Blizzard Breaks

Here’s the second dose.

 (After watching a 2 year old slip behind chairs at New Year’s Eve dinner and Jackie about to follow..)

Stacey: Jackie is F*cked.

Jackie: You didn’t think I could make it but you got BURNED.

Jackie then proceeded to entertain us with a standing up worm dance, while sucking in her nostrils and making ear fart noises.

Sean: She’s a mixture of you and Maureen.

Me: If you mean she’s funny like me and she can make ear farts like Maureen, then, YES.

Neighbor: Jackie told us the funniest story yesterday.

Stacey and Sean: Oh no.  This’ll be good.

Jackie:  My parents thought that I was going to be a boy.  I have a baby blanket with truck on it my room and Bailey and Morgan have cute pink ones.  They sent me home from the hospital in ripped jeans a Penn State sweatshirt. 

Stacey: That’s so not true. We don’t have a single thing in this house with a truck on it.

Maureen: And then I realized I had been Ice Skating for 2 hours with my big home phone in my pocket. 

Kevin: Ow! Ow! Ow! My underwear hurts b/c I sat too much!

Ordering at Wendy’s

Kevin: No, Chicken! Like the big fat blobs.

Mo: Nuggets?

Kevin: Yes.

(On our way to Newark)

Me: Look how pretty the sky is!

Momela: It’s not pretty, it’s smog.  We’re in NJ.

I asked my mom where her name came from and she said, “My mother had so many kids that she ran out of meaningful names and named me after a radio soap opera character. “

7 year old Morgan: I need to go to Michael’s.

Sean: Who is Michael?

Morgan:  No, I need to get needles and yarn to crochet.

Stacey: But no one in this house knows how to crochet.

Morgan: The lunch lady is teaching me.  We’re like this (crossed fingers.)

Morgan then got needles and yarn for Christmas and wanted to teach Stacey.  After 3 days of asking, Stacey finally agreed.  

Stacey: We’re just making one long string.  Aren’t we supposed to connect or go to the next row somehow?

Morgan: Oh I haven’t learned that yet.  That’s for after break.

Stacey sent a picture of herself to Sean Snow blowing the drive way to Sean at work.  He replied, “That’s one sexy wife!” and forwarded it to a co-worker.  He sent it to his wife saying, “This is what a REAL wife does.” And then he was surprised that he got in trouble.

Neighbor in a heavy polish accent to her husband: Where is your hat!? You need a Hat! Get in here and put on your hat!

Husband (turning to Stacey across the street while putting his hands up): I don’t have gloves either. J

Later Jeff came back outside to finish plowing 2 feet of snow.

Stacey:  You cannot plow 2 feet of snow in dress shoes! Go back inside and get some boots!

This same Belgian neighbor Jeff was over on New Years and had brought a bottle of organic cucumber vodka.  When Sean asked expressed that he didn’t know how one would go about drinking this particular alcohol, Jeff replied “What are you talking about? I had that stuff in my office and drank it every day.  Wait.  That doesn’t sound good.”  Thinking this was hilarious, I uploaded the photo and quote to facebook immediately.  I forgot to put who said the quote and was immediately corrected by BDug who told me that I had kept Peppermint Schnapps in my drawer at work.  Forgot about that—maybe I shouldn’t have judged Jeff so harshly. 

Maureen: I have done 100% more than I did yesterday.

Pat: So, what was the one thing you did today?

Maureen borrowed the snow blower after the blizzard and then when it ran out of gas she left it in the middle of our yard and then came to our door with icicles on her eyebrows and told me I had to fill it before finishing the driveway.  Later she called to apologize and say that she couldn’t breathe wha wha wha and that’s why she left it there.  Any little excuse I guess.

My mother had wanted me to watch this Masterpiece Theatre mystery.  When I came home for the Christmas party I watched ten minutes until I realized I had only slept for 2 hours and needed to take a nap.  So this most recent trip she said, “So are you going to watch this with me or are you still all I haven’t slept in 2 days wha wha wha?”

Apparently my sister tried to get me sneakers for Christmas that were blue and my nephew Kevin looked at her with both shock and derision and said, “MOM! You cannot buy those for Aunt Tiffany.” And then proceeded to pick out Pink sneakers and the pleaded and begged my sister until she bought the correct pair of shoes for me. 

On our way back from Jumpin’ Jakes Bouncy house in Newburgh my sister got angry with an overly cautious driver and then said, “Oh.  He’s from NJ that means he’s never been on the Taconic before” just before she passed him by.  (This I think might only be funny to people who have driven on the Taconic – but trust me, those of us whose first highway was the Taconic before they expanded the road knows that you need to man up or get run over.)

Speaking of New York drivers, I may have bragged to BDug (this is Brian Dugas’ official new name btw) that I, as a New Yorker, can handle snow better than the average bear.  Based on this proclamation, I can only hope that the guy driving this tow truck was originally from California: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeo-xyY8nt8

The Blizzard was actually extremely inconvenient for me as my Uncle Donald died the day after Christmas and I spent 2 days on the phone and cruising the internet trying to get a flight down to Florida.  Several ladies at JetBlue were extremely happy to talk to me.  I told them that it was JetBlue’s master plan.  Put a girl on hold for 2 hours and she is THRILLED just to hear someone say hello.   Just as we had decided to get up at 2 am to brave the blustery east coast roads down to Florida, my cousin called to say she got my dad a flight.  Anyway, in honor of the late, great Donald O’Brien I’m going to share a story.   When he was very young he worked for the post office for a summer.  His daily routine included getting a donut and coffee and having a cigarette in between routes.  Someone caught him as he was performing this routine and said, “You can’t do that.  It’s totally against the rules.  I have to bring you in.”  My Uncle Donald shrugged and said, “All right” and followed the other guy up to the main offices.  As he was dragged into the Postmaster’s office, the Postmaster said, “Hey Don, how’s it going?” He replied, “I’m great.  How are you Aunt Mary?” Aunt Mary asked, “To what to I owe the pleasure?”  Immediately the guy let go of my Uncle Donald and said, “Oh we were just stopping by to say hello.”  And then my uncle went back to his donut and cigarette. 

We played Pictionary on Saturday.  When Jackie asked Sean for help with one of the clues he simply replied, “It is what it is.”  Stacey and I got really close to guess “White Men Can’t Jump” but didn’t quite get it.  Stacey drew a map of the U.S. and Sean proceeded to guess “Pennsylvania! Penn State! Nittany Lions! Hershey Park! Pittsburg! Liberty Bell!”  When the time ran out Stacey said,” Why did you keep saying Pennsylvania!?” Sean, “Because you drew Pennsylvania.” Stacey, “Well, it was Idaho!”

I got back from New York last night and decided that me getting home from Christmas break before the rest of the fam is bad luck as it was also the second time that I discovered a hissing noise only to find pipes flooding with water.  At least this time I knew what to do about it instead of running away and calling Pam. 

Stacey told me that Sean was going to start doing the P90X program… and diet and exercise program that requires you to be able to do 3 pull ups before you can even begin.  That’s right.  You need to train to train.  Maureen and I had worked out on Tuesday and then when she called on Wednesday to do it again I told her I didn’t want to, but I would be willing do a 12 minute workout in 25 minutes.  My mom started cracking up and said, “Did you just say you were going to do 12 minutes worth of exercise in 25 minutes?”  No…. 25 minutes later I did the P90X Ab ripper video with Maureen.  The boys tried to do it with us but basically just stared at us saying “How are you DOING that!?” At one point I was very impressed with Kevin for doing one of the moves until I realized he had a pillow behind him.  I texted Sean to tell him we did some P90X…. and next thing I know there was a wager between siblings.  Be prepared for me to be hungry and sweaty for the next 90 days people.  It is ON.   

Within the first 11 seconds of 2011 I dropped a glass. Within the first 11 minutes I dropped and shattered a second glass.  Please don’t let this be how the next 11 years are going to go.