What Are Your Shoes For?

I often feel bad about the state of my shoes. When I enter someone's home I remove my shoes and place them near the collection of shoes from the other guests and those who live there. That's when I notice how worn and dirty mine look. I'm always embarrassed. Why do my shoes look so bad. I walk around the city just like everyone else, but mine look so much worse. I buy pretty decent shoes. Most of them aren't very old. I store them properly on a shelf, not on a crumpled pile of fellow dirty shoes. But my beloved shoes never fail to embarrass me at gatherings.

Recently, as many of you know, I had the privilege or reorganizing and relabeling 5, 500+ pictures my genius brother was able to recover for me. Thanks, bro! Anyway, during this two week long journey with many 18hr. days scrolling through photos and videos, I came across this video.




Then I didn't feel so bad about my shoes being more worn and dirty than everyone else's. Look what joy they bring!

The Old Maid.....And The Young Boy

Anyone who has ever played me in a game of Old Maid knows I always loose. I told my nanny friend Melissa this once and she didn't believe me.....at first. We frequently took our group of charges down to the coffee house on the corner where we all indulged in delicious treats over games and card playing. Time after time I lost at Old Maid. She soon believed me and succumbed to my claim of perpetual bad luck.

I remember loosing at the game since I was a child. I guess I should have seen it coming. Perhaps the Old Maid cards are more like Tarot cards for me.

Flash forward to today. I was with my favorite boys, David and Chris, looking for some games to play together. First was Crazy Eights, which Chris won. Then came Old Maid. "Oh, no, the game I always loose!" I cried. David laughed and asked why I always loose Old Maid. I didn't want to tell him that I believe I'm cursed, so I told him I didn't know, just luck I guessed.

So we sat down to play. David announced, after I dealt the cards, that he just got some bad luck. Clearly letting us all know who had the Old Maid card. But that's what its like to play cards with children. Chris didn't hold back either; laying all his cards on the table face up to search for his pairs. Surprisingly, David seemed happy to have the Old Maid card.

We played the game. Me picking from David's hand. He held onto that Old Maid. Keeping it in the same place, right in front of his stack. Closest to him and furthest from me. I could see him doing this so I asked him to fan them out...then to shuffle them. But I could tell he wanted to hold on to that card.

Chris won, again, and then it was down to David and me. And I couldn't believe it, but I didn't loose. I was not the Old Maid. I didn't want David to feel bad so I quickly teased him that he was an old lady. He laughed and said "Yeah, but at least you didn't loose! I turned your luck from (shows thumbs down) to (shows thumbs up)." I thanked him and gave him a big hug.

Maybe I was always the Old Maid because I didn't want anyone else to feel sad about loosing or being the Old Maid. I chose it out of their hands so I could see the relief in their eyes when they knew they were saved from being the Old Maid. And now David did it for me, just so I wouldn't be the looser, and would perhaps get my luck turned around.

Too Sleepy to Function

I was really tired this weekend. And things were worse this morning as I headed off to work. I was tired to the point of stupidity. I'm sure the Benadryl, or rather Waldryl, I took to put a stop to my constantly running nose and unstoppable sneezing didn't help perk matters up. When the baby and I arrived at his morning toddler class, I walked up to the door of the center and took my keys out of my pocket. Yeah, did you get that? I'm supposed to ring the buzzer to get in. I don't have keys.

There was a woman right behind me who saw the whole thing. She just laughed. Anyone who has or works with children automatically excuses this type of behavior. If it wasn't a cold, it could just as easily have been caused by "baby brain." (A condition that occurs from spending too much time with little ones, ultimately resulting in your brain turning to mush which significantly reduces your ability to maintain an adult conversation, remember why you are where you are, what you were just about to do, and other such things.

I used to be able to write messages with numbers on a beeper.

How uncool am I now? I just had to look to Google to interpret a text from a mother of three.