That meant we had to go to the bathroom outside in the snow. Ummm...ew.
To minimize the effects of this situation, we decided to go out to dinner in town (about twenty miles away). That way we could use the bathrooms there. We had a TON of fun at dinner, and I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. My friends are hilarious. I was wearing a birthday tiara, and at one point a little boy said, "Mommy, is that a real princess? She's so beautiful..." That obviously made my day, especially when the mom said, "Yes, honey, that's a real princess." Aw! So we had a delicious dinner, all used the bathroom, then make the drive/hike back to the cabin again.
Back at the cabin, people played Euchre for the next SIX HOURS. Personally I don't love that game, but it was fun to watch. I read a little bit and chatted with the people who weren't playing. We made snacks and basically just hung out. Then we went to bed (after we all inevitably had to pee outside...I built a make-shift toilet out of firewood). Then the real fun started.
I had been asleep for maybe a half hour when I heard a distinctive sound. It's a high-pitched click/screetch type of noise: the sound of a bat. I nudged Rex and said, "Rex, there's a bat in here." He mumbled something unintelligible and rolled over, going back to sleep. Playing Euchre until 4:30 AM really takes it out of the guy. I stared at the ceiling with my eyes wide open, as if I could use my non-existent night vision to see where the screetch came from. I knew that bats find their food through the use of echolocation, so I figured they wouldn't bite me on account of the fact that I was so much bigger than them. Probably. Just in case, I put on a hoodie and put the hood over my head. Because a thin layer of cotton will obviously stop a vicious bat. Whatever, it was 4:30. I wanted to sleep.
When we woke up in the morning, I mentioned the bat to Rex again. We looked up at the ceiling, and we were able to find two little bats snuggling in the corner of the vaulted ceiling. They would have been cute if they weren't, you know, bats. When my dad woke up we showed him the bats, and he grabbed a net to catch them. Of course, bats don't particularly enjoy being caught, so they put up a fuss. Specifically, they started flying all around the cabin. Ahhhh!! Rex grabbed a sharpened walking stick and a pillow, and he defended me. Jake snapped this picture, and I wish I could tell you that it was staged. It wasn't. In retrospect, what was Rex going to do? Spear the bat with a stick? Fend off its fangs with a pillow? I don't know.
Apparently making those bats angry caused some sort of bat uprising, because no fewer than FIVE bats flew out of the ceiling! PANIC!!! By this time everyone was awake, and they were all running around the cabin screaming and laughing and trying to take cover. My dad was chasing all of the bats with his butterfly net. Please take a moment to pause and picture this scene.
It was.....something else.
At one point Jake said, extremely calmly, "Uh, there is a bat on my pants." A bat had landed literally ON HIS JEANS. AHHHHHH!!! I would not have been calm about that. I would have screamed bloody murder. I mean, I'm not the type to jump on a couch if I see a spider, but a bat on my pants would have been a bit too much.
Once the bat-tastrophe was over, we all ate breakfast (breakfast casserole and muffins - yum!) and then started packing up and cleaning the cabin. A blizzard was on its way, and we wanted to get out before it hit. Unfortunately, due to some batty setbacks, that didn't quite happen. We ended up driving home in the blizzard. Even more unfortunately, Kate and Chris got into a car accident (see? I told you nothing went as planned). They were totally fine, but they were rear-ended and their car was a bit beat up. Shaken, they didn't want to drive all the way back to Ohio. They decided to stay with us in Kalamazoo. We drove back to my parents' house to get our car, but guess what? Our car was covered in a snow drift. It's actually still there...we haven't been able to get it out. So we ended up having an impromptu continuation of the birthday party and hung out at my parents house that night. Then school called and said I would have a snow day the next day, so that meant I could just relax and have fun with my friends. Katie and Chris called their respective work places and said they wouldn't be coming in, and then we basically had a blast for the rest of that night too! No bats this time, though, and we had running water. So basically we were in a palace. Hand-on-heart: I will never take toilets for granted again.
It was a crazy weekend for sure, but everyone told me what a great time they had. It's about making the most of what you've got and spending time with awesome people. I feel so blessed to have such fun and adventurous family and friends. Let's hope that the rest of my 26th year isn't as crazy as the beginning of it was!
To celebrate my birthday, my parents, Rex, and I decided to go to our cabin in northern Michigan. My friend Elle was flying in from Las Vegas, and we thought this would be a perfect Pure Michigan commercial kind of weekend. Backwoods log cabin, fluffy snow, warm fires and hot chocolate...you get the idea.
WELL, I don't think I've ever been more confident in saying that nothing went as planned. The only thing that actually went how I planned it was that everyone had a great time. Seriously. And when you hear what happened you might doubt me on that, but it's true. We had a blast.
Plans started changing even before we left. My friend Katie from Dayton, Ohio started texting me on Friday about my birthday plans, and I mentioned we were going to the cabin. I invited Katie and her husband to come join us, but I figured they wouldn't accept. After all, it's a six hour drive from Dayton to our cabin, and we were only going for a night. To my surprise, she accepted! How spontaneous and awesome! I was so pumped that she and Chris would be joining us.
A few hours later, Rex walked into the living room and told me that his friend Jake (whose birthday is the day before mine) suddenly had his birthday plans cancelled because his family couldn't go see him in Lansing anymore. Now he had nothing to do for his birthday (which is an obvious atrocity), so Rex invited him to go to the cabin with us. SWEET! So my small weekend of family and one friend had turned into a veritable party within just a few hours. Cool!
I wish I could say that all of the changes to our plans were that fun and positive, but I warn you: things start to go downhill from here. My family drove up to Walhalla, where our cabin is located, but we couldn't get through all of the deep snow to get back into the woods to the cabin itself. We had to get out of the car and trudge through the snow for about a quarter mile to get back to the cabin. Then I grabbed a sled and pulled it back up the giant hill to the car to pull all of our stuff down. Our dog Elvis rode on the sled too. He was a little confused about the process, but he was excited to be outside.
Once we actually got to the cabin, we were in for a new surprise: the furnace was broken. The cabin was freezing, and it looked like it was going to stay that way. I could see my breath as we discussed what to do. I was wearing my knee-length down-filled parka, and I was still cold. We couldn't just turn around and go home...we'd already driven two and a half hours to get there, and my friends were descending upon us in a matter of hours. To add insult to injury, the pipes had frozen too. That meant no running water (and no toilet!). We had to do something. We decided to split up: Dad and Rex would trek back up to the car, go into town, and try to find a furnace repair man who would be willing to work on the weekend. My mom, Elle, and I would stay in our igloo of a cabin and try to warm it up by building a fire.
We built a fire, but most of the heat went straight up the chimney. We sat by the fire and tried to keep warm, but it was really cold. I declared that I will officially never become an eskimo. I wanted things to warm up faster. That's when I had the idea to turn on the oven. After all, the electricity was still working. I checked to make sure it wasn't a gas oven (I didn't want to kill us all), and then I turned it on and opened the door. Surprisingly, this was pretty effective. I'm sure it's not the best way to heat a cabin (actually I'm sure it isn't), but it was better than waiting for the fireplace to work.
After waiting for about an hour, my dad and Rex returned victorious. There was a man willing to come look at the furnace! When he arrived, Rex had to go pick him up and show him the path through the woods to walk down to our cabin. Let me interject a moment to say that if I was the furnace man and some bearded guy in a giant hunter orange coat said, "Follow me through these dark woods to a cabin that I promise you is back in there a ways," I would probably say no. Apparently people are trusting in northern Michigan, though, because he said okay. I'm certainly glad he did, because he was able to fix the furnace. Hooray! Three cheers for the furnace guy!
By this time all of my friends had arrived, and they were all good sports about the freezing cabin. Thanks to furnace man, the cabin would now be not-so-freezing, but the pipes were still broken. That meant we had to go to the bathroom outside in the snow. Ummm...ew.
To minimize the effects of this situation, we decided to go out to dinner in town (about twenty miles away). That way we could use the bathrooms there. We had a TON of fun at dinner, and I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. My friends are hilarious. I was wearing a birthday tiara, and at one point a little boy said, "Mommy, is that a real princess? She's so beautiful..." That obviously made my day, especially when the mom said, "Yes, honey, that's a real princess." Aw! So we had a delicious dinner, all used the bathroom, then make the drive/hike back to the cabin again.
Back at the cabin, people played Euchre for the next SIX HOURS. Personally I don't love that game, but it was fun to watch. I read a little bit and chatted with the people who weren't playing. We made snacks and basically just hung out. Then we went to bed (after we all inevitably had to pee outside...I built a make-shift toilet out of firewood). Then the real fun started.
I had been asleep for maybe a half hour when I heard a distinctive sound. It's a high-pitched click/screetch type of noise: the sound of a bat. I nudged Rex and said, "Rex, there's a bat in here." He mumbled something unintelligible and rolled over, going back to sleep. Playing Euchre until 4:30 AM really takes it out of the guy. I stared at the ceiling with my eyes wide open, as if I could use my non-existent night vision to see where the screetch came from. I knew that bats find their food through the use of echolocation, so I figured they wouldn't bite me on account of the fact that I was so much bigger than them. Probably. Just in case, I put on a hoodie and put the hood over my head. Because a thin layer of cotton will obviously stop a vicious bat. Whatever, it was 4:30. I wanted to sleep.
When we woke up in the morning, I mentioned the bat to Rex again. We looked up at the ceiling, and we were able to find two little bats snuggling in the corner of the vaulted ceiling. They would have been cute if they weren't, you know, bats. When my dad woke up we showed him the bats, and he grabbed a net to catch them. Of course, bats don't particularly enjoy being caught, so they put up a fuss. Specifically, they started flying all around the cabin. Ahhhh!! Rex grabbed a sharpened walking stick and a pillow, and he defended me. Jake snapped this picture, and I wish I could tell you that it was staged. It wasn't. In retrospect, what was Rex going to do? Spear the bat with a stick? Fend off its fangs with a pillow? I don't know.
Apparently making those bats angry caused some sort of bat uprising, because no fewer than FIVE bats flew out of the ceiling! PANIC!!! By this time everyone was awake, and they were all running around the cabin screaming and laughing and trying to take cover. My dad was chasing all of the bats with his butterfly net. Please take a moment to pause and picture this scene.
It was.....something else.
At one point Jake said, extremely calmly, "Uh, there is a bat on my pants." A bat had landed literally ON HIS JEANS. AHHHHHH!!! I would not have been calm about that. I would have screamed bloody murder. I mean, I'm not the type to jump on a couch if I see a spider, but a bat on my pants would have been a bit too much.
Once the bat-tastrophe was over, we all ate breakfast (breakfast casserole and muffins - yum!) and then started packing up and cleaning the cabin. A blizzard was on its way, and we wanted to get out before it hit. Unfortunately, due to some batty setbacks, that didn't quite happen. We ended up driving home in the blizzard. Even more unfortunately, Kate and Chris got into a car accident (see? I told you nothing went as planned). They were totally fine, but they were rear-ended and their car was a bit beat up. Shaken, they didn't want to drive all the way back to Ohio. They decided to stay with us in Kalamazoo. We drove back to my parents' house to get our car, but guess what? Our car was covered in a snow drift. It's actually still there...we haven't been able to get it out. So we ended up having an impromptu continuation of the birthday party and hung out at my parents house that night. Then school called and said I would have a snow day the next day, so that meant I could just relax and have fun with my friends. Katie and Chris called their respective work places and said they wouldn't be coming in, and then we basically had a blast for the rest of that night too! No bats this time, though, and we had running water. So basically we were in a palace. Hand-on-heart: I will never take toilets for granted again.
It was a crazy weekend for sure, but everyone told me what a great time they had. It's about making the most of what you've got and spending time with awesome people. I feel so blessed to have such fun and adventurous family and friends. Let's hope that the rest of my 26th year isn't as crazy as the beginning of it was!
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